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How a man’s life is drawn, turned, shaped, by a woman! He may deny it. He may swagger and lie about it. Heredity, ambition, lust, noble aspirations, weak self-indulgence, power, failure, success, have their turns with him. But the woman he desires above all others, whose breast is his true home, makes him, mars him.
Had she cast herself on the settle exhausted and ill after exposure? Should I find her muttering and helpless? Worse than all, had the night made her forget that she was a Cloud-Mother?
I drew my breath with an audible sound in the throat. Her dress stirred. She leaned around the edge of the settle.
Eagle de Ferrier, not my Cloud-Mother, looked at me. Her features were pinched from exposure, but flooded themselves instantly with a blush. She snatched her shoes from the hearth and drew them on.
I was taken with such a trembling that I held to a gallery post.
Suppose this glimpse of herself had been given to me only to be withdrawn! I was afraid to speak, and waited.
She stood up facing me.
“Louis!”
“Madame!”
“What is the matter, sire?”
“Nothing, madame, nothing.”
“Where is Paul?”
I did not know what to do, and looked at her completely helpless; for if I told her Paul was dead, she might relapse; and evasions must be temporary.
“The Indian took him,” she cried.
“But the Indian didn’t kill him, Eagle.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Paul came to me.”
“He came to you? Where?”
“At Fort Stephenson.”
“Where is my child?”
“He is at Fort Stephenson.”
“Bring him to me!”
“I can’t bring him, Eagle.”
“Then let me go to him.”
I did not know what to say to her.
“And there were Cousin Philippe and Ernestine lying across the step. I have been thinking all night. Do you understand it?”
“Yes, I understand it, Eagle.”
By the time I had come into the house her mind leaped forward in comprehension. The blanket she had held on her shoulders fell around her feet. It was a striped gay Indian blanket.
“You were attacked, and the settlement was burned.”
“But whose house is this?”
“This is my house.”
“Did you bring me to your house?”
“I wasn’t there.”
“No, I remember. You were not there. I saw you the last time at the Tuileries.”
“When did you come to yourself, madame?”
“I have been sick, haven’t I? But I have been sitting by this fire nearly all night, trying to understand. I knew I was alone, because Cousin Philippe and Ernestine—I want Paul!”
I looked at the floor, and must have appeared miserable. She passed her hands back over her forehead many times as if brushing something away. “If he died, tell me.”
“I held him, Eagle.”
“They didn’t kill him?”
“No.”
“Or scalp him?”
“The knife never touched him.”
“But—”
“It was in battle.”
“My child died in battle? How long have I been ill?”
“More than a year, Eagle.”
“And he died in battle?”
“He had a wound in his side. He was brought into the fort, and I took care of him.”
She burst out weeping, and laughed and wept, the tears running down her face and wetting her bosom.
“My boy! My little son! You held him! He died like a man!”
I put her on the settle, and all the cloud left her in that tempest of rain. Afterwards I wiped her face with my handkerchief and she sat erect and still.
A noise of many birds came from the ravine, and winged bodies darted past the door uttering the cries of spring. Abbé Edgeworth sauntered by and she saw him, and was startled.
“Who is that?”
“A priest.”
“When did he come?”
“He rode here with me this morning.”
“Louis,” she asked, leaning back, “who took care of me?”
“You have been with the Grignons since you came to the Illinois Territory.”
“Am I in the Illinois Territory?”
“Yes, I found you with the Grignons.”
“They must be kind people!”
“They are; the earth’s salt.”
“But who brought me to the Illinois Territory?”
“A family named Jordan.”
“The Indians didn’t kill them?”
“No.”
“Why wasn’t I killed?”
“The Indians regarded you with superstition.”
“What have I said and done?”
“Nothing, madame, that need give you any uneasiness.”
“But what did I say?” she insisted.
“You thought you were a Cloud-Mother.”
“A Cloud-Mother!” She was astonished and asked, “What is a Cloud-Mother?”
“You thought I was Paul, and you were my Cloud-Mother.”
“Did I say such a foolish thing as that?”
“Don’t call it foolish, madame.”
“I hope you will forget it.”
“I don’t want to forget it.”
“But why are you in Illinois Territory, sire?”
“I came to find land for the Iroquois. I intend to make a state with the tribe.”
“But what of France?”
“Oh, France is over supplied with men who want to make a state of her. Louis XVIII has been on the throne eleven months, and was recently chased off by Napoleon.
“Louis XVIII on the throne? Did true loyalists suffer that?”
“Evidently.”
“Sire, what became of Napoleon?”
“He was beaten by the allies and sent to Elba. Louis XVIII was brought in with processions. But in about eleven months Napoleon made a dash across France—”
“Tell me slowly. You say I have been ill more than a year. I know nothing of what has happened.”
“Napoleon escaped from Elba, made a dash across France, and incidentally swept the Bourbon off the throne. The last news from Europe shows him gathering armies to meet the allies.”
“Oh, sire, you should have been there!”
“Abbé Edgeworth suggests that France is well supplied with dauphins also. Turning off dauphins has been a pastime at court.”
“Abbé Edgeworth? You do not mean the priest you saw at Mittau?
“Confessor and almoner to his majesty. The same man.”
“Is he here?”
“You saw him pass the door.”
“Why has he come to America?”
“I have not inquired.”
“Why is he here with you?”
“Because it pleases him, not me.”
“He brings you some message?”
“So he says.”
“What is it?”
“I have not had time to ask.”
She stood up. As she became more herself and the spirit rushed forward in her face, I saw how her beauty had ripened. Hoeing corn and washing in the river does not coarsen well-born women. I knew I should feel the sweetness of her presence stinging through me and following me wherever I went in the world.
“Call the priest in, sire. I am afraid I have hindered the interview.”
“I did not meet him with my arms open, madame.”
“But you would have heard what he had to say, if I had not been in your house. Why am I in your house?”
“You came here.”
“Was I wandering about by myself?”
“Yes, madame.”
“I thought I must have been walking. When I came to myself I was so tired, and my shoes were muddy. If you want to see the priest I will go into another room.”
“No, I will bring him in and let him give his message in your presence.”
When Abbé Edgeworth was presented to her, he slightly raised his eyebrows, but expressed no astonishment at meeting her lucid eyes. Nor did I explain—“God has given her back her senses in a night.”
The position in which she found herself was trying. She made him a grave courtesy. My house might have been the chateau in which she was born, so undisturbed was her manner. Her night wandering and mind-sickness were simply put behind us in the past, with her having taken refuge in my house, as matters which need not concern Abbé Edgeworth. He did not concern himself with them, but bent before her as if he had no doubt of her sanity.
I asked her to resume her place on the settle. There was a stool for the abbé and one for myself. We could see the river glinting in its valley, and the windrows of heights beyond it. A wild bee darted into the room, droning, and out again, the sun upon its back.
“Monsieur,” I said to Abbé Edgeworth, “I am ready now to hear the message which you mentioned to me last night.”
“If madame will pardon me,” he answered, “I will ask you to take me where we can confer alone.”
“It is not necessary, monsieur. Madame de Ferrier knows my whole story.”
But the priest moved his shoulders.
“I followed you in this remote place, monsieur, that we might talk together without interruption, unembarrassed by any witness.”
Madame de Ferrier rose. I put her into her seat again with authority.
“It is my wish, madame, to have at least one witness with Abbé Edgeworth and myself.”
“I hope,” he protested, “that madame will believe there can be no objection to her presence. I am simply following instructions. I was instructed to deliver my message in private.”
“Monsieur,” Eagle answered, “I would gladly withdraw to another room.”
“I forbid it, madame,” I said to her.
“Very well,” yielded Abbé Edgeworth.
He took a folded paper from his bosom, and spoke to me with startling sharpness.
“You think I should address you as Monseigneur, as the dauphin of France should be addressed?”
“I do not press my rights. If I did, monsieur the abbé, you would not have the right to sit in my presence.”
“Suppose we humor your fancy. I will address you as Monseigneur. Let us even go a little farther and assume that you are known to be the dauphin of France by witnesses who have never lost track of you. In that case, Monseigneur, would you put your name to a paper resigning all claim upon the throne?”
“Is this your message?”
“We have not yet come to the message.”
“Let us first come to the dauphin. When dauphins are as plentiful as blackberries in France and the court never sees a beggar appear without exclaiming: ‘Here comes another dauphin!’—why, may I ask, is Abbé Edgeworth sent so far to seek one?”
He smiled.
“We are supposing that Monseigneur, in whose presence I have the honor to be, is the true dauphin.”
“That being the case, how are we to account for the true dauphin’s reception at Mittau?”
“The gross stupidity and many blunders of agents that the court was obliged to employ, need hardly be assumed.”
“Poor Bellenger! He has to take abuse from both sides in order that we may be polite to each other.”
“As Monseigneur suggests, we will not go into that matter.”
Eagle sat as erect as a statue and as white.
I felt an instant’s anxiety. Yet she had herself entirely at command.
“We have now arrived at the paper, I trust,” said the priest.
“The message?”
“Oh, no. The paper in which you resign all claim to the throne of France, and which may give you the price of a principality in this country.”
“I do not sign any such paper.”
“Not at all?”
“Not at all.”
“You are determined to hold to your rights?”
“I am determined not to part with my rights.”
“Inducements large enough might be offered.” He paused suggestively.
“The only man in France,” I said, “empowered to treat for abdication of the throne at present, is Napoleon Bonaparte. Did you bring a message from him?”
Abbé Edgeworth winced, but laughed.
“Napoleon Bonaparte will not last. All Europe is against him. I see we have arrived at the message.”
He rose and handed me the paper he held in his hand. I rose and received it, and read it standing.
It was one brief line:—
“Louis: You are recalled.
Marie-Therese.”
The blood must have rushed over my face. I had a submerged feeling, looking out of it at the priest.
“Well, Monseigneur?”
“It is like her heavenly goodness.”
“Do you see nothing but her heavenly goodness in it?”
“This is the message?”
“It is a message I crossed the ocean to bring.”
“With the consent of her uncle?”
“Madame d’Angoulême never expresses a wish contrary to the wishes of his majesty.”
“We are then to suppose that Louis XVIII offers me, through you, monsieur, the opportunity to sign away my rights, and failing that, the opportunity of taking them?”
“Supposing you are Monseigneur the dauphin, we will let our supposition run as far as this.”
I saw distinctly the position of Louis XVIII. Marquis du Plessy had told me he was a mass of superstition. No doubt he had behaved, as Bellenger said, for the good of the royalist cause. But the sanction of heaven was not on his behavior. Bonaparte was let loose on him like the dragon from the pit. And Frenchmen, after yawning eleven months or so in the king’s august face, threw up their hats for the dragon. In his second exile the inner shadow and the shadow of age combined against him. He had tasted royalty. It was not as good as he had once thought. Beside him always, he saw the face of Marie-Therese. She never forgot the hushed mystery of her brother. Her silence and obedience to the crown, her loyalty to juggling and evasion, were more powerful than resistance.
A young man, brought suddenly before the jaded nation and proclaimed at an opportune moment, might be a successful toy. The sore old king would oil more than the royalist cause, and the blessing of heaven would descend on one who restored the veritable dauphin.
I never have seen the most stupid man doubt his power to ride if somebody hoists him into the saddle.
“Let us go farther with our suppositions,” I said. “Suppose I decline?”
I heard Madame de Ferrier gasp.
The priest raised his eyebrows.
“In that case you will be quite willing to give me a signed paper declaring your reasons.”
“I sign no paper.”
“Let me suggest that Monseigneur is not consistent. He neither resigns his supposed rights nor will he exercise them.”
“I will neither resign them nor exercise them.”
“This is virtually resigning them.”
“The abbé will pardon me for saying it is not. My rights are mine, whether I use them or not.”
“Monseigneur understands that opportunity is a visitor that comes but once.”
“I understand that the most extraordinary thing has happened to-day that will ever go unrecorded in history. One Bourbon offers to give away a throne he has lost and another Bourbon refuses it.”
“You may well say it will go unrecorded in history. Excepting this lady,”—the abbé bowed toward Eagle,—“there is no witness.”
“Wise precautions have been taken,” I agreed. “This scrap of paper may mean anything or nothing.”
“You decline?” he repeated.
“I think France is done with the Bourbons, monsieur the abbé. A fine spectacle they have made of themselves, cooling their heels all over Europe, waiting for Napoleon’s shoes! Will I go sneaking and trembling to range myself among impotent kings and wrangle over a country that wants none of us? No, I never will! I see where my father slipped. I see where the eighteenth Louis slipped. I am a man tenacious beyond belief. You cannot loose my grip when I take hold. But I never have taken hold, I never will take hold—of my native country, struggling as she is to throw off hereditary rule!”
“You are an American!” said Abbé Edgeworth contemptuously.
“If France called to me out of need, I would fight for her. A lifetime of peaceful years I would toss away in a minute to die in one achieving battle for her. But she neither calls me nor needs me. A king is not simply an appearance—a continuation of hereditary rights!”
“Your position is incredible,” said the priest.
“I do not belittle the prospect you open before me. I see the practical difficulties, but I see well the magnificence beyond them.”
“Then why do you hesitate?”
“I don’t hesitate. A man is contemptible who stands shivering and longing outside of what he dare not attempt. I would dare if I longed. But I don’t long.”
“Monseigneur believes there will be complications?”
“I know my own obstinacy. A man who tried to work me with strings behind a throne, would think he was struck by lightning.”
“Sire,” Madame de Ferrier spoke out, “this is the hour of your life. Take your kingdom.”
“I should have to take it, madame, if I got it. My uncle of Provence has nothing to give me. He merely says—‘My dear dauphin, if Europe knocks Napoleon down, will you kindly take hold of a crank which is too heavy for me, and turn it for the good of the Bourbons? We may thus keep the royal machine in the family!’”
“You have given no adequate reason for declining this offer,” said the priest.
“I will give no reason. I simply decline.”
“Is this the explanation that I shall make to Madame d’Angoulême? Think of the tender sister who says—‘Louis, you are recalled!”
“I do think of her. God bless her!”
“Must I tell her that Monseigneur planted his feet like one of these wild cattle, and wheeled, and fled from the contemplation of a throne?”
“You will dress it up in your own felicitous way, monsieur.”
“What do you wish me to say?”
“That I decline. I have not pressed the embarrassing question of why I was not recalled long ago. I reserve to myself the privilege of declining without saying why I decline.”
“He must be made to change his mind, monsieur!” Madame de Ferrier exclaimed.
“I am not a man that changes his mind every time the clock strikes.”
I took the padlocked book out of my breast and laid it upon the table. I looked at the priest, not at her. The padlocked book seemed to have no more to do with the conversation, than a hat or a pair of gloves.
I saw, as one sees from the side of the eye, the scarlet rush of blood and the snow-white rush of pallor which covered her one after the other. The moment was too strenuous. I could not spare her. She had to bear it with me.
She set her clenched hands on her knees.
“Sire!”
I faced her. The coldest look I ever saw in her gray eyes repelled me, as she deliberately said—
“You are not such a fool!”
I stared back as coldly and sternly, and deliberately answered—
“I am—just—such a fool!”
“Consider how any person who might be to blame for your decision, would despise you for it afterwards!”
“A boy in the first flush of his youth,” Abbé Edgeworth said, his fine jaws squared with a grin, “might throw away a kingdom for some woman who took his fancy, and whom he could not have perhaps, unless he did throw his kingdom away. And after he had done it he would hate the woman. But a young man in his strength doesn’t do such things!”
“A king who hasn’t spirit to be a king!” Madame de Ferrier mocked.
I mercilessly faced her down.
“What is there about me? Sum me up. I am robbed on every side by any one who cares to fleece me. Whenever I am about to accomplish anything I fall down as if knocked on the head!”
She rose from her seat.
“You let yourself be robbed because you are princely! You have plainly left behind you every weakness of your childhood. Look at him in his strength, Monsieur Abbé! He has sucked in the vigor of a new country! The failing power of an old line of kings is renewed in him! You could not have nourished such a dauphin for France in your exiled court! Burying in the American soil has developed what you see for yourself—the king!”
“He is a handsome man,” Abbé Edgeworth quietly admitted.
“Oh, let his beauty alone! Look at his manhood—his kinghood!”
“Of what use is his kinghood if he will not exercise it?”
“He must!”
She turned upon me fiercely.
“Have you no ambition?”
“Yes, madame. But there are several kinds of ambition, as there are several kinds of success. You have to knock people down with each kind, if you want it acknowledged. As I told you awhile ago, I am tenacious beyond belief, and shall succeed in what I undertake.”
“What are you undertaking?”
“I am not undertaking to mount a throne.”
“I cannot believe it! Where is there a man who would turn from what is offered you? Consider the life before you in this country. Compare it with the life you are throwing away.” She joined her hands. “Sire, the men of my house who fought for the kings of yours, plead through me that you will take your inheritance.”
I kept my eyes on Abbé Edgeworth. He considered the padlocked book as an object directly in his line of vision. Its wooden covers and small metal padlock attracted the secondary attention we bestow on trifles when we are at great issues.
I answered her,
“The men of your house—and the women of your house, madame—cannot dictate what kings of my house should do in this day.”
“Well as you appear to know him, madame,” said Abbé Edgeworth, “and loyally as you urge him, your efforts are wasted.”
She next accused me—
“You hesitate on account of the Indians!”
“If there were no Indians in America, I should do just as I am doing.”
“All men,” the abbé noted, “hold in contempt a man who will not grasp power when he can.”
“Why should I grasp power? I have it in myself. I am using it.”
“Using it to ruin yourself!” she cried.
“Monseigneur!” The abbé rose. We stood eye to eye. “I was at the side of the king your father upon the scaffold. My hand held to his lips the crucifix of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his death no word of bitterness escaped him. True son of St. Louis, he supremely loved France. Upon you he laid injunction to leave to God alone the punishment of regicides, and to devote your life to the welfare of all Frenchmen. Monseigneur! are you deaf to this call of sacred duty? The voice of your father from the scaffold, in this hour when the fortunes of your house are lowest, bids you take your rightful place and rid your people of the usurper who grinds France and Europe into the blood-stained earth!”
I wheeled and walked across the floor from Abbé Edgeworth, and turned again and faced him.
“Monsieur, you have put a dart through me. If anything in the universe could move me from my position, what you have said would do it. But my father’s blood cries through me to-day—‘Shall the son of Louis XVI be forced down the unwilling throats of his countrymen by foreign bayonets?—Russians—Germans—English!—Shall the dauphin of France be hoisted to place by the alien?’—My father would forbid it!... You appeal to my family love. I bear about with me everywhere the pictured faces of my family. The father whose name you invoke, is always close to my heart. That royal duchess, whom you are privileged to see daily, monsieur, and I—never—is so dear and sacred to me that I think of her with a prayer.... But my life is here.... Monsieur, in this new world, no man can say to me—‘Come,’ or ‘Go.’ I am as free as the Indian. But the pretender to the throne of France, the puppet of Russia, of England, of the enemies of my country,—a slave to policy and intrigue—a chained wanderer about Europe—O my God! to be such a pretender—gasping for air—for light—as I gasped in Ste. Pélagie!—O let me be a free man—a free man!”
The old churchman whispered over and over—
“My royal son!”
My arms dropped relaxed.
There was another reason. I did not give it. I would not give it.
We heard the spring wind following the river channel—and a far faint call that I knew so well—the triangular wild flock in the upper air, flying north.
“Honk! honk!” It was the jubilant cry of freedom!
“Madame,” said Abbé Edgeworth, resting his head on his hands, “I have seen many stubborn Bourbons, but he is the most obstinate of them all. We do not make as much impression on him as that little padlocked book.”
Her terrified eyes darted at him—and hid their panic.
“Monsieur Abbé,” she exclaimed piercingly, “tell him no woman will love him for throwing away a kingdom!”
The priest began once more.
“You will not resign your rights?”
“No.”
“You will not exercise them?”
“No.”
“If I postpone my departure from to-day until to-morrow, or next week, or next month, is there any possibility of your reconsidering this decision?”
“No.”
“Monseigneur, must I leave you with this answer?”
“Your staying cannot alter it, Monsieur Abbé.”
“You understand this ends all overtures from France?”
“I understand.”
“Is there nothing that you would ask?”
“I would ask Madame d’Angoulême to remember me.”
He came forward like a courtier, lifted my hand to his lips, and kissed it.
“With your permission, Monseigneur, I will now retire and ride slowly back along the river until you overtake me. I should like to have some time for solitary thought.”
“You have my permission, Monsieur Abbé.”
He bowed to Madame de Ferrier, and so moving to the door, he bowed again to me, and took his leave.
His horse’s impatient start, and his remonstrance as he mounted, came plainly to our ears. The regular beat of hoofs upon the sward followed; then an alternating tap-tap of horse’s feet diminished down the trail.
Eagle and I avoided looking at each other.
A bird inquired through the door with inquisitive chirp, and was away.
Volcanoes, and whirlwinds, fire, and all force, held themselves condensed and quiescent in the still room.
I moved first, laying Marie-Therese’s message on the padlocked book. Standing with folded arms I faced Eagle, and she as stonily faced me. It was a stare of unspeakable love that counts a thousand years as a day.
She shuddered from head to foot. Thus a soul might ripple in passing from its body.
“I am not worth a kingdom!” her voice wailed through the room.
I opened my arms and took her. Volcanoes and whirlwinds, fire, and all force, were under our feet. We trod them breast to breast.
She held my head between her hands. The tears streamed down her face.
“Louis!—you are a king!—you are a king!”
The End