Alice of Old Vincennes

by Maurice Thompson

  CHAPTER I

  UNDER THE CHERRY TREE

  Up to the days of Indiana's early statehood, probably as late as 1825,there stood, in what is now the beautiful little city of Vincennes onthe Wabash, the decaying remnant of an old and curiously gnarled cherrytree, known as the Roussillon tree, le cerisier de Monsieur Roussillon,as the French inhabitants called it, which as long as it lived borefruit remarkable for richness of flavor and peculiar dark ruby depth ofcolor. The exact spot where this noble old seedling from la belleFrance flourished, declined, and died cannot be certainly pointed out;for in the rapid and happy growth of Vincennes many land-marks oncenotable, among them le cerisier de Monsieur Roussillon, have beendestroyed and the spots where they stood, once familiar to every eye inold Vincennes, are now lost in the pleasant confusion of the new town.

  The security of certain land titles may have largely depended upon thedisappearance of old, fixed objects here and there. Early records wereloosely kept, indeed, scarcely kept at all; many were destroyed bydesigning land speculators, while those most carefully preserved oftenfailed to give even a shadowy trace of the actual boundaries of theestates held thereby; so that the position of a house or tree notinfrequently settled an important question of property rights left openby a primitive deed. At all events the Roussillon cherry treedisappeared long ago, nobody living knows how, and with it alsovanished, quite as mysteriously, all traces of the once importantRoussillon estate. Not a record of the name even can be found, it issaid, in church or county books.

  The old, twisted, gum-embossed cherry tree survived every otherdistinguishing feature of what was once the most picturesque andromantic place in Vincennes. Just north of it stood, in the earlyFrench days, a low, rambling cabin surrounded by rude verandasovergrown with grapevines. This was the Roussillon place, the mostpretentious home in all the Wabash country. Its owner was GaspardRoussillon, a successful trader with the Indians. He was rich, for thetime and the place, influential to a degree, a man of some education,who had brought with him to the wilderness a bundle of books and ataste for reading.

  From faded letters and dimly remembered talk of those who once clungfondly to the legends and traditions of old Vincennes, it is drawn thatthe Roussillon cherry tree stood not very far away from the presentsite of the Catholic church, on a slight swell of ground overlooking awide marshy flat and the silver current of the Wabash. If the tree grewthere, then there too stood the Roussillon house with its cosy logrooms, its clay-daubed chimneys and its grapevine-mantled verandas,while some distance away and nearer the river the rude fort with itshuddled officers' quarters seemed to fling out over the wild landscape,through its squinting and lopsided port-holes, a gaze of stubborndefiance.

  Not far off was the little log church, where one good Father Beret, oras named by the Indians, who all loved him, Father Blackrobe, performedthe services of his sacred calling; and scattered all around were thecabins of traders, soldiers and woodsmen forming a queer little town,the like of which cannot now be seen anywhere on the earth.

  It is not known just when Vincennes was first founded; but mosthistorians make the probable date very early in the eighteenth century,somewhere between 1710 and 1730. In 1810 the Roussillon cherry tree wasthought by a distinguished botanical letter-writer to be at least fiftyyears old, which would make the date of its planting about 1760.Certainly as shown by the time-stained family records upon which thisstory of ours is based, it was a flourishing and wide-topped tree inearly summer of 1778, its branches loaded to drooping with lusciousfruit. So low did the dark red clusters hang at one point that a tallyoung girl standing on the ground easily reached the best ones and madeher lips purple with their juice while she ate them.

  That was long ago, measured by what has come to pass on the gentleswell of rich country from which Vincennes overlooks the Wabash. Thenew town flourishes notably and its appearance marks the latest limitof progress. Electric cars in its streets, electric lights in itsbeautiful homes, the roar of railway trains coming and going in alldirections, bicycles whirling hither and thither, the most fashionablestyles of equipages, from brougham to pony-phaeton, make the days offlint-lock guns and buckskin trousers seem ages down the past; and yetwe are looking back over but a little more than a hundred and twentyyears to see Alice Roussillon standing under the cherry tree andholding high a tempting cluster of fruit, while a very short,hump-backed youth looks up with longing eyes and vainly reaches for it.The tableau is not merely rustic, it is primitive. "Jump!" the girl issaying in French, "jump, Jean; jump high!"

  Yes, that was very long ago, in the days when women lightly braved whatthe strongest men would shrink from now.

  Alice Roussillon was tall, lithe, strongly knit, with an almost perfectfigure, judging by what the master sculptors carved for the form ofVenus, and her face was comely and winning, if not absolutelybeautiful; but the time and the place were vigorously indicated by herdress, which was of coarse stuff and simply designed. Plainly she was achild of the American wilderness, a daughter of old Vincennes on theWabash in the time that tried men's souls.

  "Jump, Jean!" she cried, her face laughing with a show ofcheek-dimples, an arching of finely sketched brows and the twinkling oflarge blue-gray eyes.

  "Jump high and get them!"

  While she waved her sun-browned hand holding the cherries aloft, thebreeze blowing fresh from the southwest tossed her hair so that someloose strands shone like rimpled flames. The sturdy little hunchbackdid leap with surprising activity; but the treacherous brown hand wenthigher, so high that the combined altitude of his jump and the reach ofhis unnaturally long arms was overcome. Again and again he sprangvainly into the air comically, like a long-legged, squat-bodied frog.

  "And you brag of your agility and strength, Jean," she laughinglyremarked; "but you can't take cherries when they are offered to you.What a clumsy bungler you are."

  "I can climb and get some," he said with a hideously happy grin, andimmediately embraced the bole of the tree, up which he began scramblingalmost as fast as a squirrel.

  When he had mounted high enough to be extending a hand for a hold on acrotch, Alice grasped his leg near the foot and pulled him down,despite his clinging and struggling, until his hands clawed in the softearth at the tree's root, while she held his captive leg almostvertically erect.

  It was a show of great strength; but Alice looked quite unconscious ofit, laughing merrily, the dimples deepening in her plump cheeks, herforearm, now bared to the elbow, gleaming white and shapely while itsmuscles rippled on account of the jerking and kicking of Jean.

  All the time she was holding the cherries high in her other hand,shaking them by the twig to which their slender stems attached them,and saying in a sweetly tantalizing tone:

  "What makes you climb downward after cherries. Jean? What a foolishfellow you are, indeed, trying to grabble cherries out of the ground,as you do potatoes! I'm sure I didn't suppose that you knew so littleas that."

  Her French was colloquial, but quite good, showing here and there whatwe often notice in the speech of those who have been educated inisolated places far from that babel of polite energies which we callthe world; something that may be described as a bookish cast appearingoddly in the midst of phrasing distinctly rustic and local,--apeculiarity not easy to transfer from one language to another.

  Jean the hunchback was a muscular little deformity and a wonder of goodnature. His head looked unnaturally large, nestling grotesquely betweenthe points of his lifted and distorted shoulders, like a shaggy blackanimal in the fork of a broken tree. He was bellicose in his amiableway and never knew just when to acknowledge defeat. How long he mighthave kept up the hopeless struggle with the girl's invincible gripwould be hard to guess. His release was caused by the approach of athird person, who wore the robe of a Catholic priest and thecountenance of a man who had lived and suffered a long time withoutmuch loss of physical strength and endurance.

  This was Pere Beret, grizzly, short, compact, his face deeply lined,his mouth decide
dly aslant on account of some lost teeth, and his eyesset deep under gray, shaggy brows. Looking at him when his featureswere in repose a first impression might not have been favorable; butseeing him smile or hearing him speak changed everything. His voice wassweetness itself and his smile won you on the instant. Something like apervading sorrow always seemed to be close behind his eyes and underhis speech; yet he was a genial, sometimes almost jolly, man, veryprone to join in the lighter amusements of his people.

  "Children, children, my children," he called out as he approached alonga little pathway leading up from the direction of the church, "what areyou doing now? Bah there, Alice, will you pull Jean's leg off?"

  At first they did not hear him, they were so nearly deafened by theirown vocal discords.

  "Why are you standing on your head with your feet so high in air,Jean?" he added. "It's not a polite attitude in the presence of a younglady. Are you a pig, that you poke your nose in the dirt?"

  Alice now turned her bright head and gave Pere Beret a look of frankwelcome, which at the same time shot a beam of willful self-assertion.

  "My daughter, are you trying to help Jean up the tree feet foremost?"the priest added, standing where he had halted just outside of thestraggling yard fence.

  He had his hands on his hips and was quietly chuckling at the scenebefore him, as one who, although old, sympathized with the natural andharmless sportiveness of young people and would as lief as not join ina prank or two.

  "You see what I'm doing, Father Beret," said Alice, "I am preventing agreat damage to you. You will maybe lose a good many cherry pies anddumplings if I let Jean go. He was climbing the tree to pilfer thefruit; so I pulled him down, you understand."

  "Ta, ta!" exclaimed the good man, shaking his gray head; "we mustreason with the child. Let go his leg, daughter, I will vouch for him;eh, Jean?"

  Alice released the hunchback, then laughed gayly and tossed the clusterof cherries into his hand, whereupon he began munching them voraciouslyand talking at the same time.

  "I knew I could get them," he boasted; "and see, I have them now." Hehopped around, looking like a species of ill-formed monkey.

  Pere Beret came and leaned on the low fence close to Alice. She wasalmost as tall as he.

  "The sun scorches to-day," he said, beginning to mop his furrowed facewith a red-flowered cotton handkerchief; "and from the look of the skyyonder," pointing southward, "it is going to bring on a storm. How isMadame Roussillon to-day?"

  "She is complaining as she usually does when she feels extremely well,"said Alice; "that's why I had to take her place at the oven and bakepies. I got hot and came out to catch a bit of this breeze. Oh, but youneedn't smile and look greedy, Pere Beret, the pies are not for yourteeth!"

  "My daughter, I am not a glutton, I hope; I had meat not two hourssince--some broiled young squirrels with cress, sent me by Rene deRonville. He never forgets his old father."

  "Oh, I never forget you either, mon pere; I thought of you to-day everytime I spread a crust and filled it with cherries; and when I took outa pie all brown and hot, the red juice bubbling out of it so goodsmelling and tempting, do you know what I said to myself?"

  "How could I know, my child?"

  "Well, I thought this: 'Not a single bite of that pie does Father Beretget.'"

  "Why so, daughter?"

  "Because you said it was bad of me to read novels and told MotherRoussillon to hide them from me. I've had any amount of trouble aboutit."

  "Ta, ta! read the good books that I gave you. They will soon kill thetaste for these silly romances."

  "I tried," said Alice; "I tried very hard, and it's no use; your booksare dull and stupidly heavy. What do I care about something that aqueer lot of saints did hundreds of years ago in times of plague andfamine? Saints must have been poky people, and it is poky people whocare to read about them, I think. I like reading about brave, heroicmen and beautiful women, and war and love."

  Pere Beret looked away with a curious expression in his face, his eyeshalf closed.

  "And I'll tell you now, Father Beret," Alice went on after a pause, "nomore claret and pies do you get until I can have my own sort of booksback again to read as I please." She stamped her moccasin-shod footwith decided energy.

  The good priest broke into a hearty laugh, and taking off his cap ofgrass-straw mechanically scratched his bald head. He looked at thetall, strong girl before him for a moment or two, and it would havebeen hard for the best physiognomist to decide just how much ofapproval and how much of disapproval that look really signified.

  Although, as Father Beret had said, the sun's heat was violent, causingthat gentle soul to pass his bundled handkerchief with a wipingcircular motion over his bald and bedewed pate, the wind was momentlyfreshening, while up from behind the trees on the horizon beyond theriver, a cloud was rising blue-black, tumbled, and grim against the sky.

  "Well," said the priest, evidently trying hard to exchange his laughfor a look of regretful resignation, "you will have your own way, mychild, and--"

  "Then you will have pies galore and no end of claret!" she interrupted,at the same time stepping to the withe-tied and peg-latched gate of theyard and opening it. "Come in, you dear, good Father, before the rainshall begin, and sit with me on the gallery" (the creole word forveranda) "till the storm is over."

  Father Beret seemed not loath to enter, albeit he offered a weakprotest against delaying some task he had in hand. Alice reached forthand pulled him in, then reclosed the queer little gate and pegged it.She caressingly passed her arm through his and looked into hisweather-stained old face with childlike affection.

  There was not a photographer's camera to be had in those days; but whatif a tourist with one in hand could have been there to take a snapshotat the priest and the maiden as they walked arm in arm to that squatlittle veranda! The picture to-day would be worth its weight in afirst-water diamond. It would include the cabin, the cherry-tree, aglimpse of the raw, wild background and a sharp portrait-group of PereBeret, Alice, and Jean the hunchback. To compare it with a photographof the same spot now would give a perfect impression of the historicatmosphere, color and conditions which cannot be set in words. But wemust not belittle the power of verbal description. What if a thoroughlytrained newspaper reporter had been given the freedom of old Vincenneson the Wabash during the first week of June, 1778, and we now had hisprinted story! What a supplement to the photographer's pictures! Well,we have neither photographs nor graphic report; yet there they arebefore us, the gowned and straw-capped priest, the fresh-faced,coarsely-clad and vigorous girl, the grotesque little hunchback, alljust as real as life itself. Each of us can see them, even with closedeyes. Led by that wonderful guide, Imagination, we step back a centuryand more to look over a scene at once strangely attractive andunspeakably forlorn.

  What was it that drew people away from the old countries, from thecities, the villages and the vineyards of beautiful France, forexample, to dwell in the wilderness, amid wild beasts and wilder savageIndians, with a rude cabin for a home and the exposures and hardshipsof pioneer life for their daily experience?

  Men like Gaspard Roussillon are of a distinct stamp. Take him as hewas. Born in France, on the banks of the Rhone near Avignon, he came asa youth to Canada, whence he drifted on the tide of adventure this wayand that, until at last he found himself, with a wife, at PostVincennes, that lonely picket of religion and trade, which was tobecome the center of civilizing energy for the great NorthwesternTerritory. M. Roussillon had no children of his own; so his kind heartopened freely to two fatherless and motherless waifs. These were Alice,now called Alice Roussillon, and the hunchback, Jean. The former wastwelve years old, when he adopted her, a child of Protestant parents,while Jean had been taken, when a mere babe, after his parents had beenkilled and scalped by Indians. Madame Roussillon, a professed invalid,whose appetite never failed and whose motherly kindness expresseditself most often through strains of monotonous falsetto scolding, wasa woman of little education and no
refinement; while her husband clungtenaciously to his love of books, especially to the romances most invogue when he took leave of France.

  M. Roussillon had been, in a way, Alice's teacher, though not greatlyinclined to abet Father Beret in his kindly efforts to make a Catholicof the girl, and most treacherously disposed toward the good priest inthe matter of his well-meant attempts to prevent her from reading andre-reading the aforesaid romances. But for many weeks past GaspardRoussillon had been absent from home, looking after his trading schemeswith the Indians; and Pere Beret acting on the suggestion of theproverb about the absent cat and the playing mouse, had formed analliance offensive and defensive with Madame Roussillon, in which itwas strictly stipulated that all novels and romances were to beforcibly taken and securely hidden away from Mademoiselle Alice; which,to the best of Madame Roussillon's ability, had accordingly been done.

  Now, while the wind strengthened and the softly booming summer showercame on apace, the heavy cloud lifting as it advanced and showing underit the dark gray sheet of the rain, Pere Beret and Alice sat under theclapboard roof behind the vines of the veranda and discussed, what wasgenerally uppermost in the priest's mind upon such occasions, the goodof Alice's immortal soul,--a subject not absorbingly interesting to herat any time.

  It was a standing grief to the good old priest, this strange perversityof the girl in the matter of religious duty, as he saw it. True she hada faithful guardian in Gaspard Roussillon; but, much as he had done toaid the church's work in general, for he was always vigorous andliberal, he could not be looked upon as a very good Catholic; and ofcourse his influence was not effective in the right direction. But thenPere Beret saw no reason why, in due time and with patient work, aidedby Madame Roussillon and notwithstanding Gaspard's treachery, he mightnot safely lead Alice, whom he loved as a dear child, into the arms ofthe Holy Church, to serve which faithfully, at all hazards and in allplaces, was his highest aim.

  "Ah, my child," he was saying, "you are a sweet, good girl, after all,much better than you make yourself out to be. Your duty will controlyou; you do it nobly at last, my child."

  "True enough, Father Beret, true enough!" she responded, laughing,"your perception is most excellent, which I will prove to youimmediately."

  She rose while speaking and went into the house.

  "I'll return in a minute or two," she called back from a region whichPere Beret well knew was that of the pantry; "don't get impatient andgo away!"

  Pere Beret laughed softly at the preposterous suggestion that he wouldeven dream of going out in the rain, which was now roaring heavily onthe loose board roof, and miss a cut of cherry pie--a cherry pie ofAlice's making! And the Roussillon claret, too, was always excellent."Ah, child," he thought, "your old Father is not going away."

  She presently returned, bearing on a wooden tray a ruby-stained pie anda short, stout bottle flanked by two glasses.

  "Of course I'm better than I sometimes appear to be," she said, almosthumbly, but with mischief still in her voice and eyes, "and I shall getto be very good when I have grown old. The sweetness of my presentnature is in this pie."

  She set the tray on a three-legged stool which she pushed close to him.

  "There now," she said, "let the rain come, you'll be happy, rain orshine, while the pie and wine last, I'll be bound."

  Pere Beret fell to eating right heartily, meantime handing Jean aliberal piece of the luscious pie.

  "It is good, my daughter, very good, indeed," the priest remarked withhis mouth full. "Madame Roussillon has not neglected your culinaryeducation." Alice filled a glass for him. It was Bordeaux and veryfragrant. The bouquet reminded him of his sunny boyhood in France, ofhis journey up to Paris and of his careless, joy-brimmed youth in thegay city. How far away, how misty, yet how thrillingly sweet it allwas! He sat with half closed eyes awhile, sipping and dreaming.

  The rain lasted nearly two hours; but the sun was out again when PereBeret took leave of his young friend. They had been having anothergood-natured quarrel over the novels, and Madame Roussillon had comeout on the veranda to join in.

  "I've hidden every book of them," said Madame, a stout and swarthywoman whose pearl-white teeth were her only mark of beauty. Her voiceindicated great stubbornness.

  "Good, good, you have done your very duty, Madame," said Pere Beret,with immense approval in his charming voice.

  "But, Father, you said awhile ago that I should have my own way aboutthis," Alice spoke up with spirit; "and on the strength of that remarkof yours I gave you the pie and wine. You've eaten my pie and swiggedthe wine, and now--"

  Pere Beret put on his straw cap, adjusting it carefully over theshining dome out of which had come so many thoughts of wisdom, kindnessand human sympathy. This done, he gently laid a hand on Alice's brightcrown of hair and said:

  "Bless you, my child. I will pray to the Prince of Peace for you aslong as I live, and I will never cease to beg the Holy Virgin tointercede for you and lead you to the Holy Church."

  He turned and went away; but when he was no farther than the gate,Alice called out:

  "O Father Beret, I forgot to show you something!"

  She ran forth to him and added in a low tone:

  "You know that Madame Roussillon has hidden all the novels from me."

  She was fumbling to get something out of the loose front of her dress.

  "Well, just take a glance at this, will you?" and she showed him alittle leather bound volume, much cracked along the hinges of the back.

  It was Manon Lescaut, that dreadful romance by the famous Abbe Prevost.

  Pere Beret frowned and went his way shaking his head; but before hereached his little hut near the church he was laughing in spite ofhimself.

  "She's not so bad, not so bad," he thought aloud, "it's only her young,independent spirit taking the bit for a wild run. In her sweet soul sheis as good as she is pure."