Montlivet Part 19

"I am going to plait it into a braid for the ring," I said. "I think that I can file the ends, and make it serve. It is all I have. I wear no jewelry, and would not give you one of the bra.s.s rings we use in trade. This is at least gold."

She watched me straighten the kinks in the wire. "You took that from something you valued," she said. "I will wear the bra.s.s ring. Surely you can replace this wire where it belongs."

I shook my head. "It was a filigree frame," I volunteered.

I had spoken with as little thought as a dog barks, and quite as witlessly. I knew that as soon as I heard my words. I looked at the woman. But she was not going to question me.

"If it was a frame, it held a miniature," she said quietly. "Please twist the wire around it again. I prefer the bra.s.s ring."

"Because?"

"I would not rob any one. If you have carried the picture all these leagues, it is a token from some one you love; some one who loves you.

I have no part in that."

I went on plaiting the wire. "The woman of the miniature will know no robbery," I said, "because she knew no possession. Mademoiselle, you seem in every way to be a woman with whom it is wisest to have a clear understanding."

"You need tell me nothing."

"It is better to tell the whole, now that you have stumbled on a part.

I was nothing to that woman whose face I carried with me. She did not know I had the picture. I might never have told her. It was nothing, you see. It was all in a man's mind, and the man now has sterner matters to fill his thought. I would like you to wear this ring."

"Why not the other?"

I laughed at her a little. "I shall try not to give you spurious metal,--even granted that our bargain is provisional. Now, mademoiselle, may I take you to the lodge I have had made? In two hours we are to be married."

She followed at my side, and I took her to the lodge, and pointed her within. She glanced at what I had done, and I saw her bite her lip.

She turned to me without a smile.

"It all makes it harder," she said indefinitely. "Harder to think of the wrong that I am doing you and the other woman."

I cannot abide misapprehension. We were alone. "Wait!" I begged.

"Mademoiselle, you cannot probe a man's thought. Often he cannot probe his own. But I am not unhappy. A man marries many brides, and Ambition, if the truth be told, is, perhaps, the dearest. I shall embrace her. You should be able to understand."

"But the woman. She must have seen that you loved her. She may have cared more in return than you knew."

I looked at her. "The lady of the miniature," I said slowly, "had many lovers. If she showed me special favor, I a.s.sure you I did not know.

But even if her fancy did stray toward me,--which I think it did not,--why, she was---- She was a winsome, softly smiling, gentle lady, mademoiselle. She was not fire, and spirit, and courage, and loyalty, and temper, and tenderness. No, she was not in the least like that. I think that she would soon forget. Have we dropped this subject forever, mademoiselle?"

She made me a grave curtsy. "Till we reach Montreal," she promised, and she did not raise her eyes.

We were married at noon. The altar stood under an oak tree, and the light sifted in patterns on the ground. I wore satin, and ribbon, and shining buckle, for I carried those gewgaws in my cargo, but my finery did not shame my bride's attire. She stood proud, and rounded, and supple in her deerskins, and a man might have gloried in her. Seven hundred Indians, glistening like snakes with oil and vermilion, squatted around us, but they held themselves as lifeless as marionettes. It was so still that I heard the snore of a sleeping dog and the gulls in the harbor squawking over a floating fish. Father Nouvel spoke very slowly. This was a real marriage, a sacrament, to him.

As we turned from the ceremony, Onanguisse came forward. He was not painted, but he wore a mantle of embroidered buffalo skin, and his hair, which was dressed high with eagle's feathers, was powdered with down from the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of white gulls. He stood in front of the woman.

"Listen," he said. "I speak to the white thrush. She cannot understand my words, but her heart has called to my heart, and that will teach her to know my meaning. Brethren, bear witness. An eagle cares naught for a partridge, but an eagle calls to an eagle though there be much water and many high rocks between. You know the lodge of Onanguisse. It has fire, but no warmth. I am old, and age needs love to warm it, but I am alone. First my wife, then my two sons, last of all, at the time the chestnuts were in blossom, my daughter Mimi,--the Master of Life called them one by one. I have washed my face, and I have combed my hair, yet who can say I have not mourned? My life has been as dead as the dried gra.s.s that thatches the muskrat's lodges.

When have any of you seen Onanguisse smile? Yet think not that I stretch out my hands to the country of souls. I will live, and sit at the council fire till many of you who are before me have evaporated like smoke from a pipe. For I am of the race of the bear, and the bear never yields while one drop of blood is left. And the Master of Life has been kind. He has brought me at last a woman who has an eagle's eyesight and a bear's endurance. She is worthy to be of my family. I have waited for such an one. Her speech is strange, but her blood answers mine. It is idle to mourn. I will replace the dead with the living. This woman shall be no more the white thrush. She shall be Mimi, the turtle dove, the daughter of Onanguisse. Brethren, bear witness. Mimi is no longer dead. She stands here." He stepped closer to the woman. "I give you this cloak that you may wrap me in your memory," he went on. "I hereby confirm my words;" and thereupon, he threw over her shoulders a long, shining mantle made of the small skins of the white hare. It was a robe for an empress.

I stepped forward, then stood still, and resolved to trust the woman as she had asked.

"You are adopted," I prompted softly, with no motion of my lips.

She understood. Wrapped in her white cloak, she curtsied low before Onanguisse. Then she turned to me. "Tell him," she said, "that my heart is wiser than my tongue; the one is dumb, but the other answers.

Say to him that I see his face, and it tells me that he has lived wisely and with honor. I am now of his family. I, too, will strive to live wisely, that he need not be shamed. Say to him that I will not forget." She stopped with her glance upon the old chief, and her eyes held something I had not seen in them before. With me, their self-reliance had sometimes been hard, almost provocative, as if the spirit behind them defied the world to break it down. But as she met this kindness--this kindness that was instinctive, and not a matter of prudence or reason--all hardness vanished, and her dignity was almost wistful. I thought of my mother, the saddened head of a great house, who had seen the ruin of home and heart, but whose spirit would not die. Something in this woman's face, as she stood silent, suddenly gave me back the vision of my mother as I had seen her last. I looked with my heart beating hard. The hush lasted fully a moment, then the woman drew her cloak closer, curtsied again, and walked back to her green lodge.

I turned to the chief, and would have translated what had been said, but after the first phrase, he motioned me to silence. "She has taken my robe. She has become of my family. That is sufficient." He lifted his calumet, and went to give orders for the feasting.

So the priest and I stood alone. He looked at me, and shook his head.

His mouth was smiling, but I saw him brush at his eyes. "You have married a woman of great spirit, monsieur," he said, with a touch of his hand on my sleeve. "They are rare,--most rare." He stopped. "Yet the roedeer is not made for the paddock," he said impersonally.

I laughed, and it sounded exultant. I felt the blood hammer in my temples. "Nor can the thrush be tamed to sit the finger like the parrakeet," I completed. "I understand that, Father Nouvel."

The wedding feast followed. Madame de Montlivet, the priest, Onanguisse, and I sat in a semicircle on the ground, and slaves served us with wooden trenchers of food. We each had our separate service, like monks in a refectory, but we were not treated with equal state, for the woman drank from a copper-trimmed ladle, made from the polished skull of a buffalo, while my cup was a dried gourd. We ate in ceremonial silence, and were sunk in our own thoughts. There was food till the stomach sickened at its gross abundance: whitefish, broth, sagamite, the feet of a bear, the roasted tail of a beaver. I watched the slaves bring the food and bear it away, and I said to myself that I was sitting at my wedding feast,--a feast to celebrate a false marriage.

After the feast, the calumet was danced before us. Still there was silence between the woman and myself as we sat side by side. I wondered if she realized that this strange dance was still further confirmation of what we had done; that it was part of the ceremony of our marriage. It was a picture as unreal, as incomprehensible, as the fate we had invited. The sun was westering, and shone full upon the dancing braves. Their corded muscles and protruding eyes made them ghastly as tortured wretches of some red-lit inferno. There was no laughter nor jesting. The kettle-drum rumbled like water in a cave, and the chant of the singers wailed, and died, and wailed again. And this was for my wedding. I looked down at the woman's hand that bore my ring, and saw that the strong, nervous fingers were gripped till they were bloodless. What was she thinking? I tried to meet her look, but it was rapt and awed. A wave of heat ran through me; the wild music beat into my blood. This savage ritual that I had looked at with alien eyes suddenly took to itself the dignity of the terrible wilderness that bound us. The pageantry of its barbarism seized upon me; it was a fitting setting for one kind of marriage,--not a marriage of flowers and dowry, but the union of two great, stormy hearts who, through clash and turmoil, had found peace at last. But ours was a mock marriage, and we had not found peace. My breath choked me. I leaped to my feet, and begged Onanguisse to end the ceremony, and let me do my share. I knew what was my part as bridegroom, and Pierre and Labarthe were waiting with their arms laden. I distributed hatchets, Brazil tobacco, and beads from Venice. Then I turned to Onanguisse.

"We go to the land of the Malhominis, to the wild rice people. They live toward the south-west?"

He nodded. "Across La Baye des Puants as the wild goose flies. Then down till you find the mouth of the wild rice river. But why go till another sunrise?"

I hesitated. But I thought of the shadowing Huron, and decided that I could elude him best at night. "We are in haste," I told Onanguisse, and I pointed the men toward their work.

But before I myself had time to step toward the canoes, I felt the woman's touch upon my arm. Though, in truth, it was odd that I felt it, for the movement was light as the brushing of a gra.s.s stalk.

"Monsieur, do we go now?" she asked. "You have had no opportunity for council with these Indians, yet I see that they are powerful."

She was watching my interests. I laid my fingers on hers, and looked full at her as I had not done since we had been man and wife. Her eyes were mournful as they often were, but they were starry with a thought I could not read. The awe and the wonder were still there, and her fingers were unsteady under mine. I dropped to my knees.

"I have done more than you saw," I said, with my eyes on hers. "I have talked with Onanguisse, and have smoked a full pipe with the old men in council. Thank you for your interest. Thank you, Madame de Montlivet."

But she would not look at me bent before her. "That I wish you to do your best, unhampered by me, does not mean that I wish you success,"

she said, with her head high, and she went to Onanguisse, and curtsied her adieus. Her last words were with Father Nouvel, and she hid her eyes for a moment, while he blessed her and said good-by.

Our canoes pointed to the sunset as we rounded the headland and slid outward. On the sh.o.r.e, the Indian women chanted a hymn to Messou,--to Messou, the Maker of Life, and the G.o.d of Marriage, to whom, on our behalf, many pipes had been smoked that day.

CHAPTER XV

I TAKE A NEW Pa.s.sENGER

Now the great bay on which we were embarked was a water empire, fair to the eye, but tricky of wind and current. La Baye des Puants the French called it, from the odor that came at seasons from the swamps on the sh.o.r.e, and it ran southwest from Lake Illinois. The Pottawatamie Islands that we had just left well-nigh blocked its mouth, and its southern end was the outlet of a shining stream that was known as the River of the Fox. The bay was thirty leagues long by eight broad, and had tides like the ocean. Five tribes dwelt around it: the Pottawatamies at its mouth, the Malhominis halfway down on its western sh.o.r.e, and the Sacs, the Chippewas, and the Winnebagoes scattered at different points in more transitory camps. To the east the bay was separated from Lake Illinois by a long peninsula that lay like a rough-hewn arrow with its point to the polestar. It was goodly land, I had been told, rich in game, and splashed with ponds, but since it was too small to support the hunting of a tribe it was left comparatively unoccupied. All of the five tribes, and sometimes the Miamis, fished there at intervals; it was neutral ground. I told all this to the woman as our canoes swept toward the sunset.

She sat with her back to the west, and the sun, that dazzled my eyes, shone red through her brown hair, and I scorned myself that I should have believed for a moment that such soft, fine abundance ever framed a man's forehead. I talked to her freely; talked of winds and tides and Indians, and was not deterred when she answered me but sparingly. I could not see her face distinctly, because of the light, but there was something in the gentleness and intentness of her listening poise that made me feel that she welcomed the safeguard of my aimless speech, but that for the moment she had no similar weapons of her own.

So long as daylight lasted, we traveled swiftly toward the southwest, but when the sunset had burned itself to ashes, and the sky had blurred into the tree line, I told the men to shift their paddles, and drift for a time. The last twenty-four hours had hardened them to surprise.

They obeyed me as they did Providence,--as a troublesome, but all-powerful enigma.

And so we floated, swinging like dead leaves on the long swells. The stars came out, the gulls went sh.o.r.eward for the night, and we were as alone as if on the sea. The woman's slender figure, wrapped in her white cloak, became a silent, shining wraith. She was within touch of my hand, yet unreachably remote. I lost my glib speech. The gray loneliness that one feels in a crowd came over me. If I had been alone with my men, I should have felt well accompanied, master of my craft, and in tune with my condition. It was the presence of this alien woman, whom I must protect, but not approach, that made me realize that I was thousands of leagues from my own kind, and that I must depend on my own judgment--with which I felt much out of conceit--to carry this expedition safely through the barbarous wilderness. I shook myself, and told my men to pick up their paddles.