At Fault Part 17

There were many already gathered around the mill, when Gregoire and Hosmer reached it. All effort to save anything had been abandoned as useless. The books and valuables had been removed from the office. The few householders--mill-hands--whose homes were close by, had carried their scant belongings to places of safety, but everything else was given over to the devouring flames.

The heat from this big raging fire was intense, and had driven most of the gaping spectators gradually back--almost into the woods. But there, to one side, where the fire was rapidly gaining, and making itself already uncomfortably felt, stood a small awe-stricken group talking in whispers; their ignorance and superst.i.tion making them irresolute to lay a hand upon the dead Jocint. His body lay amongst the heavy timbers, across a huge beam, with arms outstretched and head hanging down upon the ground. The glazed eyes were staring up into the red sky, and on his swarthy visage was yet the horror which had come there, when he looked in the face of death.

"In G.o.d's name, what are you doing?" cried Hosmer. "Can't some of you carry that boy's body to a place of safety?"

Gregoire had followed, and was looking down indifferently at the dead.

"Come, len' a han' there; this is gittin' too durn hot," he said, stooping to raise the lifeless form. Hosmer was preparing to help him.

But there was some one staggering through the crowd; pushing men to right and left. With now a hand upon the breast of both Hosmer and Gregoire, and thrusting them with such force and violence, as to lay them p.r.o.ne amongst the timbers. It was the father. It was old Morico.

He had awakened in the night and missed his boy. He had seen the fire; indeed close enough that he could hear its roaring; and he knew everything. The whole story was plain to him as if it had been told by a revealing angel. The strength of his youth had come back to speed him over the ground.

"Murderers!" he cried looking about him with hate in his face. He did not know who had done it; no one knew yet, and he saw in every man he looked upon the possible slayer of his child.

So here he stood over the prostrate figure; his old gray jeans hanging loosely about him; wild eyed--with bare head clasped between his claw-like hands, which the white disheveled hair swept over. Hosmer approached again, offering gently to help him carry his son away.

"Stand back," he hurled at him. But he had understood the offer. His boy must not be left to burn like a log of wood. He bent down and strove to lift the heavy body, but the effort was beyond his strength.

Seeing this he stooped again and this time grasped it beneath the arms; then slowly, draggingly, with halting step, began to move backward.

The fire claimed no more attention. All eyes were fastened upon this weird picture; a sight which moved the most callous to offer again and again a.s.sistance, that was each time spurned with an added defiance.

Hosmer stood looking on, with folded arms; moved by the grandeur and majesty of the scene. The devouring element, loosed in its awful recklessness there in the heart of this lonely forest. The motley group of black and white standing out in the great red light, powerless to do more than wait and watch. But more was he stirred to the depths of his being, by the sight of this human tragedy enacted before his eyes.

Once, the old man stops in his backward journey. Will he give over?

has his strength deserted him? is the thought that seizes every on-looker. But no--with renewed effort he begins again his slow retreat, till at last a sigh of relief comes from the whole watching mult.i.tude. Morico with his burden has reached a spot of safety. What will he do next? They watch in breathless suspense. But Morico does nothing. He only stands immovable as a carved image. Suddenly there is a cry that reaches far above the roar of fire and crash of falling timbers: "_Mon fils! mon garcon!_" and the old man totters and falls backward to earth, still clinging to the lifeless body of his son. All hasten towards him. Hosmer reaches him first. And when he gently lifts the dead Jocint, the father this time makes no hinderance, for he too has gone beyond the knowledge of all earthly happenings.

VII

Melicent Leaves Place-du-Bois.

There had been no witness to the killing of Jocint; but there were few who did not recognize Gregoire's hand in the affair. When met with the accusation, he denied it, or acknowledged it, or evaded the charge with a jest, as he felt for the moment inclined. It was a deed characteristic of any one of the Santien boys, and if not altogether laudable--Jocint having been at the time of the shooting unarmed--yet was it thought in a measure justified by the heinousness of his offense, and beyond dispute, a benefit to the community.

Hosmer reserved the expression of his opinion. The occurrence once over, with the emotions which it had awakened, he was inclined to look at it from one of those philosophic stand-points of his friend Homeyer. Heredity and pathology had to be considered in relation with the slayer's character. He saw in it one of those interesting problems of human existence that are ever turning up for man's contemplation, but hardly for the exercise of man's individual judgment. He was conscious of an inward repulsion which this action of Gregoire's awakened in him,--much the same as a feeling of disgust for an animal whose instinct drives it to the doing of violent deeds,--yet he made no difference in his manner towards him.

Therese was deeply distressed over this double tragedy: feeling keenly the unhappy ending of old Morico. But her chief sorrow came from the callousness of Gregoire, whom she could not move even to an avowal of regret. He could not understand that he should receive any thing but praise for having rid the community of so offensive and dangerous a personage as Jocint; and seemed utterly blind to the moral aspect of his deed.

An event at once so exciting and dramatic as this conflagration, with the attendant deaths of Morico and his son, was much discussed amongst the negroes. They were a good deal of one opinion in regard to Jocint having been only properly served in getting "w'at he done ben lookin'

fu' dis long time." Gregoire was rather looked upon as a clever instrument in the Lord's service; and the occurrence pointed a moral which they were not likely to forget.

The burning of the mill entailed much work upon Hosmer, to which he turned with a zest--an absorption that for the time excluded everything else.

Melicent had shunned Gregoire since the shooting. She had avoided speaking with him--even looking at him. During the turmoil which closely followed upon the tragic event, this change in the girl had escaped his notice. On the next day he suspected it only. But the third day brought him the terrible conviction. He did not know that she was making preparations to leave for St. Louis, and quite accidentally overheard Hosmer giving an order to one of the unemployed mill hands to call for her baggage on the following morning before train time.

As much as he had expected her departure, and looked painfully forward to it, this certainty--that she was leaving on the morrow and without a word to him--bewildered him. He abandoned at once the work that was occupying him.

"I didn' know Miss Melicent was goin' away to-morrow," he said in a strange pleading voice to Hosmer.

"Why, yes," Hosmer answered, "I thought you knew. She's been talking about it for a couple of days."

"No, I didn' know nothin' 'tall 'bout it," he said, turning away and reaching for his hat, but with such nerveless hand that he almost dropped it before placing it on his head.

"If you're going to the house," Hosmer called after him, "tell Melicent that Woodson won't go for her trunks before morning. She thought she'd need to have them ready to-night."

"Yes, if I go to the house. I don' know if I'm goin' to the house or not," he replied, walking listlessly away.

Hosmer looked after the young man, and thought of him for a moment: of his soft voice and gentle manner--perplexed that he should be the same who had expressed in confidence the single regret that he had not been able to kill Jocint more than once.

Gregoire went directly to the house, and approached that end of the veranda on which Melicent's room opened. A trunk had already been packed and fastened and stood outside, just beneath the low-silled window that was open. Within the room, and also beneath the window, was another trunk, before which Melicent kneeled, filling it more or less systematically from an abundance of woman's toggery that lay in a c.u.mbrous heap on the floor beside her. Gregoire stopped at the window to tell her, with a sad attempt at indifference:

"Yo' brotha says don't hurry packin'; Woodson ain't goin' to come fur your trunks tell mornin'."

"All right, thank you," glancing towards him for an instant carelessly and going on with her work.

"I didn' know you was goin' away."

"That's absurd: you knew all along I was going away," she returned, with countenance as expressionless as feminine subtlety could make it.

"W'y don't you let somebody else do that? Can't you come out yere a w'ile?"

"No, I prefer doing it myself; and I don't care to go out."

What could he do? what could he say? There were no convenient depths in his mind from which he might draw at will, apt and telling speeches to taunt her with. His heart was swelling and choking him, at sight of the eyes that looked anywhere, but in his own; at sight of the lips that he had one time kissed, pressed into an icy silence. She went on with her task of packing, unmoved. He stood a while longer, silently watching her, his hat in his hands that were clasped behind him, and a stupor of grief holding him vise-like. Then he walked away. He felt somewhat as he remembered to have felt oftentimes as a boy, when ill and suffering, his mother would put him to bed and send him a cup of bouillon perhaps, and a little negro to sit beside him. It seemed very cruel to him now that some one should not do something for him--that he should be left to suffer this way. He walked across the lawn over to the cottage, where he saw f.a.n.n.y pacing slowly up and down the porch.

She saw him approach and stood in a patch of sunlight to wait for him.

He really had nothing to say to her as he stood grasping two of the bal.u.s.trades and looking up at her. He wanted somebody to talk to him about Melicent.

"Did you know Miss Melicent was goin' away?"

Had it been Hosmer or Therese asking her the question she would have replied simply "yes," but to Gregoire she said "yes; thank Goodness,"

as frankly as though she had been speaking to Belle Worthington. "I don't see what's kept her down here all this time, anyway."

"You don't like her?" he asked, stupefied at the strange possibility of any one not loving Melicent to distraction.

"No. You wouldn't either, if you knew her as well as I do. If she likes a person she goes on like a lunatic over them as long as it lasts; then good-bye John! she'll throw them aside as she would an old dress."

"Oh, I believe she thinks a heap of Aunt Therese."

"All right; you'll see how much she thinks of Aunt Therese. And the people she's been engaged to! There ain't a worse flirt in the city of St. Louis; and always some excuse or other to break it off at the last minute. I haven't got any use for her, Lord knows. There ain't much love lost between us."

"Well, I reckon she knows they ain't anybody born, good enough fur her?" he said, thinking of those engagements that she had shattered.

"What was David doing?" f.a.n.n.y asked abruptly.

"Writin' lettas at the sto'."

"Did he say when he was coming?"