Part 15 (1/2)

And Alice went on through the beautiful and perfect prayer, which she repeated in English with infinite sweetness and solemnity, her eyes uplifted, her hands clasped before her. Beverley could have sworn that she was a s.h.i.+ning saint, and that he saw an aureole.

”I know,” she continued, ”that sometime, somewhere, to a very dear person I promised that I never, never, never would pray any prayer but that. And I remember almost nothing else about that other life, which is far off back yonder in the past, I don't know where,--sweet, peaceful, shadowy; a dream that I have all but lost from my mind.”

Beverley's sympathy was deeply moved. He sat for some minutes looking at her without speaking. She, too, was pensive and silent, while the fire sputtered and sang, the great logs slowly melting, the flames tossing wisps of smoke into the chimney still booming to the wind.

”I know, too, that I am not French,” she presently resumed, ”but I don't know just how I know it. My first words must have been English, for I have always dreamed of talking in that language, and my dimmest half recollections of the old days are of a large, white house, and a soft-voiced black woman, who sang to me in that language the very sweetest songs in the world.”

It must be borne in mind that all this was told by Alice in her creole French, half bookish, half patois, of which no translation can give any fair impression.

Beverley listened, as one who hears a clever reader intoning a strange and captivating poem. He was charmed. His imagination welcomed the story and furnished it with all that it lacked of picturesque completeness. In those days it was no uncommon thing for a white child to be found among the Indians with not a trace left by which to restore it to its people. He had often heard of such a case. But here was Alice right before him, the most beautiful girl that he had ever seen, telling him the strangest story of all. To his mind it was clear that she belonged to the Tarleton family of Virginia. Youth always concludes a matter at once. He knew some of the Tarletons; but it was a widely scattered family, its members living in almost every colony in America.

The crest he recognized at a glance by the dragon on the helmet with three stars. It was not for a woman to bear; but doubtless it had been enameled on the locket merely as a family mark, as was often done in America.

”The black woman was your nurse, your mammy,” he said. ”I know by that and by your prayer in English, as well as by your locket, that you are of a good old family.”

Like most Southerners, he had strong faith in genealogy, and he held at his tongue's tip the names of all the old families. The Carters, the Blairs, the Fitzhughs, the Hansons, the Randolphs, the Lees, the Ludwells, the Joneses, the Beverleys, the Tarletons--a whole catalogue of them stretched back in his memory. He knew the coat of arms displayed by each house. He could repeat their legends.

”I wish you could tell me more,” he went on. ”Can't you recollect anything further about your early childhood, your first impressions--the house, the woman who taught you to pray, the old black mammy? Any little thing might be of priceless value as evidence.”

Alice shrugged her shoulders after the creole fas.h.i.+on with something of her habitual levity of manner, and laughed. His earnestness seemed disproportioned to the subject, as she fancied he must view it, although to her it had always been something to dream over. It was impossible for her to realize, as he did, the importance of details in solving a problem like that involved in her past history. Nor could she feel the pathos and almost tragic fascination with which her story had touched him.

”There is absolutely nothing more to tell,” she said. ”All my life I have tried to remember more, but it's impossible; I can't get any further back or call up another thing. There's no use trying. It's all like a dream--probably it is one. I do have such dreams. In my sleep I can lift myself into the air, just as easy, and fly back to the same big white house that I seem to remember. When you told me about your home it was like something that I had often seen before. I shall be dreaming about it next!”

Beverley cross-questioned her from every possible point of view; he was fascinated with the mystery; but she gave him nothing out of which the least further light could be drawn. A half-breed woman, it seemed, had been her Indian foster-mother; a silent, grave, watchful guardian from whom not a hint of disclosure ever fell. She was, moreover, a Christian woman, had received her conversion from an English-speaking Protestant missionary. She prayed with Alice, thus keeping in the child's mind a perfect memory of the Lord's prayer.

”Well,” said Beverley at last, ”you are more of a mystery to me, the longer I know you.”

”Then I must grow every day more distasteful to you.”

”No, I love mystery.”

He went away feeling a new web of interest binding him to this inscrutable maiden whose life seemed to him at once so full of idyllic happiness and so enshrouded in tantalizing doubt. At the first opportunity he frankly questioned M. Roussillon, with no helpful result. The big Frenchman told the same meager story. The woman was dying in the time of a great epidemic, which killed most of her tribe.

She gave Alice to M. Roussillon, but told him not a word about her ancestry or previous life. That was all.

A wise old man, when he finds himself in a blind alley, no sooner touches the terminal wall than he faces about and goes back the way he came. Under like circ.u.mstances a young man must needs try to batter the wall down with his head. Beverley endeavored to break through the web of mystery by sheer force. It seemed to him that a vigorous attempt could not fail to succeed; but, like the fly in the spider's lines, he became more hopelessly bound at every move he made. Moreover against his will he was realizing that he could no longer deceive himself about Alice. He loved her, and the love was mastering him body and soul. Such a confession carries with it into an honest masculine heart a sense of contending responsibilities. In Beverley's case the clash was profoundly disturbing. And now he clutched the thought that Alice was not a mere child of the woods, but a daughter of an old family of cavaliers!

With coat b.u.t.toned close against the driving wind, he strode toward the fort in one of those melodramatic moods to which youth in all climes and times is subject. It was like a slap in the face when Captain Helm met him at the stockade gate and said:

”Well, sir, you are good at hiding.”

”Hiding! what do you mean, Captain Helm?” he demanded, not in the mildest tone.

”I mean, sir, that I've been hunting you for an hour and more, over the whole of this d.a.m.ned town. The English and Indians are upon us, and there's no time for fooling. Where are all the men?”

Beverley comprehended the situation in a second. Helm's face was congested with excitement. Some scouts had come in with the news that Governor Hamilton, at the head of five or six hundred soldiers and Indians, was only three or four miles up the river.

”Where are all the men?” Helm repeated.

”Buffalo hunting, most of them,” said Beverley.

”What in h.e.l.l are they off hunting buffaloes for?” raged the excited captain.