Alice of Old Vincennes Part 49

"Bring the wine, Alice," she added, "a bottle of Bordeaux."

She stood for a breath of two, her red hands on her hips, looking first at Father Beret, then at Alice.

"Quarreling again about the romances?" she inquired. "She's been at it again?--she's found 'em again?"

"Yes," said Father Beret, with a queer, dry smile, "more romance. Yes, she's been at it again! Now fetch the Bordeaux, little one."

The following days were cycles of torture to Alice. She groveled in the shadow of a great dread. It seemed to her that Beverley could not love her, could not help looking upon her as a poor, wild, foolish girl, unworthy of consideration. She magnified her faults and crudities, she paraded before her inner vision her fecent improprieties, as they had been disclosed to her, until she saw herself a sort of monstrosity at which all mankind was gazing with disgust. Life seemed dry and shriveled, a mere jaundiced shadow, while her love for Beverley took on a new growth, luxuriant, all-embracing, uncontrollable. The ferment of spirit going on in her breast was the inevitable process of self-recognition which follows the terrible unfolding of the pa.s.sion-flower, in a nature almost absolutely simple and unsophisticated.

Vincennes held its breath while waiting for news from Helm's expedition. Every day had its nimble, yet wholly imaginary account of what had happened, skipping from mouth to mouth, and from cabin to cabin. The French folk ran hither and thither in the persistent rain, industriously improving the dramatic interest of each groundless report. Alice's disturbed imagination reveled in the kaleidoscopic terrors conjured up by these swift changes of the form and color of the stories "from the front," all of them more or less tragic. To-day the party is reported as having been surprised and ma.s.sacred to a man--to-morrow there has been a great fight, many killed, the result in doubt--next day the British are defeated, and so on. The volatile spirit of the Creoles fairly surpa.s.sed itself in ringing the changes on stirring rumors.

Alice scarcely left the house during the whole period of excitement and suspense. Like a wounded bird, she withdrew herself from the light and noisy chatter of her friends, seeking only solitude and crepuscular nooks in which to suffer silently. Jean brought her every picturesque bit of the ghastly gossip, thus heaping coals on the fire of her torture. But she did not grow pale and thin. Not a dimple fled from cheek or chin, not a ray of saucy sweetness vanished from her eyes. Her riant health was unalterable. Indeed, the only change in her was a sudden ripening and mellowing of her beauty, by which its colors, its lines, its subtle undercurrents of expression were spiritualized, as if by some powerful clarifying process.

Tremendous is the effect of a soul surprised by pa.s.sion and brought hard up against an opposing force which dashes it back upon itself with a flare and explosion of self-revealment. Nor shall we ever be able to foretell just how small a circ.u.mstance, just how slight an exigency, will suffice to bring on the great change. The s.h.i.+fting of a smile to the gloom of a frown, the snap of a string on the lute of our imagination, just at the point when a rich melody is culminating; the waving of a hand, a vanis.h.i.+ng face--any eclipse of tender, joyous expectation--dashes a nameless sense of despair into the soul. And a young girl's soul--who shall uncover its sacred depths of sensitiveness, or a.n.a.lyze its capacity for suffering under such a stroke?

On the fifth day of March, back came the victorious Helm, having surrounded and captured seven boats, richly loaded with provisions and goods, and Dejean's whole force. Then again the little Creole town went wild with rejoicing. Alice heard the news and the noise; but somehow there was no response in her heart. She dreaded to meet Beverley; indeed, she did not expect him to come to her. Why should he?

M. Roussillon, who had volunteered to accompany Helm, arrived in a mood of unlimited proportions, so far as expressing self-admiration and abounding delight was concerned. You would have been sure that he had done the whole deed single-handed, and brought the flotilla and captives to town on his back. But Oncle Jazon for once held his tongue, being too disgusted for words at not having been permitted to fire a single shot. What was the use of going to fight and simply meeting and escorting down the river a lot of non-combatants?

There is something inscrutably delightful about a girl's way of thinking one thing and doing another. Perversity, thy name is maidenhood; and maidenhood, thy name is delicious inconsequence! When Alice heard that Beverley had come back, safe, victorious, to be greeted as one of the heroes of an important adventure, she immediately ran to her room frightened and full of vague, shadowy dread, to hide from him, yet feeling sure that he would not come! Moreover, she busied herself with the preposterous task of putting on her most attractive gown--the buff brocade which she wore that evening at the river house--how long ago it seemed!--when Beverley thought her the queenliest beauty in the world. And she was putting it on so as to look her prettiest while hiding from him!

It is a toss-up where happiness will make its nest. The palace, the hut, the great lady's garden, the wild la.s.s's bower,--skip here, alight there,--the secret of it may never be told. And love and beauty find lodgment, by the same inexplicable route, in the same extremes of circ.u.mstances. The wind bloweth where it listeth, finding many a matchless flower and many a ravis.h.i.+ng fragrance in the wildest nooks of the world.

No sooner did Beverley land at the little wharf than, rus.h.i.+ng to his quarters, he made a hasty exchange of water-soaked apparel for something more comfortable, and then bolted in the direction of Roussillon place.

Now Alice knew by the beating of her heart that he was coming. In spite of all she could do, trying to hold on hard and fast to her doubt and gloom, a tide of rich sweetness began to course through her heart and break in splendid expectation from her eyes, as they looked through the little unglazed window toward the fort. Nor had she long to wait. He came up the narrow wet street, striding like a tall actor in the height of a melodrama, his powerful figure erect as an Indian's, and his face glowing with the joy of a genuine, impatient lover, who is proud of himself because of the image he bears in his heart.

When Alice flung wide the door (which was before Beverley could cross the veranda), she had quite forgotten how she had gowned and bedecked herself; and so, without a trace of self-consciousness, she flashed upon him a full-blown flower--to his eyes the loveliest that ever opened under heaven.

Gaspard Roussillon, still overflowing with the importance of his part in the capture of Dejean, came puffing homeward just in time to see a man at the door holding Alice a-tiptoe in his arms.

"Ziff!" he cried, as he pushed open the little front gate of the yard, "en voila a.s.sez, vogue la galere!"

The two forms disappeared within the house, as if moved by his roaring voice.

The letter to Beverley from his father was somewhat disturbing. It bore the tidings of his mother's failing health. This made it easier for the young Lieutenant to accept from Clark the a.s.signment to duty with a party detailed for the purpose of escorting Hamilton, Farnsworth and several other British officers to Williamsburg, Virginia. It also gave him a most powerful a.s.sistance in persuading Alice to marry him at once, so as to go with him on what proved to be a delightful wedding journey through the great wilderness to the Old Dominion. Spring's verdure burst abroad on the sunny hills as they slowly went their way; the mating birds sang in every blooming brake and grove by which they pa.s.sed, and in their joyous hearts they heard the bubbling of love's eternal fountain.

CHAPTER XXIII

AND SO IT ENDED

Our story must end here, because at this point its current flows away forever from old Vincennes; and it was only of the post on the Wabash that we set out to make a record. What befell Alice and Beverley after they went to Virginia we could go on to tell; but that would be another story. Suffice it to say, they lived happily ever after, or at least somewhat beyond three score and ten, and left behind them a good name and numerous descendants.

How Alice found out her family in Virginia, we are not informed; but after a lapse of some years from the date of her marriage, there appears in one of her letters a reference to an estate inherited from her Tarleton ancestors, and her name appears in old records signed in full, Alice Tarleton Beverley. A descendant of hers still treasures the locket, with its broken miniature and battered crest, which won Beverley's life from Long-Hair, the savage. Beside it, as carefully guarded, is the Indian charm-stone that stopped Hamilton's bullet over Alice's heart The rapiers have somehow disappeared, and there is a tradition in the Tarleton family that they were given by Alice to Gaspard Roussillon, who, after Madame Roussillon's death in 1790, went to New Orleans, where he stayed a year or two before embarking for France, whither he took with him the beautiful pair of colechemardes and Jean the hunchback.

Oncle Jazon lived in Vincennes many years after the war was over; but he died at Natchez, Mississippi, when ninety-three years old. He said, with almost his last breath, that he couldn't shoot very well, even in his best days; but that he had, upon various occasions, "jes' kind o'

happened to hit a Injun in the lef' eye." They used to tell a story, as late as General Harrison's stay in Vincennes, about how Oncle Jazon buried his collection of scalps, with great funeral solemnity, as his part of the celebration of peace and independence about the year 1784.

Good old Father Beret died suddenly soon after Alice's marriage and departure for Virginia. He was found lying face downward on the floor of his cabin. Near him, on a smooth part of a puncheon, were the mildewed fragments of a letter, which he had been arranging, as if to read its contents. Doubtless it was the same letter brought to him by Rene de Ronville, as recorded in an early chapter of our story. The fragments were gathered up and buried with him. His dust lies under the present Church of St. Xavier,--the dust of as n.o.ble a man and as true a priest as ever sacrificed himself for the good of humanity.

In after years Simon Kenton visited Beverley and Alice in their Virginia home. To his dying day he was fond of describing their happy and hospitable welcome and the luxuries to which they introduced him.

They lived in a stately white mansion on a hill overlooking a vast tobacco plantation, where hundreds of negro slaves worked and sang by day and frolicked by night. Their oldest child was named Fitzhugh Gaspard. Kenton died in 1836.

There remains but one little fact worth recording before we close the book. In the year 1800, on the fourth of July, a certain leading French family of Vincennes held a patriotic reunion, during which a little old flag was produced and its story told. Some one happily proposed that it be sent to Mrs. Alice Tarleton Beverley with a letter of explanation, and in profound recognition of the glorious circ.u.mstances which made it the true flag of the great Northwest.

And so it happened that Alice's little banner went to Virginia and is still preserved in an old mansion not very far from Monticello; but it seems likely that the Wabash Valley will soon again possess the precious relic. The marriage engagement of Miss Alice Beverley to a young Indiana officer, distinguished for his patriotism and military ardor, has been announced at the old Beverley homestead on the hill, and the high contracting parties have planned that the wedding ceremony shall take place under the famous little flag, on the anniversary of dark's capture of Post Vincennes. When the bride shall be brought to her new home on the banks of the Wabash, the flag will come with her; but Oncle Jazon will not be on hand with his falsetto shout: "VIVE LA BANNIERE D'ALICE ROUSSILLON! VIVE ZHORZZH VASINTON!"