Old Kaskaskia | Page 3

making of an abbot was not
in you. You old rascal, I am scarcely in the house, and there you stand
all of a tremble for your jig."
Father Baby's death's-head face wrinkled itself with expectant smiles.
He shook off his wooden shoes and whirled upon one toe.
The doctor went into another room, his own apartment in the friar's
small house. His office fronted this, and gave him a door to the street.
Its bottles and jars and iron mortar and the vitreous slab on which he
rolled pills were all lost in twilight now. There were many other
doctors' offices in Kaskaskia, but this was the best equipped one, and
was the lair of a man who had not only been trained in Europe, but had
sailed around the entire world. Dr. Dunlap's books, some of them in
board covers, made a show on his shelves. He had an articulated
skeleton, and ignorant Kaskaskians would declare that they had seen it
whirl past his windows many a night to the music of his violin.
"What did you say had happened since I went away?" he inquired,
sauntering back and tuning his fiddle as he came.
"There's plenty of news," responded Father Baby. "Antoine Lamarche's
cow fell into the Mississippi."

Dr. Dunlap uttered a note of contempt.
"It would go wandering off where the land crumbles daily with that
current setting down from the northwest against us; and Antoine was
far from sneering in your cold-blooded English manner when he got the
news."
"He tore his hair and screamed in your warm-blooded French manner?"
"That he did."
The doctor stood in the bar of candle-light which one of the shop
sconces extended across the room, and lifted the violin to his neck. He
was so large that all his gestures had a ponderous quality. His dress was
disarranged by riding, and his blond skin was pricked through by the
untidy growth of a three-days' beard, yet he looked very handsome.
Dr. Dunlap stood in the light, but Father Baby chose the dark for those
ecstatic antics into which the fiddle threw him. He leaped high from the
floor at the first note, and came down into a jig of the most perfect
execution. The pat of his bare soles was exquisitely true. He raised the
gown above his ankles, and would have seemed to float but for his
response in sound. Yet through his most rapturous action he never
ceased to be conscious of the shop. A step on the sill would break the
violin's charm in the centre of a measure.
But this time no step broke it, and the doctor kept his puppet friar going
until his own arm began to weary. The tune ended, and Father Baby
paused, deprived of the ether in which he had been floating.
Dr. Dunlap sat down, nursing the instrument on his crossed knees while
he altered its pitch.
"Are you not going to Colonel Menard's at all?" inquired the friar.
"It would be a great waste of good dancing not to," said the doctor
lazily. "But you haven't told me who else has lost a cow or had an
increase of goats while I was away."

"The death of even a beast excites pity in me."
"Yes, you are a holy man. You would rather skin a live Indian than a
dead sheep."
The doctor tried his violin, and was lifting it again to position when
Father Baby remarked:--
"They doubtless told you on the road that a party has come through
from Post Vincennes."
"Now who would doubtless tell me that?"
"The governor's suite, since they must have known it. The party was in
almost as soon as you left. Perhaps," suggested the friar, taking a crafty
revenge for much insolence, "nobody would mention it to you on
account of Monsieur Zhone's sister."
The violin bow sunk on the strings with a squeak.
"What sister?"
"The only sister of Monsieur Reece Zhone, Mademoiselle Zhone, from
Wales. She came to Kaskaskia with the party from Post Vincennes."
On Dr. Dunlap's face the unshorn beard developed like thorns on a
mask of wax. The spirit of manly beauty no longer infused it.
"Why didn't you tell me this at first?" he asked roughly.
"Is the name of Zhone so pleasant to you?" hinted the shrugging friar.
"But take an old churchman's advice now, my son, and make up your
quarrel with the lawyer. There will be occasion. That pretty young
thing has crossed the sea to die. I heard her cough."
The doctor's voice was husky as he attempted to inquire,--
"Did you hear what she was called?"

"Mademoiselle Mareea Zhone."
The young man sagged forward over his violin. Father Baby began to
realize that his revel was over, and reluctantly stuck his toes