Chapter 4

Very trivial in Dr. Dunlap's eyes were the anxieties of some poor fellows whom he saw later in the day appealing to Colonel Menard. The doctor was returning to a patient. The speeches were over, and the common meadow had become a wide picnic ground under the slant of a low afternoon sun. Those outdwelling settlers, who had other business to transact besides storing political opinions, now began to stir themselves; and a dozen needy men drew together and encouraged one another to ask Colonel Menard for salt. They were obliged to have salt at once, and he was the only great trader who brought it in by the flatboat load and kept it stored. He had a covered box in his cellar as large as one of their cabins, and it was always kept filled with cured meats.

They stood with hands in their pockets and coonskin caps slouching over their brows, stating the case to Colonel Menard. But poverty has many grades. The quizzical Frenchman detected in some of his clients a moneyed ability which raised them above their fellows.

"I have salt," admitted the colonel, speaking English to men who did not understand French, "but I have not enough to make brine of de Okaw river. I bet you ten dollaire you have not money in your pockets to pay for it."

More than half the pockets owned this fact. One man promised to pay when he killed his hogs. Another was sure he could settle by election day. But the colonel cut these promises short.

"I will settle this matter. De goats that have no money will stand on this side, and de sheep that have money will stand on that."

The hopeless majority budged to his right hand, and the confident ones to his left. He knew well what comfort or misery hung on his answer, and said with decision which no one could turn:--

"Now, messieurs, I am going to lend all my salt to these poor men who cannot get it any other way. You fellows who have money in your pockets, you may go to Sa' Loui', by gar, and buy yourselves some."

The peninsula of Kaskaskia was glorified by sunset, and even having its emerald stretches purpled by the evening shadows of the hills, before Rice Jones could go home to his sister. The hundreds thronging him all day and hurrahing at his merciless wit saw none of his trouble in his face.

He had sat by Maria day after day, wiping the cold dampness from her forehead and watching her self-restraining pride. They did not talk much, and when they spoke it was to make amusement for each other. This young sister growing up over the sea had been a precious image to his early manhood. But it was easier to see her die now that the cause of Dr. Dunlap's enmity was growing distinct to him.

"No wonder he wanted me shot," thought Rice. "No wonder he took all her family as his natural foes at sight."

Sometimes the lawyer dropped his papers and walked his office, determining to go out and shoot Dr. Dunlap. The most judicial mind has its revolts against concise statement. In these boiling moods Rice did not want evidence; he knew enough. But cooler counsel checked him. There were plenty of grounds and plenty of days yet to come for a political duel, in which no names and no family honor need be mixed.

Rice turned back from the gallery steps with a start at hearing a voice behind him. It was only young Pierre Menard at his father's gate. The veins on the child's temples were distended by their embarrassed throbbing, and his cheeks shone darkly red.

"I want, in fact, to speak to you, Monsieur Zhone," stammered Pierre, looking anxiously down the street lest the slave or Jean Lozier should appear before he had his say.

"What is it, colonel junior?" said Rice, returning to the gate.

"I want, in fact, to have some talk about our family."

"I hope you haven't any disagreement in your family that the law will have to settle?"

"Oh, no, monsieur, we do not quarrel much. And we never should quarrel at all if we had a mother to teach us better," said young Pierre adroitly.

Rice studied him with a sidelong glance of amusement, and let him struggle unhelped to his object.

"Monsieur Zhone, do you intend to get married?"

"Certainly," replied the prompt lawyer.

"But why should you want to get married? You have no children."

"I might have some, if I were married," argued Rice.

"But unless you get some you don't need any mother for them. On the contrary, we have great need of a mother in our family."

"I see. You came to take my advice about a stepmother. I have a stepmother myself, and I am the very man to advise you. But suppose you and I agree on the person for the place, and the colonel refuses her?"

The boy looked at him sharply, but there was no trace of raillery on Rice's face.

"You never can tell what the colonel intends to do until he does it, monsieur, but I think he will be glad to get her. The girls--all of us, in fact, think he ought to be satisfied with her."

"You are quite right. I don't know of a finer young woman in Kaskaskia than Miss Peggy Morrison."

"But she isn't the one, Monsieur Zhone. Oh, she wouldn't do at all."

"She wouldn't? I have made a mistake. It's Mademoiselle Vigo."

"Oh, no, she wouldn't do, either. There is only one that would do." The boy tried to swallow his tumult of palpitation. "It is Mademoiselle Angélique Saucier, monsieur."

Rice looked reproachfully at him over folded arms.

"That's why I came to you about it, monsieur. In the first place, Odile picked her out because she is handsome; Berenice and Alzira want her because she is good-natured; and I want her because I like to sit in the room where she is."

"Young man, this cannot be," said Rice Jones.

"Have you engaged her yourself, monsieur? If you haven't, please don't. Nobody else will suit us; and you can take Mademoiselle Peggy Morrison that you think is such a fine young woman."

Rice laughed.

"You and I are not the only men in Kaskaskia who admire Mademoiselle Saucier, my lad."

"But you are the worst one," said Pierre eagerly. "Odile thinks if you let her alone we may get her."

"But I can't let her alone. I see the force of your claims, but human nature is so perverse, Pierre, that I want her worse than ever."

Pierre dug with his heel in the grass. His determined countenance delighted the rival.

"Monsieur, if you do get her, you have our whole family to beat."

"Yes, I see what odds there are against me," owned Rice.

"We are going to marry her if we can--and my father is willing. He is nearly always willing to please us."

"This is fair and open," pronounced Rice, "and the way for gentlemen to treat each other. You have done the right thing in coming to talk this matter over with me."

"I'm not sure of that, m'sieur."

"I am, for there is nothing better than fair and open rivalry. And after all, nobody can settle this but Mademoiselle Saucier herself. She may not be willing to take any of us. But, whatever the result, shake hands, Pierre."

The boy transferred his riding-whip, and met the lawyer's palm with a hearty grasp. They shook hands, laughing, and Pierre felt surprised to find how well he liked Rice Jones.

As the wide and capacious Kaskaskia houses were but a single story high, Maria's bedroom was almost in the garden. Sweet-brier stretched above the foundation and climbed her window; and there were rank flowers, such as marigolds and peppery bouncing-betties, which sent her pungent odors. Sometimes she could see her stepmother walking the graveled paths between the vegetable beds, or her father and Rice strolling back and forth together of an evening. Each one was certain to bring her something,--a long-stemmed pink, or phlox in a bunch, like a handful of honeycomb. The gardener pulled out dead vines and stalks and burned them behind a screen of bushes, the thin blue smoke trailing low.

Her father would leave his office to sit beside her, holding the hand which grew thinner every day. He had looked forward to his daughter's coming as a blossoming-time in his life. Maria had not left her bed since the night of her hemorrhage. A mere fortnight in the Territory seemed to have wasted half her little body.

When you have strained to bear your burden and keep up with the world's march, lightly commiserated by the strong, there is great peace in finally giving up and lying down by the roadside. The hour often fiercely wished for, and as often repelled with awe, is here. The visible is about to become invisible. It is your turn to pass into the unknown. You have seen other faces stiffen, and other people carried out and forgotten. Your face is now going to chill the touch. You are going to be carried out. But, most wonderful of all, you who have been so keenly alive are glad to creep close to Death and lay your head in his lap.

There are natures to whom suffering is degradation. Sympathy would burn them like caustic. They are dumb on the side which seeks promiscuous fellowship. They love one person, and live or die by that love.

"I have borne it by myself so far," Maria would think; "I can bear it by myself the rest of the way."

Yet the sleepy nurse was often roused at dead of night by her sobbing: "Oh, James, that you should be in the same town with me, and never come near to see me die! And I love you,--I love you so in spite of everything."

Sometimes she resolved to tell her brother the whole story. He would perhaps think better of Dr. Dunlap than he now did. Yet, on the contrary, his implacable pride and sense of justice might drive him directly out to kill the man she loved. And again she would burn with rage and shame at Dr. Dunlap's condescension to a legal marriage. He was willing.

"You are not willing," she would whisper fiercely at the night candle. "You do not love me any more."

The old glamour again covering her, she would lie in a waking dream for hours, living over their stolen life together. And she puzzled herself trying to fit the jagged pieces of her experience, and to understand why all these things should happen. The mystery to come is not greater than the mystery which has been, when one lies on a dying bed and counts the many diverse individuals that have lived in his skin and been called by his name.

At other times, all she had lost of common good flashed through Maria in a spark: the deeds to other souls; the enjoyment of nature, which is a continual discovery of new worlds; the calm joy of daily life, that best prayer of thanks to Almighty God.

Maria always thought of these wholesome things when Angélique came in at twilight, a little exhilarated by her escape from the tyrant at home. The nurse would give place, and go out to talk with the other negroes, while Angélique sat down and held Maria's hand. Perhaps invisible streams of health flowed from her, quieting the sick girl. She smiled with pure happiness, on account of general good and comfort; her oval face and dark hair and eyes having a certain freshness of creation. Maria looked at her and wondered what love and sorrow would do to her.

Angélique had one exquisite characteristic which Maria did not at first notice, but it grew upon her during these quiet half-hours when she was spared the effort of talking or listening. It was a fixed look of penetrating sweetness, projecting the girl herself into your nature, and making her one with you. No intrusive quality of a stare spoiled it. She merely became you for the time being; and this unconscious pretty trick had brought down many a long Kaskaskian, for it drove directly through the hearts of men.

The provincial girl sometimes puzzled herself about the method of education abroad which had produced such a repressed yet such an appealing creature as Maria Jones. When she talked to the triangular little face on the pillow, she talked about the outdoor world rather than its people; so that after Angélique went away Maria often fell asleep, fancying herself on the grass, or lying beside the rivers or under the cool shadows of rocks.

As Rice Jones entered the house, after his talk about Angélique with young Pierre Menard, he met her coming out. It was the first time that her twilight visits to his sister had brought them face to face, and Rice directly turned off through the garden with her, inquiring how Maria had borne the noise of the day.

"She is very quiet," said Angélique. "She was indeed falling asleep when I came out."

"I sent my man at noon and at three o'clock to bring me word of her."

There was still a great trampling of horses in the streets. Shouts of departing happy voters sounded from the Okaw bridge, mixing with the songs of river men. The primrose lights of many candles began to bloom all over Kaskaskia. Rice parted the double hedge of currant bushes which divided his father's garden from Saucier's, and followed Angélique upon her own gravel walk, holding her by his sauntering. They could smell the secluded mould in the shadow of the currant roots, which dew was just reaching. She went to a corner where a thicket of roses grew. She had taken a handful of them to Maria, and now gathered a fresh handful for herself, reaching in deftly with mitted arms, holding her gown between her knees to keep it back from the briers. Some of them were wild roses, with a thin layer of petals and effulgent yellow centres. There was a bouquet of garden-breaths from gray-green sage and rosemary leaves and the countless herbs and vegetables which every slaveholding Kaskaskian cultivated for his large household. Pink and red hollyhocks stood sentinel along the paths. The slave cabins, the loom-house, the kitchen, and a row of straw beehives were ranged at the back of the lawn, edging the garden.

Angélique came back to the main walk, picking her way with slipper toes, and offered part of her spoil to Rice. He took some roses, and held the hand which gave them. She had come in his way too soon after his mocking little talk with young Pierre Menard. He was occupied with other things, but that had made him feel a sudden need.

Angélique blushed in the dense twilight, her face taking childlike lines of apprehension. Her heart sank, and she suffered for him vicariously in advance. Her sensibility to other presences was so keen that she had once made it a subject of confession. "Father, I cannot feel any separateness from the people around me. Is this a sin?" "Believe that you have the saints and holy angels also in your company, and it will be no sin," answered Father Olivier.

Though she was used to these queer demonstrations of men, her conscience always rebuked her for the number of offers she received. No sooner did she feel on terms of excellent friendliness with any man than he began to fondle her hand and announce himself her lover. It must be as her tante-gra'mère said, that girls had too much liberty in the Territory. Jules Vigo and Billy Edgar had both proposed in one day, and Angélique hid herself in the loom-house, feeling peculiarly humbled and ashamed to face the family, until her godmother had her almost forcibly brought back to the usual post.

"I love you," said Rice Jones.

"But please, no, Monsieur Zhone, no."

"I love you," he repeated, compressing his lips. "Why 'no, Monsieur Zhone, no'?"

"I do not know." Angélique drew her hand back and arranged her roses over and over, looking down at them in blind distress.

"Is it Pierre Menard?"

She glanced up at him reproachfully.

"Oh, monsieur, it is only that I do not want"--She put silence in the place of words. "Monsieur," she then appealed, "why do men ask girls who do not want them to? If one appeared anxious, then it would be reasonable."

"Not to men," said Rice, smiling. "We will have what is hard to be got. I shall have you, my Angélique. I will wait."

"Monsieur," said Angélique, thinking of an obstacle which might block his way, "I am a Catholic, and you are not."

"Priests don't frighten me. And Father Olivier is too sensible an old fellow to object to setting you in the car of my ambition."

They stood in silence.

"Good-night, Monsieur Zhone," said Angélique. "Don't wait."

"But I shall wait," said Rice.

He had bowed and turned away to the currant hedge, and Angélique was entering her father's lawn, when he came back impetuously. He framed her cheeks in his hands, and she could feel rather than see the power of possession in his eyes.

"Angélique!" he said, and the word rushed through her like flame. She recoiled, but Rice Jones was again in his father's garden, moving like a shadow toward the house, before she stirred. Whether it was the trick of the orator or the irrepressible outburst of passion, that appeal continued to ring in her ears and to thrill.

More disturbed than she had ever been before by the tactics of a lover, Angélique hurried up the back gallery steps, to find Peggy Morrison sitting in her chamber window, cross-legged, leaning over with one palm supporting a pointed chin. The swinging sashes were pushed outward, and Peggy's white gown hung down from the broad sill.

"Is that you, Peggy?" said Angélique. "I thought you were dancing at Vigo's this evening."

"I thought you were, too."

"Mama felt obliged to send our excuses, on account of going to sister's baby."

"How beautiful these large French families are!" observed Peggy; "some of them are always dying or teething, and the girls are slaves to their elders."

"We must be beautiful," said Angélique, "since two of the Morrisons have picked wives from us; and I assure you the Morrison babies give us the most trouble."

"You might expect that. I never saw any luck go with a red-headed Morrison."

Angélique sat down on the sill, also, leaning against the side of the window. The garden was becoming a void of dimness, through which a few fireflies sowed themselves. Vapor blotted such stars as they might have seen from their perch, and the foliage of fruit trees stirred with a whisper of wind.

"I am so glad you came to stay with me, Peggy. But you are dressed; why did you not go?"

"I am hiding."

"What are you hiding from?"

"Jules Vigo, of course."

"Poor Jules."

"Yes, you are always saying poor this and that, after you set them on by rejecting them. They run about like blind, mad oxen till they bump their stupid heads against somebody that will have them. I shouldn't wonder if I got a second-hand husband one day, taking up with some cast-off of yours."

"Peggy, these things do not flatter me; they distress me," said Angélique genuinely.

"They wouldn't distress me. If I had your face, and your hands and arms, and the way you carry yourself, I'd love to kill men. They have no sense at all."

Angélique heard her grind her teeth, and exclaimed,--

"Why, Peggy, what has poor Jules done?"

"Oh, Jules!--he is nothing. I have just engaged myself to him to get rid of him, and now I have some right to be let alone. He's only the fourth one of your victims that I've accepted, and doctored up, and set on foot again. I take them in rotation, and let them easily down to marrying some girl of capacity suitable to them. And until you are married off, I have no prospect of ever being anything but second choice."

Angélique laughed.

"Your clever tongue so fascinates men that this is all mockery, your being second choice. But indeed I like men, Peggy; if they had not the foolishness of falling in love."

"Angélique Saucier, when do you intend to settle in life?"

"I do not know," said the French girl slowly. "It is pleasant to be as we are."

Peggy glanced at her through the dark.

"Do you intend to be a nun?"

"No, I have no vocation."

"Well, if you don't marry, the time will come when you'll be called an old maid."

"That is what mama says. It is a pity to make ugly names for good women."

"I'll be drawn and quartered before I'll be called an old maid," said Peggy fiercely. "What difference does it make, after all, which of these simpletons one takes for a husband? Were you ever in love with one of them, Angélique?"

Peggy had the kind of eyes which show a disk of light in the dark, and they revealed it as she asked this question.

"No, I think not," answered Angélique.

"You think not. You believe, to the best of your knowledge and recollection, that such a thing has never happened to you," mocked Peggy. And then she made a sudden pounce at Angélique's arm. "What was the matter with you when you ran up the gallery steps, a minute ago?"

The startled girl drew in her breath with surprise, but laughed.

"It was lighter then," hinted Peggy.

"Did you see him?"

"Yes, I saw him. And I saw you coaxing him along with a bunch of roses, for all the world like catching a pony with a bunch of grass. And I saw him careering back to neigh in your face."

"Oh, Peggy, I wish Monsieur Reece Zhone could but hear what you say. Do teach me some of your clever ridicule. It must be that I take suitors too seriously."

"Thank you," said Peggy dryly, "I need it all for my second-hand lot. He is the worst fool of any of them."

"Take care, Peggy, you rouse me. Why is a man a fool for loving me?"

"He said he loved you, then?"

The Saucier negroes were gathering on doorsteps, excited by the day and the bustle of crowds which still hummed in the streets. Now a line of song was roared from the farthest cabin, and old and young voices all poured themselves into a chorus. A slender young moon showed itself under foliage, dipping almost as low as the horizon. Under all other sounds of life, but steadily and with sweet monotony, the world of little living things in grass and thicket made itself heard. The dewy darkness was a pleasure to Angélique, but Peggy moved restlessly, and finally clasped her hands behind her neck and leaned against the window side, watching as well as she could the queen of hearts opposite. She could herself feel Angélique's charm of beautiful health and outreaching sympathy. Peggy was a candid girl, and had no self-deceptions. But she did have that foreknowledge of herself which lives a germ in some unformed girls whose development surprises everybody. She knew she could become a woman of strength and influence, the best wife in the Territory for an ambitious man who had the wisdom to choose her. Her sharp fairness would round out, moreover, and her red head, melting the snows which fell in middle age on a Morrison, become a softly golden and glorious crown. At an age when Angélique would be faded, Peggy's richest bloom would appear. She was like the wild grapes under the bluffs; it required frost to ripen her. But women whom nature thus obliges to wait for beauty seldom do it graciously; transition is not repose.

"Well, which is it to be, Rice Jones or Pierre Menard? Be candid with me, Angélique, as I would be with you. You know you will have to decide some time."

"I do not think Monsieur Reece Zhone is for me," said Angélique, with intuitive avoidance of Colonel Menard's name; Peggy cared nothing for the fate of Colonel Menard. "Indeed, I believe his mind dwells more on his sister now than on any one else."

"I hate people's relations!" cried Peggy brutally; "especially their sick relations. I couldn't run every evening to pet Maria Jones and feed her pap."

"I do not pet her nor feed her pap," declared Angélique, put on the defensive. "Don't be a little beast, Peggy," she added in French.

"I see how it is: you are going to take him. The man who needs a bug in his ear worse than any other man in the Territory will never be handed over to me to get it. But let me tell you, you will have your hands full with Rice Jones. This Welsh-English stock is not soft stuff to manage. When he makes that line with his lips that looks like a red-hot razor edge, his poor wife will wish to leave this earth and take to the bluffs."

"You appear to think a great deal about Monsieur Reece Zhone and his future wife," said Angélique mischievously.

"I know what you mean," said Peggy defiantly, "and we may as well have it out now as any time. If you throw him at me, I shall quarrel with you. I detest Rice Jones. He makes me crosser than any other person in the world."