Old Kaskaskia Part 17

"Ma'amselle, I can't swim," piteously declared the older negro.

"Neither can I, ma'amselle," pleaded the other.

"Then I shall have to go in myself. I cannot swim, either, and I shall die, but I cannot help it."

The desperate and useless impulse which so often perishes in words returned upon her with its absurdity as she stared down, trying to part the muddy atoms of the Mississippi. The men held the boat in a scarcely visible stream moving from west to east through the gaps in the building. They eyed her, waiting the motions of the Caucasian mind, but dumbly certain it was their duty to seize her if she tried to throw herself in.

They waited until Angelique hid her face upon a bench, s.h.i.+vering in her clinging garments with a chill which was colder than any the river gave.

A ghostly shadow of themselves and the boat and the collapsed figure of the girl began to grow upon the water. More stones in the moist walls showed glistening surfaces as the light mounted. The fact that they had lost their master, that his household was without a head, that the calamity of Kaskaskia involved their future, then took possession of both poor fellows, and the great heart of Africa shook the boat with sobs and groans and useless cries for help.

"Come out here, you black rascals!" called a voice from the log dam.

Angelique lifted her head. Colonel Menard was in plain sight, resting his arms across a tree, and propping a sodden bundle on branches.

Neither Angelique nor his men had turned a glance through the eastern gap, or thought of the stream sweeping to the dam. The spot where he sank, the broken floor, the inclosing walls, were their absorbing boundaries as to his fate. As the slaves saw him, a droll and sheepish look came on their faces at having wailed his death in his living ears.

They shot through the door vigorously, and brought the boat with care alongside the trunk supporting him.

The colonel let them take tante-gra'mere in. He was exhausted. One arm and his cheek sunk on the side of the boat, and they drew him across it, steadying themselves by the foliage upreared by the tree.

He opened his eyes, and saw rose and pearl streaks in the sky. The sun was mounting behind the bluffs. Then a canopy of leaves intervened, and a whir of bird wings came to his ears. The boat had reached dead water, and was moving over the submerged roadbed, and groping betwixt the stems of great pecan-trees,--the great pecan-trees which stood sentinel on the river borders of his estate. He noticed how the broken limbs flourished in the water, every leaf satisfied with the moisture it drew.

The colonel realized that he was lying flat in a boat which had not been bailed dry, and that his head rested on wet homespun, by its odor belonging to Louis or Jacques; and he saw their black naked arms paddling with the oars. Beyond them he saw Wachique holding her mistress carefully and unrestrained; and the negro in her quailed before him at the deed the Indian had done, scarcely comforted by the twinkle in the colonel's eye. Tante-gra'mere was sitting up meekly, less affected by dampness than anybody else in the boat. She had a fresh and toughened look. Her baptism in the rivers had perhaps renewed her for another century.

"Madame, you are certainly the most remarkable woman in this Territory.

You have borne this night marvelously well, and the accident of the boat even better."

"Not at all, monsieur the colonel."

She spoke as children do when effectually punished for ill temper.

"Are you cold?"

"I am wet, monsieur. We are all wet. It is indeed a time of flood."

"We shall soon see a blazing fire and a hot breakfast, and all the garments in the country will be ours without asking."

The colonel raised himself on his elbow and looked around. Angelique sat beside his head; so close that they both blushed.

They were not wet nor chilled nor hungry. They had not looked on death nor felt the shadow of eternity. The sweet mystery of continued life was before them. The flood, like a sea of gla.s.s, spread itself to the thousand footsteps of the sun.

Tante-gra'mere kept her eyes upon them. But it is not easy to hear what people say when you are riding among treetops and bird's-nests in the early morning.

"Mademoiselle, we are nearly home."

"Yes, monsieur."

"It has been to me a great night."

"I can understand that, monsieur."

"The children will be dancing when they see you. Odile and Pierre were awake, and they both cried when the first boat came home last night without you."

"Monsieur the colonel, you are too good to us."

"Angelique, do you love me?"

"It is true, monsieur."

"But it must be owned I am a dozen years older than you, and I have loved before."

"I never have."

"Does it not seem a pity, then, that you who have had the pick of the Territory should become the second wife of Pierre Menard?"

"I should rather be the second choice with you, monsieur, than the first choice of any other man in the Territory."

"Mademoiselle, I adore you."

"That remains to be seen, monsieur."

"What did you think when I was under water?"

"I did not think, monsieur. I perished. It was then you conquered me."

"Good. I will take to the water whenever any little difference arises between us. It is a lucky thing for me that I am a practiced river man."

"I do not say it could be done again. Never will there be such another night and morning."

"Now see how it is with nature, Angelique. Life is always rising out of death. This affair of ours,--I call it a lily growing out of the water.

Does it trouble you that your old home is out there standing almost to its eaves in the Mississippi?"

"Papa cannot now give me so good a dower." The girl's lowered eyes laughed into his.

"We will not have any settlements or any dower. We will be married in this new American way. Everything I have left from this flood will be yours and the children's, anyhow. But while there is game in the woods, or bacon in the cellar, or flour in the bin, or wine to be tapped, or a cup of milk left, not a child or woman or man shall go hungry. I was not unprepared for this. My fur storehouse there on the bank of the Okaw is empty. At the first rumor of high water I had the skins carried to the strong-house on the hill."

Angelique's wet hair still clung to her forehead, but her warmth had returned with a glow. The colonel was a compact man, who had pa.s.sed through water as his own element. To be dripping was no hindrance to his courts.h.i.+p.

"When may we celebrate the marriage?"

"Is it a time to speak of marriage when two are lying dead in the house?"

His countenance changed at the rebuke, and, as all fortunate people do when they have pa.s.sed the selfish fury of youth, he apologized for success.

"It is true. And Reece Zhone was the only man in the Territory whom I feared as a rival. As soon as he is laid low I forget him. He would not so soon forget me. Yet I do not forget him. The whole Illinois Territory will remember him. But Reece Zhone himself would not blame me, when I am bringing you home to my house, for hinting that I hope to keep you there."

"To keep me there, monsieur the colonel! No, I am not to be married in a hurry."

"But I made my proposals months ago, Angelique. The children and I have long had our secrets about bringing you home. Two of them sit on my knee and two of them climb my back, and we talk it over. They will not let you leave the house alive, mademoiselle. Father Olivier will still celebrate the sacraments among us. Kaskaskia will have the consolations of religion for this flood; but I may not have the consolation of knowing my own wedding-day."

"The church is now half full of water."