Chapter 2

"That means, Miss Jones," explained Peggy, "that she has set a fashion to give the rest of the girls a chance. I wouldn't be so mealy-mouthed about cutting them out. But Angélique has been ruined by waiting so much on her tante-gra'mère. When you bear an old woman's temper from dawn till dusk, you soon forget you're a girl in your teens."

"Don't abuse the little tante-gra'mère."

"She gets praise enough at our house. Mother says she's a discipline that keeps Angélique from growing vain. Thank Heaven, we don't need such discipline in our family."

"It is my father's grand-aunt," explained Angélique to Maria, "and when you see her, mademoiselle, you will be surprised to find how well she bears her hundred years, though she has not been out of her bed since I can remember. Mademoiselle, I hope I never shall be very old."

Maria gave Angélique the piercing stare which unconsciously belongs to large black eyes set in a hectic, nervous face.

"Would you die now?"

"I feel always," said the French girl, "that we stand facing the mystery every minute, and sometimes I should like to know it."

"Now hear that," said Peggy. "I'm no Catholic, but I will say for the mother superior that she never put that in your head at the convent. It is wicked to say you want to die."

"But I did not say it. The mystery of being without any body,--that is what I want to know. It is good to meditate on death."

"It isn't comfortable," said Peggy. "It makes me have chills down my back."

She glanced behind her through the many-paned open window into the dining-room. Three little girls and a boy were standing there, so close to the sill that their breath had touched Peggy's neck. They were Colonel Menard's motherless children. A black maid was with them, holding the youngest by the hand. They were whispering in French under cover of the music. French was the second mother tongue of every Kaskaskia girl, and Peggy heard what they said by merely taking her attention from her companions.

"I will get Jean Lozier to beat Monsieur Reece Zhone. Jean Lozier is such an obliging creature he will do anything I ask him."

"But, Odile," argued the boy, with some sense of equity, "she is not yet engaged to our family."

"And how shall we get her engaged to us if Monsieur Reece Zhone must hang around her? Papa says he is the most promising young man in the Territory. If I were a boy, Pierre Menard, I would do something with him."

"What would you do?"

"I would shoot him. He has duels."

"But my father might punish me for that."

"Very well, chicken-heart. Let Mademoiselle Saucier go, then. But I will tell you this: there is no one else in Kaskaskia that I will have for a second mother."

"Yes, we have all chosen her," owned Pierre, "but it seems to me papa ought to make the marriage."

"But she would not know we children were willing to have her. If you did something to stop Monsieur Zhone's courtship, she would then know."

"Why do you not go out on the gallery now and tell her we want her?" exclaimed Pierre. "The colonel says it is best to be straightforward in any matter of business."

"Pierre, it is plain to be seen that you do not know how to deal with young ladies. They like best to be fought over. It is not proper to _tell_ her we are willing to have her. The way to do is to drive off the other suitors."

"But there are so many. Tante Isidore says all the young men in Kaskaskia and the officers left at Fort Chartres are her suitors. Monsieur Reece Zhone is the worst one, though. I might ask him to go out to papa's office with me to-night, but we shall be sent to bed directly after supper. Besides, here sits his sister who was carried out fainting."

"While he is in our house we are obliged to be polite to him," said Odile. "But if I were a boy, I would, some time, get on my pony and ride into Kaskaskia"--The conspiring went on in whispers. The children's heads bobbed nearer each other, so Peggy overheard no more.

It was the very next evening, the evening of St. John's Day, that young Pierre rode into Kaskaskia beside his father to see the yearly bonfire lighted. Though many of the old French customs had perished in a mixing of nationalities, St. John's Day was yet observed; the Latin race drawing the Saxon out to participate in the festival, as so often happens wherever they dwell.

The bonfire stood in the middle of the street fronting the church. It was an octagonal pyramid, seven or eight feet high, built of dry oak and pecan limbs and logs, with straw at all the corners.

The earth yet held a red horizon rim around its dusky surface. Some half-distinct swallows were swarming into the church belfry, as silent as bats; but people swarming on the ground below made a cheerful noise, like a fair. The St. John bonfire was not a religious ceremony, but its character lifted it above the ordinary burning of brushwood at night. The most dignified Kaskaskians, heretics as well as papists, came out to see it lighted; the pagan spell of Midsummer Night more or less affecting them all.

Red points appeared at the pile's eight corners and sprung up flame, showing the eight lads who were bent down blowing them; showing the church front, and the steps covered with little negroes good-naturedly fighting and crowding one another off; showing the crosses of slate and wood and square marble tombs in the graveyard, and a crowd of honest faces, red kerchiefs, gray cappos, and wooden shoes pressing close around it. Children raced, shouting in the light, perpetuating unconsciously the fire-worship of Asia by leaping across outer edges of the blaze. It rose and showed the bowered homes of Kaskaskia, the tavern at an angle of the streets, with two Indians, in leggins and hunting-shirts, standing on the gallery as emotionless spectators. It illuminated fields and woods stretching southward, and little weeds beside the road whitened with dust. The roaring and crackling heat drove venturesome urchins back.

Father Baby could be seen established behind a temporary counter, conveniently near the pile, yet discreetly removed from the church front. Thirsty rustics and flatboat men crowded to his kegs and clinked his glasses. The firelight shone on his crown which was bare to the sky. Father Olivier passed by, receiving submissive obeisance from the renegade, but returning him a shake of the head.

Girls slipped back and forth through the church gate. Now their laughing faces grouped three or four together in the bonfire light. In a moment, when their mothers turned to follow them with the eye, they were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps outside the beacon's glare hobgoblins and fairies danced. Midsummer Night tricks and the freemasonry of youth were at work.

People watched one another across that pile with diverse aims. Rice Jones had his sister on his arm, wrapped in a Spanish mantilla. Her tiny face, with a rose above one ear, was startling against this black setting. They stood near Father Baby's booth; and while Peggy Morrison waited at the church gate to signal Maria, she resented Rice Jones's habitual indifference to her existence. He saw Angélique Saucier beside her mother, and the men gathering to her, among them an officer from Fort Chartres. They troubled him little; for he intended in due time to put these fellows all out of his way. There were other matters as vital to Rice Jones. Young Pierre Menard hovered vainly about him. The moment Maria left him a squad of country politicians surrounded their political leader, and he did some effectual work for his party by the light of the St. John fire.

Darkness grew outside the irregular radiance of that pile, and the night concert of insects could be heard as an interlude between children's shouts and the hum of voices. Peggy Morrison's lifted finger caught Maria's glance. It was an imperative gesture, meaning haste and secrecy, and separation from her brother Rice. Maria laughed and shook her head wistfully. The girlish pastimes of Midsummer Night were all done for her. She thought of nights in her own wild county of Merionethshire, when she had run, palpitating like a hare, to try some spell or charm which might reveal the future to her; and now it was revealed.

An apparition from the other hemisphere came upon her that instant. She saw a man standing by the friar's booth looking at her. What his eyes said she could not, through her shimmering and deadly faintness, perceive. How could he be here in Kaskaskia? The shock of seeing him annihilated physical weakness in her. She stood on limbs of stone. Her hand on her brother's arm did not tremble; but a pinched blueness spread about her nostrils and eye sockets, and dinted sudden hollows in her temples.

Dr. Dunlap took a step toward her. At that, she looked around for some place to hide in, the animal instinct of flight arising first, and darted from her brother into the graveyard. Rice beheld this freak with quizzical surprise, but he had noted the disappearance of more than one maid through that gate, and was glad to have Maria with them.

"Come on," whispered Peggy, seizing her. "Clarice Vigo has gone to fetch Angélique, and then we shall be ready."

Behind the church, speaking all together like a chorus of blackbirds, the girls were clustered, out of the bonfire's light. French and English voices debated.

"Oh, I wouldn't do such a thing."

"Your mother did it when she was a girl."

"But the young men may find it out and follow."

"Then we'll run."

"I'm afraid to go so far in the dark."

"What, to the old Jesuit College?"

"It isn't very dark, and our old Dinah will go with us; she's waiting outside the fence."

"But my father says none of our Indians are to be trusted in the dark."

"What a slander on our Indians!"

"But some of them are here; they always come to the St. John bonfire."

"All the men in Kaskaskia are here, too. We could easily give an alarm."

"Anyhow, nothing will hurt us."

"What are you going to do, girls?" inquired the voice of Angélique Saucier. The whole scheme took a foolish tinge as she spoke. They were ashamed to tell her what they were going to do.

Peggy Morrison drew near and whispered, "We want to go to the old Jesuit College and sow hempseed."

"Hempseed?"

"Yes. You do it on Midsummer Night."

"Will it grow the better for that?" asked the puzzled French girl.

"We don't want it to grow, you goose. We want to try our fortunes."

"It was Peggy Morrison's plan," spoke out Clarice Vigo.

"It's an old English custom," declared Peggy, "as old as burning brushwood."

"Would you like to observe this old English custom, Mademoiselle Zhone?" questioned Angélique.

"Yes, let us hurry on."

"I think myself it would be charming." The instant Angélique thought this, Peggy Morrison's plan lost foolishness, and gained in all eyes the dignity of adventure. "But we have no hempseed."

"Yes, we have," responded Peggy. "Our Dinah is there outside the fence with her lap full of it."

"And how do you sow it?"

"You scatter it and say, 'Hempseed, I sow thee,--hempseed, I sow thee; let him who is to marry me come after me and mow thee.'"

An abashed titter ran through girlish Kaskaskia.

"And what happens then?"

"Then you look back and see somebody following you with a scythe."

A suppressed squeal ran through girlish Kaskaskia.

"Now if we are going, we ought to go, or it will all be found out," observed Peggy with decision.

They had only to follow the nearest cross-street to reach the old Jesuit College; but some were for making a long detour into the common fields to avoid being seen, while others were for passing close by the bonfire in a solid squad. Neither Peggy nor Angélique could reconcile these factions, and Peggy finally crossed the fence and led the way in silence. The majority hung back until they were almost belated. Then, with a venturous rush, they scaled the fence and piled themselves upon Dinah, who was quietly trying to deal out a handful of hempseed to every passer; and some of them squalled in the fear of man at her uplifted paw. Then, shying away from the light, they entered a street which was like a canal of shadow. The houses bounding it were all dark, except the steep roof slopes of the southern row, which seemed to palpitate in the bonfire's flicker.

Finding themselves away from their families in this deserted lane, the girls took to their heels, and left like sheep a perceptible little cloud of dust smoking in the gloom behind them.

Beyond the last house and alongside the Okaw river stood the ruined building with gaping entrances. The girls stumbled among irregular hummocks which in earlier days had been garden beds and had supplied vegetables to the brethren. The last commandant of Kaskaskia, who occupied the Jesuits' house as a fortress, had complained to his superiors of a leaky and broken roof. There was now no roof to complain of, and the upper floors had given way in places, leaving the stone shell open to the sky. It had once been an imposing structure, costing the Jesuits forty thousand piasters. The uneven stone floor was also broken, showing gaps into vaults beneath; fearful spots to be avoided, which the custom of darkness soon revealed to all eyes. Partitions yet standing held stained and ghastly smears of rotted plaster.

The river's gurgle and rush could be distinctly heard here, while the company around the bonfire were lost in distance.

Angélique had given her arm to Maria Jones in the flight down the road; but when they entered the college Maria slipped away from her. A blacker spot in an angle of the walls and a smothered cough hinted to the care-taker where the invalid girl might be found, but where she also wished to be let alone.

Now a sob rising to a scream, as if the old building had found voice and protested against invasion, caused a recoil of the invaders. Girls brought up in neighborly relations with the wilderness, however, could be only a moment terrified by the screech-owl. But at no previous time in its history, not even when it was captured as a fort, had the Jesuit College inclosed such a cluster of wildly beating hearts. Had light been turned on the group, it would have shown every girl shaking her hand at every other girl and hissing, "S--s--sh!"

"Girls, be still."

"Girls, do be still."

"Girls, if you won't be still, somebody will come."

"Clarice Vigo, why don't you stop your noise?"

"Why do you not stop yours, mademoiselle?"

"I haven't spoken a word but sh! I have been trying my best to quiet them all."

"So have I."

"Ellen Bond fell over me. She was scared to death by a screech-owl!"

"It was you fell over me, Miss Betsey."

"If we are going to try the charm," announced Peggy Morrison, "we must begin. You had better all get in a line behind me and do just as I do. You can't see me very well, but you can scatter the hempseed and say what I say. And it must be done soberly, or Satan may come mowing at our heels."

From a distant perch to which he had removed himself, the screech-owl again remonstrated. Silence settled like the slow fluttering downward of feathers on every throbbing figure. The stir of a slipper on the pavement, or the catching of a breath, became the only tokens of human presence in the old college. These postulants of fortune in their half-visible state once more bore some resemblance to the young ladies who had stood in decorum answering compliments between the figures of the dance the night before.

On cautious shoe leather the march began. One voice, two voices, and finally a low chorus intoned and repeated,--

"Hempseed, I sow thee,--hempseed, I sow thee; let him who is to marry me come after me and mow thee."

Peggy led her followers out of the east door towards the river; wheeling when she reached a little wind-row of rotted timbers. This chaos had once stood up in order, forming makeshift bastions for the fort, and supporting cannon. Such boards and posts as the negroes had not carried off lay now along the river brink, and the Okaw was steadily undermining that brink as it had already undermined and carried away the Jesuits' spacious landing.

Glancing over their shoulders with secret laughter for that fearful gleam of scythes which was to come, the girls marched back; and their leader's abrupt halt jarred the entire line. A man stood in the opposite entrance. They could not see him in outline, but his unmistakable hat showed against a low-lying sky.

"Who's there?" demanded Peggy Morrison.

The intruder made no answer.

They could not see a scythe about him, but to every girl he took a different form. He was Billy Edgar, or Jules Vigo, or Rice Jones, or any other gallant of Kaskaskia, according to the varying faith which beating hearts sent to the eyes that saw him.

The spell of silence did not last. A populous roost invaded by a fox never resounded with more squalling than did the old Jesuit College. The girls swished around corners and tumbled over the vegetable beds. Angélique groped for Maria, not daring to call her name, and caught and ran with some one until they neared the light, when she found it was the dumpy little figure of her cousin Clarice.

As soon as the girls were gone, the man who had broken up their hempseed sowing advanced a few steps on the pavement. He listened, and that darker shadow in the angle of the walls was perceptible to him.

"Are you here?"

"I am here," answered Maria.

Rice Jones's sister could not sit many minutes in the damp old building without being missed by the girls and her family. His voice trembled. She could hear his heart beating with large strokes. His presence surrounded her like an atmosphere, and in the darkness she clutched her own breast to keep the rapture from physically hurting her.

"Maria, did you know that my wife was dead?"

"Oh, James, no!"

Her whisper was more than a caress. It was surrender and peace and forgiveness. It was the snapping of a tension which had held her two years.

"Oh, James, when I saw you to-night I did not know what to do. I have not been well. You have borne it so much better than I have."

"I thought," said Dr. Dunlap, "it would be best for us to talk matters over."

She caught her breath. What was the matter with this man? Once he had lain at her feet and kissed the hem of her garment. He was hers. She had never relinquished her ownership of him even when her honor had constrained her to live apart from him. Whose could he be but hers?

Dr. Dunlap had thought twenty-four hours on what he would say at this unavoidable meeting, and he acknowledged in a business-like tone,--

"I did not treat you right, Maria. My wretched entanglement when I was a boy ruined everything. But when I persuaded you into a secret marriage with me, I meant to make it right when the other one died. And you found it out and left me. If I treated you badly, you treated me badly, too."

He knew the long chin of the Joneses. He could imagine Maria lifting her slim chin. She did not speak.

"I came over here to begin life again. When you ran off to your friends, what was there for me to do but take to the navy again or sail for America? Kaskaskia was the largest post in the West; so I came here. And here I found your family, that I thought were in another Territory. And from the first your brother has been my enemy."

His sulky complaint brought no response in words; but a strangling sob broke all restraint in the angle of the wall.

"Maria," exclaimed the startled doctor, "don't do that. You excite yourself."

In her paroxysm she rolled down on the stone floor, and he stooped in consternation and picked her up. He rested his foot on the ledge where she had sat, and held her upon his knee. She struggled for breath until he thought she would die, and the sweat of terror stood on his forehead. When he had watched her by the bonfire, his medical knowledge gave her barely two months of life; and within those two months, he had also told himself bitterly then, Rice Jones could marry Angélique Saucier; but to have her die alone with him in this old building was what he could not contemplate.

Scarcely conscious of his own action, the doctor held her in positions which helped her, and finally had the relief of hearing her draw a free breath as she lapsed against his shoulder. Even a counterfeit tie of marriage has its power. He had lived with this woman, she believing herself his lawful wife. Their half-year together had been the loftiest period of his life. The old feeling, smothered as it was under resentment and a new passion, stirred in him. He strained her to his breast and called her the pet names he used to call her. The diminutive being upon his knee heard them without response. When she could speak she whispered,--

"Set me down."

Dr. Dunlap moved his foot and placed her again on the stone ledge. She leaned against the wall. There was a ringing in her ears. The unpardonable sin in man is not his ceasing to love you. That may be a mortal pain, but it has dignity. It is the fearful judgment of seeing in a flash that you have wasted your life on what was not worth the waste.

"Now if you are composed, Maria," said Dr. Dunlap hurriedly, "I will say what I followed you here to say. The best thing for us to do, now that I am free to do it, is to have the marriage ceremony repeated over us and made valid. I am ready and willing. The only drawback is the prejudice of your family against me."

A magnanimous tone in his voice betrayed eagerness to put the Joneses under obligations to him.

"Dr. Dunlap,"--when Maria had spoken his name she panted awhile,--"when I found out I was not your wife, and left you, I began then to cough. But now--we can never be married."

"Why, Maria?"

She began those formidable sounds again, and he held his breath.

Somebody in the distance began playing a violin. Its music mingled with the sounds which river-inclosed lands and the adjacent dwellings of men send up in a summer night.

"You know," said Maria when she could speak, "how we deceived my people in Wales and in London. None of my family here know anything about that marriage."

Another voice outside the walls, keen with anxiety, shouted her name. Dr. Dunlap hurried a few yards from her, then stopped and held his ground. A man rushed into the old building regardless of the broken floor.

"Maria, are you here?"

"Yes, brother Rice."

She was leaving her corner to meet him. The doctor could see that she sunk to her hands and knees with weakness and helped herself up by the wall.

"Where are you? Is any one with you?"

As they met in the darkness the brother felt her hands and trembling figure.

"What possessed you to sit down here in this damp old place? You are clammy as stone. Poor little thing, were you frightened? What have you been doing?"

"I have been talking," replied Maria.

The doctor's heart labored like a drum. Perhaps she would tell it all out to Rice Jones now.

The same acrid restraint may be heard in a mother's voice when she inquires, as Rice did,--

"Who was talking with you?"

"Dr. Dunlap."

"Dr. Dunlap? You don't know Dr. Dunlap."

"We met in England," daringly broke out Dr. Dunlap himself.

"He is here yet, is he?" said Rice Jones. "Doctors are supposed to be the natural protectors of ailing women; but here's one that is helping a sick girl to take her death cold."

An attack on his professional side was what Dr. Dunlap was not prepared for. He had nothing to say, and Maria's brother carried her out of the old college and took the nearest way home.

Noise was ceasing around the sinking bonfire, a clatter of wooden shoes setting homeward along the streets of Kaskaskia. Maria saw the stars stretching their great network downward enmeshing the Mississippi. That nightly vision is wonderful. But what are outward wonders compared to the unseen spiritual chemistry always at work within and around us, changing our loves and beliefs and needs?