The Story of Tonty Part 3

A great circle of Indians, ranged according to their tribes, sat around Frontenac when the stone windmill trod its noon shadow underfoot. Te Deum had been sung in the chapel, and thanks offered for his safe arrival. The princ.i.p.al men of Montreal, with the governor's white and gold officers, sat now within the circle behind his chair.

But Frontenac faced every individual of his Indian children, moving before them, their natural leader, as he made his address of greeting, admonition, and approval, through Du Lhut as interpreter. The old courtier loved Indians. They appealed to that same element in him which the coureurs de bois knew how to reach. The Frenchman has a wild strain of blood. He takes kindly and easily to the woods. He makes himself an appropriate and even graceful figure against any wilderness background, and goes straight to Nature's heart, carrying all the refinements of civilization with him.

The smoke of the peace pipe went up hour after hour. By strictest rules of precedence each red orator rose in his turn and spoke his tribe's reply to Onontio.[4] An Indian never hurried eloquence. The sun might tip toward Mount Royal, and the steam of his own deferred feast reach his nose in delicious suggestion. He had to raise the breeze of prosperity, to clear the sun, to wipe away tears for friends slain during past misunderstandings with Onontio's other children, and to open the path of peace between their lodges and the lodges of his tribe.

Ottawa, Huron, Cree, Nip.i.s.sing, Ojibwa, or Pottawatamie, it was necessary for him to bury the hatchet in pantomime, to build a great council-fire whose smoke should rise to heaven in view of all the nations, and gather the tribes of the lakes in one family council with the French around this fire forever.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Each red orator rose in his turn and spoke his tribe's reply."--_Page 40._]

Children played along the river's brink, and squaws kept fire under the kettles. A few men guarded the booths along the palisades from pilferers, though scarce a possible pilferer roamed from the centre of interest.

Crowds of spectators pressed around the great circle; traders who had brought packs of skins skilfully intercepted by them at some station above Montreal; interpreters, hired by merchants to serve them during the fair; coureurs de bois stretching up their neck sinews until these knotted with intense and prolonged effort. In this standing wall the habitant was crowded by converted Iroquois from the Mountain mission, who, having learned their rights as Christians, yielded no inch of room.

The sun descended out of sight behind Mount Royal, though his presence lingered with sky and river in abundant crimsons. Still the smoke of the peace pipe rose above the council ring, and eloquence rolled its periods on. That misty scarf around the horizon, which high noon drove out of sight, floated into view again, becoming denser and denser. The pipings of out-door insects came sharpened through twilight, and all the camp-fires were deepening their hue, before a solemn uprising of Frenchmen and Indians proclaimed the council over.

La Salle had sat through it at the governor's right hand, watching those bronze faces and restless eyes with sympathy as great as Frontenac's.

He, also, was a lord of the wilderness. He could more easily open his shy nature to such red brethren and eloquently command, denounce, or persuade them, than stand before dames and speak one word,--which he was forced to attempt when candles were lighted in the candelabra of the fort.

There was not such pageantry at Montreal as in the more courtly society of Quebec. The appearance of the governor with his train of young n.o.bles drew out those gentler inhabitants who took no part in the bartering of the beaver fair.

Perrot, the sub-governor, had known his period of bitter disagreement with Frontenac. Having made peace with a superior he once defied, he was anxious to pay Frontenac every honor, and the two governors were united in their policy of amusing and keeping busy so varied an a.s.semblage as that which thronged the beaver fair. Festivity as grand as colonial circ.u.mstances permitted was therefore held in the governor's apartments.

The guarded fortress gates stood open; torches burned within the walls, and blanketed savages stalked in and out.

Yet that colonial drawing-room lacked the rude elements which go to making most pioneer societies. Human intercourse in frontier towns exposed to danger and hardship, though it may be hearty and innocent, is rarely graceful.

But here was a small Versailles transplanted to the wilderness.

Fragments of a great court met Indian-wedded n.o.bles and women with generations of good ancestors behind them. Here were even the fashions of the times in gowns, and the youths of Louis' salon bowed and paid compliments to powdered locks. These French colonial n.o.bles were poor; but with pioneer instinct they decorated themselves with the best garments their scanty money would buy. Here thronged Dumays, Le Moynes, Mousniers, Desroches, Fleurys, Baudrys, Migeons, Vigers, Gautiers, all chattering and animated. Here stood the Baroness de Saint-Castin like a statue of bronze. Here were those ill.u.s.trious Le Moynes, father and sons, whose deeds may be traced in our day from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. Here Frontenac, with the graciously winning manner which belonged to his pleasant hours, drew to himself and soothed disaffected magnates of his colonial kingdom.

All these figures, and the spectacles swarming around the beaver fair, like combinations in a kaleidoscope to be seen once and seen no more, gave Tonty such condensed knowledge of the New World as no ordinary days could offer.

La Salle alone, though fresh from audiences at court and distinguished by royal favor, stood abashed and annoyed by the part he must play toward civilized people.

"Look at the Sieur de la Salle," observed Du Lhut to Tonty. "There is a man who stands and fights off the approach of every other creature."

"There never was a man better formed for friendship," retorted Tonty.

"Touching his reserve, I call that no blemish, though he has said of it himself, it is a defect he can never be rid of as long as he lives, and often it spites him against himself."

La Salle turned his shoulder on these a.s.sociates, uneasily conscious that his weakness was observed, and put many moving figures between himself and them. He had the free gait of a woodsman tempered by the air of a courtier. More than one Montreal girl accusing gold-embroidered young soldiers of finding the Quebec women charming, turned her eyes to follow La Salle. Possible lord of the vast and unknown west, in the flower of his years, he was next to Frontenac the most considerable figure in the colony.

Severe study in early youth and ambition in early manhood had crowded the lover out of La Salle. His practical gaze was oppressed by so many dames. It dwelt upon the floor, until, travelling accidentally to a corner, it rose and encountered Jacques le Ber's daughter sitting beside her mother.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] "This name was in Huron and Iroquois the translation of the name of M. de Montmagny (Mons maguns, great mountain). The savages continued calling the successors of Governor Montmagny by the same name, and even to the French king they applied the t.i.tle 'Great Ononthio.'" Translated from note on page 138, tome 1, Garneau's Histoire du Canada.

V.

SAINTE JEANNE.

When La Salle was seignior of Lachine, before the king and Frontenac helped his ambition to its present foothold, he had been in the habit of stopping at Jacques le Ber's house when he came to Montreal.

The first day of the beaver fair greatly tasked Madame le Ber. She sat drowsily beside the eldest child of her large absent flock, and was not displeased to have her husband's distinguished enemy approach Jeanne.

The wife of Le Ber had been called madame since her husband bought his patent of n.o.bility; but she held no strict right to the t.i.tle, even wives of the lesser n.o.bles being then addressed as demoiselles. In that simple colonial life Jacques le Ber, or his wife in his absence, served goods to customers over his own counter. Madame le Ber was an excellent woman, who said her prayers and approached the sacraments at proper seasons. She had abundant flesh covered with dark red skin, and she often pondered why a spirit of a daughter with pa.s.sionate longings after heaven had been sent to her. If Sieur de la Salle could draw the child's mind from extreme devotion, her husband must feel indebted to him.

La Salle's face relaxed and softened as he sat down beside this sixteen-year-old maid in her colonial gown. She held her crucifix in her hands, and waited for him to talk. Jeanne made melody of his silences.

As a child she had never rubbed against him for caresses, but looked into his eyes with sincere meditation. Having no idea of the explorer's aim, Jeanne le Ber was yet in harmony with him across their separating years. She also could stake her life on one supreme idea. La Salle was formed to subdue the wilderness; she was dimly and ignorantly, but with her childish might, undertaking that stranger region, the human soul.

She looked younger than other girls of her age; yet La Salle was moved to say, using the name he had given her,--

"You have changed much since last year, Sainte Jeanne."

"Am I worse, Sieur de la Salle?" she anxiously inquired.

"No. Better. Except I fear you have prayed yourself to a greater distance from me."

"I name you in my prayers, Sieur de la Salle. Ever since my father ceased to be your friend I have asked to have your haughty spirit humbled."

La Salle laughed.

"If you name me at all, Sainte Jeanne, pray rather for the humbling of my enemies."

"No, Sieur de la Salle. You need your enemies. I could ill do without mine."

"Who could be an enemy to thee?"

"There are many enemies of my soul. One is my great, my very great love."

La Salle's face whitened and flushed. He cast a quick glance upon the dozing matron, the backs of people whose conversation buzzed about his ears, and returned to Jeanne's childlike white eyelids and crucifix-folding hands.

"Whom do you love, Sainte Jeanne?"

"I love my father so much, and my mother; and the children are too dear to me. Sometimes when I rise in the night to pray, and think of living apart from my dear father, the cold sweat stands on my forehead. Too many dear people throng between the soul and heaven. Even you, Sieur de la Salle,--I have to pray against thoughts of you."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Do not pray against me, Sainte Jeanne," said the explorer, with a wistful tremor of the lower lip. "Consider how few there be that love me well."

Her eyes rested on him with divining gaze. Jeanne le Ber's eyes had the singular function of sending innumerable points of light swimming through the iris, as if the soul were in motion and shaking off sparkles.

"If you lack love and suffer thereby," she instructed him, "it will profit your soul."

La Salle interlaced his fingers, resting his hands upon his knees, and gave her a look which was both amused and tender.

"And what other enemies has Sainte Jeanne?"