Old Kaskaskia | Page 4

singing on some neighboring gallery could be heard in the pause of the violin. Beetles, lured by the shop candles, began to explore the room where the two men were, bumping themselves against the walls and buzzing their complaints.
"A man is nothing but a young beast until he is past twenty-five years old," said Dr. Dunlap.
Father Baby added his own opinion to this general remark.--
"Very often he is nothing but an old beast when you catch him past seventy. But it all depends on what kind of a man he is."
"Friar, do you believe in marriage?"
"How could I believe in marriage?"
"But do you believe in it for other people?"
"The Church has always held it to be a sacred institution."
Dr. Dunlap muttered a combination of explosive words which he had probably picked up from sailors, making the churchman cross himself. He spoke out, with a reckless laugh:--
"I married as soon as I came of age, and here I am, ruined for my prime by that act."
"What!" exclaimed Father Baby, setting his hands on his hips, "you a man of family, and playing bachelor among the women of Kaskaskia?"
"Oh, I have no wife now. She finally died, thank Heaven. If she had only died a year sooner! But nothing matters now."
"My son," observed Father Baby severely, "Satan has you in his net. You utter profane words, you rail against institutions sanctioned by the Church, and you have desired the death of a human being. Repent and do penance"--
"You have a customer, friar," sneered the young man, lifting his head to glance aside at a figure entering the shop. "Vigo's idiot slave boy is waiting to be cheated."
"By my cappo!" whispered Father Baby, a cunning look netting wrinkles over his lean face, "you remind me of the bad shilling I have laid by me to pass on that nigger. O Lamb of mercy,"--he turned and hastily plumped on his knees before a sacred picture on the wall,--"I will, in expiation for passing that shilling, say twelve paters and twelve aves at the foot of the altar of thy Virgin Mother, or I will abstain from food a whole day in thy honor."
Having offered this compromise, Father Baby sprung with a cheerful eagerness to deal with Vigo's slave boy.
The doctor sat still, his ears closed to the chatter in the shop. His bitter thoughts centred on the new arrival in Kaskaskia, on her brother, on all her family.
She herself, unconscious that he inhabited the same hemisphere with her, was standing up for the reel in Pierre Menard's house. The last carriage had driven to the tall flight of entrance steps, discharged its load, and parted with its horses to the huge stone stable under the house. The mingling languages of an English and French society sounded all around her. The girl felt bewildered, as if she had crossed ocean and forest to find, instead of savage wilderness, an enchanted English county full of French country estates. Names and dignitaries crowded her memory.
A great clear glass, gilt-framed and divided into three panels, stood over the drawing-room mantel. It reflected crowds of animated faces, as the dance began, crossing and recrossing or running the reel in a vista of rooms, the fan-lights around the hall door and its open leaves disclosing the broad gallery and the dusky world of trees outside; it reflected cluster on cluster of wax-lights. To this day the great glass stands there, and, spotless as a clear conscience, waits upon the future. It has held the image of Lafayette and many an historic companion of his.
On the other side of the hall, in the dining-room, stood a carved mahogany sideboard holding decanters and glasses. In this quiet retreat elderly people amused themselves at card-tables. Apart from them, but benignantly ready to chat with everybody, sat the parish priest; for every gathering of his flock was to him a call for social ministration.
A delicious odor of supper escaped across a stone causeway from the kitchen, and all the Menard negroes, in their best clothes, were collected on the causeway to serve it. Through open doors they watched the flying figures, and the rocking of many a dusky heel kept time to the music.
The first dance ended in some slight confusion. A little cry went through the rooms: "Rice Jones's sister has fainted!" "Mademoiselle Zhone has fainted!" But a few minutes later she was sitting on a gallery chair, leaning against her brother and trying to laugh through her coughing, and around her stood all girlish Kaskaskia, and the matrons also, as well as the black maid Colonel Menard had sent with hartshorn.
Father Olivier brought her a glass of wine; Mrs. Edwards fanned her; the stars shone through the pecan-trees, and all the loveliness of this new hemisphere and home and the kindness of