looking over the limitless Louisiana forests, where new and wondrous
vines and flowers grew, and came to the beautiful Walnut Hills crowned
by a Spanish fort. We did not stop there to exchange courtesies, but
pressed on to the Grand Gulf, the grave of many a keel boat before and
since. This was by far the most dangerous place on the Mississippi, and
Xavier was never weary of recounting many perilous escapes there, or
telling how such and such a priceless cargo had sunk in the mud by
reason of the lack of skill of particular boatmen he knew of. And
indeed, the Canadian’s face assumed a graver mien after the Walnut Hills
were behind us.
“You laugh, Michié,” he said to Nick, a little resentfully. “I who speak
to you say that there is four foot on each side of ze bateau. Too much
tafia, a little too much excite--” and he made a gesture with his hand
expressive of total destruction; “ze tornado, I would sooner have him--”
“Bah!” said Nick, stroking Xavier’s black beard, “give me the tiller.
I will see you through safely, and we will not spare the tafia either.”
And he began to sing a song of Xavier’s own:--
“‘Marianson, dame jolie,
Où est allé votre mari?’”
“Ah, toujours les dames!” said Xavier. “But I tell you, Michié, le
diable,--he is at ze bottom of ze Grand Gulf and his mouth open--so.”
And he suited the action to the word.
At night we tied up under the shore within earshot of the mutter of the
place, and twice that night I awoke with clinched hands from a dream
of being spun fiercely against the rock of which Xavier had told,
and sucked into the devil’s mouth under the water. Dawn came as I was
fighting the mosquitoes,--a still, sultry dawn with thunder muttering in
the distance.
We breakfasted in silence, and with the crew standing ready at the oars
and Xavier scanning the wide expanse of waters ahead, seeking for that
unmarked point whence to embark on this perilous journey, we floated
down the stream. The prospect was sufficiently disquieting on that
murky day. Below us, on the one hand, a rocky bluff reached out into
the river, and on the far side was a timber-clad point round which the
Mississippi doubled and flowed back on itself. It needed no trained eye
to guess at the perils of the place. On the one side the mighty current
charged against the bluff and, furious at the obstacle, lashed itself
into a hundred sucks and whirls, their course marked by the flotsam
plundered from the forests above. Woe betide the boat that got into this
devil’s caldron! And on the other side, near the timbered point, ran a
counter current marked by forest wreckage flowing up-stream. To venture
too far on this side was to be grounded or at least to be sent back to
embark once more on the trial.
But where was the channel? We watched Xavier with bated breath. Not once
did he take his eyes from the swirling water ahead, but gave the tiller
a touch from time to time, now right, now left, and called in a monotone
for the port or starboard oars. Nearer and nearer we sped, dodging the
snags, until the water boiled around us, and suddenly the boat
shot forward as in a mill-race, and we clutched the cabin’s roof.
A triumphant gleam was in Xavier’s eyes, for he had hit the channel
squarely. And then, like a monster out of the deep, the scaly, black
back of a great northern pine was flung up beside us and sheered us
across the channel until we were at the very edge of the foam-specked,
spinning water. But Xavier saw it, and quick as lightning brought his
helm over and laughed as he heard it crunching along our keel. And so
we came swiftly around the bend and into safety once more. The next day
there was the Petite Gulf, which bothered Xavier very little, and the
day after that we came in sight of Natchez on her heights and guided our
boat in amongst the others that lined the shore, scowled at by lounging
Indians there, and eyed suspiciously by a hatchet-faced Spaniard in a
tawdry uniform who represented his Majesty’s customs. Here we stopped
for a day and a night that Xavier and his crew might get properly drunk
on tafia, while Nick and I walked about the town and waited until his
Excellency, the commandant, had finished dinner that we might present
our letters and obtain his passport. Natchez at that date was a
sufficiently unkempt and evil place of dirty, ramshackle houses and
gambling dens, where men of the four nations gamed and quarrelled and
fought. We were glad enough to get away the following morning, Xavier
somewhat saddened by the loss of thirty livres of which he had no
memory, and Nick and myself relieved at having the passports in our
pockets. I have mine yet among my papers.
“Natchez, 29 de Junio, de 1789.
“Concedo libre y seguro pasaporte a Don Davíd Ritchie para que pase a la
Nueva Orleans por Agna. Pido y encargo no se le ponga embarazo.”
A few days more and we were running between low shores which seemed to
hold a dark enchantment. The rivers now flowed out of, and not into the
Mississippi, and Xavier called them bayous, and often it took much skill
and foresight on his part not to be shot into the lane they made in the
dark forest of an evening. And the forest,--it seemed an impenetrable
mystery, a strange tangle of fantastic growths: the live-oak (chêne
vert), its wide-spreading limbs hung funereally with Spanish moss and
twined in the mistletoe’s death embrace; the dark cypress swamp with the
conelike knees above the yellow back-waters; and here and there grew the
bridelike magnolia which we had known in Kentucky, wafting its perfume
over the waters, and wondrous flowers and vines and trees with French
names that bring back the scene to me even now with a whiff of romance,
bois d’arc, lilac, grande volaille (water-lily). Birds flew hither and
thither (the names of every one of which Xavier knew),--the whistling
papabot, the mournful bittern (garde-soleil), and the night-heron
(grosbeck), who stood like a sentinel on the points.
One night I awoke with the sweat starting from my brow, trying to
collect my senses, and I lay on my blanket listening to such plaintive
and heart-rending cries as I had never known. Human cries they were,
cries as of children in distress, and I rose to a sitting posture on the
deck with my hair standing up straight, to discover Nick beside me in
the same position.
“God have mercy on us,” I heard him mutter, “what’s that? It sounds like
the wail of all the babies since the world began.”
We listened together, and I can give no notion of the hideous
mournfulness of the sound. We lay in a swampy little inlet, and the
forest wall made a dark blur against the star-studded sky. There was a
splash near the boat that made me clutch my legs, the wails ceased and
began again with redoubled intensity. Nick and I leaped to our feet
and stood staring, horrified, over the gunwale into the black water.
Presently there was a laugh behind us, and we saw Xavier resting on his
elbow.
“What devil-haunted place is this?” demanded Nick.
“Ha, ha,” said Xavier, shaking with unseemly mirth, “you have never
heard ze alligator sing, Michié?”
“Alligator!” cried Nick; “there are babies in the water, I tell you.”
“Ha, ha,” laughed Xavier, flinging off his blanket and searching for his
flint and tinder. He lighted a pine knot, and in the red pulsing flare
we saw what seemed to be a dozen black logs floating on the surface.
And then Xavier flung the cresset at them, fire and all. There was a
lashing, a frightful howl from one of the logs, and the night’s silence
once more.
Often after that our slumbers were disturbed, and we would rise
with maledictions in our mouths to fling the handiest thing at the
serenaders. When we arose in the morning we would often see them by the
dozens, basking in the shallows, with their wide mouths flapped open
waiting for their prey. Sometimes we ran upon them in the water, where
they looked like the rough-bark pine logs from the North, and Nick
would have a shot at them. When he hit one fairly there would be a
leviathan-like roar and a churning of the river into suds.
At length there were signs that we were drifting out of the wilderness,
and one morning we came in sight of a rich plantation with its dark
orange trees and fields of indigo, with its wide-galleried manor-house
in a grove. And as we drifted we heard the negroes chanting at their
work, the plaintive cadence of the strange song adding to the mystery
of the scene. Here in truth was a new world, a land of peaceful customs,
green and moist. The soft-toned bells of it seemed an expression of its
life,--so far removed from our own striving and fighting existence in
Kentucky. Here and there, between plantations, a belfry could be seen
above the cluster of the little white village planted in the green; and
when we went ashore amongst these simple French people they treated us
with such gentle civility and kindness that we would fain have lingered
there. The river had become a vast yellow lake, and often as we drifted
of an evening the wail of a slave dance and monotonous beating of a
tom-tom would float to us over the water.
At last, late one afternoon, we came in sight of that strange city which
had filled our thoughts for many days.
CHAPTER XI. THE STRANGE CITY
Nick and I stood by the mast on the forward part of the cabin, staring
at the distant, low-lying city, while Xavier sought for the entrance
to the eddy which here runs along the shore. If you did not gain this
entrance,--so he explained,--you were carried by a swift current below
New Orleans and might by no means get back save by the hiring of a
crew. Xavier, however, was not to be caught thus, and presently we were
gliding quietly along the eastern bank, or levee, which held back
the river from the lowlands. Then, as we looked, the levee became an
esplanade shaded by rows of willows, and through them we caught sight
of the upper galleries and low, curving roofs of the city itself. There,
cried Xavier, was the Governor’s house on the corner, where the great
Miro lived, and beyond it the house of the Intendant; and then, gliding
into an open space between the keel boats along the bank, stared at by
a score of boatmen and idlers from above, we came to the end of our long
journey. No sooner had we made fast than we were boarded by a shabby
customs officer who, when he had seen our passports, bowed politely and
invited us to land. We leaped ashore, gained the gravelled walk on the
levee, and looked about us.
Squalidity first met our eyes. Below us, crowded between the levee
and the row of houses, were dozens of squalid market-stalls tended by
cotton-clad negroes. Beyond, across the bare Place d’Armes, a blackened
gap in the line of houses bore witness to the devastation of the year
gone by, while here and there a roof, struck by the setting sun, gleamed
fiery red with its new tiles. The levee was deserted save for the
negroes and the river men.
“Time for siesta, Michié,” said Xavier, joining us; “I will show you ze
inn of which I spik. She is kep’ by my fren’, Madame Bouvet.”
“Xavier,” said Nick, looking at the rolling flood of the river, “suppose
this levee should break?”
“Ah,” said Xavier, “then some Spaniard who never have a bath--he feel
what water is lak.”
Followed by Benjy with the saddle-bags, we went down the steps set in
the levee into this strange, foreign city. It was like unto nothing
we had ever seen, nor can I give an adequate notion of how it affected
us,--such a mixture it seemed of dirt and poverty and wealth and
romance. The narrow, muddy streets ran with filth, and on each side
along the houses was a sun-baked walk held up by the curved sides of
broken flatboats, where two men might scarcely pass. The houses, too,
had an odd and foreign look, some of wood, some of upright logs and
plaster, and newer ones, Spanish in style, of adobe, with curving roofs
of red tiles and strong eaves spreading over the banquette (as the
sidewalk was called), casting shadows on lemon-colored walls. Since New
Orleans was in a swamp, the older houses for the most part were lifted
some seven feet above the ground, and many of these houses had wide
galleries on the street side. Here and there a shop was set in the wall;
a watchmaker was to be seen poring over his work at a tiny window, a
shoemaker cross-legged on the floor. Again, at an open wicket, we caught
a glimpse through a cool archway into a flowering court-yard. Stalwart
negresses with bright kerchiefs made way for us on the banquette. Hands
on hips, they swung along erect, with baskets of cakes and sweetmeats on
their heads, musically crying their wares.
At length, turning a corner, we came to a white wooden house on the Rue
Royale, with a flight of steps leading up to the entrance. In place of
a door a flimsy curtain hung in the doorway, and, pushing this aside,
we followed Xavier through a darkened hall to a wide gallery that
overlooked a court-yard. This court-yard was shaded by several great
trees which grew there; the house and gallery ran down one other side of
it; and the two remaining sides were made up of a series of low cabins,
these forming the various outhouses and the kitchen. At the far end
of this gallery a sallow, buxom lady sat sewing at a table, and Xavier
saluted her very respectfully.
“Madame,” he said, “I have brought you from St. Louis with Michié
Gratiot’s compliments two young American gentlemen, who are travelling
to amuse themselves.”
The lady rose and beamed upon us.
“From Monsieur Gratiot,” she said; “you are very welcome, gentlemen, to
such poor accommodations as I have. It is not unusual to have American
gentlemen in New Orleans, for many come here first and last. And I am
happy to say that two of my best rooms are vacant. Zoey!”
There was a shrill answer from the court below, and a negro girl in a
yellow turban came running up, while Madame Bouvet bustled along the
gallery and opened the doors of two darkened rooms. Within I could dimly
see a walnut dresser, a chair, and a walnut bed on which was spread a
mosquito bar.
“Voilá! Messieurs,” cried Madame Bouvet, “there is still a little
time for a siesta. No siesta!” cried Madame, eying us aghast; “ah, the
Americans they never rest--never.”
We bade farewell to the good Xavier, promising to see him soon; and
Nick, shouting to Benjy to open the saddle-bags, proceeded to array
himself in the clothes which had made so much havoc at St. Louis. I
boded no good from this proceeding, but I reflected, as I watched him
dress, that I might as well try to turn the Mississippi from its course
as to attempt to keep my cousin from the search for gallant adventure.
And I reflected that his indulgence in pleasure-seeking would serve
the more to divert any suspicions which might fall upon my own head. At
last, when the setting sun was flooding the court-yard, he stood arrayed
upon the gallery, ready to venture forth to conquest.
Madame Bouvet’s tavern, or hotel, or whatever she was pleased to call
it, was not immaculately clean. Before passing into the street we stood
for a moment looking into the public room on the left of the hallway,
a long saloon, evidently used in the early afternoon for a dining room,
and at the back of it a wide, many-paned window, capped by a Spanish
arch, looked out on the gallery. Near this window was a gay party of
young men engaged at cards, waited on by the yellow-turbaned Zoey, and
drinking what evidently was claret punch. The sounds of their jests and
laughter pursued us out of the house.
The town was waking from its siesta, the streets filling, and people
stopped to stare at Nick as we passed. But Nick, who was plainly in
search of something he did not find, hurried on. We soon came to the
quarter which had suffered most from the fire, where new houses had
gone up or were in the building beside the blackened logs of many of
Bienville’s time. Then we came to a high white wall that surrounded a
large garden, and within it was a long, massive building of some beauty
and pretension, with a high, latticed belfry and heavy walls and with
arched dormers in the sloping roof. As we stood staring at it through
the iron grille set in the archway of the lodge, Nick declared that it
put him in mind of some of the châteaux he had seen in France, and he
crossed the street to get a better view of the premises. An old man in
coarse blue linen came out of the lodge and spoke to me.
“It is the convent of the good nuns, the Ursulines, Monsieur,” he said
in French, “and it was built long ago in the Sieur de Bienville’s time,
when the colony was young. For forty-five years, Monsieur, the young
ladies of the city have come here to be educated.”
“What does he say?” demanded Nick, pricking up his ears as he came
across the street.
“That young men have been sent to the mines of Brazil for climbing the
walls,” I answered.
“Who wants to climb the walls?” said Nick, disgusted.
“The young ladies of the town go to school here,” I answered; “it is a
convent.”
“It might serve to pass the time,” said Nick, gazing with a new interest
at the latticed windows. “How much would you take, my friend, to let us
in at the back way this evening?” he demanded of the porter in French.
The good man gasped, lifted his hands in horror, and straightway let
loose upon Nick a torrent of French invectives that had not the least
effect except to cause a blacksmith’s apprentice and two negroes to stop
and stare at us.
“Pooh!” exclaimed Nick, when the man had paused for want of breath, “it
is no trick to get over that wall.”
“Bon Dieu!” cried the porter, “you are Kentuckians, yes? I might have
known that you were Kentuckians, and I shall advise the good sisters to
put glass on the wall and keep a watch.”
“The young ladies are beautiful, you say?” said Nick.
At this juncture, with the negroes grinning and the porter near bursting
with rage, there came out of the lodge the fattest woman I have ever
seen for her size. She seized her husband by the back of his loose frock
and pulled him away, crying out that he was losing time by talking to
vagabonds, besides disturbing the good sisters. Then we went away, Nick
following the convent wall down to the river. Turning southward under
the bank past the huddle of market-stalls, we came suddenly upon a sight
that made us pause and wonder.
New Orleans was awake. A gay and laughing throng paced the esplanade on
the levee under the willows, with here and there a cavalier on horseback
on the Royal Road below. Across the Place d’Armes the spire of the
parish church stood against the fading sky, and to the westward the
mighty river stretched away like a gilded floor. It was a strange
throng. There were grave Spaniards in long cloaks and feathered beavers;
jolly merchants and artisans in short linen jackets, each with his
tabatière, the wives with bits of finery, the children laughing and
shouting and dodging in and out between fathers and mothers beaming with
quiet pride and contentment; swarthy boat-men with their worsted belts,
gaudy negresses chanting in the soft patois, and here and there a
blanketed Indian. Nor was this all. Some occasion (so Madame Bouvet had
told us) had brought a sprinkling of fashion to town that day, and it
was a fashion to astonish me. There were fine gentlemen with swords
and silk waistcoats and silver shoe-buckles, and ladies in filmy summer
gowns. Greuze ruled the mode in France then, but New Orleans had not
got beyond Watteau. As for Nick and me, we knew nothing of Greuze and
Watteau then, and we could only stare in astonishment. And for once we
saw an officer of the Louisiana Regiment resplendent in a uniform that
might have served at court.
Ay, and there was yet another sort. Every flatboatman who returned to
Kentucky was full of tales of the marvellous beauty of the quadroons and
octoroons, stories which I had taken with a grain of salt; but they had
not indeed been greatly overdrawn. For here were these ladies in the
flesh, their great, opaque, almond eyes consuming us with a swift
glance, and each walking with a languid grace beside her duenna. Their
faces were like old ivory, their dress the stern Miro himself could
scarce repress. In former times they had been lavish in their finery,
and even now earrings still gleamed and color broke out irrepressibly.
Nick was delighted, but he had not dragged me twice the length of the
esplanade ere his eye was caught by a young lady in pink who sauntered
between an elderly gentleman in black silk and a young man more gayly
dressed.
“Egad,” said Nick, “there is my divinity, and I need not look a step
farther.”
I laughed.
“You have but to choose, I suppose, and all falls your way,” I answered.
“But look!” he cried, halting me to stare after the girl, “what a face,
and what a form! And what a carriage, by Jove! There is breeding for
you! And Davy, did you mark the gentle, rounded arm? Thank heaven these
short sleeves are the fashion.”
“You are mad, Nick,” I answered, pulling him on, “these people are
not to be stared at so. And once I present our letters to Monsieur de
Saint-Gré, it will not be difficult to know any of them.”
“Look!” said he, “that young man, lover or husband, is a brute. On my
soul, they are quarrelling.”
The three had stopped by a bench under a tree. The young man, who wore
claret silk and a sword, had one of those thin faces of dirty complexion
which show the ravages of dissipation, and he was talking with a
rapidity and vehemence of which only a Latin tongue will admit. We
could see, likewise, that the girl was answering with spirit,--indeed, I
should write a stronger word than spirit,--while the elderly gentleman,
who had a good-humored, fleshy face and figure, was plainly doing his
best to calm them both. People who were passing stared curiously at the
three.
“Your divinity evidently has a temper,” I remarked.
“For that scoundel--certainly,” said Nick; “but come, they are moving
on.”
“You mean to follow them?” I exclaimed.
“Why not?” said he. “We will find out where they live and who they are,
at least.”
“And you have taken a fancy to this girl?”
“I have looked them all over, and she’s by far the best I’ve seen. I can
say so much honestly.”
“But she may be married,” I said weakly.
“Tut, Davy,” he answered, “it’s more than likely, from the violence of
their quarrel. But if so, we will try again.”
“We!” I exclaimed.
“Oh, come on!” he cried, dragging me by the sleeve, “or we shall lose
them.”
I resisted no longer, but followed him down the levee, in my heart
thanking heaven that he had not taken a fancy to an octoroon. Twilight
had set in strongly, the gay crowd was beginning to disperse, and in
the distance the three figures could be seen making their way across the
Place d’Armes, the girl hanging on the elderly gentleman’s arm, and the
young man following with seeming sullenness behind. They turned into one
of the narrower streets, and we quickened our steps. Lights gleamed in
the houses; voices and laughter, and once the tinkle of a guitar came
to us from court-yard and gallery. But Nick, hurrying on, came near to
bowling more than one respectable citizen we met on the banquette, into
the ditch. We reached a corner, and the three were nowhere to be seen.
“Curse the luck!” cried Nick, “we have lost them. The next time I’ll
stop for no explanations.”
There was no particular reason why I should have been penitent, but I
ventured to say that the house they had entered could not be far off.
“And how the devil are we to know it?” demanded Nick.
This puzzled me for a moment, but presently I began to think that the
two might begin quarrelling again, and said so. Nick laughed and put his
arm around my neck.
“You have no mean ability for intrigue when you put your mind to
it, Davy,” he said; “I vow I believe you are in love with the girl
yourself.”
I disclaimed this with some vehemence. Indeed, I had scarcely seen her.
“They can’t be far off,” said Nick; “we’ll pitch on a likely house and
camp in front of it until bedtime.”
“And be flung into a filthy calaboose by a constable,” said I. “No,
thank you.”
We walked on, and halfway down the block we came upon a new house with
more pretensions than its neighbors. It was set back a little from the
street, and there was a high adobe wall into which a pair of gates were
set, and a wicket opening in one of them. Over the wall hung a dark
fringe of magnolia and orange boughs. On each of the gate-posts a
crouching lion was outlined dimly against the fainting light, and, by
crossing the street, we could see the upper line of a latticed gallery
under the low roof. We took our stand within the empty doorway of a
blackened house, nearly opposite, and there we waited, Nick murmuring
all sorts of ridiculous things in my ear. But presently I began to
reflect upon the consequences of being taken in such a situation by a
constable and dragged into the light of a public examination. I put this
to Nick as plainly as I could, and was declaring my intention of going
back to Madame Bouvet’s, when the sound of voices arrested me. The
voices came from the latticed gallery, and they were low at first, but
soon rose to such an angry pitch that I made no doubt we had hit on
the right house after all. What they said was lost to us, but I could
distinguish the woman’s voice, low-pitched and vibrant as though
insisting upon a refusal, and the man’s scarce adult tones, now high as
though with balked passion, now shaken and imploring. I was for leaving
the place at once, but Nick clutched my arm tightly; and suddenly, as I
stood undecided, the voices ceased entirely, there were the sounds of a
scuffle, and the lattice of the gallery was flung open. In the all but
darkness we saw a figure climb over the railing, hang suspended for an
instant, and drop lightly to the ground. Then came the light relief of a
woman’s gown in the opening of the lattice, the cry “Auguste, Auguste!”
the wicket in the gate opened and slammed, and a man ran at top speed
along the banquette towards the levee.
Instinctively I seized Nick by the arm as he started out of the doorway.
“Let me go,” he cried angrily, “let me go, Davy.”
But I held on.
“Are you mad?” I said.
He did not answer, but twisted and struggled, and before I knew what he
was doing he had pushed me off the stone step into a tangle of blackened
beams behind. I dropped his arm to save myself, and it was mere good
fortune that I did not break an ankle in the fall. When I had gained
the step again he was gone after the man, and a portly citizen stood in
front of me, looking into the doorway.
“Qu’est-ce-qu’il-y-a la dedans?” he demanded sharply.
It was a sufficiently embarrassing situation. I put on a bold front,
however, and not deigning to answer, pushed past him and walked with as
much leisure as possible along the banquette in the direction which Nick
had taken. As I turned the corner I glanced over my shoulder, and in the
darkness I could just make out the man standing where I had left him.
In great uneasiness I pursued my way, my imagination summing up for Nick
all kinds of adventures with disagreeable consequences. I walked for
some time--it may have been half an hour--aimlessly, and finally decided
it would be best to go back to Madame Bouvet’s and await the issue with
as much calmness as possible. He might not, after all, have caught the
fellow.
There were few people in the dark streets, but at length I met a man who
gave me directions, and presently found my way back to my lodging place.
Talk and laughter floated through the latticed windows into the street,
and when I had pushed back the curtain and looked into the saloon
I found the same gaming party at the end of it, sitting in their
shirt-sleeves amidst the moths and insects that hovered around the
candles.
“Ah, Monsieur,” said Madame Bouvet’s voice behind me, “you must excuse
them. They will come here and play, the young gentlemen, and I cannot
find it in my heart to drive them away, though sometimes I lose a
respectable lodger by their noise. But, after all, what would you?” she
added with a shrug; “I love them, the young men. But, Monsieur,” she
cried, “you have had no supper! And where is Monsieur your companion?
Comme il est beau garçon!”
“He will be in presently,” I answered with unwarranted assumption.
Madame shot at me the swiftest of glances and laughed, and I suspected
that she divined Nick’s propensity for adventure. However, she said
nothing more than to bid me sit down at the table, and presently Zoey
came in with lights and strange, highly seasoned dishes, which I ate
with avidity, notwithstanding my uneasiness of mind, watching the while
the party at the far end of the room. There were five young gentlemen
playing a game I knew not, with intervals of intense silence, and
boisterous laughter and execrations while the cards were being shuffled
and the money rang on the board and glasses were being filled from a
stand at one side. Presently Madame Bouvet returned, and placing before
me a cup of wondrous coffee, advanced down the room towards them.
“Ah, Messieurs,” she cried, “you will ruin my poor house.”
The five rose and bowed with marked profundity. One of them, with a
puffy, weak, good-natured face, answered her briskly, and after a little
raillery she came back to me. I had a question not over discreet on my
tongue’s tip.
“There are some fine residences going up here, Madame,” I said.
“Since the fire, Monsieur, the dreadful fire of Good Friday a year ago.
You admire them?”
“I saw one,” I answered with indifference, “with a wall and lions on the
gate-posts--”
“Mon Dieu, that is a house,” exclaimed Madame; “it belongs to Monsieur
de Saint-Gré.”
“To Monsieur de Saint-Gré!” I repeated.
She shot a look at me. She had bright little eyes like a bird’s, that
shone in the candlelight.
“You know him, Monsieur?”
“I heard of him in St. Louis,” I answered.
“You will meet him, no doubt,” she continued. “He is a very fine
gentleman. His grandfather was Commissary-general of the colony, and he
himself is a cousin of the Marquis de Saint-Gré, who has two châteaux, a
house in Paris, and is a favorite of the King.” She paused, as if to let
this impress itself upon me, and added archly, “Tenez, Monsieur, there
is a daughter--”
She stopped abruptly.
I followed her glance, and my first impression--of claret-color--gave
me a shock. My second confirmed it, for in the semi-darkness beyond
the rays of the candle was a thin, eager face, prematurely lined, with
coal-black, lustrous eyes that spoke eloquently of indulgence. In an
instant I knew it to be that of the young man whom I had seen on the
levee.
“Monsieur Auguste?” stammered Madame.
“Bon soir, Madame,” he cried gayly, with a bow; “diable, they are
already at it, I see, and the punch in the bowl. I will win back
to-night what I have lost by a week of accursed luck.”
“Monsieur your father has relented, perhaps,” said Madame,
deferentially.
“Relented!” cried the young man, “not a sou. C’est égal! I have the
means here,” and he tapped his pocket, “I have the means here to set me
on my feet again, Madame.”
He spoke with a note of triumph, and Madame took a curious step towards
him.
“Qu’est-ce-que c’est, Monsieur Auguste?” she inquired.
He drew something that glittered from his pocket and beckoned to her to
follow him down the room, which she did with alacrity.
“Ha, Adolphe,” he cried to the young man of the puffy face, “I will have
my revenge to-night. Voilà!” and he held up the shining thing, “this
goes to the highest bidder, and you will agree that it is worth a pretty
sum.”
They rose from their chairs and clustered around him at the table,
Madame in their midst, staring with bent heads at the trinket which he
held to the light. It was Madame’s voice I heard first, in a kind of
frightened cry.
“Mon Dieu, Monsieur Auguste, you will not part with that!” she
exclaimed.
“Why not?” demanded the young man, indifferently. “It was painted by
Boze, the back is solid gold, and the Jew in the Rue Toulouse will give
me four hundred livres for it to-morrow morning.”
There followed immediately such a chorus of questions, exclamations,
and shrill protests from Madame Bouvet, that I (being such a laborious
French scholar) could distinguish but little of what they said. I looked
in wonderment at the gesticulating figures grouped against the light,
Madame imploring, the youthful profile of the newcomer marked with a
cynical and scornful refusal. More than once I was for rising out of
my chair to go over and see for myself what the object was, and then,
suddenly, I perceived Madame Bouvet coming towards me in evident
agitation. She sank into the chair beside me.
“If I had four hundred livres,” she said, “if I had four hundred
livres!”
“And what then?” I asked.
“Monsieur,” she said, “a terrible thing has happened. Auguste de
Saint-Gré--”
“Auguste de Saint-Gré!” I exclaimed.
“He is the son of that Monsieur de Saint-Gré of whom we spoke,” she
answered, “a wild lad, a spendthrift, a gambler, if you like. And yet he
is a Saint-Gré, Monsieur, and I cannot refuse him. It is the miniature
of Mademoiselle Hélène de Saint-Gré, the daughter of the Marquis, sent
to Mamselle ‘Toinette, his sister, from France. How he has obtained it I
know not.”
“Ah!” I exclaimed sharply, the explanation of the scene of which I had
been a witness coming to me swiftly. The rascal had wrenched it from her
in the gallery and fled.
“Monsieur,” continued Madame, too excited to notice my interruption,
“if I had four hundred livres I would buy it of him, and Monsieur de
Saint-Gré père would willingly pay it back in the morning.”
I reflected. I had a letter in my pocket to Monsieur de Saint-Gré, the
sum was not large, and the act of Monsieur Auguste de Saint-Gré in every
light was detestable. A rising anger decided me, and I took a wallet
from my pocket.
“I will buy the miniature, Madame,” I said.
She looked at me in astonishment.
“God bless you, Monsieur,” she cried; “if you could see Mamselle
‘Toinette you would pay twice the sum. The whole town loves her.
Monsieur Auguste, Monsieur Auguste!” she shouted, “here is a gentleman
who will buy your miniature.”
The six young men stopped talking and stared at me with one accord.
Madame arose, and I followed her down the room towards them, and, had it
not been for my indignation, I should have felt sufficiently ridiculous.
Young Monsieur de Saint-Gré came forward with the good-natured, easy
insolence to which he had been born, and looked me over.
“Monsieur is an American,” he said.
“I understand that you have offered this miniature for four hundred
livres,” I said.
“It is the Jew’s price,” he answered; “mais pardieu, what will you?” he
added with a shrug, “I must have the money. Regardez, Monsieur, you have
a bargain. Here is Mademoiselle Hélène de Saint-Gré, daughter of my lord
the Marquis of whom I have the honor to be a cousin,” and he made a bow.
“It is by the famous court painter, Joseph Boze, and Mademoiselle de
Saint-Gré herself is a favorite of her Majesty.” He held the portrait
close to the candle and regarded it critically. “Mademoiselle Hélène
Victoire Marie de Saint-Gré, painted in a costume of Henry the Second’s
time, with a ruff, you notice, which she wore at a ball given by his
Highness the Prince of Condé at Chantilly. A trifle haughty, if you
like, Monsieur, but I venture to say you will be hopelessly in love with
her within the hour.”
At this there was a general titter from the young gentlemen at the
table.
“All of which is neither here nor there, Monsieur,” I answered sharply.
“The question is purely a commercial one, and has nothing to do with the
lady’s character or position.”
“It is well said, Monsieur,” Madame Bouvet put in.
Monsieur Auguste de Saint-Gré shrugged his slim shoulders and laid down
the portrait on the walnut table.
“Four hundred livres, Monsieur,” he said.
I counted out the money, scrutinized by the curious eyes of his
companions, and pushed it over to him. He bowed carelessly, sat him
down, and began to shuffle the cards, while I picked up the miniature
and walked out of the room. Before I had gone twenty paces I heard them
laughing at their game and shouting out the stakes. Suddenly I bethought
myself of Nick. What if he should come in and discover the party at the
table? I stopped short in the hallway, and there Madame Bouvet overtook
me.
“How can I thank you, Monsieur?” she said. And then, “You will return
the portrait to Monsieur de Saint-Gré?”
“I have a letter from Monsieur Gratiot to that gentleman, which I shall
deliver in the morning,” I answered. “And now, Madame, I have a favor to
ask of you.”
“I am at Monsieur’s service,” she answered simply.
“When Mr. Temple comes in, he is not to go into that room,” I said,
pointing to the door of the saloon; “I have my reasons for requesting
it.”
For answer Madame went to the door, closed it, and turned the key. Then
she sat down beside a little table with a candlestick and took up her
knitting.
“It will be as Monsieur says,” she answered.
I smiled.
“And when Mr. Temple comes in will you kindly say that I am waiting for
him in his room?” I asked.
“As Monsieur says,” she answered. “I wish Monsieur a good-night and
pleasant dreams.”
She took a candlestick from the table, lighted the candle, and handed it
me with a courtesy. I bowed, and made my way along the gallery above the
deserted court-yard. Entering my room and closing the door after me, I
drew the miniature from my pocket and stood gazing at it for I know not
how long.
CHAPTER XII. LES ILES
I stood staring at the portrait, I say, with a kind of fascination that
astonished me, seeing that it had come to me in such a way. It was no
French face of my imagination, and as I looked it seemed to me that I
knew Mademoiselle Hélène de Saint-Gré. And yet I smile as I write this,
realizing full well that my strange and foreign surroundings and my
unforeseen adventure had much to do with my state of mind. The lady in
the miniature might have been eighteen, or thirty-five. Her features
were of the clearest cut, the nose the least trifle aquiline, and by a
blurred outline the painter had given to the black hair piled high upon
the head a suggestion of waviness. The eyebrows were straight, the brown
eyes looked at the world with an almost scornful sense of humor, and I
marked that there was determination in the chin. Here was a face that
could be infinitely haughty or infinitely tender, a mouth of witty--nay,
perhaps cutting--repartee of brevity and force. A lady who spoke
quickly, moved quickly, or reposed absolutely. A person who commanded
by nature and yet (dare I venture the thought?) was capable of a supreme
surrender. I was aroused from this odd revery by footsteps on the
gallery, and Nick burst into the room. Without pausing to look about
him, he flung himself lengthwise on the bed on top of the mosquito bar.
“A thousand curses on such a place,” he cried; “it is full of rat holes
and rabbit warrens.”
“Did you catch your man?” I asked innocently.
“Catch him!” said Nick, with a little excusable profanity; “he went in
at one end of such a warren and came out at another. I waited for him
in two streets until an officious person chanced along and threatened to
take me before the Alcalde. What the devil is that you have got in your
hand, Davy?” he demanded, raising his head.
“A miniature that took my fancy, and which I bought.”
He rose from the bed, yawned, and taking it in his hand, held it to the
light. I watched him curiously.
“Lord,” he said, “it is such a passion as I might have suspected of you,
Davy.”
“There was nothing said about passion,” I answered hotly.
“Then why the deuce did you buy it?” he said with some pertinence.
This staggered me.
“A man may fancy a thing, without indulging in a passion, I suppose,” I
replied.
Nick held the picture at arm’s length in the palm of his hand and
regarded it critically.
“Faith,” said he, “you may thank heaven it is only a picture. If such
a one ever got hold of you, Davy, she would general you even as you
general me. Egad,” he added with a laugh, “there would be no more
walking the streets at night in search of adventure for you. Consider
carefully the masterful features of that lady and thank God you haven’t
got her.”
I was inclined to be angry, but ended by laughing.
“There will be no rivalry between us, at least,” I said.
“Rivalry!” exclaimed Nick. “Heaven forbid that I should aspire to such
abject slavery. When I marry, it will be to command.”
“All the more honor in such a conquest,” I suggested.
“Davy,” said he, “I have long been looking for some such flaw in your
insuperable wisdom. But I vow I can keep my eyes open no longer. Benjy!”
A smothered response came from the other side of the wall, and Benjy
duly appeared in the doorway, blinking at the candlelight, to put his
master to bed.
We slept that night with no bed covering save the mosquito bar, as was
the custom in New Orleans. Indeed, the heat was most oppressive, but we
had become to some extent inured to it on the boat, and we were both
in such sound health that our slumbers were not disturbed. Early in the
morning, however, I was awakened by a negro song from the court-yard,
and I lay pleasantly for some minutes listening to the early sounds,
breathing in the aroma of coffee which mingled with the odor of the
flowers of the court, until Zoey herself appeared in the doorway,
holding a cup in her hand. I arose, and taking the miniature from the
table, gazed at it in the yellow morning light; and then, having dressed
myself, I put it carefully in my pocket and sat down at my portfolio to
compose a letter to Polly Ann, knowing that a description of what I
had seen in New Orleans would amuse her. This done, I went out into the
gallery, where Madame was already seated at her knitting, in the shade
of the great tree that stood in the corner of the court and spread its
branches over the eaves. She arose and courtesied, with a questioning
smile.
“Madame,” I asked, “is it too early to present myself to Monsieur de
Saint-Gré?”
“Pardieu, no, Monsieur, we are early risers in the South for we have our
siesta. You are going to return the portrait, Monsieur?”
I nodded.
“God bless you for the deed,” said she. “Tenez, Monsieur,” she added,
stepping closer to me, “you will tell his father that you bought it from
Monsieur Auguste?”
I saw that she had a soft spot in her heart for the rogue.
“I will make no promises, Madame,” I answered.
She looked at me timidly, appealingly, but I bowed and departed. The sun
was riding up into the sky, the walls already glowing with his heat, and
a midsummer languor seemed to pervade the streets as I walked along. The
shadows now were sharply defined, the checkered foliage of the trees
was flung in black against the yellow-white wall of the house with the
lions, and the green-latticed gallery which we had watched the night
before seemed silent and deserted. I knocked at the gate, and presently
a bright-turbaned gardienne opened it.
Was Monsieur de Saint-Gré at home. The gardienne looked me over, and
evidently finding me respectable, replied with many protestations of
sorrow that he was not, that he had gone with Mamselle very early that
morning to his country place at Les Îles. This information I extracted
with difficulty, for I was not by any means versed in the negro patois.
As I walked back to Madame Bouvet’s I made up my mind that there was
but the one thing to do, to go at once to Monsieur de Saint-Gré’s
plantation. Finding Madame still waiting in the gallery, I asked her to
direct me thither.
“You have but to follow the road that runs southward along the levee,
and some three leagues will bring you to it, Monsieur. You will inquire
for Monsieur de Saint-Gré.”
“Can you direct me to Mr. Daniel Clark’s?” I asked.
“The American merchant and banker, the friend and associate of the
great General Wilkinson whom you sent down to us last year? Certainly,
Monsieur. He will no doubt give you better advice than I on this
matter.”
I found Mr. Clark in his counting-room, and I had not talked with
him five minutes before I began to suspect that, if a treasonable
understanding existed between Wilkinson and the Spanish government, Mr.
Clark was innocent of it. He being the only prominent American in the
place, it was natural that Wilkinson should have formed with him a
business arrangement to care for the cargoes he sent down. Indeed, after
we had sat for some time chatting together, Mr. Clark began himself to
make guarded inquiries on this very subject. Did I know Wilkinson? How
was his enterprise of selling Kentucky products regarded at home? But
I do not intend to burden this story with accounts of a matter which,
though it has never been wholly clear, has been long since fairly
settled in the public mind. Mr. Clark was most amiable, accepted my
statement that I was travelling for pleasure, and honored Monsieur
Chouteau’s bon (for my purchase of the miniature had deprived me of
nearly all my ready money), and said that Mr. Temple and I would need
horses to get to Les Îles.
“And unless you purpose going back to Kentucky by keel boat, or round by
sea to Philadelphia or New York, and cross the mountains,” he said,
“you will need good horses for your journey through Natchez and the
Cumberland country. There is a consignment of Spanish horses from the
westward just arrived in town,” he added, “and I shall be pleased to go
with you to the place where they are sold. I shall not presume to advise
a Kentuckian on such a purchase.”
The horses were crowded together under a dirty shed near the levee, and
the vessel from which they had been landed rode at anchor in the river.
They were the scrawny, tough ponies of the plains, reasonably cheap, and
it took no great discernment on my part to choose three of the strongest
and most intelligent looking. We went next to a saddler’s, where I
selected three saddles and bridles of Spanish workmanship, and Mr. Clark
agreed to have two of his servants meet us with the horses before Madame
Bouvet’s within the hour. He begged that we would dine with him when we
returned from Les Îles.
“You will not find an island, Mr. Ritchie,” he said; “Saint-Gré’s
plantation is a huge block of land between the river and a cypress swamp
behind. Saint-Gré is a man with a wonderful quality of mind, who might,
like his ancestors, have made his mark if necessity had probed him or
opportunity offered. He never forgave the Spanish government for the
murder of his father, nor do I blame him. He has his troubles. His son
is an incurable rake and degenerate, as you may have heard.”
I went back to Madame Bouvet’s, to find Nick emerging from his toilet.
“What deviltry have you been up to, Davy?” he demanded.
“I have been to the House of the Lions to see your divinity,” I
answered, “and in a very little while horses will be here to carry us to
her.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, grasping me by both shoulders.
“I mean that we are going to her father’s plantation, some way down the
river.”
“On my honor, Davy, I did not suspect you of so much enterprise,” he
cried. “And her husband--?”
“Does not exist,” I replied. “Perhaps, after all, I might be able to
give you instruction in the conduct of an adventure. The man you chased
with such futility was her brother, and he stole from her the miniature
of which I am now the fortunate possessor.”
He stared at me for a moment in rueful amazement.
“And her name?” he demanded.
“Antoinette de Saint-Gré,” I answered; “our letter is to her father.”
He made me a rueful bow.
“I fear that I have undervalued you, Mr. Ritchie,” he said. “You have
no peer. I am unworthy to accompany you, and furthermore, it would be
useless.”
“And why useless!” I inquired, laughing.
“You have doubtless seen the lady, and she is yours," said he.
“You forget that I am in love with a miniature,” I said.
In half an hour we were packed and ready, the horses had arrived, we
bade good-by to Madame Bouvet and rode down the miry street until we
reached the road behind the levee. Turning southward, we soon left
behind the shaded esplanade and the city’s roofs below us, and came to
the first of the plantation houses set back amidst the dark foliage.
No tremor shook the fringe of moss that hung from the heavy boughs, so
still was the day, and an indefinable, milky haze stretched between
us and the cloudless sky above. The sun’s rays pierced it and gathered
fire; the mighty river beside us rolled listless and sullen, flinging
back the heat defiantly. And on our left was a tropical forest in all
its bewildering luxuriance, the live-oak, the hackberry, the myrtle, the
Spanish bayonet in bristling groups, and the shaded places gave out a
scented moisture like an orangery; anon we passed fields of corn and
cotton, swamps of rice, stretches of poverty-stricken indigo plants,
gnawed to the stem by the pest. Our ponies ambled on, unmindful; but
Nick vowed that no woman under heaven would induce him to undertake such
a journey again.
Some three miles out of the city we descried two figures on horseback
coming towards us, and quickly perceived that one was a gentleman, the
other his black servant. They were riding at a more rapid pace than the
day warranted, but the gentleman reined in his sweating horse as he
drew near to us, eyed us with a curiosity tempered by courtesy, bowed
gravely, and put his horse to a canter again.
“Phew!” said Nick, twisting in his saddle, “I thought that all Creoles
were lazy.”
“We have met the exception, perhaps,” I answered. “Did you take in that
man?”
“His looks were a little remarkable, come to think of it,” answered
Nick, settling down into his saddle again.
Indeed, the man’s face had struck me so forcibly that I was surprised
out of an inquiry which I had meant to make of him, namely, how far we
were from the Saint-Gré plantation. We pursued our way slowly, from
time to time catching a glimpse of a dwelling almost hid in the distant
foliage, until at length we came to a place a little more pretentious
than those which we had seen. From the road a graceful flight of wooden
steps climbed the levee and descended on the far side to a boat landing,
and a straight vista cut through the grove, lined by wild orange trees,
disclosed the white pillars and galleries of a far-away plantation
house. The grassy path leading through the vista was trimly kept, and on
either side of it in the moist, green shade of the great trees flowers
bloomed in a profusion of startling colors,--in splotches of scarlet and
white and royal purple.
Nick slipped from his horse.
“Behold the mansion of Mademoiselle de Saint-Gré,” said he, waving his
hand up the vista.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I am told by a part of me that never lies, Davy,” he answered, laying
his hand upon his heart; “and besides,” he added, “I should dislike
devilishly to go too far on such a day and have to come back again.”
“We will rest here,” I said, laughing, “and send in Benjy to find out.”
“Davy,” he answered, with withering contempt, “you have no more romance
in you than a turnip. We will go ourselves and see what befalls.”
“Very well, then,” I answered, falling in with his humor, “we will go
ourselves.”
He brushed his face with his handkerchief, gave himself a pull here and
a pat there, and led the way down the alley. But we had not gone far
before he turned into a path that entered the grove on the right, and to
this likewise I made no protest. We soon found ourselves in a heavenly
spot,--sheltered from the sun’s rays by a dense verdure,--and no one
who has not visited these Southern country places can know the teeming
fragrance there. One shrub (how well I recall it!) was like unto the
perfume of all the flowers and all the fruits, the very essence of the
delicious languor of the place that made our steps to falter. A bird
shot a bright flame of color through the checkered light ahead of us.
Suddenly a sound brought us to a halt, and we stood in a tense and
wondering silence. The words of a song, sung carelessly in a clear,
girlish voice, came to us from beyond.
“Je voudrais bien me marier,
Je voudrais bien me marier,
Mais j’ai qrand’ peur de me tromper:
Mais j’ai grand’ peur de me tromper:
Ils sont si malhonnêtes!
Ma luron, ma lurette,
Ils sont si malhonnêtes!
Ma luron, ma luré.”
“We have come at the very zenith of opportunity,” I whispered.
“Hush!” he said.
“Je ne veux pas d’un avocat,
Je ne veux pas d’un avocat,
Car ils aiment trop les ducats,
Car ils aiment trop les ducats,
Ils trompent les fillettes,
Ma luron, ma lurette,
Ils trompent les fillettes,
Ma luron, ma luré.”
“Eliminating Mr. Ritchie, I believe,” said Nick, turning on me with a
grimace. “But hark again!”
“Je voudrais bien d’un officier:
Je voudrais bien d’un officier:
Je marcherais a pas cárres,
Je marcherais a pas cárres,
Dans ma joli’ chambrette,
Ma luron, ma lurette
Dans ma joli’ chambrette,
Ma luron, ma luré.”
The song ceased with a sound that was half laughter, half sigh. Before I
realized what he was doing, Nick, instead of retracing his steps towards
the house, started forward. The path led through a dense thicket which
became a casino hedge, and suddenly I found myself peering over his
shoulder into a little garden bewildering in color. In the centre of
the garden a great live-oak spread its sheltering branches. Around the
gnarled trunk was a seat. And on the seat,--her sewing fallen into her
lap, her lips parted, her eyes staring wide, sat the young lady whom we
had seen on the levee the evening before. And Nick was making a bow in
his grandest manner.
“Hélas, Mademoiselle,” he said, “je ne suis pas officier, mais on peut
arranger tout cela, sans doute.”
My breath was taken away by this unheard-of audacity, and I braced
myself against screams, flight, and other feminine demonstrations of
terror. The young lady did nothing of the kind. She turned her back
to us, leaned against the tree, and to my astonishment I saw her slim
shoulders shaken with laughter. At length, very slowly, she looked
around, and in her face struggled curiosity and fear and merriment. Nick
made another bow, worthy of Versailles, and she gave a frightened little
laugh.
“You are English, Messieurs--yes?” she ventured.
“We were once!” cried Nick, “but we have changed, Mademoiselle.”
“Et quoi donc?” relapsing into her own language.
“Americans,” said he. “Allow me to introduce to you the Honorable David
Ritchie, whom you rejected a few moments ago.”
“Whom I rejected?” she exclaimed.
“Alas,” said Nick, with a commiserating glance at me, “he has the
misfortune to be a lawyer.”
Mademoiselle shot at me the swiftest and shyest of glances, and turned
to us once more her quivering shoulders. There was a brief silence.
“Mademoiselle?” said Nick, taking a step on the garden path.
“Monsieur?” she answered, without so much as looking around.
“What, now, would you take this gentleman to be?” he asked with an
insistence not to be denied.
Again she was shaken with laughter, and suddenly to my surprise she
turned and looked full at me.
“In English, Monsieur, you call it--a gallant?”
My face fairly tingled, and I heard Nick laughing with unseemly
merriment.
“Ah, Mademoiselle,” he cried, “you are a judge of character, and you
have read him perfectly.”
“Then I must leave you, Messieurs,” she answered, with her eyes in her
lap. But she made no move to go.
“You need have no fear of Mr. Ritchie, Mademoiselle,” answered Nick,
instantly. “I am here to protect you against his gallantry.”
This time Nick received the glance, and quailed before it.
“And who--par exemple--is to protect me against--you, Monsieur?” she
asked in the lowest of voices.
“You forget that I, too, am unprotected--and vulnerable, Mademoiselle,”
he answered.
Her face was hidden again, but not for long.
“How did you come?” she demanded presently.
“On air,” he answered, “for we saw you in New Orleans yesterday.”
“And--why?”
“Need you ask, Mademoiselle?” said the rogue, and then, with more
effrontery than ever, he began to sing:--
“‘Je voudrais bien me marier,
Je voudrais bien me marier,
Mais j’ai grand’ peur de me tromper.’”
She rose, her sewing falling to the ground, and took a few startled
steps towards us.
“Monsieur! you will be heard,” she cried.
“And put out of the Garden of Eden,” said Nick.
“I must leave you,” she said, with the quaintest of English
pronunciation.
Yet she stood irresolute in the garden path, a picture against the dark
green leaves and the flowers. Her age might have been seventeen. Her
gown was of some soft and light material printed in buds of delicate
color, her slim arms bare above the elbow. She had the ivory complexion
of the province, more delicate than I had yet seen, and beyond that
I shall not attempt to describe her, save to add that she was such a
strange mixture of innocence and ingenuousness and coquetry as I had not
imagined. Presently her gaze was fixed seriously on me.
“Do you think it very wrong, Monsieur?” she asked.
I was more than taken aback by this tribute.
“Oh,” cried Nick, “the arbiter of etiquette!”
“Since I am here, Mademoiselle,” I answered, with anything but
readiness, “I am not a proper judge.”
Her next question staggered me.
“You are well-born?” she asked.
“Mr. Ritchie’s grandfather was a Scottish earl,” said Nick, immediately,
a piece of news that startled me into protest. “It is true, Davy, though
you may not know it,” he added.
“And you, Monsieur?” she said to Nick.
“I am his cousin,--is it not honor enough?” said he.
“Yet you do not resemble one another.”
“Mr. Ritchie has all the good looks in the family,” said Nick.
“Oh!” cried the young lady, and this time she gave us her profile.
“Come, Mademoiselle,” said Nick, “since the fates have cast the die, let
us all sit down in the shade. The place was made for us.”
“Monsieur!” she cried, giving back, “I have never in my life been alone
with gentlemen.”
“But Mr. Ritchie is a duenna to satisfy the most exacting,” said Nick;
“when you know him better you will believe me.”
She laughed softly and glanced at me. By this time we were all three
under the branches.
“Monsieur, you do not understand the French customs. Mon Dieu, if the
good Sister Lorette could see me now--”
“But she is safe in the convent,” said Nick. “Are they going to put
glass on the walls?”
“And why?” asked Mademoiselle, innocently.
“Because,” said Nick, “because a very bad man has come to New
Orleans,--one who is given to climbing walls.”
“You?”
“Yes. But when I found that a certain demoiselle had left the convent, I
was no longer anxious to climb them.”
“And how did you know that I had left it?”
I was at a loss to know whether this were coquetry or innocence.
“Because I saw you on the levee,” said Nick.
“You saw me on the levee?” she repeated, giving back.
“And I had a great fear,” the rogue persisted.
“A fear of what?”
“A fear that you were married,” he said, with a boldness that made
me blush. As for Mademoiselle, a color that vied with the June roses
charged through her cheeks. She stooped to pick up her sewing, but Nick
was before her.
“And why did you think me married?” she asked in a voice so low that we
scarcely heard.
“Faith,” said Nick, “because you seemed to be quarrelling with a man.”
She turned to him with an irresistible seriousness.
“And is that your idea of marriage, Monsieur?”
This time it was I who laughed, for he had been hit very fairly.
“Mademoiselle,” said he, “I did not for a moment think it could have
been a love match.”
Mademoiselle turned away and laughed.
“You are the very strangest man I have ever seen,” she said.
“Shall I give you my notion of a love match, Mademoiselle?” said Nick.
“I should think you might be well versed in the subject, Monsieur,”
she answered, speaking to the tree, “but here is scarcely the time and
place.” She wound up her sewing, and faced him. “I must really leave
you,” she said.
He took a step towards her and stood looking down into her face. Her
eyes dropped.
“And am I never to see you again?” he asked.
“Monsieur!” she cried softly, “I do not know who you are.” She made him
a courtesy, took a few steps in the opposite path, and turned. “That
depends upon your ingenuity,” she added; “you seem to have no lack of
it, Monsieur.”
Nick was transported.
“You must not go,” he cried.
“Must not? How dare you speak to me thus, Monsieur?” Then she tempered
it. “There is a lady here whom I love, and who is ill. I must not be
long from her bedside.”
“She is very ill?” said Nick, probably for want of something better.
“She is not really ill, Monsieur, but depressed--is not that the
word? She is a very dear friend, and she has had trouble--so much,
Monsieur,--and my mother brought her here. We love her as one of the
family.”
This was certainly ingenuous, and it was plain that the girl gave us
this story through a certain nervousness, for she twisted her sewing in
her fingers as she spoke.
“Mademoiselle,” said Nick, “I would not keep you from such an errand of
mercy.”
She gave him a grateful look, more dangerous than any which had gone
before.
“And besides,” he went on, “we have come to stay awhile with you, Mr.
Ritchie and myself.”
“You have come to stay awhile?” she said.
I thought it time that the farce were ended.
“We have come with letters to your father, Monsieur de Saint-Gré,
Mademoiselle,” I said, “and I should like very much to see him, if he is
at leisure.”
Mademoiselle stared at me in unfeigned astonishment.
“But did you not meet him, Monsieur?” she demanded. “He left an hour ago
for New Orleans. You must have met a gentleman riding very fast.”
It was my turn to be astonished.
“But that was not your father!” I exclaimed.
“Et pourquoi non?” she said.
“Is not your father the stout gentleman whom I saw with you on the levee
last evening?” I asked.
She laughed.
“You have been observing, Monsieur,” she said. “That was my uncle,
Monsieur de Beauséjour. You saw me quarrelling with my brother,
Auguste,” she went on a little excitedly. “Oh, I am very much ashamed
of it. I was so angry. My cousin, Mademoiselle Hélène de Saint-Gré, has
just sent me from France such a beautiful miniature, and Auguste fell in
love with it.”
“Fell in love with it!” I exclaimed involuntarily.
“You should see it, Monsieur, and I think you also would fall in love
with it.”
“I have not a doubt of it,” said Nick.
Mademoiselle made the faintest of moues.
“Auguste is very wild, as you say,” she continued, addressing me, “he is
a great care to my father. He intrigues, you know, he wishes Louisiane
to become French once more,--as we all do. But I should not say this,
Monsieur,” she added in a startled tone. “You will not tell? No, I know
you will not. We do not like the Spaniards. They killed my grandfather
when they came to take the province. And once, the Governor-general Miro
sent for my father and declared he would put Auguste in prison if he did
not behave himself. But I have forgotten the miniature. When Auguste
saw that he fell in love with it, and now he wishes to go to France and
obtain a commission through our cousin, the Marquis of Saint-Gré, and
marry Mademoiselle Hélène.”
“A comprehensive programme, indeed,” said Nick.
“My father has gone back to New Orleans,” she said, “to get the
miniature from Auguste. He took it from me, Monsieur.” She raised her
head a little proudly. “If my brother had asked it, I might have given
it to him, though I treasured it. But Auguste is so--impulsive. My uncle
told my father, who is very angry. He will punish Auguste severely,
and--I do not like to have him punished. Oh, I wish I had the
miniature.”
“Your wish is granted, Mademoiselle,” I answered, drawing the case from
my pocket and handing it to her.
She took it, staring at me with eyes wide with wonder, and then she
opened it mechanically.
“Monsieur,” she said with great dignity, “do you mind telling me where
you obtained this?”
“I found it, Mademoiselle,” I answered; and as I spoke I felt Nick’s
fingers on my arm.
“You found it? Where? How, Monsieur?”
“At Madame Bouvet’s, the house where we stayed.”
“Oh,” she said with a sigh of relief, “he must have dropped it. It
is there where he meets his associates, where they talk of the French
Louisiane.”
Again I felt Nick pinching me, and I gave a sigh of relief. Mademoiselle
was about to continue, but I interrupted her.
“How long will your father be in New Orleans, Mademoiselle?” I asked.
“Until he finds Auguste,” she answered. “It may be days, but he will
stay, for he is very angry. But will you not come into the house,
Messieurs, and be presented to my mother?” she asked. “I have been
very--inhospitable,” she added with a glance at Nick.
We followed her through winding paths bordered by shrubs and flowers,
and presently came to a low house surrounded by a wide, cool gallery,
and shaded by spreading trees. Behind it were clustered the kitchens and
quarters of the house servants. Mademoiselle, picking up her dress,
ran up the steps ahead of us and turned to the left in the hall into
a darkened parlor. The floor was bare, save for a few mats, and in the
corner was a massive escritoire of mahogany with carved feet, and
there were tables and chairs of a like pattern. It was a room of
more distinction than I had seen since I had been in Charlestown, and
reflected the solidity of its owners.
“If you will be so kind as to wait here, Messieurs,” said Mademoiselle,
“I will call my mother.”
And she left us.
I sat down, rather uncomfortably, but Nick took a stand and stood
staring down at me with folded arms.
“How I have undervalued you, Davy,” he said.
“I am not proud of it,” I answered shortly.
“What the deuce is to do now?” he asked.
“I cannot linger here,” I answered; “I have business with Monsieur de
Saint-Gré, and I must go back to New Orleans at once.”
“Then I will wait for you,” said Nick. “Davy, I have met my fate.”
I laughed in spite of myself.
“It seems to me that I have heard that remark before,” I answered.
He had not time to protest, for we heard footsteps in the hall, and
Mademoiselle entered, leading an older lady by the hand. In the light
of the doorway I saw that she was thin and small and yellow, but
her features had a regularity and her mien a dignity which made her
impressing, which would have convinced a stranger that she was a person
of birth and breeding. Her hair, tinged with gray, was crowned by a lace
cap.
“Madame,” I said, bowing and coming forward, “I am David Ritchie, from
Kentucky, and this is my cousin, Mr. Temple, of Charlestown. Monsieur
Gratiot and Colonel Chouteau, of St. Louis, have been kind enough to
give us letters to Monsieur de Saint-Gré.” And I handed her one of the
letters which I had ready.
“You are very welcome, Messieurs,” she answered, with the same
delightful accent which her daughter had used, “and you are especially
welcome from such a source. The friends of Colonel Chouteau and of
Monsieur Gratiot are our friends. You will remain with us, I hope,
Messieurs,” she continued. “Monsieur de Saint-Gré will return in a few
days at best.”
“By your leave, Madame, I will go to New Orleans at once and try to find
Monsieur,” I said, “for I have business with him.”
“You will return with him, I hope,” said Madame.
I bowed.
“And Mr. Temple will remain?” she asked, with a questioning look at
Nick.
“With the greatest pleasure in the world, Madame,” he answered, and
there was no mistaking his sincerity. As he spoke, Mademoiselle turned
her back on him.
I would not wait for dinner, but pausing only for a sip of cool Madeira
and some other refreshment, I made my farewells to the ladies. As I
started out of the door to find Benjy, who had been waiting for more
than an hour, Mademoiselle gave me a neatly folded note.
“You will be so kind as to present that to my father, Monsieur,” she
said.
CHAPTER XIII. MONSIEUR AUGUSTE ENTRAPPED
It may be well to declare here and now that I do not intend to burden
this story with the business which had brought me to New Orleans. While
in the city during the next few days I met a young gentleman named
Daniel Clark, a nephew of that Mr. Clark of whom I have spoken. Many
years after the time of which I write this Mr. Daniel Clark the younger,
who became a rich merchant and an able man of affairs, published a book
which sets forth with great clearness proofs of General Wilkinson’s
duplicity and treason, and these may be read by any who would satisfy
himself further on the subject. Mr. Wharton had not believed, nor had
I flattered myself that I should be able to bring such a fox as General
Wilkinson to earth. Abundant circumstantial evidence I obtained:
Wilkinson’s intimacy with Miro was well known, and I likewise learned
that a cipher existed between them. The permit to trade given by Miro to
Wilkinson was made no secret of. In brief, I may say that I discovered
as much as could be discovered by any one without arousing suspicion,
and that the information with which I returned to Kentucky was of some
material value to my employers.
I have to thank Monsieur Philippe de St. Gré for a great deal. And I
take this opportunity to set down the fact that I have rarely met a more
remarkable man.
As I rode back to town alone a whitish film was spread before the sun,
and ere I had come in sight of the fortifications the low forest on the
western bank was a dark green blur against the sky. The esplanade on
the levee was deserted, the willow trees had a mournful look, while the
bright tiles of yesterday seemed to have faded to a sombre tone. I spied
Xavier on a bench smoking with some friends of his.
“He make much rain soon, Michié,” he cried. “You hev good time, I hope,
Michié.”
I waved my hand and rode on, past the Place d’Armes with its white
diagonal bands strapping its green like a soldier’s front, and as I drew
up before the gate of the House of the Lions the warning taps of the
storm were drumming on the magnolia leaves. The same gardienne came to
my knock, and in answer to her shrill cry a negro lad appeared to hold
my horse. I was ushered into a brick-paved archway that ran under the
latticed gallery toward a flower-filled court-yard, but ere we reached
this the gardienne turned to the left up a flight of steps with a
delicate balustrade which led to an open gallery above. And there
stood the gentleman whom we had met hurrying to town in the morning. A
gentleman he was, every inch of him. He was dressed in black silk, his
hair in a cue, and drawn away from a face of remarkable features. He
had a high-bridged nose, a black eye that held an inquiring sternness, a
chin indented, and a receding forehead. His stature was indeterminable.
In brief, he might have stood for one of those persons of birth and
ability who become prime ministers of France.
“Monsieur de St. Gré?” I said.
He bowed gracefully, but with a tinge of condescension. I was awed, and
considering the relations which I had already had with his family, I
must admit that I was somewhat frightened.
“Monsieur,” I said, “I bring letters to you from Monsieur Gratiot and
Colonel Chouteau of St. Louis. One of these I had the honor to deliver
to Madame de St. Gré, and here is the other.”
“Ah,” he said, with another keen glance, “I met you this morning, did I
not?”
“You did, Monsieur.”
He broke the seal, and, going to the edge of the gallery, held the
letter to the light. As he read a peal of thunder broke distantly, the
rain came down in a flood. Then he folded the paper carefully and turned
to me again.
“You will make my house your home, Mr. Ritchie,” he said; “recommended
from such a source, I will do all I can to serve you. But where is this
Mr. Temple of whom the letter speaks? His family in Charlestown is known
to me by repute.”
“By Madame de St. Gré’s invitation he remained at Les Îles,” I answered,
speaking above the roar of the rain.
“I was just going to the table,” said Monsieur de St. Gré; “we will talk
as we eat.”
He led the way into the dining room, and as I stood on the threshold
a bolt of great brilliancy lighted its yellow-washed floor and walnut
furniture of a staid pattern. A deafening crash followed as we took our
seats, while Monsieur de St. Gré’s man lighted four candles of green
myrtle-berry wax.
“Monsieur Gratiot’s letter speaks vaguely of politics, Mr. Ritchie,”
began Monsieur de St. Gré. He spoke English perfectly, save for an
occasional harsh aspiration which I cannot imitate.
Directing his man to fetch a certain kind of Madeira, he turned to
me with a look of polite inquiry which was scarcely reassuring. And I
reflected, the caution with which I had been endowed coming uppermost,
that the man might have changed since Monsieur Gratiot had seen him.
He had, moreover, the air of a man who gives a forced attention, which
seemed to me the natural consequences of the recent actions of his son.
“I fear that I am intruding upon your affairs, Monsieur,” I answered.
“Not at all, sir,” he said politely. “I have met that charming
gentleman, Mr. Wilkinson, who came here to brush away the causes of
dissension, and cement a friendship between Kentucky and Louisiana.”
It was most fortunate that the note of irony did not escape me.
“Where governments failed, General Wilkinson succeeded,” I answered
dryly.
Monsieur de St. Gré glanced at me, and an enigmatical smile spread over
his face. I knew then that the ice was cracked between us. Yet he was
too much a man of the world not to make one more tentative remark.
“A union between Kentucky and Louisiana would be a resistless force in
the world, Mr. Ritchie,” he said.
“It was Nebuchadnezzar who dreamed of a composite image, Monsieur,” I
answered; “and Mr. Wilkinson forgets one thing,--that Kentucky is a part
of the United States.”
At that Monsieur St. Gré laughed outright. He became a different man,
though he lost none of his dignity.
“I should have had more faith in my old friend Gratiot,” he said; “but
you will pardon me if I did not recognize at once the statesman he had
sent me, Mr. Ritchie.”
It was my turn to laugh.
“Monsieur,” he went on, returning to that dignity of mien which marked
him, “my political opinions are too well known that I should make a
mystery of them to you. I was born a Frenchman, I shall die a Frenchman,
and I shall never be happy until Louisiana is French once more. My
great-grandfather, a brother of the Marquis de St. Gré of that time, and
a wild blade enough, came out with D’Iberville. His son, my grandfather,
was the Commissary-general of the colony under the Marquis de Vaudreuil.
He sent me to France for my education, where I was introduced at court
by my kinsman, the old Marquis, who took a fancy to me and begged me
to remain. It was my father’s wish that I should return, and I did not
disobey him. I had scarcely come back, Monsieur, when that abominable
secret bargain of Louis the Fifteenth became known, ceding Louisiana to
Spain. You may have heard of the revolution which followed here. It was
a mild affair, and the remembrance of it makes me smile to this day,
though with bitterness. I was five and twenty, hot-headed, and French.
Que voulez-vous?” and Monsieur de St. Gré shrugged his shoulders.
“O’Reilly, the famous Spanish general, came with his men-of-war. Well
I remember the days we waited with leaden hearts for the men-of-war to
come up from the English turn; and I can see now the cannon frowning
from the ports, the grim spars, the high poops crowded with officers,
the great anchors splashing the yellow water. I can hear the chains
running. The ships were in line of battle before the town, their flying
bridges swung to the levee, and they loomed above us like towering
fortresses. It was dark, Monsieur, such as this afternoon, and we poor
French colonists stood huddled in the open space below, waiting for we
knew not what.”
He paused, and I started, for the picture he drew had carried me out of
myself.
“On the 18th of August, 1769,--well I remember the day,” Monsieur de
St. Gré continued, “the Spanish troops landed late in the afternoon,
twenty-six hundred strong, the artillery rumbling over the bridges, the
horses wheeling and rearing. And they drew up as in line of battle in
the Place d’Armes,--dragoons, fusileros de montañas, light and heavy
infantry. Where were our white cockades then? Fifty guns shook the town,
the great O’Reilly limped ashore through the smoke, and Louisiana was
lost to France. We had a cowardly governor, Monsieur, whose name is
written in the annals of the province in letters of shame. He betrayed
Monsieur de St. Gré and others into O’Reilly’s hands, and when my father
was cast into prison he was seized with such a fit of anger that he
died.”
Monsieur de St. Gré was silent. Without, under the eaves of the gallery,
a white rain fell, and a steaming moisture arose from the court-yard.
“What I have told you, Monsieur, is common knowledge. Louisiana has been
Spanish for twenty years. I no longer wear the white cockade, for I am
older now.” He smiled. “Strange things are happening in France, and the
old order to which I belong” (he straightened perceptibly) “seems to be
tottering. I have ceased to intrigue, but thank God I have not ceased to
pray. Perhaps--who knows?--perhaps I may live to see again the lily of
France stirred by the river breeze.”
He fell into a revery, his fine head bent a little, but presently
aroused himself and eyed me curiously. I need not say that I felt a
strange liking for Monsieur de St. Gré.
“And now, Mr. Ritchie,” he said, “will you tell me who you are, and how
I can serve you?”
The servant had put the coffee on the table and left the room. Monsieur
de St. Gré himself poured me a cup from the dainty, quaintly wrought
Louis Quinze coffeepot, graven with the coat of arms of his family. As
we sat talking, my admiration for my host increased, for I found that he
was familiar not only with the situation in Kentucky, but that he
also knew far more than I of the principles and personnel of the new
government of which General Washington was President. That he had little
sympathy with government by the people was natural, for he was a Creole,
and behind that a member of an order which detested republics. When we
were got beyond these topics the rain had ceased, the night had fallen,
the green candles had burned low. And suddenly, as he spoke of Les
Îsles, I remembered the note Mademoiselle had given me for him, and
I apologized for my forgetfulness. He read it, and dropped it with an
exclamation.
“My daughter tells me that you have returned to her a miniature which
she lost, Monsieur,” he said.
“I had that pleasure,” I answered.
“And that--you found this miniature at Madame Bouvet’s. Was this the
case?” And he stared hard at me.
I nodded, but for the life of me I could not speak. It seemed an outrage
to lie to such a man. He did not answer, but sat lost in thought,
drumming with his fingers on the tables until the noise of the slamming
of a door aroused him to a listening posture. The sound of subdued
voices came from the archway below us, and one of these, from an
occasional excited and feminine note, I thought to be the gardienne’s.
Monsieur de St. Gré thrust back his chair, and in three strides was at
the edge of the gallery.
“Auguste!” he cried.
Silence.
“Auguste, come up to me at once,” he said in French.
Another silence, then something that sounded like “Sapristi!” a groan
from the gardienne, and a step was heard on the stairway. My own
discomfort increased, and I would have given much to be in any other
place in the world. Auguste had arrived at the head of the steps but was
apparently unable to get any farther.
“Bon soir, mon père,” he said.
“Like a dutiful son,” said Monsieur de St. Gré, “you heard I was in
town, and called to pay your respects, I am sure. I am delighted to find
you. In fact, I came to town for that purpose.”
“Lisette--” began Auguste.
“Thought that I did not wish to be disturbed, no doubt,” said his
father. “Walk in, Auguste.”
Monsieur Auguste’s slim figure appeared in the doorway. He caught sight
of me, halted, backed, and stood staring with widened eyes. The candles
threw their light across his shoulder on the face of the elder Monsieur
de St. Gré. Auguste was a replica of his father, with the features
minimized to regularity and the brow narrowed. The complexion of the one
was a clear saffron, while the boy’s skin was mottled, and he was not
twenty.
“What is the matter?” said Monsieur de St. Gré.
“You--you have a visitor!” stammered Auguste, with a tact that savored
of practice. Yet there was a sorry difference between this and the
haughty young patrician who had sold me the miniature.
“Who brings me good news,” said Monsieur de St. Gré, in English. “Mr.
Ritchie, allow me to introduce my son, Auguste.”
I felt Monsieur de St. Gré’s eyes on me as I bowed, and I began to think
I was in near as great a predicament as Auguste. Monsieur de St. Gré was
managing the matter with infinite wisdom.
“Sit down, my son,” he said; “you have no doubt been staying with your
uncle.” Auguste sat down, still staring. “Does your aunt’s health mend?”
“She is better to-night, father,” said the son, in English which might
have been improved.
“I am glad of it,” said Monsieur de St. Gré, taking a chair. “André,
fill the glasses.”
The silent, linen-clad mulatto poured out the Madeira, shot a look at
Auguste, and retired softly.
“There has been a heavy rain, Monsieur,” said Monsieur de St. Gré to
me, “but I think the air is not yet cleared. I was about to say, Mr.
Ritchie, when my son called to pay his respects, that the miniature of
which we were speaking is one of the most remarkable paintings I have
ever seen.” Auguste’s thin fingers were clutching the chair. “I have
never beheld Mademoiselle Hélène de St. Gré, for my cousin, the Marquis,
was not married when I left France. He was a captain in a regiment of
his Majesty’s Mousquetaires, since abolished. But I am sure that the
likeness of Mademoiselle must be a true one, for it has the stamp of a
remarkable personality, though Hélène can be only eighteen. Women, with
us, mature quickly, Monsieur. And this portrait tallies with what I have
heard of her character. You no doubt observed the face, Monsieur,--that
of a true aristocrat. But I was speaking of her character. When she was
twelve, she said something to a cardinal for which her mother made her
keep her room a whole day. For Mademoiselle would not retract, and,
pardieu, I believe his Eminence was wrong. The Marquise is afraid of
her. And when first Hélène was presented formally she made such a witty
retort to the Queen’s sally that her Majesty insisted upon her coming
to court. On every New Year’s day I have always sent a present of coffee
and périque to my cousin the Marquis, and it is Mademoiselle who writes
to thank us. Parole d’honneur, her letters make me see again the
people amongst whom she moves,--the dukes and duchesses, the cardinals,
bishops, and generals. She draws them to the life, Monsieur, with a
touch that makes them all ridiculous. His Majesty does not escape. God
forgive him, he is indeed an amiable, weak person for calling a States
General. And the Queen, a frivolous lady, but true to those whom she
loves, and beginning now to realize the perils of the situation.” He
paused. “Is it any wonder that Auguste has fallen in love with
his cousin, Monsieur? That he loses his head, forgets that he is a
gentleman, and steals her portrait from his sister!”
Had I not been so occupied with my own fate in the outcome of this
inquisition, I should have been sorry for Auguste. And yet this feeling
could not have lasted, for the young gentleman sprang to his feet, cast
a glance at me which was not without malignance, and faced his father,
his lips twitching with anger and fear. Monsieur de St. Gré sat
undisturbed.
“He is so much in love with the portrait, Monsieur, that he loses it.”
“Loses it!” cried Auguste.
“Precisely,” said his father, dryly, “for Mr. Ritchie tells me he found
it--at Madame Bouvet’s, was it not, Monsieur?”
Auguste looked at me.
“Mille diables!” he said, and sat down again heavily.
“Mr. Ritchie has returned it to your sister, a service which puts him
heavily in our debt,” said Monsieur de St. Gré. “Now, sir,” he added to
me, rising, “you have had a tiresome day. I will show you to your room,
and in the morning we will begin our--investigations.”
He clapped his hands, the silent mulatto appeared with a new candle, and
I followed my host down the gallery to a room which he flung open at the
far end. A great four-poster bedstead was in one corner, and a polished
mahogany dresser in the other.
“We have saved some of our family furniture from the fire, Mr. Ritchie,”
said Monsieur de St. Gré; “that bed was brought from Paris by my father
forty years ago. I hope you will rest well.”
He set the candle on the table, and as he bowed there was a trace of
an enigmatical smile about his mouth. How much he knew of Auguste’s
transaction I could not fathom, but the matter and the scarcely
creditable part I had played in it kept me awake far into the night. I
was just falling into a troubled sleep when a footstep on the gallery
startled me back to consciousness. It was followed by a light tap on the
door.
“Monsieur Reetchie,” said a voice.
It was Monsieur Auguste. He was not an imposing figure in his nightrail,
and by the light of the carefully shaded candle he held in his hand I
saw that he had hitherto deceived me in the matter of his calves. He
stood peering at me as I lay under the mosquito bar.
“How is it I can thank you, Monsieur!” he exclaimed in a whisper.
“By saying nothing, Monsieur,” I answered.
“You are noble, you are generous, and--and one day I will give you the
money back,” he added with a burst of magniloquence. “You have behave
very well, Monsieur, and I mek you my friend. Behol’ Auguste de St. Gré,
entirely at your service, Monsieur.” He made a sweeping bow that might
have been impressive save for the nightrail, and sought my hand, which
he grasped in a fold of the mosquito bar.
“I am overcome, Monsieur,” I said.
“Monsieur Reetchie, you are my friend, my intimate” (he put an aspirate
on the word). “I go to tell you one leetle secret. I find that I can
repose confidence in you. My father does not understan’ me, you saw,
Monsieur, he does not appreciate--that is the Engleesh. Mon Dieu, you
saw it this night. I, who spik to you, am made for a courtier, a noble.
I have the gift. La Louisiane--she is not so big enough for me.” He
lowered his voice still further, and bent nearer to me. “Monsieur, I
run away to France. My cousin the Marquis will help me. You will hear
of Auguste de St. Gré at Versailles, at Trianon, at Chantilly, and
peut-être--”
“It is a worthy campaign, Monsieur,” I interrupted.
A distant sound broke the stillness, and Auguste was near to dropping
the candle on me.
“Adieu, Monsieur,” he whispered; “milles tonneres, I have done one
extraordinaire foolish thing when I am come to this house to-night.”
And he disappeared, shading his candle, as he had come.
CHAPTER XIV. RETRIBUTION
During the next two days I had more evidence of Monsieur de St. Gré’s
ability, and, thanks to his conduct of my campaign, not the least
suspicion of my mission to New Orleans got abroad. Certain gentlemen
were asked to dine, we called on others, and met still others casually
in their haunts of business or pleasure. I was troubled because of
the inconvenience and discomfort to which my host put himself, for New
Orleans in the dog-days may be likened in climate to the under side of
the lid of a steam kettle. But at length, on the second evening, after
we had supped on jambalaya and rice cakes and other dainties, and the
last guest had gone, my host turned to me.
“The rest of the burrow is the same, Mr. Ritchie, until it comes to the
light again.”
“And the fox has crawled out of the other end,” I said.
“Precisely,” he answered, laughing; “in short, if you were to remain in
New Orleans until New Year’s, you would not learn a whit more. To-morrow
morning I have a little business of my own to transact, and we shall
get to Les Îles in time for dinner. No, don’t thank me,” he protested;
“there’s a certain rough honesty and earnestness ingrained in you
which I like. And besides,” he added, smiling, “you are poor indeed at
thanking, Mr. Ritchie. You could never do it gracefully. But if ever I
were in trouble, I believe that I might safely call on you.”
The next day was a rare one, for a wind from somewhere had blown the
moisture away a little, the shadows were clearer cut, and by noon
Monsieur de St. Gré and I were walking our horses in the shady road
behind the levee. We were followed at a respectful distance by André,
Monsieur’s mulatto body-servant, and as we rode my companion gave me
stories of the owners of the different plantations we passed, and spoke
of many events of interest in the history of the colony. Presently he
ceased to talk, and rode in silence for many minutes. And then he turned
upon me suddenly.
“Mr. Ritchie,” he said, “you have seen my son. It may be that in him
I am paying the price of my sins. I have done everything to set him
straight, but in vain. Monsieur, every son of the St. Grés has awakened
sooner or later to a sense of what becomes him. But Auguste is a fool,”
he cried bitterly,--a statement which I could not deny; “were it not for
my daughter, Antoinette, I should be a miserable man indeed.”
Inasmuch as he was not a person of confidences, I felt the more
flattered that he should speak so plainly to me, and I had a great
sympathy for this strong man who could not help himself.
“You have observed Antoinette, Mr. Ritchie,” he continued; “she is a
strange mixture of wilfulness and caprice and self-sacrifice, and she
has at times a bit of that wit which has made our house for generations
the intimates--I may say--of sovereigns.”
This peculiar pride of race would have amused me in another man. I found
myself listening to Monsieur de St. Gré with gravity, and I did not dare
to reply that I had had evidence of Mademoiselle’s aptness of retort.
“She has been my companion since she was a child, Monsieur. She has
disobeyed me, flaunted me, nursed me in illness, championed me behind my
back. I have a little book which I have kept of her sayings and doings,
which may interest you, Monsieur. I will show it you.”
This indeed was a new side of Monsieur de St. Gré, and I reflected
rather ruefully upon the unvarnished truth of what Mr. Wharton had told
me,--ay, and what Colonel Clark had emphasized long before. It was my
fate never to be treated as a young man. It struck me that Monsieur de
St. Gré had never even considered me in the light of a possible suitor
for his daughter’s hand.
“I should be delighted to see them, Monsieur,” I answered.
“Would you?” he exclaimed, his face lighting up as he glanced at me.
“Alas, Madame de St. Gré and I have promised to go to our neighbors’,
Monsieur and Madame Bertrand’s, for to-night. But, to-morrow, if you
have leisure, we shall look at it together. And not a word of this to my
daughter, Monsieur,” he added apprehensively; “she would never forgive
me. She dislikes my talking of her, but at times I cannot help it. It
was only last year that she was very angry with me, and would not speak
to me for days, because I boasted of her having watched at the bedside
of a poor gentleman who came here and got the fever. You will not tell
her?”
“Indeed I shall not, Monsieur,” I answered.
“It is strange,” he said abruptly, “it is strange that this gentleman
and his wife should likewise have had letters to us from Monsieur
Gratiot. They came from St. Louis, and they were on their way to Paris.”
“To Paris?” I cried; “what was their name?”
He looked at me in surprise.
“Clive,” he said.
“Clive!” I cried, leaning towards him in my saddle. “Clive! And what
became of them?”
This time he gave me one of his searching looks, and it was not unmixed
with astonishment.
“Why do you ask, Monsieur?” he demanded. “Did you know them?”
I must have shown that I was strangely agitated. For the moment I could
not answer.
“Monsieur Gratiot himself spoke of them to me,” I said, after a little;
“he said they were an interesting couple.”
“Pardieu!” exclaimed Monsieur de St. Gré, “he put it mildly.” He gave me
another look. “There was something about them, Monsieur, which I could
not fathom. Why were they drifting? They were people of quality who had
seen the world, who were by no means paupers, who had no cause to travel
save a certain restlessness. And while they were awaiting the sailing
of the packet for France they came to our house--the old one in the
Rue Bourbon that was burned. I would not speak ill of the dead, but Mr.
Clive I did not like. He fell sick of the fever in my house, and it was
there that Antoinette and Madame de St. Gré took turns with his wife in
watching at his bedside. I could do nothing with Antoinette, Monsieur,
and she would not listen to my entreaties, my prayers, my commands. We
buried the poor fellow in the alien ground, for he did not die in the
Church, and after that my daughter clung to Mrs. Clive. She would not
let her go, and the packet sailed without her. I have never seen such
affection. I may say,” he added quickly, “that Madame de St. Gré and I
share in it, for Mrs. Clive is a lovable woman and a strong character.
And into the great sorrow that lies behind her life, we have never
probed.”
“And she is with you now, Monsieur?” I asked.
“She lives with us, Monsieur,” he answered simply, “and I hope for
always. No,” he said quickly, “it is not charity,--she has something of
her own. We love her, and she is the best of companions for my daughter.
For the rest, Monsieur, she seems benumbed, with no desire to go back or
to go farther.”
An entrance drive to the plantation of Les Îles, unknown to Nick and me,
led off from the main road like a green tunnel arched out of the forest.
My feelings as we entered this may be imagined, for I was suddenly
confronted with the situation which I had dreaded since my meeting with
Nick at Jonesboro. I could scarcely allow myself even the faint hope
that Mrs. Clive might not prove to be Mrs. Temple after all. Whilst I
was in this agony of doubt and indecision, the drive suddenly came out
on a shaded lawn dotted with flowering bushes. There was the house with
its gallery, its curved dormer roof and its belvedere; and a white,
girlish figure flitted down the steps. It was Mademoiselle Antoinette,
and no sooner had her father dismounted than she threw herself into his
arms. Forgetful of my presence, he stood murmuring in her ear like a
lover; and as I watched them my trouble slipped from my mind, and gave
place to a vaguer regret that I had been a wanderer throughout my life.
Presently she turned up to him a face on which was written something
which he could not understand. His own stronger features reflected a
vague disquiet.
“What is it, ma chérie?”
What was it indeed? Something was in her eyes which bore a message and
presentiment to me. She dropped them, fastening in the lapel of his
coat a flaunting red flower set against a shining leaf, and there was a
gentle, joyous subterfuge in her answer.
“Thou pardoned Auguste, as I commanded?” she said. They were speaking in
the familiar French.
“Ha, diable! is it that which disquiets thee?” said her father. “We will
not speak of Auguste. Dost thou know Monsieur Ritchie, ‘Toinette?”
She disengaged herself and dropped me a courtesy, her eyes seeking
the ground. But she said not a word. At that instant Madame de St. Gré
herself appeared on the gallery, followed by Nick, who came down the
steps with a careless self-confidence to greet the master. Indeed, a
stranger might have thought that Mr. Temple was the host, and I saw
Antoinette watching him furtively with a gleam of amusement in her eyes.
“I am delighted to see you at last, Monsieur,” said my cousin. “I am
Nicholas Temple, and I have been your guest for three days.”
Had Monsieur de St. Gré been other than the soul of hospitality, it
would have been impossible not to welcome such a guest. Our host had,
in common with his daughter, a sense of humor. There was a quizzical
expression on his fine face as he replied, with the barest glance at
Mademoiselle Antoinette:--
“I trust you have been--well entertained, Mr. Temple. My daughter has
been accustomed only to the society of her brother and cousins.”
“Faith, I should not have supposed it,” said Nick, instantly, a remark
which caused the color to flush deeply into Mademoiselle’s face. I
looked to see Monsieur de St. Gré angry. He tried, indeed, to be grave,
but smiled irresistibly as he mounted the steps to greet his wife, who
stood demurely awaiting his caress. And in this interval Mademoiselle
shot at Nick a swift and withering look as she passed him. He returned a
grimace.
“Messieurs,” said Monsieur de St. Gré, turning to us, “dinner will soon
be ready--if you will be so good as to pardon me until then.”
Nick followed Mademoiselle with his eyes until she had disappeared
beyond the hall. She did not so much as turn. Then he took me by the arm
and led me to a bench under a magnolia a little distance away, where he
seated himself, and looked up at me despairingly.
“Behold,” said he, “what was once your friend and cousin, your
counsellor, sage, and guardian. Behold the clay which conducted you
hither, with the heart neatly but painfully extracted. Look upon a
woman’s work, Davy, and shun the sex. I tell you it is better to go
blindfold through life, to have--pardon me--your own blunt features,
than to be reduced to such a pitiable state. Was ever such a refinement
of cruelty practised before? Never! Was there ever such beauty, such
archness, such coquetry,--such damned elusiveness? Never! If there is a
cargo going up the river, let me be salted and lie at the bottom of it.
I’ll warrant you I’ll not come to life.”
“You appear to have suffered somewhat,” I said, forgetting for the
moment in my laughter the thing that weighed upon my mind.
“Suffered!” he cried; “I have been tossed high in the azure that I might
sink the farther into the depths. I have been put in a grave, the earth
stamped down, resurrected, and flung into the dust-heap. I have been
taken up to the gate of heaven and dropped a hundred and fifty years
through darkness. Since I have seen you I have been the round of all the
bright places and all the bottomless pits in the firmament.”
“It seems to have made you literary,” I remarked judicially.
“I burn up twenty times a day,” he continued, with a wave of the hand to
express the completeness of the process; “there is nothing left. I see
her, I speak to her, and I burn up.”
“Have you had many tête-à-têtes?” I asked.
“Not one,” he retorted fiercely; “do you think there is any sense in the
damnable French custom? I am an honorable man, and, besides, I am not
equipped for an elopement. No priest in Louisiana would marry us. I see
her at dinner, at supper. Sometimes we sew on the gallery,” he went on,
“but I give you my oath that I have not had one word with her alone.”
“An oath is not necessary,” I said. “But you seem to have made some
progress nevertheless.”
“Do you call that progress?” he demanded.
“It is surely not retrogression.”
“God knows what it is,” said Nick, helplessly, “but it’s got to stop. I
have sent her an ultimatum.”
“A what?”
“A summons. Her father and mother are going to the Bertrands’ to-night,
and I have written her a note to meet me in the garden. And you,” he
cried, rising and slapping me between the shoulders, “you are to keep
watch, like the dear, careful, canny, sly rascal you are.”
“And--and has she accepted?” I inquired.
“That’s the deuce of it,” said he; “she has not. But I think she’ll
come.”
I stood for a moment regarding him.
“And you really love Mademoiselle Antoinette?” I asked.
“Have I not exhausted the language?” he answered. “If what I have been
through is not love, then may the Lord shield me from the real disease.”
“It may have been merely a light case of--tropical enthusiasm, let
us say. I have seen others, a little milder because the air was more
temperate.”
“Tropical--balderdash,” he exploded. “If you are not the most
exasperating, unfeeling man alive--”
“I merely wanted to know if you wished to marry Mademoiselle de St.
Gré,” I interrupted.
He gave me a look of infinite tolerance.
“Have I not made it plain that I cannot live without her?” he said; “if
not, I will go over it all again.”
“That will not be necessary,” I said hastily.
“The trouble may be,” he continued, “that they have already made one of
their matrimonial contracts with a Granpré, a Beauséjour, a Bernard.”
“Monsieur de St. Gré is a very sensible man,” I answered. “He loves his
daughter, and I doubt if he would force her to marry against her will.
Tell me, Nick,” I asked, laying my hand upon his shoulder, “do you love
this girl so much that you would let nothing come between you and her?”
“I tell you, I do; and again I tell you, I do,” he replied. He paused
suddenly glancing at my face, and added, “Why do you ask, Davy?”
I stood irresolute, now that the time had come not daring to give voice
to my suspicions. He had not spoken to me of his mother save that once,
and I had no means of knowing whether his feeling for the girl might not
soften his anger against her. I have never lacked the courage to come
to the point, but there was still the chance that I might be mistaken in
this after all. Would it not be best to wait until I had ascertained in
some way the identity of Mrs. Clive? And while I stood debating, Nick
regarding me with a puzzled expression, Monsieur de St. Gré appeared on
the gallery.
“Come, gentlemen,” he cried; “dinner awaits us.”
The dining room at Les Îles was at the corner of the house, and its
windows looked out on the gallery, which was shaded at that place by
dense foliage. The room, like others in the house, seemed to reflect the
decorous character of its owner. Two St. Grés, indifferently painted,
but rigorous and respectable, relieved the whiteness of the wall. They
were the Commissary-general and his wife. The lattices were closed on
one side, and in the deep amber light the family silver shone but dimly.
The dignity of our host, the evident ceremony of the meal,--which was
attended by three servants,--would have awed into a modified silence at
least a less irrepressible person than Nicholas Temple. But Nick was one
to carry by storm a position which another might wait to reconnoitre.
The first sensation of our host was no doubt astonishment, but he was
soon laughing over a vivid account of our adventures on the keel boat.
Nick’s imitation of Xavier, and his description of Benjy’s terrors after
the storm, were so perfect that I laughed quite as heartily; and
Madame de St. Gré wiped her eyes and repeated continually, “Quel
drôle monsieur! it is thus he has entertained us since thou departed,
Philippe.”
As for Mademoiselle, I began to think that Nick was not far wrong in his
diagnosis. Training may have had something to do with it. She would not
laugh, not she, but once or twice she raised her napkin to her face and
coughed slightly. For the rest, she sat demurely, with her eyes on
her plate, a model of propriety. Nick’s sufferings became more
comprehensible.
To give the devil his due, Nick had an innate tact which told him when
to stop, and perhaps at this time Mademoiselle’s superciliousness made
him subside the more quickly. After Monsieur de St. Gré had explained to
me the horrors of the indigo pest and the futility of sugar raising, he
turned to his daughter.
“‘Toinette, where is Madame Clive?” he asked.
The girl looked up, startled into life and interest at once.
“Oh, papa,” she cried in French, “we are so worried about her, mamma and
I. It was the day you went away, the day these gentlemen came, that we
thought she would take an airing. And suddenly she became worse.”
Monsieur de St. Gré turned with concern to his wife.
“I do not know what it is, Philippe,” said that lady; “it seems to be
mental. The loss of her husband weighs upon her, poor lady. But this is
worse than ever, and she will lie for hours with her face turned to the
wall, and not even Antoinette can arouse her.”
“I have always been able to comfort her before,” said Antoinette, with a
catch in her voice.
I took little account of what was said after that, my only notion being
to think the problem out for myself, and alone. As I was going to my
room Nick stopped me.
“Come into the garden, Davy,” he said.
“When I have had my siesta,” I answered.
“When you have had your siesta!” he cried; “since when did you begin to
indulge in siestas?”
“To-day,” I replied, and left him staring after me.
I reached my room, bolted the door, and lay down on my back to think.
Little was needed to convince me now that Mrs. Clive was Mrs. Temple,
and thus the lady’s relapse when she heard that her son was in the house
was accounted for. Instead of forming a plan, my thoughts drifted from
that into pity for her, and my memory ran back many years to the text
of good Mr. Mason’s sermon, “I have refined thee, but not with silver,
I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.” What must Sarah Temple
have suffered since those days! I remembered her in her prime, in her
beauty, in her selfishness, in her cruelty to those whom she might have
helped, and I wondered the more at the change which must have come over
the woman that she had won the affections of this family, that she had
gained the untiring devotion of Mademoiselle Antoinette. Her wit might
not account for it, for that had been cruel. And something of the agony
of the woman’s soul as she lay in torment, facing the wall, thinking
of her son under the same roof, of a life misspent and irrevocable, I
pictured.
A stillness crept into the afternoon like the stillness of night. The
wide house was darkened and silent, and without a sunlight washed with
gold filtered through the leaves. There was a drowsy hum of bees, and in
the distance the occasional languishing note of a bird singing what must
have been a cradle-song. My mind wandered, and shirked the task that was
set to it.
Could anything be gained by meddling? I had begun to convince myself
that nothing could, when suddenly I came face to face with the
consequences of a possible marriage between Nick and Mademoiselle
Antoinette. In that event the disclosure of his mother’s identity would
be inevitable. Not only his happiness was involved, but Mademoiselle’s,
her father’s and her mother’s, and lastly that of this poor hunted woman
herself, who thought at last to have found a refuge.
An hour passed, and it became more and more evident to me that I must
see and talk with Mrs. Temple. But how was I to communicate with her? At
last I took out my portfolio and wrote these words on a sheet:--
“If Mrs. Clive will consent to a meeting with Mr. David Ritchie, he
will deem it a favor. Mr. Ritchie assures Mrs. Clive that he makes this
request in all friendliness.”
I lighted a candle, folded the note and sealed it, addressed it to Mrs.
Clive, and opening the latticed door I stepped out. Walking along the
gallery until I came to the rear part of the house which faced towards
the out-buildings, I spied three figures prone on the grass under a
pecan tree that shaded the kitchen roof. One of these figures was Benjy,
and he was taking his siesta. I descended quietly from the gallery, and
making my way to him, touched him on the shoulder. He awoke and stared
at me with white eyes.
“Marse Dave!” he cried.
“Hush,” I answered, “and follow me.”
He came after me, wondering, a little way into the grove, where I
stopped.
“Benjy,” I said, “do you know any of the servants here?”
“Lawsy, Marse Dave, I reckon I knows ‘em,--some of ‘em,” he answered
with a grin.
“You talk to them?”
“Shucks, no, Marse Dave,” he replied with a fine scorn, “I ain’t no hand
at dat ar nigger French. But I knows some on ‘em, and right well too.”
“How?” I demanded curiously.
Benjy looked down sheepishly at his feet. He was standing pigeon-toed.
“I done c’ressed some on ‘em, Marse Dave,” he said at length, and there
was a note of triumph in his voice.
“You did what?” I asked.
“I done kissed one of dem yaller gals, Marse Dave. Yass’r, I done kissed
M’lisse.”
“Do you think Mélisse would do something for you if you asked her?” I
inquired.
Benjy seemed hurt.
“Marse Dave--” he began reproachfully.
“Very well, then,” I interrupted, taking the letter from my pocket,
“there is a lady who is ill here, Mrs. Clive--”
I paused, for a new look had come into Benjy’s eyes. He began that
peculiar, sympathetic laugh of the negro, which catches and doubles on
itself, and I imagined that a new admiration for me dawned on his face.