At Fault (15 page)

Next she was at the cottage rousing Hosmer. But the alarm of the bell
had already awakened him, and he was dressed and out on the porch
almost as soon as Thérèse had called. Melicent joined them, highly
agitated, and prepared to contribute her share towards any scene that
might be going forward. But she found little encouragement for heroics
with Hosmer. In saddling his horse rather hastily he was as unmoved as
though preparing for an uneventful morning canter. He stood at the
foot of the stairs preparing to mount when Grégoire rode up as if
pursued by furies; checking his horse with a quick, violent wrench
that set it quivering in its taut limbs.

"Well," said Hosmer, "I guess it's done for. How did it happen? who
did it?"

"Joçint's work," answered Grégoire bitingly.

"The damned scoundrel," muttered Hosmer, "where is he?"

"Don' botha 'bout Joçint; he ain't goin' to set no mo' mill afire,"
saying which, he turned his horse and the two rode furiously away.

Melicent grasped Thérèse's arm convulsively.

"What does he mean?" she asked in a frightened whisper.

"I—I don't know," Thérèse faltered. She had clasped her hands
spasmodically together, at Grégoire's words, trembling with horror of
what must be their meaning.

"May be he arrested him," suggested the girl.

"I hope so. Come; let's go to bed: there's no use staying out here in
the cold and dark."

Hosmer had left the sitting-room door open, and Thérèse entered. She
approached Fanny's door and knocked twice: not brusquely, but
sufficiently loud to be heard from within, by any one who was awake.
No answer came, and she went away, knowing that Fanny slept.

The unusual sound of the bell, ringing two hours past midnight—that
very deadest hour of the night—had roused the whole plantation. On
all sides squads of men and a few venturesome women were hurrying
towards the fire; the dread of supernatural encounters overcome for
the moment by such strong reality and by the confidence lent them in
each other's company.

There were many already gathered around the mill, when Grégoire and
Hosmer reached it. All effort to save anything had been abandoned as
useless. The books and valuables had been removed from the office. The
few householders—mill-hands—whose homes were close by, had carried
their scant belongings to places of safety, but everything else was
given over to the devouring flames.

The heat from this big raging fire was intense, and had driven most of
the gaping spectators gradually back—almost into the woods. But
there, to one side, where the fire was rapidly gaining, and making
itself already uncomfortably felt, stood a small awe-stricken group
talking in whispers; their ignorance and superstition making them
irresolute to lay a hand upon the dead Joçint. His body lay amongst
the heavy timbers, across a huge beam, with arms outstretched and head
hanging down upon the ground. The glazed eyes were staring up into the
red sky, and on his swarthy visage was yet the horror which had come
there, when he looked in the face of death.

"In God's name, what are you doing?" cried Hosmer. "Can't some of you
carry that boy's body to a place of safety?"

Grégoire had followed, and was looking down indifferently at the dead.
"Come, len' a han' there; this is gittin' too durn hot," he said,
stooping to raise the lifeless form. Hosmer was preparing to help him.
But there was some one staggering through the crowd; pushing men to
right and left. With now a hand upon the breast of both Hosmer and
Grégoire, and thrusting them with such force and violence, as to lay
them prone amongst the timbers. It was the father. It was old Morico.
He had awakened in the night and missed his boy. He had seen the fire;
indeed close enough that he could hear its roaring; and he knew
everything. The whole story was plain to him as if it had been told by
a revealing angel. The strength of his youth had come back to speed
him over the ground.

"Murderers!" he cried looking about him with hate in his face. He did
not know who had done it; no one knew yet, and he saw in every man he
looked upon the possible slayer of his child.

So here he stood over the prostrate figure; his old gray jeans hanging
loosely about him; wild eyed—with bare head clasped between his
claw-like hands, which the white disheveled hair swept over. Hosmer
approached again, offering gently to help him carry his son away.

"Stand back," he hurled at him. But he had understood the offer. His
boy must not be left to burn like a log of wood. He bent down and
strove to lift the heavy body, but the effort was beyond his strength.
Seeing this he stooped again and this time grasped it beneath the
arms; then slowly, draggingly, with halting step, began to move
backward.

The fire claimed no more attention. All eyes were fastened upon this
weird picture; a sight which moved the most callous to offer again and
again assistance, that was each time spurned with an added defiance.

Hosmer stood looking on, with folded arms; moved by the grandeur and
majesty of the scene. The devouring element, loosed in its awful
recklessness there in the heart of this lonely forest. The motley
group of black and white standing out in the great red light,
powerless to do more than wait and watch. But more was he stirred to
the depths of his being, by the sight of this human tragedy enacted
before his eyes.

Once, the old man stops in his backward journey. Will he give over?
has his strength deserted him? is the thought that seizes every
on-looker. But no—with renewed effort he begins again his slow
retreat, till at last a sigh of relief comes from the whole watching
multitude. Morico with his burden has reached a spot of safety. What
will he do next? They watch in breathless suspense. But Morico does
nothing. He only stands immovable as a carved image. Suddenly there is
a cry that reaches far above the roar of fire and crash of falling
timbers: "
Mon fils! mon garçon!
" and the old man totters and falls
backward to earth, still clinging to the lifeless body of his son. All
hasten towards him. Hosmer reaches him first. And when he gently lifts
the dead Joçint, the father this time makes no hinderance, for he too
has gone beyond the knowledge of all earthly happenings.

There had been no witness to the killing of Joçint; but there were few
who did not recognize Grégoire's hand in the affair. When met with the
accusation, he denied it, or acknowledged it, or evaded the charge
with a jest, as he felt for the moment inclined. It was a deed
characteristic of any one of the Santien boys, and if not altogether
laudable—Joçint having been at the time of the shooting unarmed—yet
was it thought in a measure justified by the heinousness of his
offense, and beyond dispute, a benefit to the community.

Hosmer reserved the expression of his opinion. The occurrence once
over, with the emotions which it had awakened, he was inclined to look
at it from one of those philosophic stand-points of his friend
Homeyer. Heredity and pathology had to be considered in relation with
the slayer's character. He saw in it one of those interesting problems
of human existence that are ever turning up for man's contemplation,
but hardly for the exercise of man's individual judgment. He was
conscious of an inward repulsion which this action of Grégoire's
awakened in him,—much the same as a feeling of disgust for an animal
whose instinct drives it to the doing of violent deeds,—yet he made
no difference in his manner towards him.

Thérèse was deeply distressed over this double tragedy: feeling keenly
the unhappy ending of old Morico. But her chief sorrow came from the
callousness of Grégoire, whom she could not move even to an avowal of
regret. He could not understand that he should receive any thing but
praise for having rid the community of so offensive and dangerous a
personage as Joçint; and seemed utterly blind to the moral aspect of
his deed.

An event at once so exciting and dramatic as this conflagration, with
the attendant deaths of Morico and his son, was much discussed amongst
the negroes. They were a good deal of one opinion in regard to Joçint
having been only properly served in getting "w'at he done ben lookin'
fu' dis long time." Grégoire was rather looked upon as a clever
instrument in the Lord's service; and the occurrence pointed a moral
which they were not likely to forget.

The burning of the mill entailed much work upon Hosmer, to which he
turned with a zest—an absorption that for the time excluded
everything else.

Melicent had shunned Grégoire since the shooting. She had avoided
speaking with him—even looking at him. During the turmoil which
closely followed upon the tragic event, this change in the girl had
escaped his notice. On the next day he suspected it only. But the
third day brought him the terrible conviction. He did not know that
she was making preparations to leave for St. Louis, and quite
accidentally overheard Hosmer giving an order to one of the unemployed
mill hands to call for her baggage on the following morning before
train time.

As much as he had expected her departure, and looked painfully forward
to it, this certainty—that she was leaving on the morrow and without
a word to him—bewildered him. He abandoned at once the work that was
occupying him.

"I didn' know Miss Melicent was goin' away to-morrow," he said in a
strange pleading voice to Hosmer.

"Why, yes," Hosmer answered, "I thought you knew. She's been talking
about it for a couple of days."

"No, I didn' know nothin' 'tall 'bout it," he said, turning away and
reaching for his hat, but with such nerveless hand that he almost
dropped it before placing it on his head.

"If you're going to the house," Hosmer called after him, "tell
Melicent that Woodson won't go for her trunks before morning. She
thought she'd need to have them ready to-night."

"Yes, if I go to the house. I don' know if I'm goin' to the house or
not," he replied, walking listlessly away.

Hosmer looked after the young man, and thought of him for a moment: of
his soft voice and gentle manner—perplexed that he should be the same
who had expressed in confidence the single regret that he had not been
able to kill Joçint more than once.

Grégoire went directly to the house, and approached that end of the
veranda on which Melicent's room opened. A trunk had already been
packed and fastened and stood outside, just beneath the low-silled
window that was open. Within the room, and also beneath the window,
was another trunk, before which Melicent kneeled, filling it more or
less systematically from an abundance of woman's toggery that lay in a
cumbrous heap on the floor beside her. Grégoire stopped at the window
to tell her, with a sad attempt at indifference:

"Yo' brotha says don't hurry packin'; Woodson ain't goin' to come fur
your trunks tell mornin'."

"All right, thank you," glancing towards him for an instant carelessly
and going on with her work.

"I didn' know you was goin' away."

"That's absurd: you knew all along I was going away," she returned,
with countenance as expressionless as feminine subtlety could make it.

"W'y don't you let somebody else do that? Can't you come out yere a
w'ile?"

"No, I prefer doing it myself; and I don't care to go out."

What could he do? what could he say? There were no convenient depths
in his mind from which he might draw at will, apt and telling speeches
to taunt her with. His heart was swelling and choking him, at sight of
the eyes that looked anywhere, but in his own; at sight of the lips
that he had one time kissed, pressed into an icy silence. She went on
with her task of packing, unmoved. He stood a while longer, silently
watching her, his hat in his hands that were clasped behind him, and a
stupor of grief holding him vise-like. Then he walked away. He felt
somewhat as he remembered to have felt oftentimes as a boy, when ill
and suffering, his mother would put him to bed and send him a cup of
bouillon perhaps, and a little negro to sit beside him. It seemed very
cruel to him now that some one should not do something for him—that
he should be left to suffer this way. He walked across the lawn over
to the cottage, where he saw Fanny pacing slowly up and down the
porch.

She saw him approach and stood in a patch of sunlight to wait for him.
He really had nothing to say to her as he stood grasping two of the
balustrades and looking up at her. He wanted somebody to talk to him
about Melicent.

"Did you know Miss Melicent was goin' away?"

Had it been Hosmer or Thérèse asking her the question she would have
replied simply "yes," but to Grégoire she said "yes; thank Goodness,"
as frankly as though she had been speaking to Belle Worthington. "I
don't see what's kept her down here all this time, anyway."

"You don't like her?" he asked, stupefied at the strange possibility
of any one not loving Melicent to distraction.

"No. You wouldn't either, if you knew her as well as I do. If she
likes a person she goes on like a lunatic over them as long as it
lasts; then good-bye John! she'll throw them aside as she would an old
dress."

"Oh, I believe she thinks a heap of Aunt Thérèse."

"All right; you'll see how much she thinks of Aunt Thérèse. And the
people she's been engaged to! There ain't a worse flirt in the city of
St. Louis; and always some excuse or other to break it off at the last
minute. I haven't got any use for her, Lord knows. There ain't much
love lost between us."

"Well, I reckon she knows they ain't anybody born, good enough fur
her?" he said, thinking of those engagements that she had shattered.

"What was David doing?" Fanny asked abruptly.

"Writin' lettas at the sto'."

"Did he say when he was coming?"