Part 41 (2/2)
”Good-by, Chevalier Le Moyne; this cancels a few debts!”
I have never seen him since.
CHAPTER XXIX
UNDER THE OLD FLAG
”And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky.”
It was in the early days of March, some eight months later, that the big barge in which I had come down the Ohio, and thus far on the Mississippi, put me ash.o.r.e at New Madrid with my saddle-bags and my horse Bourbon Prince; for so I had promptly named the black beauty for whom I had exchanged my chestnut mare. He could never quite take the place of Fatima in my affections, but I had grown very fond of him: partly for his virtues, for he was a thoroughbred of famous lineage, and partly, I have no doubt, because he had once belonged to mademoiselle.
Of mademoiselle I had not heard for many months. I had arrived at home in the late summer, to find my father a physical and almost a mental wreck from the stroke of paralysis that had laid him low nearly three months before. Yet I had never loved my strong, stern father in the prime of manhood, managing great business enterprises, occupying places of honor and responsibility in the State, as I loved this feeble and broken old man with the face and the manner of a little child. As the weeks went on and he gradually grew able to move about, it was my pride and my joy to walk slowly down Chestnut Street, my father leaning heavily on my arm, and looking up into my face to comment with childish delight upon whatever pleased him in the streets.
I had had to a.s.sume, to the best of my ability, his heavy business responsibilities, and the charge of his great properties, and but that my mother was herself a fine business woman and thoroughly informed on my father's affairs I might have made s.h.i.+pwreck of it all. It was not the life I had chosen for myself, but it lay so directly in the path of duty there was no escaping it, and it kept every moment so fully occupied there was no time left for brooding over private troubles.
I had received a letter from the Prince de Polignac about two weeks after my return home, telling me of the safe arrival in Baden of the Comtesse de Baloit. It was a very courteous letter, thanking me once more for the great services I had rendered them on that eventful night in the Chantilly parks, and inclosing a pleasant message of acknowledgment from the Duc d'Enghien for the kindness shown his cousin the countess. Mademoiselle had added a line in her own writing:
”Fatima is well, and I love her for the sake of dear old St.
Louis.
PELAGIE.”
To most people that might seem a very common-place little message; to me those sixteen words were the most wonderful ever written. I twisted and turned them until each one became a volume of tender sentiments, and the little signature ”Pelagie” almost too sacred to be looked at, and only to be kissed, shut up in my own room in the dark, or with none but the moon to see.
I had replied to the prince's letter immediately, sending a courteous message to the duke and a special one to Pelagie about Clotilde, whom I had sent under safe escort to St. Louis. But although I had intimated to the prince that it would give me very great pleasure to hear occasionally of the welfare of the countess, I never heard from any of them again.
This, of course, was an especial grief to me on Pelagie's account, but also it touched me a little that the prince should so soon have forgotten me and what he was pleased to term my ”great services” to him, for I had been strongly attracted to him by his n.o.ble bearing and chivalrous protection of mademoiselle. Often, in thinking of them,--he a n.o.ble young prince of great manly beauty and endowed by nature with all charming and lovable qualities; she the most exquisite of womankind,--I thought it would be strange indeed if in the intimate companions.h.i.+p of that long ride together they had not become so deeply interested in each other as to forget the existence of a young American gentleman three thousand miles away.
When in the winter there came news of the Cadoudal plots against the life of Napoleon, in which the young Prince de Polignac and his older brother the duke were involved; that both brothers had been arrested, tried, and condemned to death; and, later, that Napoleon had granted them a free pardon, I could easily believe that other interests than love and marriage had so absorbed the prince as to make him forgetful of a distant acquaintance.
On the heels of this appalling news, which shook the world and which yet left me glad and grateful that the chivalrous young prince had been saved from the ignominious death of an a.s.sa.s.sin, there came a letter to me from Captain Clarke, written in St. Louis, inviting me to join the expedition of discovery and exploration which Mr. Meriwether Lewis and he were to conduct up the Missouri River and across the mountains.
Few duties have come to me in life more difficult to perform than the writing of that letter declining the invitation. It was the life I longed for, to be had for the taking, and an expedition of such kind under the leaders.h.i.+p of two men like my captain, whom I still adored, and Mr. Meriwether Lewis, whom I greatly admired, was the strongest temptation that could be presented to me.
But I knew well it was not for me. It would, no doubt, be a year or two in the accomplis.h.i.+ng, with many hazards to life and limb, and I was now the virtual head of the family, with mother and sisters and invalid father all looking to me for protection and guidance and comfort. No, it was not to be thought of.
Without consulting any one I sent my answer, but I suppose my face was an open book to my dear mother, and in some moment of abstraction I had forgotten to be cheerful and so betrayed that something was troubling me. At any rate, she came to my room one night, and there, in the way that mothers have, she beguiled my secret from me. She agreed with me that it would never do in my father's state of health to join such an expedition, but she was greatly distressed for what she called my disappointment, though I tried to a.s.sure her it was not enough to think about.
Now mothers have a way of finding a salve for every hurt. I suppose it is a talent G.o.d has given them, that this world may be a pleasanter place for living in, and that the rugged path we have to tread through it may be smoother and pleasanter to our feet. (Though I hope no one will think because I have said this that I am one of those long-faced people who think this world a vale of woes to be traversed as quickly as possible, looking neither to the right nor to the left, lest they see something to please their eyes. I have ever found it a pleasant world, and my path through it of exceeding interest, with some sorrows and many difficulties to test one's mettle and add to the zest of living; but also with many wonderful and beautiful things lying all along the path, that G.o.d has placed there that one may stop and enjoy them and rest by the wayside.)
Now the salve my mother found for this hurt was one to my especial liking.
”Though you could not be gone from home two or three years, my son,”
she said, ”a matter of two or three months could make no great difference to any one; why not go out to St. Louis, see your friends there, and help the expedition get under way?”
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