Alice of Old Vincennes Part 22

"Lieutenant Beverley says that the Americans will be sure to drive Hamilton out of Vincennes, or capture him. Probably they are not so very far away now, and Rene may join them and come back to help punish these brutal Englishmen. Don't you wish he would, Adrienne? Wouldn't it be romantic?"

"He's armed, I know that," said Adrienne, brightening a little, "and he's brave, Alice, brave as can be. He came right back into town the other night and got his gun and pistols. He was at our house, too, and, oh!--"

She burst out crying again. "O Alice! It breaks my heart to think that the Indians will kill him. Do you think they will kill him, Alice?"

"He'll come nearer killing them," said Alice confidently, with her strong, warm arms around the tiny la.s.s; "he's a good woodsman, a fine shot--he's not so easy to kill, my dear. If he and Papa Roussillon should get together by chance they would be a match for all the Indians in the country. Anyway, I feel that it's much better for them to take their chances in the woods than to be in the hands of Governor Hamilton. If I were a man I'd do just as Papa Roussillon and Rene did; I'd break the bigoted head of every Englishman that mistreated me, I'll do it, girl as I am, if they annoy me, see if I don't!"

She was thinking of Captain Farnsworth, who had been from the first untiring in his efforts to gain something more than a pa.s.sing acquaintance. As yet he had not made himself unbearable; but Alice's fine intuition led her to the conclusion that she must guard against him from the outset.

Adrienne's simple heart could not grasp the romantic criterion with which Alice was wont to measure action. Her mind was single, impulsive, narrow and direct in all its movements. She loved, hated, desired, caressed, repulsed, not for any a.s.signable reason more solid or more luminous than "because." She adored Rene and wanted him near her. He was a hero in her imagination, no matter what he did. Little difference was it to her whether he hauled logs for the English or smoked his pipe in idleness by the winter fire--what could it matter which flag he served under, so that he was true to her? Or whom he served if she could always have him coming to see her and calling her his little pet?

He might crush an Irish Corporal's head every day, if he would but stroke her hair and say: "My sweet little one."

"Why couldn't he be quiet and do as your man, Lieutenant Beverley, did?" she cried in a sudden change of mood, the tears streaming down her cheeks. "Lieutenant Beverley surrendered and took the consequences.

He didn't kill somebody and run off to be hunted like a bear. No wonder you're happy, Alice; I'd be happy, too, if Rene were here and came to spend half of every day with me. I--"

"Why, what a silly girl you are!" Alice exclaimed, her face reddening prettily. "How foolishly you prattle! I'm sure I don't trouble myself about Lieutenant Beverley--what put such absurd nonsense into your head, Adrienne?"

"Because, that's what, and you know it's so, too. You love him just as much as I love Rene, and that's just all the love in the world, and you needn't deny it, Alice Roussillon!"

Alice laughed and hugged the wee, brown-faced mite of a girl until she almost smothered her.

It was growing dusk when Adrienne left Roussillon place to go home. The wind cut icily across the commons and moaned as it whirled around the cabins and cattle-sheds. She ran briskly, m.u.f.fled in a wrap, partly through fear and partly to keep warm, and had gone two-thirds of her way when she was brought to an abrupt stop by the arms of a man. She screamed sharply, and Father Beret, who was coming out of a cabin not far away, heard and knew the voice.

"Ho-ho, my little lady!" cried Adrienne's captor in a breezy, jocund tone, "you wouldn't run over a fellow, would you?" The words were French, but the voice was that of Captain Farnsworth, who laughed while he spoke. "You jump like a rabbit, my darling! Why, what a lively little chick of a girl it is!"

Adrienne screamed and struggled recklessly.

"Now don't rouse up the town," coaxed the Captain. He was just drunk enough to be quite a fool, yet sufficiently sober to imagine himself the most proper person in the world. "I don't mean you any harm, Mademoiselle; I'll just see you safe home, you know; 'scort you to your residence; come on, now--that's a good girl."

Father Beret hurried to the spot, and when in the deepening gloom he saw Adrienne flinging herself violently this way and that, helplessly trying to escape from the clasp of a man, he did to perfection what a priest is supposed to be the least fitted to do. Indeed, considering his age and leaving his vocation out of the reckoning, his performance was amazing. It is not certain that the blow dealt upon Governor Hamilton's jaw by M. Roussillon was a stiffer one than that sent straight from the priest's shoulder right into the short ribs of Captain Farnsworth, who there-upon released a mighty grunt and doubled himself up.

Adrienne recognized her a.s.sailant at the first and used his name freely during the struggle. When Father Beret appeared she cried out to him--

"Oh, Father--Father Beret! help me! help me!"

When Farnsworth recovered from the breath-expelling shock of the jab in his side and got himself once more in a vertical position, both girl and priest were gone. He looked this way and that, rapidly becoming sober, and beginning to wonder how the thing could have happened so easily. His ribs felt as if they had been hit with a heavy hammer.

"By Jove!" he muttered all to himself, "the old prayer-singing heathen!

By Jove!" And with this very brilliant and relevant observation he rubbed his sore side and went his way to the fort.

CHAPTER XI

A SWORD AND A HORSE PISTOL

We hear much about the "days that tried men's souls"; but what about the souls of women in those same days? Sitting in the liberal geniality of the nineteenth century's sunset glow, we insist upon having our grumble at the times and the manners of our generation; but if we had to exchange places, periods and experiences with the people who lived in America through the last quarter of the eighteenth century, there would be good ground for despairing ululations. And if our men could not bear it, if it would try their souls too poignantly, let us imagine the effect upon our women. No, let us not imagine it; but rather let us give full credit to the heroic souls of the mothers and the maidens who did actually bear up in the center of that terrible struggle and unflinchingly help win for us not only freedom, but the vast empire which at this moment is at once the master of the world and the model toward which all the nations of the earth are slowly but surely tending.

If Alice was an extraordinary girl, she was not aware of it; nor had she ever understood that her life was being shaped by extraordinary conditions. Of course it could not but be plain to her that she knew more and felt more than the girls of her narrow acquaintance; that her accomplishments were greater; that she nursed splendid dreams of which they could have no proper comprehension, but until now she had never even dimly realized that she was probably capable of being something more than a mere creole la.s.s, the foster daughter of Gaspard Roussillon, trader in pelts and furs. Even her most romantic visions had never taken the form of personal desire, or ambition in its most nebulous stage; they had simply pleased her fresh and natural fancy and served to gild the hardness and crudeness of her life,--that was all.

Her experiences had been almost too terrible for belief, viewed at our distance from them; she had pa.s.sed through scenes of incredible horror and suffering, but her nature had not been chilled, stunted or hardened. In body and in temper her development had been sound and beautiful. It was even thus that our great-grandmothers triumphed over adversity, hards.h.i.+p, indescribable danger. We cannot say that the strong, lithe, happy-hearted Alice of old Vincennes was the only one of her kind. Few of us who have inherited the faded portraits of our revolutionary forbears can doubt that beauty, wit and great lovableness flourished in the cabins of pioneers all the way from the Edisto to the Licking, from the Connecticut to the Wabash.

Beverley's advent could not fail to mean a great deal in the life of a girl like Alice; a new era, as it were, would naturally begin for her the moment that his personal influence touched her imagination; but it is well not to measure her too strictly by the standard of our present taste and the specialized forms of our social and moral code. She was a true child of the wilderness, a girl who grew, as the wild prairie rose grew, not on account of innumerable exigencies, accidents and hards.h.i.+ps, but in spite of them. She had blushed unseen, and had wasted divine sweets upon a more than desert air. But when Beverley came near her, at first carelessly droning his masculine monotonies, as the wandering bee to the lonely and lovely rose, and presently striking her soul as with the wings of Love, there fell a change into her heart of hearts, and lo! her haunting and elusive dreams began to condense and take on forms that startled her with their wonderful splendor and beauty. These she saw all the time, sleeping or waking; they made bright summer of the frozen stream and snapping gale, the snowdrifts and the sleet. In her brave young heart, swelled the ineffable song--the music never yet caught by syrinx or flute or violin, the words no tongue can speak.

Ah, here may be the secret of that vigorous, brave, sweet life of our pioneer maids, wives, and mothers. It was love that gave those tender hearts the iron strength and heroic persistence at which the world must forever wonder. And do we appreciate those women? Let the Old World boast its crowned kings, its mailed knights, its ladies of the court and castle; but we of the New World, we of the powerful West, let us brim our cups with the wine of undying devotion, and drink to the memory of the Women of the Revolution,--to the humble but good and marvelously brave and faithful women like those of old Vincennes.

But if Alice was being radically influenced by Beverley, he in turn found a new light suffusing his nature, and he was not unaware that it came out of her eyes, her face, her smiles, her voice, her soul. It was the old, well-known, inexplicable, mutual magnetism, which from the first has been the same on the highest mountain-top and in the lowest valley. The queen and the milkmaid, the king and the hind may come together only to find the king walking off with the lowly beauty and her fragrant pail, while away stalks the l.u.s.ty rustic, to be lord and master of the queen. Love is love, and it thrives in all climes, under all conditions.

There is an inevitable and curious protest that comes up unbidden between lovers; it takes many forms in accordance with particular circ.u.mstances. It is the demand for equality and perfection. Love itself is without degrees--it is perfect--but when shall it see the perfect object? It does see it, and it does not see it, in every beloved being. Beverley found his mind turning, as on a pivot, round and round upon the thought that Alice might be impossible to him. The mystery of her life seemed to force her below the line of his aristocratic vision, so that he could not fairly consider her, and yet with all his heart he loved her. Alice, on the other hand, had her bookish ideal to reckon with, despite the fact that she daily dashed it contemptuously down. She was different from Adrienne Bourcier, who bewailed the absence of her un-tamable lover; she wished that Beverley had not, as she somehow viewed it, weakly surrendered to Hamilton. His apparently complacent acceptance of idle captivity did not comport with her dream of knighthood and heroism. She had been all the time half expecting him to do something that would stamp him a hero.

Counter protests of this sort are never sufficiently vigorous to take a fall out of Love; they merely serve to worry his temper by lightly hindering his feet. And it is surprising how Love does delight himself with being entangled.

Both Beverley and Alice day by day felt the cord tightening which drew their hearts together--each acknowledged it secretly, but strove not to evince it openly. Meantime both were as happy and as restlessly dissatisfied as love and uncertainty could make them.

Amid the activities in which Hamilton was engaged--his dealings with the Indians and the work of reconstructing the fort--he found time to worry his temper about the purloined flag. Like every other man in the world, he was superst.i.tious, and it had come into his head that to insure himself and his plans against disaster, he must have the banner of his captives as a badge of his victory. It was a small matter; but it magnified itself as he dwelt upon it. He suspected that Alice had deceived him. He sharply questioned Father Beret, only to be half convinced that the good priest told the truth when he said that he knew nothing whatever on the subject beyond the fact that the banner had mysteriously disappeared from under his floor.

Captain Farnsworth scarcely sympathized with his chief about the flag, but he was nothing if not anxious to gain Hamilton's highest confidence. His military zeal knew no bounds, and he never let pa.s.s even the slightest opportunity to show it. Hence his persistent search for a clue to the missing banner. He was no respecter of persons. He frankly suspected both Alice and Father Beret of lying. He would himself have lied under the existing circ.u.mstances, and he considered himself as truthful and trustworthy as priest or maiden.

"I'll get that flag for you," he said to Hamilton, "if I have to put every man, woman and child in this town on the rack. It lies, I think, between Miss Roussillon and the priest, although both insistently deny it. I've thought it over in every way, and I can't see how they can both be ignorant of where it is, or at least who got it."

Hamilton, since being treated to that wonderful blow on the jaw, was apt to fall into a spasm of anger whenever the name Roussillon was spoken in his hearing. Involuntarily he would put his hand to his cheek, and grimace reminiscently.

"If it's that girl, make her tell," he savagely commanded. "Let's have no trifling about it. If it's the priest, then make him tell, or tie him up by the thumbs. Get that flag, or show some good reason for your failure. I'm not going to be baffled."

The Captain's adventure with Father Beret came just in time to make it count against that courageous and bellicose missionary in more ways than one. Farnsworth did not tell Hamilton or any other person about what the priest had done to him, but nursed his sore ribs and his wrath, waiting patiently for the revenge that he meant soon to take.

Alice heard from Adrienne the story of Farnsworth's conduct and his humiliating discomfiture at the hands of Father Beret. She was both indignant and delighted, sympathizing with Adrienne and glorying in the priest's vigorous pugilistic achievement.

"Well," she remarked, with one of her infectious trills of laughter, "so far the French have the best of it, anyway! Papa Roussillon knocked the Governor's cheek nearly off, then Rene cracked the Irish Corporal's head, and now Father Beret has taught Captain Farnsworth a lesson in fisticuffs that he'll not soon forget! If the good work can only go on a little longer we shall see every English soldier in Vincennes wearing the mark of a Frenchman's blow." Then her mood suddenly changed from smiling lightness to almost fierce gravity, and she added:

"Adrienne Bourcier, if Captain Farnsworth ever offers to treat me as he did you, mark my words, I'll kill him--kill him, indeed I will! You ought to see me!"

"But he won't dare touch you," said Adrienne, looking at her friend with round, admiring eyes. "He knows very well that you are not little and timid like me. He'd be afraid of you."

"I wish he would try it. How I would love to shoot him into pieces, the hateful wretch! I wish he would."

The French inhabitants all, or nearly all, felt as Alice did; but at present they were helpless and dared not say or do anything against the English. Nor was this feeling confined to the Creoles of Vincennes; it had spread to most of the points where trading posts existed. Hamilton found this out too late to mend some of his mistakes; but he set himself on the alert and organized scouting bodies of Indians under white officers to keep him informed as to the American movements in Kentucky and along the Ohio. One of these bands brought in as captive Colonel Francis Vigo, of St. Louis, a Spaniard by birth, an American by adoption, a patriot to the core, who had large influence over both Indians and Creoles in the Illinois country.

Colonel Vigo was not long held a prisoner. Hamilton dared not exasperate the Creoles beyond their endurance, for he knew that the savages would closely sympathize with their friends of long standing, and this might lead to revolt and coalition against him,--a very dangerous possibility. Indeed, at least one of the great Indian chieftains had already frankly informed him that he and his tribe were loyal to the Americans. Here was a dilemma requiring consummate diplomacy. Hamilton saw it, but he was not of a diplomatic temper or character. With the Indians he used a demoralizing system of bribery, while toward the whites he was too often gruff, imperious, repellant.

Helm understood the whole situation and was quick to take advantage of it. His personal relations with Hamilton were easy and familiar, so that he did not hesitate to give advice upon all occasions. Here his jovial disposition helped him.

"You'd better let Vigo return to St. Louis," he said. They had a bowl of something hot steaming between them. "I know him. He's harmless if you don't rub him too hard the wrong way. He'll go back, if you treat him well, and tell Clark how strong you are here and how foolish it would be to think of attacking you. Clark has but a handful of men, poorly supplied and tired with long, hard marches. If you'll think a moment you cannot fail to understand that you'd better be friends with this man Vigo. He and Father Gibault and this old priest here, Beret, carry these Frenchmen in their pockets. I'm not on your side, understand, I'm an American, and I'd blow the whole of you to kingdom come in a minute, if I could; but common sense is common sense all the same. There's no good to you and no harm to Clark in mistreating, or even holding this prisoner. What harm can he do you by going back to Clark and telling him the whole truth? Clark knew everything long before Vigo reached here. Old Jazon, my best scout, left here the day you took possession, and you may bet he got to Kaskaskia in short order. He never fails. But he'll tell Clark to stay where he is, and Vigo can do no more."

What effect Helm's bold and apparently artless talk had upon Hamilton's mind is not recorded; but the meager historical facts at command show that Vigo was released and permitted to return under promise that he would give no information to the enemy ON HIS WAY to Kaskaskia.

Doubtless this bit of careless diplomacy on the Governor's part did have a somewhat soothing effect upon a large cla.s.s of Frenchmen at Vincennes; but Farnsworth quickly neutralized it to a serious extent by a foolish act while slightly under the influence of liquor.