Before the war for the Union, in the times of the old army, there had
been peace throughout the country for thirteen years. Regiments
existed in their officers, but the ranks were thin,--the more so the
better, since the United States possessed few forts and seemed in
chronic embarrassment over her military children, owing to the flying
foot-ball of public opinion, now 'standing army pro,' now 'standing
army con,' with more or less allusion to the much-enduring Caesar and
his legions, the ever-present ghost of the political arena.
In those days the few forts were full and much state was kept up; the
officers were all graduates of West Point, and their wives graduates
of the first families. They prided themselves upon their antecedents;
and if there was any aristocracy in the country, it was in the circles
of army life.
Those were pleasant days,--pleasant for the old soldiers who were
resting after Mexico,--pleasant for young soldiers destined to die on
the plains of Gettysburg or the cloudy heights of Lookout Mountain.
There was an esprit de corps in the little band, a dignity of
bearing, and a ceremonious state, lost in the great struggle which
came afterward. That great struggle now lies ten years back; yet,
to-day, when the silver-haired veterans meet, they pass it over as a
thing of the present, and go back to the times of the 'old army.'
Up in the northern straits, between blue Lake Huron, with its clear
air, and gray Lake Michigan, with its silver fogs, lies the bold
island of Mackinac. Clustered along the beach, which runs around its
half-moon harbor, are the houses of the old French village, nestling
at the foot of the cliff rising behind, crowned with the little white
fort, the stars and stripes floating above it against the deep blue
sky. Beyond, on all sides, the forest stretches away, cliffs finishing
it abruptly, save one slope at the far end of the island, three miles
distant, where the British landed in 1812. That is the whole of
Mackinac.
The island has a strange sufficiency of its own; it satisfies; all
who have lived there feel it. The island has a wild beauty of its own;
it fascinates; all who have lived there love it. Among its aromatic
cedars, along the aisles of its pine trees, in the gay company of its
maples, there is companionship. On its bald northern cliffs, bathed in
sunshine and swept by the pure breeze, there is exhilaration. Many
there are, bearing the burden and heat of the day, who look back to
the island with the tears that rise but do not fall, the sudden
longing despondency that comes occasionally to all, when the tired
heart cries out, 'O, to escape, to flee away, far, far away, and be at
rest!'
In 1856 Fort Mackinac held a major, a captain, three lieutenants, a
chaplain, and a surgeon, besides those subordinate officers who wear
stripes on their sleeves, and whose rank and duties are mysteries to
the uninitiated. The force for this array of commanders was small,
less than a company; but what it lacked in quantity it made up in
quality, owing to the continual drilling it received.
The days were long at Fort Mackinac; happy thought! drill the men. So
when the major had finished, the captain began, and each lieutenant
was watching his chance. Much state was kept up also. Whenever the
major appeared, 'Commanding officer; guard, present arms,' was called
down the line of men on duty, and the guard hastened to obey, the
major acknowledging the salute with stiff precision. By day and by
night sentinels paced the walls. True, the walls were crumbling, and
the whole force was constantly engaged in propping them up, but none
the less did the sentinels pace with dignity. What was it to the
captain if, while he sternly inspected the muskets in the block-house,
the lieutenant, with a detail of men, was hard at work strengthening
its underpinning? None the less did he inspect. The sally-port, mended
but imposing; the flag-staff with its fair-weather and storm flags;
the frowning iron grating; the sidling white causeway, constantly
falling down and as constantly repaired, which led up to the main
entrance; the well-preserved old cannon,--all showed a strict military
rule. When the men were not drilling they were propping up the fort
and when they were not propping up the fort they were drilling. In the
early days, the days of the first American commanders, military roads
had been made through the forest,--roads even now smooth and solid,
although trees of a second growth meet overhead. But that was when the
fort was young and stood firmly on its legs. In 1856 there was no time
for road-making, for when military duty was over there was always more
or less mending to keep the whole fortification from sliding down hill
into the lake.
On Sunday there was service in the little chapel, an upper room
overlooking the inside parade-ground. Here the kindly Episcopal
chaplain read the chapters about Balaam and Balak, and always made the
same impressive pause after 'Let me die the death of the righteous,
and let my last end be like his.' (Dear old man! he has gone. Would
that our last end might indeed be like his!) Not that the chaplain
confined his reading to the Book of Numbers; but as those chapters are
appointed for the August Sundays, and as it was in August that the
summer visitors came to Mackinac, the little chapel is in many minds
associated with the patient Balak, his seven altars, and his seven
rams.
There was state and discipline in the fort even on Sundays;
bugle-playing marshalled the congregation in, bugle-playing marshalled
them out. If the sermon was not finished, so much the worse for the
sermon, but it made no difference to the bugle; at a given moment it
sounded, and out marched all the soldiers, drowning the poor
chaplain's hurrying voice with their tramp down the stairs. The
officers attended service in full uniform, sitting erect and dignified
in the front seats. We used to smile at the grand air they had, from
the stately gray-haired major down to the youngest lieutenant fresh
from the Point. But brave hearts were beating under those fine
uniforms; and when the great struggle came, one and all died on the
field in the front of the battle. Over the grave of the commanding
officer is inscribed, 'Major-General,' over the captain's is
'Brigadier,' and over each young lieutenant is 'Colonel.' They gained
their promotion in death.
I spent many months at Fort Mackinac with Archie; Archie was my
nephew, a young lieutenant. In the short, bright summer came the
visitors from below; all the world outside is 'below' in island
vernacular. In the long winter the little white fort looked out over
unbroken ice-fields, and watched for the moving black dot of the
dog-train bringing the mails from the main land. One January day I had
been out walking on the snow-crust, breathing the cold, still air,
and, returning within the walls to our quarters, I found my little
parlor already occupied. Jeannette was there, petite Jeanneton, the
fisherman's daughter. Strange beauty sometimes results from a mixed
descent, and this girl had French, English and Indian blood in her
veins, the three races mixing and intermixing among her ancestors,
according to the custom of the Northwestern border. A bold profile
delicately finished, heavy blue-black hair, light blue eyes looking
out unexpectedly from under black lashes and brows; a fair white skin,
neither the rose-white of the blonde nor the cream-white of the
Oriental brunette; a rounded form with small hands and feet, showed
the mixed beauties of three nationalities. Yes, there could be no
doubt but that Jeannette was singularly lovely, albeit ignorant
utterly. Her dress was as much of a melange as her ancestry: a
short skirt of military blue, Indian leggings and moccasins, a red
jacket and little red cap embroidered with beads. The thick braids of
her hair hung down her back, and on the lounge lay a large
blanket-mantle lined with fox-skins and ornamented with the plumage of
birds. She had come to teach me bead-work; I had already taken several
lessons to while away the time, but found myself an awkward scholar.
'Bonjou', madame,' she said, in her patois of broken English
and degenerate French. 'Pretty here.'
My little parlor had a square of carpet, a hearth-fire of great logs,
Turkey-red curtains, a lounge and arm-chair covered with chintz,
several prints on the cracked walls, and a number of books,--the whole
well used and worn, worth perhaps twenty dollars in any town below,
but ten times twenty in icy Mackinac. I began the bead-work, and
Jeannette was laughing at my mistakes, when the door opened, and our
surgeon came in, pausing to warm his hands before going up to his room
in the attic. A taciturn man was our surgeon, Rodney Prescott, not
popular in the merry garrison circle, but a favorite of mine; the
Puritan, the New-Englander, the Bostonian, were as plainly written
upon his face as the French and Indian were written upon Jeannette.
'Sit down, Doctor,' I said.
He took a seat and watched us carelessly, now and then smiling at
Jeannette's chatter as a giant might smile upon a pygmy. I could see
that the child was putting on all her little airs to attract his
attention; now the long lashes swept the cheeks, now they were raised
suddenly, disclosing the unexpected blue eyes: the little moccasined
feet must be warmed on the fender, the braids must be swept back with
an impatient movement of the hand and shoulder, and now and then there
was a coquettish arch of the red lips, less than a pout, what she
herself would have called 'une p'tite moue.' Our surgeon
watched this pantomime unmoved.
'Isn't she beautiful?' I said, when, at the expiration of the hour,
Jeannette disappeared, wrapped in her mantle.
'No; not to my eyes.'
'Why, what more can you require, Doctor? Look at her rich coloring,
her hair--'
'There is no mind in her face, Mrs. Corlyne.'
'But she is still a child.'
'She will always be a child; she will never mature,' answered our
surgeon, going up the steep stairs to his room above.
Jeannette came regularly, and one morning, tired of the bead-work, I
proposed teaching her to read. She consented, although not without an
incentive in the form of shillings; but, however gained, my scholar
gave to the long winter a new interest. She learned readily; but as
there was no foundation, I was obliged to commence with A, B, C.
'Why not teach her to cook?' suggested the major's fair young wife,
whose life was spent in hopeless labors with Indian servants, who,
sooner or later, ran away in the night with spoons and the family
apparel.
'Why not teach her to sew?' said Madame Captain, wearily raising her
eyes from the pile of small garments before her.
'Why not have her up for one of our sociables?' hazarded our most
dashing lieutenant, twirling his moustache.
'Frederick!' exclaimed his wife, in a tone of horror: she was
aristocratic, but sharp in outlines.
'Why not bring her into the church? Those French half-breeds are
little better than heathen,' said the chaplain.
Thus the high authorities disapproved of my educational efforts. I
related their comments to Archie, and added, 'The surgeon is the only
one who has said nothing against it.'
'Prescott? O, he's too high and mighty to notice anybody, much less a
half-breed girl. I never saw such a stiff, silent fellow; he looks as
if he had swallowed all his straightlaced Puritan ancestors. I wish
he'd exchange.'
'Gently, Archie--'
'O, yes, without doubt; certainly, and amen! I know you like
him, Aunt Sarah,' said my handsome boy-soldier, laughing.
The lessons went on. We often saw the surgeon during study hours as
the stairway leading to his room opened out of the little parlor.
Sometimes he would stop awhile and listen as Jeannette slowly read,
'The good boy likes his red top'; 'The good girl can sew a seam', or
watched her awkward attempts to write her name, or add a one and a
two. It was slow work, but I persevered, if from no other motive than
obstinacy. Had they not all prophesied a failure? When wearied with
the dull routine, I gave an oral lesson in poetry. If the rhymes were
of the chiming, rhythmic kind, Jeannette learned rapidly, catching the
verses as one catches a tune, and repeating them with a spirit and
dramatic gesture all her own. Her favorite was Macaulay's 'Ivry.'
Beautiful she looked, as, standing in the centre of the room, she
rolled out the sonorous lines, her French accent giving a charming
foreign coloring to the well-known verses:--
'Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France,
Charge for the golden lilies,--upon them with the lance!
A thousand spears are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest,
A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest;
And in they burst, and on they rushed, while, like a guiding star,
Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre.'
And yet, after all my explanations, she only half understood it; the
'knights' were always 'nights' in her mind, and the 'thickest carnage'
was always the 'thickest carriage.'
One March day she came at the appointed hour, soon after our noon
dinner. The usual clear winter sky was clouded, and a wind blew the
snow from the trees where it had lain quietly month after month.
'Spring is coming,' said the old sergeant that morning, as he hoisted
the storm-flag; it's getting wildlike.'
Jeannette and I went through the lessons, but towards three o'clock a
north-wind came sweeping over the Straits and enveloped the island in
a whirling snow-storm, partly eddies of white splinters torn from the
ice-bound forest, and partly a new, fall of round snow pellets
careering along on the gale, quite unlike the soft, feathery flakes of
early winter. 'You cannot go home now, Jeannette,' I said, looking out
through the little west window; our cottage stood back on the hill,
and from this side window we could see the Straits, going down toward
far Waugoschance; the steep fort-hill outside the wall; the long
meadow, once an Indian burial-place, below; and beyond on the beach
the row of cabins inhabited by the French fishermen, one of them the
home of my pupil. The girl seldom went round the point into the
village; its one street and a half seemed distasteful to her. She
climbed the stone-wall on the ridge behind her cabin, took an Indian
trail through the grass in summer, or struck across on the snow-crust
in winter, ran up the steep side of the fort-hill like a wild
chamois, and came into the garrison enclosure with a careless nod to
the admiring sentinel, as she passed under the rear entrance. These
French, half-breeds, like the gypsies, were not without a pride of
their own. They held themselves aloof from the Irish of Shantytown,
the floating sailor population of the summer, and the common soldiers
of the garrison. They intermarried among themselves, and held their
own revels in their beach-cabins during the winter, with music from
their old violins, dancing and, songs, French ballads with a chorus
after every two lines, quaint chansons handed down from
voyageur ancestors. Small respect had they for the little Roman
Catholic church beyond the old Agency garden; its German priest they
refused to honor; but, when stately old Father Piret came over to the
island from his hermitage in the Chenaux, they ran to meet him, young
and old, and paid him reverence with affectionate respect. Father
Piret was a Parisian, and a gentleman; nothing less would suit these
far-away sheep in the wilderness!
Jeannette Leblanc had all the pride of her class; the Irish
saloon-keeper with his shining tall hat, the loud-talking mate of the
lake schooner, the trim sentinel pacing the fort walls, were nothing
to her, and this somewhat incongruous hauteur gave her the air of a
little princess.
On this stormy afternoon the captain's wife was in my parlor preparing
to return to her own quarters with some coffee she had borrowed.
Hearing my remark she said, 'O, the snow won't hurt the child, Mrs.
Corlyne; she must be storm-proof, living down there on the beach!
Duncan can take her home.'
Duncan was the orderly, a factotum in the garrison.
'Non,' said Jeannette, tossing her head proudly, as the door
closed behind the lady, 'I wish not of Duncan; I go alone.'
It happened that Archie, my nephew, had gone over to the cottage of
the commanding officer to decorate the parlor for the military
sociable; I knew he would not return, and the evening stretched out
before me in all its long loneliness. 'Stay, Jeannette,' I said. 'We
will have tea together here, and when the wind goes down, old Antoine
shall go back with you.' Antoine was a French wood-cutter, whose cabin
clung half-way down the fort-hill like a swallow's nest.
Jeannette's eyes sparkled; I had never invited her before; in an
instant she had turned the day into a high festival. 'Braid hair?'
she asked, glancing toward the mirror, 'faut que je m' fasse
belle.' And the long hair came out of its close braids enveloping her
in its glossy dark waves, while she carefully smoothed out the bits of
red ribbon that served as fastenings. At this moment the door opened,
and the surgeon, the wind, and a puff of snow came in together.
Jeannette looked up, smiling and blushing; the falling hair gave a new
softness to her face, and her eyes were as shy as the eyes of a wild
fawn.
Only the previous day I had noticed that Rodney Prescott listened with
marked attention to the captain's cousin, a Virginia lady, as she
advanced a theory that Jeannette had negro blood in her veins. 'Those
quadroon girls often have a certain kind of plebeian beauty like this
pet of yours, Mrs. Corlyne,' she said, with a slight sniff of her
high-bred, pointed nose. In vain I exclaimed, in vain I argued; the
garrison ladies were all against me, and, in their presence, not a man
dared come to my aid; and the surgeon even added, 'I wish I could be
sure of it.'
'Sure of the negro blood?' I said indignantly.
'Yes.'
'But Jeannette does not look in the least like a quadroon.'
'Some of the quadroon girls are very handsome, Mrs. Corlyne,' answered
the surgeon, coldly.
'O yes!' said the high-bred Virginia lady. 'My brother has a number of
them about his place, but we do not teach them to read, I assure you.
It spoils them.'
As I looked at Jeannette's beautiful face, her delicate eagle profile,
her fair skin and light blue eyes, I recalled this conversation with
vivid indignation. The surgeon, at least, should be convinced of his
mistake. Jeannette had never looked more brilliant; probably the man
had never really scanned her features,--he was such a cold, unseeing
creature; but to-night he should have a fair opportunity, so I invited
him to join our storm-bound tea-party. He hesitated.
'Ah, do, Monsieur Rodenai,' said Jeannette, springing forward. 'I
sing for you, I dance; but, no, you not like that. Bien, I
tell your fortune then.' The young girl loved company. A party of
three, no matter who the third, was to her infinitely better than two.
The surgeon stayed.
A merry evening we had before the hearth-fire. The wind howled around
the block-house and rattled the flag-staff, and the snow pellets
sounded on the window-panes, giving that sense of warm comfort within
that comes only with the storm. Our servant had been drafted into
service for the military sociable, and I was to prepare the evening
meal myself.
'Not tea,' said Jeannette, with a wry face; 'tea,--c'est
medecine!' She had arranged her hair in fanciful braids, and now
followed me to the kitchen, enjoying the novelty like a child.
'Cafe?' she said. 'O, please, madame! I make it.'
The little shed kitchen was cold and dreary, each plank of its thin
walls rattling in the gale with a dismal creak; the wind blew the
smoke down the chimney, and finally it ended on our bringing
everything into the cosey parlor, and using the hearth fire, where
Jeannette made coffee and baked little cakes over the coals.
The meal over, Jeannette sang her songs, sitting on the rug before the
fire,--Le Beau Voyageur, Les Neiges de la Cloche, ballads in Canadian
patois sung to minor airs brought over from France two hundred years
before.
The surgeon sat in the shade of the chimney-piece, his face shaded by
his hand, and I could not discover whether he saw anything to admire
in my protegee, until, standing in the centre of the room, she
gave as 'Ivry' in glorious style. Beautiful she looked as she rolled
out the lines,--
'And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may,--
For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray,--
Press where ye see my white plume shine amidst the ranks of war,
And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre.'
Rodney sat in the full light now, and I secretly triumphed in his rapt
attention.
'Something else, Jeannette,' I said in the pride of my heart. Instead
of repeating anything I had taught her, she began in French:--
'"Marie, enfant, quitte l'ouvrage,
Voici l'etoille du berger."
--"Ma mere, un enfant du village
Languit captif chez l'etranger;
Pris sur mer, loin de sa patrie,
Il c'est rendu,--mais le dernier."
File, file, pauvre Marie,
Pour secourir le prisonnier;
File, file, pauvre Marie,
File, file, pour le prisonnier.
'"Pour lui je filerais moi-meme
Mon enfant,--mais--j'ai tant vieilli!"
--"Envoyez a celui que j'aime
Tout le gain par moi recueilli.
Rose a sa noce en vain me prie;--
Dieu! j'entends le menetrier!"
File, file, pauvre Marie,
Pour secourir le prisonnier;
File, file, pauvre Marie,
File, file, pour le prisonnier.
'"Plus pres du feu file, ma cherie;
La nuit vient de refroidir le temps"
--"Adrien, m'a-t-on dit, ma mere,
Gemit dans des cachots flottants.
On repousse la main fletrie
Qu'il etend vers an pain grossier."
File, file, pauvre Marie,
Pour secourir le prisonnier;
File, file, pauvre Marie,
File, file pour le prisonnier.'
[Footnote: 'Le Prisonnier de Guerre,' Beranger.]
Jeannette repeated these lines with a pathos so real that I felt a
moisture rising in my eyes.
'Where did you learn that, child?' I asked.
'Father Piret, madame.'
'What is it?'
'Je n'sais.'
'It is Beranger,--'The Prisoner of War,' said Rodney Prescott. 'But
you omitted the last verse, mademoiselle; may I ask why?'
'More sad so,' answered Jeannette. 'Marie she die now.'
'You wish her to die?'
'Mais oui: she die for love; c'est beau!'
And there flashed a glance from the girl's eyes that thrilled through
me, I scarcely knew why. I looked towards Rodney, but he was back in
the shadow again.
The hours passed. 'I must go,' said Jeannette, drawing aside the
curtain. Clouds were still driving across the sky, but the snow had
ceased falling, and at intervals the moon shone out over the cold
white scene; the March wind continued on its wild career toward the
south.
'I will send for Antoine,' I said, rising, as Jeannette took up her
fur mantle.
'The old man is sick, to-day,' said Rodney. 'It would not be safe for
him to leave the fire, to-night. I will accompany mademoiselle.'
Pretty Jeannette shrugged her shoulders. 'Mais, monsieur,' she
answered, 'I go over the hill.'
'No, child; not tonight,' I said decidedly. 'The wind is violent, and
the cliff doubly slippery after this ice-storm. Go round through the
village.'
'Of course we shall go through the village,' said our surgeon, in his
calm authoritative way. They started. But in another minute I saw
Jeannette fly by the west window, over the wall and across the snowy
road, like a spirit, disappearing down the steep bank, now slippery
with glare ice. Another minute, and Rodney Prescott followed in her
track.
With bated breath I watched for the reappearance of the two figures on
the white plain, one hundred and fifty feet below; the cliff was
difficult at any time, and now in this ice! The moments seemed very
long, and, alarmed, I was on the point of arousing the garrison, when
I spied the two dark figures on the snowy plain below, now clear in
the moonlight, now lost in the shadow. I watched them for some
distance; then a cloud came, and I lost them entirely.
Rodney did not return, although I sat late before the dying fire.
Thinking over the evening, the idea came to me that perhaps, after
all, he did admire my protegee, and, being a romantic old
woman, I did not repel the fancy; it might go a certain distance
without harm, and an idyl is always charming, doubly so to people cast
away on a desert island. One falls into the habit of studying persons
very closely in the limited circle of garrison life.
But, the next morning, the major's wife gave me an account of the
sociable. 'It was very pleasant,' she said. 'Toward the last Dr.
Prescott came in, quite unexpectedly. I had no idea he could be so
agreeable. Augusta can tell you how charming he was!'
Augusta, a young lady cousin, of pale blond complexion, neutral
opinions, and irreproachable manners, smiled primly. My idyl was
crushed!
The days passed. The winds, the snows, and the high-up fort remained
the same. Jeannette came and went, and the hour lengthened into two or
three; not that we read much, but we talked more. Our surgeon did not
again pass through the parlor; he had ordered a rickety stairway on
the outside wall to be repaired, and we could hear him going up and
down its icy steps as we sat by the hearth-fire. One day I said to
him, 'My protegee is improving wonderfully. If she could have a
complete education, she might take her place with the best in the
land.'
'Do not deceive yourself, Mrs. Corlyne,' he answered. 'It is only the
shallow French quickness.'
'Why do you always judge the child so harshly, Doctor?'
'Do you take her part, Aunt Sarah?' (For sometimes he used the
title which Archie had made so familiar.)
'Of course I do, Rodney. A poor, unfriended girl living in this remote
place, against a United States surgeon with the best of Boston behind
him.'
'I wish you would tell me that every day, Aunt Sarah,' was the reply I
received. It set me musing, but I could make nothing of it. Troubled
without knowing why, I suggested to Archie that he should endeavor to
interest our surgeon in the fort gayety; there was something for every
night in the merry little circle,--games, suppers, tableaux, music,
theatricals, readings, and the like.
'Why, he's in the thick of it already, Aunt Sarah,' said my nephew.
'He's devoting himself to Miss Augusta; she sings "The Harp that
once--" to him every night.'
('The Harp that once through Tara's Halls', was Miss Augusta's
dress-parade song. The Major's quarters not being as large as the
halls aforesaid, the melody was somewhat overpowering.)
'O, does she?' I thought, not without a shade of vexation. But the
vague anxiety vanished.
The real spring came at last,--the rapid, vivid spring of Mackinac.
Almost in a day the ice moved out, the snows melted, and the northern
wild-flowers appeared in the sheltered glens. Lessons were at an end,
for my scholar was away in the green woods. Sometimes she brought me a
bunch of flowers, but I seldom saw her; my wild bird had flown back to
the forest. When the ground was dry and the pine droppings warmed by
the sun, I, too, ventured abroad. One day, wandering as far as the
Arched Rock, I found the surgeon there, and together we sat down to
rest under the trees, looking off over the blue water flecked with
white caps. The Arch is a natural bridge over a chasm one hundred and
fifty feet above the lake,--a fissure in the cliff which has fallen
away in a hollow, leaving the bridge by itself far out over the water.
This bridge springs upward in the shape of an arch; it is fifty feet
long, and its width is in some places two feet, in others only a few
inches,--a narrow, dizzy pathway hanging between sky and water.
'People have crossed it,' I said.
'Only fools,' answered oar surgeon, who despised foolhardiness. 'Has
a man nothing better to do with his life than risk it for the sake of
a silly feat like that! I would not so much as raise my eyes to see
any one cross.'
'O yes, you would, Monsieur Rodenai,' cried a voice behind us. We both
turned and caught a glimpse of Jeannette as she bounded through the
bushes and out to the very centre of the Arch, where she stood
balancing herself and laughing gayly. Her form was outlined against
the sky; the breeze, swayed her skirt; she seemed hovering over the
chasm. I watched her, mute with fear; a word might cause her to lose
her balance; but I could not turn my eyes away, I was fascinated with
the sight. I was not aware that Rodney had left me until he, too,
appeared on the Arch, slowly finding a foothold for himself and
advancing toward the centre. A fragment of the rock broke off under
his foot and fell in the abyss below.
'Go back, Monsieur Rodenai,' cried Jeannette, seeing his danger.
'Will you came back too, Jeannette?'
'Moi? C'est aut'chose,' answered the girl, gayly tossing her
pretty head.
'Then I shall come out and carry you back, wilful child,' said the
surgeon.
A peal of laughter broke from Jeannette as he spoke and then she began
to dance on her point of rock, swinging herself from side to side,
marking the time with a song. I held my breath; her dance seemed
unearthly; it was as though she belonged to the Prince of the Powers
of the Air.
At length the surgeon reached the centre and caught the mocking
creature in his arms: neither spoke, but I could see the flash of
their eyes as they stood for an instant motionless. Then they
struggled on the narrow foothold and swayed over so far that I buried
my face in my trembling hands, unable to look at the dreadful end.
When I opened my eyes again all was still; the Arch was tenantless,
and no sound came from below. Were they, then, so soon dead? Without
a cry? I forced myself to the brink to look down, over the precipice;
but while I stood there, fearing to look, I heard a sound behind me in
the woods. It was Jeannette singing a gay French song. I called to her
to stop. 'How could you!' I said severely, for I was still trembling
with agitation.
'Ce n'est rien, madame. I cross l'Arche when I had five year.
Mais, Monsieur Rodenai le Grand, he raise his eye to look
this time, I think,' said Jeannette, laughing triumphantly.
'Where is he?'
'On the far side, gone on to Scott's Pic [Peak]. Feroce, O feroce,
comme un loupgarou! Ah! c'est joli, ca!' And over-flowing with the
wildest glee the girl danced along through the woods in front of me,
now pausing to look at something in her hand, now laughing, now
shouting like a wild creature, until I lost sight of her. I went back
to the fort alone.
For several days I saw nothing of Rodney. When at last we met, I said,
'That was a wild freak of Jeannette's at the Arch.'
'Planned, to get a few shilling out of us.'
'O Doctor! I do not think she had any such motive,' I replied, looking
up deprecatingly into his cold scornful eyes.
'Are you not a little sentimental over that ignorant, half-wild
creature, Aunt Sarah?'
'Well,' I said to myself, 'perhaps I am!'
The summer came, sails whitened the blue straits again, steamers
stopped for an hour or two at the island docks, and the summer
travellers rushed ashore to buy 'Indian curiosities,' made by the nuns
in Montreal, or to climb breathlessly up the steep fort-hill to see
the pride and panoply of war. Proud was the little white fort in those
summer days; the sentinels held themselves stiffly erect, the officers
gave up lying on the parapet half asleep, the best flag was hoisted
daily, and there was much bugle-playing and ceremony connected with
the evening gun, fired from the ramparts at sunset; the hotels were
full, the boarding-house keepers were in their annual state of wonder
over the singular taste of these people from 'below,' who actually
preferred a miserable white-fish to the best of beef brought up on ice
all the way from Buffalo! There were picnics and walks, and much
confusion of historical dates respecting Father Marquette and the
irrepressible, omnipresent Pontiac. The officers did much escort
duty; their buttons gilded every scene. Our quiet surgeon was foremost
in everything.
'I am surprised! I had no idea Dr. Prescott was so gay,' said the
major's wife.
'I should not think of calling him gay,' I answered.
'Why, my dear Mrs. Corlyne! He is going all the time. Just ask
Augusta.'
Augusta thereupon remarked that society, to a certain extent, was
beneficial; that she considered Dr. Prescott much improved; really, he
was now very 'nice.'