CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST MAYOR OF VINCENNES
Governor Abbott probably never so much as heard of the dame jeanne of French brandy sent to him by his creole friend in New Orleans. He had been gone from Vincennes several months when the batteau arrived, having been recalled to Detroit by the British authorities; and he never returned. Meantime the little post with its quaint cabins and its dilapidated block-house, called Fort Sackville, lay sunning drowsily by the river in a blissful state of helplessness from the military point of view. There was no garrison; the two or three pieces of artillery, abandoned and exposed, gathered rust and cobwebs, while the pickets of the stockade, decaying and loosened in the ground by winter freezes and summer rains, leaned in all directions, a picture of decay and inefficiency.
The inhabitants of the town, numbering about six hundred, lived very much as pleased them, without any regular municipal government, each family its own tribe, each man a law unto himself; yet for mutual protection, they all kept in touch and had certain common rights which were religiously respected and defended faithfully. A large pasturing ground was fenced in where the goats and little black cows of the villagers browsed as one herd, while the patches of wheat, corn and vegetables were not inclosed at all. A few of the thriftier and more important citizens, however, had separate estates of some magnitude, surrounding their residences, kept up with care and, if the time and place be taken into account, with considerable show of taste.
Monsieur Gaspard Roussillon was looked upon as the aristocrat par excellence of Vincennes, notwithstanding the fact that his name bore no suggestion of noble or titled ancestry. He was rich and in a measure educated; moreover the successful man's patent of leadership, a commanding figure and a suave manner, came always to his assistance when a crisis presented itself. He traded shrewdly, much to his own profit, but invariably with the excellent result that the man, white or Indian, with whom he did business felt himself especially favored in the transaction. By the exercise of firmness, prudence, vast assumption, florid eloquence and a kindly liberality he had greatly endeared himself to the people; so that in the absence of a military commander he came naturally to be regarded as the chief of the town, Mo'sieu' le maire.
He returned from his extended trading expedition about the middle of July, bringing, as was his invariable rule, a gift for Alice. This time it was a small, thin disc of white flint, with a hole in the center through which a beaded cord of sinew was looped. The edge of the disc was beautifully notched and the whole surface polished so that it shone like glass, while the beads, made of very small segments of porcupine quills, were variously dyed, making a curiously gaudy show of bright colors. "There now, ma cherie, is something worth fifty times its weight in gold," said M. Roussillon when he presented the necklace to his foster daughter with pardonable self-satisfaction. "It is a sacred charm-string given me by an old heathen who would sell his soul for a pint of cheap rum. He solemnly informed me that whoever wore it could not by any possibility be killed by an enemy."
Alice kissed M. Roussillon.
"It's so curious and beautiful," she said, holding it up and drawing the variegated string through her fingers. Then, with her mischievous laugh, she added; "and I'm glad it is so powerful against one's enemy; I'll wear it whenever I go where Adrienne Bourcier is, see if I don't!"
"Is she your enemy? What's up between you and la petite Adrienne, eh?" M. Roussillon lightly demanded. "You were always the best of good friends, I thought. What's happened?"
"Oh, we are good friends," said Alice, quickly, "very good friends, indeed; I was but chaffing."
"Good friends, but enemies; that's how it is with women. Who's the young man that's caused the coolness? I could guess, maybe!" He laughed and winked knowingly. "May I be so bold as to name him at a venture?"
"Yes, if you'll be sure to mention Monsieur Rene de Ronville," she gayly answered. "Who but he could work Adrienne up into a perfect green mist of jealousy?"
"He would need an accomplice, I should imagine; a young lady of some beauty and a good deal of heartlessness."
"Like whom, for example?" and she tossed her bright head. "Not me, I am sure."
"Poh! like every pretty maiden in the whole world, ma petite coquette; they're all alike as peas, cruel as blue jays and as sweet as apple-blossoms." He stroked her hair clumsily with his large hand, as a heavy and roughly fond man is apt to do, adding in an almost serious tone:
"But my little girl is better than most of them, not a foolish mischief-maker, I hope."
Alice was putting her head through the string of beads and letting the translucent white disc fall into her bosom.
"It's time to change the subject," she said; "tell me what you have seen while away. I wish I could go far off and see things. Have you been to Detroit, Quebec, Montreal?"
"Yes, I've been to all, a long, hard journey, but reasonably profitable. You shall have a goodly dot when you get married, my child."
"And did you attend any parties and balls?" she inquired quickly, ignoring his concluding remark. "Tell me about them. How do the fine ladies dress, and do they wear their hair high with great big combs? Do they have long skirts and--"
"Hold up, you double-tongued chatterbox!" he interrupted; "I can't answer forty questions at once. Yes, I danced till my legs ached with women old and girls young; but how could I remember how they were dressed and what their style of coiffure was? I know that silk rustled and there was a perfume of eau de Cologne and mignonette and my heart expanded and blazed while I whirled like a top with a sweet lady in my arms."
"Yes, you must have cut a ravishing figure!" interpolated Madame Roussillon with emphatic disapproval, her eyes snapping. "A bull in a lace shop. How delighted the ladies must have been!"
"Never saw such blushing faces and burning glances--such fluttering breasts, such--"
"Big braggart," Madame Roussillon broke in contemptuously, "it's a piastre to a sou that you stood gawping in through a window while gentlemen and ladies did the dancing. I can imagine how you looked --I can!" and with this she took her prodigious bulk at a waddling gait out of the room. "I remember how you danced even when you were not clumsy as a pig on ice!" she shrieked back over her shoulder.
"Parbleu! true enough, my dear," he called after her, "I should think you could--you mind how we used trip it together. You were the prettiest dancer them all, and the young fellows all went to the swords about you!"
"But tell me more," Alice insisted; "I want to know about what you saw in the great towns--in the fine houses--how the ladies looked, how they acted--what they said--the dresses they wore--how--"
"Ciel! you will split my ears, child; can't you fill my pipe and bring it to me with a coal on it? Then I'll try to tell you what I can," he cried, assuming a humorously resigned air. "Perhaps if I smoke I can remember everything."
Alice gladly ran to do what he asked. Meantime Jean was out on the gallery blowing a flute that M. Roussillon had brought him from Quebec.
The pipe well filled and lighted apparently did have the effect to steady and encourage M. Roussillon's memory; or if not his memory, then his imagination, which was of that fervid and liberal sort common to natives of the Midi, and which has been exquisitely depicted by the late Alphonse Daudet in Tartarin and Bompard. He leaned far back in a strong chair, with his massive legs stretched at full length, and gazed at the roof-poles while he talked.
He sympathized fully, in his crude way, with Alice's lively curiosity, and his affection for her made him anxious to appease her longing after news from the great outside world. If the sheer truth must come out, however, he knew precious little about that world, especially the polite part of it in which thrived those femininities so dear to the heart of an isolated and imaginative girl. Still, as he, too, lived in Arcadia, there was no great effort involved when he undertook to blow a dreamer's flute.
In the first place he had not been in Quebec or Montreal during his absence from home. Most of the time he had spent disposing of pelts and furs at Detroit and in extending his trading relations with other posts; but what mattered a trifling want of facts when his meridional fancy once began to warm up? A smattering of social knowledge gained at first hand in his youthful days in France while he was a student whose parents fondly expected him to conquer the world, came to his aid, and besides he had saturated himself all his life with poetry and romance. Scudery, Scarron, Prevost, Madame La Fayette and Calprenede were the chief sources of his information touching the life and manners, morals and gayeties of people who, as he supposed, stirred the surface of that resplendent and far-off ocean called society. Nothing suited him better than to smoke a pipe and talk about what he had seen and done; and the less he had really seen and done the more he had to tell.
His broad, almost over-virile, kindly and contented face beamed with the warmth of wholly imaginary recollections while he recounted with minute circumstantiality to the delighted Alice his gallant adventures in the crowded and brilliant ball-rooms of the French-Canadian towns. The rolling burr of his bass voice, deep and resonant, gave force to the improvised descriptions. Madame Roussillon heard the heavy booming and presently came softly back into the door from the kitchen to listen. She leaned against the facing in an attitude of ponderous attention, a hand, on her bulging hip. She could not suppress her unbounded admiration of her liege lord's manly physique, and jealous to fierceness as she was of his experiences so eloquently and picturesquely related, her woman's nature took fire with enjoyment of the scenes described.
This is the mission of the poet and the romancer--to sponge out of existence, for a time, the stiff, refractory, and unlovely realities and give in their place a scene of ideal mobility and charm. The two women reveled in Gaspard Roussillon's revelations. They saw the brilliant companies, the luxurious surroundings, heard the rustle of brocade and the fine flutter of laces, the hum of sweet voices, breathed in the wafts of costly perfumeries, looked on while the dancers whirled and flickered in the confusion of lights; and over all and through all poured and vibrated such ravishing music as only the southern imagination could have conjured up out of nothing.
Alice was absolutely charmed. She sat on a low wooden stool and gazed into Gaspard Roussillon's face with dilating eyes in which burned that rich and radiant something we call a passionate soul. She drank in his flamboyant stream of words with a thirst which nothing but experience could ever quench. He felt her silent applause and the admiring involuntary absorption that possessed his wife; the consciousness of his elementary magnetism augmented the flow of his fine descriptions, and he went on and on, until the arrival of Father Beret put an end to it all.
The priest, hearing of M. Roussillon's return, had come to inquire about some friends living at Detroit. He took luncheon with the family, enjoying the downright refreshing collation of broiled birds, onions, meal-cakes and claret, ending with a dish of blackberries and cream.
M. Roussillon seized the first opportunity to resume his successful romancing, and presently in the midst of the meal began to tell Father Beret about what he had seen in Quebec.
"By the way," he said, with expansive casualness in his voice, "I called upon your old-time friend and co-adjutor, Father Sebastien, while up there. A noble old man. He sent you a thousand good messages. Was mightily delighted when I told him how happy and hale you have always been here. Ah, you should have seen his dear old eyes full of loving tears. He would walk a hundred miles to see you, he said, but never expected to in this world. Blessings, blessings upon dear Father Beret, was what he murmured in my ear when we were parting. He says that he will never leave Quebec until he goes to his home above--ah!"
The way in which M. Roussillon closed his little speech, his large eyes upturned, his huge hands clasped in front of him, was very effective.
"I am under many obligations, my son," said Father Beret, "for what you tell me. It was good of you to remember my dear old friend and go to him for his loving messages to me. I am very, very thankful. Help me to another drop of wine, please."
Now the extraordinary feature of the situation was that Father Beret had known positively for nearly five years that Father Sebastien was dead and buried.
"Ah, yes," M. Roussillon continued, pouring the claret with one hand and making a pious gesture with the other; "the dear old man loves you and prays for you; his voice quavers whenever he speaks of you."
"Doubtless he made his old joke to you about the birth-mark on my shoulder," said Father Beret after a moment of apparently thoughtful silence. "He may have said something about it in a playful way, eh?"
"True, true, why yes, he surely mentioned the same," assented M. Roussillon, his face assuming an expression of confused memory; "it was something sly and humorous, I mind; but it just escapes my recollection. A right jolly old boy is Father Sebastien; indeed very amusing at times."
"At times, yes," said Father Beret, who had no birth-mark on his shoulder, and had never had one there, or on any other part of his person.
"How strange!" Alice remarked, "I, too, have a mark on my shoulder--a pink spot, just like a small, five-petaled flower. We must be of kin to each other, Father Beret."
The priest laughed.
"If our marks are alike, that would be some evidence of kinship," he said.
"But what shape is yours, Father?"
"I've never seen it," he responded.
"Never seen it! Why?"
"Well, it's absolutely invisible," and he chuckled heartily, meantime glancing shrewdly at M. Roussillon out of the tail of his eye.
"It's on the back part of his shoulder," quickly spoke up M. Roussillon, "and you know priests never use looking-glasses. The mark is quite invisible therefore, so far as Father Beret is concerned!"
"You never told me of your birth-mark before, my daughter," said Father Beret, turning to Alice with sudden interest. "It may some day be good fortune to you."
"Why so, Father?"
"If your family name is really Tarleton, as you suppose from the inscription on your locket, the birth-mark, being of such singular shape, would probably identify you. It is said that these marks run regularly in families. With the miniature and the distinguishing birth-mark you have enough to make a strong case should you once find the right Tarleton family."
"You talk as they write in novels," said Alice. "I've read about just such things in them. Wouldn't it be grand if I should turn out to be some great personage in disguise!"
The mention of novels reminded Father Beret of that terrible book, Manon Lescaut, which he last saw in Alice's possession, and he could not refrain from mentioning it in a voice that shuddered.
"Rest easy, Father Beret," said Alice; "that is one novel I have found wholly distasteful to me. I tried to read it, but could not do it, I flung it aside in utter disgust. You and mother Roussillon are welcome to hide it deep as a well, for all I care. I don't enjoy reading about low, vile people and hopeless unfortunates; I like sweet and lovely heroines and strong, high- souled, brave heroes."
"Read about the blessed saints, then, my daughter; you will find in them the true heroes and heroines of this world," said Father Beret.
M. Roussillon changed the subject, for he always somehow dreaded to have the good priest fall into the strain of argument he was about to begin. A stray sheep, no matter how refractory, feels a touch of longing when it hears the shepherd's voice. M. Roussillon was a Catholic, but a straying one, who avoided the confessional and often forgot mass. Still, with all his reckless independence, and with all his outward show of large and breezy self- sufficiency, he was not altogether free from the hold that the church had laid upon him in childhood and youth. Moreover, he was fond of Father Beret and had done a great deal for the little church of St. Xavier and the mission it represented; but he distinctly desired to be let alone while he pursued his own course; and he had promised the dying woman who gave Alice to him that the child should be left as she was, a Protestant, without undue influence to change her from the faith of her parents. This promise he had kept with stubborn persistence and he meant to keep it as long as he lived. Perhaps the very fact that his innermost conscience smote him with vague yet telling blows at times for this departure from the strict religion of his fathers, may have intensified his resistance of the influence constantly exerted upon Alice by Father Beret and Madame Roussillon, to bring her gently but surely to the church. Perverseness is a force to be reckoned with in all original characters.
A few weeks had passed after M. Roussillon's return, when that big-hearted man took it into his head to celebrate his successful trading ventures with a moonlight dance given without reserve to all the inhabitants of Vincennes. It was certainly a democratic function that he contemplated, and motley to a most picturesque extent.
Rene de Ronville called upon Alice a day or two previous to the occasion and duly engaged her as his partenaire; but she insisted upon having the engagement guarded in her behalf by a condition so obviously fanciful that he accepted it without argument.
"If my wandering knight should arrive during the dance, you promise to stand aside and give place to him," she stipulated. "You promise that? You see I'm expecting him all the time. I dreamed last night that he came on a great bay horse and, stooping, whirled me up behind the saddle, and away we went!"
There was a childish, half bantering air in her look; but her voice sounded earnest and serious, notwithstanding its delicious timbre of suppressed playfulness.
"You promise me?" she insisted.
"Oh, I promise to slink away into a corner and chew my thumb, the moment he comes," Rene eagerly assented. "Of course I'm taking a great risk, I know; for lords and barons and knights are very apt to appear Suddenly in a place like this."
"You may banter and make light if you want to," she said, pouting admirably. "I don't care. All the same the laugh will jump to the other corner of your mouth, see if it doesn't. They say that what a person dreams about and wishes for and waits for and believes in, will come true sooner or later."
"If that's so," said Rene, "you and I will get married; for I've dreamed it every night of the year, wished for it, waited for it and believed in it, and--"
It was a madly sudden rush. He made it on an impulse quite irresistible, as hypnotized persons are said to do in response to the suggestion of the hypnotist, and his heart was choking his throat before he could end his speech. Alice interrupted him with a hearty burst of laughter.
"A very pretty twist you give to my words, I must declare," she said; "but not new by any means. Little Adrienne Bourcier could tell you that. She says that you have vowed to her over and over that you dream about her, and wish for her, and wait for her, precisely as you have just said to me,"
Rene's brown face flushed to the temples, partly with anger, partly with the shock of mingled surprise and fear. He was guilty, and the guilt showed in his eyes and paralyzed his tongue, so that he sat there before Alice with his under jaw sagging ludicrously.
"Don't you rather think, Monsieur Rene de Ronville," she presently added in a calmly advisory tone, "that you had better quit trying to say such foolish things to me, and just be my very good friend? If you don't, I do, which comes to the same thing. What's more, I won't be your partenaire at the dance unless you promise me on your word of honor that you will dance two dances with Adrienne to every one that you have with me. Do you promise?"
He dared not oppose her outwardly, although in his heart resistance amounted to furious revolt and riot.
"I promise anything you ask me to," he said resignedly, almost sullenly; "anything for you."
"Well, I ask nothing whatever on my own account," Alice quickly replied; "but I do tell you firmly that you shall not maltreat little Adrienne Bourcier and remain a friend of mine. She loves you, Rene de Ronville, and you have told her that you love her. If you are a man worthy of respect you will not desert her. Don't you think I am right?"
Like a singed and crippled moth vainly trying to rise once again to the alluring yet deadly flame, Rene de Ronville essayed to break out of his embarrassment and resume equal footing with the girl so suddenly become his commanding superior; but the effort disclosed to him as well as to her that he had fallen to rise no more. In his abject defeat he accepted the terms dictated by Alice and was glad when she adroitly changed her manner and tone in going on to discuss the approaching dance.
"Now let me make one request of you," he demanded after a while. "It's a small favor; may I ask it?"
"Yes, but I don't grant it in advance."
"I want you to wear, for my sake, the buff gown which they say was your grandmother's."
"No, I won't wear it."
"But why, Alice?"
"None of the other girls have anything like such a dress; it would not be right for me to put it on and make them all feel that I had taken the advantage of them, just because I could; that's why."
"But then none of them is beautiful and educated like you," he said; "you'll outshine them anyway."
"Save your compliments for poor pretty little Adrienne," she firmly responded, "I positively do not wish to hear them. I have agreed to be your partenaire at this dance of Papa Roussillon's, but it is understood between us that Adrienne is your sweet-heart. I am not, and I'm not going to be, either. So for your sake and Adrienne's, as well as out of consideration for the rest of the girls who have no fine dresses, I am not going to wear the buff brocade gown that belonged to Papa Roussillon's mother long ago. I shall dress just as the rest do."
It is safe to say that Rene de Ronville went home with a troublesome bee in his bonnet. He was not a bad-hearted fellow. Many a right good young man, before him and since, has loved an Adrienne and been dazzled by an Alice. A violet is sweet, but a rose is the garden's queen. The poor youthful frontiersman ought to have been stronger; but he was not, and what have we to say?
As for Alice, since having a confidential talk with Adrienne Bourcier recently, she had come to realize what M. Roussillon meant when he said; "But my little girl is better than most of them, not a foolish mischief-maker, I hope." She saw through the situation with a quick understanding of what Adrienne might suffer should Rene prove permanently fickle. The thought of it aroused all her natural honesty and serious nobleness of character, which lay deep under the almost hoydenish levity usually observable in her manner. Crude as her sense of life's larger significance was, and meager as had been her experience in the things which count for most in the sum of a young girl's existence under fair circumstances, she grasped intuitively the gist of it all.
The dance did not come off; it had to be postponed indefinitely on account of a grave change in the political relations of the little post. A day or two before the time set for that function a rumor ran through the town that something of importance was about to happen. Father Gibault, at the head of a small party, had arrived from Kaskaskia, far away on the Mississippi, with the news that France and the American Colonies had made common cause against the English in the great war of which the people of Vincennes neither knew the cause nor cared a straw about the outcome.
It was Oncle Jazon who came to the Roussillon place to tell M. Roussillon that he was wanted at the river house. Alice met him at the door.
"Come in, Oncle Jazon," she cheerily said, "you are getting to be a stranger at our house lately. Come in; what news do you bring? Take off your cap and rest your hair, Oncle Jazon."
The scalpless old fighter chuckled raucously and bowed to the best of his ability. He not only took off his queer cap, but looked into it with a startled gaze, as if he expected something infinitely dangerous to jump out and seize his nose.
"A thousand thanks, Ma'm'selle," he presently said, "will ye please tell Mo'sieu' Roussillon that I would wish to see 'im?"
"Yes, Oncle Jazon; but first be seated, and let me offer you just a drop of eau de vie; some that Papa Roussillon brought back with him from Quebec. He says it's old and fine."
She poured him a full glass, then setting the bottle on a little stand, went to find M. Roussillon. While she was absent Oncle Jazon improved his opportunity to the fullest extent. At least three additional glasses of the brandy went the way of the first. He grinned atrociously and smacked his corrugated lips; but when Gaspard Roussillon came in, the old man was sitting at some distance from the bottle and glass gazing indifferently out across the veranda. He told his story curtly. Father Gibault, he said, had sent him to ask M. Roussillon to come to the river house, as he had news of great importance to communicate.
"Ah, well, Oncle Jazon, we'll have a nip of brandy together before we go," said the host.
"Why, yes, jes" one agin' the broilin' weather," assented Oncle Jazon; "I don't mind jes' one."
"A very rich friend of mine in Quebec gave me this brandy, Oncle Jazon," said M. Roussillon, pouring the liquor with a grand flourish; "and I thought of you as soon as I got it. Now, says I to myself, if any man knows good brandy when he tastes it, it's Oncle Jazon, and I'll give him a good chance at this bottle just the first of all my friends."
"It surely is delicious," said Oncle Jazon, "very delicious." He spoke French with a curious accent, having spent long years with English-speaking frontiersmen in the Carolinas and Kentucky, so that their lingo had become his own.
As they walked side by side down the way to the river house they looked like typical extremes of rough, sun-burned and weather- tanned manhood; Oncle Jazon a wizened, diminutive scrap, wrinkled and odd in every respect; Gaspard Roussillon towering six feet two, wide shouldered, massive, lumbering, muscular, a giant with long curling hair and a superb beard. They did not know that they were going down to help dedicate the great Northwest to freedom.