Part 45 (1/2)

h'ist it!”

He was dancing with a rickety liveliness, his goatish legs and shriveled body giving him the look of an emaciated satyr.

Clark had been told by some of his creole officers the story of how Alice raised the flag when Helm took the fort, and how she s.n.a.t.c.hed it from Hamilton's hand, as it were, and would not give it up when he demanded it. The whole situation pretty soon began to explain itself, as he saw what Alice was doing. Then he heard her say to Hamilton, while she slowly swayed the rippling flag back and forth:

”I said, as you will remember, Monsieur le Gouverneur, that when you next should see this flag, I should wave it over your head. Well, look, I am waving it! Vive la republique! Vive George Was.h.i.+ngton! What do you think of it, Monsieur le Gouverneur?”

The poor little hunchback Jean took off his cap and tossed it in rhythmical emphasis, keeping time to her words.

And now from behind the hollow square came a mighty voice:

”C'est moi, Gaspard Roussillon; me voici, messieurs!”

There was a spirit in the air which caught from Alice a thrill of romantic energy. The men in the ranks and the officers in front of them felt a wave of irresistible sympathy sweep through their hearts. Her picturesque beauty, her fine temper, the fitness of the incident to the occasion, had an instantaneous power which moved all men alike.

”Raise her flag! Run up the young lady's flag!” some one shouted, and then every voice seemed to echo the words. Clark was a young man of n.o.ble type, in whose veins throbbed the warm chivalrous blood of the cavaliers. A waft of the suddenly prevailing influence bore him also quite off his feet. He turned to Beverley and said:

”Do it! It will have a great effect. It is a good idea; get the young lady's flag and her permission to run it up.”

Before he finished speaking, indeed at the first glance, he saw that Beverley, like Hamilton, was white as a dead man; and at the same time it came to his memory that his young friend had confided to him during the awful march through the prairie wilderness, a love-story about this very Alice Roussillon. In the worry and stress of the subsequent struggle, he had forgotten the tender basis upon which Beverley had rested his excuse for leaving Vincennes. Now, it all reappeared in justification of what was going on. It touched the romantic core of his southern nature.

”I say, Lieutenant Beverley,” he repeated, ”beg the young lady's permission to use her flag upon this glorious occasion; or shall I do it for you?”

There were no miracles in those brave days, and the strain of life with its terrible realities braced all men and women to meet sudden explosions of surprise, whether of good or bad effect, with admirable equipoise; but Beverley's trial, it must be admitted, was extraordinary; still he braced himself quickly and his whole expression changed when Clark moved to go to Alice. For he realized now that it was, indeed, Alice in flesh and blood, standing there, the center of admiration, filling the air with her fine magnetism and crowning a great triumph with her beauty. He gave her a glad, flas.h.i.+ng smile, as if he had just discovered her, and walked straight to her, his hands extended. She was not looking toward him; but she saw him and turned to face him. Hers was the advantage; for she had known, for some hours, of his presence in Vincennes, and had prepared herself to meet him courageously and with maidenly reserve.

There is no safety, however, where Love lurks. Neither Beverley nor Alice was as much agitated at Hamilton, yet they both forgot, what he remembered, that a hundred grim frontier soldiers were looking on.

Hamilton had his personal and official dignity to sustain, and he fairly did it, under what a pressure of humiliating and surprising circ.u.mstances we can fully comprehend. Not so with the two young people, standing as it were in a suddenly bestowed and incomparable happiness, on the verge of a new life, each to the other an unexpected, unhoped-for resurrection from the dead. To them there was no universe save the illimitable expanse of their love. In that moment of meeting, all that they had suffered on account of love was transfused and poured forth,--a glowing libation for love's sake,--a flood before which all barriers broke.

Father Beret was looking on with a strange fire in his eyes, and what he feared would happen, did happen. Alice let the flag fall at Hamilton's feet, when Beverley came near her smiling that great, glad smile, and with a joyous cry leaped into his outstretched arms.

Jean s.n.a.t.c.hed up the fallen banner and ran to Colonel Clark with it.

Two minutes later it was made fast and the halyard began to squeak through the rude pulley at the top of the pole. Up, up, climbed the gay little emblem of glory, while the cannon crashed from the embrasures of the blockhouse hard by, and outside the roar of voices redoubled.

Thirteen guns boomed the salute, though it should have been fourteen,--the additional one for the great Northwestern Territory, that day annexed to the domain of the young American Republic. The flag went up at old Vincennes never to come down again, and when it reached its place at the top of the staff, Beverley and Alice stood side by side looking at it, while the sun broke through the clouds and flashed on its s.h.i.+ning folds, and love unabashed glorified the two strong young faces.

CHAPTER XXI

SOME TRANSACTIONS IN SCALPS

History would be a very orderly affair, could the dry-as-dust historians have their way, and doubtless it would be thrillingly romantic at every turn if the novelists were able to control its current. Fortunately neither one nor the other has much influence, and the result, in the long run, is that most novels are shockingly tame, while the large body of history is loaded down with picturesque incidents, which if used in fiction, would be thought absurdly romantic and improbable.

Were our simple story of old Vincennes a mere fiction, we should hesitate to bring in the explosion of a magazine at the fort with a view to sudden confusion and, by that means, distracting attention from our heroine while she betakes herself out of a situation which, although delightful enough for a blessed minute, has quickly become an embarra.s.sment quite unendurable. But we simply adhere to the established facts in history. Owing to some carelessness there was, indeed, an explosion of twenty-six six-pound cartridges, which made a mighty roar and struck the newly installed garrison into a heap, so to say, scattering things terribly and wounding six men, among them Captains Bowman and Worthington.

After the thunderous crash came a momentary silence, which embraced both the people within the fort and the wild crowd outside. Then the rush and noise were indescribable. Even Clark gave way to excitement, losing command of himself and, of course, of his men. There was a stampede toward the main gate by one wing of the troops in the hollow square. They literally ran over Beverley and Alice, flinging them apart and jostling them hither and yonder without mercy. Of course the turmoil quickly subsided. Clark and Beverley got hold of themselves and sang out their peremptory orders with excellent effect. It was like oil on raging water; the men obeyed in a straggling way, getting back into ranks as best they could.

”Ventrebleu!” squeaked Oncle Jazon, ”ef I didn't think the ole world had busted into a million pieces!”

He was jumping up and down not three feet from Beverley's toes, waving his cap excitedly.

”But wasn't I skeert! Ya, ya, ya! Vive la banniere d'Alice Roussillon!