Chapter 3

Rice stopped to rest as soon as they were out of Dr. Dunlap's hearing. Light as she was, he felt his sister's complete prostration in her weight.

"For God's sake, Maria," he said to her in Welsh,--"is that fellow anything to you?"

She shook her head.

"But he says he met you in England."

She said nothing, and Rice also remained in silence. When he spoke again, it was in the tone of dry statement which he used for presenting cases in court.

"My pistols have hair triggers and go off at a touch. I had a political difference with a gentleman some time ago, and this Dr. Dunlap acted as his second. We were standing ready, but before the word was given, and while the pistol hung down in my hand, it went off, and the ball struck the ground at my feet. Then Dr. Dunlap insisted I had had my shot, and must stand still and be fired at without firing again. His anxiety to have me shot was so plain that my opponent refused to fire, and we made up our difference. That's the Dr. Dunlap we have here in the Territory, whatever he may have been in England."

Rice hurried on with her, his motherless little sister, who had been left with kinspeople in Wales because she was too delicate to bear the hardships of the family transplanting. He blamed himself for her exposure and prostration, and held her tenderly, whispering,--

"Mareea-bach!"

She tried to answer the Welsh caressing name, but her throat gurgled and a warm stream ran out of her mouth, and he knew it was blood.

PART SECOND.

A FIELD DAY.

The gallery pillars of the Sauciers' house hung full of fragrant vines. The double doors stood hospitably wide, but no one was visible through the extent of hall, though the sound of harp music filled it, coming from a large darkened room. Angélique was playing for her great-grand-aunt Angélique, the despot of the Saucier family.

This survivor of a past century had her treasures displayed and her throne set up in the state apartment of the house. The Sauciers contented themselves with a smaller drawing-room across the hall. Her throne was a vast valanced, canopied, gilded bed, decorated with down sacks in chintz covers to keep her warm, high pillows set up as a background for her, and a little pillow for every bone which might make a dint in the feather bed. Another such piece of furniture was not to be found in the Territory. It and her ebony chairs, her claw-footed tables, her harp and dower chest, had come with her from France. The harp alone she had already given to Angélique, who was to inherit all she owned.

From childhood the girl had been this aged woman's constant attendant. Some days the black servants took their orders at the door, and nobody but Angélique was allowed to enter that room. Then the tyrant would unbend, and receive family and neighborhood visits. Though she had lived a spinster's life, she herself taught Angélique to call her "tante-gra'mère," and this absurd mixture of names had been taken up by the entire family. So tight a grip did she hold on the growing child that Angélique was educated by half-days at the convent; she never had an entire day free from tante-gra'mère. Madame Saucier often rose against such absorption, and craved the privilege of taking the girl's place.

"There is a fête of the children on the bluffs to-day," madame would plead; or, "There is a religious procession, and the mother superior has particularly sent for Angélique."

But tante-gra'mère lifted her thin shout against every plea, and, if pushed, would throw the little pillows at her grand-nephew's wife. What were fêtes and processions to her claims?

"I am the godmother of this child," she declared; "it is for me to say what she shall do."

The patriarch of a French family was held in such veneration that it was little less than a crime to cross her. The thralldom did not ruin Angélique's health, though it grew heavier with her years; but it made her old in patient endurance and sympathetic insight while she was a child. She sat pitying and excusing her elder's whims when she should have been playing. The oldest story in humanity is the story of the house tyrant,--that usurper often so physically weak that we can carry him in our arms, yet so strong that he can tumble down the pillars of family peace many times a day.

There was something monkey-like in the tempers of tante-gra'mère. To see her grasp her whip and beat her slaves with a good will, but poor execution, was to smile self-reproachfully as at the antics of a sick child. Though it is true, for a woman who had no use of her legs, she displayed astonishing reach in her arms. Her face was a mass of puckers burnt through by coal-black eyes. Her mouth was so tucked and folded inward that she appeared to have swallowed her lips. In the daytime she wore a black silk cap tied under the chin, and a dimity short gown over a quilted petticoat. Tante-gra'mère was rich in stored finery. She had inherited brocades, and dozen dozens of linen, including sheets and napkins. Her things were washed by themselves and bleached on their own green, where the family washing never dared intrude.

Fortunately for Angélique, tante-gra'mère's hours were early, and she slept as aged people seldom do. At sunset, summer or winter, she had herself promptly done up in linen, the whip placed near her hand, and her black woman's bed made within reach on the floor. She then went into a shell of sleep which dancing-parties in the house had not broken, and required no further attention until the birds stirred in the morning. Angélique rushed out to evening freedom with a zest which became rapture when she danced. Perhaps this fresh delight made her the best dancer in Kaskaskia.

The autocrat loved to compound her own dinners. She had a salver which Angélique placed before her on the bed; and the old child played in pastry or salads, or cut vegetable dice for her soup. The baking or boiling or roasting was done with rigor at her own fireplace by her blacks, the whiplash in her hand hovering over their bare spots. Silence was the law of the presence-chamber when she labored with her recipes, of which she had many, looking like spider tracks on very yellow paper. These she kept locked up with many of the ingredients for creating them. She pored over them with unspectacled eyes whenever she mixed a cunning dish; and even Angélique dared not meddle with them, though they were to be part of the girl's inheritance.

Angélique now played on the harp to soothe tante-gra'mère's digestion after her midday dinner, while outdoors all Kaskaskia buzzed with excitement. It was a field day in territorial politics. All the girls were at Peggy Morrison's house, watching the processions march by, and making bouquets to send up to the speakers, of whom Rice Jones was chief. Tante-gra'mère had her heavy green shutters closed, to keep out disturbing sights and the noise of fife and drum. Her eyes snapped in the gloom. It was a warm day, and the large apartment looked like a linen bazaar, so many garments had tante-gra'mère discarded on account of the heat, and hung about her. The display made Angélique's face burn when Colonel Menard was announced; but it was one of tante-gra'mère's unshakable beliefs that her linen was so superior to other people's its exposure was a favor to the public. Any attempt to fold it away would put her into a fury.

The colonel had his hat and riding-whip in his hand. He stood smiling at both the aged woman and the girl, with his comprehensive grasp of all individualities. The slave woman placed a chair for him between the bed and the harp. Angélique loved the harp; but she was glad to let her hands fall in her lap, and leave Colonel Menard to work good nature in her tante-gra'mère. The autocrat tolerated him with as much liking as she could give to any suitor of Angélique's. The intentions of the others were discovered only through slaves used as spies; but he came into her state apartment and showed her consideration. She sat up on her broad throne, against the background of pillows, and received his salute upon her hand. Afterwards he bowed over Angélique's fingers.

"I hope the seven children of monsieur the colonel are well," said tante-gra'mère in her tiny scream.

"Four, madame," corrected the visitor. "Thanks, they are very well."

They spoke in French, for although she understood English she never condescended to use it. Their conference begun each time by her inquiry after his seven children.

"And madame, I hope she is comfortable to-day?"

"I neither sleep nor eat," declared tante-gra'mère. "And with the streets full of a shouting rabble, there is no comfort to be had in Kaskaskia."

"We are rather noisy to-day. But we are very earnest in this matter. We want to be separated from the Indiana Territory and be made an independent State."

Tante-gra'mère caught up her whip, and cracked it so suddenly on the back of her little page, who was prying into a wall closet, that he leaped like a frog, and fell on all fours at the opposite corner of the hearth. His grandmother, the black woman, put him behind her, and looked steadily at their tyrant. She sat on the floor like an Indian; and she was by no means a soft, full-blooded African. High cheek-bones and lank coarse hair betrayed the half-breed. Untamed and reticent, without the drollery of the black race, she had even a Pottawatomie name, Watch-e-kee, which French usage shortened to Wachique.

Tante-gra'mère put this sullen slave in motion and made her bring a glass of wine for Colonel Menard. The colonel was too politic to talk to Angélique before her elder, though she had not yet answered his proposal. He had offered himself through her father, and granted her all the time she could require for making up her mind. The colonel knew of her sudden decisions against so many Kaskaskians that he particularly asked her to take time. Two dimpling grooves were cut in his cheeks by the smile which hovered there, as he rose to drink the godmother's health, and she said,--

"Angélique, you may leave the room."

Angélique left the room, and he drew his chair toward the autocrat for the conference she expected.

"It is very kind of you, madame," said Colonel Menard, "to give me this chance of speaking to you alone."

"I do so, monsieur the colonel, because I myself have something to say." The little elfin voice disregarded Wachique and the page. They were part of the furniture of the room, and did not count as listeners.

"You understand that I wish to propose for mademoiselle?"

Tante-gra'mère nodded. "I understand that you are a man who will make a contract and conduct his marriage properly; while these Welsh and English, they lean over a gallery rail and whisper, and I am told they even come fiddling under the windows after decent people are asleep."

"I am glad to have you on my side, madame."

"I am not on your side, monsieur. I am on nobody's side. And Angélique is on nobody's side. Angélique favors no suitor. She is like me: she would live a single life to the end of her days, as holy as a nun, with never a thought of courtship and weddings, but I have set my face against such a life for her. I have seen the folly of it. Here am I, a poor old helpless woman, living without respect or consideration, when I ought to be looked up to in the Territory."

"You are mistaken, madame. Your name is always mentioned with veneration."

"Ah, if I had sons crowding your peltry traffic and taking their share of these rich lands, then you would truly see me venerated. I have thought of these things many a day; and I am not going to let Angélique escape a husband, however such creatures may try a woman's religious nature."

"I will make myself as light a trial as possible," suggested Colonel Menard.

"You have had one wife."

"Yes, madame."

"But she died." The tiny high voice had the thrust of an insect's stinger.

"If she were alive, madame, I could not now have the honor of asking for Mademoiselle Angélique's hand."

The dimpling grooves in his cheeks did not escape tante-gra'mère's black eyes.

"I do not like widowers," she mused.

"Nor do I," responded the colonel.

"Poor Thérèse might have been alive to-day, if she had not married you."

"Possibly, madame."

"And you have seven children?"

"Four, madame."

"On the whole, I like young men."

"Then you reject my suit?" observed the unmoved wooer.

"I do not reject it, and I do not accept it, monsieur the colonel. I consider it."

This gracious promise of neutrality Colonel Menard carried away with him without again seeing Angélique; and he made his way through the streets of Kaskaskia, unconscious that his little son was following Rice Jones about with the invincible persistence of a Menard.

Young Pierre had been allowed to ride into the capital this thronging day under charge of his father's body-servant and Jean Lozier. The body-servant he sent out of his way with the ponies. Jean Lozier tramped at his young seignior's heels, glad of some duty which would excuse him to his conscience.

This was the peasant lad's first taste of Kaskaskia. He could hardly believe he was there. The rapture of it at first shook him like a palsy. He had risen while the whole peninsula was yet a network of dew, and the Mississippi's sheet, reflecting the dawn, threw silver in his eyes. All thoughts of his grandfather he put resolutely out of his mind; and such thoughts troubled him little, indeed, while that sea of humanity dashed around him. The crash of martial music stirred the man in him. And when he saw the governor's carriage and the magnates of the Territory, heading the long procession; the festooned galleries, on which sat girls dressed in white, like angels, sending their slaves out with baskets of flowers to strew in the way; when he saw floating tableaux of men and scenes in the early history of the Territory,--heroes whose exploits he knew by heart; and when he heard the shouting which seemed to fill the rivers from bluff to bluff, he was willing to wade through purgatory to pay for such a day.

Traffic moved with unusual force. It was the custom for outdwelling men who had something to sell or to trade to reserve it until they came to a convention in Kasky, when they were certain to meet the best buyers. All the up-river towns sent lines of vehicles and fleets of boats to the capital. Kickapoo, Pottawatomie, and Kaskaskia Indians were there to see the white-man council, scattered immovably along the streets, their copper faces glistening in the sun, the buckskin fringes on their leggins scarcely stirring as the hours crept by. Squaws stood in the full heat, erect and silent, in yellow or dark red garments woven of silky buffalo wool, and seamed with roebuck sinews. Few of them had taken to civilized finery. Their barbaric and simple splendor was a rebuke to poor white women.

Many ease-loving old Frenchmen denied themselves the pleasure of following the day's pageant from point to point, and chose the best of the vacant seats fronting the empty platform in the common meadow. There they waited for speech-making to begin, smoking New Orleans tobacco, and stretching their wooden-shod feet in front of them. No kind of covering intervened betwixt their gray heads and the sky's fierce light, which made the rivers seem to wrinkle with fire. An old Frenchman loved to feel heaven's hand laid on his hair. Sometimes they spoke to one another; but the most of each man's soul was given to basking. Their attitudes said: "This is as far as I have lived. I am not living to-morrow or next day. The past has reached this instant as high-water mark, and here I rest. Move me if you can. I have arrived."

Booths were set up along the route to the common meadow, where the thirsty and hungry might find food and drink; and as the crowd surged toward its destination, a babel of cries rose from the venders of these wares. Father Baby was as great a huckster as any flatboat man of them all. He outscreamed and outsweated Spaniards from Ste. Genevieve; and a sorry spectacle was he to Father Olivier when a Protestant circuit-rider pointed him out. The itinerant had come to preach at early candle-lighting to the crowd of sinners which this occasion drew to Kaskaskia. There was a flourishing chapel where this good preacher was esteemed, and his infrequent messages were gladly accepted. He hated Romish practices, especially the Sunday dancing after mass, which Father Olivier allowed his humbler parishioners to indulge in. They were such children. When their week's work was over and their prayers were said, they could scarcely refrain from kicking up their heels to the sound of a fiddle.

But when the preacher saw a friar peddling spirits, he determined to denounce Kaskaskia as Sodom and Gomorrah around his whole circuit in the American bottom lands. While the fire burned in him he encountered Father Olivier, who despised him as a heretic, and respected him as a man. Each revered the honest faith that was in the other, though they thought it their duty to quarrel.

"My friend," exclaimed the preacher, "do you believe you are going in and out before this people in a God-fearing manner, when your colleague is yonder selling liquor?"

"Oh, that's only poor half-crazy Father Baby. He has no right even to the capote he wears. Nobody minds him here."

"He ought to be brought to his knees and soundly converted," declared the evangelist.

"He is on his knees half the time now," said Father Olivier mischievously. "He's religious enough, but, like you heretics, he perverts the truth to suit himself."

The preacher laughed. He was an unlearned man, but he had the great heart of an apostle, and was open to jokes.

"Do you think I am riding the wilderness for the pleasure of perverting the truth?"

"My friend," returned Father Olivier, "you have been in our sacristy, and seen our parish records kept here by the hands of priests for a hundred years. You want to make what you call revivals; I am content with survivals, with keeping alive the faith. Yet you think I am the devil. As for me, I do not say all heretics ought to be burned."

The preacher laughed again with Father Olivier, but did not fail to add,--

"You say what I think better than I could say it myself."

The priest left his Protestant brother with a wave of the hand and a smiling shrug, and passed on his way along the array of booths. His presence was a check on many a rustic drinker. His glance, dropped here and there, saved more than one sheep from the shearer. But his own face fell, and he stopped in astonishment, when an awkward figure was pushed against him, and he recognized his upland lamb.

"Jean Lozier, what are you doing here?" said Father Olivier.

Jean had dodged him many times. The lad stood still, cap in hand, looking down. Nothing could make him sorry he had come to Kaskaskia; but he expected to do penance for it.

"Where is your grandfather?"

"He is at home, father."

"Did you leave that blind old man alone, to wander out and fall over the bluff?"

"I left him, father, but I tied him to a joist in the ceiling with a long rope."

"To hang himself?"

"No, father; it is a very long rope."

"And what will the old man do when he grows hungry?"

"His food for the day is on the table."

"My son, my son!"

"Father," exclaimed the boy with passion, "I was never in Kaskaskia before. And Colonel Menard lent me a pony to ride after my young master. I have no pleasure but watching the lights of the town at night." The great fellow began to sob. "If my grandfather would but come here, I could keep him well. I have been watching how they do things in Kaskaskia. But no, he will stay on the hills. And when I could stand it no more I tied him and came."

Father Olivier had looked into the eyes of soldiers and seen the sick longing for some particular place which neither courage nor resolution seems able to control. He saw even more than this in Jean Lozier's eyes. He saw the anguish of a creature about to be driven back from its element to another in which it cannot develop. The priest had hitherto used Jean's fondness for the capital as means of moral discipline. But the sympathy which gave so many simple natures into his literal keeping enlightened him now.

"My son," said Father Olivier, "I see how it is with you better than I ever did before. You shall come and live in Kaskaskia. I will myself forbid your grandfather to keep you longer on the hills."

"But, father, he says he will die in a great town."

"Then, my son, the crown of a little martyrdom is yours. Will you wear it until this old man ends his days, and then come to Kaskaskia as your reward? Or will you come trampling down your duty, and perhaps shortening the life of your father's father? I will not lay any penance on you for following this strong desire."

Jean's spirit moved through his rough features, and responded to the priest's touch.

"I will wait, father," he said.

"You do right, my son. Now enjoy the remainder of this day, but do not make it too long a trial to the old man dependent on you."

Jean Lozier knew very little about the fierce partisan war raging in the Territory over separation and non-separation, and all the consequences which lay beyond either. But he took his place in a sea of listeners, having a man's object in life to struggle for. He was going to live in Kaskaskia, and have a little house of his own, a cart and two oxen; and when he had made enough by hauling bales from the wharf, he could set up in trade. His breast lifted and fell freely as he looked into this large and possible future. The patience and frugality and self-confidence of the successful man of affairs were born in him.

Rice Jones was on the speaker's platform, moulding the politics of the Territory. His voice reached over the great outdoor audience, compelling and convincing; now sinking to penetrating undertones, and now rising in thrilling music. His irony was so cutting, his humor so irrepressible. Laughter ran in waves across the sea of heads as wind runs across the grass. On many a homeward road and in many a cabin would these issues be fought over before election day, and Rice Jones's arguments quoted and propagated to the territorial limits. The serious long-jawed Virginia settler and the easy light-minded French boatman listened side by side. One had a homestead at stake, and the other had his possessions in the common fields where he labored as little as possible; but both were with Rice Jones in that political sympathy which bands unlike men together. He could say in bright words what they nebulously thought. He was the high development of themselves. They were proud of him, with that touching hero worship which is the tribute of unlettered men to those who represent their best.

Dr. Dunlap stopped an instant at the edge of the crowd, carrying his saddle-bags on his arm. He was so well known to be Rice Jones's political and personal enemy that his momentary lingering there drew a joke or two from his observers. He was exhorted to notice how the speaker could wipe up Kasky with such as he, and he replied in kind. But his face was wearing thin in his deeper and silent struggle with Rice Jones.

He knew that that judicial mind was fathoming and understanding his past relations with Maria upon the evidence he had himself furnished. Every day since their encounter in the college the doctor had armed himself. If he saw Rice Jones appear suddenly on the street, his hand sought his pocket. Sometimes he thought of leaving the Territory; which would be giving up the world and branding himself a coward. The sick girl was forgotten in this nightmare of a personal encounter. As a physician, he knew the danger of mania, and prescribed hard labor to counteract it. Dismounting under the bluff and tying his horse, he had many times toiled and sweated up the ascent, and let himself down again, bruised and scratched by stones and briers.