Amanda Douglas - A Little Girl in Old St. Louis

Cities that have grown from small hamlets seldom keep register of their earlier days, except in the legends handed down in families. St. Louis has the curious anomaly of beginning over several times. For the earliest knowledge of how the little town looked I wish to express my obligations for some old maps and historical points to Mr. Frederick M. Crunden, Public Librarian, Miss Katharine I. Moody, and Colonel David Murphy.

The bell had clanged and the gates of the stockade were closed. There were some houses on the outside; there was not so much fear of the Indians here, for the French had the art of winning them into friendship. Farms were cultivated, and the rich bottom lands produced fine crops. Small as the town was twenty years before the eighteenth century ended, it was the headquarters of a flourishing trade. The wisdom of Pierre Laclede had laid the foundation of a grand city. The lead mines even then were profitably worked, and supplied a large tract of the Mississippi River east and west.

Antoine Freneau stood a few moments in the door of his log hut, down by the old Mill Creek, listening with his hand to one ear. There were sounds of spring all about, but he was not heeding them. Then he turned, closed the door, which was braced on the inner side with some rough iron bands; fastened it with the hook, and let down a chain. He was seldom troubled with unexpected evening visitors.

The log hut was hidden at the back with trees enough to form a sort of grove. It had two rooms. This at the front was a sort of miscellaneous storehouse. Freneau did quite a trade with the Indians and the boatmen going up and down the river. There was no real attempt at orderly store-keeping. Articles were in heaps and piles. One had almost to stumble over them.

The back room was larger. There was a stone chimney, with a great wide fireplace, where Freneau was cooking supper. In the far corner was a bed raised on sawed rounds of logs, with skins stretched over the framework, on which was a sack of hay with a heap of Indian blankets, just as he had crawled out of it in the morning. A table and three stools manufactured by himself; a rude sort of closet, and a curious old brass-bound chest, now almost black with age, completed the furnishing. The puncheon floor, in common use at that time, was made with logs split in the middle and the rounding side laid in a sort of clay plaster that hardened and made it very durable. The top would get worn smooth presently. The walls were hung with various trophies and arms of different kinds. Two windows had battened shutters; one stood a little way open, and this was on the creek side.

The supper had a savory fragrance. He had baked a loaf of bread on a heated flat stone, spreading the dough out thin and turning it two or three times. A dish of corn stewed with salted pork, a certain kind of coffee compounded of roasted grains and crushed in the hollow of a stone, gave out a fragrance, and now he was broiling some venison on the coals.

There were sundry whispers about the old man as to smuggling. Once his place had been searched, he standing by, looking on and jibing the men so engaged, turning any apparent mystery inside out for them. Then he would be gone days at a time, but his house was securely fastened. Occasionally he had taken longer journeys, and once he had brought back from New Orleans a beautiful young wife, who died when her baby girl was born. The nurse had taken it to her home in Kaskaskia. Then it had been sent to the Sisters’ School at New Orleans. She had been home all one winter and had her share in the merry making. In the spring her father took her to Canada, to the great disappointment of hosts of admirers. At Quebec she was married and went to France. That was ten years ago. He had grown queer and morose since, and turned miserly.

There was a peremptory thump at the door, and Antoine started, glancing wildly about an instant, then went through and unfastened the stout hook. The chain he did not remove: it was about a foot from the floor and well calculated to trip up any unwary intruder and send him sprawling face downward.

The night had grown dark, and a mist-like rain had set in. The trees were beating about in the rising wind.

“Open wide to us, Antoine Freneau! See what I have brought you, if you can make light enough.”

“Gaspard Denys – is it you? Why, I thought you were in the wilds of Canada. And – ”

He kicked aside the chain and peered over at the small figure beside Gaspard.

Gaspard had just stood the child down, and his arms tingled with the strain when the muscles were set loose.

“You have brought her!”

There was a sound in the voice far from welcome, almost anger.

“Yes; your messenger from New Orleans told the truth. The nurse or companion, whatever you may call her, had instructions, if no one claimed her, to place her in a convent.”

“And you – you interfered?” Freneau struck his clinched fist hard on a pile of skins.

Gaspard laughed.

“What I am to do with a child is more than I can tell,” Freneau said doggedly, almost threateningly.

“Well, you can give us something to eat. Your supper has a grand fragrance to a hungry man. Then we can discuss the other points. A bear taken away from his meal is always cross – eh, Antoine?”

Freneau turned swarthy; he was dark, and the red tinge added made him look dangerous.

“I don’t understand – ”

“Well, neither do I. You married your daughter to a French title when you knew she would have been happier here with a young fellow who loved her; and – yes, I am sure she loved me. Somewhere back, when my forebears called themselves St. Denys, there might have been a title in the family. In this New World we base our titles on our courage, ambitions, successes. Then her little daughter was born, and she pined away in the old Château de Longueville and presently died, while her husband was paying court and compliments to the ladies at the palace of Louis XVII. There are deep mutterings over in France. And De Longueville, with his half dozen titles, marries one of Marie Antoinette’s ladies in waiting. The child goes on in the old château. Two boys are born to the French inheritance, and little mademoiselle is not worth a rush. She will be sent to her grandfather somewhere in the province of Louisiana. But the nurse goes to Canada to marry her lover, expatriated for some cause. You see, I know it all. If mademoiselle had stayed in France she would have been put in a convent.”

“The best thing! the best thing!” interrupted the old man irascibly.

“Word was sent to enter her in a convent at Quebec. Well, I have brought her here. Give us some supper.”

He had been taking off the child’s cap and coat after they entered the living room. A great flaming torch stood up in one corner of the chimney, and shed a peculiar golden-red light around the room, leaving some places in deep shadow. The old man turned his meat, took up his cake of bread, and put them on the table. Then he went for plates and knives.

“This is your grandfather, Renée,” Denys said, turning the child to face him.

The girl shrank a little, and then suddenly surveyed him from his yarn stockings and doeskin breeches up to his weather-beaten and not especially attractive face, surmounted by a shock of grizzled hair. She looked steadily out of large brown eyes. She was slim, with a clear-cut face and air of dignity, a child of nine or so. Curiously enough, his eyes fell. He turned in some confusion without a word and went on with his preparations.

“Let us have some supper. It is not much. Even if I had expected a guest I could not have added to it.”