Alice of Old Vincennes Part 45

h'ist it!"

He was dancing with a rickety liveliness, his goatish legs and shriveled body giving him the look of an emaciated satyr.

Clark had been told by some of his creole officers the story of how Alice raised the flag when Helm took the fort, and how she s.n.a.t.c.hed it from Hamilton's hand, as it were, and would not give it up when he demanded it. The whole situation pretty soon began to explain itself, as he saw what Alice was doing. Then he heard her say to Hamilton, while she slowly swayed the rippling flag back and forth:

"I said, as you will remember, Monsieur le Gouverneur, that when you next should see this flag, I should wave it over your head. Well, look, I am waving it! Vive la republique! Vive George Washington! What do you think of it, Monsieur le Gouverneur?"

The poor little hunchback Jean took off his cap and tossed it in rhythmical emphasis, keeping time to her words.

And now from behind the hollow square came a mighty voice:

"C'est moi, Gaspard Roussillon; me voici, messieurs!"

There was a spirit in the air which caught from Alice a thrill of romantic energy. The men in the ranks and the officers in front of them felt a wave of irresistible sympathy sweep through their hearts. Her picturesque beauty, her fine temper, the fitness of the incident to the occasion, had an instantaneous power which moved all men alike.

"Raise her flag! Run up the young lady's flag!" some one shouted, and then every voice seemed to echo the words. Clark was a young man of n.o.ble type, in whose veins throbbed the warm chivalrous blood of the cavaliers. A waft of the suddenly prevailing influence bore him also quite off his feet. He turned to Beverley and said:

"Do it! It will have a great effect. It is a good idea; get the young lady's flag and her permission to run it up."

Before he finished speaking, indeed at the first glance, he saw that Beverley, like Hamilton, was white as a dead man; and at the same time it came to his memory that his young friend had confided to him during the awful march through the prairie wilderness, a love-story about this very Alice Roussillon. In the worry and stress of the subsequent struggle, he had forgotten the tender basis upon which Beverley had rested his excuse for leaving Vincennes. Now, it all reappeared in justification of what was going on. It touched the romantic core of his southern nature.

"I say, Lieutenant Beverley," he repeated, "beg the young lady's permission to use her flag upon this glorious occasion; or shall I do it for you?"

There were no miracles in those brave days, and the strain of life with its terrible realities braced all men and women to meet sudden explosions of surprise, whether of good or bad effect, with admirable equipoise; but Beverley's trial, it must be admitted, was extraordinary; still he braced himself quickly and his whole expression changed when Clark moved to go to Alice. For he realized now that it was, indeed, Alice in flesh and blood, standing there, the center of admiration, filling the air with her fine magnetism and crowning a great triumph with her beauty. He gave her a glad, flashing smile, as if he had just discovered her, and walked straight to her, his hands extended. She was not looking toward him; but she saw him and turned to face him. Hers was the advantage; for she had known, for some hours, of his presence in Vincennes, and had prepared herself to meet him courageously and with maidenly reserve.

There is no safety, however, where Love lurks. Neither Beverley nor Alice was as much agitated at Hamilton, yet they both forgot, what he remembered, that a hundred grim frontier soldiers were looking on.

Hamilton had his personal and official dignity to sustain, and he fairly did it, under what a pressure of humiliating and surprising circ.u.mstances we can fully comprehend. Not so with the two young people, standing as it were in a suddenly bestowed and incomparable happiness, on the verge of a new life, each to the other an unexpected, unhoped-for resurrection from the dead. To them there was no universe save the illimitable expanse of their love. In that moment of meeting, all that they had suffered on account of love was transfused and poured forth,--a glowing libation for love's sake,--a flood before which all barriers broke.

Father Beret was looking on with a strange fire in his eyes, and what he feared would happen, did happen. Alice let the flag fall at Hamilton's feet, when Beverley came near her smiling that great, glad smile, and with a joyous cry leaped into his outstretched arms.

Jean s.n.a.t.c.hed up the fallen banner and ran to Colonel Clark with it.

Two minutes later it was made fast and the halyard began to squeak through the rude pulley at the top of the pole. Up, up, climbed the gay little emblem of glory, while the cannon crashed from the embrasures of the blockhouse hard by, and outside the roar of voices redoubled.

Thirteen guns boomed the salute, though it should have been fourteen,--the additional one for the great Northwestern Territory, that day annexed to the domain of the young American Republic. The flag went up at old Vincennes never to come down again, and when it reached its place at the top of the staff, Beverley and Alice stood side by side looking at it, while the sun broke through the clouds and flashed on its shining folds, and love unabashed glorified the two strong young faces.

CHAPTER XXI

SOME TRANSACTIONS IN SCALPS

History would be a very orderly affair, could the dry-as-dust historians have their way, and doubtless it would be thrillingly romantic at every turn if the novelists were able to control its current. Fortunately neither one nor the other has much influence, and the result, in the long run, is that most novels are shockingly tame, while the large body of history is loaded down with picturesque incidents, which if used in fiction, would be thought absurdly romantic and improbable.

Were our simple story of old Vincennes a mere fiction, we should hesitate to bring in the explosion of a magazine at the fort with a view to sudden confusion and, by that means, distracting attention from our heroine while she betakes herself out of a situation which, although delightful enough for a blessed minute, has quickly become an embarra.s.sment quite unendurable. But we simply adhere to the established facts in history. Owing to some carelessness there was, indeed, an explosion of twenty-six six-pound cartridges, which made a mighty roar and struck the newly installed garrison into a heap, so to say, scattering things terribly and wounding six men, among them Captains Bowman and Worthington.

After the thunderous crash came a momentary silence, which embraced both the people within the fort and the wild crowd outside. Then the rush and noise were indescribable. Even Clark gave way to excitement, losing command of himself and, of course, of his men. There was a stampede toward the main gate by one wing of the troops in the hollow square. They literally ran over Beverley and Alice, flinging them apart and jostling them hither and yonder without mercy. Of course the turmoil quickly subsided. Clark and Beverley got hold of themselves and sang out their peremptory orders with excellent effect. It was like oil on raging water; the men obeyed in a straggling way, getting back into ranks as best they could.

"Ventrebleu!" squeaked Oncle Jazon, "ef I didn't think the ole world had busted into a million pieces!"

He was jumping up and down not three feet from Beverley's toes, waving his cap excitedly.

"But wasn't I skeert! Ya, ya, ya! Vive la banniere d'Alice Roussillon!

Vive Zhorzh Vasinton!"

Hearing Alice's name caused Beverley to look around. Where was she? In the distance he saw Father Beret hurrying to the spot where some of the men burnt and wounded by the explosion were being stripped and cared for. Hamilton still stood like a statue. He appeared to be the only cool person in the fort.

"Where is Alice?--Miss Roussillon--where did Miss Roussillon go?"

Beverley exclaimed, staring around like a lost man. "Where is she?"

"D'know," said Oncle Jazon, resuming his habitual expression of droll dignity, "she shot apast me jes' as thet thing busted loose, an' she went like er hummin' bird, skitch!--jes' thet way--an' I didn't see 'r no more. 'Cause I was skeert mighty nigh inter seven fits; 'spect that 'splosion blowed her clean away! Ventrebleu! never was so plum outen breath an' dead crazy weak o' bein' afeard!"

"Lieutenant Beverley," roared Clark in his most commanding tone, "go to the gate and settle things there. That mob outside is trying to break in!"

The order was instantly obeyed, but Beverley had relapsed. Once more his soul groped in darkness, while the whole of his life seemed unreal, a wavering, misty, hollow dream. And yet his military duty was all real enough. He knew just what to do when he reached the gate.

"Back there at once!" he commanded, not loudly, but with intense force, "back there!" This to the inward surging wedge of excited outsiders.

Then to the guard.

"Shoot the first man who crosses the line!"

"Ziff! me voici! moi! Gaspard Roussillon. Laissez-moi pa.s.ser, messieurs."

A great body hurled itself frantically past Beverley and the guard, going out through the gateway against the wall of the crowd, bearing everything before it and shouting:

"Back, fools! you'll all be killed--the powder is on fire! Ziff! run!"

Wild as a March hare, he bristled with terror and foamed at the mouth.

He stampeded the entire ma.s.s. There was a wild howl; a rush in the other direction followed, and soon enough the esplanade and all the s.p.a.ce back to the barricades and beyond were quite deserted.

Alice was not aware that a serious accident had happened. Naturally she thought the great, rattling, crashing noise of the explosion a mere part of the spectacular show. When the rush followed, separating her and Beverley, it was a great relief to her in some way; for a sudden recognition of the boldness of her action in the little scene just ended, came over her and bewildered her. An impulse sent her running away from the spot where, it seemed to her, she had invited public derision. The terrible noises all around her were, she now fancied, but the jeering and hooting of rude men who had seen her unmaidenly forwardness.

With a burning face she flew to the postern and slipped out, once more taking the course which had become so familiar to her feet. She did not slacken her speed until she reached the Bourcier cabin, where she had made her home since the night when Hamilton's pistol ball struck her.

The little domicile was quite empty of its household, but Alice entered and flung herself into a chair, where she sat quivering and breathless when Adrienne, also much excited, came in, preceded by a stream of patois that sparkled continuously.

"The fort is blown up!" she cried, gesticulating in every direction at once, her pet.i.te figure comically dilated with the importance of her statement. "A hundred men are killed, and the powder is on fire!"

She pounced into Alice's arms, still talking as fast as her tongue could vibrate, changing from subject to subject without rhyme or reason, her prattle making its way by skips and shies until what was really upper-most in her sweet little heart disclosed itself.

"And, O Alice! Rene has not come yet!"

She plunged her dusky face between Alice's cheek and shoulder; Alice hugged her sympathetically and said:

"But Rene will come, I know he will, dear."

"Oh, but do you know it? is it true? who told you? when will he come?

where is he? tell me about him!"

Her head popped up from her friend's neck and she smiled brilliantly through the tears that were still sparkling on her long black lashes.