 | The Crossing |  |
BOOK II: FLOTSAM AND JETSAM
2.1.
CHAPTER I
IN THE CABIN
THE Eden of one man may be the Inferno of his neighbor, and now I am to throw to the winds, like leaves of a worthless manuscript, some years of time, and introduce you to a new Kentucky,—a Kentucky that was not for the pioneer. One page of this manuscript might have told of a fearful winter, when the snow lay in great drifts in the bare woods, when Tom and I fashioned canoes or noggins out of the great roots, when a new and feminine bit of humanity cried in the bark cradle, and Polly Ann sewed deer leather. Another page—nay, a dozen—could be filled with Indian horrors, ambuscades and massacres. And also I might have told how there drifted into this land, hitherto unsoiled, the refuse cast off by the older colonies. I must add quickly that we got more than our share of their best stock along with this.
No sooner had the sun begun to pit the snow hillocks than wild creatures came in from the mountains, haggard with hunger and hardship. They had left their homes in Virginia and the Carolinas in the autumn; an unheralded winter of Arctic fierceness had caught them in its grip. Bitter tales they told of wives and children buried among the rocks. Fast on the heels of these wretched ones trooped the spring settlers in droves; and I have seen whole churches march singing into the forts, the preacher
But Tom was no husbandman. He and his kind were the scouts, the advance guard of civilization, not tillers of the soil or lovers of close communities. Farther and farther they went afield for game, and always they grumbled sorely against this horde which had driven the deer from his cover and the buffalo from his wallow.
Looking back, I can recall one evening when the long summer twilight lingered to a close. Tom was lounging lazily against the big persimmon tree, smoking his pipe, the two children digging at the roots, and Polly Ann, seated on the door-log, sewing. As I drew near, she looked up at me from her work. She was a woman upon whose eternal freshness industry made no mar.
“Davy,” she exclaimed, “how ye've growed! I thought ye'd be a wizened little body, but this year ye've shot up like a cornstalk.”
“My father was six feet two inches in his moccasins,” I said.
“He'll be wallopin' me soon,” said Tom, with a grin. He took a long whiff at his pipe, and added thoughtfully, “I reckon this ain't no place fer me now, with all the settler folks and land-grabbers comin' through the Gap.”
“Tom,” said I, “there's a bit of a fall on the river here.”
“Ay,” he said, “and nary a fish left.”
“Something better,” I answered; “we'll put a dam there and a mill and a hominy pounder.”
“And make our fortune grinding corn for the settlers,” cried Polly Ann, showing a line of very white teeth. “I always said ye'd be a rich man, Davy.”
Tom was mildly interested, and went with us at daylight to measure the fall. And he allowed that he would have the more time to hunt if the mill were a success. For a month I had had the scheme in my mind, where the dam was to be put, the race, and the wondrous wheel rimmed with cow horns to dip the water. And fixed on the wheel there was to be a crank that worked the pounder in the mortar. So we were to grind until I could arrange with Mr. Scarlett, the new storekeeper in Harrodstown, to have two grinding-stones fetched across the mountains.
While the corn ripened and the melons swelled and the flax flowered, our axes rang by the river's side; and sometimes, as we worked, Cowan and Terrell and McCann and other Long Hunters would come and jeer good-naturedly because we were turning civilized. Often they gave us a lift.
It was September when the millstones arrived, and I spent a joyous morning of final bargaining with Mr. Myron Scarlett. This Mr. Scarlett was from Connecticut, had been a quartermaster in the army, and at much risk brought ploughs and hardware, and scissors and buttons, and broadcloth and corduroy, across the Alleghanies, and down the Ohio in flatboats. These he sold at great profit. We had no money, not even the worthless scrip that Congress issued; but a beaver skin was worth eighteen shillings, a bearskin ten, and a fox or a deer or a wildcat less. Half the village watched the barter. The rest lounged sullenly about the land court.
The land court-curse of Kentucky! It was just a windowless log house built outside the walls, our temple of avarice. The case was this: Henderson (for whose company Daniel Boone cut the wilderness road) believed that he had bought the country, and issued grants therefor. Tom held one of these grants, alas, and many others whom I knew. Virginia repudiated Henderson. Keen-faced speculators bought acre upon acre and tract upon tract from the State, and crossed the mountains to extort. Claims conflicted, titles lapped. There was the court set in the sunlight in the midst of a fair land, held by the
“Drat 'em,” said the stranger, as he watched a hawk-eyed extortioner in drab, for these did not condescend to hunting shirts, “drat 'em, ef I had my way I'd wring the neck of every mother's son of 'em.”
I turned with a start, and there was Mr. Daniel Boone.
“Howdy, Davy,” he said; “ye've growed some sence ye've ben with Clark.” He paused, and then continued in the same strain: “ 'Tis the same at Boonesboro and up thar at the Falls settlement. The critters is everywhar, robbin' men of their claims. Davy,” said Mr. Boone, earnestly, “you know that I come into Kaintuckee when it waren't nothin' but wilderness, and resked my life time and again. Them varmints is wuss'n redskins,—they've robbed me already of half my claims.”
“Robbed you!” I exclaimed, indignant that he, of all men, should suffer.
“Ay,” he said, “robbed me. They've took one claim after another, tracts that I staked out long afore they heerd of Kaintuckee.” He rubbed his rifle barrel with his buckskin sleeve. “I get a little for my skins, and a little by surveyin'. But when the game goes I reckon I'll go after it.”
“Where, Mr. Boone?” I asked.
“Whar? whar the varmints cyant foller. Acrost the Mississippi into the Spanish wilderness.”
“And leave Kentucky?” I cried.
“Davy,” he answered sadly, “you kin cope with 'em. They tell me you're buildin' a mill up at McChesney's, and I reckon you're as cute as any of 'em. They beat me. I'm good for nothin' but shootin' and explorin'.”
We stood silent for a while, our attention caught by a quarrel which had suddenly come out of the doorway. One of the men was Jim Willis,—my friend of Clark's campaign,—who had a Henderson claim near Shawanee Springs. The other was the hawk-eyed man of whom Mr. Boone had spoken, and fragments of their curses
“I was acrost the mountain last month,” said Mr. Boone, presently, “and one of them skunks had stole Campbell's silver spoons at Abingdon. Campbell was out arter him for a week with a coil of rope on his saddle. But the varmint got to cover.”
Mr. Boone wished me luck in my new enterprise, bade me good-by, and set out for Redstone, where he was to measure a tract for a Revolutioner. The speculator having been rescued from Jim Willis's clutches by the sheriff, the crowd good-naturedly helped us load our stones between pack-horses, and some of them followed us all the way home that they might see the grinding. Half of McAfee's new station had heard the news, and came over likewise. And from that day we ground as much corn as could be brought to us from miles around.
Polly Ann and I ran the mill and kept the accounts. Often of a crisp autumn morning we heard a gobble-gobble above the tumbling of the water and found a wild turkey perched on top of the hopper, eating his fill. Some of our meat we got that way. As for Tom, he was off and on. When the roving spirit seized him he made journeys to the westward with Cowan and Ray. Generally they returned with packs of skins. But sometimes soberly, thanking Heaven that their hair was left growing on their heads. This, and patrolling the Wilderness Road and other militia duties, made up Tom's life. No sooner was the mill fairly started than off he went to the Cumberland. I mention this, not alone because I remember well the day of his return, but because of a certain happening then that had a heavy influence on my after life.
The episode deals with an easy-mannered gentleman named Potts, who was the agent for a certain Major Colfax of Virginia. Tom owned under a Henderson grant; the Major had been given this and other lands for his services in the war. Mr. Potts arrived one rainy afternoon and found me standing alone under the little lean-to that covered the hopper. How we served him, with the aid of McCann and Cowan and other neighbors, and how we were near getting into trouble because of the prank, will be seen later. The next morning I rode into Harrodstown not wholly easy in my mind concerning the wisdom of the thing I had done. There was no one to advise me, for Colonel Clark was far away, building a fort on the banks of the Mississippi. Tom had laughed at the consequences; he cared little about his land, and was for moving into the Wilderness again. But for Polly Ann's sake I wished that we had treated the land agent less cavalierly. I was soon distracted from these thoughts by the sight of Harrodstown itself.
I had no sooner ridden out of the forest shade when I saw that the place was in an uproar, men and women gathering in groups and running here and there between the cabins. Urging on the mare, I cantered across the fields, and the first person I met was James Ray.
“What's the matter?” I asked.
“Matter enough! An army of redskins has crossed the Ohio, and not a man to take command. My God,” cried Ray, pointing angrily at the swarms about the land office, “what trash we have got this last year! Kentucky can go to the devil, half the stations be wiped out, and not a thrip do they care.”
“Have you sent word to the Colonel?” I asked.
“If he was here,” said Ray, bitterly, “he'd have half of 'em swinging inside of an hour. I'll warrant he'd send 'em to the right-about.”
I rode on into the town, Potts gone out of my mind. Apart from the land-office crowds, and looking on in silent rage, stood a group of the old settlers,—tall, lean, powerful, yet impotent for lack of a leader. A contrast
“By the eternal!” said Jack Terrell, “if the yea'th was ter swaller 'em up, they'd keep on a-dickerin in hell.”
“Something's got to be done,” Captain Harrod put in gloomily; “the red varmints 'll be on us in another day. In God's name, whar is Clark.
“Hold!” cried Fletcher Blount, “what s that?”
The broiling about the land court, too, was suddenly hushed. Men stopped in their tracks, staring fixedly at three forms which had come out of the woods into the clearing.
“Redskins, or there's no devil!” said Terrell.
Redskins they were, but not the blanketed kind that drifted every day through the station. Their war-paint gleamed in the light, and the white edges of the feathered head-dresses caught the sun. One held up in his right hand a white belt,—token of peace on the frontier.
“Lord A'mighty!” said Fletcher Blount, “be they “Chickasaws, by the headgear,” said Terrell. “Davy, you've got a hoss. Ride out and look em over.
Nothing loath, I put the mare into a gallop, and I passed over the very place where Polly Ann had picked me up and saved my life long since. The Indians came on at a dog trot, but when they were within fifty paces of me they halted abruptly. The chief waved the white belt around his head.
“Davy!” says he, and I trembled from head to foot. How well I knew that voice!
“Colonel Clark!” I cried, and rode up to him. “Thank God you are come, sir,” said I, “for the people here are land-mad, and the Northern Indians are crossing the Ohio.”
He took my bridle, and, leading the horse, began to walk rapidly towards the station.
“Ay,” he answered, “I know it. A runner came to
I glanced at my old friends, who grinned at me through the berry-stain on their faces. We reached a ditch through which the rain of the night before was draining from the fields Clark dropped the bridle, stooped down, and rubbed his face clean. Up he got again and flung the feathers from his head, and I thought that his eyes twinkled despite the sternness of his look.
“Davy, my lad,” said he, “you and I have seen some strange things together. Perchance we shall see stranger to-day.”
A shout went up, for he had been recognized. And Captain Harrod and Ray and Terrell and Cowan (who had just ridden in) ran up to greet him and press his hand. He called them each by name, these men whose loyalty had been proved, but said no word more nor paused in his stride until he had reached the edge of the mob about the land court. There he stood for a full minute, and we who knew him looked on silently and waited.
The turmoil had begun again, the speculators calling out in strident tones, the settlers bargaining and pushing, and all clamoring to be heard. While there was money to be made or land to be got they had no ear for the public weal. A man shouldered his way through, roughly, and they gave back, cursing, surprised. He reached the door, and, flinging those who blocked it right and left, entered. There he was recognized, and his name flew from mouth to mouth.
“Clark!”
He walked up to the table, strewn with books and deeds.
“Silence!” he thundered. But there was no need,— they were still for once. “This court is closed,” he cried “while Kentucky is in danger. Not a deed shall be signed nor an acre granted until I come back from the Ohio. Out you go!”
Out they went indeed, judge, brokers, speculators—
“Now,” he said, “there have been many to claim this land—who will follow me to defend it?”
As I live, they cheered him. Hands were flung up that were past counting, and men who were barely rested from the hardships of the Wilderness Trail shouted their readiness to go. But others slunk away, and were found that morning grumbling and cursing the chance that had brought them to Kentucky. Within the hour the news had spread to the farms, and men rode in to Harrodstown to tell the Colonel of many who were leaving the plough in the furrow and the axe in the wood, and starting off across the mountaills in anger and fear. The Colonel turned to me as he sat writing down the names of the volunteers.
“Davy,” said he, “when you are grown you shall not stay at home, I promise you. Take your mare and ride as for your life to McChesney, and tell him to choose ten men and go to the Crab Orchard on the Wilderness Road. Tell him for me to turn back every man, woman, and child who tries to leave Kentucky.”
I met Tom coming in from the field with his rawhide
harness over his shoulders. Polly Ann stood calling him
in the door, and the squirrel broth was steaming on the
table. He did not wait for it. Kissing her, he flung
himself into the saddle I had left, and we watched him
mutely as he waved back to us from the edge of the woods.
* * * * * * *
In the night I found myself sitting up in bed, listening to a running and stamping near the cabin.
Polly Ann was stirring. “Davy,” she whispered, “the stock is oneasy.”
We peered out of the loophole together and through the little orchard we had planted. The moon flooded the fields, and beyond it the forest was a dark blur. I can recall the scene now, the rude mill standing by the water-
What was there to do? McAfee's Station was four miles away, and Ray's clearing two. Ray was gone with Tom. I could not leave Polly Ann alone. There was nothing for it but to wait.
Silently, that the children might not be waked and lurking savage might not hear, we put the powder and bullets in the middle of the room and loaded the guns and pistols. For Polly Ann had learned to shoot. She took the loopholes of two sides of the cabin, I of the other two, and then began the fearful watching and waiting which the frontier knows so well. Suddenly the cattle stirred again, and stampeded to the other corner of the field. There came a whisper from Polly Ann.
“What is it?” I answered, running over to her.
“Look out,” she said; “what d'ye see near the mill?”
Her sharp eyes had not deceived her, for mine perceived plainly a dark form skulking in the hickory grove. Next, a movement behind the rail fence, and darting back to my side of the house I made out a long black body wriggling at the edge of the withered corn-patch. They were surrounding us. How I wished that Tom were home!
A stealthy sound began to intrude itself upon our ears. Listening intently, I thought it came from the side of the cabin where the lean-to was, where we stored our wood in winter. The black shadow fell on that side, and into a patch of bushes; peering out of the loophole, I could perceive nothing there. The noise went on at intervals. All at once there grew on me, with horror, the discovery that there was digging under the cabin.
How long the sound continued I know not,—it might have been an hour, it might have been less. Now I thought I heard it under the wall, now beneath the puncheons of the floor. The pitchy blackness within
There was no time to think; my great fear was that the devil in the cabin would kill Polly Ann. Just then I heard her calling out to me.
“Hide!” I cried, “hide under the shake-down! Has he got you?”
I heard her answer, and then the sound of a scuffle that maddened me. Knife in hand, I crept slowly about, and put my fingers on a man's neck and side. Next Polly Ann careened against me, and I lost him again. “Davy, Davy,” I heard her gasp, “look out fer the floor!”
It was too late. The puncheon rose under me, I stumbled, and it fell again. Once more the awful changing notes of the war-whoop sounded without. A body bumped on the boards, a white light rose before my eyes, and a sharp pain leaped in my side. Then all was black again, but I had my senses still, and my fingers closed around the knotted muscles of an arm. I thrust the pistol in my hand against flesh, and fired. Two of us fell together, but the thought of Polly Ann got me staggering to my feet again, calling her name. By the grace of God I heard her answer.
“Are ye hurt, Davy?”
“No,” said I, “no. And you?”
We drifted together. 'Twas she who had the presence of mind.
“The chest—quick, the chest!”
We stumbled over a body in reaching it. We seized the handles, and with all our strength hauled it athwart the loose puncheon that seemed to be lifting even then. A mighty splintering shook the door.
“To the ports!” cried Polly Ann, as our heads knocked together.
To find the rifles and prime them seemed to take an age. Next I was staring through the loophole along a barrel, and beyond it were three black forms in line on a long beam. I think we fired—Polly Ann and I—at the same time. One fell. We saw a comedy of the beam dropping heavily on the foot of another, and he limping off with a guttural howl of rage and pain. I fired a pistol at him, but missed him, and then I was ramming a powder charge down the long barrel of the rifle. Suddenly there was silence,—even the children had ceased crying. Outside, in the dooryard, a feathered figure writhed like a snake towards the fence. The moon still etched the picture in black and white.
Shots awoke me, I think, distant shots. And they sounded like the ripping and tearing of cloth for a wound. 'Twas no new sound to me.
“Davy, dear,” said a voice, tenderly.
Out of the mist the tear-stained face of Polly Ann bent over me. I put up my hand, and dropped it again with a cry. Then, my senses coming with a rush, the familiar objects of the cabin outlined themselves: Tom's winter hunting shirt, Polly Ann's woollen shift and sunbonnet on their pegs; the big stone chimney, the ladder to the loft, the closed door, with a long, jagged line across it where the wood was splintered; and, dearest of all, the chubby forms of Peggy and little Tom playing on the trundle-bed. Then my glance wandered to the floor, and on the puncheons were three stains. I closed my eyes.
Again came a far-off rattle, like stones falling from a great height down a rocky bluff.
“What's that?” I whispered.
“They're fighting at McAfee's Station,” said Polly Ann. She put her cool hand on my head, and little Tom climbed up on the bed and looked up into my face, wistfully calling my name.
“Oh, Davy,” said his mother, “I thought ye were never coming back.”
“And the redskins?” I asked.
She drew the child away, lest he hurt me, and shuddered.
“I reckon 'twas only a war-party,” she answered. “The rest is at McAfee's. And if they beat 'em off—” she stopped abruptly.
“We shall be saved,” I said.
I shall never forget that day. Polly Ann left my side only to feed the children and to keep watch out of the loopholes, and I lay on my back, listening and listening to the shots. At last these became scattered. Then, though we strained our ears, we heard them no more. Was the fort taken? The sun slid across the heavens and shot narrow blades of light, now through one loophole and now through another, until a ray slanted from the western wall and rested upon the red-and-black paint of two dead bodies in the corner. I stared with horror.
“I was afeard to open the door and throw 'em out,” said Polly Ann, apologetically.
Still I stared. One of them had a great cleft across his face.
“But I thought I hit him in the shoulder,” I exclaimed.
Polly Ann thrust her hand, gently, across my eyes. “Davy, ye mustn't talk,” she said; “that's a dear.”
Drowsiness seized me. But I resisted.
You killed him, Polly Ann,” I murmured, “you?”
“Hush,” said Polly Ann.
And I slept again.
2.2. CHAPTER II
"THE BEGGARS ARE COME TO TOWN"
“THEY was that destitute,” said Tom, “ 'twas a pity to see 'em.”
“And they be grand folks, ye say?” said Polly Ann.
“Grand folks, I reckon. And helpless as babes on the Wilderness Trail. They had two niggers—his nigger an' hers—and they was tuckered, too, fer a fact.
“Lawsy!” exclaimed Polly Ann. “Be still, honey!” Taking a piece of corn-pone from the cupboard, she bent over and thrust it between little Peggy's chubby fingers “Be still, honey, and listen to what your Pa says. Whar did ye find 'em, Tom?”
“ 'Twas Jim Ray found 'em,” said Tom. “We went up to Crab Orchard, accordin' to the Colonel's orders and we was thar three days. Ye ought to hev seen the trash we turned back, Polly Ann! Most of 'em was scared plum' crazy, and they was fer gittin 'out 'n Kaintuckee at any cost. Some was fer fightin' their way through us.”
“The skulks!” exclaimed Polly Ann. “They tried to kill ye? What did ye do?”
Tom grinned, his mouth full of bacon.
“Do?” says he; “we shot a couple of 'em in the legs and arms, and bound 'em up again. They was in a t'arin' rage. I'm more afeard of a scar't man,—a real scar't man—nor a rattler. They cussed us till they was hoarse. Said they'd hev us hung, an' Clark, too.
“An' what did ye say?” demanded Polly Ann, pausing in her work, her eyes flashing with resentment. “Did ye tell 'em they was cowards to want to settle lands, and not fight for 'em? Other folks' lands, too.”
“We didn't tell 'em nothin',” said Tom; “jest sent 'em kitin' back to the stations whar they come from.”
“I reckon they won't go foolin' with Clark's boys again,” said Polly Ann, resuming a vigorous rubbing of the skillet. “Ye was tellin' me about these fine folks ye fetched home.” She tossed her head in the direction of the open door, and I wondered if the fine folks were outside.
“Oh, ay,” said Tom, “they was comin' this way, from the Carolinys. Jim Ray went out to look for a deer, and found 'em off 'n the trail. By the etarnal, they *was tuckered. *He was the wust, Jim said, lyin' down on a bed of laurels she and the niggers made. She has sperrit, that woman. Jim fed him, and he got up. She wouldn't eat nothin', and made Jim put him on his hoss. She walked. I can't mek out why them aristocrats wants to come to Kaintuckee. They're a sight too tender.”
“Pore things!” said Polly Ann, compassionately. “So ye fetched 'em home.”
“They hadn't a place ter go,” said he, “and I reckoned 'twould give 'em time ter ketch breath, an' turn around. I told 'em livin' in Kaintuck was kinder rough.”
“Mercy!” said Polly Ann, “ter think that they was use' ter silver spoons, and linen, and niggers ter wait on 'em. Tom, ye must shoot a turkey, and I'll do my best to give 'em a good supper.” Tom rose obediently, and seized his coonskin hat. She stopped him with a word.
“Tom.”
“Ay?”
“Mayhap—mayhap Davy would know 'em. He's been to Charlestown with the gentry there.”
“Mayhap,” agreed Tom. “Pore little deevil,” said he, “he's hed a hard time.”
“He'll be right again soon,” said Polly Ann. “He's
“I reckon we owe Davy a heap, Polly Ann,” said he.
I was about to interrupt, but Polly Ann's next remark arrested me.
“Tom,” said she, “he oughter be eddicated.”
“Eddicated!” exclaimed Tom, with a kind of dismay.
“Yes, eddicated,” she repeated. “He ain't like you and me. He's different. He oughter be a lawyer, or somethin'.”
Tom reflected.
“Ay,” he answered, “the Colonel says that same thing. He oughter be sent over the mountain to git l'arnin'.”
“And we'll be missing him sore,” said Polly Ann, with a sigh.
I wanted to speak then, but the words would not come.
“Whar hev they gone?” said Tom.
“To take a walk,” said Polly Ann, and laughed. “The gentry has sech fancies as that. Tom, I reckon I'll fly over to Mrs. McCann's an' beg some of that prime bacon she has.”
Tom picked up his ride, and they went out together. I lay for a long time reflecting. To the strange guests whom Tom in the kindness of his heart had brought back and befriended I gave little attention. I was overwhelmed by the love which had just been revealed to me. And so I was to be educated. It had been in my mind these many years, but I had never spoken of it to Polly Ann. Dear Polly Ann! My eyes filled at the thought that she herself had determined upon this sacrifice.
There were footsteps at the door, and these I heard, and heeded not. Then there came a voice,—a woman's voice, modulated and trained in the perfections of speech and in the art of treating things lightly. At the sound of that voice I caught my breath.
“What a pastoral! Harry, if we have sought for virtue in the wilderness, we have found it.”
“When have we ever sought for virtue, Sarah?”
It was the man who answered and stirred another chord of my memory.
“When, indeed!” said the woman; “ 'tis a luxury that is denied us, I fear me.”
“Egad, we have run the gamut, all but that.”
I thought the woman sighed.
“Our hosts are gone out,” she said, “bless their simple souls! 'Tis Arcady, Harry, `where thieves do not break in and steal.' That's Biblical, isn't it?” She paused, and joined in the man's laugh. “I remember—” She stopped abruptly.
“Thieves!” said he, “not in our sense. And yet a fortnight ago this sylvan retreat was the scene of murder and sudden death.”
“Yes, Indians,” said the woman; “but they are beaten off and forgotten. Troubles do not last here. Did you see the boy? He's in there, in the corner, getting well of a fearful hacking. Mrs. McChesney says he saved her and her brats.”
“Ay, McChesney told me,” said the man. “Let's have a peep at him.”
In they came, and I looked on the woman, and would have leaped from my bed had the strength been in me. Superb she was, though her close-fitting travelling gown of green cloth was frayed and torn by the briers, and the beauty of her face enhanced by the marks of I know not what trials and emotions. Little, dark-pencilled lines under the eyes were nigh robbing these of the haughtiness I had once seen and hated. Set high on her hair was a curving, green hat with a feather, ill-suited to the wilderness.
I looked on the man. He was as ill-equipped as she. A London tailor must have cut his suit of gray. A single band of linen, soiled by the journey, was wound about his throat, and I remember oddly the buttons stuck on his knees and cuffs, and these silk-embroidered in a criss-cross pattern of lighter gray. Some had been torn off. As for
My thoughts flew back to that day long gone when a friendless boy rode up a long drive to a pillared mansion. I saw again the picture. The horse with the craning neck, the liveried servant at the bridle, the listless young gentleman with the shiny boots reclining on the horse-block, and above him, under the portico, the grand lady whose laugh had made me sad. And I remembered, too, the wild, neglected lad who had been to me as a brother, warm-hearted and generous, who had shared what he had with a foundling, who had wept with me in my first great sorrow. Where was he?
For I was face to face once more with Mrs. Temple and Mr. Harry Riddle!
The lady started as she gazed at me, and her tired eyes widened. She clutched Mr. Riddle's arm.
“Harry!” she cried, “Harry, he puts me in mind of— of some one—I cannot think.”
Mr. Riddle laughed nervously.
“There, there, Sally,” says he, “all brats resemble somebody. I have heard you say so a dozen times.”
She turned upon him an appealing glance.
“Oh!” she said, with a little catch of her breath, “is there no such thing as oblivion? Is there a place in the world that is not haunted? I am cursed with memory.”
“Or the lack of it,” answered Mr. Riddle, pulling out a silver snuff-box from his pocket and staring at it ruefully. “Damme, the snuff I fetched from Paris is gone, all but a pinch. Here is a real tragedy.”
“It was the same in Rome,” the lady continued, unheeding, “when we met the Izards, and at Venice that nasty Colonel Tarleton saw us at the opera. In London we must needs run into the Manners from Maryland. In Paris—”
“In Paris we were safe enough,” Mr. Riddle threw in hastily.
“And why?” she flashed back at him.
He did not answer that.
“A truce with your fancies, madam,” said he. “Behold a soul of good nature! I have followed you through half the civilized countries of the globe—none of them are good enough. You must needs cross the ocean again, and come to the wilds. We nearly die on the trail, are picked up by a Samaritan in buckskin and taken into the bosom of his worthy family. And forsooth, you look at a backwoods urchin, and are nigh to swooning.”
“Hush, Harry,” she cried, starting forward and peering into my face; “he will hear you.”
“Tut!” said Harry, “what if he does? London and Paris are words to him. We might as well be speaking French. And I'll take my oath he's sleeping.”
The corner where I lay was dark, for the cabin had no windows. And if my life had depended upon speaking, I could have found no fit words then.
She turned from me, and her mood changed swiftly. For she laughed lightly, musically, and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Perchance I am ghost-ridden,” she said.
“They are not ghosts of a past happiness, at all events,” he answered.
She sat down on a stool before the hearth, and clasping her fingers upon her knee looked thoughtfully into the embers of the fire. Presently she began to speak in a low, even voice, he looking down at her, his feet apart, his hand thrust backward towards the heat.
“Harry,” she said, “do you remember all our contrivances? How you used to hold my hand in the garden under the table, while I talked brazenly to Mr. Mason? And how jealous Jack Temple used to get?” She laughed again, softly, always looking at the fire.
“Damnably jealous!” agreed Mr. Riddle, and yawned. “Served him devilish right for marrying you. And he was a blind fool for five long years.”
“Yes, blind,” the lady agreed. “How could he have been so blind? How well I recall the day he rode after us in the woods.”
“ 'Twas the parson told, curse him!” said Mr. Riddle.
“We should have gone that night, if your courage had held.”
“My courage!” she cried, flashing a look upwards, “my foresight. A pretty mess we had made of it without my inheritance. 'Tis small enough, the Lord knows. In Europe we should have been dregs. We should have starved in the wilderness with you a-farming.”
He looked down at her curiously.
“Devilish queer talk,” said he, “but while we are in it, I wonder where Temple is now. He got aboard the King's frigate with a price on his head. Williams told me he saw him in London, at White's. Have—have you ever heard, Sarah?”
She shook her head, her glance returning to the ashes.
“No,” she answered.
“Faith,” says Mr. Riddle, “he'll scarce turn up here.”
She did not answer that, but sat motionless.
“He'll scarce turn up here, in these wilds,” Mr. Riddle repeated, “and what I am wondering, Sarah, is how the devil we are to live here.”
“How do these good people live, who helped us when we were starving?”
Mr. Riddle flung his hand eloquently around the cabin. There was something of disgust in the gesture.
“You see!” he said, “love in a cottage.”
“But it is love,” said the lady, in a low tone.
He broke into laughter.
“Sally,” he cried, “I have visions of you gracing the board at which we sat to-day, patting journey-cakes on the hearth, stewing squirrel broth with the same pride that you once planned a rout. Cleaning the pots and pans, and standing anxious at the doorway staring through a sunbonnet for your lord and master.”
“My lord and master!” said the lady, and there was so much of scorn in the words that Mr. Riddle winced.
“Come,” he said, “I grant now that you could make pans shine like pier-glasses, that you could cook bacon to a turn—although I would have laid an hundred guineas against it some years ago. What then? Are you to be
She shook her head, sadly.
“It's no use, Harry,” said she, “we'll never be rid of regrets.”
“We'll never have a barony like Temple Bow, and races every week, and gentry round about. But, damn it, the Rebels have spoiled all that since the war.”
“Those are not the regrets I mean,” answered Mrs. Temple.
“What then, in Heaven's name?” he cried. “You were not wont to be thus. But now I vow you go beyond me. What then?”
She did not answer, but sat leaning forward over the hearth, he staring at her in angry perplexity. A sound broke the afternoon stillness,—the pattering of small, bare feet on the puncheons. A tremor shook the woman's shoulders, and little Tom stood before her, a quaint figure in a butternut smock, his blue eyes questioning. He laid a hand on her arm.
Then a strange thing happened. With a sudden impulse she turned and flung her arms about the boy and strained him to her, and kissed his brown hair. He struggled, but when she released him he sat very still on her knee, looking into her face. For he was a solemn child. The lady smiled at him, and there were two splashes like raindrops on her fair cheeks.
As for Mr. Riddle, he went to the door, looked out, and took a last pinch of snuff.
“Here is the mistress of the house coming back,” he cried, “and singing like the shepherdess in the opera.”
It was Polly Ann indeed. At the sound of his mother's voice, little Tom jumped down from the lady's lap and
“And what is that you have under your arm?” said Mr. Riddle, as he gave back.
“I've fetched some prime bacon fer your supper, sir,” said Polly Ann, all rosy from her walk; “what I have ain't fit to give ye.”
Mrs. Temple rose.
“My dear,” she said, “what you have is too good for us. And if you do such a thing again, I shall be very angry.
“Lord, ma'am,” exclaimed Polly Ann, “and you use' ter dainties an' silver an' linen! Tom is gone to try to git a turkey for ye.” She paused, and looked compassionately at the lady. “Bless ye, ma'am, ye're that tuckered from the mountains! 'Tis a fearsome journey.”
“Yes,” said the lady, simply, “I am tired.”
“Small wonder!” exclaimed Polly Ann. “To think what ye've been through—yere husband near to dyin' afore yere eyes, and ye a-reskin' yere own life to save him —so Tom tells me. When Tom goes out a-fightin' red-skins I'm that fidgety I can't set still. I wouldn't let him know what I feel fer the world. But well ye know the pain of it, who love yere husband like that.”
The lady would have smiled bravely, had the strength been given her. She tried. And then, with a shudder, she hid her face in her hands.
“Oh, don't!” she exclaimed, “don't!”
Mr. Riddle went out.
“There, there, ma'am,” she said, “I hedn't no right ter speak, and ye fair worn out.” She drew her gently into a chair. “Set down, ma'am, and don't ye stir tell supper's ready.” She brushed her eyes with her sleeve, and, stepping briskly to my bed, bent over me. “Davy,” she said, “Davy, how be ye?”
“Davy!”
It was the lady's voice. She stood facing us, and never while I live shall I forget that which I saw in her eyes. Some resemblance it bore to the look of the hunted deer,
“Yes,” I answered, “I am David Ritchie.
“You—you dare to judge me!” she cried.
I knew not why she said this.
“To judge you?” I repeated.
“Yes, to judge me,” she answered. “I know you, David Ritchie, and the blood that runs in you. Your mother was a foolish—saint” (she laughed), “who lifted her eyebrows when I married her brother, John Temple. That was her condemnation of me, and it stung me more than had a thousand sermons. A doting saint, because she followed your father into the mountain wilds to her death for a whim of his. And your father. A Calvinist fanatic who had no mercy on sin, save for that particular weakness of his own
“Stop, Mrs. Temple!” I cried, lifting up in bed. And to my astonishment she was silenced, looking at me in amazement. “You had your vengeance when I came to you, when you turned from me with a lift of your shoulders at the news of my father's death. And now—”
“And now?” she repeated questioningly.
“Now I thought you were changed, I said slowly, for the excitement was telling on me.
“You listened!” she said.
“I pitied you.”
“Oh, pity!” she cried. “My God, that you should pity me!” She straightened, and summoned all the spirit that was in her. “I would rather be called a name than have the pity of you and yours.”
“You cannot change it, Mrs. Temple,” I answered, and
fell back on the nettle-bark sheets. “You cannot change
it,” I heard myself repeating, as though it were another's
voice. And I knew that Polly Ann was bending over me
and calling me.
* * * * * * * *
“Where did they go, Polly Ann?” I asked.
“Acrost the Mississippi, to the lands of the Spanish King,” said Polly Ann.
“And where in those dominions?” I demanded.
“John Saunders took 'em as far as the Falls,” Polly Ann answered. “He 'lowed they was goin' to St. Louis. But they never said a word. I reckon they'll be hunted as long as they live.”
I had thought of them much as I lay on my back recovering from the fever,—the fever for which Mrs. Temple was to blame. Yet I bore her no malice. And many other thoughts I had, probing back into childhood memories for the solving of problems there.
“I knowed ye come of gentlefolks, Davy,” Polly Ann had said when we talked together.
So I was first cousin to Nick, and nephew to that selfish gentleman, Mr. Temple, in whose affectionate care I had been left in Charlestown by my father. And my father? Who had he been? I remembered the speech that he had used and taught me, and how his neighbors had dubbed him “aristocrat.” But Mrs. Temple was gone, and it was not in likelihood that I should ever see her more.
2.3. CHAPTER III
WE GO TO DANVILLE
Two years went by, two uneventful years for me, two mighty years for Kentucky. Westward rolled the tide of emigrants to change her character, but to swell her power. Towns and settlements sprang up in a season and flourished, and a man could scarce keep pace with the growth of them. Doctors came, and ministers, and lawyers; generals and majors, and captains and subalterns of the Revolution, to till their grants and to found families. There were gentry, too, from the tide-waters, come to retrieve the fortunes which they had lost by their patriotism. There were storekeepers like Mr. Scarlett, adventurers and ne'er-do-weels who hoped to start with a clean slate, and a host of lazy vagrants who thought to scratch the soil and find abundance.
I must not forget how, at the age of seventeen, I became a landowner, thanks to my name being on the roll of Colonel Clark's regiment. For, in a spirit of munificence, the Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia had awarded to every private in that regiment one hundred and eight acres of land on the Ohio River, north of the Falls. Sergeant Thomas McChesney, as a reward for his services in one of the severest campaigns in history, received a grant of two hundred and sixteen acres! You who will may look at the plat made by William Clark, Surveyor for the Board of Commissioners, and find sixteen acres marked for Thomas McChesney in Section 169, and two hundred more in Section 3. Section 3 fronted the Ohio some distance above Bear Grass Creek, and was, of course,
I mention these things as bearing on the story of my life, with which I must get on. And, therefore, I may not dwell upon this injustice to the men who won an empire and were flung a bone long afterwards.
It was early autumn once more, and such a busy week we had had at the mill, that Tom was perforce obliged to remain at home and help, though he longed to be gone with Cowan and Ray a-hunting to the southwest. Up rides a man named Jarrott, flings himself from his horse, passes the time of day as he watches the grinding, helps Tom to tie up a sack or two, and hands him a paper.
“What's this?” says Tom, staring at it blankly.
“Ye won't blame me, Mac,” answers Mr. Jarrott, somewhat ashamed of his rôle of process-server. “ 'Tain't none of my doin's.”
“Read it, Davy,” said Tom, giving it to me.
I stopped the mill, and, unfolding the paper, read. I remember not the quaint wording of it, save that it was ill-spelled and ill-writ generally. In short, it was a summons for Tom to appear before the court at Danville on a certain day in the following week, and I made out that a Mr. Neville Colfax was the plaintiff in the matter, and that the suit had to do with land.
“Neville Colfax!” I exclaimed, “that's the man for whom Mr. Potts was agent.”
“Ay, ay,” said Tom, and sat him down on the meal-bags. “Drat the varmint, he kin hev the land.”
“Hev the land?” cried Polly Ann, who had come in upon us. “Hev ye no sperrit, Tom McChesney?”
“There's no chance ag'in the law,” said Tom, hopelessly. “Thar's Perkins had his land tuck away last year, and Terrell's moved out, and twenty more I could name. And thar's Dan'l Boone, himself. Most the rich bottom he tuck up the critters hev got away from him.”
“Ye'll go to Danville and take Davy with ye and fight
Mr. Jarrott applauded her courage.
“Ye have the grit, ma'am,” he said, as he mounted his horse again. “Here's luck to ye!”
The remembrance of Mr. Potts weighed heavily upon my mind during the next week. Perchance Tom would have to pay for this prank likewise. 'Twas indeed a foolish, childish thing to have done, and I might have known that it would only have put off the evil day of reckoning. Since then, by reason of the mill site and the business we got by it, the land had become the most valuable in that part of the country. Had I known Colonel Clark's whereabouts, I should have gone to him for advice and comfort. As it was, we were forced to await the issue without counsel. Polly Ann and I talked it over many times while Tom sat, morose and silent, in a corner. He was the pioneer pure and simple, afraid of no man, red or white, in open combat, but defenceless in such matters as this.
“ 'Tis Davy will save us, Tom,” said Polly Ann, “with the l'arnin' he's got while the corn was grindin'.”
I had, indeed, been reading at the mill while the hopper emptied itself, such odd books as drifted into Harrodstown. One of these was called “Bacon's Abridgment”; it dealt with law and it puzzled me sorely.
“And the children,” Polly Ann continued,—“ye'll not make me pick up the four of 'em, and pack it to Louisiana, because Mr. Colfax wants the land we've made for ourselves.”
There were four of them now, indeed,—the youngest still in the bark cradle in the corner. He bore a no less illustrious name than that of the writer of these chronicles.
It would be hard to say which was the more troubled, Tom or I, that windy morning we set out on the Danville trace. Polly Ann alone had been serene,—ay, and smiling and hopeful. She had kissed us each good-by impartially. And we left her, with a future governor of
When the forest was cleared at Danville, Justice was housed first. She was not the serene, inexorable dame whom we have seen in pictures holding her scales above the jars of earth. Justice at Danville was a somewhat high-spirited, quarrelsome lady who decided matters oftenest with the stroke of a sword. There was a certain dignity about her temple withal,—for instance, if a judge wore linen, that linen must not be soiled. Nor was it etiquette for a judge to lay his own hands in chastisement on contemptuous persons, though Justice at Danville had more compassion than her sisters in older communities upon human failings.
There was a temple built to her “of hewed or sawed logs nine inches thick”—so said the specifications. Within the temple was a rude platform which served as a bar, and since Justice is supposed to carry a torch in her hand, there were no windows,—nor any windows in the jail next door, where some dozen offenders languished on the afternoon that Tom and I rode into town.
There was nothing auspicious in the appearance of Danville, and no man might have said then that the place was to be the scene of portentous conventions which were to decide the destiny of a State. Here was a sprinkling of log cabins, some in the building, and an inn, by courtesy so called. Tom and I would have preferred to sleep in the woods near by, with our feet to the blaze; this was partly from motives of economy, and partly because Tom, in common with other pioneers, held an inn in contempt. But to come back to our arrival.
It was a sunny and windy afternoon, and the leaves were flying in the air. Around the court-house was a familiar, buzzing scene,—the backwoodsmen, lounging against the wall or brawling over their claims, the sleek agents and attorneys, and half a dozen of a newer type. These were adventurous young gentlemen of family, some of them lawyers and some of them late officers in the Continental army who had been rewarded with grants of land.
“Thar's Mac,” cried a backwoodsman who was sitting on the court-house steps as we rode up. “Howdy, Mac; be they tryin' to git your land, too?”
“Howdy, Mac,” said a dozen more, paying a tribute to Tom's popularity. And some of them greeted me.
“Is this whar they take a man's land away?” says Tom, jerking his thumb at the open door.
Tom had no intention of uttering a witticism, but his words were followed by loud guffaws from all sides, even the lawyers joining in.
“I reckon this is the place, Tom,” came the answer.
“I reckon I'll take a peep in thar,” said Tom, leaping off his horse and shouldering his way to the door. I followed him, curious. The building was half full. Two elderly gentlemen of grave demeanor sat on stools behind a puncheon table, and near them a young man was writing. Behind the young man was a young gentleman who was closing a speech as we entered, and he had spoken with such vehemence that the perspiration stood out on his brow. There was a murmur from those listening, and I saw Tom pressing his way to the front.
“Hev any of ye seen a feller named Colfax?” cries Tom, in a loud voice. “He says he owns the land I settled, and he ain't ever seed it.”
There was a roar of laughter, and even the judges smiled.
“Whar is he?” cries Tom; “said he'd be here to-day.”
Another gust of laughter drowned his words, and then one of the judges got up and rapped on the table. The gentleman who had just made the speech glared mightily, and I supposed he had lost the effect of it.
“What do you mean by interrupting the court?” cried the judge. “Get out, sir, or I'll have you fined for contempt.”
Tom looked dazed. But at that moment a hand was laid on his shoulder, and Tom turned.
“Why,” says he, “thar's no devil if it ain't the Colonel. Polly Ann told me not to let 'em scar' me, Colonel.”
“And quite right, Tom,” Colonel Clark answered, smiling. He turned to the judges. “If your Honors please,” said he, “this gentleman is an old soldier of mine, and unused to the ways of court. I beg your Honors to excuse him.”
The judges smiled back, and the Colonel led us out of the building.
“Now, Tom,” said he, after he had given me a nod and a kind word, “I know this Mr. Colfax, and if you will come into the tavern this evening after court, we'll see what can be done. I have a case of my own at present.”
Tom was very grateful. He spent the remainder of the daylight hours with other friends of his, shooting at a mark near by, serenely confident of the result of his case now that Colonel Clark had a hand in it. Tom being one of the best shots in Kentucky, he had won two beaver skins before the early autumn twilight fell. As for me, I had an afternoon of excitement in the court, fascinated by the marvels of its procedures, by the impassioned speeches of its advocates, by the gravity of its judges. Ambition stirred within me.
The big room of the tavern was filled with men in heated talk over the day's doings, some calling out for black betty, some for rum, and some demanding apple toddies. The landlord's slovenly negro came in with candles, their feeble rays reënforcing the firelight and revealing the mud-chinked walls. Tom and I had barely sat ourselves down at a table in a corner, when in came Colonel Clark. Beside him was a certain swarthy gentleman whom I had noticed in the court, a man of some thirty-five years, with a fine, fleshy face and coal-black hair. His expression was not one to give us the hope of an amicable settlement,—in fact, he had the scowl of a thundercloud. He was talking quite angrily, and seemed not to heed those around him.
“Why the devil should I see the man, Clark?” he was saying.
The Colonel did not answer until they had stopped in front of us.
“Major Colfax,” said he, “this is Sergeant Tom McChesney, one of the best friends I have in Kentucky. I think a vast deal of Tom, Major. He was one of the few that never failed me in the Illinois campaign. He is as honest as the day; you will find him plain-spoken if he speaks at all, and I have great hopes that you will agree. Tom, the Major and I are boyhood friends, and for the sake of that friendship he has consented to this meeting.”
“I fear that your kind efforts will be useless, Colonel,” Major Colfax put in, rather tartly. “Mr. McChesney not only ignores my rights, but was near to hanging my agent.”
“What?” says Colonel Clark.
I glanced at Tom. However helpless he might be in a court, he could be counted on to stand up stanchly in a personal argument. His retorts would certainly not be brilliant, but they surely would be dogged. Major Colfax had begun wrong.
“I reckon ye've got no rights that I know on,” said Tom. “I cleart the land and settled it, and I have a better right to it nor any man. And I've got a grant fer it.”
“A Henderson grant!” cried the Major; “ 'tis so much worthless paper.”
“I reckon it's good enough fer me,” answered Tom. “It come from those who blazed their way out here and druv the redskins off. I don't know nothin' about this newfangled law, but 'tis a queer thing to my thinkin' if them that fit fer a place ain't got the fust right to it.”
Major Colfax turned to Colonel Clark with marked impatience.
“I told you it would be useless, Clark,” said he. “I care not a fig for a few paltry acres, and as God hears me I'm a reasonable man.” (He did not look it then.) “But I swear by the evangels I'll let no squatter have the better of me. I did not serve Virginia for gold or land, but I lost my fortune in that service, and before I know it these backwoodsmen will have every acre of my grant.
This remark brought me near to an untimely laugh at the remembrance of Mr. Potts, and this though I was far too sober over the outcome of the conference. Colonel Clark seized hold of a chair and pushed it under Major Colfax.
“Sit down, gentlemen, we are not so far apart,” said the Colonel, coolly. The slovenly negro lad passing at that time, he caught him by the sleeve. “Here, boy, a bowl of toddy, quick. And mind you brew it strong. Now, Tom,” said he, “what is this fine tale about a hanging?”
“ 'Twan't nothin',” said Tom.
“You tell me you didn't try to hang Mr. Potts!” cried Major Colfax.
“I tell you nothin',” said Tom, and his jaw was set more stubbornly than ever.
Major Colfax glanced at Colonel Clark.
“You see!” he said a little triumphantly.
I could hold my tongue no longer.
“Major Colfax is unjust, sir,” I cried. “ 'Twas Tom saved the man from hanging.”
“Eh?” says Colonel Clark, turning to me sharply. “So you had a hand in this, Davy. I might have guessed as much.”
“Who the devil is this?” says Mr. Colfax.
“A sort of ward of mine,” answers the Colonel. “Drummer boy, financier, strategist, in my Illinois campaign. Allow me to present to you, Major, Mr. David
“God bless my soul!” exclaimed the Major, staring at me from under his black eyebrows, “he was but a child.”
“With an old head on his shoulders,” said the Colonel, and his banter made me flush.
The negro boy arriving with the toddy, Colonel Clark served out three generous gourdfuls, a smaller one for me. “Your health, my friends, and I drink to a peaceful settlement.”
“You may drink to the devil if you like,” says Major Colfax, glaring at Tom.
“Come, Davy,” said Colonel Clark, when he had taken half the gourd, “let's have the tale. I'll warrant you're behind this.”
I flushed again, and began by stammering. For I had a great fear that Major Colfax's temper would fly into bits when he heard it.
“Well, sir,” said I, “I was grinding corn at the mill when the man came. I thought him a smooth-mannered person, and he did not give his business. He was just for wheedling me. `And was this McChesney's mill?' said he. `Ay,' said I. `Thomas McChesney?' `Ay,' said I. Then he was all for praise of Thomas McChesney. `Where is he?' said he. `He is at the far pasture,' said I,' and may be looked for any moment.' Whereupon he sits down and tries to worm out of me the business of the mill, the yield of the land. After that he begins to talk about the great people he knows, Sevier and Shelby and Robertson and Boone and the like. Ay, and his intimates, the Randolphs and the Popes and the Colfaxes in Virginia. 'Twas then I asked him if he knew Colonel Campbell of Abingdon.”
“And what deviltry was that?” demanded the Colonel, as he dipped himself more of the toddy.
“I'll come to it, sir. Yes, Colonel Campbell was his intimate, and ranted if he did not tarry a week with him
“By the eternal!” cried Colonel Clark, bringing down his fist upon the table. “And what then?”
I glanced at Major Colfax, but for the life of me I could make nothing of his look.
“And what did your man say?” said Colonel Clark.
“He called on the devil to bite me, sir,” I answered. The Colonel put down his gourd and began to laugh. The Major was looking at me fixedly.
“And what then?” said the Colonel.
“It was then Polly Ann called him a thief to take away the land Tom had fought for and paid for and tilled. The man was all politeness once more, said that the matter was unfortunate, and that a new and good title might be had for a few skins.”
“He said that?” interrupted Major Colfax, half rising in his chair. “He was a damned scoundrel.”
“So I thought, sir,” I answered.
“The devil you did!” said the Major.
“Tut, Colfax,” said the Colonel, pulling him by the sleeve of his greatcoat, “sit down and let the lad finish. And then?”
“Mr. Boone had told me of a land agent who had made off with Colonel Campbell's silver spoons from Abingdon, and how the Colonel had ridden east and west after him for a week with a rope hanging on his saddle. I began to tell this story, and instead of the description of Mr. Boone's man, I put in that of Mr. Potts,—in height some five feet nine, spare, of sallow complexion and a green greatcoat.
Major Colfax leaped up in his chair.
“Great Jehovah!” he shouted, “you described the wrong man.”
Colonel Clark roared with laughter, thereby spilling some of his toddy.
“I'll warrant he did so,” he cried; “and I'll warrant your agent went white as birch bark. Go on, Davy.”
“There's not a great deal more, sir,” I answered, looking apprehensively at Major Colfax, who still stood. “The man vowed I lied, but Tom laid hold of him and was for hurrying him off to Harrodstown at once.”
“Which would ill have suited your purpose,” put in the Colonel. “And what did you do with him?”
“We put him in a loft, sir, and then I told Tom that he was not Campbell's thief at all. But I had a craving to scare the man out of Kentucky. So I rode off to the neighbors and gave them the tale, and bade them come after nightfall as though to hang Campbell's thief, which they did, and they were near to smashing the door trying to get in the cabin. Tom told them the rascal had escaped, but they must needs come in and have jigs and toddies until midnight. When they were gone, and we called down the man from the loft, he was in such a state that he could scarce find the rungs of the ladder with his feet. He rode away into the night, and that was the last we heard of him. Tom was not to blame, sir.”
Colonel Clark was speechless. And when for the moment he would conquer his mirth, a glance at Major Colfax would set him off again in laughter. I was puzzled. I thought my Colonel more human than of old.
“How now, Colfax?” he cried, giving a poke to the Major's ribs; “you hold the sequel to this farce.”
The Major's face was purple,—with what emotion I could not say. Suddenly he swung full at me.
“Do you mean to tell me that you were the general of this hoax—you?” he demanded in a strange voice.
“The thing seemed an injustice to me, sir,” I replied in self-defence, “and the man a rascal.”
“A rascal!” cried the Major, “a knave, a poltroon, a simpleton! And he came to me with no tale of having
“McChesney,” said he, “we'll have no bickerings in court among soldiers. The land is yours, and to-morrow my attorney shall give you a deed of it. Your hand, McChesney.”
The stubbornness vanished from Tom's face, and there came instead a dazed expression as he thrust a great, hard hand into the Major's.
“ 'Twan't the land, sir,” he stammered; “these varmints of settlers is gittin' thick as flies in July. 'Twas Polly Ann. I reckon I'm obleeged to ye, Major.”
“There, there,” said the Major, “I thank the Lord I came to Kentucky to see for myself. Damn the land. I have plenty more,—and little else.” He turned quizzically to Colonel Clark, revealing a line of strong, white teeth. “Suppose we drink a health to your drummer boy,” said he, lifting up his gourd.
2.4. CHAPTER IV
I CROSS THE MOUNTAINS ONCE MORE
“ 'TIS what ye've a right to, Davy,” said Polly Ann, and she handed me a little buckskin bag on which she had been sewing. I opened it with trembling fingers, and poured out, chinking on the table, such a motley collection of coins as was never seen,—Spanish milled dollars, English sovereigns and crowns and shillings, paper issues of the Confederacy, and I know not what else. Tom looked on with a grin, while little Tom and Peggy reached out their hands in delight, their mother vigorously blocking their intentions.
“Ye've earned it yerself,” said Polly Ann, forestalling my protest; “ 'tis what ye got by the mill, and I've laid it by bit by bit for yer eddication.”
“And what do you get?” I cried, striving by feigned anger to keep the tears back from my eyes. “Have you no family to support?”
“Faith,” she answered, “we have the mill that ye gave us, and the farm, and Tom's rifle. I reckon we'll fare better than ye think, tho' we'll miss ye sore about the place.”
I picked out two sovereigns from the heap, dropped them in the bag, and thrust it into my hunting shirt.
“There,” said I, my voice having no great steadiness, “not a penny more. I'll keep the bag for your sake, Polly Ann, and I'll take the mare for Tom's.”
She had had a song on her lips ever since our coming back from Danville, seven days agone, a song on her lips and banter on her tongue, as she made me a new hunting shirt and breeches for the journey across the mountains.
“Oh, Davy, 'tis no time to be stubborn,” she sobbed, “and eddication is a costly thing. Ever sence I found ye on the trace, years ago, I've thought of ye one day as a great man. And when ye come back to us so big and l'arned, I'd wish to be saying with pride that I helped ye.”
“And who else, Polly Ann?” I faltered, my heart racked with the parting. “You found me a homeless waif, and you gave me a home and a father and mother.”
“Davy, ye'll not forget us when ye're great, I know ye'll not. Tis not in ye.”
She stood back and smiled at me through her tears. The light of heaven was in that smile, and I have dreamed of it even since age has crept upon me. Truly, God sets his own mark on the pure in heart, on the unselfish.
I glanced for the last time around the rude cabin, every timber of which was dedicated to our sacrifices and our love: the fireplace with its rough stones, on the pegs the quaint butternut garments which Polly Ann had stitched, the baby in his bark cradle, the rough bedstead and the little trundle pushed under it,—and the very homely odor of the place is dear to me yet. Despite the rigors and the dangers of my life here, should I ever again find such happiness and peace in the world? The children clung to my knees; and with a “God bless ye, Davy, and come back to us,” Tom squeezed my hand until I winced with pain. I leaped on the mare, and with blinded eyes rode down the familiar trail, past the mill, to Harrodsburg.
There Mr. Neville Colfax was waiting to take me across the mountains.
There is a story in every man's life, like the kernel in the shell of a hickory nut. I am ill acquainted with the arts of a biographer, but I seek to give in these pages little of the shell and the whole of the kernel of mine. 'Twould be unwise and tiresome to recount the journey
And how had he come to take me over the mountains, and to put me in the way of studying law? Mindful of the kernel of my story, I have shortened the chapter to tell you out of the proper place. Major Colfax had made and me sup with himself and Colonel Clark at the inn in Danville. And so pleased had the Major professed himself with my story of having outwitted his agent, that he must needs have more of my adventures. Colonel Clark gave him some, and Tom,—his tongue loosed by the toddy,—others. And the Colonel added to the debt I owed him by suggesting that Major Colfax take me to Virginia and recommend me to a lawyer there.
“Nay,” cried the Major, “I will do more. I like the lad, for he is modest despite the way you have paraded him. I have an uncle in Richmond, Judge Wentworth, to whom I will take him in person. And when the Judge has done with him, if he is not flayed and tattooed with Blackstone, you may flay and tattoo me.”
Thus did I break through my environment. And it was settled that I should meet the Major in seven days at Harrodstown.
Once in the journey did the Major make mention of a subject which had troubled me.
“Davy,” said he, “Clark has changed. He is not the same man he was when I saw him in Williamsburg demanding supplies for his campaign.”
“Virginia has used him shamefully, sir,” I answered,
“Commonwealths have short memories,” said the Major, “they will accept any sacrifice with a smile. Shakespeare, I believe, speaks of royal ingratitude—he knew not commonwealths. Clark was close-lipped once, not given to levity and—to toddy. There, there, he is my friend as well as yours, and I will prove it by pushing his cause in Virginia. Is yours Scotch anger? Then the devil fend me from it. A monarch would have given him fifty thousand acres on the Wabash, a palace, and a sufficient annuity. Virginia has given him a sword, eight thousand wild acres to be sure, repudiated the debts of his army, and left him to starve. Is there no room for a genius in our infant military establishment?”
At length, as Christmas drew near, we came to Major Colfax's seat, some forty miles out of the town of Richmond. It was called Neville's Grange, the Major's grandfather having so named it when he came out from England some sixty years before. It was a huge, rambling, draughty house of wood,—mortgaged, so the Major cheerfully informed me, thanks to the patriotism of the family. At Neville's Grange the Major kept a somewhat roisterous bachelor's hall. The place was overrun with negroes and dogs, and scarce a night went by that there was not merrymaking in the house with the neighbors. The time passed pleasantly enough until one frosty January morning Major Colfax had a twinge of remembrance, cried out for horses, took me into Richmond, and presented me to that very learned and decorous gentleman, Judge Wentworth.
My studies began within the hour of my arrival.
2.5. CHAPTER V
I MEET AN OLD BEDFELLOW
I SHALL burden no one with the dry chronicles of a law office. The acquirement of learning is a slow process in life, and perchance a slower one in the telling. I lacked not application during the three years of my stay in Richmond, and to earn my living I worked at such odd tasks as came my way.
The Judge resembled Major Colfax in but one trait: he was choleric. But he was painstaking and cautious, and I soon found out that he looked askance upon any one whom his nephew might recommend. He liked the Major, but he vowed him to be a roisterer and spendthrift, and one day, some months after my advent, the Judge asked me flatly how I came to fall in with Major Colfax. I told him. At the end of this conversation he took my breath away by bidding me come to live with him. Like many lawyers of that time, he had a little house in one corner of his grounds for his office. It stood under great spreading trees, and there I was wont to sit through many a summer day wrestling with the authorities. In the evenings we would have political arguments, for the Confederacy was in a seething state between the Federalists and the Republicans over the new Constitution, now ratified. Between the Federalists and the Jacobins, I would better say, for the virulence of the French Revolution was soon to be reflected among the parties on our side. Kentucky, swelled into an unmanageable territory, was come near to rebellion because the government was not strong enough to wrest from Spain the free navigation of the Mississippi.
And yet I yearned to go back, and looked forward eagerly to the time when I should have stored enough in my head to gain admission to the bar. I was therefore greatly embarrassed, when my examinations came, by an offer from Judge Wentworth to stay in Richmond and help him with his practice. It was an offer not to be lightly set aside, and yet I had made up my mind. He flew into a passion because of my desire to return to a wild country of outlaws and vagabonds.
“Why, damme,” he cried, “Kentucky and this pretty State of Franklin which desired to chip off from North Carolina are traitorous places. Disloyal to Congress! Intriguing with a Spanish minister and the Spanish governor of Louisiana to secede from their own people and join the King of Spain. Bah!” he exclaimed, “if our new Federal Constitution is adopted I would hang Jack Sevier of Franklin and your Kentuckian Wilkinson to the highest trees west of the mountains.”
I can see the little gentleman as he spoke, his black broadcloth coat and lace ruffles, his hand clutching the gold head of his cane, his face screwed up with indignation under his white wig. It was on a Sunday, and he was standing by the lilac bushes on the lawn in front of his square brick house.
“David,” said he, more calmly, “I trust I have taught you something besides the law. I trust I have taught you that a strong Federal government alone will be the salvation of our country.”
“You cannot blame Kentucky greatly, sir,” said I, feeling that I must stand up for my friends. “The Federal government has done little enough for its people, and treated them to a deal of neglect. They won that western country for themselves with no Federal nor Virginia or North Carolina troops to help them. No man east of the mountains knows what that fight has been. No man east of the mountains knows the horror of that Indian warfare. This government gives them no protection now. Nay, Congress cannot even procure for them an outlet for their commerce. They must trade or perish.
The Judge stared at me aghast. It was the first time I had dared oppose him on this subject
“What,” he sputtered, “what? You are a Separatist, —you whom I have received into the bosom of my family!” Seizing the cane at the middle, he brandished it in my face.
“Don't misunderstand me, sir,” said I. “You have given me books to read, and have taught me what may be the destiny of our nation on this continent. But you must forgive a people whose lives have been spent in a fierce struggle for their homes, whose families have nearly all lost some member by massacre, who are separated by hundreds of miles of wilderness from you.”
He looked at me speechless, and turned and walked into the house. I thought I had sinned past forgiveness, and I was beyond description uncomfortable, for he had been like a parent to me. But the next morning, at half after seven, he walked into the little office and laid down some gold pieces on my table. Gold was very scarce in those days.
“They are for your journey, David,” said he. “My only comfort in your going back is that you may grow up to put some temperance into their wild heads. I have a commission for you at Jonesboro, in what was once the unspeakable State of Franklin. You can stop there on your way to Kentucky.” He drew from his pocket a great bulky letter, addressed to “Thomas Wright, Esquire, Barrister-at-law in Jonesboro, North Carolina.” For the good gentleman could not bring himself to write Franklin.
It was late in September of the year 1788 when I set out on my homeward way—for Kentucky was home to me. I was going back to Polly Ann and Tom, and visions of that home-coming rose before my eyes as I rode. In a packet in my saddle-bags were some dozen letters which Mr. Wrenn, the schoolmaster at Harrodstown, had writ
I have often pictured myself on that journey. I was twenty-one years of age, though one would have called me older. My looks were nothing to boast of, and I was grown up tall and weedy, so that I must have made quite a comical sight, with my long legs dangling on either side of the pony. I wore a suit of gray homespun, and in my saddle-bags I carried four precious law books, the stock in trade which my generous patron had given me. But as I mounted the slopes of the mountains my spirits rose too at the prospect of the life before me. The woods were all aflame with color, with wine and amber and gold, and the hills wore the misty mantle of shadowy blue so dear to my youthful memory. As I left the rude taverns of a morning and jogged along the heights, I watched the vapors rise and troll away from the valleys far beneath, and saw great flocks of ducks and swans and cackling geese darkening the air in their southward flight. Strange that I fell in with no company, for the trail leading into the Tennessee country was widened and broadened beyond belief, and everywhere I came upon blackened fires and abandoned lean-tos, and refuse bones gnawed by the wolves and bleached by the weather. I slept in some of these lean-tos, with my fire going brightly, indifferent to the howl of wolves in chase or the scream of a panther pouncing on its prey. For I was born of the wilderness. It had no terrors for me, nor did I ever feel alone. The great cliffs with their clinging, gnarled trees, the vast mountains clothed in the motley colors of the autumn,
As I drew near to Jonesboro my thoughts began to dwell upon that strange and fascinating man who had entertained Polly Ann and Tom and me so lavishly on our way to Kentucky,—Captain John Sevier. For he had made a great noise in the world since then, and the wrath of such men as my late patron was heavy upon him. Yes, John Sevier, Nollichucky Jack, had been a king in all but name since I had seen him, the head of such a principality as stirred the blood to read about. It comprised the Watauga settlement among the mountains of what is now Tennessee, and was called prosaically (as is the wont of the Anglo-Saxon) the free State of Franklin. There were certain conservative and unimaginative souls in this mountain principality who for various reasons held their old allegiance to the State of North Carolina. One Colonel Tipton led these loyalist forces, and armed partisans of either side had for some years ridden up and down the length of the land, burning and pillaging and slaying. We in Virginia had heard of two sets of courts in Franklin, of two sets of legislators. But of late the rumor had grown persistently that Nollichucky Jack was now a kind of fugitive, and that he had passed the summer pleasantly enough fighting Indians in the vicinity of Nick-a-jack Cave.
It was court day as I rode into the little town of Jonesboro, the air sparkling like a blue diamond over the mountain crests, and I drew deep into my lungs once more the scent of the frontier life I had loved so well. In the streets currents of excited men flowed and backed and eddied, backwoodsmen and farmers in the familiar hunting shirts of hide or homespun, and lawyers in dress less rude. A line of horses stood kicking and switching their tails in front of the log tavern, rough carts and wagons had been left here and there with their poles on the ground, and between these, piles of skins were heaped up and bags of corn and grain. The log meeting-house was deserted, but the court-house was the centre of such a
Tying my horse, and making my way through the press in front of the tavern door, I entered the common room, and found it stifling, brawling and drinking going on apace. Scarce had I found a seat before the whole room was emptied by one consent, all crowding out of the door after two men who began a rough-and-tumble fight in the street. I had seen rough-and-tumble fights in Kentucky, and if I have forborne to speak of them it is because there always has been within me a loathing for them. And so I sat quietly in the common room until the landlord came. I asked him if he could direct me to Mr. Wright's house, as I had a letter for that gentleman. His answer was to grin at me incredulously.
“I reckoned you wah'nt from these parts,” said he. “Wright's-out o' town.”
“What is the excitement?” I demanded.
He stared at me.
“Nollichucky Jack's been heah, in Jonesboro, young man,” said he.
“What,” I exclaimed, “Colonel Sevier?”
“Ay, Sevier,” he repeated. “With Martin and Tipton and all the Caroliny men right heah, having a council of mility officers in the court-house, in rides Jack with his frontier boys like a whirlwind. He bean't afeard of 'em, and a bench warrant out ag'in him for high treason. Never seed sech a recklessness. Never had sech a jamboree sence I kept the tavern. They was in this here room most of the day, and they was five fights before they set down to dinner.”
“And Colonel Tipton?” I said.
“Oh, Tipton,” said he, “he hain't afeard neither, but he hain't got men enough.”
“And where is Sevier now?” I demanded.
“How long hev you ben in town?” was his answer.
I told him.
“Wal,” said he, shifting his tobacco from one sallow cheek to the other, “I reckon he and his boys rud out just afore you come in. Mark me,” he added, “when I tell ye there'll be trouble yet. Tipton and Martin and the Caroliny folks is burnin' mad with Chucky Jack for the murder of Corn Tassel and other peaceful chiefs. But Jack hez a wild lot with him,—some of the Nollichucky Cave traders, and there's one young lad that looks like he was a gentleman once. I reckon Jack himself wouldn't like to get into a fight with him. He's a wild one. Great Goliah,” he exclaimed, running to the door, “ef thar ain't a-goin' to be another fight! Never seed sech a day in Jonesboro.”
I likewise ran to the door, and this fight interested me. There was a great, black-bearded mountaineer-farmer-desperado in the midst of a circle, pouring out a torrent of abuse at a tall young man.
“That thar's Hump Gibson,” said the landlord, genially pointing out the black-bearded ruffian, “and the young lawyer feller hez git a jedgment ag'in him. He's got spunk, but I reckon Hump 'll t'ar the innards out'n him ef he stands thar a great while.”
“Ye'll git jedgment ag'in me, ye Caroliny splinter, will ye?” yelled Mr. Gibson, with an oath. “I'll pay Bill Wilder the skins when I git ready, and all the pinhook lawyers in Washington County won't budge me a mite.”
“You'll pay Bill Wilder or go to jail, by the eternal,” cried the young man, quite as angrily, whereupon I looked upon him with a mixture of admiration and commiseration, with a gulping certainty in my throat that I was about to see murder done. He was a strange young man, with the rare marked look that would compel even a poor memory to pick him out again. For example, he was very tall and very slim, with red hair blown every which way over a high and towering forehead that seemed as long as the face under it. The face, too, was long, and all freckled by the weather. The blue eyes held me in wonder, and these blazed with such prodigious
“Skin out o' here afore I kill ye,” he shouted, and he charged at the slim young man like a buffalo, while the crowd held its breath. I, who had looked upon cruel sights in my day, was turning away with a kind of sickening when I saw the slim young man dodge the rush. He did more. With two strides of his long legs he reached the fence, ripped off the topmost rail, and his huge antagonist, having changed his direction and coming at him with a bellow, was met with the point of a scantling in the pit of his stomach, and Mr. Gibson fell heavily to the ground. It had all happened in a twinkling, and there was a moment's lull while the minds of the onlookers needed readjustment, and then they gave vent to ecstasies of delight.
“Great Goliah!” cried the landlord, breathlessly, “he shet him up jest like a jack-knife.”
Awe-struck, I looked at the tall young man, and he was the very essence of wrath. Unmindful of the plaudits, he stood brandishing the fence-rail over the great, writhing figure on the ground. And he was slobbering. I recall that this fact gave a twinge to something in my memory.
“Come on, Hump Gibson,” he cried, “come on!”—at which the crowd went wild with pure joy. Witticisms flew.
“Thought ye was goin' to eat 'im up, Hump?” said a friend.
“Ye ain't hed yer meal yet, Hump,” reminded another.
Mr. Hump Gibson arose slowly out of the dust, yet he did not stand straight.
“Come on, come on!” cried the young lawyer-fellow, and he thrust the point of the rail within a foot of Mr. Gibson's stomach.
“Come on, Hump!” howled the crowd, but Mr. Gibson stood irresolute. He lacked the supreme test of courage which was demanded on this occasion. Then he turned and walked away very slowly, as though his pace might
“Hooray fer Jackson!” they shouted. “Hooray fer Andy Jackson!”
Andy Jackson! Then I knew. Then I remembered a slim, wild, sandy-haired boy digging his toes in the red mud long ago at the Waxhaws Settlement. And I recalled with a smile my own fierce struggle at the schoolhouse with the same boy, and how his slobbering had been my salvation. I turned and went in after him with the landlord, who was rubbing his hands with glee.
“I reckon Hump won't come crowin' round heah any more co't days, Mr. Jackson,” said our host.
But Mr. Jackson swept the room with his eyes and then glared at the landlord so that he gave back.
“Where's my man?” he demanded.
“Your man, Mr. Jackson?” stammered the host.
“Great Jehovah!” cried Mr. Jackson, “I believe he's afraid to race. He had a horse that could show heels to my Nancy, did he? And he's gone, you say?”
A light seemed to dawn on the landlord's countenance.
“God bless ye, Mr. Jackson!” he cried, “ye don't mean that young daredevil that was with Sevier?”
“With Sevier?” says Jackson.
“Ay,” says the landlord; “he's been a-fightin with Sevier all summer, and I reckon he ain't afeard of nothin' any more than you. Wait—his name was Temple— Nick Temple, they called him.”
“Nick Temple!” I cried, starting forward.
“Where's he gone?” said Mr. Jackson. “He was going to bet me a six-forty he has at Nashboro that his horse could beat mine on the Greasy Cove track. Where's he gone?”
“Gone!” said the landlord, apologetically, “Nollichucky Jack and his boys left town an hour ago.”
“Is he a man of honor or isn't he?” said Mr. Jackson, fiercely.
“Lord, sir, I only seen him once, but I'd stake my oath on it.
“Do you mean to say Mr. Temple has been here— Nicholas Temple?” I said.
The bewildered landlord turned towards me helplessly.
“Who the devil are you, sir?” cried Mr. Jackson.
“Tell me what this Mr. Temple was like,” said I.
The landlord's face lighted up.
“Faith, a thoroughbred hoss,” says he; “sech nostrils, and sech a gray eye with the devil in it fer go-yellow ha'r, and ez tall ez Mr. Jackson heah.”
“And you say he's gone off again with Sevier?”
“They rud into town” (he lowered his voice, for the room was filling), “snapped their fingers at Tipton and his warrant, and rud out ag'in. My God, but that was like Nollichucky Jack. Say, stranger, when your Mr. Temple smiled—”
“He is the man!” I cried; “tell me where to find him.”
Mr. Jackson, who had been divided between astonishment and impatience and anger, burst out again.
“What the devil do you mean by interfering with my business, sir?
“Because it is my business too,” I answered, quite as testily; “my claim on Mr. Temple is greater than yours.”
“By Jehovah!” cried Jackson, “come outside, sir, come outside!”
The landlord backed away, and the men in the tavern began to press around us expectantly.
“Gallop into him, Andy!” cried one.
“Don't let him git near no fences, stranger,” said another.
Mr. Jackson turned on this man with such truculence that he edged away to the rear of the room.
“Step out, sir,” said Mr. Jackson, starting for the door before I could reply. I followed perforce, not without misgivings, the crowd pushing eagerly after. Before we reached the dusty street Jackson began pulling off his coat. In a trice the shouting onlookers had made a ring, and tod facing each other, he in his shirt-sleeves.
“We'll fight fair,” said he, his lips wetting.
“Very good,” said I, “if you are still accustomed to this hasty manner. You have not asked my name, my standing, nor my reasons for wanting Mr. Temple.”
I know not whether it was what I said that made him stare, or how I said it.
“Pistols, if you like,” said he.
“No,” said I; “I am in a hurry to find Mr. Temple. I fought you this way once, and it's quicker.”
“You fought me this way once?” he repeated. The noise of the crowd was hushed, and they drew nearer to hear.
“Come, Mr. Jackson,” said I, “you are a lawyer and a gentleman, and so am I. I do not care to be beaten to a pulp, but I am not afraid of you. And I am in a hurry. If you will step back into the tavern, I will explain to you my reasons for wishing to get to Mr. Temple.”
Mr. Jackson stared at me the more.
“By the eternal,” said he, “you are a cool man. Give me my coat,” he shouted to the bystanders, and they helped him on with it. “Now,” said he, as they made to follow him, “keep back. I would talk to this gentleman. By the heavens,” he cried, when he had gained the room, “I believe you are not afraid of me. I saw it in your eyes.”
Then I laughed.
“Mr. Jackson,” said I, “doubtless you do not remember a homeless boy named David whom you took to your uncle's house in the Waxhaws—”
“I do,” he exclaimed, “as I live I do. Why, we slept together.”
“And you stumped your toe getting into bed and swore,” said I.
At that he laughed so heartily that the landlord came running across the room.
“And we fought together at the Old Fields School. Are you that boy?” and he scanned me again. “By God, I believe you are.” Suddenly his face clouded once more.
“But what about Temple?” said he.
“Ah,” I answered, “I come to that quickly. Mr. Temple is my cousin. After I left your uncle's house my father took me to Charlestown.”
“Is he a Charlestown Temple?” demanded Mr. Jackson. “For I spent some time gambling and horse-racing with the gentry there, and I know many of them. I was a wild lad” (I repeat his exact words), “and I ran up a bill in Charlestown that would have filled a folio volume. Faith, all I had left me was the clothes on my back and a good horse. I made up my mind one night that if I could pay my debts and get out of Charlestown I would go into the back country and study law and sober down. There was a Mr. Braiden in the ordinary who staked me two hundred dollars at rattle-and-snap against my horse. Gad, sir, that was providence. I won. I left Charlestown with honor, I studied law at Salisbury in North Carolina, and I have come here to practise it.”
“You seem to have the talent,” said I, smiling at the remembrance of the Hump Gibson incident.
“That is my history in a nutshell,” said Mr. Jackson.
“And now,” he added, “since you are Mr. Temple's cousin and friend and an old acquaintance of mine to boot, I will tell you where I think he is.”
“Where is that?” I asked eagerly.
“I'll stake a cowbell that Sevier will stop at the Widow Brown's,” he replied. “I'll put you on the road. But mind you, you are to tell Mr. Temple that he is to come back here and race me at Greasy Cove.”
“I'll warrant him to come,” said I.
Whereupon we left the inn together, more amicably than before. Mr. Jackson had a thoroughbred horse near by that was a pleasure to see, and my admiration of his mount seemed to set me as firmly in Mr. Jackson's esteem again as that gentleman himself sat in the saddle. He was as good as his word, rode out with me some distance on the road, and reminded me at the last that Nick was to race him.
2.6. CHAPTER VI
THE WIDOW BROWN'
S
IT was not to my credit that I should have lost the trail, after Mr. Jackson put me straight. But the night was dark, the country unknown to me, and heavily wooded and mountainous. In addition to these things my mind ran like fire. My thoughts sometimes flew back to the wondrous summer evening when I trod the Nollichucky trace with Tom and Polly Ann, when I first looked down upon the log palace of that prince of the border, John Sevier. Well I remembered him, broad-shouldered, handsome, gay, a courtier in buckskin. Small wonder he was idolized by the Watauga settlers, that he had been their leader in the struggle of Franklin for liberty. And small wonder that Nick Temple should be in his following.
Nick! My mind was in a torment concerning him. What of his mother? Should I speak of having seen her? I went blindly through the woods for hours after the night fell, my horse stumbling and weary, until at length I came to a lonely clearing on the mountain side, and a fierce pack of dogs dashed barking at my horse's heels. There was a dark cabin ahead, indistinct in the starlight, and there I knocked until a gruff voice answered me and a tousled man came to the door. Yes, I had missed the trail. He shook his head when I asked for the Widow Brown's, and bade me share his bed for the night. No, I would go on, I was used to the backwoods. Thereupon he thawed a little, kicked the dogs, and pointed to where the mountain dipped against the star-studded sky. There was a trail there which led direct to the Widow Brown's, if I could follow it. So I left him.
Once the fear had settled deeply of missing Nick at the Widow Brown's, I put my mind on my journey, and thanks to my early training I was able to keep the trail. It doubled around the spurs, forded stony brooks in diagonals, and often in the darkness of the mountain forest I had to feel for the blazes on the trees. There was no making time. I gained the notch with the small hours of the morning, started on with the descent, crisscrossing, following a stream here and a stream there, until at length the song of the higher waters ceased and I knew that I was in the valley. Suddenly there was no crown-cover over my head. I had gained the road once more, and I followed it hopefully, avoiding the stumps and the deep wagon ruts where the ground was spongy.
The morning light revealed a milky mist through which the trees showed like phantoms. Then there came stains upon the mist of royal purple, of scarlet, of yellow like a mandarin's robe, peeps of deep blue fading into azure as the mist lifted. The fiery eye of the sun was cocked over the crest, and beyond me I saw a house with its logs all golden brown in the level rays, the withered cornstalks orange among the blackened stumps. My horse stopped of his own will at the edge of the clearing. A cock crew, a lean hound prostrate on the porch of the house rose to his haunches, sniffed, growled, leaped down, and ran to the road and sniffed again. I listened, startled, and made sure of the distant ring of many hoofs. And yet I stayed there, irresolute. Could it be Tipton and his men riding from Jonesboro to capture Sevier? The hoof-beats grew louder, and then the hound in the road gave tongue to the short, sharp bark that is the call to arms. Other dogs, hitherto unseen, took up the cry, and turning in my saddle I saw a body of men riding hard at me through the alley in the forest. At their head, on a heavy, strong-legged horse, was one who might have stood for the figure of turbulence, and I made no doubt that this was Colonel Tipton himself,—Colonel Tipton, once secessionist, now champion of the Old North State and arch-enemy of John Sevier. At sight of me he reined
“Look out, boys,” he shouted, with a fierce oath, “they've got guards out!” He flung back one hand to his holster for a pistol, while the other reached for the powder flask at his belt. He primed the pan, and, seeing me immovable, set his horse forward at an amble, his pistol at the cock.
“Who in hell are you?” he cried.
“A traveller from Virginia,” I answered.
“And what are you doing here?” he demanded, with another oath.
“I have just this moment come here,” said I, as calmly as I might. “I lost the trail in the darkness.”
He glared at me, purpling, perplexed.
“Is Sevier there?” said he, pointing at the house.
“I don't know,” said I.
Tipton turned to his men, who were listening.
“Surround the house,” he cried, “and watch this fellow.”
I rode on perforce towards the house with Tipton and three others, while his men scattered over the corn-field and cursed the dogs. And then we saw in the open door the figure of a woman shading her eyes with her hand. We pulled up, five of us, before the porch in front of her.
“Good morning, Mrs. Brown,” said Tipton, gruffly.
“Good morning, Colonel,” answered the widow.
Tipton leaped from his horse, flung the bridle to a companion, and put his foot on the edge of the porch to mount. Then a strange thing happened. The lady turned deftly, seized a chair from within, and pulled it across the threshold. She sat herself down firmly, an expression on her face which hinted that the late lamented Mr. Brown had been a dominated man. Colonel Tipton stopped, staggering from the very impetus of his charge, and gazed at her blankly.
“I have come for Colonel Sevier,” he blurted. And then, his anger rising, “I will have no trifling, ma'am. He is in this house.”
“La! you don't tell me,” answered the widow, in a tone that was wholly conversational.
“He is in this house,” shouted the Colonel.
“I reckon you've guessed wrong, Colonel,” said the widow.
There was an awkward pause until Tipton heard a titter behind him. Then his wrath exploded.
“I have a warrant against the scoundrel for high treason,” he cried, “and, by God, I will search the house and serve it.”
Still the widow sat tight. The Rock of Ages was neither more movable nor calmer than she.
“Surely, Colonel, you would not invade the house of an unprotected female.”
The Colonel, evidently with a great effort, throttled his wrath for the moment. His new tone was apologetic but firm.
“I regret to have to do so, ma'am,” said he, “but both sexes are equal before the law.”
“The law!” repeated the widow, seemingly tickled at the word. She smiled indulgently at the Colonel. “What a pity, Mr. Tipton, that the law compels you to arrest such a good friend of yours as Colonel Sevier. What self-sacrifice, Colonel Tipton! What nobility!”
There was a second titter behind him, whereat he swung round quickly, and the crimson veins in his face looked as if they must burst. He saw me with my hand over my mouth.
“You warned him, damn you!” he shouted, and turning again leaped to the porch and tried to squeeze past the widow into the house.
“How dare you, sir?” she shrieked, giving him a vigorous push backwards. The four of us, his three men and myself, laughed outright. Tipton's rage leaped its bounds. He returned to the attack again and again, and yet at the crucial moment his courage would fail him and he would let the widow thrust him back. Suddenly I became aware that there were two new spectators of this comedy. I started and looked again, and was near to
Ten years had made his figure more portly, but I knew at once the man in the well-fitting hunting shirt, with the long hair flowing to his shoulders, with the keen, dark face and courtly bearing and humorous eyes. Yes, humorous even now, for he stood, smiling at this comedy played by his enemy, unmindful of his peril. The widow saw him before Tipton did, so intent was he on the struggle.
“Enough!” she cried, “enough, John Tipton!” Tipton drew back involuntarily, and a smile broadened on the widow's face. “Shame on you for doubting a lady's word! Allow me to present to you—Colonel Sevier.”
Tipton turned, stared as a man might who sees a ghost, and broke into such profanity as I have seldom heard.
“By the eternal God, John Sevier,” he shouted, “I'll hang you to the nearest tree!”
Colonel Sevier merely made a little ironical bow and looked at the gentleman beside him.
“I have surrendered to Colonel Love,” he said.
Tipton snatched from his belt the pistol which he might have used on me, and there flashed through my head the thought that some powder might yet be held in its pan. We cried out, all of us, his men, the widow, and myself,— all save Sevier, who stood quietly, smiling. Suddenly, while we waited for murder, a tall figure shot out of the door past the widow, the pistol flew out of Tipton's hand, and Tipton swung about with something like a bellow, to face Mr. Nicholas Temple.
Well I knew him! And oddly enough at that time
Riddle's words of long ago came to me, “God help the
woman you love or the man you fight.” How shall I
describe him? He was thin even to seeming frailness,—
yet it was the frailness of the race-horse. The golden
hair, sun-tanned, awry across his forehead, the face the
same thin and finely cut face of the boy. The gray eyes
held an anger that did not blaze; it was far more dangerous
than that. Colonel John Tipton looked, and as I live
he recoiled.
THE PISTOL FLEW OUT OF TIPTON'S HAND
“If you touch him, I'll kill you,” said Mr. Temple. Nor did he say it angrily. I marked for the first time that he held a pistol in his slim fingers. What Tipton might have done when he swung to his new bearings is mere conjecture, for Colonel Sevier himself stepped up on the porch, laid his hand on Temple's arm, and spoke to him in a low tone. What he said we didn't hear. The astonishing thing was that neither of them for the moment paid any attention to the infuriated man beside them. I saw Nick's expression change. He smiled,—the smile the landlord had described, the smile that made men and women willing to die for him. After that Colonel Sevier stooped down and picked up the pistol from the floor of the porch and handed it with a bow to Tipton, butt first. Tipton took it, seemingly without knowing why, and at that instant a negro boy came around the house, leading a horse. Sevier mounted it without a protest from any one.
“I am ready to go with you, gentlemen,” he said.
Colonel Tipton slipped his pistol back into his belt, stepped down from the porch, and leaped into his saddle, and he and his men rode off into the stump-lined alley in the forest that was called a road. Nick stood beside the widow, staring after them until they had disappeared.
“My horse, boy!” he shouted to the gaping negro, who vanished on the errand.
“What will you do, Mr. Temple?” asked the widow.
“Rescue him, ma'am,” cried Nick, beginning to pace up and down. “I'll ride to Turner's. Cozby and Evans are there, and before night we shall have made Jonesboro too hot to hold Tipton and his cutthroats.”
“La, Mr. Temple,” said the widow, with unfeigned admiration, “I never saw the like of you. But I know John Tipton, and he'll have Colonel Sevier started for North Carolina before our boys can get to Jonesboro.”
“Then we'll follow,” says Nick, beginning to pace again. Suddenly, at a cry from the widow, he stopped and stared at me, a light in his eye like a point of steel. His hand slipped to his waist.
“A spy,” he said, and turned and smiled at the lady,
“God forbid that I ever do,” I answered fervently.
“What,” he exclaimed, “and you here with him on this sneak's errand!”
“I am here with him on no errand,” said I. “He and his crew came on me a quarter of an hour since at the edge of the clearing. Mr. Temple, I am here to find you, and to save time I will ride with you.”
“Egad, you'll have to ride like the devil then,” said he, and he stooped and snatched the widow's hand and kissed it with a daring gallantry that I had thought to find in him. He raised his eyes to hers.
“Good-by, Mr. Temple, she said,—there was a tremor in her voice,—“and may you save our Jack!”
He snatched the bridle from the boy, and with one leap he was on the rearing, wheeling horse. “Come on,” he cried to me, and, waving his hat at the lady on the porch, he started off with a gallop up the trail in the opposite direction from that which Tipton's men had taken.
All that I saw of Mr. Nicholas Temple on that ride to Turner's was his back, and presently I lost sight of that. In truth, I never got to Turner's at all, for I met him coming back at the wind's pace, a huge, swarthy, determined man at his side and four others spurring after, the spume dripping from the horses' mouths. They did not so much as look at me as they passed, and there was nothing left for me to do but to turn my tired beast and follow at any pace I could make towards Jonesboro.
It was late in the afternoon before I reached the town, the town set down among the hills like a caldron boiling over with the wrath of Franklin. The news of
I tethered my tired beast at the first picket, and was no sooner on my feet than I was caught in the hurrying stream of the crowd and fairly pushed and beaten towards the court-house. Around it a thousand furious men were packed. I heard cheering, hoarse and fierce cries, threats and imprecations, and I knew that they were listening to oratory. I was suddenly shot around the corner of a house, saw the orator himself, and gasped.
It was Nicholas Temple. There was something awe-impelling in the tall, slim, boyish figure that towered above the crowd, in the finely wrought, passionate face, in the voice charged with such an anger as is given to few men.
“What has North Carolina done for Franklin?” he cried. “Protected her? No. Repudiated her? Yes. You gave her to the Confederacy for a war debt, and the Confederacy flung her back. You shook yourselves free from Carolina's tyranny, and traitors betrayed you again. And now they have betrayed your leader. Will you avenge him, or will you sit down like cowards while they hang him for treason?”
His voice was drowned, but he stood immovable with arms folded until there was silence again.
“Will you rescue him?” he cried, and the roar rose again. “Will you avenge him? By to-morrow we shall have two thousand here. Invade North Carolina, humble her, bring her to her knees, and avenge John Sevier!”
Pandemonium reigned. Hats were flung in the air, rifles fired, shouts and curses rose and blended into one terrifying note. Gradually, in the midst of this mad uproar, the crowd became aware that another man was standing upon the stump from which Nicholas Temple had leaped. “Cozby!” some one yelled, “Cozby!” The cry was taken up. “Huzzay for Cozby! He'll lead us into Caroliny.” He was the huge, swarthy man I had seen riding hard with Nick that morning. A sculptor
“I admire Mr. Temple's courage, and above all his loyalty to our beloved General,” said Major Cozby. “But Mr. Temple is young, and the heated counsels of youth must not prevail. My friends, in order to save Jack Sevier we must be moderate.”
His voice, strong as it was, was lost. “To hell with moderation!” they shouted. “Down with North Carolina! We'll fight her!”
He got silence again by the magnetic strength he had in him.
“Very good,” he said, “but get your General first. If we lead you across the mountains now, his blood will be upon your heads. No man is a better friend to Jack Sevier than I. Leave his rescue to me, and I will get him for you.” He paused, and they were stilled perforce. “I will get him for you,” he repeated slowly, “or North Carolina will pay for the burial of James Cozby.”
There was an instant when they might have swung either way.
“How will ye do it?” came in a thin, piping voice from somewhere near the stump. It may have been this that turned their minds. Others took up the question, “How will ye do it, Major Cozby?”
“I don't know,” cried the Major, “I don't know. And if I did know, I wouldn't tell you. But I will get Nollichucky Jack if I have to burn Morganton and rake the General out of the cinders!”
Five hundred hands flew up, five hundred voices cried, “I'm with ye, Major Cozby!” But the Major only shook his head and smiled. What he said was lost in the roar. Fighting my way forward, I saw him get down from the stump, put his hand kindly on Nick's shoulder, and lead
It was then I bethought myself of the letter to Mr. Wright, and I sought for some one who would listen to my questions as to his whereabouts. At length the man himself was pointed out to me, haranguing an excited crowd of partisans in front of his own gate. Some twenty minutes must have passed before I could get any word with him. He was a vigorous little man, with black eyes like buttons, he wore brown homespun and white stockings, and his hair was clubbed. When he had yielded the ground to another orator, I handed him the letter. He drew me aside, read it on the spot, and became all hospitality at once. The town was full, and though he had several friends staying in his house I should join them. Was my horse fed? Dinner had been forgotten that day, but would I enter and partake? In short, I found myself suddenly provided for, and I lost no time in getting my weary mount into Mr. Wright's little stable. And then I sat down, with several other gentlemen, at Mr. Wright's board, where there was much guessing as to Major Cozby's plan.
“No other man west of the mountains could have calmed that crowd after that young daredevil Temple had stirred them up,” declared Mr. Wright.
I ventured to say that I had business with Mr. Temple.
“Faith, then, I will invite him here,” said my host. “But I warn you, Mr. Ritchie, that he is a trigger set on the hair. If he does not fancy you, he may quarrel with you and shoot you. And he is in no temper to be trifled with to-day.”
“I am not an easy person to quarrel with,” I answered.
“To look at you, I shouldn't say that you were,” said he. “We are going to the court-house, and I will see if I can get a word with the young Hotspur and send him to you. Do you wait here.”
I waited on the porch as the day waned. The tumult of the place had died down, for men were gathering in the houses to discuss and conjecture. And presently,
“Well, sir,” he said, “so you are the gentleman who has been dogging me all day.”
“I dog no one, Mr. Temple,” I replied bitterly.
“We'll not quibble about words,” said he. “Would it be impertinent to ask your business—and perhaps your name?”
“Did not Mr. Wright give you my name?” I exclaimed.
“He might have mentioned it, I did not hear. Is it of such importance?”
At that I lost my temper entirely.
“It may be, and it may not,” I retorted. “I am David Ritchie.”
He changed before my eyes as he stared at me, and then, ere I knew it, he had me by both arms, crying out:—
“David Ritchie! My Davy—who ran away from me —and we were going to Kentucky together. Oh, I have never forgiven you,”—the smile that there was no resisting belied his words as he put his face close to mine —“I never will forgive you. I might have known you— you've grown, but I vow you're still an old man,—Davy, you renegade. And where the devil did you run to?”
“Kentucky,” I said, laughing.
“Oh, you traitor—and I trusted you. I loved you, Davy. Do you remember how I clung to you in my sleep? And when I woke up, the world was black. I followed your trail down the drive and to the cross-roads—”
“It was not ingratitude, Nick,” I said; “you were all I had in the world.” And then I faltered, the sadness of that far-off time coming over me in a flood, and the remembrance of his generous sorrow for me.
“And how the devil did you track me to the Widow Brown's?” he demanded, releasing me.
“A Mr. Jackson had a shrewd notion you were there. And by the way, he was in a fine temper because you had skipped a race with him.”
“That sorrel-topped, lantern-headed Mr. Jackson?” said Nick. “He'll be killed in one of his fine tempers. Damn a man who can't keep his temper. I'll race him, of course. And where are you bound now, Davy?”
“For Louisville, in Kentucky, at the Falls of the Ohio. It is a growing place, and a promising one for a young man in the legal profession to begin life.”
“When do you leave?” said he.
“To-morrow morning, Nick,” said I. “You wanted once to go to Kentucky; why not come with me?”
His face clouded.
“I do not budge from this town,” said he, “I do not budge until I hear that Jack Sevier is safe. Damn Cozby! If he had given me my way, we should have been forty miles from here by this. I'll tell you. Cozby is even now picking five men to go to Morganton and steal Sevier, and he puts me off with a kind word. He'll not have me, he says.”
“He thinks you too hot. It needs discretion and an old head,” said I.
“Egad, then, I'll commend you to him,” said Nick.
“Now,” I said, “it's time for you to tell me something of yourself, and how you chanced to come into this country.”
“ 'Twas Darnley's fault,” said Nick.
“Darnley!” I exclaimed; “he whom you got into the duel with—” I stopped abruptly, with a sharp twinge of remembrance that was like a pain in my side. 'Twas Nick took up the name.
“With Harry Riddle.” He spoke quietly, that was the terrifying part of it. “David, I've looked for that man in Italy and France, I've scoured London for him, and, by God, I'll find him before he dies. And when I do find him I swear to you that there will be no such thing as time wasted, or mercy.”
I shuddered. In all my life I had never known such a
“They have ruined my life,” said Nick. “I curse him, and I curse her.”
“Hold!” I cried; “she is your mother.”
“And therefore I curse her the more,” he said. “You know what she is, you've tasted of her charity, and you are my father's nephew. If you have been without experience, I will tell you what she is. A common—” I reached out and put my hand across his mouth.
“Silence!” I cried; “you shall say no such thing. And have you not manhood enough to make your own life for yourself?”
“Manhood!” he repeated, and laughed. It was a laugh that I did not like. “They made a man of me, my parents. My father played false with the Rebels and fled to England for his reward. A year after he went I was left alone at Temple Bow to the tender mercies of the niggers. Mr. Mason came back and snatched what was left of me. He was a good man; he saved me an annuity out of the estate, he took me abroad after the war on a grand tour, and died of a fever in Rome. I made my way back to Charlestown, and there I learned to gamble, to hold liquor like a gentleman, to run horses and fight like a gentleman. We were speaking of Darnley,” he said.
“Yes, of Darnley,” I repeated.
“The devil of a man,” said Nick; “do you remember him, with the cracked voice and fat calves?”
At any other time I should have laughed at the recollection.
“Darnley turned Whig, became a Continental colonel, and got a grant out here in the Cumberland country of three thousand acres. And now I own it.”
“You own it!” I exclaimed.
“Rattle-and-snap,” said Nick; “I played him for the land at the ordinary one night, and won it. It is out here near a place called Nashboro, where this wild, long-faced Mr. Jackson says he is going soon. I crossed the mountains to have a look at it, fell in with Nollichucky Jack, and went off with him for a summer campaign. There's a man for you, Davy,” he cried, “a man to follow through hell-fire. If they touch a hair of his head we'll sack the State of North Carolina from Morganton to the sea.”
“But the land?” I asked.
“Oh, a fig for the land,” answered Nick; “as soon as Nollichucky Jack is safe I'll follow you into Kentucky.” He slapped me on the knee. “Egad, Davy, it seems like a fairy tale. We always said we were going to Kentucky, didn't we? What is the name of the place you are to startle with your learning and calm by your example?”
“Louisville,” I answered, laughing, “by the Falls of the Ohio.”
“I shall turn up there when Jack Sevier is safe and I have won some more land from Mr. Jackson. We'll have a rare old time together, though I have no doubt you can drink me under the table. Beware of these sober men. Egad, Davy, you need only a woolsack to become a full-fledged judge. And now tell me how fortune has buffeted you.”
It was my second night without sleep, for we sat burning candles in Mr. Wright's house until the dawn, making up the time which we had lost away from each other.
2.7. CHAPTER VII
I MEET A HERO
WHEN left to myself, I was wont to slide into the commonplace; and where my own dull life intrudes to clog the action I cut it down here and pare it away there until I am merely explanatory, and not too much in evidence. I rode out the Wilderness Trail, fell in with other travellers, was welcomed by certain old familiar faces at Harrodstown, and pressed on. I have a vivid recollection of a beloved, vigorous figure swooping out of a cabin door and scattering a brood of children right and left. “Polly Ann!” I said, and she halted, trembling.
“Tom,” she cried, “Tom, it's Davy come back, and Tom himself flew out of the door, ramrod in one hand and rifle in the other. Never shall I forget them as they stood there, he grinning with sheer joy as of yore, and she, with her hair flying and her blue gown snapping in the wind, in a tremor between tears and laughter. I leaped to the ground, and she hugged me in her arms as though I had been a child, calling my name again and again, and little Tom pulling at the skirts of my coat. I caught the youngster by the collar.
“Polly Ann,” said I, “he's grown to what I was when you picked me up, a foundling.”
“And now it's little Davy no more,” she answered, swept me a courtesy, and added, with a little quiver in her voice, “ye are a gentleman now.”
“My heart is still where it was,” said I.
“Ay, ay,” said Tom, “I'm sure o' that, Davy.”
I was with them a fortnight in the familiar cabin, and then I took up my journey northward, heavy at
Louisville was even then bursting with importance, and as I rode into it, one bright November day, I remembered the wilderness I had seen here not ten years gone when I had marched hither with Captain Harrod's company to join Clark on the island. It was even then a thriving little town of log and clapboard houses and schools and churches, and wise men were saying of it— what Colonel Clark had long ago predicted—that it would become the first city of commercial importance in the district of Kentucky.
I do not mean to give you an account of my struggles that winter to obtain a foothold in the law. The time was a heyday for young barristers, and troubles in those early days grew as plentifully in Kentucky as corn. In short, I got a practice, for Colonel Clark was here to help me, and, thanks to the men who had gone to Kaskaskia and Vincennes, I had a fairly large acquaintance in Kentucky. I hired rooms behind Mr. Crede's store, which was famed for the glass windows which had been fetched all the way from Philadelphia. Mr. Crede was the embodiment of the enterprising spirit of the place, and often of an evening he called me in to see the new fashionable things his barges had brought down the Ohio. The next day certain young sparks would drop into my room to waylay the belles as they came to pick a costume to be worn at Mr. Nickle's dancing school, or at the ball at Fort Finney.
The winter slipped away, and one cool evening in May there came a negro to my room with a note from Colonel Clark, bidding me sup with him at the tavern and meet a celebrity.
I put on my best blue clothes that I had brought with me from Richmond, and repaired expectantly to the tavern about eight of the clock, pushed through the curious
He was a man to fill the eye, handsome of face, symmetrical of figure, easy of manner, and he wore a suit of bottle-green that became him admirably. In short, so fascinated and absorbed was I in watching him as he greeted this man and the other that I started as though something had pricked me when I heard my name called by Colonel Clark.
“Come here, Davy,” he cried across the room, and I came and stood abashed before the hero. “General, allow me to present to you the drummer boy of Kaskaskia and Vincennes, Mr. David Ritchie.”
“I hear that you drummed them to victory through a very hell of torture, Mr. Ritchie,” said the General. “It is an honor to grasp the hand of one who did such service at such a tender age.”
General Wilkinson availed himself of that honor, and encompassed me with a smile so benignant, so winning in its candor, that I could only mutter my acknowledgment, and Colonel Clark must needs apologize, laughing, for my youth and timidity.
“Mr. Ritchie is not good at speeches, General,” said he, “but I make no doubt he will drink a bumper to your health before we sit down. Gentlemen,” he cried, filling his glass from a bottle on the table, “a toast to General Wilkinson, emancipator and saviour of Kentucky!”
The company responded with a shout, tossed off the toast, and sat down at the long table. Chance placed me between a young dandy from Lexington—one of several the General had brought in his train—and Mr. Wharton, a prominent planter of the neighborhood with whom I had a speaking acquaintance. This was a backwoods feast, though served in something better than the old backwoods style, and we had venison and bear's meat and prairie fowl as well as pork and beef, and breads that
“And what say you of the Jay?” cried one; “what will he hatch?”
Hisses greeted the name, for Mr. Jay wished to enter into a treaty with Spain, agreeing to close the river for five and twenty years. Colonel Clark stood up, and rapped on the table.
“Gentlemen,” said he, “Louisville has as her guest of honor to-night a man of whom Kentucky may well be proud [loud cheering]. Five years ago he favored Lexington by making it his home, and he came to us with the laurel of former achievements still clinging to his brow. He fought and suffered for his country, and attained the honorable rank of Major in the Continental line. He was chosen by the people of Pennsylvania to represent them in the august body of their legislature, and now he has got new honor in a new field [renewed cheering]. He has come to Kentucky to show her the way to prosperity and glory. Kentucky had a grievance [loud cries of “Yes, yes!”]. Her hogs and cattle had no market, her tobacco and agricultural products of all kinds were rotting because the Spaniards had closed the Mississippi to our traffic. Could the Federal government open the river? [shouts of “No, no!” and hisses]. Who opened it? [cries of “Wilkinson, Wilkinson!”]. He said to the Kentucky planters, `Give your tobacco to me, and I will sell it.' He put it in barges, he floated down the river, and, as became a man of such distinction, he was met by Governor-general Miro on the levee at New Orleans. Where is that tobacco now, gentlemen?” Colonel Clark was here interrupted by such roars and stamping that he paused a moment, and during this interval Mr. Wharton leaned over and whispered quietly in my ear:—
“Ay, where is it?”
I stared at Mr. Wharton blankly. He was a man nearing the middle age, with a lacing of red in his cheeks, a pleasant gray eye, and a singularly quiet manner.
“Thanks to the genius of General Wilkinson,” Colonel Clark continued, waving his hand towards the smilingly placid hero, “that tobacco has been deposited in the King's store at ten dollars per hundred,—a privilege heretofore confined to Spanish subjects. Well might Wilkinson return from New Orleans in a chariot and four to a grateful Kentucky! This year we have tripled, nay, quadrupled, our crop of tobacco, and we are here to-night to give thanks to the author of this prosperity.” Alas, Colonel Clark's hand was not as steady as of yore, and he spilled the liquor on the table as he raised his glass. “Gentlemen, a health to our benefactor.”
They drank it willingly, and withal so lengthily and noisily that Mr. Wilkinson stood smiling and bowing for full three minutes before he could be heard. He was a very paragon of modesty, was the General, and a man whose attitudes and expressions spoke as eloquently as his words. None looked at him now but knew before he opened his mouth that he was deprecating such an ovation.
“Gentlemen,—my friends and fellow-Kentuckians, he said, “I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your kindness, but I assure you that I have done nothing worthy of it [loud protests]. I am a simple, practical man, who loves Kentucky better than he loves himself. This is no virtue, for we all have it. We have the misfortune to be governed by a set of worthy gentlemen who know little about Kentucky and her wants, and think less [cries of “Ay, ay!”]. I am not decrying General Washington and his cabinet; it is but natural that the wants of the seaboard and the welfare and opulence of the Eastern cities should be uppermost in their minds [another interruption]. Kentucky, if she would prosper, must look to her own welfare. And if any credit is due to me, gentlemen, it is because I reserved my decision of his Excellency, Governor-general Miro, and his people
“In General Wilkinson's barges,” said Mr. Wharton leaning over and subsiding again at once.
The General was the first to drink the toast, and he sat down very modestly amidst a thunder of applause.
The young man on the other side of me, somewhat flushed, leaped to his feet.
“Down with the Federal government!” he cried; “what have they done for us, indeed? Before General Wilkinson went to New Orleans the Spaniards seized our flat boats and cargoes and flung our traders into prison, ay, and sent them to the mines of Brazil. The Federal government takes sides with the Indians against us. And what has that government done for you, Colonel?” he demanded, turning to Clark, “you who have won for them half of their territory? They have cast you off like an old moccasin. The Continental officers who fought in the East have half-pay for life or five years' full pay. And what have you?”
There was a breathless hush. A swift vision came to me of a man, young, alert, commanding, stern under necessity, self-repressed at all times—a man who by the very dominance of his character had awed into submission the fierce Northern tribes of a continent, who had compelled men to follow him until the life had all but ebbed from their bodies, who had led them to victory in the end. And I remembered a boy who had stood awe-struck before this man in the commandant's house at Fort Sackville. Ay, and I heard again his words as though he had just spoken them, “Promise me that you will not forget me if I am —unfortunate.” I did not understand then. And now because of a certain blinding of my eyes, I did not see him
“Not a shilling has this government given me, he cried. “Virginia was more grateful; from her I have some acres of wild land and—a sword.” He laughed. “A sword, gentlemen, and not new at that. Oh, a grateful government we serve, one careful of the honor of her captains. Gentlemen, I stand to-day a discredited man because the honest debts I incurred in the service of that government are repudiated, because my friends who helped it, Father Gibault, Vigo, and Gratiot, and others have never been repaid. One of them is ruined.
A dozen men had sprung clamoring to their feet before he sat down. One, more excited than the rest, got the ear of the company.
“Do we lack leaders?” he cried. “We have them here with us to-night, in this room. Who will stop us. Not the contemptible enemies in Kentucky who call themselves Federalists. Shall we be supine forever. We have fought once for our liberties, let us fight again. Let us make a common cause with our real friends on the far side of the Mississippi.”
I rose, sick at heart, but every man was standing. And then a strange thing happened. I saw General Wilkinson at the far end of the room; his hand was raised, and there was that on his handsome face which might have been taken for a smile, and yet was not a smile. Others saw him too, I know not by what exertion of magnetism. They looked at him and they held their tongues.
“I fear that we are losing our heads, gentlemen,” he said; “and I propose to you the health of the first citizen of Kentucky, Colonel George Rogers Clark.
I found myself out of the tavern and alone in the cool May night. And as I walked slowly down the deserted street, my head in a whirl, a hand was laid on my shoulder. I turned, startled, to face Mr. Wharton, the planter.
“I would speak a word with you, Mr. Ritchie,” he said. “May I come to your room for a moment?”
“Certainly, sir,” I answered.
After that we walked along together in silence, my own mind heavily occupied with what I had seen and heard. We came to Mr. Crede's store, went in at the picket gate beside it and down the path to my own door, which I unlocked. I felt for the candle on the table, lighted it, and turned in surprise to discover that Mr. Wharton was poking up the fire and pitching on a log of wood. He flung off his greatcoat and sat down with his feet to the blaze. I sat down beside him and waited, thinking him a sufficiently peculiar man.
“You are not famous, Mr. Ritchie,” said he, presently.
“No, sir,” I answered.
“Nor particularly handsome,” he continued, “nor conspicuous in any way.”
I agreed to this, perforce.
“You may thank God for it,” said Mr. Wharton.
“That would be a strange outpouring, sir,” said I.
He looked at me and smiled.
“What think you of this paragon, General Wilkinson?” he demanded suddenly.
“I have Federal leanings, sir,” I answered
“Egad,” said he, “we'll add caution to your lack of negative accomplishments. I have had an eye on you this winter, though you did not know it. I have made inquiries about you, and hence I am not here to-night entirely through impulse. You have not made a fortune at the law, but you have worked hard, steered wide of sensation, kept your mouth shut. Is it not so?”
Astonished, I merely nodded in reply.
“I am not here to waste your time or steal your sleep,” he went on, giving the log a push with his foot, “and I will come to the point. When I first laid eyes on this fine gentleman, General Wilkinson, I too fell a victim to his charms. It was on the eve of this epoch-making trip of which we heard so glowing an account to-night, and I
My astonishment somewhat prevented me from replying to this, too. Was it possible that Mr. Wharton meant to sue the General? I reflected while he paused. I remembered how inconspicuous he had named me, and hope died. Mr. Wharton did not look at me, but stared into the fire, for he was plainly not a man to rail and rant.
“Mr. Ritchie, you are young, but mark my words, that man Wilkinson will bring Kentucky to ruin if he is not found out. The whole district from Crab Orchard to Bear Grass is mad about him. Even Clark makes a fool of himself—”
“Colonel Clark, sir!” I cried.
He put up a hand.
“So you have some hot blood,” he said. “I know you love him. So do I, or I should not have been there tonight. Do I blame his bitterness? Do I blame—anything he does? The treatment he has had would bring a blush of shame to the cheek of any nation save a republic. Republics are wasteful, sir. In George Rogers Clark they have thrown away a general who might some day have decided the fate of this country, they have left to stagnate a man fit to lead a nation to war. And now he is ready to intrigue against the government with any adventurer who may have convincing ways and a smooth tongue.”
“Mr. Wharton,” I said, rising, “did you come here to tell me this?”
But Mr. Wharton continued to stare into the fire.
“I like you the better for it, my dear sir,” said he, “and I assure you that I mean no offence. Colonel Clark is enshrined in our hearts, Democrats and Federalists alike. Whatever he may do, we shall love him always. But this other man,—pooh!” he exclaimed, which was as near a vigorous expression as he got. “Now, sir, to the point. I, too, am a Federalist, a friend of Mr. Humphrey Marshall, and, as you know, we are sadly in the minority in Kentucky now. I came here to-night to ask you to undertake a mission in behalf of myself and certain other gentlemen, and I assure you that my motives are not wholly mercenary.” He paused, smiled, and put the tips of his fingers together. “I would willingly lose every crop for the next ten years to convict this Wilkinson of treason against the Federal government.”
“Treason!” I repeated involuntarily.
“Mr. Ritchie,” answered the planter, “I gave you credit for some shrewdness. Do you suppose the Federal government does not realize the danger of this situation in Kentucky. They have tried in vain to open the Mississippi, and are too weak to do it. This man Wilkinson goes down to see Miro, and Miro straightway opens the river to us through him. How do you suppose Wilkinson did it? By his charming personality?”
I said something, I know not what, as the light began to dawn on me. And then I added, “I had not thought about the General.”
“Ah,” replied Mr. Wharton, “just so. And now you may easily imagine that General Wilkinson has come to a very pretty arrangement with Miro. For a certain stipulated sum best known to Wilkinson and Miro, General Wilkinson agrees gradually to detach Kentucky from the Union and join it to his Catholic Majesty's dominion of Louisiana. The bribe—the opening of the river. What the government could not do Wilkinson did by the lifting of his finger.”
Still Mr. Wharton spoke without heat.
“Mind you,” he said, “we have no proof of this, and
“You want me—” I said, bewildered.
“I repeat that you are not handsome,”—I think he emphasized this unduly,—“that you are self-effacing, inconspicuous; in short, you are not a man to draw suspicion. You might travel anywhere and scarcely be noticed,—I have observed that about you. In addition to this you are wary, you are discreet, you are painstaking. I ask you to go first to St. Louis, in Louisiana territory, and this for two reasons. First, because it will draw any chance suspicion from your real objective, New Orleans; and second, because it is necessary to get letters to New Orleans from such leading citizens of St. Louis as Colonel Chouteau and Monsieur Gratiot, and I will give you introductions to them. You are then to take passage to New Orleans in a barge of furs which Monsieur Gratiot is sending down. Mind, we do not expect that you will obtain proof that Miro is paying Wilkinson money. If you do, so much the better; but we believe that both are too sharp to leave any tracks. You will make a report, however, upon the conditions under which our tobacco is being received, and of all other matters which you may think germane to the business in hand. Will you go?”
I had made up my mind.
“Yes, I will go,” I answered.
“Good,” said Mr. Wharton, but with no more enthusiasm than he had previously shown; “I thought I had not misjudged you. Is your law business so onerous that you could not go to-morrow?”
I laughed.
“I think I could settle what affairs I have by noon, Mr. Wharton,” I replied.
“Egad, Mr. Ritchie, I like your manner,” said he; “and now for a few details, and you may go to bed.”
He sat with me half an hour longer, carefully reviewing his instructions, and then he left me to a night of contemplation.
2.8. CHAPTER VIII
TO ST. LOUIS
BY eleven o'clock the next morning I had wound up my affairs, having arranged with a young lawyer of my acquaintance to take over such cases as I had, and I was busy in my room packing my saddle-bags for the journey. The warm scents of spring were wafted through the open door and window, smells of the damp earth giving forth the green things, and tender shades greeted my eyes when I paused and raised my head to think. Purple buds littered the black ground before my door-step, and against the living green of the grass I saw the red stain of a robin's breast as he hopped spasmodically hither and thither, now pausing immovable with his head raised, now tossing triumphantly a wriggling worm from the sod. Suddenly he flew away, and I heard a voice from the street side that brought me stark upright.
“Hold there, neighbor; can you direct me to the mansion of that celebrated barrister, Mr. Ritchie?”
There was no mistaking that voice—it was Nicholas Temple's. I heard a laugh and an answer, the gate slammed, and Mr. Temple himself in a long gray riding-coat, booted and spurred, stood before me.
“Davy,” he cried, “come out here and hug me. Why, you look as if I were your grandmother's ghost.”
“And if you were,” I answered, “you could not have surprised me more. Where have you been?”
“At Jonesboro, acting the gallant with the widow, winning and losing skins and cow-bells and land at rattle-and-snap, horse-racing with that wild Mr. Jackson. Faith, he near shot the top of my head off because I beat him at Greasy Cove.”
I laughed, despite my anxiety.
“And Sevier?” I demanded.
“You have not heard how Sevier got off?” exclaimed Nick. “Egad, that was a crowning stroke of genius! Cozby and Evans, Captains Greene and Gibson, and Sevier's two boys whom you met on the Nollichucky rode over the mountains to Morganton. Greene and Gibson and Sevier's boys hid themselves with the horses in a clump outside the town, while Cozby and Evans, disguised as bumpkins in hunting shirts, jogged into the town with Sevier's racing mare between them. They jogged into the town, I say, through the crowds of white trash, and rode up to the court-house where Sevier was being tried for his life. Evans stood at the open door and held the mare and gaped, while (Cozby stalked in and shouldered his way to the front within four feet of the bar, like a big, awkward countryman. Jack Sevier saw him, and he saw Evans with the mare outside. Then, by thunder, Cozby takes a step right up to the bar and cries out, `Judge, aren't you about done with that man?' Faith, it was like judgment day, such a mix-up as there was after that, and Nollichucky Jack made three leaps and got on the mare, and in the confusion Cozby and Evans were off too, and the whole State of North Carolina couldn't catch 'em then.” Nick sighed. “I'd have given my soul to have been there,” he said.
“Come in,” said I, for lack of something better.
“Cursed if you haven't given me a sweet reception, Davy,” said he. “Have you lost your practice, or is there a lady here, you rogue,” and he poked into the cupboard with his stick. “Hullo, where are you going now?” he added, his eye falling on the saddle-bags.
I had it on my lips to say, and then I remembered Mr. Wharton's injunction.
“I'm going on a journey,” said I.
“When?” said Nick.
“I leave in about an hour,” said I.
He sat down. “Then I leave too,” he said.
“What do you mean, Nick?” I demanded.
“I mean that I will go with you,” said he.
“But I shall be gone three months or more,” I protested.
“I have nothing to do,” said Nick, placidly.
A vague trouble had been working in my mind, but now the full horror of it dawned upon me. I was going to St. Louis. Mrs. Temple and Harry Riddle were gone there, so Polly Ann had avowed, and Nick could not help meeting Riddle. Sorely beset, I bent over to roll up a shirt, and refrained from answering.
He came and laid a hand on my shoulder.
“What the devil ails you, Davy?” he cried. “If it is an elopement, of course I won't press you. I'm hanged if I'll make a third.”
“It is no elopement,” I retorted, my face growing hot in spite of myself.
“Then I go with you,” said he, “for I vow you need taking care of. You can't put me off, I say. But never in my life have I had such a reception, and from my own first cousin, too.”
I was in a quandary, so totally unforeseen was this situation. And then a glimmer of hope came to me that perhaps his mother and Riddle might not be in St. Louis after all. I recalled the conversation in the cabin, and reflected that this wayward pair had stranded on so many beaches, had drifted off again on so many tides, that one place could scarce hold them long. Perchance they had sunk,—who could tell? I turned to Nick, who stood watching me.
“It was not that I did not want you,” I said, “you must believe that. I have wanted you ever since that night long ago when I slipped out of your bed and ran away. I am going first to St. Louis and then to New Orleans on a mission of much delicacy, a mission that requires discretion and secrecy. You may come, with all my heart, with one condition only—that you do not ask my business.”
“Done!” cried Nick. “Davy, I was always sure of you; you are the one fixed quantity in my life. To St. Louis, eh, and to New Orleans? Egad, what havoc we'll
“By all means,” said I, laughing, “only hurry.”
“I'll run to the inn,” said Nick, “and be back in ten minutes.” He got as far as the door, slapped his thigh, and looked back. “Davy, we may run across—”
“Who?” I asked, with a catch of my breath.
“Harry Riddle,” he answered; “and if so, may God have mercy on his soul!”
He ran down the path, the gate clicked, and I heard him whistling in the street on his way to the inn.
After dinner we rode down to the ferry, Nick on the thoroughbred which had beat Mr. Jackson's horse, and his man, Benjy, on a scraggly pony behind. Benjy was a small, black negro with a very squat nose, alert and talkative save when Nick turned on him. Benjy had been born at Temple Bow; he worshipped his master and all that pertained to him, and he showered upon me all the respect and attention that was due to a member of the Temple family. For this I was very grateful. It would have been an easier journey had we taken a boat down to Fort Massac, but such a proceeding might have drawn too much attention to our expedition. I have no space to describe that trip overland, which reminded me at every stage of the march against Kaskaskia, the woods, the chocolate streams, the coffee-colored swamps flecked with dead leaves,—and at length the prairies, the grass not waist-high now, but young and tender, giving forth the acrid smell of spring. Nick was delighted. He made me recount every detail of my trials as a drummer boy, or kept me in continuous spells of laughter over his own escapades. In short, I began to realize that we were as near to each other as though we had never been parted.
We looked down upon Kaskaskia from the self-same spot where I had stood on the bluff with Colonel Clark, and the sounds were even then the same,—the sweet tones of the church bell and the lowing of the cattle. We found a few Virginians and Pennsylvanians scattered in amongst the French, the forerunners of that change which
Down in the moist and shady bottom we came upon the log hut of a half-breed trapper, and he agreed to ferry us across. As for our horses, a keel boat must be sent after these, and Monsieur Gratiot would no doubt easily arrange for this. And so we found ourselves, about five o'clock on that Saturday evening, embarked in a wide pirogue on the current, dodging the driftwood, avoiding the eddies, and drawing near to a village set on a low bluff on the Spanish side and gleaming white among the trees. And as I looked, the thought came again like a twinge of pain that Mrs. Temple and Riddle might be there, thinking themselves secure in this spot, so removed from the world and its doings.
“How now, my man of mysterious affairs?” cried Nick, from the bottom of the boat; “you are as puckered as a sour persimmon. Have you a treaty with Spain in your pocket or a declaration of war? What can trouble you?”
“Nothing, if you do not,” I answered, smiling.
“Lord send we don't admire the same lady, then,” said Nick. “Pierrot,” he cried, turning to one of the boatmen, “il y a des belles demoiselles là, n'est-ce pas?”
The man missed a stroke in his astonishment, and the boat swung lengthwise in the swift current.
“Dame, Monsieur, il y en a,” he answered.
“Where did you learn French, Nick?” I demanded.
“Mr. Mason had it hammered into me,” he answered
We looked about us while our packs were being unloaded, and the place had a strange flavor in that year of our Lord, 1789. A swarthy boatman in a tow shirt with a bright handkerchief on his head stared at us over the gunwale of one of the keel boats, and spat into the still, yellow water; three high-cheeked Indians, with smudgy faces and dirty red blankets, regarded us in silent contempt; and by the water-side above us was a sled loaded with a huge water cask, a bony mustang pony between the shafts, and a chanting negro dipping gourdfuls from the river. A road slanted up the little limestone bluff, and above and below us stone houses could be seen nestling into the hill, houses higher on the river side, and with galleries there. We climbed the bluff, Benjy at our heels with the saddle-bags, and found ourselves on a yellow-clay street lined with grass and wild flowers. A great peace hung over the village, an air of a different race, a restfulness strange to a Kentuckian. Clematis and honeysuckle climbed the high palings, and behind the privacy of these, low, big-chimneyed houses of limestone, weathered gray, could be seen, their roofs sloping in gentle curves to the shaded porches in front; or again, houses of posts set upright in the ground and these filled between with plaster, and so immaculately whitewashed that they gleamed against the green of the trees which shaded them. Behind the houses was often a kind of pink-and-cream paradise of flowering fruit trees, so dear to the French settlers. There were vineyards, too, and thrifty patches of vegetables, and lines of flowers set in the carefully raked mould.
We walked on, enraptured by the sights around us, by the heavy scent of the roses and the blossoms. Here was a quaint stone horse-mill, a stable, or a barn set uncouthly on the street; a baker's shop, with a glimpse of the white-capped baker through the shaded doorway, and an appetizing
We walked on, stopping now and again to peer between the palings, when we heard, amidst the rattling of a cart and the jingling of bells, a chorus of voices:— “À cheval, à cheval, pour aller voir ma mie, Lon, lon, la!”
A shaggy Indian pony came ambling around the corner between the long shafts of a charette. A bareheaded young man in tow shirt and trousers was driving, and three laughing girls were seated on the stools in the cart behind him. Suddenly, before I quite realized what had happened, the young man pulled up the pony, the girls fell silent, and Nick was standing in the middle of the road, with his hat in his hand, bowing elaborately.
“Je vous salue, Mesdemoiselles,” he cried, “mes anges à char-à-banc. Pouvez-vous me diriger chez Monsieur Gratiot?”
“Sapristi!” exclaimed the young man, but he laughed. The young women stood up, giggling, and peered at Nick over the young man's shoulder. One of them wore a fresh red-and-white calamanco gown. She had a complexion of ivory tinged with red, raven hair, and dusky, long-lashed, mischievous eyes brimming with merriment.
“Volontiers, Monsieur,” she answered, before the others could catch their breath, “première droite et première gauche. Allons, Gaspard!” she cried, tapping the young man sharply on the shoulder, “es tu fou?”
Gaspard came to himself, flicked the pony, and they went off down the road with shouts of laughter, while Nick stood waving his hat until they turned the corner.
“Egad,” said he, “I'd take to the highway if I could be sure of holding up such a cargo every time. Off with you, Benjy, and find out where she lives,” he cried,
“Pick up those bags, Benjy,” said I, laughing.
Benjy glanced uncertainly at his master.
“Do as I tell you, you black scalawag,” said Nick, “or I'll tan you. What are you waiting for?”
“Marse Dave—” began Benjy, rolling his eyes in discomfiture.
“Look you, Nick Temple,” said I, “when you shipped with me you promised that I should command. I can't afford to have the town about our ears.
“Oh, very well, if you put it that way,” said Nick. “A little honest diversion— Pick up the bags, Benjy, and follow the parson.”
Obeying Mademoiselle's directions, we trudged on until we came to a comfortable stone house surrounded by trees and set in a half-block bordered by a seven-foot paling. Hardly had we opened the gate when a tall gentleman of grave demeanor and sober dress rose from his seat on the porch, and I recognized my friend of Cahokia days, Monsieur Gratiot. He was a little more portly, his hair was dressed now in an eelskin, and he looked every inch the man of affairs that he was. He greeted us kindly and bade us come up on the porch, where he read my letter of introduction.
“Why,” he exclaimed immediately, giving me a cordial grasp of the hand, “of course. The strategist, the John Law, the reader of character of Colonel Clark's army. Yes, and worse, the prophet, Mr. Ritchie.”
“And why worse, sir?” I asked.
“You predicted that Congress would never repay me for the little loan I advanced to your Colonel.”
“It was not such a little loan, Monsieur,” I said.
“N'importe,” said he; “I went to Richmond with my box of scrip and promissory notes, but I was not ill repaid. If I did not get my money, I acquired, at least, a host of distinguished acquaintances. But, Mr. Ritchie, you must introduce me to your friend;
“My cousin. Mr. Nicholas Temple,” I said.
Monsieur Gratiot looked at him fixedly.
“Of the Charlestown Temples?” he asked, and a sudden vague fear seized me.
“Yes,” said Nick, “there was once a family of that name.”
“And now?” said Monsieur Gratiot, puzzled.
“Now,” said Nick, “now they are become a worthless lot of refugees and outlaws, who by good fortune have escaped the gallows.”
Before Monsier{sic} Gratiot could answer, a child came running around the corner of the house and stood, surprised, staring at us. Nick made a face, stooped down, and twirled his finger. Shouting with a terrified glee, the boy fled to the garden path, Nick after him.
“I like Mr. Temple,” said Monsieur Gratiot, smiling. “He is young, but he seems to have had a history.”
“The Revolution ruined many families—his was one,” I answered, with what firmness of tone I could muster. And then Nick came back, carrying the shouting youngster on his shoulders. At that instant a lady appeared in the doorway, leading another child, and we were introduced to Madame Gratiot.
“Gentlemen,” said Monsieur Gratiot, “you must make my house your home. I fear your visit will not be as long as I could wish, Mr. Ritchie,” he added, turning to me, “if Mr. Wharton correctly states your business. I have an engagement to have my furs in New Orleans by a certain time. I am late in loading, and as there is a moon I am sending off my boats to-morrow night. The men will have to work on Sunday.”
“We were fortunate to come in such good season,” I answered.
After a delicious supper of gumbo, a Creole dish, of fricassee, of crême brûlé, of red wine and fresh wild strawberries, we sat on the porch. The crickets chirped in the garden, the moon cast fantastic shadows from the pecan tree on the grass, while Nick, struggling with his French, talked to Madame Gratiot; and now and then their gay laughter made Monsieur Gratiot pause and smile as he talked to me of my errand. It seemed strange
“Mr. Ritchie,” said he, “the most casual student of your race must come to the same conclusion. You have seen for yourself how they have overrun and conquered Kentucky and the Cumberland districts, despite a hideous warfare waged by all the tribes?? Your people will not be denied, and when they get to Louisiana, they will take it, as they take everything else.”
He was a man strong in argument, was Monsieur Gratiot, for he loved it. And he beat me fairly.
“Nay,” he said finally, “Spain might as well try to dam the Mississippi as to dam your commerce on it. As for France, I love her, though my people were exiled to Switzerland by the Edict of Nantes. But France is rotten through the prodigality of her kings and nobles, and she cannot hold Louisiana. The kingdom is sunk in debt.” He cleared his throat. “As for this Wilkinson of whom you speak, I know something of him. I have no doubt that Miro pensions him, but I know Miro likewise, and you will obtain no proof of that. You will, however, discover in New Orleans many things of interest to your government and to the Federal party in Kentucky. Colonel Chouteau and I will give you letters to certain French gentlemen in New Orleans who can be trusted. There is Saint-Gré, for instance, who puts a French Louisiana into his prayers. He has never forgiven O'Reilly and his Spaniards for the murder of his father in sixty-nine. Saint-Gré is a good fellow,—a cousin of the present Marquis in France,—and his ancestors held many positions of trust in the colony under the French regime. He entertains lavishly at Les Îles, his plantation on the Mississippi. He has the gossip of New Orleans at his
Monsieur Gratiot produced his tabatière and took a pinch of snuff. I summoned my courage for the topic which had trembled all the evening on my lips.
“Some years ago, Monsieur Gratiot, a lady and a gentleman were rescued on the Wilderness Trail in Kentucky. They left us for St. Louis. Did they come here?”
Monsieur Gratiot leaned forward quickly.
“They were people of quality?” he demanded.
“Yes.”
“And their name?”
“They—they did not say.”
“It must have been the Clives,” he cried “it can have been no other. Tell me—a woman still beautiful, commanding, of perhaps eight and thirty? A woman who had a sorrow?—a great sorrow, though we have never learned it. And Mr. Clive, a man of fashion., ill content too, and pining for the life of a capital?”
“Yes,” I said eagerly, my voice sinking near to a whisper, “yes—it is they. And are they here?”
Monsieur Gratiot took another pinch of snuff. It seemed an age before he answered:—
“It is curious that you should mention them, for I gave them letters to New Orleans,—amongst others, to Saint-Gré. Mrs. Clive was—what shall I say?—haunted. Monsieur Clive talked of nothing but Paris, where they had lived once. And at last she gave in. They have gone there.”
“To Paris?” I said, taking breath.
“Yes. It is more than a year ago,” he continued, seeming not to notice my emotion; “they went by way of New Orleans, in one of Chouteau's boats. Mrs. Clive seemed a woman with a great sorrow.”
2.9. CHAPTER IX
"CHERCHEZ LA FEMME"
SUNDAY came with the soft haziness of a June morning, and the dew sucked a fresh fragrance from the blossoms and the grass. I looked out of our window at the orchard, all pink and white in the early sun, and across a patch of clover to the stone kitchen. A pearly, feathery smoke was wafted from the chimney, a delicious aroma of Creole coffee pervaded the odor of the blossoms, and a cotton-clad negro à pieds nus came down the path with two steaming cups and knocked at our door. He who has tasted Creole coffee will never forget it. The effect of it was lost upon Nick, for he laid down the cup, sighed, and promptly went to sleep again, while I dressed and went forth to make his excuses to the family. I found Monsieur and Madame with their children walking among the flowers. Madame laughed.
“He is charming, your cousin,” said she. “Let him sleep, by all means, until after Mass. Then you must come with us to Madame Chouteau's, my mother's. Her children and grandchildren dine with her every Sunday.”
“Madame Chouteau, my mother-in-law, is the queen regent of St. Louis, Mr. Ritchie,” said Monsieur Gratiot, gayly. “We are all afraid of her, and I warn you that she is a very determined and formidable personage. She is the widow of the founder of St. Louis, the Sieur Laclède, although she prefers her own name. She rules us with a strong hand, dispenses justice, settles disputes, and —sometimes indulges in them herself. It is her right.”
“You will see a very pretty French custom of submission to parents,” said Madame Gratiot. “And afterwards there is a ball.”
“A ball!” I exclaimed involuntarily.
“It may seem very strange to you, Mr. Ritchie, but we believe that Sunday was made to enjoy. They will have time to attend the ball before you send them down the river?” she added mischievously, turning to her husband.
“Certainly,” said he, “the loading will not be finished before eight o'clock.”
Presently Madame Gratiot went off to Mass, while I walked with Monsieur Gratiot to a storehouse near the river's bank, whence the skins, neatly packed and numbered, were being carried to the boats on the sweating shoulders of the negroes, the half-breeds, and the Canadian boatmen,—bulky bales of yellow elk, from the upper plains of the Missouri, of buffalo and deer and bear, and priceless little packages of the otter and the beaver trapped in the green shade of the endless Northern forests, and brought hither in pirogues down the swift river by the red tribesmen and Canadian adventurers.
Afterwards I strolled about the silent village. Even the cabarets were deserted. A private of the Spanish Louisiana Regiment in a dirty uniform slouched behind the palings in front of the commandant's quarters,—a quaint stone house set against the hill, with dormer windows in its curving roof, with a wide porch held by eight sturdy hewn pillars; here and there the muffled figure of a prowling Indian loitered, or a barefooted negress shuffled along by the fence crooning a folk-song. All the world had obeyed the call of the church bell save these—and Nick. I bethought myself of Nick, and made my way back to Monsieur Gratiot's.
I found my cousin railing at Benjy, who had extracted from the saddle-bags a wondrous gray suit of London cut in which to array his master. Clothes became Nick's slim figure remarkably. This coat was cut away smartly, like a uniform, towards the tails, and was brought in at the waist with an infinite art.
“Whither now, my conquistador?” I said.
“To Mass,” said he.
“To Mass!” I exclaimed; “but you have slept through the greater part of it.”
“The best part is to come,” said Nick, giving a final touch to his neck-band. Followed by Benjy's adoring eyes, he started out of the door, and I followed him perforce. We came to the little church, of upright logs and plaster, with its crudely shingled, peaked roof, with its tiny belfry crowned by a cross, with its porches on each side shading the line of windows there. Beside the church, a little at the back, was the curé's modest house of stone, and at the other hand, under spreading trees, the graveyard with its rough wooden crosses. And behind these graves rose the wooded hill that stretched away towards the wilderness.
What a span of life had been theirs who rested here! Their youth, perchance, had been spent amongst the crooked streets of some French village, streets lined by red-tiled houses and crossing limpid streams by quaint bridges. Death had overtaken them beside a monster tawny river of which their imaginations had not conceived, a river which draws tribute from the remote places of an unknown land,—a river, indeed, which, mixing all the waters, seemed to symbolize a coming race which was to conquer the land by its resistless flow, even as the Mississippi bore relentlessly towards the sea.
These were my own thoughts as I listened to the tones of the priest as they came, droningly, out of the door, while Nick was exchanging jokes in doubtful French with some half-breeds leaning against the palings. Then we heard benches scraping on the floor, and the congregation began to file out.
Those who reached the steps gave back, respectfully, and there came an elderly lady in a sober turban, a black mantilla wrapped tightly about her shoulders, and I made no doubt that she was Monsieur Gratiot's mother-in-law, Madame Chouteau, she whom he had jestingly called the queen regent. I was sure of this when I saw Madame Gratiot behind her. Madame Chouteau indeed had the face of authority, a high-bridged nose, a determined chin,
After her the congregation, the well-to-do and the poor alike, poured out of the church and spread in merry groups over the grass: keel boatmen in tow shirts and party-colored worsted belts, the blacksmith, the shoemaker, the farmer of a small plot in the common fields in large cotton pantaloons and light-wove camlet coat, the more favored in skull-caps, linen small-clothes, cotton stockings, and silver-buckled shoes,—every man pausing, dipping into his tabatière, for a word with his neighbor. The women, too, made a picture strange to our eyes, the matrons in jacket and petticoat, a Madras handkerchief flung about their shoulders, the girls in fresh cottonade or calamanco.
All at once cries of “ 'Polyte! 'Polyte!” were heard, and a nimble young man with a jester-like face hopped around the corner of the church, trundling a barrel. Behind 'Polyte came two rotund little men perspiring freely, and laden down with various articles,—a bird-cage with two yellow birds, a hat-trunk, an inlaid card box, a roll of scarlet cloth, and I know not what else. They deposited these on the grass beside the barrel, which 'Polyte had set on end and proceeded to mount, encouraged by the shouts of his friends, who pressed around the barrel
“It's an auction,” I said.
But Nick did not hear me. I followed his glance to the far side of the circle, and my eye was caught by a red ribbon, a blush that matched it. A glance shot from underneath long lashes,—but not for me. Beside the girl, and palpably uneasy, stood the young man who had been called Gaspard.
“Ah,” said I, “your angel of the tumbrel.”
But Nick had pulled off his hat and was sweeping her a bow. The girl looked down, smoothing her ribbon, Gaspard took a step forward, and other young women near us tittered with delight. The voice of Hippolyte rolling his r's called out in a French dialect:—
“M'ssieurs et Mesdames, ce sont des effets d'un pauvre officier qui est mort. Who will buy?” He opened the hat-trunk, produced an antiquated beaver with a gold cord, and surveyed it with a covetousness that was admirably feigned. For 'Polyte was an actor. “M'ssieurs, to own such a hat were a patent of nobility. Am I bid twenty livres?”
There was a loud laughter, and he was bid four.
“Gaspard,” cried the auctioneer, addressing the young man of the tumbrel, “Suzanne would no longer hesitate if she saw you in such a hat. And with the trunk, too. Ah, mon Dieu, can you afford to miss it?”
The crowd howled, Suzanne simpered, and Gaspard turned as pink as clover. But he was not to be bullied. The hat was sold to an elderly person, the red cloth likewise; a pot of grease went to a housewife, and there was a veritable scramble for the box of playing cards; and at last Hippolyte held up the wooden cage with the fluttering yellow birds.
“Ha!” he cried, his eyes on Gaspard once more, “a gentle present—a present to make a heart relent. And Monsieur Léon, perchance you will make a bid, although they are not gamecocks.”
Instantly, from somewhere under the barrel, a cock crew. Even the yellow birds looked surprised, and as for 'Polyte, he nearly dropped the cage. One elderly person crossed himself. I looked at Nick. His face was impassive, but suddenly I remembered his boyhood gift, how he had imitated the monkeys, and I began to shake with inward laughter. There was an uncomfortable silence.
“Peste, c'est la magie!” said an old man at last, searching with an uncertain hand for his snuff.
“Monsieur,” cried Nick to the auctioneer, “I will make a bid. But first you must tell me whether they are cocks or yellow birds.”
“Parbleu,” answered the puzzled Hippolyte, “that I do not know, Monsieur.”
Everybody looked at Nick, including Suzanne.
“Very well,” said he, “I will make a bid. And if they
There was a laugh, as of relief.
“Three!” cried Gaspard, and his voice broke.
Hippolyte looked insulted.
“M'ssieurs,” he shouted, “they are from the Canaries. Diable, un berger doit être généreux.”
Another laugh, and Gaspard wiped the perspiration from his face.
“Five!” said he.
“Six!” said Nick, and the villagers turned to him in wonderment. What could such a fine Monsieur want with two yellow birds?
“En avant, Gaspard,” said Hippolyte, and Suzanne shot another barbed glance in our direction.
“Seven,” muttered Gaspard.
“Eight!” said Nick, immediately.
“Nine,” said Gaspard.
“Ten,” said Nick.
“Ten,” cried Hippolyte, “I am offered ten livres for the yellow birds. Une bagatelle! Onze, Gaspard! Onze! onze livres, pour l'amour de Suzanne!”
But Gaspard was silent. No appeals, entreaties, or taunts could persuade him to bid more. And at length Hippolyte, with a gesture of disdain, handed Nick the cage, as though he were giving it away.
“Monsieur,” he said, “the birds are yours, since there are no more lovers who are worthy of the name. They do not exist.”
“Monsieur,” answered Nick, “it is to disprove that statement that I have bought the birds. Mademoiselle,” he added, turning to the flushing Suzanne, “I pray that you will accept this present with every assurance of my humble regard.”
Mademoiselle took the cage, and amidst the laughter of the village at the discomfiture of poor Gaspard, swept Nick a frightened courtesy,—one that nevertheless was full of coquetry. And at that instant, to cap the situation, a rotund little man with a round face under a linen biretta
“Monsieur, you mek my daughter ver' happy. She want those bird ever sence Captain Lopez he die. Monsieur, I am Jean Baptiste Lenoir, Colonel Chouteau's miller, and we ver' happy to see you at the pon'.”
“If Monsieur will lead the way,” said Nick, instantly, taking the little man by the arm.
“But you are to dine at Madame Chouteau's,” I expostulated.
“To be sure,” said he. “Au revoir, Monsieur. Au revoir, Mademoiselle. Plus tard, Mademoiselle; nous danserons plus tard.”
“What devil inhabits you?” I said, when I had got him started on the way to Madame Chouteau's.
“Your own, at present, Davy,” he answered, laying a hand on my shoulder, “else I should be on the way to the pon' with Lenoir. But the ball is to come,” and he executed several steps in anticipation. “Davy, I am sorry for you.”
“Why?” I demanded, though feeling a little self-commiseration also.
“You will never know how to enjoy yourself,” said he, with conviction.
Madame Chouteau lived in a stone house, wide and low, surrounded by trees and gardens. It was a pretty tribute of respect her children and grandchildren paid her that day, in accordance with the old French usage of honoring the parent. I should like to linger on the scene, and tell how Nick made them all laugh over the story of Suzanne Lenoir and the yellow birds, and how the children pressed around him and made him imitate all the denizens of wood and field, amid deafening shrieks of delight.
“You have probably delayed Gaspard's wooing another year, Mr. Temple. Suzanne is a sad coquette,” said Colonel Auguste Chouteau, laughing, as we set out for the ball.
The sun was hanging low over the western hills as we approached the barracks, and out of the open windows came the merry, mad sounds of violin, guitar, and flageolet,
Across the room, by the sirop bowl, a pair of red ribbons flaunted, a pair of eyes sent a swift challenge, Zéron and his assistants struck up again, and there in a corner was Nick Temple, with characteristic effrontery attempting a pas de deux with Suzanne. Though Nick was ignorant, he was not ungraceful, and the village laughed and admired. And when Zéron drifted back into a valse he seized Suzanne's plump figure in his arms and bore her, unresisting, like a prize among the dancers, avoiding alike the fat and unwieldy, the clumsy and the spiteful. For a while the tune held its mad pace, and ended with a shriek and a snap on a high note, for Zéron had broken a string. Amid a burst of laughter from the far end of the room I saw Nick stop before an open window in which a prying Indian was framed, swing Suzanne at arm's length, and bow abruptly at the brave with a grunt that startled him into life.
“Va-t'en, méchant!” shrieked Suzanne, excitedly.
Poor Gaspard! Poor Hippolyte! They would gain Suzanne for a dance only to have her snatched away at the next by the slim and reckless young gentleman in the
“The girl has met her match, for she has played shuttle-cock with all the hearts in the village,” said Monsieur Chouteau. “But perhaps it is just as well that Mr. Temple is leaving to-night. I have signed a bon, Mr. Ritchie, by which you can obtain money at New Orleans. And do not forget to present our letter to Monsieur de Saint Gré. He has a daughter, by the way, who will be more of a match for your friend's fascinations than Suzanne.”
The evening faded into twilight, with no signs of weariness from the dancers. And presently there stood beside us Jean Baptiste Lenoir, the Colonel's miller.
“B' soir, Monsieur le Colonel,” he said, touching his skull-cap, “the water is very low. You fren',” he added, turning to me, “he stay long time in St. Louis?”
“He is going away to-night,—in an hour or so,” I answered, with thanksgiving in my heart.
“I am sorry,” said Monsieur Lenoir, politely, but his looks belied his words. “He is ver' fond Suzanne. Peutêtre he marry her, but I think not. I come away from France to escape the fine gentlemen; long time ago they want to run off with my wife. She was like Suzanne.”
“How long ago did you come from France, Monsieur?” I asked, to get away from an uncomfortable subject.
“It is twenty years,” said he, dreamily, in French. “I was born in the Quartier Saint Jean, on the harbor of the city of Marseilles near Notre Dame de la Nativité.” And he told of a tall, uneven house of four stories, with a high pitched roof, and a little barred door and window at the bottom giving out upon the rough cobbles. He spoke of the smell of the sea, of the rollicking sailors who surged through the narrow street to embark on his Majesty's men-of-war, and of the King's white soldiers in ranks of four going to foreign lands. And how he had become a farmer, the tenant of a country family. Excitement grew on
“They desire all, the nobles,” he cried, “I make the land good, and they seize it. I marry a pretty wife, and Monsieur le Comte he want her. L' bon Dieu,” he added bitterly, relapsing into French. “France is for the King and the nobility, Monsieur. The poor have but little chance there. In the country I have seen the peasants eat roots, and in the city the poor devour the refuse from the houses of the rich. It was we who paid for their luxuries, and with mine own eyes I have seen their gilded coaches ride down weak men and women in the streets. But it cannot last. They will murder Louis and burn the great châteaux. I, who speak to you, am of the people, Monsieur, I know it.”
The sun had long set, and with flint and tow they were touching the flame to the candles, which flickered transparent yellow in the deepening twilight. So absorbed had I become in listening to Lenoir's description that I had forgotten Nick. Now I searched for him among the promenading figures, and missed him. In vain did I seek for a glimpse of Suzanne's red ribbons, and I grew less and less attentive to the miller's reminiscences and arraignments of the nobility. Had Nick indeed run away with his daughter?
The dancing went on with unabated zeal, and through the open door in the fainting azure of the sky the summer moon hung above the hills like a great yellow orange. Striving to hide my uneasiness, I made my farewells to Madame Chouteau's sons and daughters and their friends, and with Colonel Chouteau I left the hall and began to walk towards Monsieur Gratiot's, hoping against hope that Nick had gone there to change. But we had scarce reached the road before we could see two figures in the distance, hazily outlined in the mid-light of the departed sun and the coming moon. The first was Monsieur Gratiot himself, the second Benjy. Monsieur Gratiot took me by the hand.
“I regret to inform you, Mr. Ritchie,” said he, politely,
“Is Temple at your house?” I asked faintly.
“Why, no,” said Monsieur Gratiot; “I thought he was with you at the ball.”
“Where is your master?” I demanded sternly of Benjy.
“I ain't seed him, Marse Dave, sence I put him inter dem fine clothes 'at he w'ars a-cou'tin'.”
“He has gone off with the girl,” put in Colonel Chouteau, laughing.
“But where?” I said, with growing anger at this lack of consideration on Nick's part.
“I'll warrant that Gaspard or Hippolyte Beaujais will know, if they can be found,” said the Colonel. “Neither of them willingly lets the girl out of his sight.”
As we hurried back towards the throbbing sounds of Zéron's fiddle I apologized as best I might to Monsieur Gratiot, declaring that if Nick were not found within the half-hour I would leave without him. My host protested that an hour or so would make no difference. We were about to pass through the group of loungers that loitered by the gate when the sound of rapid footsteps arrested us, and we turned to confront two panting and perspiring young men who halted beside us. One was Hippolyte Beaujais, more fantastic than ever as he faced the moon, and the other was Gaspard. They had plainly made a common cause, but it was Hippolyte who spoke.
“Monsieur,” he cried, “you seek your friend? Ha, we have found him,—we will lead you to him.”
“Where is he?” said Colonel Chouteau, repressing another laugh.
“On the pond, Monsieur,—in a boat, Monsieur, with Suzanne, Monsieur le Colonel! And, moreover, he will come ashore for no one.”
“Parbleu,” said the Colonel, “I should think not for any arguments that you two could muster. But we will go there.”
“How far is it?” I asked, thinking of Monsieur Gratiot.
“About a mile,” said Colonel Chouteau, “a pleasant walk.”
We stepped out, Hippolyte and Gaspard running in front, the Colonel and Monsieur Gratiot and myself following; and a snicker which burst out now and then told us that Benjy was in the rear. On any other errand I should have thought the way beautiful, for the country road, rutted by wooden wheels, wound in and out through pleasant vales and over gentle rises, whence we caught glimpses from time to time of the Mississippi gleaming like molten gold to the eastward. Here and there, nestling against the gentle slopes of the hillside clearing, was a low-thatched farmhouse among its orchards. As we walked, Nick's escapade, instead of angering Monsieur Gratiot, seemed to present itself to him in a more and more ridiculous aspect, and twice he nudged me to call my attention to the two vengefully triumphant figures silhouetted against the moon ahead of us. From time to time also I saw Colonel Chouteau shaking with laughter. As for me, it was impossible to be angry at Nick for any space. Nobody else would have carried off a girl in the face of her rivals for a moonlight row on a pond a mile away.
At length we began to go down into the valley where Chouteau's pond was, and we caught glimpses of the shimmering of its waters through the trees, ay, and presently heard them tumbling lightly over the mill-dam. The spot was made for romance,—a sequestered vale, clad with forest trees, cleared a little by the water-side, where Monsieur Lenoir raised his maize and his vegetables. Below the mill, so Monsieur Gratiot told me, where the creek lay in pools on its limestone bed, the village washing was done; and every Monday morning bare-legged negresses strode up this road, the bundles of clothes balanced on their heads, the paddles in their hands, followed by a stream of black urchins who tempted Providence to drown them.
Down in the valley we came to a path that branched from the road and led under the oaks and hickories towards the pond, and we had not taken twenty paces in it before the notes of a guitar and the sound of a voice reached our
I put my hand to my mouth.
“Nick!” I shouted.
There came for an answer, with the careless and unskilful thrumming of the guitar, the end of the verse:—
Thy cheeks like the rose of the dawning, oh!”
“Hélas!” exclaimed Hippolyte, sadly, “there is no other boat.”
“Nick!” I shouted again, reënforced vociferously by the others.
The music ceased, there came feminine laughter across the water, then Nick's voice, in French that dared everything:—
“Go away and amuse yourselves at the dance. Peste, it is scarce an hour ago I threatened to row ashore and break your heads. Allez vous en, jaloux!”
A scream of delight from Suzanne followed this sally, which was received by Gaspard and Hippolyte with a rattle of saerés, and—despite our irritation—the Colonel, Monsieur Gratiot, and myself with a burst of involuntary laughter.
“Parbleu,” said the Colonel, choking, “it is a pity to disturb such a one. Gratiot, if it was my boat, I'd delay the departure till morning.”
“Indeed, I shall have had no small entertainment as a solace,” said Monsieur Gratiot. “Listen!”
The tinkle of the guitar was heard again, and Nick's voice, strong and full and undisturbed:—
Like a bird into the country my spirit would fly.
Go 'way, old man, and leave me alone,
For I am a stranger and a long way from home.”
There was a murmur of voices in the boat, the sound of a paddle gurgling as it dipped, and the dugout shot out towards the middle of the pond and drifted again.
I shouted once more at the top of my lungs:—
“Come in here, Nick, instantly!”
There was a moment's silence.
“By gad, it's Parson Davy!” I heard Nick exclaim. “Halloo, Davy, how the deuce did you get there?”
“No thanks to you,” I retorted hotly. “Come in.”
“Lord,” said he, “is it time to go to New Orleans?”
“One might think New Orleans was across the street,” said Monsieur Gratiot. “What an attitude of mind!”
The dugout was coming towards us now, propelled by easy strokes, and Nick could be heard the while talking in low tones to Suzanne. We could only guess at the tenor of his conversation, which ceased entirely as they drew near. At length the prow slid in among the rushes, was seized vigorously by Gaspard and Hippolyte, and the boat hauled ashore.
“Thank you very much, Messieurs; you are most obliging,” said Nick. And taking Suzanne by the hand, he helped her gallantly over the gunwale. “Monsieur,” he added, turning in his most irresistible manner to Monsieur Gratiot, “if I have delayed the departure of your boat, I am exceedingly sorry. But I appeal to you if I have not the best of excuses.”
And he bowed to Suzanne, who stood beside him coyly, looking down. As for 'Polyte and Gaspard, they were quite breathless between rage and astonishment. But Colonel Chouteau began to laugh.
“Diable, Monsieur, you are right,” he cried, “and rather than have missed this entertainment I would pay Gratiot for his cargo.”
“Au revoir, Mademoiselle,” said Nick, “I will return when I am released from bondage. When this terrible mentor relaxes vigilance, I will escape and make my way back to you through the forests.”
“Oh!” cried Mademoiselle to me, “you will let him come back, Monsieur.”
“Assuredly, Mademoiselle,” I said, “but I have known him longer than you, and I tell you that in a month he will not wish to come back.”
Hippolyte gave a grunt of approval to this plain speech. Suzanne exclaimed, but before Nick could answer footsteps were heard in the path and Lenoir himself, perspiring, panting, exhausted, appeared in the midst of us.
“Suzanne!” he cried, “Suzanne!” And turning to Nick, he added quite simply, “So, Monsieur, you did not run off with her, after all?”
“There was no place to run, Monsieur,” answered Nick.
“Praise be to God for that!” said the miller, heartily, “there is some advantage in living in the wilderness, when everything is said.”
“I shall come back and try, Monsieur,” said Nick.
The miller raised his hands.
“I assure you that he will not, Monsieur,” I put in.
He thanked me profusely, and suddenly an idea seemed to strike him.
“There is the priest,” he cried; “Monsieur le curé retires late. There is the priest, Monsieur.”
There was an awkward silence, broken at length by an exclamation from Gaspard. Colonel Chouteau turned his back, and I saw his shoulders heave. All eyes were on Nick, but the rascal did not seem at all perturbed.
“Monsieur,” he said, bowing, “marriage is a serious thing, and not to be entered into lightly. I thank you from my heart, but I am bound now with Mr. Ritchie on an errand of such importance that I must make a sacrifice of my own interests and affairs to his.”
“If Mr. Temple wishes—” I began, with malicious delight. But Nick took me by the shoulder.
“My dear Davy,” he said, giving me a vicious kick, “I could not think of it. I will go with you at once. Adieu, Mademoiselle,” said he, bending over Suzanne's unresisting hand. “Adieu, Messieurs, and I thank you for your great interest in me.” (This to Gaspard and Hippolyte.)
“And now, Monsieur Gratiot, I have already presumed too much on your patience. I will follow you, Monsieur.”
We left them, Lenoir, Suzanne, and her two suitors, standing at the pond, and made our way through the path in the forest. It was not until we reached the road and
“Monsieur,” said Colonel Chouteau, slyly, “do you have many such escapes?”
“It might have been closer,” said Nick.
“Closer?” ejaculated the Colonel.
“Assuredly,” said Nick, “to the extent of abducting Monsieur le curé. As for you, Davy,” he added, between his teeth, “I mean to get even with you.”
It was well for us that the Colonel and Monsieur Gratiot took the escapade with such good nature. And so we walked along through the summer night, talking gayly, until at length the lights of the village twinkled ahead of us, and in the streets we met many parties making merry on their homeward way. We came to Monsieur Gratiot's, bade our farewells to Madame, picked up our saddle-bags, the two gentlemen escorting us down to the river bank where the keel boat was tugging at the ropes that held her, impatient to be off. Her captain, a picturesque Canadian by the name of Xavier Paret, was presented to us; we bade our friends farewell, and stepped across the plank to the deck. As we were casting off, Monsieur Gratiot called to us that he would take the first occasion to send our horses back to Kentucky. The oars were manned, the heavy hulk moved, and we were shot out into the mighty current of the river on our way to New Orleans.
Nick and I stood for a long time on the deck, and the windows of the little village gleamed like stars among the trees. We passed the last of its houses that nestled against the hill, and below that the forest lay like velvet under the moon. The song of our boatmen broke the silence of the night:—
Voici le temps et la saison,
Ah! vrai, que les journées sont longues,
Ah! vrai, que les journées sont longues!”
2.10. CHAPTER X
THE KEEL BOAT
WE were embarked on a strange river, in a strange boat, and bound for a strange city. To us Westerners a halo of romance, of unreality, hung over New Orleans. To us it had an Old World, almost Oriental flavor of mystery and luxury and pleasure, and we imagined it swathed in the moisture of the Delta, built of quaint houses, with courts of shining orange trees and magnolias, and surrounded by flowering plantations of unimagined beauty. It was most fitting that such a place should be the seat of dark intrigues against material progress, and this notion lent added zest to my errand thither. As for Nick, it took no great sagacity on my part to predict that he would forget Suzanne and begin to look forward to the Creole beauties of the Mysterious City.
First, there was the fur-laden keel boat in which we travelled, gone forever now from Western navigation. It had its rude square sail to take advantage of the river winds, its mast strongly braced to hold the long tow-ropes. But tow-ropes were for the endless up-river journey, when a numerous crew strained day after day along the bank, chanting the voyageurs' songs. Now we were light-manned, two half-breeds and two Canadians to handle the oars in time of peril, and Captain Xavier, who stood aft on the cabin roof, leaning against the heavy beam of the long, curved tiller, watching hawklike for snag and eddy and bar. Within the cabin was a great fireplace of stones, where our cooking was done, and bunks set round for the men in cold weather and rainy. But in these fair nights we chose to sleep on deck.
Far into the night we sat, Nick and I, our feet dangling over the forward edge of the cabin, looking at the glory of the moon on the vast river, at the endless forest crown, at the haze which hung like silver dust under the high bluffs on the American side. We slept. We awoke again as the moon was shrinking abashed before the light that glowed above these cliffs, and the river was turned from brown to gold and then to burnished copper, the forest to a thousand shades of green from crest to the banks where the river was licking the twisted roots to nakedness. The south wind wafted the sharp wood-smoke from the chimney across our faces. In the stern Xavier stood immovable against the tiller, his short pipe clutched between his teeth, the colors of his new worsted belt made gorgeous by the rising sun.
“B' jour, Michié,” he said, and added in the English he had picked up from the British traders, “the breakfas' he is ready, and Jean make him good. Will you have the grace to descen'?”
We went down the ladder into the cabin, where the odor of the furs mingled with the smell of the cooking. There was a fricassee steaming on the crane, some of Zéron's bread, brought from St. Louis, and coffee that Monsieur Gratiot had provided for our use. We took our bowls and cups on deck and sat on the edge of the cabin.
“By gad,” cried Nick, “it lacks but the one element to make it a paradise.”
“And what is that?” I demanded.
“A woman,” said he.
Xavier, who overheard, gave a delighted laugh.
“Parbleu, Michie, you have right,” he said, “but Michié Gratiot, he say no. In Nouvelle Orléans we find some.”
Nick got to his feet, and if anything he did could have surprised me, I should have been surprised when he put his arm coaxingly about Xavier's neck. Xavier himself was surprised and correspondingly delighted.
“Tell me, Xavier,” he said, with a look not to be resisted, “do you think I shall find some beauties there?”
“Beauties!” exclaimed Xavier, “La Nouvelle Orléans
“But what, Xavier?”
“But, mon Dieu, Michié, they are vair' difficile. They are not like Englis' beauties, there is the father and the mother, and—the convent.” And Xavier, who had a wen under his eye, laid his finger on it.
“For shame, Xavier,” cried Nick; “and you are balked by such things?”
Xavier thought this an exceedingly good joke, and he took his pipe out of his mouth to laugh the better.
“Me? Mais non, Michié. And yet ze Alcalde, he mek me afraid. Once he put me in ze calaboose when I tried to climb ze balcon'.”
Nick roared.
“I will show you how, Xavier,” he said; “as to climbing the balconies, there is a convenance in it, as in all else. For instance, one must be daring, and discreet, and nimble, and ready to give the law a presentable answer, and lacking that, a piastre. And then the fair one must be a fair one indeed.”
“Diable, Michié,” cried Xavier, “you are ze mischief.”
“Nay,” said Nick, “I learned it all and much more from my cousin, Mr. Ritchie.”
Xavier stared at me for an instant, and considering that he knew nothing of my character, I thought it extremely impolite of him to laugh. Indeed, he tried to control himself, for some reason standing in awe of my appearance, and then he burst out into such loud haw-haws that the crew poked their heads above the cabin hatch.
“Michié Reetchie,” said Xavier, and again he burst into laughter that choked further speech. He controlled himself and laid his finger on his wen.
“You don't believe it,” said Nick, offended.
“Michié Reetchie a gallant!” said Xavier.
“An incurable,” said Nick, “an amazingly clever rogue at device when there is a petticoat in it. Davy, do I do you justice?”
Xavier roared again.
“Quel maître!” he said.
“Xavier,” said Nick, gently taking the tiller out of his hand, “I will teach you how to steer a keel boat.”
“Mon Dieu,” said Xavier, “and who is to pay Michié Gratiot for his fur? The river, she is full of things.”
“Yes, I know, Xavier, but you will teach me to steer.”
“Volontiers, Michié, as we go now. But there come a time when I, even I, who am twenty year on her, do not know whether it is right or left. Ze rock—he vair' hard. Ze snag, he grip you like dat,” and Xavier twined his strong arms around Nick until he was helpless. “Ze bar—he hol' you by ze leg. An' who is to tell you how far he run under ze yellow water, Michié? I, who speak to you, know. But I know not how I know. Ze water, sometime she tell, sometime she say not'ing.”
“À bas, Xavier!” said Nick, pushing him away, “I will teach you the river.”
Xavier laughed, and sat down on the edge of the cabin. Nick took easily to accomplishments, and he handled the clumsy tiller with a certainty and distinction that made the boatmen swear in two languages and a patois. A great water-logged giant of the Northern forests loomed ahead of us. Xavier sprang to his feet, but Nick had swung his boat swiftly, smoothly, into the deeper water on the outer side.
“Saint Jacques, Michié,” cried Xavier, “you mek him better zan I thought.”
Fascinated by a new accomplishment, Nick held to the tiller, while Xavier with a trained eye scanned the troubled, yellow-glistening surface of the river ahead. The wind died, the sun beat down with a moist and venomous sting, and northeastward above the edge of the bluff a bank of cloud like sulphur smoke was lifted. Gradually Xavier ceased his jesting and became quiet.
“Looks like a hurricane,” said Nick.
“Mon Dieu,” said Xavier, “you have right, Michié,” and he called in his rapid patois to the crew, who lounged forward in the cabin's shade. There came to my mind
The cloud-bank came on in black and yellow masses, and the saffron light I recalled so well turned the living green of the forest to a sickly pallor and the yellow river to a tinge scarce to be matched on earth. Xavier had the tiller now, and the men were straining at the oars to send the boat across the current towards the nearer western shore. And as my glance took in the scale of things, the miles of bluff frowning above the bottom, the river that seemed now like a lake of lava gently boiling, and the wilderness of the western shore that reached beyond the ken of man, I could not but shudder to think of the conflict of nature's forces in such a place. A grim stillness reigned over all, broken only now and again by a sharp command from Xavier. The men were rowing for their lives, the sweat glistening on their red faces.
“She come,” said Xavier.
I looked, not to the northeast whence the banks of cloud had risen, but to the southwest, and it seemed as though a little speck was there against the hurrying film of cloud. We were drawing near the forest line, where a little creek made an indentation. I listened, and from afar came a sound like the strumming of low notes on a guitar, and sad. The terrified scream of a panther broke the silence of the forest, and then the other distant note grew stronger, and stronger yet, and rose to a high hum like unto no sound on this earth, and mingled with it now was a lashing like water falling from a great height. We grounded, and Xavier, seizing a great tow-rope, leaped into the shallow water and passed the bight around a trunk. I cried out to Nick, but my voice was drowned. He seized me and flung me under the cabin's lee, and then above the fearful note of the storm came cracklings like gunshots of great trees snapping at their trunk. We saw the forest wall burst out—how far away I know not— and the air was filled as with a flock of giant birds, and boughs crashed on the roof of the cabin and tore the
It was Nick who moved first. With white face he climbed to the roof of the cabin and idly seizing the great limb that lay there tried to move it. Xavier, who lay on his face on the bank, rose to a sitting posture and crossed himself. Beyond me crowded the four members of the crew, unhurt. Then we heard Xavier's voice, in French, thanking the Blessed Virgin for our escape.
Further speech was gone from us, for men do not talk after such a matter. We laid hold of the tree across the cabin and, straining, flung it over into the water. A great drop of rain hit me on the forehead, and there came a silver-gray downpour that blotted out the scene and drove us down below. And then, from somewhere in the depths of the dark cabin, came a sound to make a man's blood run cold.
“What's that?” I said, clutching Nick.
“Benjy,” said he; “thank God he did not die of fright.” We lighted a candle, and poking around, found the negro where he had crept into the farthest corner of a bunk with his face to the wall. And when we touched him he gave vent to a yell that was blood-curdling.
“I'se a bad nigger, Lo'd, yes, I is,” he moaned. “I ain't fit fo' jedgment, Lo'd.”
Nick shook him and laughed.
“Come out of that, Benjy,” he said; “you've got another chance.
Benjy turned, perforce, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the candle-light, and stared at us.
“You ain't gone yit, Marse,” he said.
“Gone where?” said Nick.
“I'se done been tole de quality 'll be jedged fust, Marse,”
Nick hauled him out on the floor. Climbing to the deck, we found that the boat was already under way, running southward in the current through the misty rain. And gazing shoreward, a sight met my eyes which I shall never forget. A wide vista, carpeted with wreckage, was cut through the forest to the river's edge, and the yellow water was strewn for miles with green boughs. We stared down it, overwhelmed, until we had passed beyond its line.
“It is as straight,” said Nick, “as straight as one of her
Majesty's alleys I saw cut through the forest at Saint-Cloud.”
* * * * * * * *
Had I space and time to give a faithful account of this journey it would be chiefly a tribute to Xavier's skill, for they who have not put themselves at the mercy of the Mississippi in a small craft can have no idea of the dangers of such a voyage. Infinite experience, a keen eye, a steady hand, and a nerve of iron are required. Now, when the current swirled almost to a rapid, we grazed a rock by the width of a ripple; and again, despite the effort of Xavier and the crew, we would tear the limbs from a huge tree, which, had we hit it fair, would have ripped us from bow to stern. Once, indeed, we were fast on a sand-bar, whence (as Nick said) Xavier fairly cursed us off. We took care to moor at night, where we could be seen as little as possible from the river, and divided the watches lest we should be surprised by Indians. And, as we went southward, our hands and faces became blotched all over by the bites of mosquitoes and flies, and we smothered ourselves under blankets to get rid of them. At times we fished, and one evening, after we had passed the expanse of water at the mouth of the Ohio, Nick pulled a hideous thing from the inscrutable yellow depths,—a slimy, scaleless catfish. He came up like a log, and must have weighed seventy pounds. Xavier and his men and myself made two good meals of him, but Nick would not touch the meat.
The great river teemed with life. There were flocks of herons and cranes and water pelicans, and I know not what other birds, and as we slipped under the banks we often heard the paroquets chattering in the forests. And once, as we drifted into an inlet at sunset, we caught sight of the shaggy head of a bear above the brown water, and leaping down into the cabin I primed the rifle that stood there and shot him. It took the seven of us to drag him on board, and then I cleaned and skinned him as Tom had taught me, and showed Jean how to put the caul fat and liver in rows on a skewer and wrap it in the bear's handkerchief and roast it before the fire. Nick found no difficulty in eating this—it was a dish fit for any gourmand.
We passed the great, red Chickasaw Bluff, which sits facing westward looking over the limitless Louisiana forests, where new and wondrous vines and flowers grew, and came to the beautiful Walnut Hills crowned by a Spanish fort. We did not stop there to exchange courtesies, but pressed on to the Grand Gulf, the grave of many a keel boat before and since. This was by far the most dangerous place on the Mississippi, and Xavier was never weary of recounting many perilous escapes there, or telling how such and such a priceless cargo had sunk in the mud by reason of the lack of skill of particular boatmen he knew of. And indeed, the Canadian's face assumed a graver mien after the Walnut Hills were behind us.
“You laugh, Michié,” he said to Nick, a little resentfully. “I who speak to you say that there is four foot on each side of ze bateau. Too much tafia, a little too much excite—” and he made a gesture with his hand expressive of total destruction; “ze tornado, I would sooner have him—”
Bah!” said Nick, stroking Xavier's black beard, “give me the tiller. I will see you through safely, and we will not spare the tafia either.” And he began to sing a song of Xavier's own:—
Où est allé votre mari?' ”
“Ah, toujours les dames!” said Xavier. “But I tell you, Michié, le diable,—he is at ze bottom of ze Grand Gulf and his mouth open—so.” And he suited the action to the word.
At night we tied up under the shore within earshot of the mutter of the place, and twice that night I awoke with clinched hands from a dream of being spun fiercely against the rock of which Xavier had told, and sucked into the devil's mouth under the water. Dawn came as I was fighting the mosquitoes,—a still, sultry dawn with thunder muttering in the distance.
We breakfasted in silence, and with the crew standing ready at the oars and Xavier scanning the wide expanse of waters ahead, seeking for that unmarked point whence to embark on this perilous journey, we floated down the stream. The prospect was sufficiently disquieting on that murky day. Below us, on the one hand, a rocky bluff reached out into the river, and on the far side was a timber-clad point round which the Mississippi doubled and flowed back on itself. It needed no trained eye to guess at the perils of the place. On the one side the mighty current charged against the bluff and, furious at the obstacle, lashed itself into a hundred sucks and whirls, their course marked by the flotsam plundered from the forests above. Woe betide the boat that got into this devil's caldron! And on the other side, near the timbered point, ran a counter current marked by forest wreckage flowing up-stream. To venture too far on this side was to be grounded or at least to be sent back to embark once more on the trial.
But where was the channel? We watched Xavier with bated breath. Not once did he take his eyes from the swirling water ahead, but gave the tiller a touch from time to time, now right, now left, and called in a monotone for the port or starboard oars. Nearer and nearer we sped, dodging the snags, until the water boiled around us, and suddenly the boat shot forward as in a mill-race, and we clutched the cabin's roof. A triumphant gleam was in Xavier's eyes, for he had hit the channel squarely. And then, like a monster out of the deep, the scaly, black
“Concedo libre y seguro paeaporte a Don Davíd Ritchie para que pase a la Nueva Orleans por Agna. Pido y encargo no se le ponga embarazo.”
A few days more and we were running between low shores which seemed to hold a dark enchantment. The rivers now flowed out of, and not into the Mississippi, and Xavier called them bayous, and often it took much skill and foresight on his part not to be shot into the lane they made in the dark forest of an evening. And the forest, —it seemed an impenetrable mystery, a strange tangle of fantastic growths: the live-oak (chêne vert), its wide-spreading limbs hung funereally with Spanish moss and
One night I awoke with the sweat starting from my brow, trying to collect my senses, and I lay on my blanket listening to such plaintive and heart-rending cries as I had never known. Human cries they were, cries as of children in distress, and I rose to a sitting posture on the deck with my hair standing up straight, to discover Nick beside me in the same position.
“God have mercy on us,” I heard him mutter, “what's that? It sounds like the wail of all the babies since the world began.”
We listened together, and I can give no notion of the hideous mournfulness of the sound. We lay in a swampy little inlet, and the forest wall made a dark blur against the star-studded sky. There was a splash near the boat that made me clutch my legs, the wails ceased and began again with redoubled intensity. Nick and I leaped to our feet and stood staring, horrified, over the gunwale into the black water. Presently there was a laugh behind us, and we saw Xavier resting on his elbow.
“What devil-haunted place is this?” demanded Nick.
“Ha, ha,” said Xavier, shaking with unseemly mirth, “you have never heard ze alligator sing, Michié?”
“Alligator!” cried Nick; “there are babies in the water, I tell you.”
“Ha, ha,” laughed Xavier, flinging off his blanket and searching for his flint and tinder. He lighted a pine knot, and in the red pulsing flare we saw what seemed to be a
Often after that our slumbers were disturbed, and we would rise with maledictions in our mouths to fling the handiest thing at the serenaders. When we arose in the morning we would often see them by the dozens, basking in the shallows, with their wide mouths flapped open waiting for their prey. Sometimes we ran upon them in the water, where they looked like the rough-bark pine logs from the North, and Nick would have a shot at them. When he hit one fairly there would be a leviathan-like roar and a churning of the river into suds.
At length there were signs that we were drifting out of the wilderness, and one morning we came in sight of a rich plantation with its dark orange trees and fields of indigo, with its wide-galleried manor-house in a grove. And as we drifted we heard the negroes chanting at their work, the plaintive cadence of the strange song adding to the mystery of the scene. Here in truth was a new world, a land of peaceful customs, green and moist. The soft-toned bells of it seemed an expression of its life,—so far removed from our own striving and fighting existence in Kentucky. Here and there, between plantations, a belfry could be seen above the cluster of the little white village planted in the green; and when we went ashore amongst these simple French people they treated us with such gentle civility and kindness that we would fain have lingered there. The river had become a vast yellow lake, and often as we drifted of an evening the wail of a slave dance and monotonous beating of a tom-tom would float to us over the water.
At last, late one afternoon, we came in sight of that strange city which had filled our thoughts for many days.
2.11. CHAPTER XI
THE STRANGE CITY
NICK and I stood by the mast on the forward part of the cabin, staring at the distant, low-lying city, while Xavier sought for the entrance to the eddy which here runs along the shore. If you did not gain this entrance, —so he explained,—you were carried by a swift current below New Orleans and might by no means get back save by the hiring of a crew. Xavier, however, was not to be caught thus, and presently we were gliding quietly along the eastern bank, or levee, which held back the river from the lowlands. Then, as we looked, the levee became an esplanade shaded by rows of willows, and through them we caught sight of the upper galleries and low, curving roofs of the city itself. There, cried Xavier, was the Governor's house on the corner, where the great Miro lived, and beyond it the house of the Intendant; and then, gliding into an open space between the keel boats along the bank, stared at by a score of boatmen and idlers from above, we came to the end of our long journey. No sooner had we made fast than we were boarded by a shabby customs officer who, when he had seen our passports, bowed politely and invited us to land. We leaped ashore, gained the gravelled walk on the levee, and looked about us.
Squalidity first met our eyes. Below us, crowded between the levee and the row of houses, were dozens of squalid market-stalls tended by cotton-clad negroes. Beyond, across the bare Place d'Armes, a blackened gap in the line of houses bore witness to the devastation of the year gone by, while here and there a roof, struck by the
“Time for siesta, Michié,” said Xavier, joining us; “I will show you ze inn of which I spik. She is kep' by my fren', Madame Bouvet.”
“Xavier,” said Nick, looking at the rolling flood of the river, “suppose this levee should break?”
“Ah,” said Xavier, “then some Spaniard who never have a bath—he feel what water is lak.”
Followed by Benjy with the saddle-bags, we went down the steps set in the levee into this strange, foreign city. It was like unto nothing we had ever seen, nor can I give an adequate notion of how it affected us,—such a mixture it seemed of dirt and poverty and wealth and romance. The narrow, muddy streets ran with filth, and on each side along the houses was a sun-baked walk held up by the curved sides of broken flatboats, where two men might scarcely pass. The houses, too, had an odd and foreign look, some of wood, some of upright logs and plaster, and newer ones, Spanish in style, of adobe, with curving roofs of red tiles and strong eaves spreading over the banquette (as the sidewalk was called), casting shadows on lemon-colored walls. Since New Orleans was in a swamp, the older houses for the most part were lifted some seven feet above the ground, and many of these houses had wide galleries on the street side. Here and there a shop was set in the wall; a watchmaker was to be seen poring over his work at a tiny window, a shoemaker cross-legged on the floor. Again, at an open wicket, we caught a glimpse through a cool archway into a flowering court-yard. Stalwart negresses with bright kerchiefs made way for us on the banquette. Hands on hips, they swung along erect, with baskets of cakes and sweetmeats on their heads, musically crying their wares.
At length, turning a corner, we came to a white wooden house on the Rue Royale, with a flight of steps leading up to the entrance. In place of a door a flimsy curtain hung in the doorway, and, pushing this aside, we followed
“Madame,” he said, “I have brought you from St. Louis with Michie Gratiot's compliments two young American gentlemen, who are travelling to amuse themselves.”
The lady rose and beamed upon us.
“From Monsieur Gratiot,” she said; “you are very welcome, gentlemen, to such poor accommodations as I have. It is not unusual to have American gentlemen in New Orleans, for many come here first and last. And I am happy to say that two of my best rooms are vacant. Zoey!”
There was a shrill answer from the court below, and a negro girl in a yellow turban came running up, while Madame Bouvet bustled along the gallery and opened the doors of two darkened rooms. Within I could dimly see a walnut dresser, a chair, and a walnut bed on which was spread a mosquito bar.
“Voilà, Messieurs,” cried Madame Bouvet, “there is still a little time for a siesta. No siesta!” cried Madame, eying us aghast; “ah, the Americans they never rest— never.”
We bade farewell to the good Xavier, promising to see him soon; and Nick, shouting to Benjy to open the saddle-bags, proceeded to array himself in the clothes which had made so much havoc at St. Louis. I boded no good from this proceeding, but I reflected, as I watched him dress, that I might as well try to turn the Mississippi from its course as to attempt to keep my cousin from the search for gallant adventure. And I reflected that his indulgence in pleasure-seeking would serve the more to divert any suspicions which might fall upon my own head. At last, when the setting sun was flooding the court-yard, he
Madame Bouvet's tavern, or hotel, or whatever she was pleased to call it, was not immaculately clean. Before passing into the street we stood for a moment looking into the public room on the left of the hallway, a long saloon, evidently used in the early afternoon for a dining room, and at the back of it a wide, many-paned window, capped by a Spanish arch, looked out on the gallery. Near this window was a gay party of young men engaged at cards, waited on by the yellow-turbaned Zoey, and drinking what evidently was claret punch. The sounds of their jests and laughter pursued us out of the house.
The town was waking from its siesta, the streets filling, and people stopped to stare at Nick as we passed. But Nick, who was plainly in search of something he did not find, hurried on. We soon came to the quarter which had suffered most from the fire, where new houses had gone up or were in the building beside the blackened logs of many of Bienville's time. Then we came to a high white wall that surrounded a large garden, and within it was a long, massive building of some beauty and pretension, with a high, latticed belfry and heavy walls and with arched dormers in the sloping roof. As we stood staring at it through the iron grille set in the archway of the lodge, Nick declared that it put him in mind of some of the châteaux he had seen in France, and he crossed the street to get a better view of the premises. An old man in coarse blue linen came out of the lodge and spoke to me.
“It is the convent of the good nuns, the Ursulines, Monsieur, he said in French, “and it was built long ago in the Sieur de Bienville's time, when the colony was young. For forty-five years, Monsieur, the young ladies of the city have come here to be educated.”
“What does he say?” demanded Nick, pricking up his ears as he came across the street.
“That young men have been sent to the mines of Brazil for climbing the walls,” I answered.
“Who wants to climb the walls?” said Nick, disgusted.
“The young ladies of the town go to school here,” I answered; “it is a convent.”
“It might serve to pass the time,” said Nick, gazing with a new interest at the latticed windows. “How much would you take, my friend, to let us in at the back way this evening?” he demanded of the porter in French.
The good man gasped, lifted his hands in horror, and straightway let loose upon Nick a torrent of French invectives that had not the least effect except to cause a blacksmith's apprentice and two negroes to stop and stare at us.
“Pooh!” exclaimed Nick, when the man had paused for want of breath, “it is no trick to get over that wall.”
“Bon Dieu!” cried the porter, “you are Kentuckians, yes? I might have known that you were Kentuckians, and I shall advise the good sisters to put glass on the wall and keep a watch.”
“The young ladies are beautiful, you say?” said Nick.
At this juncture, with the negroes grinning and the porter near bursting with rage, there came out of the lodge the fattest woman I have ever seen for her size. She seized her husband by the back of his loose frock and pulled him away, crying out that he was losing time by talking to vagabonds, besides disturbing the good sisters. Then we went away, Nick following the convent wall down to the river. Turning southward under the bank past the huddle of market-stalls, we came suddenly upon a sight that made us pause and wonder.
New Orleans was awake. A gay and laughing throng paced the esplanade on the levee under the willows, with here and there a cavalier on horseback on the Royal Road below. Across the Place d'Armes the spire of the parish church stood against the fading sky, and to the westward the mighty river stretched away like a gilded floor. It was a strange throng. There were grave Spaniards in long cloaks and feathered beavers; jolly merchants and artisans in short linen jackets, each with his tabatière, the wives with bits of finery, the children laughing and shouting
Ay, and there was yet another sort. Every flatboatman who returned to Kentucky was full of tales of the marvellous beauty of the quadroons and octoroons, stories which I had taken with a grain of salt; but they had not indeed been greatly overdrawn. For here were these ladies in the flesh, their great, opaque, almond eyes consuming us with a swift glance, and each walking with a languid grace beside her duenna. Their faces were like old ivory, their dress the stern Miro himself could scarce repress. In former times they had been lavish in their finery, and even now earrings still gleamed and color broke out irrepressibly.
Nick was delighted, but he had not dragged me twice the length of the esplanade ere his eye was caught by a young lady in pink who sauntered between an elderly gentleman in black silk and a young man more gayly dressed.
“Egad,” said Nick, “there is my divinity, and I need not look a step farther.”
I laughed.
“You have but to choose, I suppose, and all falls your way,” I answered.
“But look!” he cried, halting me to stare after the girl, “what a face, and what a form! And what a carriage,
“You are mad, Nick,” I answered, pulling him on, “these people are not to be stared at so. And once I present our letters to Monsieur de Saint-Gré, it will not be difficult to know any of them.”
“Look!” said he, “that young man, lover or husband, is a brute. On my soul, they are quarrelling.”
The three had stopped by a bench under a tree. The young man, who wore claret silk and a sword, had one of those thin faces of dirty complexion which show the ravages of dissipation, and he was talking with a rapidity and vehemence of which only a Latin tongue will admit. We could see, likewise, that the girl was answering with spirit,—indeed, I should write a stronger word than spirit,—while the elderly gentleman, who had a good-humored, fleshy face and figure, was plainly doing his best to calm them both. People who were passing stared curiously at the three.
“Your divinity evidently has a temper, “I remarked.
“For that scoundel—certainly,” said Nick; “but come, they are moving on.”
“You mean to follow them?” I exclaimed.
“Why not?” said he. “We will find out where they live and who they are, at least.”
“And you have taken a fancy to this girl?”
“I have looked them all over, and she's by far the best I've seen. I can say so much honestly.”
“But she may be married,” I said weakly.
“Tut, Davy,” he answered, “it's more than likely, from the violence of their quarrel. But if so, we will try again.”
“We!” I exclaimed.
“Oh, come on!” he cried, dragging me by the sleeve, “or we shall lose them.”
I resisted no longer, but followed him down the levee, in my heart thanking heaven that he had not taken a fancy to an octoroon. Twilight had set in strongly, the gay crowd was beginning to disperse, and in the distance
“Curse the luck!” cried Nick, “we have lost them. The next time I'll stop for no explanations.”
There was no particular reason why I should have been penitent, but I ventured to say that the house they had entered could not be far off.
“And how the devil are we to know it?” demanded Nick.
This puzzled me for a moment, but presently I began to think that the two might begin quarrelling again, and said so. Nick laughed and put his arm around my neck.
“You have no mean ability for intrigue when you put your mind to it, Davy,” he said; “I vow I believe you are in love with the girl yourself.”
I disclaimed this with some vehemence. Indeed, I had scarcely seen her.
“They can't be far off,” said Nick; “we'll pitch on a likely house and camp in front of it until bedtime.”
“And be flung into a filthy calaboose by a constable,” said I. “No, thank you.”
We walked on, and halfway down the block we came upon a new house with more pretensions than its neighbors. It was set back a little from the street, and there was a high adobe wall into which a pair of gates were set, and a wicket opening in one of them. Over the wall hung a dark fringe of magnolia and orange boughs. On each of the gate-posts a crouching lion was outlined dimly against the fainting light, and, by crossing the street, we could see the upper line of a latticed gallery under the
Instinctively I seized Nick by the arm as he started out of the doorway.
“Let me go,” he cried angrily, “let me go, Davy.”
But I held on.
“Are you mad?” I said.
He did not answer, but twisted and struggled, and before I knew what he was doing he had pushed me off the stone step into a tangle of blackened beams behind. I dropped his arm to save myself, and it was mere good fortune that I did not break an ankle in the fall. When I had gained the step again he was gone after the man, and a portly citizen stood in front of me, looking into the doorway.
“Qu' est-ce-qu'il-y-a la dedans?” he demanded sharply.
It was a sufficiently embarrassing situation. I put on a bold front, however, and not deigning to answer, pushed past him and walked with as much leisure as possible along the banquette in the direction which Nick had taken. As I turned the corner I glanced over my shoulder, and in the darkness I could just make out the man standing where I had left him. In great uneasiness I pursued my way, my imagination summing up for Nick all kinds of adventures with disagreeable consequences. I walked for some time—it may have been half an hour —aimlessly, and finally decided it would be best to go back to Madame Bouvet's and await the issue with as much calmness as possible. He might not, after all, have caught the fellow.
There were few people in the dark streets, but at length I met a man who gave me directions, and presently found my way back to my lodging place. Talk and laughter floated through the latticed windows into the street, and when I had pushed back the curtain and looked into the saloon I found the same gaming party at the end of it, sitting in their shirt-sleeves amidst the moths and insects that hovered around the candles.
“Ah, Monsieur,” said Madame Bouvet's voice behind me, “you must excuse them. They will come here and play, the young gentlemen, and I cannot find it in my heart to drive them away, though sometimes I lose a respectable lodger by their noise. But, after all, what would you?” she added with a shrug; “I love them, the young men. But, Monsieur,” she cried, “you have had no supper! And where is Monsieur your companion? Comme il est beau garçon!”
“He will be in presently,” I answered with unwarranted assumption.
Madame shot at me the swiftest of glances and laughed, and I suspected that she divined Nick's propensity for adventure. However, she said nothing more than to bid me sit down at the table, and presently Zoey came in with lights and strange, highly seasoned dishes, which I ate
“Ah, Messieurs,” she cried, “you will ruin my poor house.”
The five rose and bowed with marked profundity. One of them, with a puffy, weak, good-natured face, answered her briskly, and after a little raillery she came back to me. I had a question not over discreet on my tongue's tip.
“There are some fine residences going up here, Madame,” I said.
“Since the fire, Monsieur, the dreadful fire of Good Friday a year ago. You admire them?”
“I saw one,” I answered with indifference, “with a wall and lions on the gate-posts—”
“Mon Dieu, that is a house,” exclaimed Madame; “it belongs to Monsieur de Saint-Gré.”
“To Monsieur de Saint-Gré!” I repeated.
She shot a look at me. She had bright little eyes like a bird's, that shone in the candlelight.
“You know him, Monsieur?”
“I heard of him in St. Louis,” I answered.
“You will meet him, no doubt,” she continued. “He is a very fine gentleman. His grandfather was Commissary-general of the colony, and he himself is a cousin of the Marquis de Saint-Gré, who has two châteaux, a house in Paris, and is a favorite of the King.” She paused, as if to let this impress itself upon me, and added archly, “Tenez, Monsieur, there is a daughter—”
She stopped abruptly.
I followed her glance, and my first impression—of claret-color—gave me a shock. My second confirmed
“Monsieur Auguste?” stammered Madame.
“Bon soir, Madame,” he cried gayly, with a bow; “diable, they are already at it, I see, and the punch in the bowl. I will win back to-night what I have lost by a week of accursed luck.”
“Monsieur your father has relented, perhaps,” said Madame, deferentially.
“Relented!” cried the young man, “not a sou. C' est égal! I have the means here,” and he tapped his pocket, “I have the means here to set me on my feet again, Madame.”
He spoke with a note of triumph, and Madame took a curious step towards him.
“Qu' est-ce-que c'est, Monsieur Auguste?” she inquired.
He drew something that glittered from his pocket and beckoned to her to follow him down the room, which she did with alacrity.
“Ha, Adolphe,” he cried to the young man of the puffy face, “I will have my revenge to-night. Voilà!” and he held up the shining thing, “this goes to the highest bidder, and you will agree that it is worth a pretty sum.”
They rose from their chairs and clustered around him at the table, Madame in their midst, staring with bent heads at the trinket which he held to the light. It was Madame's voice I heard first, in a kind of frightened cry.
“Mon Dieu, Monsieur Auguste, you will not part with that!” she exclaimed.
“Why not?” demanded the young man, indifferently. “It was painted by Boze, the back is solid gold, and the Jew in the Rue Toulouse will give me four hundred livres for it to-morrow morning.”
There followed immediately such a chorus of questions,
“If I had four hundred livres,” she said, “if I had four hundred livres!”
“And what then?” I asked.
“Monsieur,” she said, “a terrible thing has happened. Auguste de Saint-Gré—”
“Auguste de Saint-Gré!” I exclaimed.
“He is the son of that Monsieur de Saint-Gré of whom we spoke,” she answered, “a wild lad, a spendthrift, a gambler, if you like. And yet he is a Saint-Gré, Monsieur, and I cannot refuse him. It is the miniature of Mademoiselle Hélène de Saint-Gré, the daughter of the Marquis, sent to Mamselle 'Toinette, his sister, from France. How he has obtained it I know not.”
“Ah!” I exclaimed sharply, the explanation of the scene of which I had been a witness coming to me swiftly. The rascal had wrenched it from her in the gallery and fled.
“Monsieur,” continued Madame, too excited to notice my interruption, “if I had four hundred livres I would buy it of him, and Monsieur de Saint-Gré père would willingly pay it back in the morning.”
I reflected. I had a letter in my pocket to Monsieur de Saint-Gré, the sum was not large, and the act of Monsieur Auguste de Saint-Gré in every light was detestable. A rising anger decided me, and I took a wallet from my pocket.
“I will buy the miniature, Madame,” I said.
She looked at me in astonishment.
“God bless you, Monsieur,” she cried; “if you could see
In a Costume worn at Private Theatricals at Chantilly.
Painted by Lilian Bayliss.
HELÈNE DE ST. GRÉ
Mamselle 'Toinette you would pay twice the sum. The whole town loves her. Monsieur Auguste, Monsieur Auguste!” she shouted, “here is a gentleman who will buy your miniature.”
The six young men stopped talking and stared at me With one accord. Madame arose, and I followed her down the room towards them, and, had it not been for my indignation, I should have felt sufficiently ridiculous. Young Monsieur de Saint-Gré came forward with the good-natured, easy insolence to which he had been born, and looked me over.
“Monsieur is an American,” he said.
“I understand that you have offered this miniature for four hundred livres,” I said.
“It is the Jew's price,” he answered; “mais pardieu, what will you?” he added with a shrug, “I must have the money. Regardez, Monsieur, you have a bargain. Here is Mademoiselle Hélène de Saint-Gré, daughter of my lord the Marquis of whom I have the honor to be a cousin,” and he made a bow. “It is by the famous court painter, Joseph Boze, and Mademoiselle de Saint-Gré herself is a favorite of her Majesty.” He held the portrait close to the candle and regarded it critically. “Mademoiselle Hélène Victoire Marie de Saint-Gré, painted in a costume of Henry the Second's time, with a ruff, you notice, which she wore at a ball given by his Highness the Prince of Condé at Chantilly. A trifle haughty, if you like, Monsieur, but I venture to say you will be hopelessly in love with her within the hour.”
At this there was a general titter from the young gentlemen at the table.
“All of which is neither here nor there, Monsieur,” I answered sharply. “The question is purely a commercial one, and has nothing to do with the lady's character or position.”
“It is well said, Monsieur,” Madame Bouvet put in.
Monsieur Auguste de Saint-Gré shrugged his slim shoulders and laid down the portrait on the walnut table.
“Four hundred livres, Monsieur,” he said.
I counted out the money, scrutinized by the curious eyes of his companions, and pushed it over to him. He bowed carelessly, sat him down, and began to shuffle the cards, while I picked up the miniature and walked out of the room. Before I had gone twenty paces I heard them laughing at their game and shouting out the stakes. Suddenly I bethought myself of Nick. What if he should come in and discover the party at the table? I stopped short in the hallway, and there Madame Bouvet overtook me.
“How can I thank you, Monsieur?” she said. And then, “You will return the portrait to Monsieur de Saint-Gré?”
“I have a letter from Monsieur Gratiot to that gentleman, which I shall deliver in the morning,” I answered. “And now, Madame, I have a favor to ask of you.”
“I am at Monsieur's service,” she answered simply.
“When Mr. Temple comes in, he is not to go into that room,” I said, pointing to the door of the saloon; “I have my reasons for requesting it.”
For answer Madame went to the door, closed it, and turned the key. Then she sat down beside a little table with a candlestick and took up her knitting.
“It will be as Monsieur says,” she answered.
I smiled.
“And when Mr. Temple comes in will you kindly say that I am waiting for him in his room?” I asked.
“As Monsieur says,” she answered. “I wish Monsieur a good-night and pleasant dreams.”
She took a candlestick from the table, lighted the candle, and handed it me with a courtesy. I bowed, and made my way along the gallery above the deserted court-yard. Entering my room and closing the door after me, I drew the miniature from my pocket and stood gazing at it for I know not how long.
2.12. CHAPTER XII
LES ÎLES
I STOOD staring at the portrait, I say, with a kind of fascination that astonished me, seeing that it had come to me in such a way. It was no French face of my imagination, and as I looked it seemed to me that I knew Mademoiselle Hélène de Saint-Gré. And yet I smile as I write this, realizing full well that my strange and foreign surroundings and my unforeseen adventure had much to do with my state of mind. The lady in the miniature might have been eighteen, or thirty-five. Her features were of the clearest cut, the nose the least trifle aquiline, and by a blurred outline the painter had given to the black hair piled high upon the head a suggestion of waviness. The eyebrows were straight, the brown eyes looked at the world with an almost scornful sense of humor, and I marked that there was determination in the chin. Here was a face that could be infinitely haughty or infinitely tender, a mouth of witty—nay, perhaps cutting—repartee of brevity and force. A lady who spoke quickly, moved quickly, or reposed absolutely. A person who commanded by nature and yet (dare I venture the thought?) was capable of a supreme surrender. I was aroused from this odd revery by footsteps on the gallery, and Nick burst into the room. Without pausing to look about him, he flung himself lengthwise on the bed on top of the mosquito bar.
“A thousand curses on such a place,” he cried; “it is full of rat holes and rabbit warrens.”
“Did you catch your man?” I asked innocently.
“Catch him!” said Nick, with a little excusable profanity; “he went in at one end of such a warren and came out at another. I waited for him in two streets until an
“A miniature that took my fancy, and which I bought.”
He rose from the bed, yawned, and taking it in his hand, held it to the light. I watched him curiously.
“Lord,” he said, “it is such a passion as I might have suspected of you, Davy.”
“There was nothing said about passion,” I answered
“Then why the deuce did you buy it?” he said with some pertinence.
This staggered me.
“A man may fancy a thing, without indulging in a passion, I suppose,” I replied.
Nick held the picture at arm's length in the palm of his hand and regarded it critically.
“Faith,” said he, “you may thank heaven it is only a picture. If such a one ever got hold of you, Davy, she would general you even as you general me. Egad,” he added with a laugh, “there would be no more walking the streets at night in search of adventure for you. Consider carefully the masterful features of that lady and thank God you haven't got her.”
I was inclined to be angry, but ended by laughing.
“There will be no rivalry between us, at least,” I said.
“Rivalry!” exclaimed Nick. “Heaven forbid that I should aspire to such abject slavery. When I marry, it will be to command.”
“All the more honor in such a conquest,” I suggested.
“Davy,” said he, “I have long been looking for some such flaw in your insuperable wisdom. But I vow I can keep my eyes open no longer. Benjy!
A smothered response came from the other side of the wall, and Benjy duly appeared in the doorway, blinking at the candlelight, to put his master to bed.
We slept that night with no bed covering save the mosquito bar, as was the custom in New Orleans. Indeed, the heat was most oppressive, but we had become to some
“Madame,” I asked, “is it too early to present myself to Monsieur de Saint-Gré?”
“Pardieu, no, Monsieur, we are early risers in the South for we have our siesta. You are going to return the portrait, Monsieur?”
I nodded.
“God bless you for the deed,” said she. “Tenez, Monsieur,” she added, stepping closer to me, “you will tell his father that you bought it from Monsieur Auguste?”
I saw that she had a soft spot in her heart for the rogue.
“I will make no promises, Madame,” I answered.
She looked at me timidly, appealingly, but I bowed and departed. The sun was riding up into the sky, the walls already glowing with his heat, and a midsummer languor seemed to pervade the streets as I walked along. The shadows now were sharply defined, the checkered foliage of the trees was flung in black against the yellow-white wall of the house with the lions, and the green-latticed gallery which we had watched the night before seemed silent and deserted. I knocked at the gate, and presently a bright-turbaned gardienne opened it.
Was Monsieur de Saint-Gré at home. The gardienne
As I walked back to Madame Bouvet's I made up my mind that there was but the one thing to do, to go at once to Monsieur de Saint-Gré's plantation. Finding Madame still waiting in the gallery, I asked her to direct me thither.
“You have but to follow the road that runs southward along the levee, and some three leagues will bring you to it, Monsieur. You will inquire for Monsieur de Saint-Gré.”
“Can you direct me to Mr. Daniel Clark's?” I asked.
“The American merchant and banker, the friend and associate of the great General Wilkinson whom you sent down to us last year? Certainly, Monsieur. He will no doubt give you better advice than I on this matter.”
I found Mr. Clark in his counting-room, and I had not talked with him five minutes before I began to suspect that, if a treasonable understanding existed between Wilkinson and the Spanish government, Mr. Clark was innocent of it. He being the only prominent American in the place, it was natural that Wilkinson should have formed with him a business arrangement to care for the cargoes he sent down. Indeed, after we had sat for some time chatting together, Mr. Clark began himself to make guarded inquiries on this very subject. Did I know Wilkinson? How was his enterprise of selling Kentucky products regarded at home? But I do not intend to burden this story with accounts of a matter which, though it has never been wholly clear, has been long since fairly settled in the public mind. Mr. Clark was most amiable, accepted my statement that I was travelling for pleasure, and honored Monsieur Chouteau's bon (for my purchase of the miniature had deprived me of nearly all my ready money), and said that Mr. Temple and I would need horses to get to Les Îles
“And unless you purpose going back to Kentucky by
The horses were crowded together under a dirty shed near the levee, and the vessel from which they had been landed rode at anchor in the river. They were the scrawny, tough ponies of the plains, reasonably cheap, and it took no great discernment on my part to choose three of the strongest and most intelligent looking. We went next to a saddler's, where I selected three saddles and bridles of Spanish workmanship, and Mr. Clark agreed to have two of his servants meet us with the horses before Madame Bouvet's within the hour. He begged that we would dine with him when we returned from Les Îles.
“You will not find an island, Mr. Ritchie,” he said; “Saint-Gré's plantation is a huge block of land between the river and a cypress swamp behind. Saint-Gré is a man with a wonderful quality of mind, who might, like his ancestors, have made his mark if necessity had probed him or opportunity offered. He never forgave the Spanish government for the murder of his father, nor do I blame him. He has his troubles. His son is an incurable rake and degenerate, as you may have heard.”
I went back to Madame Bouvet's, to find Nick emerging from his toilet.
“What deviltry have you been up to, Davy?” he demanded.
“I have been to the House of the Lions to see your divinity,” I answered, “and in a very little while horses will be here to carry us to her.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, grasping me by both shoulders.
“I mean that we are going to her father's plantation, some way down the river.”
“On my honor, Davy, I did not suspect you of so much enterprise,” he cried. “And her husband—?”
“Does not exist,” I replied. “Perhaps, after all, I might be able to give you instruction in the conduct of an adventure. The man you chased with such futility was her brother, and he stole from her the miniature of which I am now the fortunate possessor.
He stared at me for a moment in rueful amazement.
“And her name?” he demanded.
“Antoinette de Saint-Gré,” I answered; “our letter is to her father.”
He made me a rueful bow.
“I fear that I have undervalued you, Mr. Ritchie,” he said. “You have no peer. I am unworthy to accompany you, and furthermore, it would be useless.”
“And why useless!” I inquired, laughing.
“You have doubtless seen the lady, and she is yours, said he.
“You forget that I am in love with a miniature,” I said.
In half an hour we were packed and ready, the horses had arrived, we bade good-by to Madame Bouvet and rode down the miry street until we reached the road behind the levee. Turning southward, we soon left behind the shaded esplanade and the city's roofs below us, and came to the first of the plantation houses set back amidst the dark foliage. No tremor shook the fringe of moss that hung from the heavy boughs, so still was the day, and an indefinable, milky haze stretched between us and the cloudless sky above. The sun's rays pierced it and gathered fire; the mighty-river beside us rolled listless and sullen, flinging back the heat defiantly. And on our left was a tropical forest in all its bewildering luxuriance, the live-oak, the hackberry, the myrtle, the Spanish bayonet in bristling groups, and the shaded places gave out a scented moisture like an orangery; anon we passed fields of corn and cotton, swamps of rice, stretches of poverty-stricken indigo plants, gnawed to the stem by the pest. Our ponies ambled on, unmindful; but Nick
Some three miles out of the city we descried two figures on horseback coming towards us, and quickly perceived that one was a gentleman, the other his black servant. They were riding at a more rapid pace than the day warranted, but the gentleman reined in his sweating horse as he drew near to us, eyed us with a curiosity tempered by courtesy, bowed gravely, and put his horse to a canter again.
“Phew!” said Nick, twisting in his saddle, “I thought that all Creoles were lazy.”
“We have met the exception, perhaps,” I answered. “Did you take in that man?”
“His looks were a little remarkable, come to think of it,” answered Nick, settling down into his saddle again.
Indeed, the man's face had struck me so forcibly that I was surprised out of an inquiry which I had meant to make of him, namely, how far we were from the Saint-Gré plantation. We pursued our way slowly, from time to time catching a glimpse of a dwelling almost hid in the distant foliage, until at length we came to a place a little more pretentious than those which we had seen. From the road a graceful flight of wooden steps climbed the levee and descended on the far side to a boat landing, and a straight vista cut through the grove, lined by wild orange trees, disclosed the white pillars and galleries of a far-away plantation house. The grassy path leading through the vista was trimly kept, and on either side of it in the moist, green shade of the great trees flowers bloomed in a profusion of startling colors,—in splotches of scarlet and white and royal purple.
Nick slipped from his horse.
“Behold the mansion of Mademoiselle de Saint-Gré,” said he, waving his hand up the vista.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I am told by a part of me that never lies, Davy,” he answered, laying his hand upon his heart; “and besides,”
“We will rest here,” I said, laughing, “and send in Benjy to find out.”
“Davy,” he answered, with withering contempt, “you have no more romance in you than a turnip. We will go ourselves and see what befalls.”
“Very well, then,” I answered, falling in with his humor, “we will go ourselves.”
He brushed his face with his handkerchief, gave himself a pull here and a pat there, and led the way down the alley. But we had not gone far before he turned into a path that entered the grove on the right, and to this likewise I made no protest. We soon found ourselves in a heavenly spot,—sheltered from the sun's rays by a dense verdure,—and no one who has not visited these Southern country places can know the teeming fragrance there. One shrub (how well I recall it!) was like unto the perfume of all the flowers and all the fruits, the very essence of the delicious languor of the place that made our steps to falter. A bird shot a bright flame of color through the checkered light ahead of us. Suddenly a sound brought us to a halt, and we stood in a tense and wondering silence. The words of a song, sung carelessly in a clear, girlish voice, came to us from beyond.
Je voudrais bien me marier,
Mais j'ai qrand' peur de me tromper:
Mais j'ai grand' peur de me tromper:
Ils sont si malhonnêtes!
Ma luron, ma lurette,
Ils sont si malhonnêtes!
Ma luron, ma luré.”
“We have come at the very zenith of opportunity,” I whispered.
“Hush!” he said.
Je ne veux pas d'un avocat,
Car ils aiment trop les ducats,
Car ils aiment trop les ducats,
Ma luron, ma lurette,
Ils trompent les fillettes,
Ma luron, ma luré.”
“Eliminating Mr. Ritchie, I believe,” said Nick, turning on me with a grimace. “But hark again!”
Je Doudrais bien d'un officier:
Je marcherais a pas cáarres,
Je marcherais a pas cárres,
Dans ma joli' chambrette,
Ma luron, ma lurette
Dans ma joli' chambrette,
Ma luron, ma luré.”
The song ceased with a sound that was half laughter, half sigh. Before I realized what he was doing, Nick, instead of retracing his steps towards the house, started forward. The path led through a dense thicket which became a casino hedge, and suddenly I found myself peering over his shoulder into a little garden bewildering in color. In the centre of the garden a great live-oak spread its sheltering branches. Around the gnarled trunk was a seat. And on the seat,—her sewing fallen into her lap, her lips parted, her eyes staring wide, sat the young lady whom we had seen on the levee the evening before. And Nick was making a bow in his grandest manner.
“Hélas, Mademoiselle,” he said, “je ne suis pas officier, mais on peut arranger tout cela, sans doute.”
My breath was taken away by this unheard-of audacity, and I braced myself against screams, flight, and other feminine demonstrations of terror. The young lady did nothing of the kind. She turned her back to us, leaned against the tree, and to my astonishment I saw her slim shoulders shaken with laughter. At length, very slowly, she looked around, and in her face struggled curiosity and fear and merriment. Nick made another bow, worthy of Versailles, and she gave a frightened little laugh.
“You are English, Messieurs—yes?” she ventured.
“We were once!” cried Nick, “but we have changed, Mademoiselle.”
“Et quoi donc?” relapsing into her own language.
“Americans,” said he. “Allow me to introduce to you the Honorable David Ritchie, whom you rejected a few moments ago.”
“Whom I rejected?” she exclaimed.
“Alas,” said Nick, with a commiserating glance at me, “he has the misfortune to be a lawyer.”
Mademoiselle shot at me the swiftest and shyest of glances, and turned to us once more her quivering shoulders. There was a brief silence.
“Mademoiselle?” said Nick, taking a step on the garden path.
“Monsieur?” she answered, without so much as looking around.
“What, now, would you take this gentleman to be?” he asked with an insistence not to be denied.
Again she was shaken with laughter, and suddenly to my surprise she turned and looked full at me.
“In English, Monsieur, you call it—a gallant?”
My face fairly tingled, and I heard Nick laughing with unseemly merriment.
“Ah, Mademoiselle,” he cried, “you are a judge of character, and you have read him perfectly.”
“Then I must leave you, Messieurs,” she answered, with her eyes in her lap. But she made no move to go.
“You need have no fear of Mr. Ritchie, Mademoiselle,” answered Nick, instantly. “I am here to protect you against his gallantry.”
This time Nick received the glance, and quailed before it.
“And who—par exemple—is to protect me against— you, Monsieur?” she asked in the lowest of voices.
“You forget that I, too, am unprotected—and vulnerable, Mademoiselle,” he answered.
Her face was hidden again, but not for long.
“How did you come?” she demanded presently.
“On air,” he answered, “for we saw you in New Orleans yesterday.”
“And—why?”
“Need you ask, Mademoiselle?” said the rogue, and then, with more effrontery than ever, he began to sing:—
Je Voudrais bein me marier,
Mais j'ai grand' peur de me tromper.' ”
She rose, her sewing falling to the ground, and took a few startled steps towards us.
“Monsieur! you will be heard,” she cried.
“And put out of the Garden of Eden,” said Nick.
“I must leave you,” she said, with the quaintest of English pronunciation.
Yet she stood irresolute in the garden path, a picture against the dark green leaves and the flowers. Her age might have been seventeen. Her gown was of some soft and light material printed in buds of delicate color, her slim arms bare above the elbow. She had the ivory complexion of the province, more delicate than I had yet seen, and beyond that I shall not attempt to describe her, save to add that she was such a strange mixture of innocence and ingenuousness and coquetry as I had not imagined. Presently her gaze was fixed seriously on me.
“Do you think it very wrong, Monsieur?” she asked.
I was more than taken aback by this tribute.
“Oh,” cried Nick, “the arbiter of etiquette!”
“Since I am here, Mademoiselle,” I answered, with anything but readiness, “I am not a proper judge.”
Her next question staggered me.
“You are well-born?” she asked.
“Mr. Ritchie's grandfather was a Scottish earl,” said Nick, immediately, a piece of news that startled me into protest. “It is true, Davy, though you may not know it,” he added.
“And you, Monsieur?” she said to Nick.
“I am his cousin,—is it not honor enough?” said he.
“Yet you do not resemble one another.”
“Mr. Ritchie has all the good looks in the family,” said Nick.
“Oh!” cried the young lady, and this time she gave us her profile.
“Come, Mademoiselle,” said Nick, “since the fates have cast the die, let us all sit down in the shade. The place was made for us.”
“Monsieur!” she cried, giving back, “I have never in my life been alone with gentlemen.”
“But Mr. Ritchie is a duenna to satisfy the most exacting,” said Nick; “when you know him better you will believe me.”
She laughed softly and glanced at me. By this time we were all three under the branches.
“Monsieur, you do not understand the French customs. Mon Dieu, if the good Sister Lorette could see me now—”
“But she is safe in the convent,” said Nick. “Are they going to put glass on the walls?”
“And why?” asked Mademoiselle, innocently.
“Because,” said Nick, “because a very bad man has come to New Orleans,—one who is given to climbing walls.”
“You?”
“Yes. But when I found that a certain demoiselle had left the convent, I was no longer anxious to climb them.”
“And how did you know that I had left it?”
I was at a loss to know whether this were coquetry or innocence.
“Because I saw you on the levee,” said Nick.
“You saw me on the levee?” she repeated, giving back.
“And I had a great fear,” the rogue persisted.
“A fear of what?”
“A fear that you were married,” he said, with a boldness that made me blush. As for Mademoiselle, a color that vied with the June roses charged through her cheeks. She stooped to pick up her sewing, but Nick was before her.
“And why did you think me married?” she asked in a voice so low that we scarcely heard.
“Faith,” said Nick, “because you seemed to be quarrelling with a man.”
She turned to him with an irresistible seriousness.
“And is that your idea of marriage, Monsieur?”
This time it was I who laughed, for he had been hit very fairly.
“Mademoiselle,” said he, “I did not for a moment think it could have been a love match.”
Mademoiselle turned away and laughed.
“You are the very strangest man I have ever seen,” she said.
“Shall I give you my notion of a love match, Mademoiselle?” said Nick.
“I should think you might be well versed in the subject, Monsieur,” she answered, speaking to the tree, “but here is scarcely the time and place.” She wound up her sewing, and faced him. “I must really leave you,” she said.
He took a step towards her and stood looking down into her face. Her eyes dropped.
“And am I never to see you again?” he asked.
Monsieur!” she cried softly, “I do not know who you are.” She made him a courtesy, took a few steps in the opposite path, and turned. “That depends upon your ingenuity,” she added; “you seem to have no lack of it, Monsieur.”
Nick was transported.
“You must not go,” he cried.
“Must not? How dare you speak to me thus, Monsieur?” Then she tempered it. “There is a lady here whom I love, and who is ill. I must not be long from her bedside.”
“She is very ill?” said Nick, probably for want of something better.
“She is not really ill, Monsieur, but depressed—is not that the word? She is a very dear friend, and she has had trouble—so much, Monsieur,—and my mother brought her here. We love her as one of the family.”
This was certainly ingenuous, and it was plain that the girl gave us this story through a certain nervousness, for she twisted her sewing in her fingers as she spoke.
“Mademoiselle,” said Nick, “I would not keep you from such an errand of mercy.”
She gave him a grateful look, more dangerous than any which had gone before.
“And besides,” he went on, “we have come to stay awhile with you, Mr. Ritchie and myself.”
“You have come to stay awhile? she said.
I thought it time that the farce were ended.
“We have come with letters to your father, Monsieur de Saint-Gré, Mademoiselle,” I said, “and I should like very much to see him, if he is at leisure.”
Mademoiselle stared at me in unfeigned astonishment.
“But did you not meet him, Monsieur?” she demanded.
“He left an hour ago for New Orleans. You must have met a gentleman riding very fast.”
It was my turn to be astonished.
“But that was not your father!” I exclaimed.
“Et pourquoi non?” she said.
“Is not your father the stout gentleman whom I saw with you on the levee last evening?” I asked.
She laughed.
“You have been observing, Monsieur,” she said.
“That was my uncle, Monsieur de Beauséjour. You saw me quarrelling with my brother, Auguste,” she went on a little excitedly. “Oh, I am very much ashamed of it. I was so angry. My cousin, Mademoiselle Hélène de Saint-Gré, has just sent me from France such a beautiful miniature, and Auguste fell in love with it.”
“Fell in love with it!” I exclaimed involuntarily.
“You should see it, Monsieur, and I think you also would fall in love with it.”
“I have not a doubt of it,” said Nick.
Mademoiselle made the faintest of moues.
“Auguste is very wild, as you say,” she continued, addressing me, “he is a great care to my father. He intrigues, you know, he wishes Louisiane to become French once more,—as we all do. But I should not say this, Monsieur,” she added in a startled tone. “You will not tell? No, I know you will not. We do not like the Spaniards. They killed my grandfather when they came to take the province. And once, the Governor-genera!
“A comprehensive programme, indeed,” said Nick.
“My father has gone back to New Orleans,” she said, “to get the miniature from Auguste. He took it from me, Monsieur.” She raised her head a little proudly. “If my brother had asked it, I might have given it to him, though I treasured it. But Auguste is so— impulsive. My uncle told my father, who is very angry. He will punish Auguste severely, and—I do not like to have him punished. Oh, I wish I had the miniature.”
“Your wish is granted, Mademoiselle,” I answered, drawing the case from my pocket and handing it to her.
She took it, staring at me with eyes wide with wonder, and then she opened it mechanically.
“Monsieur,” she said with great dignity, “do you mind telling me where you obtained this?”
“I found it, Mademoiselle,” I answered; and as I spoke I felt Nick's fingers on my arm.
“You found it? Where? How, Monsieur?”
“At Madame Bouvet's, the house where we stayed.”
“Oh,” she said with a sigh of relief, “he must have dropped it. It is there where he meets his associates, where they talk of the French Louisiane.”
Again I felt Nick pinching me, and I gave a sigh of relief. Mademoiselle was about to continue, but I interrupted her.
“How long will your father be in New Orleans, Mademoiselle?” I asked.
“Until he finds Auguste,” she answered. “It may be days, but he will stay, for he is very angry. But will you not come into the house, Messieurs, and be presented to my mother?” she asked. “I have been very— inhospitable,” she added with n glance at Nick.
We followed her through winding paths bordered by
“If you will be so kind as to wait here, Messieurs,” said Mademoiselle, “I will call my mother.”
And she left us.
I sat down, rather uncomfortably, but Nick took a stand and stood staring down at me with folded arms.
“How I have undervalued you, Davy,” he said.
“I am not proud of it,” I answered shortly.
“What the deuce is to do now!” he asked.
“I cannot linger here,” I answered; “I have business with Monsieur de Saint-Gré, and I must go back to New Orleans at once.”
“Then I will wait for you,” said Nick. “Davy, I have met my fate.”
I laughed in spite of myself.
“It seems to me that I have heard that remark before,” I answered.
He had not time to protest, for we heard footsteps in the hall, and Mademoiselle entered, leading an older lady by the hand. In the light of the doorway I saw that she was thin and small and yellow, but her features had a regularity and her mien a dignity which made her impressing, which would have convinced a stranger that she was a person of birth and breeding. Her hair, tinged with gray, was crowned by a lace cap.
“Madame,” I said, bowing and coming forward, “I am David Ritchie, from Kentucky, and this is my cousin, Mr. Temple, of Charlestown. Monsieur Gratiot and Colonel Chouteau, of St. Louis, have been kind enough to give us
“You are very welcome, Messieurs,” she answered, with the same delightful accent which her daughter had used, “and you are especially welcome from such a source. The friends of Colonel Chouteau and of Monsieur Gratiot are our friends. You will remain with us, I hope, Messieurs,” she continued. “Monsieur de Saint-Gré will return in a few days at best.”
“By your leave, Madame, I will go to New Orleans at once and try to find Monsieur,” I said, “for I have business with him.”
“You will return with him, I hope,” said Madame.
I bowed.
“And Mr. Temple will remain?” she asked, with a questioning look at Nick.
“With the greatest pleasure in the world, Madame,” he answered, and there was no mistaking his sincerity. As he spoke, Mademoiselle turned her back on him.
I would not wait for dinner, but pausing only for a sip of cool Madeira and some other refreshment, I made my farewells to the ladies. As I started out of the door to find Benjy, who had been waiting for more than an hour, Mademoiselle gave me a neatly folded note.
“You will be so kind as to present that to my father, Monsieur,” she said.
2.13. CHAPTER XIII
MONSIEUR AUGUSTE ENTRAPPED
IT may be well to declare here and now that I do not intend to burden this story with the business which had brought me to New Orleans. While in the city during the next few days I met a young gentleman named Daniel Clark, a nephew of that Mr. Clark of whom I have spoken. Many years after the time of which I write this Mr. Daniel Clark the younger, who became a rich merchant and an able man of affairs, published a book which sets forth with great clearness proofs of General Wilkinson's duplicity and treason, and these may be read by any who would satisfy himself further on the subject. Mr. Wharton had not believed, nor had I flattered myself that I should be able to bring such a fox as General Wilkinson to earth. Abundant circumstantial evidence I obtained: Wilkinson's intimacy with Miro was well known, and I likewise learned that a cipher existed between them. The permit to trade given by Miro to Wilkinson was made no secret of. In brief, I may say that I discovered as much as could be discovered by any one without arousing suspicion, and that the information with which I returned to Kentucky was of some material value to my employers.
I have to thank Monsieur Philippe de St. Gré for a great deal. And I take this opportunity to set down the fact that I have rarely met a more remarkable man.
As I rode back to town alone a whitish film was spread before the sun, and ere I had come in sight of the fortifications the low forest on the western bank was a dark green blur against the sky. The esplanade on the levee was deserted, the willow trees had a mournful look, while
“He make much rain soon, Michié,” he cried. “You hev good time, I hope, Michié.”
I waved my hand and rode on, past the Place d'Armes with its white diagonal bands strapping its green like a soldiers front, and as I drew up before the gate of the House of the Lions the warning taps of the storm were drumming on the magnolia leaves. The same gardienne came to my knock, and in answer to her shrill cry a negro lad appeared to hold my horse. I was ushered into a brick-paved archway that ran under the latticed gallery toward a flower-filled court-yard, but ere we reached this the gardienne turned to the left up a flight of steps with a delicate balustrade which led to an open gallery above. And there stood the gentleman whom we had met hurrying to town in the morning. A gentleman he was, every inch of him. He was dressed in black silk, his hair in a cue, and drawn away from a face of remarkable features. He had a high-bridged nose, a black eye that held an inquiring sternness, a chin indented, and a receding forehead. His stature was indeterminable. In brief, he might have stood for one of those persons of birth and ability who become prime ministers of France
“Monsieur de St. Gré?” I said.
He bowed gracefully, but with a tinge of condescension. I was awed, and considering the relations which I had already had with his family, I must admit that I was somewhat frightened.
“Monsieur,” I said, “I bring letters to you from Monsieur Gratiot and Colonel Chouteau of St. Louis. One of these I had the honor to deliver to Madame de St. Gré, and here is the other.”
“Ah,” he said, with another keen glance, “I met you this morning, did I not?”
“You did, Monsieur.”
He broke the seal, and, going to the edge of the gallery, held the letter to the light. As he read a peal of thunder
“You will make my house your home, Mr. Ritchie, he said; “recommended from such a source, I will do all I can to serve you. But where is this Mr. Temple of whom the letter speaks? His family in Charlestown is known to me by repute.”
“By Madame de St. Gré's invitation he remained at Les Îles,” I answered, speaking above the roar of the rain.
“I was just going to the table,” said Monsieur de St. Gré; “we will talk as we eat.”
He led the way into the dining room, and as I stood on the threshold a bolt of great brilliancy lighted its yellow-washed floor and walnut furniture of a staid pattern. A deafening crash followed as we took our seats, while Monsieur de St. Gré's man lighted four candles of green myrtle-berry wax.
“Monsieur Gratiot's letter speaks vaguely of politics, Mr. Ritchie,” began Monsieur de St. Gré. He spoke English perfectly, save for an occasional harsh aspiration which I cannot imitate.
Directing his man to fetch a certain kind of Madeira, he turned to me with a look of polite inquiry which was scarcely reassuring. And I reflected, the caution with which I had been endowed coming uppermost, that the man might have changed since Monsieur Gratiot had seen him. He had, moreover, the air of a man who gives a forced attention, which seemed to me the natural consequences of the recent actions of his son.
“I fear that I am intruding upon your affairs, Monsieur,” I answered.
“Not at all, sir,” he said politely. “I have met that charming gentleman, Mr. Wilkinson, who came here to brush away the causes of dissension, and cement a friendship between Kentucky and Louisiana.”
It was most fortunate that the note of irony did not escape me.
“Where governments failed, General Wilkinson succeeded,” I answered dryly.
Monsieur de St. Gré glanced at me, and an enigmatical smile spread over his face. I knew then that the ice was cracked between us. Yet he was too much a man of the world not to make one more tentative remark.
“A union between Kentucky and Louisiana would be a resistless force in the world, Mr. Ritchie,” he said.
“It was Nebuchadnezzar who dreamed of a composite image, Monsieur,” I answered; “and Mr. Wilkinson forgets one thing,—that Kentucky is a part of the United States.”
At that Monsieur St. Gré laughed outright. He became a different man, though he lost none of his dignity
“I should have had more faith in my old friend Gratiot, he said; “but you will pardon me if I did not recognize at once the statesman he had sent me, Mr. Ritchie.”
It was my turn to laugh.
“Monsieur,” he went on, returning to that dignity of mien which marked him, “my political opinions are too well known that I should make a mystery of them to you. I was born a Frenchman, I shall die a Frenchman, and I shall never be happy until Louisiana is French once more My great-grandfather, a brother of the Marquis de St Gré of that time, and a wild blade enough, came out with D'Iberville. His son, my grandfather, was the Commissary-general of the colony under the Marquis de Vaudreuil. He sent me to France for my education, where I was introduced at court by my kinsman, the old Marquis, who took a fancy to me and begged me to remain. It was my father's wish that I should return, and I did not disobey him. I had scarcely come back, Monsieur, when that abominable secret bargain of Louis the Fifteenth became known, ceding Louisiana to Spain. You may have heard of the revolution which followed here. It was a mild affair, and the remembrance of it makes me smile to this day, though with bitterness. I was five and twenty, hot-headed, and French. Que voulez-vous?” and Monsieur de St. Gré shrugged his shoulders. “O'Reilly, the famous Spanish general, came with his men-of-war. Well I remember the days we waited with leaden hearts for the men-of-war to come up from the
He paused, and I started, for the picture he drew had carried me out of myself.
“On the 18th of August, 1769,—well I remember the day,” Monsieur de St. Gré continued, “the Spanish troops landed late in the afternoon, twenty-six hundred strong, the artillery rumbling over the bridges, the horses wheeling and rearing. And they drew up as in line of battle in the Place d'Armes,—dragoons, fusileros de montañas, light and heavy infantry. Where were our white cockades then? Fifty guns shook the town, the great O'Reilly limped ashore through the smoke, and Louisiana was lost to France. We had a cowardly governor, Monsieur, whose name is written in the annals of the province in letters of shame. He betrayed Monsieur de St. Gré and others into O'Reilly's hands, and when my father was cast into prison he was seized with such a fit of anger that he died.”
Monsieur de St. Gré was silent. Without, under the eaves of the gallery, a white rain fell, and a steaming moisture arose from the court-yard.
“What I have told you, Monsieur, is common knowledge. Louisiana has been Spanish for twenty years. I no longer wear the white cockade, for I am older now.” He smiled. “Strange things are happening in France, and the old order to which I belong” (he straightened perceptibly) “seems to be tottering. I have ceased to intrigue, but thank God I have not ceased to pray. Perhaps— who knows?—perhaps I may live to see again the lily of France stirred by the river breeze.”
He fell into a revery, his fine head bent a little, but
“And now, Mr. Ritchie,” he said, “will you tell me who you are, and how I can serve you?”
The servant had put the coffee on the table and left the room. Monsieur de St. Gré himself poured me a cup from the dainty, quaintly wrought Louis Quinze coffeepot, graven with the coat of arms of his family. As we sat talking, my admiration for my host increased, for I found that he was familiar not only with the situation in Kentucky, but that he also knew far more than I of the principles and personnel of the new government of which General Washington was President. That he had little sympathy with government by the people was natural, for he was a Creole, and behind that a member of an order which detested republics. When we were got beyond these topics the rain had ceased, the night had fallen, the green candles had burned low. And suddenly, as he spoke of Les Îsles, I remembered the note Mademoiselle had given me for him, and I apologized for my forgetfulness. He read it, and dropped it with an exclamation.
“My daughter tells me that you have returned to her a miniature which she lost, Monsieur,” he said.
“I had that pleasure,” I answered.
“And that—you found this miniature at Madame Bouvet's. Was this the case?” And he stared hard at me.
I nodded, but for the life of me I could not speak. It seemed an outrage to lie to such a man. He did not answer, but sat lost in thought, drumming with his fingers on the tables until the noise of the slamming of a door aroused him to a listening posture. The sound of subdued voices came from the archway below us, and one of these, from an occasional excited and feminine note, I thought to be the gardienne's. Monsieur de St. Gré thrust back his chair, and in three strides was at the edge of the gallery.
“Auguste!” he cried.
Silence.
“Auguste, come up to me at once,” he said in French.
Another silence, then something that sounded like “Sapristi!” a groan from the gardienne, and a step was heard on the stairway. My own discomfort increased, and I would have given much to be in any other place in the world. Auguste had arrived at the head of the steps but was apparently unable to get any farther.
“Bon soir, mon père,” he said.
“Like a dutiful son,” said Monsieur de St. Gré, “you heard I was in town, and called to pay your respects, I am sure. I am delighted to find you. In fact, I came to town for that purpose.”
“Lisette—” began Auguste.
“Thought that I did not wish to be disturbed, no doubt,” said his father. “Walk in, Auguste.”
Monsieur Auguste's slim figure appeared in the doorway. He caught sight of me, halted, backed, and stood staring with widened eyes. The candles threw their light across his shoulder on the face of the elder Monsieur de St. Gré. Auguste was a replica of his father, with the features minimized to regularity and the brow narrowed. The complexion of the one was a clear saffron, while the boy's skin was mottled, and he was not twenty.
“What is the matter?” said Monsieur de St. Gré.
“You—you have a visitor!” stammered Auguste, with a tact that savored of practice. Yet there was a sorry difference between this and the haughty young patrician who had sold me the miniature.
“Who brings me good news,” said Monsieur de St. Gré, in English. “Mr. Ritchie, allow me to introduce my son, Auguste.”
I felt Monsieur de St. Gré's eyes on me as I bowed, and I began to think I was in near as great a predicament as Auguste. Monsieur de St. Gré was managing the matter with infinite wisdom.
“Sit down, my son,” he said; “you have no doubt been staying with your uncle.” Auguste sat down, still staring.
“Does your aunt's health mend?”
“She is better to-night, father,” said the son, in English which might have been improved.
“I am glad of it,” said Monsieur de St. Gré, taking a chair. “André, fill the glasses.”
The silent, linen-clad mulatto poured out the Madeira, shot a look at Auguste, and retired softly.
“There has been a heavy rain, Monsieur,” said Monsieur de St. Gré to me, “but I think the air is not yet cleared. I was about to say, Mr. Ritchie, when my son called to pay his respects, that the miniature of which we were speaking is one of the most remarkable paintings I have ever seen.” Auguste's thin fingers were clutching the chair. “I have never beheld Mademoiselle Hélène de St. Gré, for my cousin, the Marquis, was not married when I left France. He was a captain in a regiment of his Majesty's Mousquetaires, since abolished. But I am sure that the likeness of Mademoiselle must be a true one, for it has the stamp of a remarkable personality, though Hélène can be only eighteen. Women, with us, mature quickly, Monsieur. And this portrait tallies with what I have heard of her character. You no doubt observed the face, Monsieur,—that of a true aristocrat. But I was speaking of her character. When she was twelve, she said something to a cardinal for which her mother made her keep her room a whole day. For Mademoiselle would not retract, and, pardieu, I believe his Eminence was wrong. The Marquise is afraid of her. And when first Hélène was presented formally she made such a witty retort to the Queen's sally that her Majesty insisted upon her coming to court. On every New Year's day I have always sent a present of coffee and périque to my cousin the Marquis, and it is Mademoiselle who writes to thank us. Parole d'honneur, her letters make me see again the people amongst whom she moves,—the dukes and duchesses, the cardinals, bishops, and generals. She draws them to the life, Monsieur, with a touch that makes them all ridiculous. His Majesty does not escape. God forgive him, he is indeed an amiable, weak person for calling a States General. And the Queen, a frivolous lady, but true to those whom she loves, and beginning now to realize the perils of the situation.” He paused. “Is
Had I not been so occupied with my own fate in the outcome of this inquisition, I should have been sorry for Auguste. And yet this feeling could not have lasted, for the young gentleman sprang to his feet, cast a glance at me which was not without malignance, and faced his father, his lips twitching with anger and fear. Monsieur de St. Gré sat undisturbed.
“He is so much in love with the portrait, Monsieur, that he loses it.”
“Loses it!” cried Auguste.
“Precisely,” said his father, dryly, “for Mr. Ritchie tells me he found it—at Madame Bouvet's, was it not, Monsieur?”
Auguste looked at me.
“Mille diables!” he said, and sat down again heavily.
“Mr. Ritchie has returned it to your sister, a service which puts him heavily in our debt,” said Monsieur de St. Gré. “Now, sir,” he added to me, rising, “you have had a tiresome day. I will show you to your room, and in the morning we will begin our—investigations.”
He clapped his hands, the silent mulatto appeared with a new candle, and I followed my host down the gallery to a room which he flung open at the far end. A great four-poster bedstead was in one corner, and a polished mahogany dresser in the other.
“We have saved some of our family furniture from the fire, Mr. Ritchie,” said Monsieur de St. Gré; “that bed was brought from Paris by my father forty years ago. I hope you will rest well.”
He set the candle on the table, and as he bowed there was a trace of an enigmatical smile about his mouth. How much he knew of Auguste's transaction I could not fathom, but the matter and the scarcely creditab]e part I had played in it kept me awake far into the night. I was just falling into a troubled sleep when a footstep on
“Monsieur Reetchie,” said a voice.
It was Monsieur Auguste. He was not an imposing figure in his nightrail, and by the light of the carefully shaded candle he held in his hand I saw that he had hitherto deceived me in the matter of his calves. He stood peering at me as I lay under the mosquito bar.
“How is it I can thank you, Monsieur!” he exclaimed in a whisper.
“By saying nothing, Monsieur,” I answered.
“You are noble, you are generous, and—and one day I will give you the money back,” he added with a burst of magniloquence. “You have behave very well, Monsieur, and I mek you my friend. Behol' Auguste de St. Gré, entirely at your service, Monsieur.” He made a sweeping bow that might have been impressive save for the nightrail, and sought my hand, which he grasped in a fold of the mosquito bar.
“I am overcome, Monsieur,” I said.
“Monsieur Reetchie, you are my friend, my intimate” (he put an aspirate on the word). “I go to tell you one leetle secret. I find that I can repose confidence in you. My father does not understan' me, you saw, Monsieur, he does not appreciate—that is the Engleesh. Mon Dieu, you saw it this night. I, who spik to you, am made for a courtier, a noble. I have the gift. La Louisiane—she is not so big enough for me.” He lowered his voice still further, and bent nearer to me. “Monsieur, I run away to France. My cousin the Marquis will help me. You will hear of Auguste de St. Gré at Versailles, at Trianon, at Chantilly, and peut-être—”
“It is a worthy campaign, Monsieur,” I interrupted.
A distant sound broke the stillness, and Auguste was near to dropping the candle on me.
“Adieu, Monsieur,” he whispered; “milles tonneres, I have done one extraordinaire foolish thing when I am come to this house to-night.”
And he disappeared, shading his candle, as he had come.
2.14. CHAPTER XIV
RETRIBUTION
DURING the next two days I had more evidence of Monsieur de St. Gré's ability, and, thanks to his conduct of my campaign, not the least suspicion of my mission to New Orleans got abroad. Certain gentlemen were asked to dine, we called on others, and met still others casually in their haunts of business or pleasure. I was troubled because of the inconvenience and discomfort to which my host put himself, for New Orleans in the dog-days may be likened in climate to the under side of the lid of a steam kettle. But at length, on the second evening, after we had supped on jambalaya and rice cakes and other dainties, and the last guest had gone, my host turned to me.
“The rest of the burrow is the same, Mr. Ritchie, until it comes to the light again.”
“And the fox has crawled out of the other end,” I said.
“Precisely,” he answered, laughing; “in short, if you were to remain in New Orleans until New Year's, you would not learn a whit more. To-morrow morning I have a little business of my own to transact, and we shall get to Les Îles in time for dinner. No, don't thank me,” he protested; “there's a certain rough honesty and earnestness ingrained in you which I like. And besides,” he added, smiling, “you are poor indeed at thanking, Mr. Ritchie. You could never do it gracefully. But if ever I were in trouble, I believe that I might safely call on you.”
The next day was a rare one, for a wind from somewhere had blown the moisture away a little, the shadows
“Mr. Ritchie,” he said, “you have seen my son. It may be that in him I am paying the price of my sins. I have done everything to set him straight, but in vain. Monsieur, every son of the St. Grés has awakened sooner or later to a sense of what becomes him. But Auguste is a fool,” he cried bitterly,—a statement which I could not deny; “were it not for my daughter, Antoinette, I should be a miserable man indeed.”
Inasmuch as he was not a person of confidences, I felt the more flattered that he should speak so plainly to me, and I had a great sympathy for this strong man who could not help himself.
“You have observed Antoinette, Mr. Ritchie,” he continued; “she is a strange mixture of wilfulness and caprice and self-sacrifice, and she has at times a bit of that wit which has made our house for generations the intimates—I may say—of sovereigns.”
This peculiar pride of race would have amused me in another man. I found myself listening to Monsieur de St. Gré with gravity, and I did not dare to reply that I had had evidence of Mademoiselle's aptness of retort.
“She has been my companion since she was a child, Monsieur. She has disobeyed me, flaunted me, nursed me in illness, championed me behind my back. I have a little book which I have kept of her sayings and doings, which may interest you, Monsieur. I will show it you.”
This indeed was a new side of Monsieur de St. Gré, and I reflected rather ruefully upon the unvarnished truth of what Mr. Wharton had told me,—ay, and what Colonel
“I should be delighted to see them, Monsieur,” I answered.
“Would you?” he exclaimed, his face lighting up as he glanced at me. “Alas, Madame de St. Gré and I have promised to go to our neighbors', Monsieur and Madame Bertrand's, for to-night. But, to-morrow, if you have leisure, we shall look at it together. And not a word of this to my daughter, Monsieur,” he added apprehensively; “she would never forgive me. She dislikes my talking of her, but at times I cannot help it. It was only last year that she was very angry with me, and would not speak to me for days, because I boasted of her having watched at the bedside of a poor gentleman who came here and got the fever. You will not tell her?”
“Indeed I shall not, Monsieur,” I answered.
“It is strange,” he said abruptly, “it is strange that this gentleman and his wife should likewise have had letters to us from Monsieur Gratiot. They came from St. Louis, and they were on their way to Paris.”
“To Paris?” I cried; “what was their name?”
He looked at me in surprise.
“Clive,” he said.
“Clive!” I cried, leaning towards him in my saddle. “Clive! And what became of them?”
This time he gave me one of his searching looks, and it was not unmixed with astonishment.
“Why do you ask. Monsieur?” he demanded. “Did you know them?”
I must have shown that I was strangely agitated. For the moment I could not answer.
“Monsieur Gratiot himself spoke of them to me,” I said, after a little; “he said they were an interesting couple.”
“Pardieu!” exclaimed Monsieur de St. Gré, “he put it mildly.” He gave me another look. “There was something about them, Monsieur, which I could not fathom.
“And she is with you now, Monsieur?” I asked.
“She lives with us, Monsieur,” he answered simply, “and I hope for always. No,” he said quickly, “it is not charity,—she has something of her own. We love her, and she is the best of companions for my daughter. For the rest, Monsieur, she seems benumbed, with no desire to go back or to go farther.”
An entrance drive to the plantation of Les Îles, unknown to Nick and me, led off from the main road like a green tunnel arched out of the forest. My feelings as we entered this may be imagined, for l was suddenly confronted with the situation which I had dreaded since my meeting with Nick at Jonesboro. I could scarcely allow myself even the faint hope that Mrs. Clive might not prove to be Mrs. Temple after all. Whilst I was in this agony of doubt and indecision, the drive suddenly came out on a shaded lawn dotted with flowering bushes. There was the house with its gallery, its curved dormer roof and its belvedere; and a white, girlish figure flitted down the steps. It was Mademoiselle Antoinette, and no sooner
“What is it, ma chérie?”
What was it indeed? Something was in her eyes which bore a message and presentiment to me. She dropped them, fastening in the lapel of his coat a flaunting red flower set against a shining leaf, and there was a gentle, joyous subterfuge in her answer.
“Thou pardoned Auguste, as I commanded?” she said. They were speaking in the familiar French.
“Ha, diable! is it that which disquiets thee?” said her father. “We will not speak of Auguste. Dost thou know Monsieur Ritchie, 'Toinette?”
She disengaged herself and dropped me a courtesy, her eyes seeking the ground. But she said not a word. At that instant Madame de St. Gré herself appeared on the gallery, followed by Nick, who came down the steps with a careless self-confidence to greet the master. Indeed, a stranger might have thought that Mr. Temple was the host, and I saw Antoinette watching him furtively With a gleam of amusement in her eyes.
“I am delighted to see you at last, Monsieur,” said my cousin. “I am Nicholas Temple, and I have been your guest for three days.”
Had Monsieur de St. Gré been other than the soul of hospitality, it would have been impossible not to welcome such a guest. Our host had, in common with his daughter, a sense of humor. There was a quizzical expression on his fine face as he replied, with the barest glance at Mademoiselle Antoinette:—
“I trust you have been—well entertained, Mr. Temple. My daughter has been accustomed only to the society of her brother and cousins.”
“Faith, I should not have supposed it,” said Nick, instantly, a remark which caused the color to flush deeply into Mademoiselle's face. I looked to see Monsieur de St. Gré angry. He tried, indeed, to be grave, but smiled irresistibly as he mounted the steps to greet his wife, who stood demurely awaiting his caress. And in this interval Mademoiselle shot at Nick a swift and withering look as she passed him. He returned a grimace.
“Messieurs,” said Monsieur de St. Gré, turning to us, “dinner will soon be ready—if you will be so good as to pardon me until then.”
Nick followed Mademoiselle with his eyes until she had disappeared beyond the hall. She did not so much as turn. Then he took me by the arm and led me to a bench under a magnolia a little distance away, where he seated himself, and looked up at me despairingly.
“Behold,” said he, “what was once your friend and cousin, your counsellor, sage, and guardian. Behold the clay which conducted you hither, with the heart neatly but painfully extracted. Look upon a woman's work, Davy, and shun the sex. I tell you it is better to go blindfold through life, to have—pardon me—your own blunt features, than to be reduced to such a pitiable state. Was ever such a refinement of cruelty practised before? Never! Was there ever such beauty, such archness, such coquetry,—such damned elusiveness? Never! If there is a cargo going up the river, let me be salted and lie at the bottom of it. I'll warrant you I'll not come to life.”
“You appear to have suffered somewhat,” I said, forgetting for the moment in my laughter the thing that weighed upon my mind.
“Suffered!” he cried; “I have been tossed high in the azure that I might sink the farther into the depths. I have been put in a grave, the earth stamped down, resurrected, and flung into the dust-heap. I have been taken up to the gate of heaven and dropped a hundred and fifty years through darkness. Since I have seen you I have been the round of all the bright places and all the bottomless pits in the firmament.”
“It seems to have made you literary,” I remarked Judicially.
“I burn up twenty times a day,” he continued, with a wave of the hand to express the completeness of the process; “there is nothing left. I see her, I speak to her, and I burn up.”
“Have you had many tête-à-têtes?” I asked.
“Not one,” he retorted fiercely; “do you think there is any sense in the damnable French custom? I am an honorable man, and, besides, I am not equipped for an elopement. No priest in Louisiana would marry us. I see her at dinner, at supper. Sometimes we sew on the gallery, he went on, “but I give you my oath that I have not had one word with her alone.”
“An oath is not necessary,” I said. “But you seem to have made some progress nevertheless.”
“Do you call that progress?” he demanded.
“It is surely not retrogression.”
“God knows what it is,” said Nick, helplessly, “but it's got to stop. I have sent her an ultimatum.”
“A what?”
“A summons. Her father and mother are going to the Bertrands' to-night, and I have written her a note to meet me in the garden. And you,” he cried, rising and slapping me between the shoulders, “you are to keep watch, like the dear, careful, canny, sly rascal you are.”
“And—and has she accepted?” I inquired.
“That's the deuce of it,” said he; “she has not. But I think she'll come.”
I stood for a moment regarding him.
“And you really love Mademoiselle Antoinette?” I asked.
“Have I not exhausted the language?” he answered. “If what I have been through is not love, then may the Lord shield me from the real disease.”
“It may have been merely a light case of—tropical enthusiasm, let us say. I have seen others, a little milder because the air was more temperate.”
“Tropical—balderdash,” he exploded. “If you are not the most exasperating, unfeeling man alive—”
“I merely wanted to know if you wished to marry Mademoiselle de St. Gré,” I interrupted.
He gave me a look of infinite tolerance.
“Have I not made it plain that I cannot live without her?” he said; “if not, I will go over it all again.”
“That will not be necessary,” I said hastily.
“The trouble may be,” he continued, “that they have already made one of their matrimonial contracts with a Granpré, a Beauséjour, a Bernard.”
“Monsieur de St. Gré is a very sensible man,” I answered. “He loves his daughter, and I doubt if he would force her to marry against her will. Tell me, Nick,” I asked, laying my hand upon his shoulder, “do you love this girl so much that you would let nothing come between you and her?”
“I tell you, I do; and again I tell you, I do,” he replied. He paused, suddenly glancing at my face, and added, “Why do you ask, Davy?”
I stood irresolute, now that the time had come not daring to give voice to my suspicions. He had not spoken to me of his mother save that once, and I had no means of knowing whether his feeling for the girl might not soften his anger against her. I have never lacked the courage to come to the point, but there was still the chance that I might be mistaken in this after all. Would it not be best to wait until I had ascertained in some way the identity of Mrs. Clive? And while I stood debating, Nick regarding me with a puzzled expression, Monsieur de St. Gré appeared on the gallery.
“Come, gentlemen,” he cried; “dinner awaits us.”
The dining room at Les Îles was at the corner of the house, and its windows looked out on the gallery, which was shaded at that place by dense foliage. The room, like others in the house, seemed to reflect the decorous character of its owner. Two St. Grés, indifferently painted, but rigorous and respectable, relieved the white
As for Mademoiselle, I began to think that Nick was not far wrong in his diagnosis. Training may have had something to do with it. She would not laugh, not she, but once or twice she raised her napkin to her face and coughed slightly. For the rest, she sat demurely, with her eyes on her plate, a model of propriety. Nick's sufferings became more comprehensible.
To give the devil his due, Nick had an innate tact which told him when to stop, and perhaps at this time Mademoiselle's superciliousness made him subside the more quickly. After Monsieur de St. Gré had explained to me the horrors of the indigo pest and the futility of sugar raising, he turned to his daughter.
“ 'Toinette, where is Madame Clive?” he asked. The girl looked up, startled into life and interest at once.
“Oh, papa,” she cried in French, “we are so worried about her, mamma and I. It was the day you went away, the day these gentlemen came, that we thought she would take an airing. And suddenly she became worse.”
Monsieur de St. Gré turned with concern to his wife.
“I do not know what it is, Philippe,” said that lady; “it seems to be mental. The loss of her husband weighs upon her, poor lady. But this is worse than ever, and she
“I have always been able to comfort her before,” said Antoinette, with a catch in her voice.
I took little account of what was said after that, my only notion being to think the problem out for myself, and alone. As I was going to my room Nick stopped me.
“Come into the garden, Davy,” he said.
“When I have had my siesta,” I answered.
“When you have had your siesta!” he cried; “since when did you begin to indulge in siestas?”
“To-day,” I replied, and left him staring after me.
I reached my room, bolted the door, and lay down on my back to think. Little was needed to convince me now that Mrs. Clive was Mrs. Temple, and thus the lady's relapse when she heard that her son was in the house was accounted for. Instead of forming a plan, my thoughts drifted from that into pity for her, and my memory ran back many years to the text of good Mr. Mason's sermon, “I have refined thee, but not with silver, I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.” What must Sarah Temple have suffered since those days! I remembered her in her prime, in her beauty, in her selfishness, in her cruelty to those whom she might have helped, and I wondered the more at the change which must have come over the woman that she had won the affections of this family, that she had gained the untiring devotion of Mademoiselle Antoinette. Her wit might not account for it, for that had been cruel. And something of the agony of the woman's soul as she lay in torment, facing the wall, thinking of her son under the same roof, of a life misspent and irrevocable, I pictured.
A stillness crept into the afternoon like the stillness of night. The wide house was darkened and silent, and without a sunlight washed with gold filtered through the leaves. There was a drowsy hum of bees, and in the distance the occasional languishing note of a bird singing what must have been a cradle-song. My mind wandered, and shirked the task that was set to it.
Could anything be gained by meddling? I had begun to convince myself that nothing could, when suddenly I came face to face with the consequences of a possible marriage between Nick and Mademoiselle Antoinette. In that event the disclosure of his mother's identity would be inevitable. Not only his happiness was involved, but Mademoiselle's, her father's and her mother's, and lastly that of this poor hunted woman herself, who thought at last to have found a refuge.
An hour passed, and it became more and more evident to me that I must see and talk with Mrs. Temple. But how was I to communicate with her? At last I took out my portfolio and wrote these words on a sheet:—
“If Mrs. Clive will consent to a meeting with Mr. David Ritchie, he will deem it a favor. Mr. Ritchie assures Mrs. Clive that he makes this request in all friendliness.”
I lighted a candle, folded the note and sealed it, addressed it to Mrs. Clive, and opening the latticed door I stepped out. Walking along the gallery until I came to the rear part of the house which faced towards the out-buildings, I spied three figures prone on the grass under a pecan tree that shaded the kitchen roof. One of these figures was Benjy, and he was taking his siesta. I descended quietly from the gallery, and making my way to him, touched him on the shoulder. He awoke and stared at me with white eyes.
“Marse Dave!” he cried.
“Hush,” I answered, “and follow me.”
He came after me, wondering, a little way into the grove, where I stopped.
“Benjy,” I said, “do you know any of the servants here?”
“Lawsy, Marse Dave, I reckon I knows 'em,—some of 'em,” he answered with a grin.
“You talk to them?”
“Shucks, no, Marse Dave,” he replied with a fine scorn, “I ain't no hand at dat ar nigger French. But I knows some on 'em, and right well too.”
“How?” I demanded curiously.
Benjy looked down sheepishly at his feet. He was standing pigeon-toed.
“I done c'ressed some on 'em, Marse Dave,” he said at length, and there was a note of triumph in his voice.
“You did what?” I asked.
“I done kissed one of dem yaller gals, Marse Dave. Yass'r, I done kissed M'lisse.”
“Do you think Mélisse would do something for you if you asked her?” I inquired.
Benjy seemed hurt.
“Marse Dave—” he began reproachfully.
“Very well, then,” I interrupted, taking the letter from my pocket, “there is a lady who is ill here, Mrs. Clive—”
I paused, for a new look had come into Benjy's eyes. He began that peculiar, sympathetic laugh of the negro, which catches and doubles on itself, and I imagined that a new admiration for me dawned on his face.
“Yass'r, yass, Marse Dave, I reckon M'lisse 'll git it to her 'thout any one tekin' notice.”
I bit my lips.
“If Mrs. Clive receives this within an hour, Mélisse shall have one piastre, and you another. There is an answer.”
Benjy took the note, and departed nimbly to find Mélisse, while I paced up and down in my uneasiness as to the outcome of the experiment. A quarter of an hour passed, half an hour, and then I saw Benjy coming through the trees. He stood before me, chuckling, and drew from his pocket a folded piece of paper. I gave him the two piastres, warned him if his master or any one inquired for me that I was taking a walk, and bade him begone. Then I opened the note.
“I will meet you at the bayou, at seven this evening. Take the path that leads through the garden.”
I read it with a catch of the breath, with a certainty that the happiness of many people depended upon what I should say at that meeting. And to think of this and to compose myself a little, I made my way to the garden in search of the path, that I might know it when the time
I sat down on a wide knee that seemed to be fashioned for the purpose, and reflected. It may have been about half-past five, and I made up my mind that, rather than return and risk explanations, I would wait where I was until Mrs. Temple appeared. I had much to think of, and for the rest the weird beauty of the place, with its changing colors as the sun fell, held me in fascination. When the blue vapor stole through the cypress swamp, my trained ear caught the faintest of warning sounds. Mrs. Temple was coming.
I could not repress the exclamation that rose to my lips when she stood before me.
“I have changed somewhat,” she began quite calmly; “I have changed since you were at Temple Bow.”
I stood staring at her, at a loss to know whether by these words she sought to gain an advantage. I knew not whether to pity or to be angry, such a strange blending she seemed of former pride and arrogance and later suffering. There were the features of the beauty still, the eyes defiant, the lips scornful. Sorrow had set its brand upon this protesting face in deep, violet marks under the eyes, in lines which no human power could erase: sorrow had flecked with white the gold of the hair, had proclaimed her a woman with a history. For she had a new and remarkable beauty which puzzled and astonished me,—a beauty in which maternity had no place. The figure, gowned with an innate taste in black, still kept the rounded lines of the young woman, while about the shoulders and across the open throat a lace mantilla was thrown. She stood facing me, undaunted, and I knew that she had come to fight for what was left her. I knew further that she was no mean antagonist.
“Will you kindly tell me to what circumstance I owe the honor of this—summons, Mr. Ritchie?” she asked. “You are a travelled person for one so young. I might almost say,” she added with an indifferent laugh, “that there is some method and purpose in your travels.”
“Indeed, you do me wrong, Madame,” I replied; “I am here by the merest chance.”
Again she laughed lightly, and stepping past me took her seat on the oak from which I had risen. I marvelled that this woman, with all her self-possession, could be the same as she who had held her room, cowering, these four days past. Admiration for her courage mingled with my other feelings, and for the life of me I knew not where to begin. My experience with women of the world was, after all, distinctly limited. Mrs. Temple knew, apparently by intuition, the advantage she had gained, and she smiled.
“The Ritchies were always skilled in dealing with sinners,” she began; “the first earl had the habit of hunting them like foxes, so it is said. I take it for granted that, before my sentence is pronounced, I shall have the pleasure
“You seem to know the characteristics of my family, Mrs. Temple,” I answered. “There is one trait of the Ritchies concerning which I ask your honest opinion.”
“And what is that?” she said carelessly.
“I have always understood that they have spoken the truth. Is it not so?”
She glanced at me curiously.
“I never knew your father to lie,” she answered; “but after all he had few chances. He so seldom spoke.”
“Your intercourse with me at Temple Bow was quite as limited,” I said.
“Ah,” she interrupted quickly, “you bear me that grudge. It is another trait of the Ritchies.”
“I bear you no grudge, Madame,” I replied. “I asked you a question concerning the veracity of my family, and I beg that you will believe what I say.”
“And what is this momentous statement?” she asked.
I had hard work to keep my temper, but I knew that I must not lose it.
“I declare to you on my honor that my business in New Orleans in no way concerns you, and that I had not the slightest notion of finding you here. Will you believe that?”
“And what then?” she asked.
“I also declare to you that, since meeting your son, my chief anxiety has been lest he should run across you.”
“You are very considerate of others,” she said. “Let us admit for the sake of argument that you come here by accident.
It was the opening I had sought for, but despaired of getting.
“Then put yourself for a moment in my place, Madame, and give me credit for a little kindliness of feeling, and a sincere affection for your son.”
There was a new expression on her face, and the light of a supreme effort in her eyes.
“I give you credit at least for a logical mind,” she
“I do not see why there should be any rancor between us,” I answered. “It is true that I hated you at Temple Bow. When my father was killed and I was left a homeless orphan you had no pity for me, though your husband was my mother's brother. But you did me a good turn after all, for you drove me out into a world where I learned to rely upon myself. Furthermore, it was not in your nature to treat me well.”
“Not in my nature?” she repeated.
“You were seeking happiness, as every one must in their own way. That happiness lay, apparently, with Mr. Riddle.”
“Ah,” she cried, with a catch of her breath, “I thought you would be judging me.”
“I am stating facts. Your son was a sufficient embarrassment in this matter, and I should have been an additional one. I blame you not, Mrs. Temple, for anything you have done to me, but I blame you for embittering Nick's life.”
“And he?” she said. It seemed to me that I detected a faltering in her voice.
“I will hide nothing from you. He blames you, with what justice I leave you to decide.”
She did not answer this, but turned her head away towards the bayou. Nor could I determine what was in her mind.
“And now I ask you whether I have acted as your friend in begging you to meet me.”
She turned to me swiftly at that.
“I am at a loss to see how there can be friendship between us, Mr. Ritchie,” she said.
“Very good then, Madame; I am sorry,” I answered. “I have done all that is in my power, and now events will have to take their course.”
I had not gone two steps into the wood before I heard her voice calling my name. She had risen, and leaned with her hand against the oak.
“Does Nick—know that you are here?” she cried.
“No,” I answered shortly. Then I realized suddenly what I had failed to grasp before,—she feared that I would pity her.
“David!”
I started violently at the sound of my name, at the new note in her voice, at the change in the woman as I turned. And then before I realized what she had done she had come to me swiftly and laid her hand upon my arm.
“David, does he hate me?”
All the hope remaining in her life was in that question, was in her face as she searched mine with a terrible scrutiny. And never had I known such an ordeal. It seemed as if I could not answer, and as I stood staring back at her a smile was forced to her lips.
“I will pay you one tribute, my friend,” she said; “you are honest.”
But even as she spoke I saw her sway, and though I could not be sure it were not a dizziness in me, I caught her. I shall always marvel at the courage there was in her, for she straightened and drew away from me a little proudly, albeit gently, and sat down on the knee of the oak, looking across the bayou towards the mist of the swamp. There was the infinite calmness of resignation in her next speech.
“Tell me about him,” she said.
She was changed indeed. Were it not so I should have heard of her own sufferings, of her poor, hunted life from place to place, of countless nights made sleepless by the past. Pride indeed was left, but the fire had burned away the last vestige of selfishness.
I sat down beside her, knowing full well that I should be judged by what I said. She listened, motionless, though something of what that narrative cost her I knew by the current of sympathy that ran now between us. Unmarked, the day faded, a new light was spread over the waters, the mist was spangled with silver points, the Spanish moss took on the whiteness of lace against the black forest
At length I paused. She neither spoke, nor moved— save for the rising and falling of her shoulders. The hardest thing I had to say I saved for the last, and I was near lacking the courage to continue.
“There is Mademoiselle Antoinette—” I began, and stopped,—she turned on me so quickly and laid a hand on mine.
“Nick loves her!” she cried.
“You know it!” I exclaimed, wondering.
“Ah, David,” she answered brokenly, “I foresaw it from the first. I, too, love the girl. No human being has ever given me such care and such affection. She— she is all that I have left. Must I give her up? Have I not paid the price of my sins?”
I did not answer, knowing that she saw the full cruelty of the predicament. What happiness remained to her now of a battered life stood squarely in the way of her son's happiness. That was the issue, and no advice or aid of mine could change it. There was another silence that seemed to me an eternity as I watched, a helpless witness, the struggle going on within her. At last she got to her feet, her face turned to the shadow.
“I will go, David,” she said. Her voice was low and she spoke with a steadiness that alarmed me. “I will go.”
Torn with pity, I thought again, but I could see no alternative. And then, suddenly, she was clinging to me, her courage gone, her breast shaken with sobs. “Where shall I go?” she cried. “God help me! Are there no remote places where He will not seek me out? I have tried them all, David.” And quite as suddenly she disengaged herself, and looked at me strangely. “You are well revenged for Temple Bow,” she said.
“Hush,” I answered, and held her, fearing I knew not what, “you have not lacked courage. It is not so bad as you believe. I will devise a plan and help you. Have you money?
“Yes,” she answered, with a remnant of her former pride; “and I have an annuity paid now to Mr. Clark.”
“Then listen to what I say,” I answered. “To-night I will take you to New Orleans and hide you safely. And I swear to you, whether it be right or wrong, that I will use every endeavor to change Nick's feelings towards you. Come,” I continued, leading her gently into the path, “let us go while there is yet time.”
“Stop,” she said, and I halted fearfully. “David Ritchie, you are a good man. I can make no amends to you,”—she did not finish.
Feeling for the path in the blackness of the wood, I led her by the hand, and she followed me as trustfully as a child. At last, after an age of groping, the heavy scents of shrubs and flowers stole to us on the night air, and we came out at the hedge into what seemed a blaze of light that flooded the rows of color. Here we paused, breathless, and looked. The bench under the great tree was vacant, and the garden was empty.
It was she who led the way through the hedge, who halted in the garden path at the sound of voices. She turned, but there was no time to flee, for the tall figure of a man came through the opposite hedge, followed by a lady. One was Nicholas Temple, the other, Mademoiselle de St. Gré. Mrs. Temple's face alone was in the shadow, and as I felt her hand trembling on my arm I summoned all my resources. It was Nick who spoke first.
“It is Davy!” he cried. “Oh, the sly rascal! And this is the promenade of which he left us word, the solitary meditation! Speak up, man; you are forgiven for deserting us.
He turned, laughing, to Mademoiselle. But she stood with her lips parted and her hands dropped, staring at my companion. Then she took two steps forward and stopped with a cry.
“Mrs. Clive!”
The woman beside me turned, and with a supreme courage raised her head and faced the girl.
“Yes, Antoinette, it is I,” she answered.
And then my eyes sought Nick, for Mrs. Temple had faced her son with a movement that was a challenge, yet with a look that questioned, yearned, appealed. He, too, stared, the laughter fading from his eyes, first astonishment, and then anger, growing in them, slowly, surely. I shall never forget him as he stood there (for what seemed an age) recalling one by one the wrongs this woman had done him. She herself had taught him to brook no restraint, to follow impetuously his loves and hates, and endurance in these things was moulded in every line of his finely cut features. And when he spoke it was not to her, but to the girl at his side.
“Do you know who this is?” he said. “Tell me, do you know this woman?”
Mademoiselle de St. Gré did not answer him. She drew near, gently, to Mrs. Temple, whose head was bowed, whose agony I could only guess.
“Mrs. Clive,” she said softly, though her voice was shaken by a prescience, “won't you tell me what has happened? Won't you speak to me—Antoinette?”
The poor lady lifted up her arms, as though to embrace the girl, dropped them despairingly, and turned away.
“Antoinette,” she murmured, “Antoinette!”
For Nick had seized Antoinette by the hand, restraining her.
“You do not know what you are doing?” he cried angrily. “Listen!”
I had stood bereft of speech, watching the scene breathlessly. And now I would have spoken had not Mademoiselle astonished me by taking the lead. I have thought since that I might have pieced together this much of her character. Her glance at Nick surprised him momentarily into silence.
“I know that she is my dearest friend,” she said, “that she came to us in misfortune, and that we love her and trust her. I do not know why she is here with Mr. Ritchie, but I am sure it is for some good reason.” She laid a hand on Mrs. Temple's shoulder. “Mrs. Clive, won't you speak to me?”
“My God, Antoinette, listen!” cried Nick; “Mrs. Clive is not her name. I know her, David knows her. She is an—adventuress!”
Mrs. Temple gave a cry, and the girl shot at him a frightened, bewildered glance, in which a new-born love struggled with an older affection.
“An adventuress!” she repeated, her hand dropping, “oh, I do not believe it. I cannot believe it.”
“You shall believe it,” said Nick, fiercely. “Her name is not Clive. Ask David what her name is.”
Antoinette's lips moved, but she shirked the question. And Nick seized me roughly.
“Tell her,” he said, “tell her! My God, how can I do it? Tell her, David.”
For the life of me I could not frame the speech at once, my pity and a new-found and surprising respect for her making it doubly hard to pronounce her sentence. Suddenly she raised her head, not proudly, but with a dignity seemingly conferred by years of sorrow and of suffering. Her tones were even, bereft of every vestige of hope.
“Antoinette, I have deceived you, though as God is my witness, I thought no harm could come of it. I deluded myself into believing that I had found friends and a refuge at last. I am Mrs. Temple.”
“Mrs. Temple!” The girl repeated the name sorrowfully, but perplexedly, not grasping its full significance.
“She is my mother,” said Nick, with a bitterness I had not thought in him, “she is my mother, or I would curse her. For she has ruined my life and brought shame on a good name.”
He paused, his breath catching for very anger. Mrs. Temple hid her face in her hands, while the girl shrank back in terror. I grasped him by the arm.
“Have you no compassion?” I cried. But Mrs. Temple interrupted me.
“He has the right,” she faltered; “it is my just punishment.”
He tore himself away, and took a step to her.
“Where is Riddle?” he cried. “As God lives, I will kill him without mercy!”
His mother lifted her head again.
“God has judged him,” she said quietly; “he is beyond your vengeance—he is dead.” A sob shook her, but she conquered it with a marvellous courage. “Harry Riddle loved me, he was kind to me, and he was a better man than John Temple.”
Nick recoiled. The fierceness of his anger seemed to go, leaving a more dangerous humor.
“Then I have been blessed with parents,” he said.
At that she swayed, but when I would have caught her she motioned me away and turned to Antoinette. Twice Mrs. Temple tried to speak.
I was going away to-night,” she said at length, “and you would never have seen or heard of me more. My nephew David—Mr. Ritchie—whom I treated cruelly as a boy, had pity on me. He is a good man, and he was to have taken me away— I do not attempt to defend myself, my dear, but I pray that you, who have so much charity, will some day think a little kindly of one who has sinned deeply, of one who will love and bless you and yours to her dying day.”
She faltered, and Nick would have spoken had not Antoinette herself stayed him with a gesture.
“I wish—my son to know the little there is on my side. It is not much. Yet God may not spare him the sorrow that brings pity. I—I loved Harry Riddle as a girl. My father was ruined, and I was forced into marriage with John Temple for his possessions. He was selfish, overbearing, cruel—unfaithful. During the years I lived with him he never once spoke kindly to me. I, too, grew wicked and selfish and heedless. My head was turned by admiration. Mr. Temple escaped to England in a man-of-war; he left me without a line of warning, of farewell. I—I have wandered over the earth, haunted by remorse, and I knew no moment of peace, of happiness, until you brought me here and sheltered and loved me. And even here I have had many sleepless hours. A hundred times
She glanced with a kind of terror in her eyes from the girl to Nick, and what she meant to say concerning their love I know not, for the flood, held back so long, burst upon her. She wept as I have never seen a woman weep. And then, before Nick or I knew what had happened, Antoinette had taken her swiftly in her arms and was murmuring in her ear:—
“You shall not go. You shall not. You will live with me always.”
Presently the sobs ceased, and Mrs. Temple raised her face, slowly, wonderingly, as if she had not heard aright. And she tried gently to push the girl away.
“No, Antoinette,” she said, “I have done you harm enough.”
But the girl clung to her strongly, passionately. “I do not care what you have done,” she cried, “you are good now. I know that you are good now. I will not cast you out. I will not.”
I stood looking at them, bewildered and astonished by Mademoiselle's loyalty. She seemed to have forgotten Nick, as had I, and then as I turned to him he came towards them. Almost roughly he took Antoinette by the arm.
“You do not know what you are saying,” he cried. “Come away, Antoinette, you do not know what she has done—you cannot realize what she is.”
Antoinette shrank away from him, still clinging to Mrs. Temple. There was a fearless directness in her look which might have warned him.
“She is your mother,” she said quietly.
“My mother!” he repeated; “yes, I will tell you what a mother she has been to me—”
“Nick!”
It passes my power to write down the pity of that appeal, the hopelessness of it, the yearning in it. Freeing herself from the girl, Mrs. Temple took one step towards him, her arms held up. I had not thought that his hatred of her was deep enough to resist it. It was Antoinette whose intuition divined this ere he had turned away.
“You have chosen between me and her,” he said; and before we could get the poor lady to the seat under the oak, he had left the garden. In my perturbation I glanced at Antoinette, but there was no other sign in her face save of tenderness for Mrs. Temple.
Mrs. Temple had mercifully fainted. As I crossed the
lawn I saw two figures in the deep shadow beside the
gallery, and I heard Nick's voice giving orders to Benjy
to pack and saddle. When I reached the garden again
the girl had loosed Mrs. Temple's gown, and was bending
over her, murmuring in her ear.
* * * * * * *
Many hours later, when the moon was waning towards the horizon, fearful of surprise by the coming day, I was riding slowly under the trees on the road to New Orleans. Beside me, veiled in black, her head bowed, was Mrs. Temple, and no word had escaped her since she had withdrawn herself gently from the arms of Antoinette on the gallery at Les Îles. Nick had gone long before. The hardest task had been to convince the girl that Mrs. Temple might not stay. After that Antoinette had busied herself, with a silent fortitude I had not thought was in her, making ready for the lady's departure. I shall never forget her as she stood, a slender figure of sorrow, looking down at us, the tears glistening on her cheeks. And I could not resist the impulse to mount the steps once more.
“You were right, Antoinette,” I whispered; “whatever happens, you will remember that I am your friend. And I will bring him back to you if I can.”
She pressed my hand, and turned and went slowly into the house.
| The Crossing | |