The Daughter of Alouette

Chapter I

" Sleep, as the sun sleeps, Baby, Far out in the quiet West. Sleep, as the wind is sleeping On the prairie's dewy breast. " Sleep, as the moon sleeps, Baby, With its face against a cloud. Sleep, as the fawn is sleeping, Though the coyote's cry is loud. ' ' Sleep, as the birds sleep, Baby, With the mother watching o'er. Sleep, as the corn is sleeping Inside its closed green door. " Sleep, as the leaves sleep, Baby, In their cradle safe and high. Sleep, as the rain is sleeping In the wigwam of the sky. " A LOUETTE was hushing her baby to sleep ■**■ — the strong, wilful little Taminnika, the darling of her father, who made light of the feminine pride that would fain have brought a man-child into the world. " Sleep ! sleep ! " she crooned to the restless little one, as she drew the braided cradle-string over her shoulder, and fastened its loop so that it half-hid the gorgeous pink-and-green bird embroidered upon the toe of her tiny moccasin.

" Sleep ! sleep ! " The young mother flung her arms above her head and stretched out her foot upon her panther-skin rug till the string was taut, the swinging cradle brushed against the tent pole, and the masses of beads and bells arranged above it to charm the baby's wakeful eye, clashed and rang together. " Sleep, as the sun sleeps, baby," sang the mother reclining at the wigwam door, and the long black lashes fell obediently. " Sleep, as the wind sleeps, baby." She looked across the prairie where the low evening wind ruffled the long grass and folded the petals of the pink and golden daisies. " Will he come that way ? It makes him laugh to mislead sometimes, but, to-day, to-day — Ah ! he will not come that way, I think. He will come, — yes, he will surely come ere Little New Moon has wakened from the cloud and slipped into the trail of Old Sun.

He will come — not through Atana's cornfield — no ! He will come — my heart tells me he will come through the wood that grows by the river." She rose, shaking her scarlet draperies till they gave back a melodious tinkle, and fixed her eyes on the woodland, sombre and melancholy except where the tree-tops caught the dying light. " He will come — this way." As she communed with herself, the long drawn notes of a violin sounded from behind the wigwam. " That way ! " As she turned a gallant young Frenchman, in the white buckskin costume of a hunter, dashed forward and caught her in his arms. "'Tite Alouette, you do not watch for your husband," he cried, separating his words with kisses, " but, hurrah for the little ones ! — in spite of that. Hurrah for the little ones, Bebe and the Little Lark !"

He disengaged one arm to toss his red cap high in air and catch it by the tassel. " Hurrah for little Mother Lark, and the downy one in the nest ! — and now stand off and show how you have grown." It was a brave jest, that : it had lasted fresh and unworn for many a day. He held her from him, the pretty little thing, and his eye travelled from the embroidered moccasins, up the black skirt gay with many coloured ribbons, to the scarlet jacket loosely hung with twinkling discs of silver, tarried a moment at the round throat bound with blue wampum, and rested on the glossy head filleted with bead ropes whose ends dangled to her feet. " You have not grown," he sighed in mock despair, while his teasing glance sought hers. "You are only as high as my heart still, ma mignonne." He lifted her till her lips were on a level with his, kissed her softly, and turned with her to where their child lay sleeping.

" If you wake the little one she will never sleep," protested Alouette. " If I wake the little one, then will I fiddle like an angel, when I choose that she shall sleep," affirmed Pierre Rulo, the greatest of hunters and musicians, mimicking his wife's tone. " In the meantime, she shall see the dance of her maman." " The dance of her maman " — that was a fine sight, indeed, as a few of the old people love to recall even to this day. When Pierre had eaten his supper of little birds and acorn-bread, he lounged outside the wigwam on the platform roofed with green boughs and fragrant grass. With him, of course, was the precious daughter. Bolt up right, round eyed, silently triumphant over her mother, she sat between his knees, thinking her own thoughts and paying no heed to the entrancing notes of his violin, the gathering throng of his visitors, or the dainty little dancer they were hurrying to see.

"'Tite Alouette is very magnificent, to night," commented a grizzled old Frenchman, enthusiastically. The grunt, which was the only reply, showed that his companion was an Indian. "If the old chief, her father, were alive, not so much dancing to the fiddle, and without the other women ? " Another more emphatic grunt gave the Frenchman the answer he expected. " Well, they are a pretty pair," he continued, with a shrug that was not deprecating. " They are two babies yet, and they love much and mean no harm." He moved away from his taciturn companion, and made one of the triangle of spectators that formed between the wigwam, the platform, and a great fire of crackling branches. Wilder and wilder grew the music, tirelessly as a Parisienne 'Tite Alouette danced on and on as her gay young husband had taught her.

The steady stamp, stamp of the Indian's solemn ritual had nothing in common with those airy pirouettes and swayings. Floating like the thistle-down, darting like the jewelled dragon-fly, nodding and balancing like the flower in the wind, the meadow-lark on the bending grass, she was the ecstatic embodiment of " the truth that is beauty." No wonder the old squaws laughed and the young squaws sighed, while the braves dropped the lids over their burning eyes, and the white hunters clapped a frantic encore. Dance on, 'Tite Alouette, dance on : dance on and on while life is strong and young, and promises good days.

Chapter II. Tt

was still noisily stormy. From dawn, a -*■ gusty rain had trampled the sodden fields. At nightfall, the trample gave place to the hiss of the driving sleet. The blast that flung it forward was a bitter one, and all things with hearts to freeze and blood to clog, cowered and shrank from its fury. The very wolves hushed their evil cries and slunk away to covert The watch-dogs whimpered and turned on their straw, the cattle sighed and moaned with their heads against the untasted hay, and the trembling horses whinnied again and again for their friend, the master. "It is a terrible night," said the Reverend Elias Zone, looking like a pleasant, bald gnome in the glare of the flames leaping and swirling in the great stone chimney. "A terrible night!" he repeated, as he turned his back to the fire, and regarded with momentary interest the bald shadow-giant flung upon the cabin wall.

" Yes, dear 'Lias," replied a little matron, rocking in the chimney-corner, " it is a terrible night. And oh, to think ! " The rocking ceased. The little matron lifted a white-robed, sleeping child from her knee to her shoulder, and clasped it there. " Oh, to think ! to think the cruel storm is beating upon Allie's grave ! " " My dear love ! " " Many a night when we were lying warm and soft," went on the little matron, passion ately, " the thought has pierced me like a sword that Allie's bed was bare to every raging season that went by, but I never felt it as I do to night," shivered the little woman, growing more agitated with each word. " It never seemed so desolate and lone, so cruelly desolate and unprotected from ravening wind and beating tempest as it does to-night, out there on the bare, bleak, endless, boundless prairie, shelter less and unsheltered, without kinship to God's guardian, eternal hills, in whose walled-in, peaceful valleys I was born."

" Alice, dear wife — " She was tender always, and so timid," sobbed the mother. " A seam in her little garments cut as a blow would another child; and the dark was not a curtain to her baby eyes — it was an unholy, hovering thing, ready to swoop and destroy. 'Lias, when I think of her, laid where the cold moistures ooze their clammy way, and the light never shines, I feel that I, her mother, must somehow burst my bonds and follow." " Alice, my dear, dear wife, can you think — do you feel ? The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, my love. He hath sown in corruption and raised in incorruption. Thanks be to Him that giveth the victory, that the voice of inspiration hath taught us to disregard the garment of this earthly tabernacle, when the spirit that made it fair and lovely to behold has become the first-fruits of them that slept.

Our little girl, our delicate first-born, would not be out in the wrack of the storm unless sent as a heavenly messenger to guard and guide ; nor is she under the prairie sod. The child in your arms may know the stress of storm and sorrow, but she, whom God's finger touched, is for ever comforted and for ever safe. Try to know it, try to feel it, my Alice." Tears strangled the good man's voice. His arms went round his wife and sleeping child. " I know," sobbed the mother, with her face against her husband's breast, " I know — none so well as I, so very, very well — that Allie is with the angels, in spirit. She was always an angel herself, and that made her so clinging in her love that God's country could not be Paradise without us. She is with the angels, but there are angels that watch and wait outside the gates of pearl.

That must be her place ; that is why Lily may not wear her frocks and shoes, and smirch them with rough usage among common things. Oh, how much the worse to smirch with rains and earth-mould the white body of that shining, waiting soul ! " The man's hand uplifted, as if he were invoking the Divine presence of the Com forter. " It shall be raised in incorruption. That we are promised." There was a long silence, broken only by the snapping of the logs in the fireplace, and the rage of the storm outside. " I am afraid," said the Reverend Elias Zone, as he drew his chair close against his wife's ; " I am afraid, my dear, that the rough and lonely life of the frontier is too hard even for your high courage. If we could send for some one to bear you company — a cousin, or a friend — who, for your sake, would count as nothing the contrast between the stately home of your girlhood and this lodge in the wilderness ; or — if — you — would — would go back to the old home for a visit."

The words came unfalteringly at the last. Mrs. Zone smiled bravely through her tears. One hand sought her husband's, the other rested on the head of their little child. "These constitute my home," she said. "Where they are not could never be home again." " Home to me," cried Elias Zone, " not to be exchanged for the palaces of Eastern kings ! " His eye swept with loving glance the brown log walls, bare save where a gun rested on a pair of antlers, one tiny window shone in the E 17 THE DAUGHTER OF ALOUETTE firelight, and a tall oaken cupboard displayed a store of china and silver. " Not to be exchanged for palaces by me ; but I was born to poverty. I never knew any thing about pomp and splendour, excepting what I read of in Kings and Revelations, and saw when your uncle invited me to your home.

" I remember that first meeting as well as if it were only yesterday," mused the Reverend Elias, turning his face to the flame and regard ing it steadfastly, though he held his wife's hand in his, and patted it gently from time to time. "As I followed your uncle up the walk you came running down it — such a picture ! You had on a twigged muslin " " Sprigged, dear 'Lias," corrected Mrs. Zone, gravely. " Sprigged, if you choose, my love. At any rate, it was a white frock with little flowers sprinkled over it, and you had a long blue sash." "Why, my dear, how could you tell whether it was long or short when I was running towards you?" asked Mrs. Zone, her face brightening with the reminiscence. " My love, you may recall that you did not always proceed in a direct line in those days. On that particular occasion, if I may be allowed to say it, you pranced towards us, turning this way and that, and making all your rows of curls shake and toss, till the two little ones at your temples fell into your eyes, and you had to stop and put them back with your two little hands.

And you had on slippers tied with blue ribbons in some sort of a cross barred way," continued Mr. Zone, with grow ing triumph in the vividness of his recollections, and a tender satisfaction that he was leading his beloved one away from the Valley of the Shadow to that golden day, most sacred to all true women, when Love first revealed him self, timidly, with folded wings, as yet an alien and a stranger. " Some sort of a cross-barred way, indeed ! " exclaimed Mrs. Zone, forgetting for the moment her bereavement as her thoughts went back to the sweet old story ever new, and she laughed so clearly that the child on her bosom stirred in its sleep, and smiled a drowsy recognition of the pleasant sound. "Yes, my dear, that was it; and 'tis a great wonder that I noticed, for you came along so fast that those ribbons fairly flashed.

Dear ! dear ! Shall I ever forget how heavy and awkward I felt?" " Heavy ! why, 'Lias, you were as thin — as thin as you are now, and what could be thinner than that?" The Reverend Elias smiled contentedly. " Perhaps we might say shambling instead of heavy," he suggested. "Shambling! no, sir; the man of my choice could never have been shambling." " I was not at that time the man of your choice, my love, as I knew to my sorrow for many a weary day thereafter. I was only the poorest, most insignificant stripling your uncle could have chosen out of all Virginia for his secretary." "Don't slander my uncle's judgment, 'Lias. I'm sure he changed secretaries often enough before you came to the house. You stayed six years, almost, and might be there yet, if " " If I had not felt called to preach the Word to them that were in the darkness of ignorance, or, worse, having known the way and wilfully turned from it, and shamed the poor, ignorant, Indian heathen by their un godly walk and discourse.

I blush to think that I had a great struggle with my carnal nature when I first felt myself called. Mis souri seemed a long way from Virginia and you, my bitter-sweet delight, the loveliest, best loved lady there." " Loveliest ! that is shameful flattery," cried the little woman, with shining eyes, and dimples twinkling mid her blushes. "Best loved ! yes ; because loved by the truest, kindest heart in Virginia. In Virginia, did I say ? — in the whole world. I was a vain and silly creature, 'Lias, but I could see you loved me, and it was my pride and glory always. My silly vanity made me enjoy it when the others came galloping across country to talk nonsense on the honeysuckle portico at twilight, or glower at each other across the breadth of the drawing-room, while uncle read the Whig newspaper aloud and thought them all as ardent politicians as himself."

The mind of the Reverend Elias did not linger on the theme of the rejected suitors ; it had a gentler dalliance. " My Alice," he said thoughtfully, as he raised his wife's hand to his lips, then placed it on the head of their sleeping child, "it is strange to see history beginning to repeat itself, is it not ? Our Lily is more her mother's child than mine. She is only three, but already she is a copy of her mother's features, her form, her bright fearlessness. "The little catalpa-shoot we brought with us has grown finely, these seven years," he continued, after a pause. " Will it seem strange to us, I wonder, when she stands under its moon-silvered bloom and learns the secret of her own heart while hearing that of another?" Mrs. Zone patted the downy head of the baby-woman and smiled. " Not more strange, not more surprising, than when you stood under the catalpa, by the great stone gate, and in one breath told your love and bade me farewell.

Your secret was no secret — all the world might have read it in your eyes — but despair was in my heart when I saw you ready to depart for the wild frontier, with the words that gave me the right to reveal mine unspoken." " I had nothing to offer you but a steadfast affection," murmured Elias Zone, "and rich and gallant gentlemen had offered that, and gone away sorrowing. How could I think — why should I hope that my poor plea would be potent ?" Because I loved you," said Mrs. Alice Zone. " But you never told your love, and / was the one preyed upon by melancholy and con cealment." "Your fault," said Mrs. Zone, as she rose and moved softly towards the trundle-bed across the room. " My fault ? yes ; but call it by a kinder name. Speech seemed a madness that burst its bonds at last. After, when I contrasted what you left and what you came to, con science said it was a crime.

As the days went by, and our rude life did not blight your tender devotion, I eased my accounting soul with the thought that you would have been less happy had my love been silent and self-sacrificing." "Less happy!" echoed Mrs. Zone, turning from the baby's bed. " Less happy ! What did I know of happiness in any home but this ? Know ! you who are a man, and can never know except by the hearing of it, that a mother's very sorrows are sweeter than any girlish joy. Happy ! I thought I was happy in the in dulgent kindness of my kinsfolk ; I thought I was happy when I tried my foolish little arts of captivation on the youths of the countryside, and my ear drank in their flattery ; I thought I was happy when after the intolerable pain and fright of your farewell the right was given me to say, 'Whither thou goest I will go '; I thought I was happy in those tranquil nights and golden days when we floated down the Ohio and Mississippi ; in the more stirring times when our boat struggled against the turbid current of the Missouri ; in the hour we made this cabin — a nest as simple as the crows build, but our own — our first home ; in the loitering rides through the forest ; and the dash across the prairie, when, like our first parents, we spent our honeymoon alone with love and God.

But happiness was an idle sound in my ears until our child, our Allie — our first-born — was laid upon my bosom. The careless ease that the untried spirit knows for happiness I could not, would not, have again." With shining eyes and outreached arms she moved towards her husband, but midway she stopped, a loud and terrible cry forced itself from her whitened lips, and she stood listening with her clenched hands pressed upon her frantic breast. " Alice ! my love ! my love ! what is it ?" "Hear her, again!" she cried, distractedly. " Oh, I felt she could not bear it out there without me ! Yes, yes, Allie, darling child ! If you cannot come to me, why I will go to you. Take your arms away, 'Lias. I will go ! I must !" "Alice, my love," he expostulated with the distracted, struggling creature, striving to free herself from his detaining arms and rush out into the night, " calm yourself.

There is no sound outside save the hiss of the sleet and the uneasy noises of animals dissatisfied with their shelter. Try to control your emotions, dear, and you will Oh, my God !" He had heard it He had no strength to hold her. With another cry she broke from him and flung wide the door. As she dashed over the threshold, the whim pering hounds broke into full cry and ran before her, but ere they had gone a stone's throw the belling was a whimper again, and the running ceased. " If any unfortunate brother has lost his way and is in need of help let him speak to me," shouted Elias Zone, stumbling along in the pitchy blackness, and harkening in vain for the sound of his wife's voice, or her little moccasined feet. "Speak to me, oh, speak!" he entreated. " In heaven's name I conjure you, say who and what you are, and why you are abroad on such a fearful night ?"

From the earth a child's wail rose, and his wife's voice answered it. In another moment she called to him — " 'Lias ! 'Lias ! help ! There is a dead mother here, with a living child on her frozen breast. I have fallen across them." Before he could reach her she was on her feet. " I have the child," she said, as she ran past him. " I will send Nance and Wash to help with her." The rigid bundle that he found was wofully light; Alice had but time to tear the frozen husk of blanket from the child, to set it warm, soft, and dry beside the hearth, and call, "Nancy!" "Washington! wake! wake! and help us!" when he stumbled in and laid his burden down. There was a mumbling and shuffling over head, the rattle of footsteps on loose boards, a clumsy descent on an unsteady ladder set in the angle of the chimney and the wall.

An oily-black woman, closely followed by a weaz ened brown man, stepped to the floor. " O, my shinin' crown in Heb'n ! " exclaimed the woman, catching sight of the child, " ef dar ain't Taminnika! Why, honey, huccome ? Oh ! pity, pity ! dar 's 'Tite Alouette, huh little self." " She lives ! " cried Elias Zone. " She lives ! There is warmth over her heart. Get blankets and buffalo-robes to wrap her in. And, Alice, leave the child awhile, and strip away these melting rags." " Don't stop rubbing, Nancy. Don't stop, Wash. I know there is life here yet." " Rubbin' won't spread it to de outside. Wa'm hit wid whiskey," counselled the weaz ened brown man. " Hursh, nigger," whispered the black woman, peevishly. " Her don' want nuttin', now. De Lord took 'er wits long 'go, an' now He 's called in 'er soul to jine with 'em ag'in in Heb'n. Hit's de 'stracted squaw, Marse 'Lias," she added, aloud.

" De lil Pawnee dat had de white man, dat Rulo dat Gaspe killed, down on de levde. She say he ain' dead, he lost, an' she hunt 'im all up an' down de Ian'." " Distracted ? Poor, poor soul ! " Mrs. Zone had brought from the tall cup board a tiny flask of some strong, fragrant cordial, and she forced a few drops of it between the little Pawnee's lips. "A few drops more, Alice. I saw her eye lids flutter." " Lord, Lord ! " gabbled Nancy, still chafing a tiny claw-like hand, " ef Rulo could see 'er now. Wen 'e hunted an' trapped so' de Fur Comp'ny, de best of all was kep' back so' 'er. Eagle fedders an' otter skins-was scacely good enough. Ef he could see dese rags, he'd rise f'om de tomb and hunt once mo'. Ah — ee ! ah — ee ! de good times pass like de dream in de night. 'Tite Alouette, 'Tite Alouette, shut dem mo'nful eyes.

I 's fear'd to look in 'em — wide-open so, and starin'." " Don't ! don't, Nancy ! " said the white mother, almost angrily. "I think she must hear and understand. Alouette, dear Alouette, hear me ! it is a mother that speaks to you. Your child is safe, is well. Look ! look ! she is in my arms. Oh ! can you not see ? Can you not hear? Baby, baby, press your cheek against your mother's! Speak to her, little one, let her hear your voice ! " The silent, bright-eyed little creature under stood. She stretched out her tiny palms, and cooed strange, soft gutturals, that brightened for an instant the distressful gaze bent, not on her, but the eternity the sad spirit was to enter alone. " She is recovering, thank God ! " cried Elias Zone. " Could we not lift her to the bed ? " Nancy slipped her hand under the blankets, and laid it over 'Tite Alouette's heart.

"De Lord am liftin' 'er higher 'n de bed, right now," she said solemnly, and in an under tone began to chant that strangest of com mendatories for the passing soul, the weird hymn, " De Lord am comin' down." With a startled look, Elias Zone lifted the wrist of Alouette, then laid it gently down, and by a gesture commanded the silence of Nancy. " Let us pray," he said. Oh, if the Master who called him to his work would vouchsafe the word in season which should change that dumb anguish to His per fect peace ! " Dear Lord," he prayed, " we entreat Thee to have pity on this, Thy servant, so soon to appear in Thy august presence. Doubtless she is a sinner, dear Lord, like the rest of us, who have had better opportunities to know Thy way and walk therein ; but if she has sinned, she has also suffered, and O, compassionate One, let the thought of the suffering overspread the knowledge of the sin, and blot it out for ever.

Dear Lord, Thou seest for Thyself that she is not at ease, and her soul hath an anguish her lips cannot speak. Help her, comfort her, en courage her, as Thou alone canst. We appeal to Thee to put arms of love around her, and lift her from darkness into light ; and we do it with confidence, knowing that Thou art not squeamish about outward seeming, since it was Thy pleasure to heal lepers and other unclean folk ; to teach, by parable of Lazarus, the beg gar, and to forgive the thief on the cross, and some other sinners not caught by the law. She is sore troubled, and we know not the cause thereof; but Thou knowest. If remorse rends her, forgive her, and bid her be healed. If she fears to cross the Valley of the Shadow, reach down a hand to lead her, and make the way light. Thou knowest how rough and dark the way is, Jesus, for once Thou Thyself wentest over it in grief and fear, and long didst Thou struggle ere Thou couldst willingly set Thy foot in the way.

To Him, who helped Thee, we cry : Father, who art in Heaven, we ask help of Thee for this Thy child, because Thou art a Father. We ask it of Thee, Thou Man of Sorrows, because Thou art intimately acquainted with grief. We ask it of Thee, Holy Spirit, because Thou art the Word, and canst thrill with comfort in the dying ear. To The Three, one and eternal, we commend her spirit. Amen and Amen." The word in season had not been given him to speak. What could soften the agony mirrored in those glazing eyes ? Dear Lord, dear Lord, let her not pass like this! " Listen, Alouette, listen ! " The white mother checked her sobs, and bent her lips close to the immovable face at her knee. " Try to understand, my dear, what I say. Do you see your child ? No, no, you cannot, but, dear heart, she is here — she is in my arms.

Not yet ! not yet ! Stay your passing, Alouette, until I say it. Oh ! my sister, you must go and she must stay, but I will be her mother until you claim her again. Mine to guard and guide and cherish, Alouette ; on my knees I say it. Oh ! be comforted, though yours is the sorrow of sorrows beside which all others are light — to go first, and leave a tender child to brave the world alone. Be comforted, Alouette, your child shall be as dear to me as mine who is to greet you in the land to which you go." The word in season was spoken. Love, rapture, gratitude, shone for an instant. Then the lids fell. The wanderer went out on a new path ; she would retrace her steps no more. c