MADEMOISELLE EATS HER BREAKFAST.
The sun hung low over the western woods when Menard, at the close of
the second day, headed the canoe shoreward. The great river swept by
with hardly a surface motion, dimpling and rippling under the last
touch of the day breeze. Menard's eyes rested on Father Claude, as the
canoe drew into the shadow of the trees. The priest, stiff from the
hours of sitting and kneeling, had taken up a paddle and was handling
it deftly. He had rolled his sleeves up to the elbow, showing a thin
forearm with wire-like muscles. The two _voyageurs_, at bow and stern,
were proving to be quiet enough fellows. Guerin, the younger, wore a
boyish, half-confiding look. His fellow, Perrot, was an older man.
Menard felt, when he thought of Danton, a sense of pride in his own
right judgment. The boy was taking hold with a strong, if unguided,
hand. Already the feather was gone from his hat, the lace from his
throat. Two days in the canoe and a night on the ground had stained
and wrinkled his uniform,--a condition of which, with his quick
adaptability, he was already beginning to feel proud. He had flushed
often, during the first day, under the shrewd glances of the
_voyageurs_, who read the inexperience in his bright clothes and white
hands. Menard knew, from the way his shoulders followed the swing of
his arms, that the steady paddling was laming him sadly. He would
allow Danton five days more; at the week's end he must be a man, else
the experiment had failed.
The canoe scraped bottom under a wild growth of brush and outreaching
trees. The forest was stirring with the rustle and call of birds, with
the breath of the leaves and the far-away crackle and plunge of larger
animals through the undergrowth. A chipmunk, with inquisitive eyes,
sat on the root of a knotted oak, but he whisked away when Menard and
the canoemen stepped into the shallow water. Overhead, showing little
fear of the canoe and of the strangely clad animals within it,
scampered a family of red squirrels, now nibbling a nut from the
winter's store, now running and jumping from tree to tree, until only
by the shaking of the twigs and the leaf-clusters could one follow
their movements.
The maid leaned an elbow on the bale which Danton had placed at her
back, and rested her cheek on her hand. They were under the drooping
branches of an elm that stood holding to the edge of the bank. Well
out over the water sat one of the squirrels, his tail sweeping above
his head, nibbling an acorn, and looking with hasty little glances at
the canoe. She watched him, and memories came into her eyes. There had
been squirrels on her father's seignory who would take nuts from her
hand, burying them slyly under the bushes, and hurrying back for
more.
Danton came wading to the side of the canoe to help her to the bank,
but she took his hand only to steady herself while rising. Stepping
over the bracing-strips between the gunwales, she caught a swaying
branch, and swung herself lightly ashore. Back from the water the
ground rose into a low hill, covered with oak and elm and ragged
hickory trees. Here, for a space, there was little undergrowth, and
save under the heaviest of the trees the ground was green with short,
coarse grass. Danton took a hatchet from the canoe, and trimmed a fir
tree, heaping armfuls of green boughs at the foot of an oak near the
top of the slope. Over these he threw a blanket. The maid came slowly
up the hill, in response to his call, and with a weary little smile of
thanks she sank upon the fragrant couch. She rested against the tree
trunk, gazing through the nearer foliage at the rushing river.
For the two days she had been like this,--silent, shy, with sad eyes.
And Danton,--who could no more have avoided the company of such a maid
than he could have left off eating or breathing or laughing,--Danton,
for all his short Paris life (which should, Heaven knows, have given
him a front with the maids), could do nothing but hang about, eager
for a smile or a word, yet too young to know that he could better
serve his case by leaving her with her thoughts, and with the
boundless woods and the great lonely spaces of the river. Menard saw
the comedy--as indeed, who of the party did not--and was amused. A few
moments later he glanced again toward the oak. He was sharpening a
knife, and could seem not to be observing. Danton was sitting a few
yards from the maid, with the awkward air of a youth who doubts his
welcome. She still looked out over the water. Menard saw that her face
was white and drooping. He knew that she had not slept; for twice
during the preceding night, as he lay in his blanket, he had heard
from under the overturned canoe, where she lay, the low sound of her
sobbing.
Menard walked slowly down the slope, testing the knife-edge with his
thumb, his short pipe between his teeth. He sheathed his knife,
lowered his pipe, and called:--
"Guerin." The two men, who were bringing wood to the fire, looked up.
"Where has the Father gone?"
Guerin pointed around the base of the hill. "He went to the woods,
M'sieu."
"With a bundle," added Perrot.
Menard walked around the hill, and after a little searching found the
priest, kneeling, in a clearing, before the portrait of Catharine
Outasoren, which he had set against a tree. His brushes and paints
were spread on the ground before him. He did not hear Menard
approach.
"Oh," said the captain, "you brought the picture!"
The priest looked up over his shoulder, with a startled manner.
"I myself have stripped down to the lightest necessaries," said
Menard, with a significant glance at the portrait.
The priest lowered his brush, and sat looking at the picture
with troubled eyes. "I had no place for it," he said at last,
hesitatingly.
"They didn't take it at the College, eh?"
Father Claude flushed.
"They were very kind. They felt that perhaps it was not entirely
completed, and that--"
"You will leave it at Montreal, then, at the Mission?"
"Yes,--I suppose so. Yes, I shall plan to leave it there."
Menard leaned against a tree, and pressed the tobacco down in his
pipe.
"I have been doing some thinking in the last few minutes, Father. I've
decided to make my first call on you for assistance."
"Very well, Captain."
"It is about the maid. Have you noticed?"
"She seems of a sober mind."
"Don't you see why? It is her father's losses, and this journey. She
is taking it very hard. She is afraid, Father, all the time; and she
neither sleeps nor eats."
"It is naturally hard for such a child as she is to take this journey.
She has had no experience,--she does not comprehend the easy customs
and the hard travelling of the frontier. I think that in time--"
Menard was puffing impatiently.
"Father," he said, "do you remember when Major Gordeau was killed, and
I was detailed to bring his wife and daughter down to Three Rivers? It
was much like this. They fretted and could not sleep, and the coarse
fare of the road was beneath their appetites. Do you remember? And
when it came to taking the rapids, with the same days of hard work
that lie before us now, they were too weak, and they sickened, the
mother first, then the daughter. When I think of that, Father, of the
last week of that journey, and of how I swore never again to take a
woman in my care on the river, I--well, there is no use in going over
it. If this goes on, we shall not get to Frontenac in time, that is
all. And I cannot afford to take such a chance."
The priest looked grave. The long struggle against the rapids from
Montreal to La Gallette had tried the hardihood of more than one
strong man.
"It is probable, my son, that the sense of your responsibility makes
you a little over-cautious. She is a strong enough child, I should
say. Still, perhaps the food is not what she has been accustomed to. I
have noticed that she eats little."
"Perrot is too fond of grease," Menard said. "I must tell him to use
less grease."
"If she should be taken sick, we could leave her with someone at
Montreal."
"Leave her at Montreal!" exclaimed Menard. "When she breaks down, it
will be in the rapids. And then I must either go on alone, or wait
with you until she is strong enough to be carried. In any case it
means confusion and delay. And I must not be delayed."
"What have you in mind to do?"
"We must find a way to brighten her spirits. It is homesickness that
worries her, and sorrow for her father, and dread of what is before
and around her. I'll warrant she has never been away from her home
before. We must get her confidence,--devise ways to cheer her,
brighten her."
"I can reason with her, and--"
"This is not the time for reasoning, Father. What we must do is to
make her stop thinking, stop looking backward and forward. And there
is Danton; he can help. He is of an age with her, and should succeed
where you and I might fail."
"He has not awaited the suggestion, Captain."
"Yes, I know. But he must,--well, Father, it has all been said. The
maid is on our hands, and must be got to Frontenac. That is all. And
there is nothing for it but to rely on Danton to help."
The priest looked at his brushes, and hesitated. "I am not certain,"
he said, "she is very young. And Lieutenant Danton,--I have heard,
while at Quebec,--"
Menard laughed.
"He is a boy, Father. These tales may be true enough. Why not? They
would fit as well any idle lieutenant in Quebec, who is lucky
enough to have an eye, and a pair of shoulders, and a bit of the
King's gold in his purse. This maid is the daughter of a gentleman,
Father; she is none of your Lower Town jades. And Danton may be young
and foolish,--as may we all have been,--but he is a gentleman born."
"Very well," replied the priest, looking with regret at the failing
light, and beginning to gather his brushes. "I will counsel her, but I
fear it will do little good. If the maid is sick at heart, and we
attempt to guide her thoughts, we may but drive the trouble deeper in.
It is the same with some of the Indian maidens, when they have left
the tribe for the Mission. Now and again there comes a time, even with
piety to strengthen them,--and this maid has little,--when the
yearning seems to grow too strong to be cured. Sometimes they go back.
One died. It was at Sault St. Francis in the year of the--"
"Yes, yes," Menard broke in. "We have only one fact to remember; there
must be no delay in carrying out the Governor's orders. We cannot
change our plans because of this maid."
"We must not let her understand, M'sieu."
Menard had been standing, with a shoulder against the tree,
alternately puffing at his pipe and lowering it, scowling meanwhile at
the ground. Now he suddenly raised his head and chuckled.
"It will be many a year since I have played the beau, Father. It may
be that I have forgotten the role." He spread out his hands and looked
at the twisted fingers. "But I can try, like a soldier. And there are
three of us, Father Claude, there are three of us."
He turned to go back to the camp, but the priest touched him.
"My son,--perhaps, before you return, you would look again at my
unworthy portrait. I--about the matter of the canoe--"
"Oh," said Menard, "you've taken it out."
"Yes; it seemed best, considering the danger that others might feel
the same doubts which troubled you."
"I wouldn't do that. The canoe was all right, once the direction were
decided on."
"Above all else, the true portrait should convey to the mind of the
observer the impression that a single, an unmistakable purpose
underlies the work. When one considers--"
"Very true, Father, very true," said Menard abruptly, looking about at
the beginning of the twilight. "And now we had better get back. The
supper will be ready."
Menard strode away toward the camp. Father Claude watched him for a
time through the trees, then turned again to the picture. Finally he
got together his materials, and carrying them in a fold of his gown,
with the picture in his left hand, he followed Menard.
The maid was leaning back against the tree, looking up at the sky,
where the first red of the afterglow was spreading. She did not hear
Menard; and he paused, a few yards away, to look at the clear
whiteness of her skin and the full curve of her throat. Her figure and
air, her habits of gesture and step, and carriage of the head, were
those of the free-hearted maid of the seignory. They told of an
outdoor life, of a good horse, and a light canoe, and the inbred love
of trees and sky and running water. Here was none of the stiffness,
the more than Parisian manner, of the maidens of Quebec. To stand
there and look at her, unconscious as she was, pleased Menard.
"Mademoiselle," he said, coming nearer, "will you join us at supper?"
The maid looked at him with a slow blush (she was not yet accustomed
to the right of these men to enter into the routine of her life).
Menard reached to help her, but she rose easily.
"Lieutenant Danton is not here?"
"No, M'sieu, he walked away."
They sat about a log. Danton had not strayed far, for he joined them
shortly, wearing a sulky expression. Menard looked about the group.
The maid was silent. Father Claude was beginning at once on the food
before him. The twilight was growing deeper, and Guerin dragged a log
to the fire, throwing it on the pile with a shower of sparks, and half
a hundred shooting tongues of flame. The Captain looked again at
Danton, and saw that the boy's glance shifted uneasily about the
group. Altogether it was an unfortunate start for his plan. But it was
clear that no other would break the ice, so he drew a long breath, and
plunged doggedly into the story of his first fight on the St.
Lawrence.
It was a brave story of ambuscade and battle; and it was full of the
dark of night and the red flash of muskets and the stealth and
treachery of the Iroquois soul. When he reached the tale of the
captured Mohawk, who sat against a tree with a ball in his lungs, to
the last refusing the sacrament, and dying like a chief with the death
song on his lips, Danton was leaning forward, breathless and eager,
hanging on his words. The maid's eyes, too, were moist. Then they
talked on, Danton asking boyish questions, and Father Claude starting
over and again on a narrative of the wonderful conversion of the Huron
drunkard, Heroukiki, who, in his zeal,--and here Menard always swept
in with a new story, which left the priest adrift in the eddies of the
conversation. At last, when they rose, and the dusk was settling over
the trees, the maid was laughing with gentle good fellowship.
While they were eating, the _voyageurs_ had brought the canoe a short
way up the bank, resting it, bottom up, on large stones brought from
the shore. Underneath was a soft cot of balsam; over the canoe were
blankets, hanging on both sides to the ground. Then Mademoiselle said
good-night, with a moment's lingering on the word, and a wistful note
in her voice that brought perhaps more sympathy than had the sad eyes
of the morning. For after all she was only a girl, and hers was a
brave little heart.
The three men lay on the slope with hardly a word, looking at the
river, now shining like silver through the trees. This new turn in the
life of the party was not as yet to be taken familiarly. Father Claude
withdrew early to his meditations. Menard stretched out on his back,
his hands behind his head, gazing lazily at the leaves overhead, now
hanging motionless from the twigs.
Danton was sitting up, looking about, and running the young reeds
through his fingers.
"Danton," Menard said, after a long silence, "I suppose you know that
we have something of a problem on our hands."
Danton looked over the river.
"What have you thought about Mademoiselle?"
"I don't understand."
"Father Claude and I have been talking this evening about her. I have
thought that she does not look any too strong for a hard journey of a
hundred and more leagues."
"She has little colour," said Danton, cautiously.
"It seems to me, Danton, that you can help us."
"How?"
"What seems to you the cause of the trouble?"
"With Mademoiselle? She takes little impression from the kindness of
those about her."
"Oh, come, Danton. You know better. Even a boy of your age should see
deeper than that. You think she slights you; very likely she does.
What of that? You are not here to be drawn into a boy-and-girl quarrel
with a maid who chances to share our canoe. You are here as my aid, to
make the shortest time possible between Quebec and Frontenac. If she
were to fall sick, we should be delayed. Therefore she must not fall
sick."
Danton had plucked a weed, and now was pulling it to pieces, bit by
bit.
"What do you want me to do?"
"Stop this moping, this hanging about. Take hold of the matter. Devise
talks, diversions; fill her idle moments; I care not what you
do,--within limits, my boy, within limits."
"Oh," said Danton, "then you really want me to?"
"Certainly. I am too old myself."
Danton rose, and walked a few steps away and back.
"But she will have none of me, Menard. It is, 'No, with thanks,' or,
worse, a shake of the head. If I offer to help, if I try to talk, if
I--oh, it is always the same. I am tired of it."
Menard smiled in the dark.
"Is that your reply to an order from your superior officer, Danton?"
The boy stood silent for a moment, then he said, "I beg your pardon,
Captain." And with a curious effort at stiffness he wandered off among
the trees, and was soon out of Menard's sight.
Menard walked slowly down to the fire, opened his pack, and spreading
out his blanket, rolled himself in it with his feet close to the red
embers. For a long time he lay awake. This episode took him back
nearly a decade, to a time when he, like Danton, would have lost his
poise at a glance from the nearest pair of eyes. That the maid should
so interest him was in itself amusing. Had she been older or younger,
had she been any but the timid, honest little woman that she was, he
would have left her, without a second thought, in the care of the
Commandant at Montreal, to be escorted through the rapids by some
later party. But he had fixed his mind on getting her to Frontenac,
and the question was settled. His last thought that night was of her
quiet laughter and her friendly, hesitating "good-night."
He was awakened in the half light before the sunrise by a step on the
twigs. At a little distance through the trees was the maid, walking
down toward the water. She slipped easily between the briers, holding
her skirt close. From a spring, not a hundred yards up the hillside, a
brook came tumbling to the river, picking its way under and over the
stones and the fallen trees, and trickling over the bank with a low
murmur. The maid stopped by a pool, and kneeling on a flat rock,
dipped her hands.
The others were asleep. A rod away lay Danton, a sprawling heap in his
blanket. Menard rose, tossed his blanket upon his bundle, and walked
slowly down toward the maid.
"Mademoiselle, you rise with the birds."
She looked around, and laughed gently. He saw that she had frankly
accepted the first little change in their relations.
"I like to be with the birds, M'sieu."
Menard had no small talk. He was thinking of her evident lack of
sleep.
"It is the best hour for the river, Mademoiselle." The colours of the
dawn were beginning to creep up beyond the eastern bank, sending a
lance of red and gold into a low cloud bank, and a spread of soft
crimson close after. "Perhaps you are fond of the fish?"
The maid was kneeling to pick a cluster of yellow flower cups. She
looked up and nodded, with a smile.
"We fished at home, M'sieu."
"We will go," said Menard, abruptly. "I will bring down the canoe."
He threw the blankets to one side, and stooping under the long canoe,
carried it on his shoulders to the water. A line and hook were in his
bundle; the bait was ready at a turn of the grass and weeds.
"We are two adventurers," he said lightly, as he tossed the line into
the canoe, and held out one of the paddles. "You should do your share
of the morning's work, Mademoiselle."
She laughed again, and took the paddle. They pushed off; the maid
kneeling at the bow, Menard in the stern. He guided the canoe against
the current. The water lay flat under the still air, reflecting the
gloomy trees on the banks, and the deepening colours of the sky. He
fell into a lazy, swinging stroke, watching the maid. Her arms and
shoulders moved easily, with the grace of one who had tumbled about a
canoe from early childhood.
"Ready, Mademoiselle?" He was heading for a deep pool near a line of
rushes. The maid, laying down her paddle, reached back for the line,
and put on the bait with her own fingers.
Menard held the canoe steady against the current, which was there but
a slow movement, while she lowered the hook over the bow. They sat
without a word for some minutes. Once he spoke, in a bantering voice,
and she motioned to him to be quiet. Her brows were drawn down close
together.
It was but a short time before she felt a jerk at the line. Her arms
straightened out, and she pressed her lips tightly together. "Quick!"
she said. "Go ahead!"
"Can you hold it?" he asked, as he dipped his paddle.
She nodded. "I wish the line were longer. It will be hard to give him
any room." She wound the cord around her wrist. "Will the line hold,
M'sieu?"
"I think so. See if you can pull in."
She leaned back, and pulled steadily, then shook her head. "Not very
much. Perhaps, if you can get into the shallow water--"
Menard slowly worked the canoe through an opening in the rushes. There
was a thrashing about and plunging not two rods away. Once the fish
leaped clear of the water in a curve of clashing silver.
"It's a salmon," he said. "A small one."
The maid held hard, but the colour had gone from her face. The canoe
drew nearer to the shore.
"Hold fast," said Menard. He gave a last sweep of the paddle, and
crept forward to the bow. Kneeling behind the maid, he reached over
her shoulder, and took the line below her hand.
"Careful, M'sieu; it may break."
"We must risk it." He pulled slowly in until the fish was close under
the gunwale. "Now can you hold?"
"Yes." She shook a straying lock of hair from her eyes, and took
another turn of the cord around her wrist.
"Steady," he said. He drew his knife, leaned over the gunwale, and
stabbed at the fighting fish until his blade sank in just below the
gills, and he could lift it aboard.
The maid laughed nervously, and rested her hands upon the two
gunwales. Her breath was gone, and there was a red mark around her
wrist where the cord had been. The canoe had drifted into the rushes,
and Menard went back to his paddle, and worked out again into the
channel.
"And now, Mademoiselle," he said, "we shall have a breakfast of our
own. You need not paddle. I will take her down."
Her breath was coming back. She laughed, and sat comfortably in the
bow, facing Menard, and letting her eyes follow the steady swing and
catch of his paddle. When they reached the camp, the _voyageurs_ were
astir, but Danton and the priest still slept. The first red glare of
the sun was levelled at them over the eastern trees.
Menard made a fire under an arch of flat stones, and trimming a strip
of oak wood with his hatchet, he laid the cleaned fish upon it and
kept it on the fire until it was brown and crisp. The maid sat by, her
eyes alert and her cheeks flushed.
Danton was awake before the fish was cooked, and he stood about with a
pretence of not observing them. The maid was fairly aroused. She drew
him into the talk, and laughed and bantered with the two men as
prettily as they could have wished from a Quebec belle.
All during the morning Danton was silent. At noon, when the halt was
made for the midday lunch, he was still puzzling over the apparent
understanding between Mademoiselle and the Captain. Before the journey
was taken up, he stood for a moment near Menard, on the river bank.
"Captain," he said, "you asked me last night to--"
"Well?"
"It may be that I have misunderstood you. Of course, if Mademoiselle--if
you--" He caught himself.
Menard smiled; then he read the earnestness beneath the boy's
confusion, and sobered.
"Mademoiselle and I went fishing, Danton. Result,--Mademoiselle eats
her first meal. If you can do as much you shall have my thanks. And
now remember that you are a lieutenant in the King's service."