A Little Girl in Old Detroit Part 21

"I am going to church with you, Pani," she declared in a tone that left no demur.

"Ah, child, if thou hadst listened to the good father and been confirmed, then thou mightst have partaken of the ma.s.s."

Jeanne almost wished she had. But the schoolmaster had strengthened her opposition, or rather her dread, a little, quite unknowingly, and yet he had given her more reverence and a longing for real faith.

"But I shall be thinking of the shepherds and the glad tidings. I watched the stars last night, they were so beautiful. 'And they came and stood over the place,' the schoolmaster read it to me. That was way over the other side of the world, Pani."

The Indian woman shook her head. She was afraid of this strange knowledge, and she had a vague idea that it must have happened here in Detroit, since the Christ was born anew every year.

The stars were not all gone out of the sky. The crisp snow crunched under their feet, although the moccasins were soft and warm; and everybody was m.u.f.fled in furs, even to hoods and pointed caps. Some people were carrying lanterns, but they could find their way, straight along St. Anne's street. The bell kept on until they stood in the church porch.

"Thou wilt sit here, child."

Jeanne made no protest. She rather liked being hidden here in the darkness.

There were the De Bers, then Marie and her lover, then Rose and Pierre.

How much did dull Pierre believe and understand? The master's faith seemed simpler to her.

A little later was the regular Christmas service with the altar decked in white and gold and the two fathers in their beautiful robes of rejoicing, the candlesticks that had been sent from France a century before, burnished to their brightest and the candles lighted. Behind the screen the sisters and the children sang hymns, and some in the congregation joined, though the men were much more at home in the music of the violins and in the jollity.

Jeanne felt strangely serious, and half wished she was among the children. It was the fear of having to become a nun that deterred her.

She could not understand how Berthe Campeau could leave her ailing mother and go to Montreal for religion's sake. Madame Campeau was not able to stand the journey even if she had wanted to go, but she and her sister had had some differences, and, since Berthe would go, her son's wife had kindly offered to care for her.

"And what there is left thou shalt have, Catherine," she said to her daughter-in-law. "None of my money shall go to Montreal. It would be only such a little while for Berthe to wait. I cannot last long."

So she had said for three years and Berthe had grown tired of waiting.

Her imagination fed on the life of devotion and exaltation that her aunt wrote about.

At noon Marie De Ber was married. She shivered a little in her white gown, for the church was cold. Her veil fell all over her and no one could see whether her face was joyful or not. Truth to tell, she was sadly frightened, but everybody was merry, and her husband wrapped her in a fur cloak and packed her in his sledge. A procession followed, most of them on foot, for there was to be a great dinner at Tony Beeson's.

Then, although the morning had been so lovely, the sky clouded over with leaden gray and the wind came in great sullen gusts from Lake Huron. You could hear it miles away, a fierce roar such as the droves of bisons made, as if they were breaking in at your very door. Pani hung the bearskin against the door and let down the fur curtains over the windows. There was a bright log fire and Jeanne curled up on one side in a wolfskin, resting her head on a cushion of cedar twigs that gave out a pleasant fragrance. Pani sat quietly on the other side. There was no light but the blaze. Neither was the Indian woman used to the small industries some of the French took up when they had pa.s.sed girlhood. In a slow, phlegmatic fashion she used to go over her past life, raising up from their graves, as it were, Madame de Longueil, Madame Bellestre, and then Monsieur, though he never came from the shadowy grave, but a garden that bore strange fruit, and where it was summer all the year round. She had the gift of obedient faith, so she was a good Catholic, as far as her own soul was concerned, but her duty toward the child often troubled her.

Jeanne watched the blaze in a strange mood, her heart hot and angry at one moment, proud and indifferent at the next. She said a dozen times a day to herself that she didn't care a dead leaf for Marie, who had grown so consequential and haughty, and Rose, who was full of her own pleasure. It seemed as if other children had dropped out as well, but then in this cold weather she could not run out to the farms or lead a group of eager young people to see her do amazing feats. For she could walk out on the limb of a tree and laugh while it swung up and down with her weight, and then catch the limb of the next tree and fling herself over, amid their shouts. No boy dared climb higher. She had caught little owls who blinked at her with yellow eyes, but she always put them back in the trees again.

"You wouldn't like to be carried away by fierce Indians," she said when the children begged they might keep them. "They like their homes and their mothers."

"As if an owl could tell who its mother was!" laughed a boy disdainfully.

She had hardly known the feeling of loneliness. What did she do last winter, she wondered? O yes, she played with the De Ber children, and there were the Pallents, whom she seldom went to visit now, they seemed so very ignorant. Ah--if it would come summer again!

"For the trees and the flowers and the birds are better than most people," she ruminated. It must be because everybody had gone out of her life that it appeared wide and strange. After all she did not care for the De Bers and yet it seemed as if she had been stabbed to the heart.

Pierre and Marie had pretended to care so much for her. Then, in spite of her sadness, she laughed.

"What is it amuses thee so, little one?" asked the Indian woman.

"I am not old enough to have a lover, Pani, am I?" and she looked out of her furry wrap.

"No, child, no. What folly! Marie's wedding has set thee astray."

"And Pierre is a slow, stupid fellow."

"Pierre would be no match for thee, and I doubt if the De Bers would countenance such a thing if he were older. That is nonsense."

"Pierre asked me to be his wife. He said twice that he wanted to marry me--at the raising of the flag, when we were on the water, and one Sunday in the autumn. I am not as old as Rose De Ber, even, so Marie need not feel set upon a pinnacle because Tony Beeson marries her when she is barely fifteen."

"Jeanne!" Pani's tone was horror stricken. "And it will make no end of trouble. Madame De Ber is none too pleasant now."

"It will make no trouble. I said 'no' and 'no' and 'no,' until it was like this mighty wind rushing through the forest, and he was very angry.

So I should not go to the De Bers any more. And, Pani, if I had a father who would make me marry him when I was older, I should go and throw myself into the Strait."

"His father sends him up in the fur country in the spring."

"What makes people run crazy when weddings are talked of? But if I wanted to hold my head high and boast--"

"Oh, child, you could not be so silly!"

"No, Pani. And I shall be glad to have him go away. I do not want any lovers."

The woman was utterly amazed, and then consoled herself with the thought that it was merely child's play. They both lapsed into silence again.

But Jeanne's thoughts ran on. There was Louis Marsac. What if he returned next summer and tormented her? A perplexing mood, half pride, half disgust, filled her, and a serious elation at her own power which thrills young feminine things when they first discover it; as well as the shrinking into a new self-appropriation that thrusts out all such matters. But she did not laugh over Louis Marsac. She felt afraid of him, and she scrubbed her mouth where he had once kissed it.

There was another kiss on her hand. She held it up in the firelight. Ah, if she had a father like M. St. Armand, and a brother like the young man!

She was seized with an awful pang as if a swift, dark current was bearing her away from every one but Pani. Why had her father and mother been wrenched out of her life? She had seen a plant or a young shrub swept out of its rightful place and tossed to and fro until some stronger wave threw it upon the sandy edge, to droop and die. Was she like that? Where had she been torn from? She had been thrown into Pani's lap. She had never minded the little jeers before when the children had called her a wild Indian. Was she n.o.body's child?

She had an impulse to jump about and storm around the room, to drag some secret out of Pani, to grasp the world in her small hands and compel it to disclose its knowledge. She looked steadily into the red fire and her heart seemed bursting with the breath that could not find an outlet.

The bells began to ring again. "Come," "come," they said. Had she better not go to the sisters and live with them? The Church would be father and mother.

She bent down her head and cried very softly, for it seemed as if all joy had gone out of her life. Pani fell asleep and snored.

But the next morning the world was lovelier than ever with the new fallen snow. Men were shoveling it away from doorways and stamping it down in the streets with their great boots, the soles being wooden and the legs of fur. And they s...o...b..lled each other. The children joined and rolled in the snow. Now and then a daring young fellow caught a demoiselle and rubbed roses into her cheeks.

All the rest of the week was given over to holiday life. There were great doings at the Citadel and in some of the grand houses. There were dances and dinners, and weddings so brilliant that Marie De Ber's was only a little rushlight in comparison.

The master went down to Marietta for a visit. Jeanne seemed like a pendulum swinging this way and that. She was lonely and miserable. One day the Church seemed a refuge, the next she shrank with a sort of terror and longed for spring, as a drowning man longs for everything that promises succor.

One morning Monsieur Loisel, the notary, came in with a grave and solemn mien.

"I have news for thee, Pani and Mam'selle, a great word of sorrow, and it grieves me to be the bearer of it. Yet the good Lord has a right to his own, for I cannot doubt but that Madame Bellestre's intercession has been of some avail. And Monsieur Bellestre was an upright, honorable, kindly man."

"Monsieur Bellestre is dead," said Pani with the shock of a sudden revelation.

Jeanne stood motionless. Then he could never come back! And, oh, what if Monsieur St. Armand never came back!

"Yes. Heaven rest his soul, say I, and so does the good Father Rameau.

For his gift to the Church seems an act of faith."

"And Jeanne?" inquired the woman tremblingly.