A Little Girl in Old Detroit Part 45

She was very happy with all this mystery about her, he thought, very simple minded and sweet, doing the whole duty of a daughter to this poor Indian woman in return for her care. And when Pani was gone? She was surely fitted for some other walk in life, but she was unconsciously proud, she would not step over into it, some one must take her by the hand.

"But why trouble about the Church, as you call it? It is the life one leads, not the organization. Are these people down by the wharves and those holes on St. Louis street, where there is drunkenness and gambling and swearing, any the better for their confession and their ma.s.ses, and what not?"

"If I was the priest they should not come unless they reformed," and her eyes flashed. "But when I turn away something calls me, and when I go there I do not like it. They want me to go among the sisters, to be a nun perhaps, and that I should hate."

"At present you are doing a daughter's duty, let that suffice. Pani would soon die without you. When a new work comes to hand G.o.d will make the way plain for you."

Jeanne gave an a.s.senting nod.

"She is a curious child," the minister said to his wife afterward, "and yet a very sweet, simple-hearted one. But to confine her to any routine would make her most unhappy."

There were all the Christmas festivities, and Jeanne did enjoy them.

Afterward--some of the days were very long it seemed. She was tired of the great white blanket of snow and ice, and the blackness of the evergreens that in the cold turned to groups of strange monsters. Bears came down out of the woods, the sheep dogs and their masters had fights with wolves; there were dances and the merry sounds of the violin in every household where there were men and boys. Then Lent, not very strictly kept after all, and afterward Easter and the glorious spring.

Jeanne woke into new life. "I must go out for the first wild flowers,"

she said to Pani. "It seems years since I had any. And the robin and the thrush and the wild pigeons have come back, and the trees bud with the baths of sunshine. All the air is throbbing with fragrance."

Pani looked disturbed.

"Oh, thou wilt not go to the woods?" she cried.

"I will take Wenonah and one of the boys. They are st.u.r.dy now and can howl enough to scare even a panther. No, Pani, there is no one to carry me away. They would know that I should slip through their fingers;" and she laughed with the old time joyousness.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A HEARTACHE FOR SOME ONE.

"Jeanne," exclaimed Father Rameau, "thou art wanted at the Chapter house."

He stood in the doorway of the little cottage and glanced curiously at the two inmates. Pani often amused herself cutting fringe for Wenonah, under the impression that it was needed in haste, and she was very happy over it. A bowl of violets and wild honeysuckle stood on the table, and some green branches hung about giving the room the odor of the new season and an air of rejoicing.

"What now?" She took his wrinkled old hand in hers so plump and dimpled.

"Have I committed some new sin? I have been so glad for days and days that I could only rejoice."

"No, not sin. It is to hear a strange story and to be happier, perhaps."

He looked curiously at her. "Oh, something has happened!" she cried. Was it possible M. St. Armand had returned? For days her mind had been full of him. And he would be the guest of the Fleurys.

"Yes, I should spoil it in the telling, and I had strict injunctions."

There was an air of mystery about him.

Surely there was no trouble. But what could they want with her? A strange story! Could some one have learned about her mother or her father?

"I will change my attire in a moment. Pani, Margot will gladly come and keep you company."

"Nay, little one, I am not a baby to be watched," Pani protested.

Jeanne laughed. She looked very sweet and charming in her blue and white frock made in a plain fashion, for it did not seem becoming in her to simulate the style of the great ladies. A soft, white kerchief was drawn in a knot about her shoulders, showing the shapely throat that was nearer ivory than pearl. In the knot she drew a few violets. Head gear she usually disdained, but now she put over her curls a dainty white cap that made a delicious contrast with the dark rings nestling below the edge. A pretty, lissome girl, with a step so light it would not have crushed the gra.s.s under her feet, had there been any.

"There seems a great stir in the town," she said.

They had turned into St. Anne's street and were going toward the church.

"The new Governor General Hull is to come in a few weeks, and the officers have word to look him up a home, for governors have not lived in Detroit before. No doubt there will be fine times among the Americans."

"And there flies a white flag down at the river's edge--has that something to do with it?"

"Oh, the boat came in last evening. It is one of the great men up at the North, I think in the fur company. But he has much influence over the Indian tribes, and somehow there is a whisper that there may be disaffection and another union such as there was in Pontiac's time, which heaven forbid! He is called the White Chief."

"The White Chief!" Jeanne stopped short in a maze of astonishment.

"That has nothing to do with thee," said the priest. He preferred her interest to run in another channel.

"But--I was on his island. I saw his wife and children, you remember.

Oh, I must see him--"

"Not now;"--and her guide put out his hand.

"Oh, no," and she gave a short laugh. "As if I would go running after a strange man; a great chief! But he is not an Indian. He is French."

"I do remember, yes. There seems a great commotion, as if all the ships had come in. The winter was so long and cold that business is all the more brisk. Here, child, pay a little attention to where you are going.

There is a lack of reverence in you young people that pains me."

"Pardon me, father." Jeanne knelt on the church steps and crossed herself. She had run up here in the dark the first night she had been back in Detroit, just to kneel and give thanks, but she had told no one.

Then she walked decorously beside him. There was the Chapel of Retreat, a room where the nuns came and spent hours on their knees. They pa.s.sed that, going down a wide hall. On one side some young girls sat doing fine embroidery for religious purposes. At the end a kind of reception room, and there were several people in this now, two priests and three woman in the garb of Ursuline nuns.

Jeanne glanced around. A sort of chill crept over her. The room was bare and plain except a statue of the Virgin, and some candles and crucifixes. Nearly in the center stood a table with a book of devotions on it.

"This is Jeanne Angelot," exclaimed Father Rameau. She, in her youth and health and beauty, coming out of the warm and glowing sunshine of May, brought with her an atmosphere and radiance that seemed like a sudden sunrise in the dingy apartment. The three women in the coif and gown of the Ursulines fingered their beads and, after sharp glances at the maid, dropped their eyes, and their faces fell into stolid lines.

Another woman rose from the far corner and her gown made a swish on the bare floor. She came almost up to Jeanne, who shrank back in an inexplicable terror, a motion that brought a spasm of color to the newcomer's face, and a gasp for breath.

She was, perhaps, a little above the medium height, slim alway and now very thin. Her eyes were sunken, with grayish shadows underneath, her cheeks had a hollow where fullness should have been, her lips were compressed in a nearly straight line. She was not old, but asceticism had robbed her of every indication of youth, had made severity the leading indication in her countenance.

"Jeanne Angelot," she repeated. "You are quite sure, Father, those garments belonged to her?"

The poor woman felt the secret antipathy and she, too, seemed to contract, to realize the mysterious distance between them, the unlikeness of which she had not dreamed. For in her narrow life of devotion she had endeavored to crucify all human feelings and affections. That was her bounden duty for her girlhood's sin. Girls were poor, weak creatures and their wills counseled them wrongly, wickedly.

She had come to s.n.a.t.c.h this child, the result of her own selfish dreams, her waywardness, from a like fate. She should be housed, safe, kept from evil. The nun, too, had dreamed, although Berthe Campeau had said, "She is a wild little thing and it is suspected she has Indian blood in her veins." But it was the rescue of a soul to the service of G.o.d, the soul she was answerable for, not the ardor of human love.

The father made a slow inclination of the head.

"They were upon her that night she was dropped in the Pani's lap, and the card pinned to her. Then two letters curiously wrought upon her thigh."

"Jeanne, Jeanne, I am your mother."