Alice of Old Vincennes Part 26

She kissed the paper with pa.s.sionate fervor, pouring her tears upon it in April showers between which the light of her eyes played almost fiercely, so poignant was her sense of a despair which bordered upon desperation. "Gone, gone!" It was all she could think or say. "Gone, gone."

Jean took the offending novel back home with him, hidden under his jerkin; but Beverley's note lay upon Alice's heart, a sweet comfort and a crus.h.i.+ng weight, when an hour later Hamilton sent for her and she was taken before him. Her face was stained with tears and she looked pitifully distressed and disheveled; yet despite all this her beauty a.s.serted itself with subtle force.

Hamilton felt ashamed looking at her, but put on sternness and spoke without apparent sympathy:

"Miss Roussillon, you came near committing a great crime. As it is, you have done badly enough; but I wish not to be unreasonably severe. I hope you are sorry for your act, and feel like doing better hereafter."

She was trembling, but her eyes looked steadily straight into his. They were eyes of baby innocence, yet they irradiated a strong womanly spirit just touched with the old perverse, mischievous light which she could neither banish nor control. When she did not make reply, Hamilton continued:

"You may go home now, and I shall expect to have no more trouble on your account." He made a gesture indicative of dismissal; then, as she turned from him, he added, somewhat raising his voice:

"And further, Miss Roussillon, that flag you took from here must positively be returned. See that it is done."

She lifted her head high and walked away, not deigning to give him a word.

"Humph! what do you think now of your fine young lady?" he demanded, turning to Helm with a sneering curl of his mouth. "She gives thanks copiously for a kindness, don't you think?"

"Poor girl, she was scared nearly out of her life," said Helm. "She got away from you, like a wounded bird from a snare. I never saw a face more pitiful than hers."

"Much pity she needs, and greatly like a wounded bird she acts, I must say; but good riddance if she'll keep her place hereafter. I despise myself when I have to be hard with a woman, especially a pretty one.

That girl's a saucy and fascinating minx, and as dangerous as twenty men. I'll keep a watch on her movements from this on, and if she gets into mischief again I'll transport her to Detroit, or give her away to the Indians, She must stop her high-handed foolishness."

Helm saw that Hamilton was talking mere wind, VOX ET PRAETEREA NIHIL, and he furthermore felt that his babbling signified no harm to Alice; but Hamilton surprised him presently by saying:

"I have just learned that Lieutenant Beverley is actually gone. Did you know of his departure?"

"What are you saying, sir?"

Helm jumped to his feet, not angry, but excited.

"Keep cool, you need not answer if you prefer silence or evasion. You may want to go yourself soon."

Helm burst out laughing, but quickly growing serious said:

"Has Beverley been such a driveling fool as that? Are you in earnest?"

"He killed two of my scouts, wounded another, and crossed the Wabash in their canoe. He is going straight towards Kaskaskia."

"The idiot! Hurrah for him! If you catch your hare you may roast him, but catch him first, Governor!"

"You'll joke out of the other corner of your mouth, Captain Helm, if I find out that you gave him aid or countenance in breaking his parole."

"Aid or countenance! I never saw him after he walked out of this room.

You gave him a devil of a sight more aid and countenance than I did.

What are you talking about! Broke his parole! He did no such thing. He returned it to you fairly, as you well know. He told you he was going."

"Well, I've sent twenty of my swiftest Indians after him to bring him back. I'll let you see him shot. That ought to please you."

"They'll never get him, Governor. I'll bet high on him against your twenty scalp-lifters any day. Fitzhugh Beverley is the best Indian fighter, Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton excepted, in the American colonies."

On her way home Alice met Father Beret, who turned and walked beside her. He was so overjoyed at her release that he could scarcely speak; but held her hand and stroked it gently while she told him her story.

It was beginning to rain, a steady, cold shower, when they reached the house, and for many days and nights thereafter the downfall continued almost incessantly.

"Dear child," said Father Beret, stopping at the gate and looking beseechingly into Alice's face, "you must stay at home now--stay in the house--it will be horribly dangerous for you to pa.s.s about in the village after your--after what has happened."

"Do not fear, Father, I will be careful. Aren't you coming in? I'll find you a cake and a gla.s.s of wine."

"No, child, not now."

"Then good-bye, good-bye," she said, turning from him to run into the house. "Come soon, I shall be so lonesome."

On the veranda she suddenly stopped, running her fingers about her neck and into her bosom.

"Oh, Father, Father Beret, I've lost my locket!" she cried. "See if I dropped it there."

She went back to the gate, searching the ground with her eyes. Of course she did not find the locket. It was miles and miles away close to the heart of her lover. If she could but have known this, it would have comforted her. Beverley had intended to leave it with Jean, but in his haste and excitement he forgot; writing the note distracted his attention; and so he bore Alice's picture on his breast and in his heart while pursuing his long and perilous journey.

Four of Hamilton's scouts came upon Beverley twenty miles south of Vincennes, but having the advantage of them, he killed two almost immediately, and after a running fight, the other two attempted escape in a canoe on the Wabash. Here, firing from a bluff, he wounded a third. Both then plunged head-foremost into the water, and by keeping below the surface, got away. The adventure gave Beverley new spirit and self-reliance; he felt that he could accomplish anything necessary to his undertaking. In the captured pirogue he crossed the river, and, to make his trail hard to find, sent the little craft adrift down the current.

Then alone, in the dead of winter, he took his bearings and struck across the dreary, houseless plain toward St. Louis.

As soon as Hamilton's discomfited scouts reported to him, he sent Long-Hair with twenty picked savages, armed and supplied for continuous and rapid marching, in pursuit of Beverley. There was a large reward for bringing him in alive, a smaller one for his scalp.

When Alice heard of all this, her buoyant and happy nature seemed entirely to desert her for a time. She was proud to find out that Beverley had shown himself brave and capable; it touched her love of heroism; but she knew too much about Indian warfare to hope that he could hold his own against Long-Hair, the wiliest and boldest of scalp-hunters, and twenty of the most experienced braves in Hamilton's forces. He would almost certainly be killed and scalped, or captured and brought back to be shot or hanged in Vincennes. The thought chilled and curdled her blood.

Both Helm and Father Beret tried to encourage and comfort her by representing the probabilities in the fairest light.

"It's like hunting for a needle in a haystack, going out to find a man in that wilderness," said Helm with optimistic cheerfulness; "and besides Beverley is no easy dose for twenty red n.i.g.g.e.rs to take. I've seen him tried at worse odds than that, and he got out with a whole skin, too. Don't you fret about him, Miss Roussillon."

Little help came to her from attempts of this sort. She might brighten up for a while, but the dark dread, and the terrible gnawing at her heart, the sinking and despairing in her soul, could not be cured.

What added immeasurably to her distress was the attention of Farnsworth, whose wound troubled him but a short time. He seemed to have had a revelation and a change of spirit since the unfortunate rencounter and the subsequent nursing at Alice's hands. He was grave, earnest, kindly, evidently striving to play a gentle and honorable part. She could feel that he carried a load of regret, that he wanted to pay a full price in good for the evil that he had done; his st.u.r.dy English heart was righting itself n.o.bly, yet she but half understood him, until his actions and words began to betray his love; and then she hated him unreasonably. Realizing this, Farnsworth bore himself more like a faithful dog than in the manner hitherto habitual to him. He simply shadowed Alice and would not be rebuffed.

There can be nothing more painful to a finely sympathetic nature than regret for having done a kindness. Alice experienced this to the fullest degree. She had nursed Farnsworth but a little while, yet it was a while of sweet influence. Her tender woman nature felt the blessedness of doing good to her enemy lying helpless in her house and hurt by her own hand. But now she hated the man, and with all her soul she was sorry that she had been kind to him; for out of her kindness he had drawn the spell of a love under which he lived a new life, and all for her. Yet deep down in her consciousness the pity and the pathos of the thing hovered gloomily and would not be driven out.

The rain in mid-winter gave every prospect a sad, cold, sodden gray appearance. The ground was soaked, little rills ran in the narrow streets, the small streams became great rivers, the Wabash overflowed its banks and made a sea of all the lowlands on either side. It was hard on the poor dwellers in the thatched and mostly floorless cabins, for the gra.s.s roofs gradually let the water through and puddles formed on the ground inside. Fuel was distant and had to be hauled in the pouring rain; provisions were scarce and hunting almost impossible.

Many people, especially children, were taken ill with colds and fever.

Alice found some relief from her trouble in going from cabin to cabin and waiting upon the sufferers; but even here Farnsworth could not be got rid of; he followed her night and day. Never was a good soldier, for he was that from head to foot, more lovelorn and love-docile. The maiden had completely subdued the man.

About this time, deep in a rainy and pitch-black night, Gaspard Roussillon came home. He tapped on the door again and again. Alice heard, but she hesitated to speak or move. Was she growing cowardly?

Her heart beat like a drum. There was but one person in all the world that she could think of--it was not M. Roussillon. Ah, no, she had well-nigh forgotten her gigantic foster father.

"It is I, ma cherie, it is Gaspard, my love, open the door," came in a booming half-whisper from without. "Alice, Jean, it is your Papa Roussillon, my dears. Let me in."

Alice was at the door in a minute, unbarring it. M. Roussillon entered, armed to the teeth, the water dribbling from his buckskin clothes.

"Pouf!" he exclaimed, "my throat is like dust." His thoughts were diving into the stores under the floor. "I am famished. Dear children, dear little ones! They are glad to see papa! Where is your mama?"

He had Alice in his arms and Jean clung to his legs. Madame Roussillon, to be sure of no mistake, lighted a lamp with a brand that smoldered on the hearth and held it up, then, satisfied as to her husband's ident.i.ty, set it on a shelf and flung herself into the affectionate group with clumsy abandon, making a great noise.