The Rose of Old St. Louis Part 16

"Nay, my friends, permit that mademoiselle first tells me her pleasure."

Then, as mademoiselle (whose eyes were no longer flashing with scorn, but regarding me with the same wonder I had seen in them before) did not speak, I said, if possible with greater sternness:

"Speak at once, mademoiselle: shall we send for the chevalier and bring him back? There is no time to be lost; every minute is carrying him away from you as fast as a very good pair of legs for running can take him."

I hope I did not exceed the limits of courtesy in so speaking of the chevalier, but it was hard to resist a little fling at the "French gentleman" to whom the "pretty boy" had been so disparagingly compared. I caught a twinkle in the doctor's eye and a fleeting smile on young Papin's face and on my captain's, but I looked only at mademoiselle. She was meek enough now, but she no longer looked at me; her dark lashes were sweeping her cheek.

"You need not send for him," she said.

"Then, mademoiselle," I went on, a little more gently, "it seems to me and to your friends that the only other way to return to France is the way we have planned. You will be as safe under Captain Clarke's care as you would be under Dr. Saugrain's. He will take you to his sister, Mrs. O'Fallon, who will be as a mother to you, until a suitable escort can be found for you to New York to place you under Mr. Livingston's care. As for me, I shall not in any way annoy you: you need not know I am on the boat; and as soon as you are placed in Mrs. O'Fallon's care I shall say good-by to you forever, and continue my journey east, since it is indeed time I should be starting homeward. Dr. and Madame Saugrain will a.s.sure you that this is the most feasible plan, and I hope once more that you will not be deterred from accepting it by any fear of annoyance from me. There will be none. If you decide to go with us, we must make an early start, and there will be many things for me to attend to. Captain Clarke will inform me of your decision, and I will see Dr. Saugrain and madame in the morning. Till then, I wish you all a very good night."

I made my grand bow, turned quickly, and left the room, though Dr.

Saugrain and his wife both tried to stay me, and young Papin sprang forward with an eager hand to prevent me.

I was bitterly angry, and more hurt and disappointed than angry.

Outside I strode furiously up and down in the snow, calling myself a fool that I should care. Mademoiselle might be a great lady in France, I said to myself, but to me she had shown herself only a fickle, capricious, silly maiden. But even as I so spoke to myself my heart revolted. I saw her once more weeping in madame's arms, and I began to think it was only natural and commendable in her that she should be so stirred at the thought of leaving friends who had been so good to her, and that I had been much harder with her than was well.

And at last, as I began to walk myself into a calmer frame of mind, I could have wished that I had not made that rash promise to keep myself out of her sight on the boat. My word was given and I would have to stick to it, but in my own room, as I listened to the murmur of voices still going on in the room below me, I thought no longer with anger, but sadly enough, of the long delightful tete-a-tetes with mademoiselle I had dreamed of when I had first planned this trip on the Great River.

A bright drop suddenly fell on my hand. I brushed my eyes angrily.

"Domtiferation!" I whispered furiously to myself. "Mademoiselle was right! A pretty boy indeed!"

CHAPTER XIV

A CREOLE LOVE-SONG

"So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that she bade me return."

For three days we had been floating down the Great River, and for three days I had kept my word. Mademoiselle had not been annoyed by me; she had hardly seen me. Much to my captain's vexation, I had refused to take my meals with him and mademoiselle, though our cozy table of three had been one of the brightest parts of my dream when I was planning this trip.

It was nearing the supper-hour on the evening of this third day. The men were making ready to tie up for the night (for navigation on the river at night was a dangerous matter), and for the hundredth time I was wishing with all my heart that I had not been so rash as to make that promise to keep out of mademoiselle's way. The vision of a hot supper comfortably served in her warm and cozy cabin was of itself sufficiently enticing, as all my meals since coming aboard had been brought to me in any out-of-the-way corner of the deck, and I had found them but cold comfort. Not that my resolution was weakening, though my captain let no meal-hour pa.s.s without doing his best to weaken it, and more than once had brought me a message from mademoiselle herself begging me to join them at table. No; I was as fixed as ever, and, in a way, enjoying my own discomfort, since to pose as a martyr ever brings with it a certain satisfaction which is its own reward.

The weather had been clear and mild up to this time; but this evening an icy sleet was beginning to fall, and I glanced at mademoiselle's cabin window, brightly lighted and eloquent of warmth and dryness, and fetched a great sigh as I looked. A voice at my elbow said:

"Monsieur is sad?--or lonely, perhaps?"

I started, for I had supposed myself entirely alone on that end of the boat--the men all busy with their tying-up preparations forward, and mademoiselle and the captain in the cabin. I lifted my hat and bowed ceremoniously.

"Neither, Mademoiselle."

Mademoiselle hesitated. I saw she felt repulsed, and I secretly gloried in her embarra.s.sment. Neither would I help her out by adding another word; I waited for what she might say further.

"Monsieur," she said presently, "you have shown me much kindness in the past, and done me great service. I would like to have you know that I am not ungrateful."

"I do not desire your grat.i.tude, Mademoiselle," I said coldly (though it hurt me to speak so when she was so evidently trying to be friendly with me). "No gentleman could have done less, even if he were not a French gentleman."

The light from her cabin window fell full upon her. I could see that she colored quickly at my retort, and half started to go away, but turned back again.

"Monsieur," she said earnestly, "I have a very humble apology to make to you. I hope you will forgive me for my rude and wicked speech. I was beside myself with sorrow at the thought of being so suddenly torn from my friends, and for the time nothing else weighed with me, not even that you had just saved my life at the peril of your own. Ah, how could I have been so base! I wonder not that you will not even look at so mean a creature, and you do well to shun her as if she were vile."

No man could have resisted her sweet humility. For a moment all my anger melted.

"Mademoiselle, do not apologize to me!" I cried. "If there are any apologies to be made, it is I who should make them for not knowing how to understand and appreciate what you felt."

A quick radiance sprang into her eyes, and with a childlike abandon she extended both her hands to me.

"Then you forgive me?" she cried.

I took one hand and held it in both mine, and as I bent my knee I lifted it to my lips.

"If I am forgiven, my Queen," I answered softly.

Her dark eyes, tender and glorious, looked down into mine. For a moment I forgot she was a great lady in France; to me she was only the most bewitching and adorable maiden in the wide world. She was wearing a heavy capote to shield her from the weather, but the hood had fallen slightly back, and the falling sleet had spangled the little fringe of curls about her face with diamonds that sparkled in the candle-shine, but were not half so bright as her starry eyes. I could have knelt forever on the icy deck if I might have gazed forever into their heavenly depths. But in a minute she let the white lids fall over them.

"Rise, Monsieur," she said gently. "You are forgiven, but on one condition."

"Name it, my Queen!" And I rose to my feet, but still held her hand.

"No condition can be too hard."

"That you come to supper with us to-night, and to every meal while I am on your boat."

The condition fetched me back to earth with a shock. I remembered all the cause, and I answered moodily:

"My word has been given, Mademoiselle; I cannot go back on my word."

"Your word was given to me, and I absolve you from it," she said.

"But in the presence of others," I objected. "I am bound by it, unless I be shamed before them."

"Only your captain is here," she said, still gently; "and he, too, urges it."

But still I was obdurate. Then at last she drew away her hand and lifted her head proudly.

"Your Queen commands you!" she said haughtily, and turned and walked away. Yet she walked but slowly. Perhaps she thought I would overtake her, or call her back and tell her I had yielded. But I was still fighting with my stubborn pride, and let her go. I watched her close her cabin door, then for five minutes I strode rapidly up and down, the slippery deck.

"Your Queen commands you!" I thrilled at her words. My Queen! Yes, but only if I were her king. Now that I was away from her, and her glowing eyes were not melting my heart to softest wax, I was resolved never again to submit to her tyranny and caprice. I would go to supper, because she commanded it; but I would never for a moment forget that she was a great lady of France, and I a proud citizen of America--too proud to woo where I could only meet with scorn.

So I went to my cabin and made a careful toilet, and when Yorke came to call me to supper, I presented myself in mademoiselle's cabin. I had not been in it since she had come aboard, and, though I had carefully planned and arranged every detail of it for her comfort, I would not have known it for the same place. What she had done to it I know not; a touch here, a touch there, such as women's fingers know how to give, and the bare and rough boat's cabin had become a dainty little boudoir. The round table, draped in snowy linen, with places set for three; the silver and gla.s.s shining in the rays from two tall candles; Yorke and mademoiselle's maid Clotilde bringing in each a smoking dish to set upon it; and mademoiselle standing beside it like the glowing heart of a ruby, her dark beauty well set off by a gown of crimson paduasoy, with rich lace through which the graceful neck and rounded arms gleamed white and soft: it all looked to me like a picture from one of Master t.i.tian's canvases, and I could hardly believe that if I should look through the closely drawn curtains I would see the rough and dirty decks of our barge, and, beyond, the dark forest of the Illinois sh.o.r.e, where even now hostile savages might be lurking, ready to spring upon us with blood-curdling yells.

The captain was already there, chatting gaily with mademoiselle as I came in, and he had the delicacy to make his greeting of me as natural and unsurprised as if I had never been absent from the little board, while mademoiselle added a touch of gracious cordiality to hers.

I was on my mettle. Determined that never again, even to herself, should she call me a boy, I summoned to my aid all the _savoir-faire_ I could command. I was (at least, in my own estimation, and I hoped also in hers) the elegant man of the world, discoursing at ease on every fashionable topic, and, to my own amazement, parrying every thrust of her keen repartee, and sometimes sending her as keen in return. I think the situation had gone to my head. Certainly I had never before thought myself a brilliant fellow, but when I rose to make my bow to mademoiselle (and it was indeed a very grand one), I hoped that even in her mind I would not suffer by comparison with any French gentleman, no, though it were the chevalier himself.

I did not see mademoiselle again until the midday meal next day; for all the morning I was busy with the men, making the difficult and dangerous turn from the Great River into the Ohio, past Fort Ma.s.sac.