In the state I was it took me a long time to compose this much, and I

had barely finished it when there was a knock at the outer door. There

was André. He had the immobility of face which sometimes goes with the

mulatto, and always with the trained servant, as he informed me that

Monsieur le Médecin was not at home, but that he had left word. There

was an epidemic, Monsieur, so André feared. I gave him the note and his

directions, and ten minutes after he had gone I would have given much to

have called him back. How about Antoinette, alone at Les Îles? Why had

I not thought of her? We had told her nothing that morning, Madame la

Vicomtesse and I, after our conference with Nick. For the girl had shut

herself in her room, and Madame had thought it best not to disturb her

at such a stage. But would she not be alarmed when Hélène failed to

return that night? Had circumstances been different, I myself would have

ridden to Les Îles, but no inducement now could make me desert the post

I had chosen. After many years I dislike to recall to memory that long

afternoon which I spent, helpless, in the Rue Bourbon. Now I was on my

feet, pacing restlessly the short breadth of the room, trying to shut

out from my mind the horrors of which my ears gave testimony. Again, in

the intervals of quiet, I sat with my elbows on the table and my head in

my hands, striving to allay the throbbing in my temples. Pains came and

went, and at times I felt like a fagot flung into the fire,--I, who had

never known a sick day. At times my throat pained me, an odd symptom

in a warm climate. Troubled as I was in mind and body, the thought of

Hélène’s quiet heroism upheld me through it all. More than once I had my

hand raised to knock at the bedroom door and ask if I could help, but I

dared not; at length, the sun having done its worst and spent its fury,

I began to hear steps along the banquette and voices almost at my elbow

beyond the little window. At every noise I peered out, hoping for the

doctor. But he did not come. And then, as I fell back into the fauteuil,

there was borne on my consciousness a sound I had heard before. It was

the music of the fiddler, it was a tune I knew, and the voices of the

children were singing the refrain:--

“Ne sait quand reviendra,

Ne sait quand reviendra.”

I rose, opened the door, and slipped out of it, and I must have made a

strange, hatless figure as I came upon the fiddler and his children from

across the street.

“Stop that noise,” I cried in French, angered beyond all reason at the

thought of music at such a time. “Idiots, there is yellow fever there.”

The little man stopped with his bow raised; for a moment they all stared

at me, transfixed. It was a little elf in blue indienne who jumped first

and ran down the street, crying the news in a shrill voice, the others

following, the fiddler gazing stupidly after them. Suddenly he scrambled

up, moaning, as if the scourge itself had fastened on him, backed into

the house, and slammed the door in my face. I returned with slow

steps to shut myself in the darkened room again, and I recall feeling

something of triumph over the consternation I had caused. No sounds came

from the bedroom, and after that the street was quiet as death save for

an occasional frightened, hurrying footfall. I was tired.

All at once the bedroom door opened softly, and Hélène was standing

there, looking at me. At first I saw her dimly, as in a vision, then

clearly. I leaped to my feet and went and stood beside her.

“The doctor has not come,” I said. “Where does he live? I will go for

him.”

She shook her head.

“He can do no good. Lindy has procured all the remedies, such as they

are. They can only serve to alleviate,” she answered. “She cannot

withstand this, poor lady.” There were tears on Hélène’s lashes. “Her

sufferings have been frightful--frightful.”

“Cannot I help?” I said thickly. “Cannot I do something?”

She shook her head. She raised her hand timidly to the lapel of my coat,

and suddenly I felt her palm, cool and firm, upon my forehead. It rested

there but an instant.

“You ought not to be here,” she said, her voice vibrant with earnestness

and concern. “You ought not to be here. Will you not go--if I ask it?”

“I cannot,” I said; “you know I cannot if you stay.”

She did not answer that. Our eyes met, and in that instant for me there

was neither joy nor sorrow, sickness nor death, nor time nor space nor

universe. It was she who turned away.

“Have you written him?” she asked in a low voice.

“Yes,” I answered.

“She would not have known him,” said Hélène; “after all these years of

waiting she would not have known him. Her punishment has been great.”

A sound came from the bedroom, and Hélène was gone, silently, as she had

come.

I must have been dozing in the fauteuil, for suddenly I found myself

sitting up, listening to an unwonted noise. I knew from the count of the

hoof-beats which came from down the street that a horse was galloping in

long strides--a spent horse, for the timing was irregular. Then he was

pulled up into a trot, then to a walk as I ran to the door and opened

it and beheld Nicholas Temple flinging himself from a pony white with

lather. And he was alone! He caught sight of me as soon as his foot

touched the banquette.

“What are you doing here?” I cried. “What are you doing here?”

He halted on the edge of the banquette as a hurrying man runs into a

wall. He had been all excitement, all fury, as he jumped from his horse;

and now, as he looked at me, he seemed to lose his bearings, to be all

bewilderment. He cried out my name and stood looking at me like a fool.

“What the devil do you mean by coming here?” I cried. “Did I not write

you to stay where you were? How did you get here?” I stepped down on the

banquette and seized him by the shoulders. “Did you receive my letter?”

“Yes,” he said, “yes.” For a moment that was as far as he got, and he

glanced down the street and then at the heaving beast he had ridden,

which stood with head drooping to the kennel. Then he laid hold of me.

“Davy, is it true that she has yellow fever? Is it true?”

“Who told you?” I demanded angrily.

“André,” he answered. “André said that the lady here had yellow fever.

Is it true?”

“Yes,” I said almost inaudibly.

He let his hand fall from my shoulder, and he shivered.

“May God forgive me for what I have done!” he said. “Where is she?”

“For what you have done?” I cried; “you have done an insensate thing

to come here.” Suddenly I remembered the sentry at the gate of Fort St.

Charles. “How did you get into the city?” I said; “were you mad to defy

the Baron and his police?”

“Damn the Baron and his police,” he answered, striving to pass me. “Let

me in! Let me see her.”

Even as he spoke I caught sight of men coming into the street, perhaps

at the corner of the Rue St. Pierre, and then more men, and as we went

into the house I saw that they were running. I closed the doors. There

were cries in the street now, but he did not seem to heed them. He stood

listening, heart-stricken, to the sounds that came through the bedroom

wall, and a spasm crossed his face. Then he turned like a man not to be

denied, to the bedroom door. I was before him, but Madame la Vicomtesse

opened it. And I remember feeling astonishment that she did not show

surprise or alarm.

“What are you doing here, Mr. Temple?” she said.

“My mother, Madame! My mother! I must go to her.”

He pushed past her into the bedroom, and I followed perforce. I shall

never forget the scene, though I had but the one glimpse of it,--the

raving, yellowed woman in the bed, not a spectre nor yet even a

semblance of the beauty of Temple Bow. But she was his mother, upon

whom God had brought such a retribution as He alone can bestow. Lindy,

faithful servant to the end, held the wasted hands of her mistress

against the violence they would have done. Lindy held them, her own

body rocking with grief, her lips murmuring endearments, prayers,

supplications.

“Miss Sally, honey, doan you know Lindy? Gawd’ll let you git well,

Miss Sally, Gawd’ll let you git well, honey, ter see Marse Nick--ter

see--Marse--Nick--”

The words died on Lindy’s lips, the ravings of the frenzied woman

ceased. The yellowed hands fell limply to the sheet, the shrunken form

stiffened. The eyes of the mother looked upon the son, and in them at

first was the terror of one who sees the infinite. Then they softened

until they became again the only feature that was left of Sarah Temple.

Now, as she looked at him who was her pride, her honor, for one sight

of whom she had prayed,--ay, and even blasphemed,--her eyes were all

tenderness. Then she spoke.

“Harry,” she said softly, “be good to me, dear. You are all I have now.”

She spoke of Harry Riddle!

But the long years of penance had not been in vain. Nick had forgiven

her. We saw him kneeling at the bedside, we saw him with her hand in

his, and Hélène was drawing me gently out of the room and closing the

door behind her. She did not look at me, nor I at her.

We stood for a moment close together, and suddenly the cries in the

street brought us back from the drama in the low-ceiled, reeking room we

had left.

“Ici! Ici! Voici le cheval!”

There was a loud rapping at the outer door, and a voice demanding

admittance in Spanish in the name of his Excellency the Governor.

“Open it,” said Hélène. There was neither excitement in her voice, nor

yet resignation. In those two words was told the philosophy of her life.

I opened the door. There, on the step, was an officer, perspiring,

uniformed and plumed, and behind him a crowd of eager faces, white and

black, that seemed to fill the street. He took a step into the room, his

hand on the hilt of his sword, and poured out at me a torrent of Spanish

of which I understood nothing. All at once his eye fell upon Hélène, who

was standing behind me, and he stopped in the middle of his speech and

pulled off his hat and bowed profoundly.

“Madame la Vicomtesse!” he stammered. I was no little surprised that she

should be so well known.

“You will please to speak French, Monsieur,” she said; “this gentleman

does not understand Spanish. What is it you desire?”

“A thousand pardons, Madame la Vicomtesse,” he said. “I am the Alcalde

de Barrio, and a wild Americano has passed the sentry at St. Charles’s

gate without heeding his Excellency’s authority and command. I saw the

man with my own eyes. I should know him again in a hundred. We have

traced him here to this house, Madame la Vicomtesse. Behold the horse

which he rode!” The Alcalde turned and pointed at the beast. “Behold the

horse which he rode, Madame la Vicomtesse. The animal will die.”

“Probably,” answered the Vicomtesse, in an even tone.

“But the man,” cried the Alcalde, “the man is here, Madame la

Vicomtesse, here, in this house!”

“Yes,” she said, “he is here.”

“Sancta Maria! Madame,” he exclaimed, “I--I who speak to you have come

to get him. He has defied his Excellency’s commands. Where is he?”

“He is in that room,” said the Vicomtesse, pointing at the bedroom door.

The Alcalde took a step forward. She stopped him by a quick gesture.

“He is in that room with his mother,” she said, “and his mother has the

yellow fever. Come, we will go to him.” And she put her hand upon the

door.

“Yellow fever!” cried the Alcalde, and his voice was thick with terror.

There was a moment’s silence as he stood rooted to the floor. I did

not wonder then, but I have since thought it remarkable that the words

spoken low by both of them should have been caught up on the banquette

and passed into the street. Impassive, I heard it echoed from a score of

throats, I saw men and women stampeding like frightened sheep, I heard

their footfalls and their cries as they ran. A tawdry constable,

who held with a trembling hand the bridle of the tired horse, alone

remained.

“Yellow fever!” the Alcalde repeated

The Vicomtesse inclined her head.

He was silent again for a while, uncertain, and then, without

comprehending, I saw the man’s eyes grow smaller and a smile play about

his mouth. He looked at the Vicomtesse with a new admiration to which

she paid no heed.

“I am sorry, Madame la Vicomtesse,” he began, “but--”

“But you do not believe that I speak the truth,” she replied quietly.

He winced.

“Will you follow me?” she said, turning again.

He had started, plainly in an agony of fear, when a sound came from

beyond the wall that brought a cry to his lips.

Her manner changed to one of stinging scorn.

“You are a coward,” she said. “I will bring the gentleman to you if he

can be got to leave the bedside.”

“No,” said the Alcalde, “no. I--I will go to him, Madame la Vicomtesse.”

But she did not open the door.

“Listen,” she said in a tone of authority, “I myself have been to his

Excellency to-day concerning this gentleman--”

“You, Madame la Vicomtesse?”

“I will open the door,” she continued, impatient at the interruption,

“and you will see him. Then I shall write a letter which you will take

to the Governor. The gentleman will not try to escape, for his mother

is dying. Besides, he could not get out of the city. You may leave your

constable where he is, or the man may come in and stand at this door in

sight of the gentleman while you are gone--if he pleases.”

“And then?” said the Alcalde.

“It is my belief that his Excellency will allow the gentleman to remain

here, and that you will be relieved from the necessity of running any

further risk.”

As she spoke she opened the door, softly. The room was still now, still

as death, and the Alcalde went forward on tiptoe. I saw him peering in,

I saw him backing away again like a man in mortal fear.

“Yes, it is he--it is the man,” he stammered. He put his hand to his

brow.

The Vicomtesse closed the door, and without a glance at him went quickly

to the table and began to write. She had no thought of consulting the

man again, of asking his permission. Although she wrote rapidly, five

minutes must have gone by before the note was finished and folded and

sealed. She held it out to him.

“Take this to his Excellency,” she said, “and bring me his answer.” The

Alcalde bowed, murmured her title, and went lamely out of the house. He

was plainly in an agony of uncertainty as to his duty, but he glanced

at the Vicomtesse--and went, flipping the note nervously with his finger

nail. He paused for a few low-spoken words with the tawdry constable,

who sat down on the banquette after his chief had gone, still clinging

to the bridle. The Vicomtesse went to the doorway, looked at him, and

closed the battened doors. The constable did not protest. The day was

fading without, and the room was almost in darkness as she crossed over

to the little mantel and stood with her head laid upon her arm.

I did not disturb her. The minutes passed, the light waned until I could

see her no longer, and yet I knew that she had not moved. The strange

sympathy between us kept me silent until I heard her voice calling my

name.

“Yes,” I answered.

“The candle!”

I drew out my tinder-box and lighted the wick. She had turned, and was

facing me even as she had faced me the night before. The night before!

The greatest part of my life seemed to have passed since then. I

remember wondering that she did not look tired. Her face was sad, her

voice was sad, and it had an ineffable, sweet quality at such times that

was all its own.

“The Alcalde should be coming back,” she said.

“Yes,” I answered.

These were our words, yet we scarce heeded their meaning. Between us was

drawn a subtler communion than speech, and we dared--neither of us--to

risk speech. She searched my face, but her lips were closed. She did not

take my hand again as in the afternoon. She turned away. I knew what she

would have said.

There was a knock at the door. We went together to open it, and the

Alcalde stood on the step. He held in his hand a long letter on which

the red seal caught the light, and he gave the letter to the Vicomtesse,

with a bow.

“From his Excellency, Madame la Vicomtesse.”

She broke the seal, went to the table, and read. Then she looked up at

me.

“It is the Governor’s permit for Mr. Temple to remain in this house.

Thank you,” she said to the Alcalde; “you may go.”

“With my respectful wishes for the continued good health of Madame la

Vicomtesse,” said the Alcalde.

CHAPTER XI. “IN THE MIDST OF LIFE”

The Alcalde had stopped on the step with an exclamation at something in

the darkness outside, and he backed, bowing, into the room again to make

way for some one. A lady, slim, gowned and veiled in black and followed

by a negress, swept past him. The lady lifted her veil and stood before

us.

“Antoinette!” exclaimed the Vicomtesse, going to her.

The girl did not answer at once. Her suffering seemed to have brought

upon her a certain acceptance of misfortune as inevitable. Her face,

framed in the black veil, was never more beautiful than on that night.

“What is the Alcalde doing here?” she said.

The officer himself answered the question.

“I am leaving, Mademoiselle,” said he. He reached out his hands toward

her, appealingly. “Do you not remember me, Mademoiselle? You brought the

good sister to see my wife.”

“I remember you,” said Antoinette.

“Do not stay here, Mademoiselle!” he cried. “There is--there is yellow

fever.”

“So that is it,” said Antoinette, unheeding him and looking at her

cousin. “She has yellow fever, then?”

“I beg you to come away, Mademoiselle!” the man entreated.

“Please go,” she said to him. He looked at her, and went out silently,

closing the doors after him. “Why was he here?” she asked again.

“He came to get Mr. Temple, my dear,” said the Vicomtesse. The girl’s

lips framed his name, but did not speak it.

“Where is he?” she asked slowly.

The Vicomtesse pointed towards the bedroom.

“In there,” she answered, “with his mother.”

“He came to her?” Antoinette asked quite simply.

The Vicomtesse glanced at me, and drew the veil gently from the girl’s

shoulders. She led her, unresisting, to a chair. I looked at them. The

difference in their ages was not so great. Both had suffered cruelly;

one had seen the world, the other had not, and yet the contrast lay not

here. Both had followed the gospel of helpfulness to others, but one

as a religieuse, innocent of the sin around her, though poignant of the

sorrow it caused. The other, knowing evil with an insight that went far

beyond intuition, fought with that, too.

“I will tell you, Antoinette,” began the Vicomtesse; “it was as you

said. Mr. Ritchie and I found him at Lamarque’s. He had not taken your

money; he did not even know that Auguste had gone to see you. He did

not even know,” she said, bending over the girl, “that he was on your

father’s plantation. When we told him that, he would have left it at

once.”

“Yes,” she said.

“He did not know that his mother was still in New Orleans. And when we

told him how ill she was he would have come to her then. It was as much

as we could do to persuade him to wait until we had seen Monsieur

de Carondelet. Mr. Ritchie and I came directly to town and saw his

Excellency.”

It was characteristic of the Vicomtesse that she told this almost with

a man’s brevity, that she omitted the stress and trouble and pain of it

all. These things were done; the tact and skill and character of her who

had accomplished them were not spoken of. The girl listened immovable,

her lips parted and her eyes far away. Suddenly, with an awakening, she

turned to Hélène.

“You did this!” she cried.

“Mr. Ritchie and I together,” said the Vicomtesse.

Her next exclamation was an odd one, showing how the mind works at such

a time.

“But his Excellency was having his siesta!” said Antoinette.

Again Hélène glanced at me, but I cannot be sure that she smiled.

“We thought the matter of sufficient importance to awake his

Excellency,” said Hélène.

“And his Excellency?” asked Antoinette. In that moment all three of us

seemed to have forgotten the tragedy behind the wall.

“His Excellency thought so, too, when we had explained it sufficiently,”

Hélène answered.

The girl seemed suddenly to throw off the weight of her grief. She

seized the hand of the Vicomtesse in both of her own.

“The Baron pardoned him?” she cried. “Tell me what his Excellency said.

Why are you keeping it from me?”

“Hush, my dear,” said the Vicomtesse. “Yes, he pardoned him. Mr. Temple

was to have come to the city to-night with an officer. Mr. Ritchie and I

came to this house together, and we found--”

“Yes, yes,” said Antoinette.

“Mr. Ritchie wrote to Mr. Temple that his Excellency was to send for him

to-night, but André told him of the fever, and he came here in the face

of danger to see her before she died. He galloped past the sentry at the

gate, and the Alcalde followed him from there.”

“And came here to arrest him?” cried Antoinette. Before the Vicomtesse

could prevent her she sprang from her chair, ran to the door, and was

peering out into the darkness. “Is the Alcalde waiting?”

“No, no,” said the Vicomtesse, gently bringing her back. “I wrote to his

Excellency and we have his permission for Mr. Temple to remain here.”

Suddenly Antoinette stopped in the middle of the floor, facing the

candle, her hands clasped, her eyes wide with fear. We started, Hélène

and I, as we looked at her.

“What is it, my dear?” said the Vicomtesse, laying a hand on her arm.

“He will take it,” she said, “he will take the fever.”

A strange thing happened. Many, many times have I thought of it since,

and I did not know its meaning then. I had looked to see the Vicomtesse

comfort her. But Hélène took a step towards me, my eyes met hers, and

in them reflected was the terror I had seen in Antoinette’s. At that

instant I, too, forgot the girl, and we turned to see that she had sunk

down, weeping, in the chair. Then we both went to her, I through some

instinct I did not fathom.

Hélène’s hand, resting on Antoinette’s shoulder, trembled there. It

may well have been my own weakness which made me think her body swayed,

which made me reach out as if to catch her. However marvellous her

strength and fortitude, these could not last forever. And--Heaven help

me--my own were fast failing. Once the room had seemed to me all in

darkness. Then I saw the Vicomtesse leaning tenderly over her cousin and

whispering in her ear, and Antoinette rising, clinging to her.

“I will go,” she faltered, “I will go. He must not know I have been

here. You--you will not tell him?”

“No, I shall not tell him,” answered the Vicomtesse.

“And--you will send word to me, Hélène?”

“Yes, dear.”

Antoinette kissed her, and began to adjust her veil mechanically. I

looked on, bewildered by the workings of the feminine mind. Why was she

going? The Vicomtesse gave me no hint. But suddenly the girl’s arms fell

to her sides, and she stood staring, not so much as a cry escaping her.

The bedroom doors had been opened, and between them was the tall figure

of Nicholas Temple. So they met again after many years, and she who had

parted them had brought them together once more. He came a step into

the room, as though her eyes had drawn him so far. Even then he did not

speak her name.

“Go,” he said. “Go, you must not stay here. Go!”

She bowed her head.

“I was going,” she answered. “I--I am going.”

“But you must go at once,” he cried excitedly. “Do you know what is in

there?” and he pointed towards the bedroom.

“Yes, yes, I know,” she said, “I know.”

“Then go,” he cried. “As it is you have risked too much.”

She lifted up her head and looked at him. There was a new-born note in

her voice, a tremulous note of joy in the midst of sorrow. It was of her

he was thinking!

“And you?” she said. “You have come and remained.”

“She is my mother,” he answered. “God knows it was the least I could

have done.”

Twice she had changed before our eyes, and now we beheld a new and yet

more startling transformation. When she spoke there was no reproach in

her voice, but triumph. Antoinette undid her veil.

“Yes, she is your mother,” she answered; “but for many years she has

been my friend. I will go to her. She cannot forbid me now. Hélène has

been with her,” she said, turning to where the Vicomtesse stood watching

her intently. “Hélène has been with her. And shall I, who have longed to

see her these many years, leave her now?”

“But you were going!” he cried, beside himself with apprehension at this

new turning. “You told me that you were going.”

Truly, man is born without perception.

“Yes, I told you that,” she replied almost defiantly.

“And why were you going?” he demanded. Then I had a sudden desire to

shake him.

Antoinette was mute.

“You yourself must find the answer to that question, Mr. Temple,” said

the Vicomtesse, quietly.

He turned and stared at Hélène, and she seemed to smile. Then as his

eyes went back, irresistibly, to the other, a light that was wonderful

to see dawned and grew in them. I shall never forget him as he stood,

handsome and fearless, a gentleman still, despite his years of wandering

and adventure, and in this supreme moment unselfish. The wilful,

masterful boy had become a man at last.

He started forward, stopped, trembling with a shock of remembrance, and

gave back again.

“You cannot come,” he said; “I cannot let you take this risk. Tell her

she cannot come, Madame,” he said to Hélène. “For the love of God send

her home again.”

But there were forces which even Hélène could not stem. He had turned to

go back, he had seized the door, but Antoinette was before him. Custom

does not weigh at such a time. Had she not read his avowal? She had his

hand in hers, heedless of us who watched. At first he sought to free

himself, but she clung to it with all the strength of her love,--yet she

did not look up at him.

“I will come with you,” she said in a low voice, “I will come with you,

Nick.”

How quaintly she spoke his name, and gently, and timidly--ay, and with

a supreme courage. True to him through all those numb years of waiting,

this was a little thing--that they should face death together. A little

thing, and yet the greatest joy that God can bestow upon a good woman.

He looked down at her with a great tenderness, he spoke her name, and I

knew that he had taken her at last into his arms.

“Come,” he said.

They went in together, and the doors closed behind them.

Antoinette’s maid was on the step, and the Vicomtesse and I were alone

once more in the little parlor. I remember well the sense of unreality

I had, and how it troubled me. I remember how what I had seen and heard

was turning, turning in my mind. Nick had come back to Antoinette. They

were together in that room, and Mrs. Temple was dying--dying. No, it

could not be so. Again, I was in the garden at Les Îles on a night that

was all perfume, and I saw the flowers all ghostly white under the moon.

And then, suddenly, I was watching the green candle sputter, and out of

the stillness came a cry--the sereno calling the hour of the night. How

my head throbbed! It was keeping time to some rhythm, I knew not what.

Yes, it was the song my father used to sing:--

“I’ve faught on land? I’ve faught at sea,

At hame I’ve faught my aunty, O!”

But New Orleans was hot, burning hot, and this could not be cold I felt.

Ah, I had it, the water was cold going to Vincennes, so cold!

A voice called me. No matter where I had gone, I think I would have come

back at the sound of it. I listened intently, that I might lose no word

of what it said. I knew the voice. Had it not called to me many times in

my life before? But now there was fear in it, and fear gave it a vibrant

sweetness, fear gave it a quality that made it mine--mine.

“You are shivering.”

That was all it said, and it called from across the sea. And the sea

was cold,--cold and green under the gray light. If she who called to me

would only come with the warmth of her love! The sea faded, the light

fell, and I was in the eternal cold of space between the whirling

worlds. If she could but find me! Was not that her hand in mine? Did I

not feel her near me, touching me? I wondered that I should hear myself

as I answered her.

“I am not ill,” I said. “Speak to me again.”

She was pressing my hand now, I saw her bending over me, I felt her hair

as it brushed my face. She spoke again. There was a tremor in her voice,

and to that alone I listened. The words were decisive, of command,

and with them some sense as of a haven near came to me. Another voice

answered in a strange tongue, saying seemingly:--

“Oui, Madame--malé couri--bon djé--malé couri!”

I heard the doors close, and the sound of footsteps running and dying

along the banquette, and after that my shoulders were raised and

something wrapped about them. Then stillness again, the stillness that

comes between waking and sleeping, between pain and calm. And at times

when I felt her hand fall into mine or press against my brow, the pain

seemed more endurable. After that I recall being lifted, being borne

along. I opened my eyes once and saw, above a tile-crowned wall, the

moon all yellow and distorted in the sky. Then a gate clicked, dungeon

blackness, half-light again, ascent, oblivion.

CHAPTER XII. VISIONS, AND AN AWAKENING

I have still sharp memories of the tortures of that illness, though it

befell so long ago. At times, when my mind was gone from me, I cried out

I know not what of jargon, of sentiment, of the horrors I had beheld in

my life. I lived again the pleasant scenes, warped and burlesqued almost

beyond cognizance, and the tragedies were magnified a hundred fold. Thus

it would be: on the low, white ceiling five cracks came together, and

that was a device. And the device would take on color, red-bronze like

the sumach in the autumn and streaks of vermilion, and two glowing coals

that were eyes, and above them eagles’ feathers, and the cracks became

bramble bushes. I was behind the log, and at times I started and knew

that it was a hideous dream, and again Polly Ann was clutching me and

praying me to hold back, and I broke from her and splashed over the

slippery limestone bed of the creek to fight single-handed. Through all

the fearful struggle I heard her calling me piteously to come back to

her. When the brute got me under water I could not hear her, but her

voice came back suddenly (as when a door opens) and it was like the wind

singing in the poplars. Was it Polly Ann’s voice?

Again, I sat with Nick under the trees on the lawn at Temple Bow, and

the world was dark with the coming storm. I knew and he knew that the

storm was brewing that I might be thrust out into it. And then in the

blackness, when the air was filled with all the fair things of the earth

torn asunder, a beautiful woman came through the noise and the fury, and

we ran to her and clung to her skirts, thinking we had found safety. But

she thrust us forth into the blackness with a smile, as though she were

flinging papers out of the window. She, too, grew out of the design in

the cracks of the ceiling, and a greater fear seized me at sight of her

features than when the red face came out of the brambles.

My constant torment was thirst. I was in the prairie, and it was

scorched and brown to the horizon. I searched and prayed pitifully for

water,--for only a sip of the brown water with the specks in it that

was in the swamp. There were no swamps. I was on the bed in the cabin

looking at the shifts and hunting shirts on the pegs, and Polly Ann

would bring a gourdful of clear water from the spring as far as the

door. Nay, once I got it to my lips, and it was gone. Sometimes a young

man in a hunting shirt, square-shouldered, clear-eyed, his face tanned

and his fair hair bleached by the sun, would bring the water. He was the

hero of my boyhood, and part of him indeed was in me. And I would have

followed him again to Vincennes despite the tortures of the damned. But

when I spoke his name he grew stouter before me, and his eyes lost their

lustre and his hair turned gray; and his hand shook as he held out the

gourd and spilled its contents ere I could reach them.

Sometimes another brought the water, and at sight of her I would tremble

and grow faint, and I had not the strength to reach for it. She would

look at me with eyes that laughed despite the resolution of the mouth.

Then the eyes would grow pitiful at my helplessness, and she would

murmur my name. There was some reason which I never fathomed why she

could not give me the water, and her own suffering seemed greater than

mine because of it. So great did it seem that I forgot my own and sought

to comfort her. Then she would go away, very slowly, and I would hear

her calling to me in the wind, from the stars to which I looked up from

the prairie. It was she, I thought, who ordered the world. Who, when

women were lost and men cried out in distress, came to them calmly,

ministered to them deftly.

Once--perhaps a score of times, I cannot tell--was limned on the

ceiling, where the cracks were, her miniature, and I knew what was

coming and shuddered and cried aloud because I could not stop it. I

saw the narrow street of a strange city deep down between high

houses,--houses with gratings on the lowest windows, with studded,

evil-looking doors, with upper stories that toppled over to shut out the

light of the sky, with slated roofs that slanted and twisted this way

and that and dormers peeping from them. Down in the street, instead of

the King’s white soldiers, was a foul, unkempt rabble, creeping out

of its damp places, jesting, cursing, singing. And in the midst of the

rabble a lady sat in a cart high above it unmoved. She was the lady of

the miniature. A window in one of the jutting houses was flung open,

a little man leaned out excitedly, and I knew him too. He was Jean

Baptiste Lenoir, and he cried out in a shrill voice:--

“You must take off her ruff, citizens. You must take off her ruff!”

There came a blessed day when my thirst was gone, when I looked up at

the cracks in the ceiling and wondered why they did not change into

horrors. I watched them a long, long time, and it seemed incredible

that they should still remain cracks. Beyond that I would not go, into

speculation I dared not venture. They remained cracks, and I went to

sleep thanking God. When I awoke a breeze came in cool, fitful gusts,

and on it the scent of camellias. I thought of turning my head, and I

remember wondering for a long time over the expediency of this move.

What would happen if I did! Perhaps the visions would come back, perhaps

my head would come off. Finally I decided to risk it, and the first

thing that I beheld was a palm-leaf fan, moving slowly. That fact gave

me food for thought, and contented me for a while. Then I hit upon

the idea that there must be something behind the fan. I was distinctly

pleased by this astuteness, and I spent more time in speculation.

Whatever it was, it had a tantalizing elusiveness, keeping the fan

between it and me. This was not fair.

I had an inspiration. If I feigned to be asleep, perhaps the thing

behind the fan would come out. I shut my eyes. The breeze continued

steadily. Surely no human being could fan as long as that without being

tired! I opened my eyes twice, but the thing was inscrutable. Then

I heard a sound that I knew to be a footstep upon boards. A voice

whispered:--

“The delirium has left him.”

Another voice, a man’s voice, answered:--

“Thank God! Let me fan him. You are tired.”

“I am not tired,” answered the first voice.

“I do not see how you have stood it,” said the man’s voice. “You will

kill yourself, Madame la Vicomtesse. The danger is past now.”

“I hope so, Mr. Temple,” said the first voice. “Please go away. You may

come back in half an hour.”

I heard the footsteps retreating. Then I said: “I am not asleep.”

The fan stopped for a brief instant and then went on vibrating

inexorably. I was entranced at the thought of what I had done. I had

spoken, though indeed it seemed to have had no effect. Could it be

that I hadn’t spoken? I began to be frightened at this, when gradually

something crept into my mind and drove the fear out. I did not grasp

what this was at first, it was like the first staining of wine on the

eastern sky to one who sees a sunrise. And then the thought grew even

as the light grows, tinged by prismatic colors, until at length a

memory struck into my soul like a shaft of light. I spoke her name,

unblushingly, aloud.

“Hélène!”

The fan stopped. There was a silence that seemed an eternity as the palm

leaf trembled in her hand, there was an answer that strove tenderly to

command.

“Hush, you must not talk,” she said.

Never, I believe, came such supreme happiness with obedience. I felt her

hand upon my brow, and the fan moved again. I fell asleep once more from

sheer weariness of joy. She was there, beside me. She had been there,

beside me, through it all, and it was her touch which had brought me

back to life.

I dreamed of her. When I awoke again her image was in my mind, and I

let it rest there in contemplation. But presently I thought of the fan,

turned my head, and it was not there. A great fear seized me. I looked

out of the open door where the morning sun threw the checkered shadows

of the honeysuckle on the floor of the gallery, and over the railing to

the tree-tops in the court-yard. The place struck a chord in my memory.

Then my eyes wandered back into the room. There was a polished dresser,

a crucifix and a prie-dieu in the corner, a fauteuil, and another chair

at my bed. The floor was rubbed to an immaculate cleanliness, stained

yellow, and on it lay clean woven mats. The room was empty!

I cried out, a yellow and red turban shot across the window, and I

beheld in the door the spare countenance of the faithful Lindy.

“Marse Dave,” she cried, “is you feelin’ well, honey?”

“Where am I, Lindy?” I asked.

Lindy, like many of her race, knew well how to assume airs of

importance. Lindy had me down, and she knew it.

“Marse Dave,” she said, “doan yo’ know better’n dat? Yo’ know yo’ ain’t

ter talk. Lawsy, I reckon I wouldn’t be wuth pizen if she was to hear I

let yo’ talk.”

Lindy implied that there was tyranny somewhere.

“She?” I asked, “who’s she?”

“Now yo’ hush, Marse Dave,” said Lindy, in a shrill whisper, “I ain’t

er-gwine ter git mixed up in no disputation. Ef she was ter hear

me er-disputin’ wid yo’, Marse Dave, I reckon I’d done git such er

tongue-lashin’--” Lindy looked at me suspiciously. “Yo’-er allus was

powe’rful cute, Marse Dave.”

Lindy set her lips with a mighty resolve to be silent. I heard some one

coming along the gallery, and then I saw Nick’s tall figure looming up

behind her.

“Davy,” he cried.

Lindy braced herself up doggedly.

“Yo’ ain’t er-gwine to git in thar nohow, Marse Nick,” she said.

“Nonsense, Lindy,” he answered, “I’ve been in there as much as you

have.” And he took hold of her thin arm and pulled her back.

“Marse Nick!” she cried, terror-stricken, “she’ll done fin’ out dat

you’ve been er-talkin’.”

“Pish!” said Nick with a fine air, “who’s afraid of her?”

Lindy’s face took on an expression of intense amusement.

“Yo’ is, for one, Marse Nick,” she answered, with the familiarity of an

old servant. “I done seed yo’ skedaddle when she comed.”

“Tut,” said Nick, grandly, “I run from no woman. Eh, Davy?” He pushed

past the protesting Lindy into the room and took my hand.

“Egad, you have been near the devil’s precipice, my son. A three-bottle

man would have gone over.” In his eyes was all the strange affection

he had had for me ever since we had been boys at Temple Bow together.

“Davy, I reckon life wouldn’t have been worth much if you’d gone.”

I did not answer. I could only stare at him, mutely grateful for such an

affection. In all his wild life he had been true to me, and he had clung

to me stanchly in this, my greatest peril. Thankful that he was here,

I searched his handsome person with my eyes. He was dressed, as usual,

with care and fashion, in linen breeches and a light gray coat and a

filmy ruffle at his neck. But I thought there had come a change into his

face. The reckless quality seemed to have gone out of it, yet the spirit

and daring remained, and with these all the sweetness that was once in

his smile. There were lines under his eyes that spoke of vigils.

“You have been sitting up with me,” I said.

“Of course,” he answered, patting my shoulder. “Of course I have. What

did you think I would be doing?”

“What was the matter with me?” I asked.

“Nothing much,” he said lightly, “a touch of the sun, and a great deal

of overwork in behalf of your friends. Now keep still, or I will be

getting peppered.”

I was silent for a while, turning over this answer in my mind. Then I

said:--

“I had yellow fever.”

He started.

“It is no use to lie to you,” he replied; “you’re too shrewd.”

I was silent again for a while.

“Nick,” I said, “you had no right to stay here. You have--other

responsibilities now.”

He laughed. It was the old buoyant, boyish laugh of sheer happiness, and

I felt the better for hearing it.

“If you begin to preach, parson, I’ll go; I vow I’ll have no more

sermonizing. Davy,” he cried, “isn’t she just the dearest, sweetest,

most beautiful person in the world?”

I smiled.

“Where is she?” I asked, temporizing. Nick was not a subtle person, and

I was ready to follow him at great length in the praise of Antoinette.

“I hope she is not here.”

“We made her go to Les Îles,” said he.

“And you risked your life and stayed here without her?” I said.

“As for risking life, that kind of criticism doesn’t come well from

you. And as for Antoinette,” he added with a smile, “I expect to see

something of her later on.”

“Well,” I answered with a sigh of supreme content, “you have been a fool

all your life, and I hope that she will make you sensible.”

“You never could make me so,” said Nick, “and besides, I don’t think

you’ve been so damned sensible yourself.”

We were silent again for a space.

“Davy,” he asked, “do you remember what I said when you had that

miniature here?”

“You said a great many things, I believe.”

“I told you to consider carefully the masterful features of that lady,

and to thank God you hadn’t married her. I vow I never thought she’d

turn up. Upon my oath I never thought I should be such a blind slave

as I have been for the last fortnight. Faith, Monsieur de St. Gré is a

strong man, but he was no more than a puppet in his own house when he

came back here for a day. That lady could govern a province,--no, a

kingdom. But I warrant you there would be no climbing of balconies in

her dominions. I have never been so generalled in my life.”

I had no answer for these comments.

“The deuce of it is the way she does it,” he continued, plainly bent on

relieving himself. “There’s no noise, no fuss; but you must obey, you

don’t know why. And yet you may flay me if I don’t love her.”

“Love her!” I repeated.

“She saved your life,” said Nick; “I don’t believe any other woman could

have done it. She hadn’t any thought of her own. She has been here, in

this room, almost constantly night and day, and she never let you go.

The little French doctor gave you up--not she. She held on. Cursed if I

see why she did it.”

“Nor I,” I answered.

“Well,” he said apologetically, “of course I would have done it, but

you weren’t anything to her. Yes, egad, you were something to be

saved,--that was all that was necessary. She had you brought back

here--we are in Monsieur de St. Gré’s house, by the way--in a litter,

and she took command as though she had nursed yellow fever cases all her

life. No flurry. I said that you were in love with her once, Davy, when

I saw you looking at the portrait. I take it back. Of course a man could

be very fond of her,” he said, “but a king ought to have married her. As

for that poor Vicomte she’s tied up to, I reckon I know the reason why

he didn’t come to America. An ordinary man would have no chance at all.

God bless her!” he cried, with a sudden burst of feeling, “I would

die for her myself. She got me out of a barrel of trouble with his

Excellency. She cared for my mother, a lonely outcast, and braved death

herself to go to her when she was dying of the fever. God bless her!”

Lindy was standing in the doorway.

“Lan’ sakes, Marse Nick, yo’ gotter go,” she said.

He rose and pressed my fingers. “I’ll go,” he said, and left me. Lindy

seated herself in the chair. She held in her hand a bowl of beef broth.

From this she fed me in silence, and when she left she commanded me to

sleep informing me that she would be on the gallery within call.

But I did not sleep at once. Nick’s words had brought back a fact which

my returning consciousness had hitherto ignored. The birds sang in the

court-yard, and when the breeze stirred it was ever laden with a new

scent. I had been snatched from the jaws of death, my life was before

me, but the happiness which had thrilled me was gone, and in my weakness

the weight of the sadness which had come upon me was almost unbearable.

If I had had the strength, I would have risen then and there from my

bed, I would have fled from the city at the first opportunity. As it

was, I lay in a torture of thought, living over again every part of my

life which she had touched. I remembered the first long, yearning look I

had given the miniature at Madame Bouvet’s. I had not loved her then.

My feeling rather had been a mysterious sympathy with and admiration for

this brilliant lady whose sphere was so far removed from mine. This was

sufficiently strange. Again, in the years of my struggle for livelihood

which followed, I dreamed of her; I pictured her often in the midst of

the darkness of the Revolution. Then I had the miniature again, which

had travelled to her, as it were, and come back to me. Even then it was

not love I felt, but an unnamed sentiment for one whom I clothed with

gifts and attributes I admired: constancy, an ability to suffer and

to hide, decision, wit, refuge for the weak, scorn for the false. So I

named them at random and cherished them, knowing that these things were

not what other men longed for in women. Nay, there was another quality

which I believed was there--which I knew was there--a supreme tenderness

that was hidden like a treasure too sacred to be seen.

I did not seek to explain the mystery which had brought her across the

sea into that little garden of Mrs. Temple’s and into my heart. There

she was now enthroned, deified; that she would always be there I

accepted. That I would never say or do anything not in consonance with

her standards I knew. That I would suffer much I was sure, but the lees

of that suffering I should hoard because they came from her.

What might have been I tried to put away. There was the moment, I

thought, when our souls had met in the little parlor in the Rue Bourbon.

I should never know. This I knew--that we had labored together to bring

happiness into other lives.

Then came another thought to appall me. Unmindful of her own safety,

she had nursed me back to life through all the horrors of the fever. The

doctor had despaired, and I knew that by the very force that was in her

she had saved me. She was here now, in this house, and presently she

would be coming back to my bedside. Painfully I turned my face to the

wall in a torment of humiliation--I had called her by her name. I would

see her again, but I knew not whence the strength for that ordeal was to

come.

CHAPTER XIII. A MYSTERY

I knew by the light that it was evening when I awoke. So prisoners mark

the passing of the days by a bar of sun light. And as I looked at the

green trees in the courtyard, vaguely troubled by I knew not what, some

one came and stood in the doorway. It was Nick.

“You don’t seem very cheerful,” said he; “a man ought to be who has been

snatched out of the fire.”

“You seem to be rather too sure of my future,” I said, trying to smile.

“That’s more like you,” said Nick. “Egad, you ought to be happy--we all

ought to be happy--she’s gone.”

“She!” I cried. “Who’s gone?”

“Madame la Vicomtesse,” he replied, rubbing his hands as he stood over

me. “But she’s left instructions with me for Lindy as long as Monsieur

de Carondelet’s Bando de Buen Gobierno. You are not to do this, and you

are not to do that, you are to eat such and such things, you are to be

made to sleep at such and such times. She came in here about an hour ago

and took a long look at you before she left.”

“She was not ill?” I said faintly.

“Faith, I don’t know why she was not,” he said. “She has done enough to

tire out an army. But she seems well and fairly happy. She had her joke

at my expense as she went through the court-yard, and she reminded me

that we were to send a report by André every day.”

Chagrin, depression, relief, bewilderment, all were struggling within

me.

“Where did she go?” I asked at last.

“To Les Îles,” he said. “You are to be brought there as soon as you are

strong enough.”

“Do you happen to know why she went?” I said.

“Now how the deuce should I know?” he answered. “I’ve done everything

with blind servility since I came into this house. I never asked for any

reason--it never would have done any good. I suppose she thought that

you were well on the road to recovery, and she knew that Lindy was an

old hand. And then the doctor is to come in.”

“Why didn’t you go?” I demanded, with a sudden remembrance that he was

staying away from happiness.

“It was because I longed for another taste of liberty, Davy,” he

laughed. “You and I will have an old-fashioned time here together,--a

deal of talk, and perhaps a little piquet,--who knows?”

My strength came back, bit by bit, and listening to his happiness did

much to ease the soreness of my heart--while the light lasted. It was

in the night watches that my struggles came--though often some unwitting

speech of his would bring back the pain. He took delight in telling me,

for example, how for hours at a time I had been in a fearful delirium.

“The Lord knows what foolishness you talked, Davy,” said he. “It would

have done me good to hear you had you been in your right mind.”

“But you did hear me,” I said, full of apprehensions.

“Some of it,” said he. “You were after Wilkinson once, in a burrow, I

believe, and you swore dreadfully because he got out of the other end.

I can’t remember all the things you said. Oh, yes, once you were talking

to Auguste de St. Gré about money.”

“Money?” I repeated in a sinking voice.

“Oh, a lot of jargon. The Vicomtesse pushed me out of the room, and

after that I was never allowed to be there when you had those flights.

Curse the mosquitoes!” He seized a fan and began to ply it vigorously.

“I remember. You were giving Auguste a lecture. Then I had to go.”

These and other reminiscences gave me sufficient food for reflection,

and many a shudder over the possibilities of my ravings. She had put him

out! No wonder.

After a while I was carried to the gallery, and there I would talk

to the little doctor about the yellow fever which had swept the city.

Monsieur Perrin was not much of a doctor, to be sure, and he had

a heartier dread of the American invasion than of the scourge. He

worshipped the Vicomtesse, and was so devoid of professional pride as to

give her freely all credit for my recovery. He too, clothed her with the

qualities of statesmanship.

“Ha, Monsieur,” he said, “if that lady had been King of France, do you

think there would have been any States General, any red bonnets, any

Jacobins or Cordeliers? Parbleu, she would have swept the vicemongers

and traitors out of the Palais Royal itself. There would have been a

house-cleaning there. I, who speak to you, know it.”

Every day Nick wrote a bulletin to be sent to the Vicomtesse, and he

took a fiendish delight in the composition of these. He would come out

on the gallery with ink and a blank sheet of paper and try to enlist my

help. He would insert the most ridiculous statements, as for instance,

“Davy is worse to-day, having bribed Lindy to give him a pint of Madeira

against my orders.” Or, “Davy feigns to be sinking rapidly because he

wishes to have you back.” Indeed, I was always in a torture of doubt to

know what the rascal had sent.

His company was most agreeable when he was recounting the many

adventures he had had during the five years after he had left New

Orleans and been lost to me. These would fill a book, and a most

readable book it would be if written in his own speech. His love for the

excitement of the frontier had finally drawn him back to the Cumberland

country near Nashville, and he had actually gone so far as to raise a

house and till some of the land which he had won from Darnley. It

was perhaps characteristic of him that he had named the place

“Rattle-and-Snap” in honor of the game which had put him in possession

of it, and “Rattle-and-Snap” it remains to this day. He was going back

there with Antoinette, so he said, to build a brick mansion and to live

a respectable life the rest of his days.

There was one question which had been in my mind to ask him, concerning

the attitude of Monsieur de St. Gré. That gentleman, with Madame, had

hurried back from Pointe Coupée at a message from the Vicomtesse, and

had gone first to Les Îles to see Antoinette. Then he had come, in spite

of the fever, to his own house in New Orleans to see Nick himself. What

their talk had been I never knew, for the subject was too painful to be

dwelt upon, and the conversation had been marked by frankness on both

sides. Monsieur de St. Gré was a just man, his love for his daughter was

his chief passion, and despite all that had happened he liked Nick. I

believe he could not wholly blame the younger man, and he forgave him.

Mrs. Temple, poor lady, had died on that first night of my illness,

and it was her punishment that she had not known her son or her son’s

happiness. Whatever sins she had committed in her wayward life were

atoned for, and by her death I firmly believe that she redeemed him. She

lies now among the Temples in Charleston, and on the stone which marks

her grave is cut no line that hints of the story of these pages.

One bright morning, when Nick and I were playing cards, we heard some

one mounting the stairs, and to my surprise and embarrassment I beheld

Monsieur de St. Gré emerging on the gallery. He was in white linen and

wore a broad hat, which he took from his head as he advanced. He had

aged somewhat, his hair was a little gray, but otherwise he was the

firm, dignified personage I had admired on this same gallery five years

before.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said in English; “ha, do not rise, sir”

(to me). He patted Nick’s shoulder kindly, but not familiarly, as he

passed him, and extended his hand.

“Mr. Ritchie, it gives me more pleasure than I can express to see you so

much recovered.”

“I am again thrown on your hospitality, sir,” I said, flushing with

pleasure at this friendliness. For I admired and respected the man

greatly. “And I fear I have been a burden and trouble to you and your

family.”

He took my hand and pressed it. Characteristically, he did not answer

this, and I remembered he was always careful not to say anything which

might smack of insincerity.

“I had a glimpse of you some weeks ago,” he said, thus making light of

the risk he had run. “You are a different man now. You may thank your

Scotch blood and your strong constitution.”

“His good habits have done him some good, after all,” put in my

irrepressible cousin.

Monsieur de St. Gré smiled.

“Nick,” he said (he pronounced the name quaintly, like Antoinette), “his

good habits have turned out to be some advantage to you. Mr. Ritchie,

you have a faithful friend at least.” He patted Nick’s shoulder again.

“And he has promised me to settle down.”

“I have every inducement, sir,” said Nick.

Monsieur de St. Gré became grave.

“You have indeed, Monsieur,” he answered.

“I have just come from Dr. Perrin’s, David,”--he added, “May I call you

so? Well, then, I have just come from Dr. Perrin’s, and he says you

may be moved to Les Îles this very afternoon. Why, upon my word,” he

exclaimed, staring at me, “you don’t look pleased. One would think you

were going to the calabozo.”

“Ah,” said Nick, slyly, “I know. He has tasted freedom, Monsieur, and

Madame la Vicomtesse will be in command again.”

I flushed. Nick could be very exasperating.

“You must not mind him, Monsieur,” I said.

“I do not mind him,” answered Monsieur de St. Gré, laughing in spite of

himself. “He is a sad rogue. As for Hélène--”

“I shall not know how to thank the Vicomtesse,” I said. “She has done me

the greatest service one person can do another.”

“Hélène is a good woman,” answered Monsieur de St. Gré, simply. “She is

more than that, she is a wonderful woman. I remember telling you of her

once. I little thought then that she would ever come to us.”

He turned to me. “Dr. Perrin will be here this afternoon, David, and he

will have you dressed. Between five and six if all goes well, we shall

start for Les Îles. And in the meantime, gentlemen,” he added with a

stateliness that was natural to him, “I have business which takes me

to-day to my brother-in-law’s, Monsieur de Beauséjour’s.”

Nick leaned over the gallery and watched meditatively his prospective

father-in-law leaving the court-yard.

“He got me out of a devilish bad scrape,” he said.

“How was that?” I asked listlessly.

“That fat little Baron, the Governor, was for deporting me for running

past the sentry and giving him all the trouble I did. It seems that the

Vicomtesse promised to explain matters in a note which she wrote, and

never did explain. She was here with you, and a lot she cared about

anything else. Lucky that Monsieur de St. Gré came back. Now his

Excellency graciously allows me to stay here, if I behave myself, until

I get married.”

I do not know how I spent the rest of the day. It passed, somehow. If

I had had the strength then, I believe I should have fled. I was to see

her again, to feel her near me, to hear her voice. During the weeks that

had gone by I had schooled myself, in a sense, to the inevitable. I had

not let my mind dwell upon my visit to Les Îles, and now I was face to

face with the struggle for which I felt I had not the strength. I had

fought one battle,--I knew that a fiercer battle was to come.

In due time the doctor arrived, and while he prepared me for my

departure, the little man sought, with misplaced kindness, to raise

my spirits. Was not Monsieur going to the country, to a paradise?

Monsieur--so Dr. Perrin had noticed--had a turn for philosophy. Could

two more able and brilliant conversationalists be found than Philippe

de St. Gré and Madame la Vicomtesse? And there was the happiness of that

strange but lovable young man, Monsieur Temple, to contemplate. He was

in luck, ce beau garçon, for he was getting an angel for his wife. Did

Monsieur know that Mademoiselle Antoinette was an angel?

At last I was ready, arrayed in my best, on the gallery, when Monsieur

de St. Gré came. André and another servant carried me down into the

court, and there stood a painted sedan-chair with the St. Gré arms on

the panels.

“My father imported it, David,” said Monsieur de St. Gré. “It has not

been used for many years. You are to be carried in it to the levee, and

there I have a boat for you.”

Overwhelmed by this kindness, I could not find words to thank him as I

got into the chair. My legs were too long for it, I remember. I had a

quaint feeling of unreality as I sank back on the red satin cushions

and was borne out of the gate between the lions. Monsieur de St. Gré and

Nick walked in front, the faithful Lindy followed, and people paused to

stare at us as we passed. We crossed the Place d’Armes, the Royal Road,

gained the willow-bordered promenade on the levee’s crown, and a wide

barge was waiting, manned by six negro oarsmen. They lifted me into its

stern under the awning, the barge was cast off, the oars dipped, and we

were gliding silently past the line of keel boats on the swift current

of the Mississippi. The spars of the shipping were inky black, and the

setting sun had struck a red band across the waters. For a while the

three of us sat gazing at the green shore, each wrapped in his own

reflections,--Philippe de St. Gré thinking, perchance, of the wayward

son he had lost; Nick of the woman who awaited him; and I of one whom

fate had set beyond me. It was Monsieur de St. Gré who broke the silence

at last.

“You feel no ill effects from your moving, David?” he asked, with an

anxious glance at me.

“None, sir,” I said.

“The country air will do you good,” he said kindly.

“And Madame la Vicomtesse will put him on a diet,” added Nick, rousing

himself.

“Hélène will take care of him,” answered Monsieur de St. Gré.

He fell to musing again. “Madame la Vicomtesse has seen more in seven

years than most of us see in a lifetime,” he said. “She has beheld the

glory of France, and the dishonor and pollution of her country. Had the

old order lasted her salon would have been famous, and she would have

been a power in politics.”

“I have thought that the Vicomtesse must have had a queer marriage,”

Nick remarked.

Monsieur de St. Gré smiled.

“Such marriages were the rule amongst our nobility,” he said. “It

was arranged while Hélène was still in the convent, though it was not

celebrated until three years after she had been in the world. There

was a romantic affair, I believe, with a young gentleman of the English

embassy, though I do not know the details. He is said to be the only man

she ever cared for. He was a younger son of an impoverished earl.”

I started, remembering what the Vicomtesse had said. But Monsieur de St.

Gré did not appear to see my perturbation.

“Be that as it may, if Hélène suffered, she never gave a sign of it.

The marriage was celebrated with great pomp, and the world could only

conjecture what she thought of the Vicomte. It was deemed on both

sides a brilliant match. He had inherited vast estates, Ivry-le-Tour,

Montméry, Les Saillantes, I know not what else. She was heiress to the

Château de St. Gré with its wide lands, to the château and lands of

the Côte Rouge in Normandy, to the hotel St. Gré in Paris. Monsieur le

Vicomte was between forty and fifty at his marriage, and from what I

have heard of him he had many of the virtues and many of the faults of

his order. He was a bachelor, which does not mean that he had lacked

consolations. He was reserved with his equals, and distant with others.

He had served in the Guards, and did not lack courage. He dressed

exquisitely, was inclined to the Polignac party, took his ease

everywhere, had a knowledge of cards and courts, and little else. He

was cheated by his stewards, refused to believe that the Revolution was

serious, and would undoubtedly have been guillotined had the Vicomtesse

not contrived to get him out of France in spite of himself. They went

first to the Duke de Ligne, at Bel Oeil, and thence to Coblentz. He

accepted a commission in the Austrian service, which is much to his

credit, and Hélène went with some friends to England. There my letter

reached her, and rather than be beholden to strangers or accept my money

there, she came to us. That is her story in brief, Messieurs. As for

Monsieur le Vicomte, he admired his wife, as well he might, respected

her for the way she served the gallants, but he made no pretence of

loving her. One affair--a girl in the village of Montméry--had lasted.

Hélène was destined for higher things than may be found in Louisiana,”

said Monsieur de St. Gré, turning to Nick, “but now that you are to

carry away my treasure, Monsieur, I do not know what I should have done

without her.”

“And has there been any news of the Vicomte of late?”

It was Nick who asked the question, after a little. Monsieur de St. Gré

looked at him in surprise.

“Eh, mon Dieu, have you not heard?” he said. “C’est vrai, you have

been with David. Did not the Vicomtesse mention it? But why should she?

Monsieur le Vicomte died in Vienna. He had lived too well.”

“The Vicomte is dead?” I said.

They both looked at me. Indeed, I should not have recognized my own

voice. What my face betrayed, what my feelings were, I cannot say.

My heart beat no faster, there was no tumult in my brain, and yet--my

breath caught strangely. Something grew within me which is beyond the

measure of speech, and so it was meant to be.

“I did not know this myself until Hélène returned to Les Îles,” Monsieur

de St. Gré was saying to me. “The letter came to her the day after you

were taken ill. It was from the Baron von Seckenbrück, at whose house

the Vicomte died. She took it very calmly, for Hélène is not a woman to

pretend. How much better, after all, if she had married her Englishman

for love! And she is much troubled now because, as she declares, she

is dependent upon my bounty. That is my happiness, my consolation,” the

good man added simply, “and her father, the Marquis, was kind to me when

I was a young provincial and a stranger. God rest his soul!”

We were drawing near to Les Îles. The rains had come during my illness,

and in the level evening light the forest of the shore was the tender

green of spring. At length we saw the white wooden steps in the levee at

the landing, and near them were three figures waiting. We glided nearer.

One was Madame de St. Gré, another was Antoinette,--these I saw indeed.

The other was Hélène, and it seemed to me that her eyes met mine across

the waters and drew them. Then we were at the landing. I heard Madame de

St. Gré’s voice, and Antoinette’s in welcome--I listened for another.

I saw Nick running up the steps; in the impetuosity of his love he had

seized Antoinette’s hand in his, and she was the color of a red rose.

Creole decorum forbade further advances. André and another lifted

me out, and they gathered around me,--these kind people and devoted

friends,--Antoinette calling me, with exquisite shyness, by name; Madame

de St. Gré giving me a grave but gentle welcome, and asking anxiously

how I stood the journey. Another took my hand, held it for the briefest

space that has been marked out of time, and for that instant I looked

into her eyes. Life flowed back into me, and strength, and a joy not

to be fathomed. I could have walked; but they bore me through the

well-remembered vista, and the white gallery at the end of it was like

the sight of home. The evening air was laden with the scent of the

sweetest of all shrubs and flowers.

CHAPTER XIV. “TO UNPATHED WATERS, UNDREAMED SHORES”

Monsieur and Madame de St. Gré themselves came with me to my chamber off

the gallery, where everything was prepared for my arrival with the

most loving care,--Monsieur de St. Gré supplying many things from

his wardrobe which I lacked. And when I tried to thank them for their

kindness he laid his hand upon my shoulder.

“Tenez, mon ami,” he said, “you got your illness by doing things for

other people. It is time other people did something for you.”

Lindy brought me the daintiest of suppers, and I was left to my

meditations. Nick looked in at the door, and hinted darkly that I had to

thank a certain tyrant for my abandonment. I called to him, but he paid

no heed, and I heard him chuckling as he retreated along the gallery.

The journey, the excitement into which I had been plunged by the news I

had heard, brought on a languor, and I was between sleeping and waking

half the night. I slept to dream of her, of the Vicomte, her husband,

walking in his park or playing cards amidst a brilliant company in a

great candle-lit room like the drawing-room at Temple Bow. Doubt grew,

and sleep left me. She was free now, indeed, but was she any nearer

to me? Hope grew again,--why had she left me in New Orleans? She had

received a letter, and if she had cared she would not have remained. But

there was a detestable argument to fit that likewise, and in the light

of this argument it was most natural that she should return to Les Îles.

And who was I, David Ritchie, a lawyer of the little town of Louisville,

to aspire to the love of such a creature? Was it likely that Hélène,

Vicomtesse d’Ivry-le-Tour, would think twice of me? The powers of

the world were making ready to crush the presumptuous France of the

Jacobins, and the France of King and Aristocracy would be restored.

Châteaux and lands would be hers again, and she would go back again to

that brilliant life among the great to which she was born, for which

nature had fitted her. Last of all was the thought of the Englishman

whom I resembled. She would go back to him.

Nick was the first in my room the next morning. He had risen early (so

he ingenuously informed me) because Antoinette had a habit of getting

up with the birds, and as I drank my coffee he was emphatic in his

denunciations of the customs of the country.

“It is a wonderful day, Davy,” he cried; “you must hurry and get out.

Monsieur de St. Gré sends his compliments, and wishes to know if you

will pardon his absence this morning. He is going to escort Antoinette

and me over to see some of my prospective cousins, the Bertrands.” He

made a face, and bent nearer to my ear. “I swear to you I have not

had one moment alone with her. We have been for a walk, but Madame la

Vicomtesse must needs intrude herself upon us. Egad, I told her plainly

what I thought of her tyranny.”

“And what did she say?” I asked, trying to smile.

“She laughed, and said that I belonged to a young nation which had done

much harm in the world to everybody but themselves. Faith, if I wasn’t

in love with Antoinette, I believe I’d be in love with her.”

“I have no doubt of it,” I answered.

“The Vicomtesse is as handsome as a queen this morning,” he continued

paying no heed to this remark. “She has on a linen dress that puzzles

me. It was made to walk among the trees and flowers, it is as simple as

you please; and yet it has a distinction that makes you stare.”

“You seem to have stared,” I answered. “Since when did you take such

interest in gowns?”

“Bless you, it was Antoinette. I never should have known,” said he.

“Antoinette had never before seen the gown, and she asked the Vicomtesse

where she got the pattern. The Vicomtesse said that the gown had been

made by Léonard, a court dressmaker, and it was of the fashion the Queen

had set to wear in the gardens of the Trianon when simplicity became the

craze. Antoinette is to have it copied, so she says.”

Which proved that Antoinette was human, after all, and happy once more.

“Hang it,” said Nick, “she paid more attention to that gown than to me.

Good-by, Davy. Obey the--the Colonel.”

“Is--is not the Vicomtesse going with you?” I asked.

“No, I’m sorry for you,” he called back from the gallery.

He had need to be, for I fell into as great a fright as ever I had had

in my life. Monsieur de St. Gré knocked at the door and startled me out

of my wits. Hearing that I was awake, he had come in person to make his

excuses for leaving me that morning.

“Bon Dieu!” he said, looking at me, “the country has done you good

already. Behold a marvel! Au revoir, David.”

I heard the horses being brought around, and laughter and voices. How

easily I distinguished hers! Then I heard the hoof-beats on the soft

dirt of the drive. Then silence,--the silence of a summer morning which

is all myriad sweet sounds. Then Lindy appeared, starched and turbaned.

“Marse Dave, how you feel dis mawnin’? Yo’ ‘pears mighty peart, sholy.

Marse Dave, yo’ chair is sot on de gallery. Is you ready? I’ll fotch dat

yaller nigger, André.”

“You needn’t fetch André,” I said; “I can walk.”

“Lan sakes, Marse Dave, but you is bumptious.”

I rose and walked out on the gallery with surprising steadiness. A great

cushioned chair had been placed there, and beside it a table with books,

and another chair. I sat down. Lindy looked at me sharply, but I did not

heed her, and presently she retired. The day, still in its early golden

glory, seemed big with prescience. Above, the saffron haze was lifted,

and there was the blue sky. The breeze held its breath; the fragrance of

grass and fruit and flowers, of the shrub that vied with all, languished

on the air. Out of these things she came.

I knew that she was coming, but I saw her first at the gallery’s end,

the roses she held red against the white linen of her gown. Then I felt

a great yearning and a great dread. I have seen many of her kind since,

and none reflected so truly as she the life of the old régime. Her

dress, her carriage, her air, all suggested it; and she might, as Nick

said, have been walking in the gardens of the Trianon. Titles I cared

nothing for. Hers alone seemed real, to put her far above me. Had all

who bore them been as worthy, titles would have meant much to mankind.

She was coming swiftly. I rose to my feet before her. I believe I should

have risen in death. And then she was standing beside me, looking up

into my face.

“You must not do that,” she said, “or I will go away.”

I sat down again. She went to the door and called, I following her with

my eyes. Lindy came with a bowl of water.

“Put it on the table,” said the Vicomtesse.

Lindy put the bowl on the table, gave us a glance, and departed

silently. The Vicomtesse began to arrange the flowers in the bowl, and

I watched her, fascinated by her movements. She did everything quickly,

deftly, but this matter took an unconscionable time. She did not so much

as glance at me. She seemed to have forgotten my presence.

“There,” she said at last, giving them a final touch. “You are less

talkative, if anything, than usual this morning, Mr. Ritchie. You have

not said good morning, you have not told me how you were--you have not

even thanked me for the roses. One might almost believe that you are

sorry to come to Les Îles.”

“One might believe anything who didn’t know, Madame la Vicomtesse.”

She put her hand to the flowers again.

“It seems a pity to pick them, even in a good cause,” she said.

She was so near me that I could have touched her. A weakness seized

me, and speech was farther away than ever. She moved, she sat down and

looked at me, and the kind of mocking smile came into her eyes that I

knew was the forerunner of raillery.

“There is a statue in the gardens of Versailles which seems always about

to speak, and then to think better of it. You remind me of that statue,

Mr. Ritchie. It is the statue of Wisdom.”

What did she mean?

“Wisdom knows the limitations of its own worth, Madame,” I replied.

“It is the one particular in which I should have thought wisdom was

lacking,” she said. “You have a tongue, if you will deign to use it. Or

shall I read to you?” she added quickly, picking up a book. “I have read

to the Queen, when Madame Campan was tired. Her Majesty, poor dear lady,

did me the honor to say she liked my English.”

“You have done everything, Madame,” I said.

“I have read to a Queen, to a King’s sister, but never yet--to a King,”

she said, opening the book and giving me the briefest of glances. “You

are all kings in America are you not? What shall I read?”

“I would rather have you talk to me.”

“Very well, I will tell you how the Queen spoke English. No, I will not

do that,” she said, a swift expression of sadness passing over her

face. “I will never mock her again. She was a good sovereign and a brave

woman, and I loved her.” She was silent a moment, and I thought there

was a great weariness in her voice when she spoke again. “I have every

reason to thank God when I think of the terrors I escaped, of the

friends I have found. And yet I am an unhappy woman, Mr. Ritchie.”

“You are unhappy when you are not doing things for others, Madame,” I

suggested.

“I am a discontented woman,” she said; “I always have been. And I am

unhappy when I think of all those who were dear to me and whom I loved.

Many are dead, and many are scattered and homeless.”

“I have often thought of your sorrows, Madame,” I said.

“Which reminds me that I should not burden you with them, my good

friend, when you are recovering. Do you know that you have been very

near to death?”

“I know, Madame,” I faltered. “I know that had it not been for you I

should not be alive to-day. I know that you risked your life to save my

own.”

She did not answer at once, and when I looked at her she was gazing out

over the flowers on the lawn.

“My life did not matter,” she said. “Let us not talk of that.”

I might have answered, but I dared not speak for fear of saying what

was in my heart. And while I trembled with the repression of it, she was

changed. She turned her face towards me and smiled a little.

“If you had obeyed me you would not have been so ill,” she said.

“Then I am glad that I did not obey you.”

“Your cousin, the irrepressible Mr. Temple, says I am a tyrant. Come

now, do you think me a tyrant?”

“He has also said other things of you.”

“What other things?”

I blushed at my own boldness.

“He said that if he were not in love with Antoinette, he would be in

love with you.”

“A very safe compliment,” said the Vicomtesse. “Indeed, it sounds too

cautious for Mr. Temple. You must have tampered with it, Mr. Ritchie,”

she flashed. “Mr. Temple is a boy. He needs discipline. He will have too

easy a time with Antoinette.”

“He is not the sort of man you should marry,” I said, and sat amazed at

it.

She looked at me strangely.

“No, he is not,” she answered. “He is more or less the sort of man I

have been thrown with all my life. They toil not, neither do they spin.

I know you will not misunderstand me, for I am very fond of him. Mr.

Temple is honest, fearless, lovable, and of good instincts. One cannot

say as much for the rest of his type. They go through life fighting,

gaming, horse-racing, riding to hounds,--I have often thought that it

was no wonder our privileges came to an end. So many of us were steeped

in selfishness and vice, were a burden on the world. The early nobles,

with all their crimes, were men who carved their way. Of such were the

lords of the Marches. We toyed with politics, with simplicity, we wasted

the land, we played cards as our coaches passed through famine-stricken

villages. The reckoning came. Our punishment was not given into the

hands of the bourgeois, who would have dealt justly, but to the scum,

the canaille, the demons of the earth. Had our King, had our nobility,

been men with the old fire, they would not have stood it. They were worn

out with centuries of catering to themselves. Give me a man who will

shape his life and live it with all his strength. I am tired of sham

and pretence, of cynical wit, of mocking at the real things of life, of

pride, vain-glory, and hypocrisy. Give me a man whose existence means

something.”

Was she thinking of the Englishman of whom she had spoken? Delicacy

forbade my asking the question. He had been a man, according to her own

testimony. Where was he now? Her voice had a ring of earnestness in it I

had never heard before, and this arraignment of her own life and of her

old friends surprised me. Now she seemed lost in a revery, from which I

forebore to arouse her.

“I have often tried to picture your life,” I said at last.

“You?” she answered, turning her head quickly. “Often?”

“Ever since I first saw the miniature,” I said. “Monsieur de St. Gré

told me some things, and afterwards I read ‘Le Mariage de Figaro,’

and some novels, and some memoirs of the old courts which I got in

Philadelphia last winter. I used to think of you as I rode over the

mountains, as I sat reading in my room of an evening. I used to picture

you in the palaces amusing the Queen and making the Cardinals laugh. And

then I used to wonder--what became of you--and whether--” I hesitated,

overwhelmed by a sudden confusion, for she was gazing at me fixedly with

a look I did not understand.

“You used to think of that?” she said.

“I never thought to see you,” I answered.

Laughter came into her eyes, and I knew that I had not vexed her. But I

had spoken stupidly, and I reddened.

“I had a quick tongue,” she said, as though to cover my confusion.

“I have it yet. In those days misfortune had not curbed it. I had not

learned to be charitable. When I was a child I used to ride with my

father to the hunts at St. Gré, and I was too ready to pick out the

weaknesses of his guests. If one of the company had a trick or a

mannerism, I never failed to catch it. People used to ask me what I

thought of such and such a person, and that was bad for me. I saw their

failings and pretensions, but I ignored my own. It was the same at

Abbaye aux Bois, the convent where I was taught. When I was presented to

her Majesty I saw why people hated her. They did not understand her. She

was a woman with a large heart, with charity. Some did not suspect this,

others forgot it because they beheld a brilliant personage with keen

perceptions who would not submit to being bored. Her Majesty made many

enemies at court of persons who believed she was making fun of them.

There was a dress-maker at the French court called Mademoiselle Bertin,

who became ridiculously pretentious because the Queen allowed the

woman to dress her hair in private. Bertin used to put on airs with the

nobility when they came to order gowns, and she was very rude to me when

I went for my court dress. There was a ball at Versailles the day I was

presented, and my father told me that her Majesty wished to speak with

me. I was very much frightened. The Queen was standing with her back to

the mirror, the Duchesse de Polignac and some other ladies beside her,

when my father brought me up, and her Majesty was smiling.

“‘What did you say to Bertin, Mademoiselle?’ she asked.

“I was more frightened than ever, but the remembrance of the woman’s

impudence got the better of me.

“‘I told her that in dressing your Majesty’s hair she had acquired all

the court accomplishments but one.’

“‘I’ll warrant that Bertin was curious,’ said the Queen.

“‘She was, your Majesty.’

“‘What is the accomplishment she lacks?’ the Queen demanded; ‘I should

like to know it myself.’

“‘It is discrimination, your Majesty. I told the woman there were some

people she could be rude to with impunity. I was not one of them.’

“‘She’ll never be rude to you again, Mademoiselle,’ said the Queen.

“‘I am sure of it, your Majesty,’ I said.

“The Queen laughed, and bade the Duchesse de Polignac invite me to

supper that evening. My father was delighted,--I was more frightened

than ever. But the party was small, her Majesty was very gracious and

spoke to me often, and I saw that above all things she liked to be

amused. Poor lady! It was a year after that terrible affair of the

necklace, and she wished to be distracted from thinking of the calumnies

which were being heaped upon her. She used to send for me often during

the years that followed, and I might have had a place at court near

her person. But my father was sensible enough to advise me not to

accept,--if I could refuse without offending her Majesty. The Queen was

not offended; she was good enough to say that I was wise in my request.

She had, indeed, abolished most of the ridiculous etiquette of the

court. She would not eat in public, she would not be followed around the

palace by ladies in court gowns, she would not have her ladies in the

room when she was dressing. If she wished a mirror, she would not wait

for it to be passed through half a dozen hands and handed her by a

Princess of the Blood. Sometimes she used to summon me to amuse her and

walk with me by the water in the beautiful gardens of the Petit Trianon.

I used to imitate the people she disliked. I disliked them, too. I

have seen her laugh until the tears came into her eyes when I talked of

Monsieur Necker. As the dark days drew nearer I loved more and more to

be in the seclusion of the country at Montméry, at the St. Gré of my

girlhood. I can see St. Gré now,” said the Vicomtesse, “the thatched

houses of the little village on either side of the high-road, the

honest, red-faced peasants courtesying in their doorways at our berline,

the brick wall of the park, the iron gates beside the lodge, the long

avenue of poplars, the deer feeding in the beechwood, the bridge over

the shining stream and the long, weather-beaten château beyond it. Paris

and the muttering of the storm were far away. The mornings on the sunny

terrace looking across the valley to the blue hills, the walks in the

village, grew very dear to me. We do not know the value of things, Mr.

Ritchie, until we are about to lose them.”

“You did not go back to court?” I asked.

She sighed.

“Yes, I went back. I thought it my duty. I was at Versailles that

terrible summer when the States General met, when the National Assembly

grew out of it, when the Bastille was stormed, when the King was

throwing away his prerogatives like confetti. Never did the gardens of

the Trianon seem more beautiful, or more sad. Sometimes the Queen would

laugh even then when I mimicked Bailly, Des Moulins, Mirabeau. I

was with her Majesty in the gardens on that dark, rainy day when the

fishwomen came to Versailles. The memory of that night will haunt me as

long as I live. The wind howled, the rain lashed with fury against

the windows, the mob tore through the streets of the town, sacked the

wine-shops, built great fires at the corners. Before the day dawned

again the furies had broken into the palace and murdered what was left

of the Guard. You have heard how they carried off the King and Queen to

Paris--how they bore the heads of the soldiers on their pikes. I saw it

from a window, and I shall never forget it.”

Her voice faltered, and there were tears on her lashes. Some quality in

her narration brought before me so vividly the scenes of which she spoke

that I started when she had finished. There was much more I would have

known, but I could not press her to speak longer on a subject that gave

her pain. At that moment she seemed more distant to me than ever before.

She rose, went into the house, and left me thinking of the presumptions

of the hopes I had dared to entertain, left me picturing sadly the

existence of which she had spoken. Why had she told me of it? Perchance

she had thought to do me a kindness!

She came back to me--I had not thought she would. She sat down with her

embroidery in her lap, and for some moments busied herself with it in

silence. Then she said, without looking up:--

“I do not know why I have tired you with this, why I have saddened

myself. It is past and gone.”

“I was not tired, Madame. It is very difficult to live in the present

when the past has been so brilliant,” I answered.

“So brilliant!” She sighed. “So thoughtless,--I think that is the

sharpest regret.” I watched her fingers as they stitched, wondering how

they could work so rapidly. At last she said in a low voice, “Antoinette

and Mr. Temple have told me something of your life, Mr. Ritchie.”

I laughed.

“It has been very humble,” I replied.

“What I heard was--interesting to me,” she said, turning over her frame.

“Will you not tell me something of it?”

“Gladly, Madame, if that is the case,” I answered.

“Well, then,” she said, “why don’t you?”

“I do not know which part you would like, Madame. Shall I tell you about

Colonel Clark? I do not know when to begin--”

She dropped her sewing in her lap and looked up at me quickly.

“I told you that you were a strange man,” she said. “I almost lose

patience with you. No, don’t tell me about Colonel Clark--at least

not until you come to him. Begin at the beginning, at the cabin in the

mountains.”

“You want the whole of it!” I exclaimed.

She picked up her embroidery again and bent over it with a smile.

“Yes, I want the whole of it.”

So I began at the cabin in the mountains. I cannot say that I ever

forgot she was listening, but I lost myself in the narrative. It

presented to me, for the first time, many aspects that I had not thought

of. For instance, that I should be here now in Louisiana telling it to

one who had been the companion and friend of the Queen of France. Once

in a while the Vicomtesse would look up at me swiftly, when I paused,

and then go on with her work again. I told her of Temple Bow, and how

I had run away; of Polly Ann and Tom, of the Wilderness Trail and how I

shot Cutcheon, of the fight at Crab Orchard, of the life in Kentucky, of

Clark and his campaign. Of my doings since; how I had found Nick and

how he had come to New Orleans with me; of my life as a lawyer in

Louisville, of the conventions I had been to. The morning wore on to

midday, and I told her more than I believed it possible to tell any one.

When at last I had finished a fear grew upon me that I had told her too

much. Her fingers still stitched, her head was bent and I could not see

her face,--only the knot of her hair coiled with an art that struck me

suddenly. Then she spoke, and her voice was very low.

“I love Polly Ann,” she said; “I should like to know her.”

“I wish that you could know her,” I answered, quickening.

She raised her head, and looked at me with an expression that was not a

smile. I could not say what it was, or what it meant.

“I do not think you are stupid,” she said, in the same tone, “but I do

not believe you know how remarkable your life has been. I can scarcely

realize that you have seen all this, have done all this, have felt all

this. You are a lawyer, a man of affairs, and yet you could guide me

over the hidden paths of half a continent. You know the mountain ranges,

the passes, the rivers, the fords, the forest trails, the towns and the

men who made them!” She picked up her sewing and bent over it once more.

“And yet you did not think that this would interest me.”

Perchance it was a subtle summons in her voice I heard that bade me open

the flood-gates of my heart,--I know not. I know only that no power on

earth could have held me silent then.

“Hélène!” I said, and stopped. My heart beat so wildly that I could

hear it. “I do not know why I should dare to think of you, to look up

to you--Hélène, I love you, I shall love you till I die. I love you with

all the strength that is in me, with all my soul. You know it, and if

you did not I could hide it no more. As long as I live there will never

be another woman in the world for me. I love you. You will forgive me

because of the torture I have suffered, because of the pain I shall

suffer when I think of you in the years to come.”

Her sewing dropped to her lap--to the floor. She looked at me, and

the light which I saw in her eyes flooded my soul with a joy beyond my

belief. I trembled with a wonder that benumbed me. I would have got to

my feet had she not come to me swiftly, that I might not rise. She

stood above me, I lifted up my arms; she bent to me with a movement that

conferred a priceless thing.

“David,” she said, “could you not tell that I loved you, that you were

he who has been in my mind for so many years, and in my heart since I

saw you?”

“I could not tell,” I said. “I dared not think it. I--I thought there

was another.”

She was seated on the arm of my chair. She drew back her head with a

smile trembling on her lips, with a lustre burning in her eyes like a

vigil--a vigil for me.

“He reminded me of you,” she answered.

I was lost in sheer, bewildering happiness. And she who created it, who

herself was that happiness, roused me from it.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“I was thinking that a star has fallen,--that I may have a jewel beyond

other men,” I said.

“And a star has risen for me,” she said, “that I may have a guide beyond

other women.”

“Then it is you who have raised it, Hélène.” I was silent a moment,

trying again to bring the matter within my grasp. “Do you mean that you

love me, that you will marry me, that you will come back to Kentucky

with me and will be content,--you, who have been the companion of a

Queen?”

There came an archness into her look that inflamed me the more.

“I, who have been the companion of a Queen, love you, will marry you,

will go back to Kentucky with you and be content,” she repeated. “And

yet not I, David, but another woman--a happy woman. You shall be my

refuge, my strength, my guide. You will lead me over the mountains and

through the wilderness by the paths you know. You will bring me to Polly

Ann that I may thank her for the gift of you,--above all other gifts in

the world.”

I was silent again.

“Hélène,” I said at last, “will you give me the miniature?”

“On one condition,” she replied.

“Yes,” I said, “yes. And again yes. What is it?”

“That you will obey me--sometimes.”

“It is a privilege I long for,” I answered.

“You did not begin with promise,” she said.

I released her hand, and she drew the ivory from her gown and gave it

me. I kissed it.

“I will go to Monsieur Isadore’s and get the frame,” I said.

“When I give you permission,” said Hélène, gently.

I have written this story for her eyes.

CHAPTER XV. AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A MAN

Out of the blood and ashes of France a Man had arisen who moved real

kings and queens on his chess-board--which was a large part of the

world. The Man was Napoleon Buonaparte, at present, for lack of a better

name, First Consul of the French Republic. The Man’s eye, sweeping the

world for a new plaything, had rested upon one which had excited the

fancy of lesser adventurers, of one John Law, for instance. It was a

large, unwieldy plaything indeed, and remote. It was nothing less than

that vast and mysterious country which lay beyond the monster yellow

River of the Wilderness, the country bordered on the south by the Gulf

swamps, on the north by no man knew what forests,--as dark as those the

Romans found in Gaul,--on the west by a line which other generations

might be left to settle.

This land was Louisiana.

A future king of France, while an émigré, had been to Louisiana. This

is merely an interesting fact worth noting. It was not interesting to

Napoleon.

Napoleon, by dint of certain screws which he tightened on his Catholic

Majesty, King Charles of Spain, in the Treaty of San Ildefonso on

the 1st of October, 1800, got his plaything. Louisiana was French

again,--whatever French was in those days. The treaty was a profound

secret. But secrets leak out, even the profoundest; and this was wafted

across the English Channel to the ears of Mr. Rufus King, American

Minister at London, who wrote of it to one Thomas Jefferson, President

of the United States. Mr. Jefferson was interested, not to say alarmed.

Mr. Robert Livingston was about to depart on his mission from the little

Republic of America to the great Republic of France. Mr. Livingston was

told not to make himself disagreeable, but to protest. If Spain was to

give up the plaything, the Youngest Child among the Nations ought to

have it. It lay at her doors, it was necessary for her growth.

Mr. Livingston arrived in France to find that Louisiana was a mere

pawn on the chess-board, the Republic he represented little more. He

protested, and the great Talleyrand shrugged his shoulders. What was

Monsieur talking about? A treaty. What treaty? A treaty with Spain

ceding back Louisiana to France after forty years. Who said there was

such a treaty? Did Monsieur take snuff? Would Monsieur call again when

the Minister was less busy?

Monsieur did call again, taking care not to make himself disagreeable.

He was offered snuff. He called again, pleasantly. He was offered snuff.

He called again. The great Talleyrand laughed. He was always so happy to

see Monsieur when he (Talleyrand) was not busy. He would give Monsieur

a certificate of importunity. He had quite forgotten what Monsieur was

talking about on former occasions. Oh, yes, a treaty. Well, suppose

there was such a treaty, what then?

What then? Mr. Livingston, the agreeable but importunate, went home and

wrote a memorial, and was presently assured that the inaccessible Man

who was called First Consul had read it with interest--great interest.

Mr. Livingston did not cease to indulge in his enjoyable visits to

Talleyrand--not he. But in the intervals he sat down to think.

What did the inaccessible Man himself have in his mind?

The Man had been considering the Anglo-Saxon race, and in particular

that portion of it which inhabited the Western Hemisphere. He perceived

that they were a quarrelsome people, which possessed the lust for land

and conquest like the rest of their blood. He saw with astonishment

something that had happened, something that they had done. Unperceived

by the world, in five and twenty years they had swept across a thousand

miles of mountain and forest wilderness in ever increasing thousands,

had beaten the fiercest of savage tribes before them, stolidly unmindful

of their dead. They had come at length to the great yellow River, and

finding it closed had cried aloud in their anger. What was beyond it to

stop them? Spain, with a handful of subjects inherited from the France

of Louis the Fifteenth.

Could Spain stop them? No. But he, the Man, would stop them. He would

raise up in Louisiana as a monument to himself a daughter of France to

curb their ambition. America should not be all Anglo-Saxon.

Already the Americans had compelled Spain to open the River. How long

before they would overrun Louisiana itself, until a Frenchman or a

Spaniard could scarce be found in the land?

Sadly, in accordance with the treaty which Monsieur Talleyrand had known

nothing about, his Catholic Majesty instructed his Intendant at New

Orleans to make ready to deliver Louisiana to the French Commission.

That was in July, 1802. This was not exactly an order to close the River

again--in fact, his Majesty said nothing about closing the River. Mark

the reasoning of the Spanish mind. The Intendant closed the River as his

plain duty. And Kentucky and Tennessee, wayward, belligerent infants who

had outgrown their swaddling clothes, were heard from again. The Nation

had learned to listen to them. The Nation was very angry. Mr. Hamilton

and the Federalists and many others would have gone to war and seized

the Floridas.

Mr. Jefferson said, “Wait and see what his Catholic Majesty has to

say.” Mr. Jefferson was a man of great wisdom, albeit he had mistaken

Jacobinism for something else when he was younger. And he knew that

Napoleon could not play chess in the wind. The wind was rising.

Mr. Livingston was a patriot, able, importunate, but getting on in years

and a little hard of hearing. Importunity without an Army and a Navy

behind it is not effective--especially when there is no wind. But

Mr. Jefferson heard the wind rising, and he sent Mr. Monroe to Mr.

Livingston’s aid. Mr. Monroe was young, witty, lively, popular with

people he met. He, too, heard the wind rising, and so now did Mr.

Livingston.

The ships containing the advance guard of the colonists destined for

the new Louisiana lay in the roads at Dunkirk, their anchors ready

to weigh,--three thousand men, three thousand horses, for the Man did

things on a large scale. The anchors were not weighed.

His Catholic Majesty sent word from Spain to Mr. Jefferson that he was

sorry his Intendant had been so foolish. The River was opened again.

The Treaty of Amiens was a poor wind-shield. It blew down, and the

chessmen began to totter. One George of England, noted for his frugal

table and his quarrelsome disposition, who had previously fought with

France, began to call the Man names. The Man called George names, and

sat down to think quickly. George could not be said to be on the best of

terms with his American relations, but the Anglo-Saxon is unsentimental,

phlegmatic, setting money and trade and lands above ideals. George meant

to go to war again. Napoleon also meant to go to war again. But

George meant to go to war again right away, which was inconvenient and

inconsiderate, for Napoleon had not finished his game of chess. The

obvious outcome of the situation was that George with his Navy would

get Louisiana, or else help his relations to get it. In either case

Louisiana would become Anglo-Saxon.

This was the wind which Mr. Jefferson had heard.

The Man, being a genius who let go gracefully when he had to, decided

between two bad bargains. He would sell Louisiana to the Americans as

a favor; they would be very, very grateful, and they would go on hating

George. Moreover, he would have all the more money with which to fight

George.

The inaccessible Man suddenly became accessible. Nay, he became

gracious, smiling, full of loving-kindness, charitable. Certain

dickerings followed by a bargain passed between the American Minister

and Monsieur Barbé-Marbois. Then Mr. Livingston and Mr. Monroe dined

with the hitherto inaccessible. And the Man, after the manner of

Continental Personages, asked questions. Frederick the Great has started

this fashion, and many have imitated it.

Louisiana became American at last. Whether by destiny or chance, whether

by the wisdom of Jefferson or the necessity of Napoleon, who can say? It

seems to me, David Ritchie, writing many years after the closing words

of the last chapter were penned, that it was ours inevitably. For I have

seen and known and loved the people with all their crudities and faults,

whose inheritance it was by right of toil and suffering and blood.

And I, David Ritchie, saw the flags of three nations waving over it in

the space of two days. And it came to pass in this wise.

Rumors of these things which I have told above had filled Kentucky from

time to time, and in November of 1803 there came across the mountains

the news that the Senate of the United States had ratified the treaty

between our ministers and Napoleon.

I will not mention here what my life had become, what my fortune, save

to say that both had been far beyond my expectations. In worldly goods

and honors, in the respect and esteem of my fellow-men, I had been happy

indeed. But I had been blessed above other men by one whose power it was

to lift me above the mean and sordid things of this world.

Many times in the pursuit of my affairs I journeyed over that country

which I had known when it belonged to the Indian and the deer and the

elk and the wolf and the buffalo. Often did she ride by my side,

making light of the hardships which, indeed, were no hardships to her,

wondering at the settlements which had sprung up like magic in

the wilderness, which were the heralds of the greatness of the

Republic,--her country now.

So, in the bright and boisterous March weather of the year 1804, we

found ourselves riding together along the way made memorable by the

footsteps of Clark and his backwoodsmen. For I had an errand in St.

Louis with Colonel Chouteau. A subtle change had come upon Kaskaskia

with the new blood which was flowing into it: we passed Cahokia, full

of memories to the drummer boy whom she loved. There was the church, the

garrison, the stream, and the little house where my Colonel and I had

lived together. She must see them all, she must hear the story from my

lips again; and the telling of it to her gave it a new fire and a new

life.

At evening, when the March wind had torn the cotton clouds to shreds,

we stood on the Mississippi’s bank, gazing at the western shore, at

Louisiana. The low, forest-clad hills made a black band against the sky,

and above the band hung the sun, a red ball. He was setting, and man

might look upon his face without fear. The sight of the waters of that

river stirred me to think of many things. What had God in store for the

vast land out of which the waters flowed? Had He, indeed, saved it for a

People, a People to be drawn from all nations, from all classes? Was

the principle of the Republic to prevail and spread and change the

complexion of the world? Or were the lusts of greed and power to

increase until in the end they had swallowed the leaven? Who could say?

What man of those who, soberly, had put his hand to the Paper which

declared the opportunities of generations to come, could measure the

Force which he had helped to set in motion.

We crossed the river to the village where I had been so kindly received

many years ago--to St. Louis. The place was little changed. The wind was

stilled, the blue wood smoke curled lazily from the wide stone chimneys

of the houses nestling against the hill. The afterglow was fading into

night; lights twinkled in the windows. Followed by our servants we

climbed the bank, Hélène and I, and walked the quiet streets bordered

by palings. The evening was chill. We passed a bright cabaret from which

came the sound of many voices; in the blacksmith’s shop another group

was gathered, and we saw faces eager in the red light. They were talking

of the Cession.

We passed that place where Nick had stopped Suzanne in the cart, and

laughed at the remembrance. We came to Monsieur Gratiot’s, for he had

bidden us to stay with him. And with Madame he gave us a welcome to warm

our hearts after our journey.

“David,” he said, “I have seen many strange things happen in my life,

but the strangest of all is that Clark’s drummer boy should have married

a Vicomtesse of the old régime.”

And she was ever Madame la Vicomtesse to our good friends in St. Louis,

for she was a woman to whom a title came as by nature’s right.

“And you are about to behold another strange thing, David,” Monsieur

Gratiot continued. “To-day you are on French territory.”

“French territory!” I exclaimed.

“To-day Upper Louisiana is French,” he answered. “To-morrow it will be

American forever. This morning Captain Stoddard of the United States

Army, empowered to act as a Commissioner of the French Republic, arrived

with Captain Lewis and a guard of American troops. Today, at noon, the

flag of Spain was lowered from the staff at the headquarters. To-night

a guard of honor watches with the French Tricolor, and we are French for

the last time. To-morrow we shall be Americans.”

I saw that simple ceremony. The little company of soldiers was drawn up

before the low stone headquarters, the villagers with heads uncovered

gathered round about. I saw the Stars and Stripes rising, the Tricolor

setting. They met midway on the staff, hung together for a space, and

a salute to the two nations echoed among the hills across the waters of

the great River that rolled impassive by.

AFTERWORD

This book has been named “The Crossing” because I have tried to express

in it the beginnings of that great movement across the mountains which

swept resistless over the Continent until at last it saw the Pacific

itself. The Crossing was the first instinctive reaching out of an infant

nation which was one day to become a giant. No annals in the world’s

history are more wonderful than the story of the conquest of Kentucky

and Tennessee by the pioneers.

This name, “The Crossing,” is likewise typical in another sense. The

political faith of our forefathers, of which the Constitution is the

creed, was made to fit a more or less homogeneous body of people who

proved that they knew the meaning of the word “Liberty.” By Liberty,

our forefathers meant the Duty as well as the Right of man to govern

himself. The Constitution amply attests the greatness of its authors,

but it was a compromise. It was an attempt to satisfy thirteen

colonies, each of which clung tenaciously to its identity. It suited the

eighteenth-century conditions of a little English-speaking confederacy

along the seaboard, far removed from the world’s strife and jealousy. It

scarcely contemplated that the harassed millions of Europe would flock

to its fold, and it did not foresee that, in less than a hundred years,

its own citizens would sweep across the three thousand miles of forest

and plain and mountain to the Western Ocean, absorb French and Spanish

Louisiana, Spanish Texas, Mexico, and California, fill this land

with broad farmsteads and populous cities, cover it with a network of

railroads.

Would the Constitution, made to meet the needs of the little confederacy

of the seaboard, stretch over a Continent and an Empire?

We are fighting out that question to-day. But The Crossing was in Daniel

Boone’s time, in George Rogers Clark’s. Would the Constitution stand the

strain? And will it stand the strain now that the once remote haven of

the oppressed has become a world-power?

It was a difficult task in a novel to gather the elements necessary to

picture this movement: the territory was vast, the types bewildering.

The lonely mountain cabin; the seigniorial life of the tide-water; the

foothills and mountains which the Scotch-Irish have marked for their own

to this day; the Wilderness Trail; the wonderland of Kentucky, and the

cruel fighting in the border forts there against the most relentless of

foes; George Rogers Clark and his momentous campaign which gave to the

Republic Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; the transition period--the

coming of the settler after the pioneer; Louisiana, St. Louis, and New

Orleans,--to cover this ground, to picture the passions and politics

of the time, to bring the counter influence of the French Revolution

as near as possible to reality, has been a three years’ task. The

autobiography of David Ritchie is as near as I can get to its solution,

and I have a great sense of its incompleteness.

I had hoped when I planned the series to bring down this novel through

the stirring period which ended, by a chance, when a steamboat brought

supplies to Jackson’s army in New Orleans--the beginning of the era of

steam commerce on our Western waters. This work will have to be reserved

for a future time.

I have tried to give a true history of Clark’s campaign as seen by an

eyewitness, trammelled as little as possible by romance. Elsewhere, as

I look back through these pages, I feel as though the soil had only been

scraped. What principality in the world has the story to rival that of

John Sevier and the State of Franklin? I have tried to tell the truth as

I went along. General Jackson was a boy at the Waxhaws and dug his toes

in the red mud. He was a man at Jonesboro, and tradition says that he

fought with a fence-rail. Sevier was captured as narrated. Monsieur

Gratiot, Monsieur Vigo, and Father Gibault lost the money which they

gave to Clark and their country. Monsieur Vigo actually travelled in

the state which Davy describes when he went down the river with him.

Monsieur Gratiot and Colonel Auguste Chouteau and Madame Chouteau are

names so well known in St. Louis that it is superfluous to say that such

persons existed and were the foremost citizens of the community.

Among the many to whom my apologies and thanks are due is Mr. Pierre

Chouteau of St. Louis, whose unremitting labors have preserved and

perpetuated the history and traditions of the country of his ancestors.

I would that I had been better able to picture the character, the

courage, the ability, and patriotism of the French who settled

Louisiana. The Republic owes them much, and their descendants are to-day

among the stanchest preservers of her ideals.

WINSTON CHURCHILL.

Boston, April 18, 1904

Transcriber Notes

Welcome to the Project Gutenberg edition of The Crossing by Winston

Churchill. We have used the original publication of this book, the 1904

MacMillan edition, as the source for our transcription. On a few

occasions changes were made to correct obvious errors.

Differences between the text and e-book are explained here. A few items

that may be errors are listed below, but we did not correct an error

unless it was an obvious one. Sometimes, a word had been hyphenated in

the book to split across two lines for even spacing, thus forcing the

transcriber to make a choice. Some of those decisions are listed below.

Page 54: Changed a double quote nested inside of a double quote to use

single quotes. “Behold, I ... affliction.” became ‘Behold, I ...

affliction.’

Page 82: Journeycakes is spelled without a hyphen here, but the

journey-cakes of Page 94 and Page 95 had a hyphen. There were four

occurrences of “journey-cake” and “journey-cakes” and no other

occurrences of the word spelled without a hyphen. The inconsistency was

retained.

Page 147: The repeating “at all at all” looks like a typo, but Churchill

also used “at all, at all” on Page 222. No changes were made.

Page 150: grog-shop was hyphenated between two lines, so could be

transcribed as “grog-shop” or “grogshop”. With no other examples in the

novel, we went with the latter usage— no hyphen.

Page 152: The word “three-score,” split across two lines with a hyphen,

could be transcribed as “threescore” or “three-score.” Two lines after

that word, a sentence began “Threescore years!” The word was hyphenated

for spacing and not transcribed with a hyphen.

Page 310: Add quotation-mark after Mr. Temple: "Good-by, Mr. Temple,"

she said…

Page 317: Hell-fire was split between two lines for spacing purposes.

The decision to retain the hyphen in the transcription is traced to a

prior use of the word in this novel. On Page 40, hell-fire was spelled

with a hyphen, and the word was in the middle of a line.

On Page 321 and Page 322, changed double quotes nested inside of double

quotes to single quotes. For example, “Ay, ay!” became ‘Ay, ay!’

Page 338: Place period after all the tribes.

Page 375: Remove comma after tinkle of a guitar.

Page 385: Was Mounsier de Saint-Gré at home? This question should end in

a question mark but the author put a period there—and so did we.

Page 426: Ignored hyphen in black forest-swamp. In print, the hyphen

occurred at the end of a line. However, the novel writes “forest swamp”

on Page 51 and “forest swamps” on Page 216--and never uses

“forest-swamp.” This inconsistency was assumed to be a publisher's

mistake in typesetting.

Page 448: “fianancier” may be dialect, but in other quotes of characters

it is spelled “financier.” See Page 192, Page 250, and Page 283. No

change was made.

Page 494: The verse following Caroline is printed to sheet music in the

book.

Page 588: The preposition “to” is missing from the following phrase:

“she drew the ivory from her gown and gave it me.” “Gave it to me”

sounds better. Nevertheless, the sentence was written without the to,

and it remains as the author wrote it in the e-book.

Some inconsistencies were highlighted above, but there also were

instances where New Orléans was given an acute accent, but more often

so, it was not. The same occurred with Miró. Another inconsistency was

the author italicizing banquette and piastre as part of his rule of

italicizing foreign words, but failing to do so all the time. We

retained these inconsistencies in transcribing the book.

There were some cases where it was difficult to distinguish whether

there was or was not a space before 'll. The contraction 'll was not

spaced for common contractions, such as I'll, he'll, they'll. However,

there was a space for “Breed 'll”, “what 'll”, “M'lisse 'll”, and other

uncommon contractions formed with 'll. Sometimes, with line compression

to justify the text, it is difficult to tell whether there should, or

should not, be a space between the two parts of the uncommon

contraction. In those cases where it was difficult to tell, we applied

the convention as stated above.

Two confusing passages to transcribe are Davy's narration on Page 284

and Page 285 and Hélène's narration on Page 583. Other paragraphs

contain quotes embedded within quotes. We changed double quotes nested

inside of double quotes to single quotes because our error-checking

utilities flag the second double quote as an error.