The rose of old St. Louis 3 – Dillon · Verses Across
Literature · Historical Fiction
The rose of old St. Louis 3I Propose a Toast
18
Literature · Historical Fiction
The rose of old St. Louis 3
I Propose a Toast
DillonEnglish
"The rose that all are praising."
"And this is the village of St. Louis, sir?"
My discomfiture, my mortification, my rage, the vision of dainty beauty, the strange little savant--every remembrance of my brief visit to Cahokia had been swept away by the rushing waters of the great river of which I had read and heard so much.
My brain was teeming with tales of the Spanish adventurer De Soto; of the French trader Joliet; of the devoted and saintly Jesuit, beloved of the Indians, Père Marquette; and of the bold Norman La Salle, who hated and feared all Jesuits. I saw the river through a veil of romance that gilded its turbid waters, but it was something far other than its romantic past that set my pulses to beating, and the blood rushing through my veins so that I hardly heard my captain's answer, and hardly knew what I replied to him.
Through the months of my sojourn in Kentucky there had been one all-absorbing theme--the closing of the Mississippi to American boats by the Spanish, and their refusal to grant us a right of deposit on the Isle of New Orleans. Feeling had run so high that there were muttered threats against the government at Washington.
There were two factions, each acting secretly and each numbering thousands. One was for setting off at once down the river to capture New Orleans and take exclusive possession of both sides of the river; and if the government at Washington would not help them, or, still worse, forbade them the emprise, they would set up an independent government of the West. The other faction, inspired by secret agents of the Spanish government, was for floating the Spanish flag and proclaiming themselves subjects of Charles of Aragon. Spain's secret emissaries were eloquent of the neglect of the home government in the East, and its powerlessness to help the Westerners if it would, and it was said they clenched their arguments with chink of Spanish gold. Treason and patriotism, a wild indignation at wrongs unredressed, and a wilder enthusiasm for conquest sent the blood of Kentucky to fever-heat. Passions were inflamed until it needed but a spark from a tinder to set them ablaze.
With me, friend and distant kinsman of the Clarkes, there was no possibility of being touched by the taint of treason. But while it would be treason of the blackest dye, and most abhorrent to my soul, to submit to Spain's rule, to my young blood there could be no treason in compelling Spain at the point of the sword to submit to our demands. I was all for war, and when the cooler judgment of General Clarke and his brother, my captain, prevailed to calm for a time the wild tumult of war, I was bitterly disappointed.
Now for the first time I was beholding the river that had aroused the mighty tempest in Kentucky, and it was not the tales of De Soto and La Salle, of Joliet and Père Marquette, that sent the blood rushing through my veins, but the thought that this was the mighty river forbidden to our commerce, that the swirling brown water at my feet was rushing down to the Spanish city on the Gulf, and I longed to be one of an army rushing with it to secure our natural and inalienable rights by conquest.
I knew that Captain Clarke was visiting St. Louis to make some arrangements for his brother's debts--debts incurred principally to Mr. Gratiot and Mr. Vigo for no benefit to himself, but in rescuing and protecting the people of Illinois from the Indians and the British; debts belonging of right to the government, but repudiated by it, and left to be borne by the noble man who, almost alone, by a heroism and genius for war unparalleled had saved all that Western country to the Union.
I knew this was my captain's errand, yet I hoped there might be some touching on the question of the river navigation with the Spanish governor of St. Louis, and I had visions of returning to Kentucky and, amid the acclaims of our fellow-citizens, announcing that Captain Clarke, assisted by his young kinsman, had succeeded in convincing the Spanish governor Delassus of the wrongs inflicted upon American commerce by the unjust interdiction; that Delassus had thereupon remonstrated with the intendant at New Orleans, and, as a result, the river was thrown open to the Gulf, and a port of deposit granted on the Isle of New Orleans where our merchants might store the goods they brought down the river for sale.
It was because my brain was teeming with such sweet dreams of glory that I answered my captain so absent-mindedly and so little to the point. It was still so early that the low morning sun at our backs had just begun to gild the bluffs before us. We could not have had a finer first view of the Spanish town of which we had heard so much. High and dry on its limestone bluffs, where no floods for which the great river is so famous could ever reach it, it extended in a straggling line for a mile and a half. Its dwellings, some of them of imposing size, were embowered in trees, and, at that distance, seemed to stand in the midst of large gardens. Behind the village rose another hill, on the summit of which stood a fort, and from the fort, in either direction, palisades curved around the town, interrupted at intervals by demilunes, and terminating at the bluffs in stone towers. Behind this second terrace the land continued to rise in a succession of terraces, covered partly with low bushes and shrubs and partly with high, waving woods, giving an impression of indescribable richness to the landscape, every detail of which the level rays of the bright morning sun brought out in strong relief. The whole made a most impressive appearance, more like the picture of walled towns on the Rhine than like anything I had seen in our country.
We were now so far out in the stream that the men could no longer use their poles, and were trusting to the great sail they had spread to catch a stiff south-eastern breeze, assisted by vigorous strokes of their paddles, and I could see that against the swift current they were straining every nerve and yet were steadily being borne below the village and the landing-place.
Paddling on the Schuylkill and the Delaware was ever a favorite pastime with me, and I doubt not I was a little proud of my skill. Forgetting my recent illness and the weak state it had left me in, I seized the paddle from a young fellow who seemed to me well-nigh giving over, and unceremoniously tumbled him out of his seat into the bottom of the boat, while I took his place. To my astonishment, I found this was an entirely different stream from the steadily flowing rivers of the East. My paddle was like to be snatched from my hand at the first dip into the powerful current, and though I saved it by a mad and desperate clutch, yet it felt like a feather in my hands, and I saw my captain (who had witnessed my peremptory usurpation of the paddle) trying to suppress a sly smile, while my mortified ears caught the sound of derisive snickers behind me, and Yorke, the impudent black, grinned openly from ear to ear.
The worst of it was, I myself could see we were losing ground more rapidly than before. Now, I had ever a horror of owning myself beaten (unless it were in argument, for I have no skill with words). I would fight to the last gasp, but I would never surrender, which is sometimes a foolish way, but more often wins victory out of defeat. With my captain looking on, I felt that defeat even in so small a matter would be a disgrace I could never survive. And so, admonishing myself to keep cool, and remembering a turn of the wrist that an old Indian had taught me in Pennsylvania, I very soon caught the trick of the blade and found myself holding my own. Hope returned, and I gradually put forth more and more strength, until, to my great satisfaction, I at last saw that we were no longer drifting down-stream, but steadily making head against the current, with fair promise of reaching our landing-place. Then, indeed, did I feel exultant, and such courage leaped through my veins, and so swift and sure and strong were my strokes, that I felt I could alone, with my single arm, bring the great boat to harbor. But for the second time that morning was my vanity my undoing. We did indeed make the landing, where a great concourse of people had gathered to meet us, among them a stately Spanish don (who, I had no doubt, was the governor) surrounded by a retinue of officers; but as the keel of our boat grounded in the soft mud and my captain called me to come with him to meet the governor, and I arose in my place to obey him, suddenly a great blackness and dizziness seized me, and I knew no more until I opened my eyes to find myself being borne, on the shoulders of four men, up the steep bluff toward the village street. I insisted in the most forcible terms on being put upon my feet at once, but as I spoke in English, and the soldiers were either Spanish or creole French, my entreaties and imprecations were lost upon them. Nor did my kicking and pushing avail me any better; they but held me the more firmly for my struggles. Then I called out lustily for help, and the ever-ready Yorke (but with the grin that I had learned at times to consider detestable) ran to my aid.
"Yorke!" I shouted to him; "make the rascals put me down this minute, and do you, sir, shut that domtiferous mouth of yours. I warn you, sir, you grin at your peril!"
My mother had ever a horror of the oaths with which gentlemen lard their conversation, and because I loved and honored her greatly, I had resolved that I would never, to use her words, "sully my mouth" with one. But often feeling the need of some more emphatic expressions than our language provides except in the form of oaths, I had coined for myself a small vocabulary to be used on occasions requiring great emphasis. Since these words all began with a d, I had the satisfaction of feeling that I was sufficiently emphatic without violating the respect due my mother.
Whether it was the strangeness of the form of my imprecations or the length of my adjective that scared Yorke, certain it is that he was sobered at once, and with the solemnity of the Spanish don himself he soon made the soldiers understand that they must put me down. Once on my own feet, though I still felt a little shaky, I was able, by availing myself of Yorke's arm, to climb the steep path leading up the bluff, and soon found myself in the main street of the village, which the habitans called the Rue Royale.
We had come out into a large square or marketplace, filled with the throng of people I had seen at the landing and many more, so that, as the people surged backward and forward to get a nearer view, the whole open space looked like a great posy-bed of many-hued flowers waving in a summer breeze. And if St. Louis had had a foreign look to me when viewed from a distance, still more did I feel as if I were in a strange town in a strange land as I heard the babble of strange tongues about me and saw the picturesque costumes of the habitans, so unlike anything I had ever seen in Philadelphia or Kentucky. Negroes were chattering their queer creole patois, and Indians of many nations were gathered into groups, some of them bedizened with the cheap finery of the stores, some of them wearing only bright-hued blankets, but with wonderful head-dresses of eagle feathers, and all of them looking gravely on with a curiosity as silent as that of the habitans was noisy and babbling. The presence of so many Indians and on such friendly terms struck me as strange, for in Kentucky there were no such friendly relations between Indians and whites, and the presence of so many of them would have betokened danger and caused much uneasiness.
It thrilled me much that our coming should have made so great excitement in the village, and doubtless my vanity would have taken fire again if I had not known that it was my captain these people had come to see, and not myself, of whom they had never heard. Even my captain I knew must shine in a reflected glory, as the brother of General George Rogers Clarke, whom the people of St. Louis worshiped as their savior in the affair of 1780, when the Osages surprised the men at work in the fields, and whom all the Indians of Illinois regarded with fear and reverence as the great "Captain of the Long Knives." Yet I could see that many of their curious glances fell on me also, and I let go of Yorke's arm and walked steadily with my head in the air, as befitted the friend of Captain Clarke.
We had stopped in front of a large stone building set inside a walled inclosure. My captain, who was in advance with the governor and his party, as he entered the inclosure turned and beckoned to Yorke and me to follow him. The throng parted to let us through, and as we entered the gates I saw that the governor had stopped on the wide gallery that ran round the four sides of the building, and with a stately flourish was bidding my captain welcome to Government House.
With Yorke close at my footsteps, I followed the governor's party through a wide door into a great room that extended through the house (as I could see by the open doors and windows at the rear), and that was almost as wide as it was long, with doors opening into rooms on both sides. Here I was presented to Governor Delassus, who received me cordially, and who, with his dark eyes and punctilious manners, was my idea of a Spanish don.
On either side of him stood two men who also greeted me cordially, but without the punctiliousness of the Spaniard. They were the two Chouteaus, Auguste and Jean Pierre. I had heard much of them, both in Philadelphia and in Kentucky, and I found it difficult to conceal the curiosity with which I regarded them. I had expected to find two rough frontiersmen, somewhat after the manner of Daniel Boone or Simon Kenyon, both of whom I had seen at General Clarke's; but they were very far from that. Auguste, the elder, and who, almost more than his step-father, Laclede, was the founder of St. Louis, was the graver of the two, with keen, shrewd eyes that betokened the successful man of business. Pierre (as everybody called the younger) looked not at all like his brother: taller and slenderer of build, his flashing dark eyes and gay manners must have been inherited from his father, Laclede, for Madame Chouteau (whom I came to know very well later) was even graver and sterner in manner than her eldest son, Auguste.
But interested as I was in meeting these men,--and there were many others of whom I had heard, Manuel Lisa, Gabriel Cerré, Francis Vigo, and Josef Marie Papin,--I could not resist casting many a furtive glance toward a table set in the rear of the great room. My bowl of gruel in the early morning had satisfied me at the time, but I was still weak from illness and much fasting, and my hard pull at the paddles had left me famished indeed. It was now, I was quite sure by the sun and the shadows, nearly eleven o'clock, and I began to feel the dizziness once more, and to be seized with a terrible fear that I should again be overcome. It was with a great joy, therefore, that I began to observe black servants bringing in smoking viands and arranging them upon the table, and no words ever sounded more pleasant in my ears than the governor's invitation to breakfast.
As we were about to sit down, my captain on the governor's right, and I very kindly placed on his left, with Mr. Pierre Chouteau beside me, there was a noise at the door, and Mr. Gratiot and Dr. Saugrain entered. They were welcomed in such fashion it was easy to see they were both prime favorites in that society. In response to my captain's inquiries, they said they had left Cahokia very shortly after us, bringing the young ladies over in two small boats, and the boats being light and easily handled, they had nearly overtaken us.
At the mention of the young ladies I felt myself flush painfully, and I almost thought the little doctor regarded me with a wicked twinkle in his eyes. But I was not sure, and I resolutely put the thought of them out of my mind, while I devoted myself to the more serious matters of the table.
And, indeed, seldom has it been my lot to sit down to a more delicious meal. It was my first taste of French cookery, and I proved then, what I had often heard, that the French have a talent for savors and seasonings, and for dainty service, denied to us Anglo-Saxons. It may be, also, that my long fasting (for my light breakfast had hardly broken my fast) added a sauce to the viands more potent than any Frenchman's skill, for my appetite had come back with a rush, and for the first time in many days I ate like a well man, and a very hungry one. So well, forsooth, did I ply my knife and fork that Pierre Chouteau could not forbear congratulating me, in his polished French manner, on my prowess as a trencherman; at which I had the grace to blush.
And now, having taken the edge off my hunger, I had leisure to enjoy the swift exchange of wit and repartee flashing back and forth across the table in mixed English, French, and Spanish. There had been many toasts, most courteously worded and delicately drunk, for I noticed these Frenchmen were not deep drinkers, and did not feel it necessary to drain their glasses at every toast, as is the manner in Kentucky. My captain's health had been drunk and he had responded with the governor's (nor did our polite hosts forget to honor me), and the gaiety began to grow somewhat noisy, when a youngster, who had, no doubt, been drinking a little more than was good for him, sprang to his feet. Waving his goblet toward Yorke (who stood behind Captain Clarke's chair grinning delightedly at every flash of wit, whether he understood it or not), he called out:
"I drink to the health of Monsieur Yorke, gentlemen, tallest and most smiling of sable Mercurys. May his inches never be fewer nor his smiles grow less."
I saw my captain frown, and Yorke, who did not understand one word that was said, since it was all in French, easily understood the gesture toward him, and the hesitating glances in his direction, and the half-lifted glasses as their owners were in doubt whether the toast was to be taken in jest or earnest. His eyes rolled in terror from the proposer of the toast to Captain Clarke, and back again. I knew my captain would never brook the indignity of having his health drunk at the same table and by the same people who afterward drank his slave's, and fearing an awkward contretemps, I sprang to my feet to avert it. I lifted my glass high as I cried:
"Listen to me, messieurs! Is there no fair lady to whose honor your young men would drink? For never could we drink to the ladies after drinking to a negro and a slave. I give you, messieurs, the fairest lady in St. Louis!"
As I said it, for one fleeting moment I had a vision of a round white arm bare to the shoulder, a slender hand grasping a tawny mane, and black eyes flashing with scorn. Perhaps it was due to that vision that my voice had a ring in it that brought every man to his feet, and as glasses clinked, each man drank to the lady of his love with a rousing cheer.
As we brought our glasses to the table, rims down, the young man who had proposed Yorke's health said, with a bow of apology to me:
"I accept my rebuke, and if the gentleman permit I would like to repeat his toast: To the fairest lady in St. Louis--Dr. Saugrain's ward!"
"Fill up your glasses, gentlemen, drain them to the lees, and throw them over your shoulders; 'tis a worthy toast," cried the governor; and, filling his to the brim, and draining it at one draught, he flung it over his shoulder--an example which the others, benedict and bachelor, followed with ardor. In the midst of the crashing of glass, I thought I caught Dr. Saugrain's and Mr. Gratiot's eyes fixed curiously on me. I turned to Mr. Pierre Chouteau:
"Dr. Saugrain's ward must be fair indeed, to rouse such enthusiasm," I said.
"Vraiment," returned Pierre, "she is the Rose of St. Louis. But you dine with Dr. Saugrain to-day: you will see, and then you will know. Young Josef Papin yonder, who proposed the toast, is wild about her. And so are half the young men of the village."
"Vraiment," I murmured to myself, "if she is fairer than the scornful Mademoiselle Pelagie, she is fair indeed!"
And yet I found myself looking forward to Dr. Saugrain's dinner with suppressed excitement, while I puzzled my brains to interpret his and Mr. Gratiot's enigmatical glances in my direction.
