The Story of Tonty Part 8

Jeanne kissed his cheek before he returned to the lower room, and when the supper was removed she sat drying herself by the fire.

The eager piety of her early girlhood, which was almost fantastic in its expression, had yet worked out a n.o.bly spiritual face. She was a beautiful saint.

For several years Jeanne le Ber had refused the ordinary clothing of women. Her visible garment was made of a soft fine blanket of white wool, with long sleeves falling nearly to her feet. It was girded to her waist by a cord from which hung her rosary. Her neck stood slim and white above the top of this robe, without ornament except the peaked monk's hood which hung behind it.

This creature like a flame of living white fire stood up and turned her back to the ruddier logs, and clasped her hands across the top of her head. Her eyes wasted scintillations on rafters while she waited for heavenly peace to calm the strong excitement driving her.

The door of Jeanne's chamber stood open as the soldier had left it. At the opposite side of the room a similar door opened, and La Salle came out. He moved a step, toward the hearth, but stopped, and the pallor of a swoon filled his face.

"Sieur de la Salle," said Jeanne in a whisper. She let her arms slip down by her sides. The eccentric robe with its background of firelight cast her up tall and white before his eyes.

In the explorer's most successful moments he had never appeared so majestic. Though his dress was tarnished by the wilderness, he had it carefully arranged; for he liked to feel it fitting him with an exactness which would not annoy his thoughts.

No formal greeting preluded the crash of this encounter between La Salle and Jeanne le Ber. What had lain repressed by prayer and penance, or had been trodden down league by league in the wilds, leaped out with strength made mighty by such repression.

Voices in loud and merry conversation below and occasional laughter came up the open stairway and made accompaniment to this half-hushed duet.

"Jeanne," stammered La Salle.

"Sieur de la Salle, I was just going to my room."

She moved away from him to the side of the hearth, as he advanced and sat down upon the bench. Unconscious that she stood while he was sitting, as if overcome by sudden blindness he reached toward her with a groping gesture.

"Take hold of my hand, Sainte Jeanne."

"And if I take hold of your hand, Sieur de la Salle," murmured the girl, bending toward him though she held her arms at her sides, "what profit will it be to either of us?"

"I beg that you will take hold of my hand."

Her hand, quivering to each finger tip, moved out and met and was clasped in his. La Salle's head dropped on his breast.

Jeanne turned away her face. Voices and laughter jangled in the room below. In this silent room pulse answered pulse, and with slow encounter eyes answered the adoration of eyes. In terror of herself Jeanne uttered the whispered cry,--

"I am afraid!"

She veiled herself with the long sleeve of her robe.

"And of what should you be afraid when we are thus near together?" said La Salle. "The thing to be afraid of is losing this. Such gladness has been long coming; for I was a man when you were born, Sainte Jeanne."

"Let go my hand, Sieur de la Salle."

"Do you want me to let it go, Sainte Jeanne?"

"No, Sieur de la Salle."

Dropping her sleeve Jeanne faced heaven through the rafters. Tears stormed down her face, and her white throat swelled with strong repressed sobs. Like some angel caught in a snare, she whispered her up-directed wail,--

"All my enormity must now be confessed! Whenever Sieur de la Salle has been a.s.sailed my soul rose up in arms for him. Oh, my poor father! So dear has Sieur de la Salle been to me that I hated the hatred of my father. What shall I do to tear out this awful love? I have fought it through midnights and solitary days of ceaseless prayer. Oh, Sieur de la Salle, why art thou such a man? Pray to G.o.d and invoke the saints for me, and help me to go free from this love!"

"Jeanne," said La Salle, "you are so holy I dare touch no more than this sweet hand. It fills me with life. Ask me not to pray to G.o.d that he will take the life from me. Oh, Jeanne, if you could reach out of your eternity of devotion and hold me always by the hand, what a man I might be!"

She dropped her eyes to his face, saying like a soothing mother,--

"Thou greatest and dearest, there is a gulf between us which we cannot pa.s.s. I am vowed to Heaven. Thou art vowed to great enterprises. The life of the family is not for us. If G.o.d showed me my way by thy side I would go through any wilderness. But Jeanne was made to listen in prayer and silence and secrecy and anguish for the word of Heaven. The worst is,"--her stormy sob again shook her from head to foot,--"you will be at court, and beautiful women will love the great explorer. And one will shine; she will be set like a star as high as the height of being your wife. And Jeanne,--oh, Jeanne! here in this rough, new world,--she must eternally learn to be nothing!"

"My wife!" said La Salle, turning her hand in his clasp, and laying his cheek in her palm. "You are my wife. There is no court. There is no world to discover. There is only the sweet, the rose-tender palm of my wife where I can lay my tired cheek and rest."

Jeanne's fingers moved with involuntary caressing along the lowest curve of his face.

An ember fell on the hearth beside them, and Father Hennepin emphasized some point in his relation with a stamp of his foot.

"You left a glove at my father's house, Sieur de la Salle, and I hid it; I put my face to it. And when I burned it, my own blood seemed to ooze out of that crisping glove."

La Salle trembled. The dumb and solitary man was dumb and solitary in his love.

"Now we must part," breathed Jeanne. "Heaven is strangely merciful to sinners. I never could name you to my confessor or show him this formless anguish; but now that it has been owned and cast out, my heart is glad."

La Salle rose up and stood by the hearth. As she drew her hand from his continued hold he opened his arms. Jeanne stepped backward, her eyes swarming with motes of light. She turned and reached her chamber door; but as the saint receded from temptation the woman rose in strength. She ran to La Salle, and with a tremor and a sob in his arms, met his mouth with the one kiss of her life. As suddenly she ran from him and left him.

La Salle had had his sublime moment of standing at the centre of the universe and seeing all things swing around him, which comes to every one successful in embodying a vast idea. But from this height he looked down at that experience.

He stood still after Jeanne's door closed until he felt his own intrusion. This drove him downstairs and out of the house, regardless of Jacques le Ber, Father Hennepin, and the officers of the fortress, who turned to gaze at his transit.

Proud satisfaction, strange in a ruined man, appeared on the explorer's face. He felt his reverses as cobwebs to be brushed away. He was loved.

The king had been turned against him. His enemies had procured Count Frontenac's removal, and La Barre the new governor, conspiring to seize his estate, had ruined his credit. But he was loved. Even on this homeward journey an officer had pa.s.sed him with authority to take possession of his new post on the Illinois River. His discoveries were doubted and sneered at, as well as half claimed by boasting subordinates, who knew nothing about his greater views. Yet the only softener of this man of n.o.ble granite was a spirit-like girl, who regarded the love of her womanhood as sin.

La Salle stood in the midst of enemies. He stood considering merely how his will should break down the religious walls Jeanne built around herself, and how Jacques le Ber might be conciliated by shares in the profits of the West. Behind stretched his shadowed life, full of misfortune; good was held out to him to be withdrawn at the touch of his fingers. But this good he determined to have; and thinking of her, La Salle walked the stiffened frost-crisp ground of the fortress half the night.

IV.

A CANOE FROM THE ILLINOIS.

When Barbe Cavelier awoke next morning and saw around her the stone walls of Fort Frontenac instead of a familiar convent enclosure, she sat up in her bed and laughed aloud. The tiny cell echoed. Never before had laughter of young girl been heard there. And when she placed her feet upon the floor perhaps their neat and exact pressure was a surprise to battered planks used to the smiting tread of men.

Barbe proceeded to dress herself, with those many curvings of neck and figure, which, in any age, seem necessary to the fit sitting of a young maid in her garments. Her aquiline face glowed, full of ardent life.

Some raindrops struck the roof-window and ran down its panes like tears.

When Barbe had considered her astounding position as the only woman in Fort Frontenac, and felt well compacted for farther adventures, she sprung upon the bunk, and stood with her head near the roof, looking out into the fortress and its adjacent world. Among moving figures she could not discern her uncle La Salle, or her uncle the Abbe, or even her brother. These three must be yet in the officers' house. Dull clouds were scudding. As Barbe opened the sash and put her head out the morning air met her with a chill. Fort Frontenac's great walls half hid an autumn forest, crowding the lake's distant border in measureless expanse of sad foliage. Eastward, she caught ghostly hints of islands on misty water. The day was full of depression. Ontario stood up against the sky, a pale greenish fleece, raked at intervals by long wires of rain.

But such influences had no effect on a healthy warm young creature, freed unaccountably from her convent, and brought on a perilous, delightful journey to so strange a part of her world.

She noticed a parley going forward at the gate. Some outsider demanded entrance, for the sentry disappeared between the towers and returned for orders. He approached the commandant who stood talking with Jacques le Ber, the merchant of Montreal. Barbe could see Le Ber's face darken.

With shrugs and negative gestures he decided against the newcomer, and the sentinel again disappeared to refuse admission. She wondered if a band of Iroquois waited outside. Among Abbe Cavelier's complaints of La Salle was Governor la Barre's accusation that La Salle stirred enmity in the Iroquois by protecting the Illinois tribe they wished to exterminate.