Lazarre Part 10

He looked astonished and raised his eyebrows.

"I suppose you mean the emperor?"

I told him I did.

"If you want my candid opinion," his eyes twinkled, and he linked his hands around his white satin knees, "I think my brother rules his family with a rod of iron."

"What will you do," I continued, "when your family are turned out?"

"My faith!" said Annabel, "this in a house favorable to the Empire!"

"A very natural question," said Jerome. "I have often asked myself the same thing."

"The king of France," I argued, "and all the Bourbons were turned out.

Why shouldn't the Bonapartes be?"

"Why shouldn't they, indeed!" responded Jerome. "My mother insists they will be. But I wouldn't be the man who undertakes to turn out the emperor."

"What is he like?"

"Impossible to describe him."

"Is he no larger than you?"

Annabel gurgled aloud.

"He is not as large."

"Yet he is a great soldier?"

"A great soldier. And he is adored by the French."

"The French," I quoted, "are all fire and tow."

"Thank you!" said Annabel, pulling out her light frizzes.

"You seem interested in the political situation," remarked Prince Jerome.

I did not know what he meant by the political situation, but told him I had just heard about the Bonapartes.

"Where have you lived?" he laughed.

I told him it didn't matter where people lived; it all depended on whether they understood or not.

"What a sage!--I think I'm one of the people who will never be able to understand," said Jerome.

I said he did not look as if he had been idiotic, and both he and Mademoiselle de Chaumont laughed.

"Monsieur"--

"Lazarre Williams," supplemented Annabel.

"Monsieur Lazarre Williams, whatever your lot in life, you will have one advantage over me; you will be an American citizen."

"Haven't I that doleful advantage myself?" mourned Annabel. "A Baltimore convent, an English governess--a father that may never go back to France!"

"Mademoiselle, all advantages of nationality, of person, of mind, of heart, are yours!"

So tipping the interview with a compliment he rose up, and Annabel rose also, making him a deep courtesy, and giving him her hand to be led back to the floor. He kissed her white forefinger, and bowed to me.

"You have suggested some interesting thoughts, monsieur prince of the woods. Perhaps you may yet take your turn on the throne of France. What would you do in that case?"

"I would make the people behave themselves if I had to grind them to powder."

"Now there spoke old Louis XIV!" laughed young Jerome Bonaparte. We both bowed, and he pa.s.sed down with Annabel into the hall.

I did not know what made Madame de Ferrier watch me from her distant place with widened eyes.

Miss Chantry spoke shrilly to her brother behind me.

"You will never be able to do anything with a lad who thrusts himself forward like that! He has no sense of fitness!--standing there and facing down the brother of a crowned head!--bad as the head is. Of course Mademoiselle Annabel set him on; she loves to make people ridiculous!"

I walked downstairs after Prince Jerome, threaded a way among gazing dancers, and left the hall, stung in my pride.

We do strangely expand and contract in vital force and reach of vision.

I wanted to put the lake--the world itself--between me and that glittering company. The edge of a ball-room and the society of men in silks and satins, and of bewitching women, were not intended for me.

Homesickness like physical pain came over me for my old haunts. They were newly recognized as beloved. I had raged against them when comparing myself to Croghan. But now I thought of the evening camp fire, and hunting-stories, of the very dogs that licked my hand; of St. Regis, and my loft bed, of snowshoes, and the blue northern river, longing for them as the young Mohawks said I should long. Tom betwixt two natures, the white man's and the Indian's, I flung a boat out into the water and started to go home faster than I had come away. The slowness of a boat's progress, pushed by the silly motion of oars, which have not the nice discrimination of a paddle, impressed me as I put the miles behind.

When the camp light shone through trees it must have been close to midnight, and my people had finished their celebration of the corn dance. An odor of sweet roasted ears dragged out of hot ashes reached the poor outsider. Even the dogs were too busy to nose me out. I slunk as close as I dared and drew myself up a tree, lying stretched with arms and legs around a limb.

They would have admitted me to the feast, but as a guest. I had no longer a place of my own, either here or there. It was like coming back after death, to realize that you were unmissed. The camp was full of happiness and laughter. Young men chased the young maids, who ran squealing with merriment. My father, Thomas Williams, and my mother, Marianne, sat among the elders tranquil and satisfied. They were ignorant Indians; but I had no other parents. Skenedonk could be seen, laughing at the young Mohawks.

If there was an oval faced mother in my past, who had read to me from the missal, I wanted her. If, as Madame Tank said, I outranked De Chaumont's daughter, I wanted my rank. It was necessary for me to have something of my own: to have love from somebody!

Collapsed and dejected, I crept down the tree and back to the life that was now forced upon me whether I wished to continue it or not. Belonging nowhere, I remembered my refuge in the new world of books.

Lying stretched in the boat with oars shipped, drifting and turning on the crooked lake, I took exact stock of my position in the world, and marked out my future.

These things were known:

I was not an Indian.

I had been adopted into the family of Chief Williams.

Money was sent through an agent in New York for my support and education.

There were scars on my wrists, ankles, arm and eyebrow.