Old Kaskaskia | Page 5

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 the people made her
close her eyes to keep the tears from running out. The separation of the
sick from all healthy mankind had never so hurt her. Something was
expected of her, and she was not equal to it. She felt death's mark
branding in, and her family spoke of her recovery! What folly it was to
come into this gay little world where she had no rights at all! Maria
Jones wondered why she had not died at sea. To be floating in that
infinity of blue water would be better than this. She pictured herself in
the weighted sack,--for we never separate ourselves from our
bodies,--and tender forgiveness covering all her mistakes as the
multitude of waters covered her.
"I will not dance again," laughed Maria. Her brother Rice could feel her
little figure tremble against him. "It is ridiculous to try."
"We must have you at Elvirade," said the governor's wife soothingly. "I
will not let the young people excite you to too much dancing there."
"Oh, Mrs. Edwards!" exclaimed Peggy Morrison. "I never do dance
quite as much anywhere else, or have quite as good a time, as I do at
Elvirade."
"Hear these children slander me when I try to set an example of
sobriety in the Territory!"
"You shall not want a champion, Mrs. Edwards," said Rice Jones.
"When I want to be in grave good company, I always make a
pilgrimage to Elvirade."
"One ought to be grave good company enough for himself," retorted
Peggy, looking at Rice Jones with jealous aggressiveness. She was a
lean, sandy girl, at whom he seldom glanced, and her acrid girlhood
fought him. Rice Jones was called the handsomest man in Kaskaskia,
but his personal beauty was nothing to the ambitious force of his
presence. The parted hair fitted his broad, high head like a glove. His
straight nose extended its tip below the nostrils and shadowed the long
upper lip. He had a long chin, beautifully shaped and shaven clean as

marble, a mouth like a scarlet line, and a very round, smooth throat,
shown by his flaring collar. His complexion kept a cool whiteness
which no exposure tanned, and this made striking the blackness of his
eyes and hair.
"Please will you all go back into the drawing-room?" begged Maria.
"My brother will bring me a shawl, and then I shall need nothing else."
"But may I sit by you, mademoiselle?"
It was Angélique Saucier leaning down to make this request, but Peggy
Morrison laughed.
"I warn you against Angélique, Miss Jones. She is the man-slayer of
Kaskaskia. They all catch her like measles. If she stays out here, they
will sit in a row along the gallery edge, and there will be no more
dancing."
"Do not observe what Peggy says, mademoiselle. We are relations, and
so we take liberties."
"But no one must give up dancing," urged Maria.
They arranged for her in spite of protest, however. Rice muffled her in
a shawl, Mademoiselle Saucier sat down at her right side and Peggy
Morrison at her left, and the next dance began.
Maria Jones had repressed and nestling habits. She curled herself into a
very small compass in the easy gallery chair, and looked off into the
humid mysteries of the June night. Colonel Menard's substantial slave
cabins of logs and stone were in sight, and up the bluff near the house
was a sort of donjon of stone, having only one door letting into its base.
"That's where Colonel Menard puts his bad Indians," said Peggy
Morrison, following Maria's glance.
"It is simply a little fortress for times of danger," said Mademoiselle
Saucier, laughing. "It is also the colonel's bureau for valuable papers,

and the dairy is underneath."
"Well, you French understand one another's housekeeping better than
we English do; and may be the colonel has been explaining these things
to you."
"But are there any savage men about here now?"
"Oh, plenty of them," declared Peggy. "We have some Pottawatomies
and Kickapoos and Kaskaskias always with us,--like the poor. Nobody
is afraid of them, though. Colonel Menard has them all under