The Rose of Old St. Louis Part 24

Blood royal or not, she would always be Mademoiselle Pelagie to me, and I was not going to lose my opportunity.

"Tell me, Comtesse," I said, "how you came here. When I saw you last you had no idea of coming to Washington."

She did not answer my question at once, but, glancing up at me from under her long lashes in the most adorable fashion, she said softly:

"You used to call me Comtesse when you were angry. Are you angry now?"

"No, not when I was angry," I answered, "but when you were--were--"

"Proud and naughty and altogether disagreeable," she interposed quickly; "and that was very often, was it not, Monsieur?"

"Yes, Comtesse."

"I am not either now, am I? Then why do you not call me Mademoiselle?"

"No, indeed! You are"--I was going to say "adorable," but I finished tamely--"neither. But you are really Comtesse, and it is proper I should call you so." And before I was aware of what I was doing, I fetched a great sigh from the bottom of my boots. She understood, and looked up at me with a pathetic little smile that was sadder than my sigh.

"I am sorry, too; I think I would rather be mademoiselle," she said.

"And of the blood royal!" I added severely, as if accusing her of a crime.

She dropped her eyes.

"I cannot help it. I never knew till yesterday," meekly.

"And your guardian," I indicated the French minister with a slight nod in his direction, "thinks it great presumption for a plain Yankee gentleman to be talking on such familiar terms with a princess of the blood, and is coming in a few minutes to put a stop to it."

She looked at the minister quickly with a haughty turn of the head and a flashing glance, but in a moment she turned back to me with a smile curling her scarlet lips and a humorous twinkle in her eye.

"He would never dare," she said. "He is a good Citizen of the Republic."

"Nevertheless he will dare," I insisted. "I see it in his eye; so first tell me quickly how you got here, and when and where you are going."

"Your boat was hardly out of sight, Monsieur," she answered, "when another came up the river direct from St. Louis with Monsieur and Madame Cerre aboard. They brought letters from my guardian directing me to go on with them to Washington (where they were going to see the Spanish minister about some trouble they had had with Americans--concerning peltries, I think, and land, perhaps), and they would place me in the French minister's care. I did not expect to find you here, for we were a whole day behind you; but we traveled rapidly."

"And I was delayed," I said. "But when and how are you to get to Paris? With the Livingstons?"

"No; Citizen Pichon says they sailed this week. But he tells me, what is not generally known, that your government is about to send a special envoy to France concerning New Orleans--a Monsieur Monroe; and Monsieur Pichon has arranged that I shall go with him."

"Do you know when?" I asked hastily, for I saw the President moving toward us with the Marquis de Casa Yrujo, and I was quite sure that meant an end to all conversation.

"Not for several weeks, I believe; but I am not sure," she answered.

"Will the Comtesse de Baloit permit me to present the Marquis de Casa Yrujo, who will take her out to dinner?" And the President was adding a pretty little speech of compliment, in his gallant way, and the marquis was bowing solemnly and profoundly, and the comtesse was curtsying and smiling, and I was left entirely out in the cold. I was rescued by Mistress Madison.

"I would like nothing better than to give you your old friend Mistress Erskine to take out to dinner," she said, smiling. "It is forlorn for a young man among so many grown-ups, and the only young maiden s.n.a.t.c.hed away from him. But the President is not going to blunder twice in the same fashion, and will take Mistress Erskine himself. Now I will give you your choice among the rest. Whom would you like to take?"

"Ah, your Majesty," I answered quickly, hand on my heart and bowing low, but smiling up at her,--for she was a woman into whose amiable, cordial face no man could look without smiling,--"I suppose I dare not lift my eyes as high as my heart would dictate, and since you are out of the question, I care not whom you give me."

"Saucy boy!"--and she tapped me lightly with her snuff-box,--"I vow I think you would be vastly more fun than the British minister, but my country demands that I sacrifice myself. I will give you the Marchioness de Casa Yrujo. If you do not know Sally McKean, she certainly knew you when you were in petticoats."

So I found myself seated at table between the most brilliant woman there and the most beautiful; for the Marchioness de Casa Yrujo was universally conceded to be the one, and the Comtesse de Baloit was, in my esteem at least, as certainly the other.

It was a long table, and bounteously furnished--lacking, perhaps, some of the elegance of the Philadelphia tables I had been accustomed to, but with a lavish prodigality native to the South. Two new guests had arrived while I had been so engrossed in talking to the comtesse that I had not observed their entrance, a gentleman and his wife. The lady was amiable-looking, but of no great distinction of appearance. The gentleman I thought I had seen before; his long, rather lean visage, somber but dignified, looked familiar to me. When the marchioness told me it was Mr. Monroe, I wondered that I had not recognized him at once, for he was a familiar figure on our streets during the ten years when Philadelphia was the capital. Moreover, I could have vowed he was wearing the same sad-colored drab clothes he used to appear in then, so entirely unchanged were both cut and color. I looked at him now with great interest, for was he not to decide the fortunes of the West?--in which I could have taken no greater interest had I been Western-born. And, more than that, was he not appointed to what seemed to me a mission of far greater importance, the conveying of mademoiselle in safety to her home?

I could have wished Mistress Monroe was to accompany him, for she had an air of motherly kindliness that I felt would be both protection and comfort to Mademoiselle Pelagie; and aside from the fact that there was something cold and austere in Mr. Monroe's face, I was sufficiently imbued with Mr. Hamilton's ideas to feel no great confidence in the man. (Wherein I have since thought I did Mr. Monroe great injustice, since in every act of his life he has proved himself a high-minded gentleman. But Mr. Hamilton's personal magnetism was so great that it was quite impossible for us younger men at least, not to feel that every one who differed with him must be, if not wholly unprincipled, at least worthy of doubt and suspicion.)

It was a brilliant dinner-table, for the exciting debate at the Capitol furnished a theme that loosed every tongue. Yet I could see that the President, while he kept the ball rolling with a gaiety and good humor that rather surprised me, was himself most guarded. Indeed, many were restrained, no doubt, from saying quite what they thought by the presence of the Spanish minister, who at that time was at the height of his popularity--his course in the Louisiana affair, which made him so many enemies, not having been taken until later.

Yet most of those present were more in sympathy with Clinton of New York and Jackson of Georgia than with Ross of Pennsylvania and Gouverneur Morris. When Mr. Erskine spoke of Gouverneur Morris's speech as a masterly effort, the President, whom he addressed, replied only by a smile so coldly polite that it was like a dash of cold water, not only to the British minister, but to the whole table.

I was ever a blundering idiot, and knew not when to leave well enough alone; neither had I ever the heart to see fellow-man discomfited (especially if he were on my side of the question) without going at once to his aid. So, forgetting that it was the powerful minister of a great nation, who needed no help from a man entirely unknown in the great world and of extreme youth, I plunged boldly in.

"I agree with you, sir, most heartily," I said. "In force and polish and weight of argument it was beyond compare. But I expected nothing less from Gouverneur Morris."

There was a dead silence around the table; even the British minister had not the temerity to do more than bow his thanks in the face of Jefferson's icy smile. I caught a glimpse of the marquis's profile; he was frowning heavily. The French minister's face was a blank, and so was Mr. Monroe's. Pelagie looked the picture of distress, and Mr.

Lewis made me a slight gesture which I took to mean, "Keep still."

Even Mistress Erskine looked embarra.s.sed, and I could understand none of it. But as I caught Mistress Madison's eye there was a twinkle of humor in it, and she gave the slightest, very slightest nod in the world toward the President.

Then at once it flashed upon me: Gouverneur Morris was bosom friend to Mr. Hamilton, and this was no place to be lauding him to the skies.

Then was I seized with a rage against the restraints of society, that would not permit me to fling defiance in the face of all these grandees,--aye, and of the President himself--and declare my allegiance to Hamilton and his friends. And mingled with my rage was an intolerable sense of mortification that I had made such an arrant fool of myself before all these older men and lovely women. But, with a tact for which I can never be sufficiently grateful to her, Mistress Madison turned at once to Pelagie.

"Comtesse," she said, "you are fresh from the colony of Louisiana, in which we are all so deeply interested; tell us something about your life in St. Louis, and how you found your Spanish rulers."

And mademoiselle, understanding, responded at once with glowing descriptions of her happy life there, and the courtesy and polish of the people, with many gay little touches of rude and funny experience.

Everybody thawed at once; for most of those present had been much in Paris and could understand her French as easily as I. The President became as genial as he had been icy, and he insisted on drawing me also into the conversation (I think for the purpose of giving me an opportunity of retrieving myself), in which I hope I bore my part modestly; for I like not to seem either presumptuous or vainglorious, though, because I am a blunderer, I no doubt seem sometimes to be both.

The curtains had been drawn and the candles lighted when we sat down to dinner, though the sun was still shining; but the short winter afternoon had rapidly pa.s.sed into evening, and then into dark night, and we still lingered at the table. Talk had grown more and more animated as the wine flowed more freely, and toasts were drunk and bright speeches made in response. I had, as in duty bound, devoted most of my attention to the marchioness, and the marquis had engrossed Pelagie. Yet there had been chance for an occasional word with her. It was when the marquis was rising to respond to a toast to his Most Catholic Majesty of Spain, amid the ringing of gla.s.ses, that I turned to mademoiselle.

"Would it be permitted an old friend to call at the house of the French minister on the Comtesse de Baloit?"

"It would be unpardonable if he neglected to do so," she responded, with a bright smile.

"Then to-morrow at two I hope to find you at home," I said, and then added quickly--"unless you are going to the Senate again?"

She colored a little.

"Did you know me?"

But she would not let me answer her own question, for the marquis was beginning to speak, and it behooved us to listen. In the midst of the applause that followed his speech, I saw the President whisper something to the black man who stood behind his chair and send him to me. For a moment, when the messenger told me the President wished to see me in his office after the others were gone, I thought I was to be called to account for my malapropos speech, but I was relieved when he added:

"The President hab a message from yo' home, sah."

And had it not been that I liked much feeling myself so near mademoiselle, even if I had only an occasional word from her, I would have been very impatient for dinner to be over, for a message from home sent to the President, it seemed to me, must be of importance.

Dinner was over at last, and there was but little lingering afterward.

I had the pleasure of helping mademoiselle into her coach, though Monsieur Pichon looked cold and the Marquis de Yrujo tried to forestall me. But when she was shut up inside the golden ball, and the great golden wings were once more perched on either side of it, and it rolled away glittering and flashing in the light of the torches as it had flashed and glittered in the rays of the sun five hours before, I had a sinking of the heart such as I might have felt had she been s.n.a.t.c.hed away from my sight forever in the prophet's fiery chariot bearing her to the skies.