The Story of Tonty Part 7

"The beginning of a martyr is a saint," observed a soldier of the garrison, putting his fur-covered head between door and door-post in the little s.p.a.ce he opened. "We have a saint just landed at Fort Frontenac."

He stepped in and shut the door, to lounge with the cook while the order he brought was obeyed.

"Some of the best you have, with a tender cut of venison, for Jacques le Ber and his daughter. And some salt meat for his men in the barracks."

The cook made light skips across the floor and returned with venison.

"Well-timed, my child; for the coals are ready, and so are my cakes for the oven. Le Ber is soon served. Get upon your knees by the hearth and watch this cut broil, while I slice the larding for the sore sides of these fellows that labored through the rapids."

When you are housed in a garrison the cook becomes a potentate; the soldier went willingly down as a.s.sistant.

"Are all the demoiselles of Montreal coming to Fort Frontenac?" inquired the cook, skipping around a great block on which lay a slab of cured meat, and nicely poising his knife-tip over it.

"That I cannot tell you," replied the soldier, beginning to perspire before the coals. "Le Ber's men have been talking in the barracks about this daughter of his. He brought her almost by force out of his house, where she has taken to shutting herself in her own room."

"I have heard of this demoiselle," said the cook. "May the saints incline more women to shut themselves up at home!"

"She is his favorite child. He brought her on this dangerous voyage to wean her from too much praying."

"Too much praying!" exclaimed the cook.

"He desires to have her look more on the world, lest she should die of holiness," explained the soldier.

"Turn that venison," shouted the cook. "Was there ever a saint who liked burnt meat? I could lift this Jacques le Ber on a hot fork for dragging out a woman who inclined to stay praying in the house. Some men are stone blind to the blessings of Heaven!"

FOOTNOTES:

[7] Historians return Father Hennepin to France in 1681.

[8] Parkman.

[9] Ma.n.u.script relating to early history of Canada.

II.

A TRAVELLED FRIAR.

The lower room of the officers' lodging was filled with the light of a fire. To the hearth was drawn a half-circle of men, their central figure being a Recollet friar, so ragged and weather-stained that he seemed some ecclesiastical scarecrow placed there to excite laughter and tears in his beholders.

This group arose as Jacques le Ber entered with his daughter, and were eager to be of service to her.

"There is a fire lighted in the hall upstairs by which mademoiselle can sit," said the sergeant of the fort.

Le Ber conducted her to the top of a staircase which ascended the side of the room before he formally greeted any one present. He returned, unwinding his saturated wool wrappings and pulling off his cap of beaver skin. He was a swarthy man with anxious and calculating wrinkles between his eyebrows.

"Do I see Father Hennepin?" exclaimed Le Ber, squaring his mouth, "or is this a false image of him set before me?"

"You see Father Hennepin," the friar responded with dignity,--"explorer, missionary among the Sioux, and sufferer in the cause of religion."

"How about that hunger for adventure,--hast thou appeased it?" inquired Le Ber with freedom of manner he never a.s.sumed toward any other priest.

The merchant stood upon the hearth steaming in front of the tattered Recollet, who from his seat regarded his half-enemy with a rebuking eye impressive to the other men.

"Jacques le Ber, my son, while your greedy hands have been gathering money, the poor Franciscan has baptized heathen, discovered and explored rivers; he has lived the famished life of a captive, and come nigh death in many ways. I have seen a great waterfall five hundred feet high, whereunder four carriages might pa.s.s abreast without being wet. I have depended for food on what Heaven sent. Vast fish are to be found in the waters of that western land, and there also you may see beasts having manes and hoofs and horns, to frighten a Christian."

"And what profit doth La Salle get out of all this?" inquired Le Ber, spreading his legs before the fire as he looked down at Father Hennepin.

"What I have accomplished has been done for the spread of the faith, and not for the glory of Monsieur de la Salle, who has treated me badly."

"Does he ever treat any one well?" exclaimed Le Ber. "Does not every man in his service want to shoot him?"

"He has an over-haughty spirit, which breaks out into envy of men like me," admitted the good Fleming, whose weather-seamed face and plump lips glowed with conscious greatness before the fire. "I have decided to avoid further encounter with Monsieur de la Salle while we both remain at Fort Frontenac, for my mind is set on peace, and it is true where Monsieur de la Salle appears there can be no peace."

Jacques le Ber turned himself to face the chimney.

"Thou hast no doubt accomplished a great work, Father Hennepin," he said, with the immediate benevolence a man feels toward one who has reached his point of view. "When I have had supper with my daughter I will sit down here and beg you to tell me all that befell your wanderings, and what savages they were who received the faith at your hands, and how the Sieur de la Salle hath turned even a Recollet Father against himself."

"Perhaps Father Hennepin will tell about his buffalo hunt," suggested the sergeant of the fortress, "and how he headed a wounded buffalo from flight and drove it back to be shot."[10]

Father Hennepin looked down at patches of buffalo hide which covered holes in his habit. He remembered the trampling of a furious beast's hoofs and the twitch of its short sharp horn in his folds of flesh as it lifted him. He remembered his wounds and the soreness of his bones which lasted for months, yet his lips parted over happy teeth and he roared with laughter.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

FOOTNOTES:

[10] In reality this was Father Membre's adventure.

III.

HEAVEN AND EARTH.

Jeanne le Ber sat down upon a high-backed bench before the fire in the upper room. This apartment was furnished and decorated only by abundant firelight, which danced on stone walls and hard dark rafters, on rough floor and high enclosure, of the stairway. At opposite sides of the room were doors which Jeanne did not know opened into chambers scarcely larger than the sleepers who might lodge therein.

She sat in strained thought, without unwrapping herself, though shudders were sent through her by damp raiment. When her father came up with the sergeant who carried their supper, he took off her cloak, smoothed her hair, and tenderly reproved her. He set the dishes on the bench between them, and persuaded Jeanne to eat what he carved for her,--a swarthy nurse whose solicitude astounded the soldier.

Another man came up and opened the door nearest the chimney, on that side which overlooked the fortress enclosure. He paused in descending, loaded with the commandant's possessions, to say that this bedroom was designed for mademoiselle, and was now ready.

"And thou must get to it as soon as the river's chill is warmed out of thy bones," said Le Ber. "I will sit and hear the worthy friar downstairs tell his strange adventures. The sound of your voice can reach me with no effort whatever. My bedroom will be next yours, or near by, and no harm can befall you in Fort Frontenac."