While joining in Captain Helm's laugh at the expense of Vincennes, Beverley took leave to indulge a mental reservation in favor of Alice. He could not bear to class her with the crowd of noisy, thoughtless, mercurial beings whom he heard still singing gay snatches and calling to one another from distance to distance, as they strolled homeward in groups and pairs. Nor could the impending danger of an enforced surrender to the English and Indians drive from his mind her beautiful image, while he lay for the rest of the night between sleeping and waking on his primitive bed, alternately hearing over again her every phrase and laugh, and striving to formulate some definite plan for defending the town and fort. His heart was full of her. She had surprised his nature and filled it, as with a wonderful, haunting song. His youth, his imagination, all that was fresh and spontaneously gentle and natural in him, was flooded with the magnetic splendor of her beauty. And yet, in his pride (and it was not a false pride, but rather a noble regard for his birthright) he vaguely realized how far she was from him, how impossible.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DILEMMA OF CAPTAIN HELM
Oncle Jazon, feeling like a fish returned to the water after a long and torturing captivity in the open air, plunged into the forest with anticipations of lively adventure and made his way toward the Wea plains. It was his purpose to get a boat at the village of Ouiatenon and pull thence up the Wabash until he could find out what the English were doing. He chose for his companions on this dangerous expedition two expert coureurs de bois, Dutremble and Jacques Bailoup. Fifty miles up the river they fell in with some friendly Indians, well known to them all, who were returning from the portage.
The savages informed them that there were no signs of an English advance in that quarter. Some of them had been as far as the St. Joseph river and to within a short distance of Detroit without seeing a white man or hearing of any suspicious movements on the part of Hamilton. So back came Oncle Jazon with his pleasing report, much disappointed that he had not been able to stir up some sort of trouble.
It was Helm's turn to laugh.
"What did I tell you?" he cried, in a jolly mood, slapping Beverley on the shoulder. "I knew mighty well that it was all a big story with nothing in it. What on earth would the English be thinking about to march an army away off down here only to capture a rotten stockade and a lot of gabbling parly-voos?"
Beverley, while he did not feel quite as confident as his chief, was not sorry that things looked a little brighter than he had feared they would turn out to be. Secretly, and without acknowledging it to himself, he was delighted with the life he was living. The Arcadian atmosphere of Vincennes clothed him in its mists and dreams. No matter what way the weather blew its breath, cold or warm, cloudy or fair, rain or snow, the peace in his soul changed not. His nature seemed to hold all of its sterner and fiercer traits in abeyance while he domiciled himself absolutely within his narrow and monotonous environment. Since the dance at the river house a new content, like a soft and diffused sweetness, had crept through his blood with a vague, tingling sense of joy.
He began to like walking about rather aimlessly in the town's narrow streets, with the mud-daubed cabins on either hand. This simple life under low, thatched roofs had a charm. When a door was opened he could see a fire of logs on the ample hearth shooting its yellow tongues up the sooty chimney-throat. Soft creole voices murmured and sang, or jangled their petty domestic discords. Women in scant petticoats, leggings and moccasins swept snow from the squat verandas, or fed the pigs in little sties behind the cabins. Everybody cried cheerily: "Bon jour, Monsieur, comment allez-vous?" as he went by, always accompanying the verbal salute with a graceful wave of the hand.