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She remembered, with an infinite yet futile wish to recall the moment, how eagerly Sandy had urged the abandonment of these poor possessions, that she might herself mount the horse and ease her bleeding and torn feet. Is every woman an idolater at heart, Odalie wondered.
Odalie, who had braced up her heart, found little to encourage her as she went from one to another of the matrons and sought to comfort them with the reflection that it might have been worse. "For my own part," she declared, "I think of what might have been.
In the evenings after the dress-parade and the boom of the sunset-gun, the elder women sat about in the doors and porches, and knitted and gossiped, and the men walked up and down and discussed the stale war news from Europe for the triumphs of British arms were then rife in all the world or sat upon the grass and played dominoes or cards; the soldiers near the barracks threw horseshoes for quoits; the children rollicked about, shrill but joyous; Odalie and Belinda Rush in their cool fresh linen dresses, arm in arm, the admiration of all beholders, strolled up and down with measured step and lissome grace; and the flag would slip down, and the twilight come on, and a star tremble in the blue summer sky; and the sweet fern that overhung the deep clear spring, always in the shadow of the oaks near one of the block-houses, would give out a fresh, pungent fragrance.
It had been urged by her grandmother in moments of depression, and Odalie, born and reared in the royal province of South Carolina, had always the logic and grace to wince at this ungrateful aspiration to return to France, the dear France that had been so much too hot to hold them. For the family had rejoiced to escape thence with their lives, even at the forfeiture of all that they possessed.
With a sentiment of deep respect Odalie observed the six or eight arm-chairs of a rude and untoward manufacture, which were ranged about the hearth, draped, however, to real luxury by wolfskins, for the early settlers chiefly affected rough stools or billets of wood as seats, or benches made of puncheons with a couple of auger-holes at each end, through which four stout sticks were adjusted for legs, which were indeed often of unequal length and gave the unquiet juvenile pioneer of that day a peculiarly acceptable opportunity for cheerily jouncing to and fro.
For Odalie was presently conveying this juvenile personage about in her arms, and he left off a whimper, characteristic of no particular age or sex, to exhibit a truly masculine interest in the big soldiers with their bright uniforms and clanking accouterments, and although constrained by the force of the concussion to blink and close his eyes whenever the great guns were fired, he fairly wheezed and squealed with manly ecstasy in the sound for a cannonade had begun, seeking to deter the plunder of the deserted houses in the settlement.
The leader of the party, elderly, of commercial instincts rather than sylvan, albeit a dead shot, and decorated with ear-rings, had a great proclivity toward snuff and tears, and often indulged in both as a luxury when Hamish with his simple art sought to portray the characters of the tragedy of the siege; and as the Frenchman heard of Fifine and Odalie, and Stuart and Demeré, and all their sufferings and courage and devices of despair "Quelle barbarie!" he would burst forth, and Hamish would greet the phrase with a boyish delight of remembrance.
But the pioneers understood the proffer of the canoe for the remainder of their journey, and a deadly terror seized the heart of Odalie as she marked the demonstrations of the others in pulling Willinawaugh forcibly from his horse in spite of his feigned objections, for the canoe could hold but three persons. Little choice had she, however.
"And how do you know that I am French?" she asked, with a delightful expression of her fascinating eyes. The soldier had told her, the handsome young brave who talked to her one day at Choté, the girl said in fairly good English. Odalie asked her name, and, as it was given, exclaimed that it was a whole sentence.
What subtle influence roused Odalie at last she could hardly have said; perhaps the irresistible torpor of exhaustion had in some sort recruited her faculties. The storm was gone, unseasonable and transient, and only a broken remnant of its clouds hung about the western mountains. Toward the east the sky was clear and a dull fluctuation of sunset, alternating with shadow, was on the landscape.
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