Old Kaskaskia Part 5

"Yes, brother Rice."

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

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

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

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

"I have been talking," replied Maria.

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

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

"Who was talking with you?"

"Dr. Dunlap."

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

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

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

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

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

Rice stopped to rest as soon as they were out of Dr. Dunlap's hearing.

Light as she was, he felt his sister's complete prostration in her weight.

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

She shook her head.

"But he says he met you in England."

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

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

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

"Mareea-bach!"

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

PART SECOND.

A FIELD DAY.

The gallery pillars of the Sauciers' house hung full of fragrant vines.

The double doors stood hospitably wide, but no one was visible through the extent of hall, though the sound of harp music filled it, coming from a large darkened room. Angelique was playing for her great-grand-aunt Angelique, the despot of the Saucier family.

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

From childhood the girl had been this aged woman's constant attendant.

Some days the black servants took their orders at the door, and n.o.body but Angelique was allowed to enter that room. Then the tyrant would unbend, and receive family and neighborhood visits. Though she had lived a spinster's life, she herself taught Angelique to call her "tante-gra'mere," and this absurd mixture of names had been taken up by the entire family. So tight a grip did she hold on the growing child that Angelique was educated by half-days at the convent; she never had an entire day free from tante-gra'mere. Madame Saucier often rose against such absorption, and craved the privilege of taking the girl's place.

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

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

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

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

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

Fortunately for Angelique, tante-gra'mere's hours were early, and she slept as aged people seldom do. At sunset, summer or winter, she had herself promptly done up in linen, the whip placed near her hand, and her black woman's bed made within reach on the floor. She then went into a sh.e.l.l of sleep which dancing-parties in the house had not broken, and required no further attention until the birds stirred in the morning.

Angelique rushed out to evening freedom with a zest which became rapture when she danced. Perhaps this fresh delight made her the best dancer in Kaskaskia.

The autocrat loved to compound her own dinners. She had a salver which Angelique placed before her on the bed; and the old child played in pastry or salads, or cut vegetable dice for her soup. The baking or boiling or roasting was done with rigor at her own fireplace by her blacks, the whiplash in her hand hovering over their bare spots. Silence was the law of the presence-chamber when she labored with her recipes, of which she had many, looking like spider tracks on very yellow paper.

These she kept locked up with many of the ingredients for creating them.

She pored over them with unspectacled eyes whenever she mixed a cunning dish; and even Angelique dared not meddle with them, though they were to be part of the girl's inheritance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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