Old Kaskaskia Part 16

"But you cannot go."

"No, but Peggy can."

"Peggy would rather go with you."

"I am sure she will do it."

"Will you, Peggy?"

"Yes, I will."

So Angelique wrapped Peggy first, and went with her as far as the window. It was the window through which Dr. Dunlap had stepped.

"Good-by, dear Peggy," whispered Angelique; for the other seemed starting on the main journey of her life.

"Good-by, dear Angelique."

Peggy's eyes were tearless still, but she looked and looked at Angelique, and looked back mutely again when she sat at Rice's head in the boat. She had him to herself. Between the water and the sky, and within the dim horizon band, she could be alone with him. He was her own while the boat felt its way across the waste. The rowers sat on a bench over the foot of the pallet. Captain Saucier was obliged to steer. Peggy sat in the prow, and while they struggled against the rivers, she looked with the proud courage of a Morrison at her dead whom she must never claim again.

The colonel put Angelique first into the waiting boat. Wachique was set in front of her, to receive tante-gra'mere when the potentate's chrysalid should be lowered. For the first time in her life Angelique leaned back, letting slip from herself all responsibility. Colonel Menard could bring her great-grand-aunt out. The sense of moving in a picture, of not feeling what she handled, and of being cut off from the realities of life followed Angelique into the boat. She was worn to exhaustion. Her torpid pulses owned the chill upon the waters.

There was room in which a few of the little blacks might be stowed without annoying tante-gra'mere, but their mothers begged to keep them until all could go together.

"Now, my children," said Colonel Menard, "have patience for another hour or two, when the boats shall return and bring you all off. The house is safe; there is no longer a strong wind driving waves over it. A few people in Kaskaskia have had to sit on their roofs since the water rose."

Achille promised to take charge of his master's household. But one of the women pointed to the stain on the floor. The lantern yet burned at the head of Rice's deserted pillows. Superst.i.tion began to rise from that spot. They no longer had Angelique among them, with her atmosphere of invisible angels.

"That is the blood of the best man in the Territory," said Colonel Menard. "I would give much more of my own to bring back the man who spilled it. Are you afraid of a mere blood-spot in the gray of the morning? Go into the other room and fasten the door, then. Achille will show you that he can stay here alone."

"If mo'sieu' the colonel would let me go into that room, too"--

"Go in, Achille," said the colonel indulgently.

Colonel Menard made short work of embarking tante-gra'mere. In emergencies, he was deft and delicate with his hands. She never knew who caught her in coverlets and did her up like a papoose, with a pillow under her head.

"Pull westward to the next street," he gave orders to his oarsmen. "We found it easy going with the current that way. It will double the distance, but give us less trouble to get into dead water the other side of the Okaw."

Early summer dawn was breaking over that deluged world, a whiter light than moonshine giving increasing distinctness to every object. This hint of day gave rest to the tired ringers in church tower and convent belfry. The bells died away, and stillness brooded on the water plain.

Hoa.r.s.e roaring of the yellow current became a mere monotonous background for other sounds. A breath stole from the east, bringing the scent of rain-washed earth and foliage and sweet mints. There was no other wind; and the boat shot easily on its course alongside a thicket made by orchard treetops. Some birds, maybe proprietors of drowned nests, were already complaining over these, or toppling experimentally down on branch tips.

Kaskaskia had become a strange half-town, cut off around its middle. It affected one like a man standing on his armpits. The capital of the Territory was composed chiefly of roofs and dormer windows, of squatty wooden islands in a boundless sea. The Church of the Immaculate Conception was a laughable tent of masonry, top-heavy with its square tower. As for cultivated fields and the pastures where the cattle grazed, such vanished realities were forgotten. And what was washing over the marble tombs and slate crosses in the churchyard?

The flood strangely lifted and forced skyward the plane of life, yet lowered all life's functions. An open and liberal sky, dappling with a promise from the east, bent over and mocked paralyzed humanity.

The n.o.ble bluffs had become a sunken ridge, water meeting the forests a little below their waists. From their coverts boats could now be seen putting out in every direction, and, though the morning star was paling, each carried a light. They were like a party of belated fireflies escaping from daylight. Faces in dormer windows waited for them. Down by the Jesuit College weak hurrahs arose from people on roofs.

"The governor has come with help for us," said Pierre Menard.

In this dead world of Kaskaskia not a dog barked; not one of the shortened chimney-stacks smoked. Some of the houses had their cas.e.m.e.nts closed in terrible silence; but out of others neighbors looked and greeted Angelique in the abashed way peculiar to people who have not got used to an amputation, and are sensitive about their new appearance in the world. Heads leaned out, also, firing jokes after the boat, and offering the colonel large shares in the common fields and entire crops for a seat in his conveyance.

Drift of rotten wood stuck to the house sides, and broken trees or stumps, jammed under gallery roofs, resented the current, and broke the surface as they rose and dipped. Strange craft, large and small, rode down the turgid sweep. Straw beehives rolled along like gigantic pine cones, and rustic hencoops of bottom-land settlers kept their balance as they moved. Far off, a cart could be outlined making a hopeless ford.

The current was so broad that its sweep extended beyond the reach of sight; and perhaps the strangest object carried by this tremendous force was a small clapboarded house. Its back and front doors stood open, and in the middle of the floor stood a solitary chair. One expected to see a figure emerge from a hidden corner and sit down forlornly in the chair.

The slender voice of a violin stole across the water,--an exorcism of the spell that had fallen on Kaskaskia. As the boat reached the tavern corner, this thread of melody was easily followed to the ballroom on the second floor of the tavern, where the a.s.sembly b.a.l.l.s were danced. A slave, who had nothing but his daily bread to lose, and who would be a.s.sured of that by the hand of charity when his master could no longer maintain him, might take up the bow and touch the fiddle gayly in such a time of general calamity. But there was also dancing in the ballroom.

The boat turned south and shot down a ca.n.a.l bordered by trunkless shade trees, which had been one of the princ.i.p.al streets of Kaskaskia. At the instant of turning, however, Father Baby could be seen as he whirled, though his skinny head and gray capote need not have added their evidence to the exact sound of his foot which came so distinctly across the water. His little shop, his goods, his secret stocking-leg of coin,--for Father Baby was his own banker,--were buried out of sight.

His crop in the common fields and provision for winter lay also under the Mississippi. His late lodger had taken to the river, and was probably drowned. He had no warrant except in the nimbleness of his slave's legs that he even had a slave left. Yet he had never in his life felt so full of dance. The flood mounted to his head like wine. Father Olivier was in the tavern without forbidding it. Doubtless he thought the example an exhilarating one, when a grown-up child could dance over material loss, remembering only the joy of life.

Wachique had felt her bundle squirm from the moment it was given to her.

She enlarged on the hint Colonel Menard had given, and held the drapery bound tightly around the prisoner. The boat shot past the church, and over the spot where St. John's bonfire had so recently burnt out, and across that street through which the girls had scampered on their Midsummer Night errand.

"But stop," said Colonel Menard; and he pointed out to the rowers an obstruction which none of them had seen in the night. From the Jesuit College across the true bed of the Okaw a dam had formed, probably having for its base part of the bridge masonry. Whole trees were swept into the barricade. "We cannot now cross diagonally and come back through the dead water at our leisure, for there is that dam to be pa.s.sed. Pull for the old college."

The boat was therefore turned, and thus took the same course that the girls had taken. The current was at right angles with its advance, though the houses on the north somewhat broke that force. The roofless building, ridiculously shortened in its height, had more the look of a fortress than when it was used as one. The walls had been washed out above both great entrances, making s.p.a.cious jagged arches through which larger craft than theirs could pa.s.s. Colonel Menard was quick to see this; he steered and directed his men accordingly. The Jesuit College was too well built to crumble on the heads of chance pa.s.sers, though the wind and the flood had battered it; to row through it would shorten their course.

Angelique did not say a word about the changed aspect of her world. A warmth in the pearly light over the bluffs promised a clear day: and how Kaskaskia would look with the sun shining on her predicament! The boat cut through braiding and twisting water, and shot into the college. Part of the building's upper floor remained; everything else was gone.

The walls threw a shadow upon them, and the green flicker, dancing up and down as they disturbed the inclosure, played curiously on their faces. The stones suddenly echoed a slap. Tante-gra'mere's struggling wrath, which Wachique had tried to keep bound in the coverlet, having found an outlet, was swift as lightning in its reprisal. The stings of the whiplash had exhilaration and dignity compared to this attack. It was the climax of her midget rages. She forgot the breeding of a gentlewoman, and furiously struck her slave in the face.

Wachique started up, her Pottawatomie blood painting her cheek bones.

That instant she was an Indian, not a slave. She remembered everything this petted despot had done to her, and, lifting her bundle, threw it as far as her arms could send it across the water floor of the college. The pitiful little weight sunk with a gurgling sound.

"Sit down, woman!" shouted Colonel Menard.

Wachique cowered, and tried to obey. But the motion she had given the boat was not to be overcome. It careened, and the water rushed over their knees, filled it full, and became a whirlpool of grasping hands and choking heads.

The overturned boat, wedged partially under the flooring, lodged against the eastern wall. Both negro rowers came up from their plunge and climbed like cats upon this platform, smearing a mire of sodden plastering over their homespun trousers as they crawled. One of them reached down and caught the half-breed by the hair, as she rose at the edge of the flooring. Between them they were able to draw her up.

The shock of a cold flood around Angelique's ears sent life as vivid as fire through her brain. The exhaustion and stupor of the night were gone. She felt her body swallowed. It went down to the floor where the girls had walked when they chanted, "Hempseed, I sow thee." It rose, and all the rapturous advantage which there was in continuing to inhabit it took mighty possession of her. She was so healthily, so happily lodged.

It was a sin to say she was longing for the mystery hereafter, when all the beautiful mysteries here were unknown to her. Then Colonel Menard was holding her up, and she was dragged to sight and breathing once more, and to a solid support under her melting life. She lay on the floor, seeing the open sky above her, conscious that streams of water poured from her clothes and her hair, ran down her face, and dripped from her ears. A slow terror which had underlain all these physical perceptions now burst from her thoughts like flame. Her great-grand-aunt, the infant of the house, was all this time lying at the bottom of the old college. It was really not a minute, but minutes are long to the drowning. Angelique caught her breath, saying, "Tante-gra'mere!" She heard a plunge, and knew that Colonel Menard had stood on the platform only long enough to cast aside his coat and shoes before he dived.

The slaves, supporting themselves on their palms, stretched forward, open-mouthed. There was the rippling surface, carrying the shadow of the walls. Nothing came up. A cow could be heard lowing on the bluffs to her lost calf. The morning twitter of birds became an aggressive and sickening sound.

"Where is he?" demanded Angelique, creeping also to her trembling knees.

"Where is monsieur the colonel?"

Both men gave her the silent, frightened testimony of their rolling eyes, but Wachique lay along the floor with hidden face. Not a bubble broke the yellow sheet smothering and keeping him down.

As the driving of steel it went through Angelique that the aching and pa.s.sion and ferocity which rose in her were love. She loved that man under the water; she so loved him that she must go down after him; for what was life, with him there? She must have loved him when she was a child, and he used to take off his hat to her, saying, "Good-day, mademoiselle." She must have felt a childish jealousy of the woman called Madame Menard, who had once owned him,--had owned the very coloring of his face, the laugh in his eye, the mastery of his presence among men. She loved Colonel Menard--and he was gone.

"Turn over the boat!" screamed Angelique. "He is caught in the cellars of this old house,--the floors are broken. We must find him. He will never come up."

The men, ready to do anything which was suggested to their slow minds, made haste to creep along the weakened flooring, which shook as they moved, and to push the boat from its lodgment. The oars were fast in the rowlocks, and stuck against beams or stones, and made hard work of getting the boat righted.

"Why does he not come up? Does any one stay under water as long as this?

Oh, be quick! Turn it,--turn it over!" Angelique reached down with the men to grasp the slippery boat, her vivid will giving their clumsiness direction and force. They got it free and turned it, dipping a little water as they did so; but she let herself into its wet hollow and bailed that out with her hands. The two dropped directly after her, and with one push of the oars sent the boat over the spot where Colonel Menard had gone down.

"Which of you will go in?"