[Illustration: Dollard and His Command Taking the Oath.]
THE
ROMANCE OF DOLLARD
BY
MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration: LOGO]
SEVENTH EDITION
NEWLY REVISED.
THE CENTURY CO.
NEW-YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1888, 1889,
BY MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD.
THE DE VINNE PRESS.
CONTENTS.
I A SHIP FROM FRANCE 7
II LAVAL 13
III THE KING’S DEMOISELLE 23
IV THE HUSBAND 29
V JACQUES HAS SCRUPLES 47
VI A RIVER CÔTE 57
VII A HALF-BREED 69
VIII THE HURON 74
IX THE LADY OF ST. BERNARD 82
X THE SEIGNIORY KITCHEN 93
XI MADEMOISELLE DE GRANVILLE’S BROTHER 99
XII DOLLARD’S CONFESSION 109
XIII THE CHAPEL OF THE HÔTEL-DIEU 118
XIV MASSAWIPPA 128
XV THE WOOING OF JOUANEAUX 146
XVI FIRST USE OF A KNIFE 156
XVII JOUANEAUX’S HOUSE 161
XVIII THE WALKING HERMIT 176
XIX THE HEROES OF THE LONG SAUT 186
XX POSTERITY 199
THE ROMANCE OF DOLLARD.
PREFACE.
BY FRANCIS PARKMAN.
THE exploit which forms the basis of the following story is one of the
most notable feats of arms in American annals, and it is as real as it
is romantic.
The chief personages of the tale--except, always, the heroine--were
actual men and women two and a quarter centuries ago, and Adam
Dollard was no whit less a hero than he is represented by the writer,
though it is true that as regards his position, his past career, and,
above all, his love affairs, romance supplies some information which
history denies us. The brave Huron Annahotaha also is historical. Even
Jouaneaux, the servant of the hospital nuns, was once a living man,
whose curious story is faithfully set forth; and Sisters Brésoles,
Maçé, and Maillet were genuine Sisters of the old Hôtel-Dieu at
Montreal, with traits much like those assigned to them in the story.
The author is a pioneer in what may be called a new departure in
American fiction. Fenimore Cooper, in his fresh and manly way,
sometimes touches Canadian subjects and introduces us to French
soldiers and bush-rangers; but he knew Canada only from the outside,
having no means of making its acquaintance from within, and it is
only from within that its quality as material for romance can be
appreciated. The hard and practical features of English colonization
seem to frown down every excursion of fancy as pitilessly as puritanism
itself did in its day. A feudal society, on the other hand, with
its contrasted lights and shadows, its rivalries and passions, is
the natural theme of romance; and when to lord and vassal is joined
a dominant hierarchy with its patient martyrs and its spiritual
despots, side by side with savage chiefs and warriors jostling the
representatives of the most gorgeous civilization of modern times,--the
whole strange scene set in an environment of primeval forests,--the
spectacle is as striking as it is unique.
The realism of our time has its place and function; but an eternal
analysis of the familiar and commonplace is cloying after a while, and
one turns with relief and refreshment to such fare as that set before
us in Mrs. Catherwood’s animated story.
FRANCIS PARKMAN.
PREFACE.
BY THE AUTHOR.
THE province of Canada, or New France, under the reign of Louis XIV.,
presented the same panorama of lakes, mountains, rivers, rapids, that
it does to-day; but it was then a background for heroes, and the French
population which has become concentrated in the larger province of
Quebec was then thinly dripped along the river borders. Such figures as
Samuel de Champlain, the Chevalier La Salle, impetuous Louis de Buade,
Count of Frontenac, are seen against that dim past; and the names of
men who lived, fought, and suffered for that province are stamped on
streams, lakes, streets, and towns.
All localities have their romance, their unseen or possible life, which
is hinted to the maker of stories alone. But Canada is teeming with
such suggestions--its picturesque French dwellers in remote valleys are
to-day a hundred or two hundred years behind the rush of the age.
Adam Daulac, Sieur des Ormeaux, stands distinct against the background
of two centuries and a quarter ago. His name and the names of his
companions may yet be seen on the parish register of Villemarie--so
its founders called Montreal. His exploit and its success are matters
of history, as well authenticated as any event of our late civil war.
While the story of Thermopylæ continues to be loved by men, the story
of Dollard cannot die. It is that picture of stalwart heroism which
all nations admire. It is the possible greatness of man--set in this
instance in blue Canadian distances, with the somber and everlasting
Laurentines for its witnesses. The phase is medieval, is clothed in the
garb of religious chivalry; but the spirit is a part of the universal
man.
MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD.
THE ROMANCE OF DOLLARD.
I.
A SHIP FROM FRANCE.
IN April of the year 1660, on a morning when no rain drizzled above the
humid rock of Quebec, two young men walked along the single street by
the river. The houses of this Lower Town were a row of small buildings
with stone gables, their cedar-shingled roofs curving upward at the
eaves in Norman fashion. High in north air swelled the mighty natural
fortress of rock, feebly crowned by the little fort of St. Louis
displaying the lilies of France. Farther away the cathedral set its
cross against the sky. And where now a tangle of streets, bisected by
the city wall, climb steeply from Lower to Upper Town, then a rough
path straggled.
The St. Lawrence, blue with Atlantic tide-water, spread like a sea
betwixt its north shore and the high palisades of Fort Levi on the
opposite bank. Sailboats and skiffs were ranged in a row at the
water’s edge. And where now the steamers of all nations may be seen
resting at anchor, on that day one solitary ship from France discharged
her cargo and was viewed with lingering interest by every colonist in
Quebec. She had arrived the previous day, the first vessel of spring,
and bore marks of rough weather during her voyage.
Even merchants’ wives had gathered from their shops in Lower Town, and
stood near the river’s edge, watching the ship unload, their hands
rolled in their aprons and their square head-covers flaring in the wind.
“How many did she bring over this time?” cried a woman to her neighbor
in the teeth of the breeze.
“A hundred and fifty, my husband told me,” the neighbor replied in the
same nipped and provincialized French. And she produced one hand from
her apron to bridge it over her eyes that she might more unreservedly
absorb the ship. “Ah, to think these cables held her to French soil but
two months ago! Whenever I hear the Iroquois are about Montreal or Ste.
Anne’s, my heart leaps out of my breast towards France.”
“It is better here for us,” returned the other, “who are common people.
So another demoiselle was shipped with this load. The king is our
father. But look you! even daughters of the nobles are glad to come to
New France.”
“And have you heard,” the second exclaimed, “that she is of the house
of Laval-Montmorency and cousin of the vicar-apostolic?”
“The cousin of our holy bishop? Then she comes to found some sisterhood
for the comfort of Quebec. And that will be a thorn to Montreal.”
“No, she comes to be the bride of the governor-general. We shall soon
see her the Vicomtesse d’Argenson, spreading her pretintailles as she
goes in to mass. Well would I like a look through her caskets at new
court fashions. These Laval-Montmorencys are princes in France. V’là,
soldiers!” the woman exclaimed, with that facile play of gesture which
seems to expand all Canadian speech, as she indicated the two men from
Montreal.
“Yes, every seigniory will be sending out its men to the wife market.
If I could not marry without traveling three thousand miles for a
husband, and then going to live with him in one of the river côtes, I
would be a nun.”
“Still, there must be wives for all these bachelors,” the other woman
argued. “And his Majesty bears the expense. The poor seasick girls,
they looked so glad to come ashore!”
These chatting voices, blown by the east wind, dropped disjointed words
on the passers’ ears, but the passers were themselves busy in talk.
Both were young men, but the younger was evidently his elder’s feudal
master. He was muscular and tall, with hazel eyes, and dark hair which
clustered. His high features were cut in clear, sharp lines. He had the
enthusiast’s front, a face full of action, fire, and vision-seeing. He
wore the dress of a French officer and carried his sword by his side.
“I think we have come in good time, Jacques,” he said to his man, who
stumped stolidly along at his left hand.
Jacques was a faithful-looking fellow, short and strong, with
stiff black hair and somber black eyes. His lower garments looked
home-spun, the breeches clasping a huge coarse stocking at the knee,
while remnants of military glory clothed his upper person. Jacques
was plainly a soldier settler, and if his spear had not become a
pruning-hook it was because he had Indians yet to fight. His hereditary
lord in France, his late commander and his present seignior under whom
he held his grant of land, was walking with him up the rock of Quebec.
This Jacques was not the roaring, noisy type of soldier who usually
came in droves to be married when Louis’ ship-load of girls arrived.
Besides, the painstaking creature had now a weight upon his soul. He
answered:
“Yes, m’sieur. She will hardly be anchored twenty-four hours.”
“In four hours we must turn our backs on Quebec with your new wife
aboard, and with the stream against us this time.”
“Yes, m’sieur. But if none of them will have me, or they all turn out
unfit?”
His seignior laughed.
“From a hundred and fifty sizes, colors, and dispositions you can
surely pick yourself one mate, my man.”
“But the honesty of them,” demurred Jacques, “and their obedience after
you are at the trouble of getting them home; though girls from Rouen
were always good girls. I have not made this long voyage to pick a
Rouen wife, to go back again empty of hand. M’sieur, it is certainly
your affair as much as mine; and if you see me open my mouth to gaze at
a rouged woman who will eat up our provender and bring us no profit,
give me a punch with your scabbard. What I want is a good hearty
peasant girl from Rouen, who can milk, and hoe, and cut hay, and help
grind in the mill, and wait on Mademoiselle de Granville without taking
fright.”
“And one whom I can bless as my joint heir with you, my Jacques,” said
the young commandant, turning a pleasant face over his subaltern.
“Ultimately you will be my heirs, when Renée is done with St. Bernard
and the other islands of the seigniory. Therefore--yes--I want a very
good girl indeed, from Rouen, to perpetuate a line of my father’s
peasantry on Adam Dollard’s estate in New France.”
“Yes, m’sieur,” responded Jacques dejectedly as he plodded upward.
It grieved him that a light leg and a high bright face like Dollard’s
were sworn to certain destruction. His pride in the house of Des
Ormeaux was great, but his love for the last male of its line was
greater. This Adam Daulac, popularly called Dollard, was too mighty a
spirit for him to wrestle with; so all his dissent was silent. When he
recalled the cavalier’s gay beginning in France, he could not join it
to the serious purpose of the same man in New France.
Jacques climbed with his face towards the ground, but Dollard gazed
over the St. Lawrence’s upper flood where misty headlands were touched
with spring grayness. The river, like an elongated sea, wound out of
distances. There had been an early thaw that year, and no drowned
fragments of ice toppled about in the current.
So vast a reach of sight was like the beginning of one of St. John’s
visions.
II.
LAVAL.
THE convent of the Ursulines had received and infolded the lambs sent
out by Louis XIV. to help stock his wilderness. This convent, though
substantially built of stone, was too small for all the purposes of the
importation, and a larger structure, not far from it, had been prepared
as a bazar in which to sort and arrange the ship-load.
The good nuns, while they waited on their crowd of miscellaneous
guests, took no notice of that profane building; and only their
superior, Mother Mary of the Incarnation, accompanied and marshaled
future brides to the marriage market.
Squads began to cross the court soon after matins. The girls were
rested by one night’s sleep upon land, the balsam odor of pines, and
the clear air on Quebec heights. They must begin taking husbands at
once. The spring sowing was near. Time and the chemistry of nature
wait on no woman’s caprices. And in general there was little coyness
among these girls. They had come to New France to settle themselves,
and naturally wished to make a good bargain of it. Some faces wore
the stamp of vice, but these were the exceptions. A stolid herd of
peasantry, varying in shape and complexion but little, were there to
mother posterity in Canada. Some delicate outlines and auburn tresses
offset the monotony of somber black eyes and stout waists. Clucking
all the way across the court her gentle instructions and repressions,
Mother Mary led squad after squad.
There were hilarious girls, girls staring with large interest at the
oddities of this new world while they remarked in provincial French,
and girls folding their hands about their crucifixes and looking down.
The coquettish had arrayed themselves coquettishly, and the sober had
folded their shoulder-collars quite high about their throats.
“But,” dropped Mother Mary into the ear of Madame Bourdon, who stood
at the mouth of the matrimonial pen, receiving and placing each squad,
“these are mixed goods!” To which frolicsome remark from a strict
devotee Madame Bourdon replied with assenting shrug.
The minds of both, however, quite separated the goods on display from
one item of the cargo then standing in the convent parlor before the
real bishop of Canada. This item was a slim young girl, very high-bred
in appearance, richly plain in apparel. She held a long, dull-colored
cloak around her with hands so soft and white of flesh that one’s eye
traced over and over the flexible curve of wrist and finger. Her eyes
were darkly brown, yet they had a tendency towards topaz lights which
gave them moments of absolute yellowness; while her hair had a dazzling
white quality that the powders of a later period could not impart. Bits
of it straying from her high roll of curls suggested a nimbus around
the forehead. Her lower face was full, the lips most delicately round.
Courage and tears stood forth in her face and encountered the bishop.
François Xavier de Laval-Montmorency, then vicar-apostolic of the
province, with the power rather than name of bishop, was a tall
noble, priestly through entire length of rusty cassock and height of
intellectual temples. He regarded the girl with bloodless patience.
He had a large nose, which drooped towards a mouth cut in human
granite; his lean, fine hands, wasted by self-abasement and voluntary
privations, were smaller than a woman’s. Though not yet forty, he
looked old, and his little black skull-cup aged him more. The clear
Montmorency eye had in him gained, from asceticism and rigid devotion,
a brightness which penetrated.
His young relative’s presence and distress annoyed him. For her soul’s
salvation, he would have borne unstinted agony; for any human happiness
she craved, he was not prepared to lift a little finger.
“Monseigneur,” the girl began their interview, “I have come to New
France.”
“Strangely escorted,” said Laval.
“The reverend father cannot be thinking of Madame Bourdon: Madame
Bourdon was the best of duennas on the voyage.”
Laval shook his chin, and for reply rested a glance upon his cousin’s
attendant as a type of the company she had kept on shipboard. The
attendant was a sedate and pretty young girl, whose black hair looked
pinched so tightly in her cap as to draw her eyebrows up, while modesty
hung upon her lashes and drew her lids down. The result was an unusual
expanse of veined eyelid.
“If you mean Louise Bibelot,” the young lady responded, “she is my
foster-sister. Her mother nursed me. Louise bears papers from the curé
of her parish to strangers, but she should hardly need such passports
to the head of our house.”
“In brief, daughter,” said Laval, passing to the point, “what brings
you to this savage country--fit enough to be the arena of young men, or
of those who lay self upon the altar of the Church, but most unfit for
females tenderly brought up to enjoy the pleasures of the world?”
“Has my bringing-up been so tender, monseigneur? I have passed nearly
all my years an orphan in a convent.”
“But what brings you to New France?”
“I came to appeal against your successor in the estates.”
“My successor in the estates has nothing to do with you.”
“He has to marry me, monseigneur.”
“Well, and has he not made a suitable marriage for you?”
Her face burned hotly.
“I do not wish him to make any marriage for me. I refused all the
suitors he selected, and that is what determined him to marry me to the
last one.”
“You are deeply prejudiced against marriage?”
“Yes, monseigneur.”
“Against any marriage?”
“Yes, monseigneur.”
“This must be why you come with the king’s girls to the marriage
market.”
Her face burned in deeper flames.
“The court of Louis,” pursued Laval, “would furnish a better mate for
you than any wild coureur de bois on the St. Lawrence.”
“I have not come to any marriage market,” she stammered.
“You are in the marriage market, Mademoiselle Laval. His Majesty, in
his care for New France, sends out these girls to mate with soldiers
and peasants here. It is good, and will confirm the true faith upon the
soil. What I cannot understand is your presence among them.”
Her face sank upon her breast.
“I did not know what to do.”
“So, being at a loss, you took shipping to the ends of the earth?”
“Other women of good families have come out here.”
“As holy missionaries: as good women should come. Do you intend leading
such a life of self-sacrifice? Is that your purpose?” said Laval,
penetrating her with his glance.
Her angelic beauty, drowned in red shame, could not move him. “Rash”
and “forward” were the terms to be applied to her. She had no defense
except the murmur:
“I thought of devoting myself to a holy life. Everybody was then
willing to help me escape the marriage.”
“Were there, then, no convents in France able to bound your zeal? Did
you feel pushed to make this perilous voyage and to take up the hard
life of saintly women here?”
[Illustration: “You are deeply prejudiced against marriage?”]
“I am myself a Laval-Montmorency,” said mademoiselle, rearing her neck
in her last stronghold. “The Bishop of Petræa[1] may not have inherited
all the heroism of the present generation.”
He smiled slowly; his mouth was not facile at relaxing.
“In your convent they failed to curb the tongue. This step that you
have taken is, I fear, a very rash one, my daughter.”
“Monseigneur, I am a young girl without parents, but with fortune
enough to make suitors troublesome. How can I take none but wise steps?
I want to be let alone to think my thoughts, and that was not permitted
me in France.”
“We will have further talk to-morrow and next week,” concluded the
bishop. “We will see how your resolution holds out. At this hour I go
to the governor’s council. Receive my benediction.”
He abruptly lifted his hands and placed them above her bowed head for
an instant’s articulation of Latin, then left the room. As long as his
elastic, quick tread could be heard, Mademoiselle Laval stood still. It
died away. She turned around and faced her companion with a long breath.
“That is over! Louise, do you think after fifteen years of convent life
I shall cease to have blood in me?”
“Not at all, Mademoiselle Claire,” responded Louise literally. “As long
as we live we have blood.”
“He is terrible.”
“He is such a holy man, mademoiselle; how can he help being terrible?
You know Madame Bourdon told us he ate rotten meat to mortify his
flesh, and his servant has orders never to make his bed or pick the
fleas out of it. I myself have no vocation to be holy, mademoiselle. I
so much like being comfortable and clean.”
Claire sat down upon the only bench which furnished ease to this
convent parlor. Louise was leaning against the stone wall near her.
Such luxuries as came out from France at that date were not for nuns or
missionary priests, though the Church was then laying deep foundations
in vast grants of land which have enriched it.
“I do not love the dirty side of holiness myself,” said Claire. “They
must pick the fleas out of my bed if I endow this convent. And I do not
like trotting, fussy nuns who tell tales of each other and interfere
with one. But, O Louise! how I could adore a saint--a saint who would
lead me in some high act which I could perform!”
“The best thing next to a live saint,” remarked Louise, “is a dead
saint’s bone which will heal maladies. But, mademoiselle,--the Virgin
forgive me!--I would rather see my own mother this day than any saint,
alive or dead.”
“The good Marguerite! How strange it must seem to her that you and I
have been driven this long journey--if the dead know anything about us.”
“She would be glad I was in the ship to wait upon you, mademoiselle.
And I must have done poorly for myself in Rouen. Our curé said great
matches were made out here.”
“Now, tell me, Louise, have you the courage for this?”
“I am here and must do my duty, mademoiselle.”
“But can you marry a strange man this evening or to-morrow morning and
go off with him to his strange home, to bear whatever he may inflict on
you?”
“My mother told me,” imparted Louise, gazing at the floor, where lay
two or three rugs made by the nuns themselves, “that the worst thing
about a man is his relatives. And if he lives by himself in the woods,
these drawbacks will be away.”
“You have no terror of the man himself?”
“Yes, mademoiselle. I can hardly tell at sight whether a man is
inclined to be thrifty or not. It would be cruel to come so far and
then fare worse than at Rouen. But since my mother is not here to make
the marriage, I must do the best I can.”
“Hé, Louise! Never will you see me bending my neck to the yoke!”
“It is not necessary for you to marry, mademoiselle. You are not poor
Louise Bibelot.”
“I meant nothing of the kind. We played together, my child. Why should
you accuse me of a taunt?--me who have so little command of my own
fortune that I cannot lay down a dozen gold pieces to your dower. No!
I have passed the ordeal of meeting the bishop. My spirits rise. I am
glad to dip in this new experience. Do you know that if they send me
back it cannot be for many months? One who comes to this colony may
only return by permission of the king. The bishop himself would be
powerless there. And now I shall hear no more about husbands!”
“Louise Bibelot,” summoned Mother Mary, appearing at the door, “come
now to the hall. Mademoiselle Laval will dispense with thee. The young
men are going about making their selections. Come and get thee a good
honest husband.”
III.
THE KING’S DEMOISELLE.
BETRAYING in her face some disposition to pry into the customs of the
New World, Claire inquired:
“What is this marriage market like, reverend mother?”
“It is too much like an unholy fair,” answered Mother Mary of the
Incarnation, with mild severity. “The gallants stalk about and gaze
when they should be closing contracts. The girls clatter with their
tongues; they seem not to know what a charm lies in silence.”
Mademoiselle Laval stood up and closed her cloak.
“With your permission, reverend mother, I will walk through the fair
with you.”
“Not _you_, mademoiselle!”
“Why not?”
“You are not here to select a husband. The holy cloister is thy
shelter. Common soldiers and peasant farmers are not the sights for
thee to meet.”
“Reverend mother, I must inure myself to the rough aspect of things in
New France, for it is probable I am tossed here to stay. You and Madame
Bourdon gaze upon these evil things, and my poor Louise is exposed to
them.”
“I do not say they are evil. I only say they are not befitting thee.”
“Dear and reverend mother,” urged Claire, with a cajoling lift of the
chin and a cooing of the voice which had been effective with other
abbesses, “when the nausea was so great on shipboard and poor Louise
nursed me so well, I did not think to turn my back on her in her most
trying ordeal.”
“We will say nothing more, mademoiselle,” replied Mother Mary, shaking
her black-bound head. “Without orders from his reverence the vicar, I
should never think of taking thee into the marriage market.” She went
directly away with Louise Bibelot.
As Louise left the door she cast back a keen look of distress at her
mistress. It was merely her protest against the snapping of the last
shred which bound her to France. But Claire received it as the appeal
of dependent to superior; and more, as the appeal of maid to maid.
She unlatched a swinging pane no larger than her hand, hinged like a
diminutive door in glass of the window overlooking the court. The
glass was poor and distorted, and this appeared a loop-hole which
the sisters provided for themselves through the scale-armor Canadian
winters set upon their casement.
“Poor child!” murmured Claire to the back of Louise Bibelot’s square
cap as Louise trotted beside the gliding nun. She did not estimate the
amount of impetus which Louise’s look gave to other impulses that may
have been lurking in her mind. She arose and rebelled with the usual
swiftness of her erratic nature.
Scarcely had nun and bride-elect disappeared within the bazar when
Claire Laval entered behind them. Mother Mary unconsciously escorted
her betwixt rows of suitors and haggling damsels. Louise was to be
placed in the upper hall among select young women.
Benches were provided on which the girls sat, some laughing and
whispering, others block-like as sphinxes, except that they moved their
dark eyes among the offering husbands. Sturdy peasant girls they were,
and all of them in demand, for they could work like oxen. If there was
uniformity of appearance among them, the men presented contrast enough.
Stout coureurs de bois were there, half-renegades, who had made the
woods their home and the Indian their foster-brother; who had shirked
the toils of agriculture and depended on rod and gun: loving lazy
wigwam life and the dense balmy twilight of summer woods which steeped
them in pale green air; loving the winter trapping, the forbidden
beaver-skin, the tracking of moose; loving to surprise the secrets
of the pines, to catch ground-hog or sable at lunch on cast-off
moose-horns; loving to stand above their knees in boiling trout-streams
to lure those angels of the water with well-cast hook as they lay
dreaming in palpitating colors.
Ever thus was the provincial government luring back to domestic life
and agriculture the coureurs de bois themselves. They were paid
bounties and made tenants on seigniories if they would take wives of
the king’s girls and return to colonial civilization. Most of these
young men retained marks of their wild life in Indian trinket, caribou
moccasin, deerskin leggin, or eagle feathers fastened to their hats;
not to speak of those marks of brief Indian marriages left on their
memories.
The habitant, or censitaire, the true cultivator of the soil, was a
very different type. Groups from lower seigniories, from Cap Rouge and
even from Three Rivers, shuffled about selecting partners. They had
none of the audacity of their renegade brethren, and their decoration
was less pronounced, yet they appeared to please the girls from France.
The most successful wooers among these two or three hundred
wife-seekers, however, were soldiers holding grants under their former
officers. They pushed ahead of the slow habitant, and held their
rights above the rights of any bush-ranger. Their minds were made up
at a glance, and their proposals followed with military directness. So
prompt and brief were their measures that couples were formed in a line
for a march to the altar. Thirty at a time were paired and mustered
upon the world by notary and priest.
The notary had his small table, his ink-horn and quills, his books,
papers, and assistant scrivener, in an angle of the lower hall. To
find the priest it was necessary to open a door into a temporary
chapel created in one of those closet-like offshoots which people of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries dignified by the name of
rooms. Here fifteen pairs at a time were packed, their breath making a
perceptible cloud in the chill, stone-inclosed air as the long ceremony
proceeded.
Madame Bourdon rustled from upper to lower hall, repeating instructions
to her charges. They were not forced to accept any offer which did not
please them. They might question a suitor. And in some cases their
questioning seemed exhaustive; for though a sacred propriety radiated
throughout the bazar from nun and matron, here and there a young man
sat on a bench beside a damsel, holding her hand and pressing it and
his suit.
The sun penetrated dust and cobweb on narrow high windows, finding
through one a stone fire-place and wasting the light of several logs
which lay piled in stages of roseate coals and sap-sobbing wood-rind.
Madame Bourdon encountered Claire with surprise; but as she followed
Mother Mary, it was evident that the abbess sanctioned her presence, so
nothing was to be said on the subject. In all that buzz and trampling
the abbess could not hear her demoiselle’s silken step, and she was
herself a woman who never turned gazing about, but kept her modest eyes
cast down as she advanced.
The instant that Claire entered this lower hall she recoiled, feeling
degraded in the results of her disobedience. She shaded her face.
But the pride and stubbornness of her blood held her to her ground,
though from mouth to mouth flew a whispered sentence, and she heard it,
comprehending how current tattle was misrepresenting her in New France.
“The king’s demoiselle! V’là! See you? There she goes to choose her
husband--the king’s demoiselle!”
IV.
THE HUSBAND.
CHÂTEAU of St. Louis though the government building of Canada was
called, it had none of the substantial strength of Jesuit and Ursuline
possessions; but was a low, wooden structure, roofed with shingles, and
formed one side of the fort. Galleries, or pillared porches, with which
Latin stock love to surround themselves in any climate, were built at
the front, whence the governor could look down many sheer feet at the
cabins of Lower Town.
Dollard paused before entering the Château of St. Louis to say to
Jacques Goffinet:
“Will you not push your business now while I attend to mine, Jacques?
Yonder is the building you want to enter. Go and examine the cargo, and
I will be there to help you single out your bale.”
“M’sieur, unless these are orders, I will wait here for you. I am not
in a hurry to trot myself before a hundred and fifty women.”
“But hurry you must,” said Dollard, laughing. “I have no time to spare
Quebec, and you know the consequences if we give our Indians a chance
to get as drunk as they can.”
“Dispatch is the word, Sieur des Ormeaux. I’ll attack the first woman
in the hall if you but stand by to give the word of command.”
“Very well, then. But you will remember, not a breath of my sworn
purpose to any of the varlets within here.”
Jacques pulled off his cap, and holding it in air stood in the mute
attitude of taking an oath. Dollard flung his fingers backward,
dismissing the subject.
They entered the Château of St. Louis, where Jacques waited in an
anteroom among noisy valets and men-at-arms. He was put to question by
the governor’s joking, card-playing servants as soon as they understood
that he was from Montreal; but he said little, and sat in lowering
suspense until Dollard came out of the council-chamber.
What Dollard’s brief business was with the governor of Canada has never
been set down. That it held importance either for himself or for the
enterprise he had in hand is evident from his making a perilous journey
in the midst of Indian alarms; but that he made no mention of this
enterprise to the governor is also evident, from the fact that it was
completed before Quebec had even known of it. His garrison at Montreal
and the sub-governor Maisonneuve may have known why he made this
voyage, which he accomplished in the astonishing space of ten days,
both output and return. This century separates Montreal and Quebec by
a single night’s steaming. But voyagers then going up-stream sometimes
hovered two weeks on the way. Dollard had for his oarsmen four stout
Huron Indians, full of river skill, knowing the St. Lawrence like a
brother. He returned through the anteroom, his visionary face unchanged
by high company, and with Jacques at his heels walked briskly across
Quebec Heights.
Spread gloriously before him was St. Lawrence’s lower flood, parted by
the island of Orleans. The rock palisades of Levi looked purple even
under the forenoon sunlight. He could have turned his head over his
left shoulder and caught a glimpse of those slopes of Abraham where the
French were to lose Canada after he had given himself to her welfare.
Not looking over his shoulder, but straight ahead, he encountered
the mightiest priest in New France, stout Dollier de Casson, head of
the order of St. Sulpice in Montreal. His rosy face shone full of
good-will. There shone, also, the record of hardy, desperate mission
work, jovial famine, and high forgetfulness of Dollier de Casson. His
cassock sat on him like a Roman toga, masculine in every line. He took
Dollard’s hand and floated him in a flood-tide of good feeling while
they spoke together an instant.
“You here, commandant? Where are the Iroquois?”
“Not yet at Quebec.”
“But there have been alarms. The people around Ste. Anne’s[2] are said
to be starting to the fort.”
“Jacques,” exclaimed Dollard, “you must hasten this affair of your
marriage. We are here too long.”
“The sun is scarce an hour higher than when we landed,” muttered
Jacques.
“Doesn’t the king ship enough maids to Montreal?” inquired the priest,
smiling at Jacques’s downcast figure. “It is a strain on loyalty when
a bachelor has to travel so far to wive himself, to say nothing of
putting a scandal upon our own town, to the glorifying of Quebec.”
“I came with my seignior,” muttered the censitaire, “and this ship-load
was promised from Rouen.”
“My bride is my sword,” said Dollard. “The poor lad may perhaps find
one as sharp. Anyhow, he must grab his Sabine and be gone.”
“Come, my son,” rallied Father de Casson, dropping a hand on the
subaltern’s shoulder, “marriage is an honorable state, and the risks
of it are surely no worse than we take daily with the Iroquois. Pluck
up heart, pick thee a fine, stout, black-eyed maid, and if the king’s
priest have his hands over-full to make that haste which the commandant
desires, bring her to the cathedral presently, and there will I join
ye. And thus will Montreal Sulpitians steal one church service out of
the hands of Quebec Jesuits!”
“Are you returning directly up river, father?” inquired Dollard over
Jacques’s mumble.
“Yes, my son; but this day only so far as the remote edge of one of our
parishes, lying this side of Three Rivers.”
“Why not go in our company? It will be safer.”
“Much safer,” said Dollier de Casson. “I have only my servant who rows
the boat.”
“I know you are a company of men in yourself, father.”
“Military escort is a luxury we priests esteem when we can get it, my
son. Do you leave at once?”
“As soon as Jacques’s business is over. We shall find you, then, in
Notre Dame?”
“In Notre Dame.”
Dollier de Casson made the sign of benediction, and let them pass.
When Dollard strode into the lower bazar it was boiling in turmoil
around two wrangling men who had laid claim on one maid. The most
placid girls from the remotest benches left their seats to tiptoe and
look over each other’s shoulders at the demure prize, who, though she
kept her eyes upon the floor and tried to withdraw her wrists from both
suitors, laughed slyly.
“It is that Madeleine,” the outer girls who were not quarreled over
whispered to each other with shrugs. But all the men in delight urged
on the fray, uttering partisan cries, “She is thine, brave Picot!”
“Keep to thy rights, my little Jean Debois!” to the distress of Madame
Bourdon. She spread her hands before the combatants, she commanded them
to be at peace and hear her, but they would not have her for their
Solomon.
“I made my proposals, madame,” cried one. “I but stepped to the
notary’s table an instant, when comes this renegade from the woods and
snatches my bride. Madame, he hath no second pair of leather breeches.
Is he a fit man to espouse a wife? The king must needs support his
family. Ah, let me get at thee with my fist, thou hound of Indian
camps!”
“Come on, peasant,” swelled the coureur de bois. “I’ll show thee how to
ruffle at thy master. Mademoiselle has taken me for her husband. She
but engaged thee as a servant.”
The two men sprang at each other, but were restrained by their
delighted companions.
“Holy saints!” gasped Madame Bourdon, “must the governor be sent for to
silence these rioters? My good men, there are a hundred and fifty girls
to choose from.”
“I have chosen this one,” hissed red Picot.
“I have chosen this one,” scowled black Jean Debois.
“Now thou seest,” said Madame Bourdon, presenting her homily to the
spectators, “the evil of levity in girls.”
“Mademoiselle,” urged Picot at the right ear of the culprit, who still
smilingly gazed down her cheeks, “I have the most excellent grant in
New France. There is the mill of the seignior. And our priest comes
much oftener than is the case in up-river côtes.”
“Mademoiselle,” whispered the coureur de bois at her other ear, “thou
hast the prettiest face in the hall. Wilt thou deck that clod-turner’s
hut with it when a man of spirit wooes thee? The choice is simply this:
to yoke thee to an ox, or mate with a trader who can bring wealth out
of the woods when the ground fails.”
“And an Indian wife from every village,” blazed Picot.
“Even there thou couldst never find thee one!” retorted Jean Debois.
They menaced each other again.
“Choose now between these two men,” said Madame Bourdon, sternly. “Must
the garrison of the fort be brought hither to arrest them?”
The girl lifted her eyes as a young soldier hurriedly entered the outer
door, carrying a parcel. He wore several long pistols, and was deeply
scarred across the nose. Pushing through to the object of dispute, he
shook some merchandise out of his bundle and threw it into her hands as
she met him.
“This is my husband,” the bashful maid said to Madame Bourdon; “I
promised him before the others spoke, and he had but gone to the
merchant’s.”
The soldier stared at the beaten suitors; he led his bride to the
notary.
All around the hall laughter rising to a shout drove Picot and Jean
Debois out of the door through which the soldier had come in, the
wood-ranger bearing himself in retreat with even less bravado than the
habitant.
“Was there ever such improvidence as among our settlers!” sighed Madame
Bourdon, feeling her unvented disapproval take other channels as she
gazed after the couple seeking marriage. “They spend their last coin
for finery that they may deck out their wedding, and begin life on the
king’s bounty. But who could expect a jilt and trifler to counsel her
husband to any kind of prudence?”
[Illustration: “Choose now between these two men,” said Madame Bourdon,
sternly.]
Dollard presented his man’s credentials to Madame Bourdon, and she
heard with satisfaction of their haste. It was evident that the best of
the cargo would be demanded by this suitor; so she led them up one of
those pinched and twisted staircases in which early builders on this
continent seemed to take delight. Above this uneasy ascent were the
outer vestibule, where bride traffic went on as briskly as below, and
an inner sanctum, the counterpart of the first flagged hall, to which
the cream of the French importation had risen.
“Here are excellent girls,” said Madame Bourdon, spreading her hands to
include the collection. “They bring the best of papers from the curés
of their own parishes.”
In this hall the cobwebby dimness, the log-fire, and the waiting
figures seemed to repeat what the seekers had glanced through below;
though there was less noise, and the suitors seemed more anxious.
“Here’s your fate, Jacques,” whispered Dollard, indicating the fattest
maid of the inclosure, who sat in peaceful slumber with a purr like a
contented cat.
Jacques, carrying his cap in both hands, craned around Dollard.
“No, m’sieur. She’s a fine creature to look at, but a man must not wed
for his eyes alone. His stomach craves a wife that will not doze by his
fire and let the soup burn.”
“Here, then, my child, behold the other extreme. What activity must be
embodied in that nymph watching us from the corner!”
“Holy saints, m’sieur! There be not eels enough in the St. Lawrence to
fill her ribs and cover her hulk. I have a low-spirited turn, m’sieur,
but not to the length of putting up a death’s-head in my kitchen. A
man’s feelings go against bones.”
“These girls here have been instructed,” said Madame Bourdon at the ear
of the suitor. “These girls are not canaille from the streets of Paris.”
“Do they come from Rouen, madame?” inquired Jacques.
“Some of them came from Rouen. See! Here is a girl from Rouen at this
end of the room.”
“Now, m’sieur,” whispered Dollard’s vassal, squeezing his cap in
agitated hands, “I shall have to make my proposals. I see the girl.
Will you have the goodness to tell me how I must begin?”
“First, hold up your head as if about to salute your military superior.”
“M’sieur, it would never do to call a woman your military superior.”
“Then say to her, ‘Mademoiselle, you are the most beautiful woman in
the world.’”
Again Jacques shook his head.
“Pardon, m’sieur. You have had experience, but you never had to marry
one of them and take the consequences of your fair talk. I wish to be
cautious. Perhaps if I allow her the first shot in this business she
may yield me the last word hereafter.”
So, following Madame Bourdon’s beckoning hand, he made his shamefaced
way towards Louise Bibelot. Mother Mary stood beside the log-fire some
distance away, in the act of administering dignified rebuke to a girl
in a long mantle, who, with her back turned to the hall, heard the
abbess in silence. When the abbess moved away in stately dudgeon, the
girl kept her place as if in reverie, her fair, unusual hand stretched
towards the fire.
“Here, Louise Bibelot,” said the good shepherdess of the king’s flock,
“comes Jacques Goffinet to seek a wife--Jacques Goffinet, recommended
by Monsieur Daulac, the Sieur des Ormeaux, commandant of the fort at
Montreal, and seignior of the islands about St. Bernard.”
Louise made her reverence to Madame Bourdon and the suitor, and
Jacques held his cap in tense fists. He thought regretfully of Turkish
battle-fields which he had escaped. Louise swept him in one black-eyed
look terminating on her folded hands, and he repented ever coming to
New France at all.
The pair were left to court. Around them arose murmur and tinkle of
voices, the tread of passing feet, and the bolder noise of the lower
hall, to which Madame Bourdon hastened back that she might repress a
too-frolic Cupid.
Jacques noted Louise’s trim apparel, her nicely kept hair and excellent
red lips. But she asserted no claim to the first word, and after five
leaden minutes he began to fear she did not want to talk to him at all.
This would be a calamity, and, moreover, a waste of the commandant’s
time. It seemed that Jacques must himself put forth the first word, and
he suffered in the act of creating something to say. But out of this
chaotic darkness a luminous thought streamed across his brain like the
silent flash of the northern aurora.
“Mademoiselle, you like cabbage, is it not so?”
“Yes, monsieur,” responded Louise, without lifting her eyes.
“Cabbage is a very good vegetable.--My seignior is in somewhat of a
hurry. We must be married and start back to Montreal directly. Do you
wish to be married?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“I, in fact, wish it myself. When you go as a soldier you don’t want a
wife. But when you settle down en censive, then, mademoiselle, it is
convenient to have a woman to work and help dig.”
“Have you a house and farm, monsieur?” murmured Louise.
Jacques spread his hands, the cap pendant from one of them.
“I have the island of St. Bernard under my seignior, mademoiselle. It
is a vast estate, almost a league in extent. The house is a mansion of
stone, mademoiselle, strong as a fort, and equal to some castles in
Rouen. You come from Rouen, mademoiselle?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“And there is Mademoiselle de Granville, my lord’s half-sister, but
nobody else to wait upon. For Sieur des Ormeaux, when not at his
fortress, may go on expeditions. We never yet took refuge at Montreal
from the Indians, so strong is St. Bernard. The house is of rock
cemented together and built against a rock. Do you ever drink brandy,
mademoiselle?”
“_I_, monsieur! Never in my life!”
“That must be a good thing in a woman,” commented Jacques, with a nod
of satisfaction.
“Are you at all thriftless or lazy, monsieur?” the demure girl took her
turn to inquire.
“No, mademoiselle; I make my clothes do year after year. And had you
seen the frozen fish and eels, the venison, the cabbage, beets, and
onions I stored in our cellar for winter, you would not ask if I am
lazy.”
Louise smiled her bashful approval upon him, and said in explanation:
“I should not like a thriftless, lazy husband.”
“Mademoiselle, we are cut out of the same caribou-skin, and match like
a pair of moccasins. Shall we go to the notary?”
“If you wish, monsieur.”
“You accept me as your husband?”
“If you please, monsieur.”
“Then let us get married. I forget your name.”
“Louise Bibelot.”
“My name is Jacques Goffinet. When we are married we can get better
acquainted.”
Flushed with success, Jacques turned to display a signal of victory
to his seignior, and was astounded to see Dollard standing by the
fire-place in earnest conversation with a beautiful girl. It was
evident that no further countenance and support could be expected from
Dollard. So Jacques took his bride in tow as a tug may now be seen
guiding some yacht of goodly proportions through a crowded harbor, and
set out to find the notary.
When Dollard fell into an easy posture to enjoy his man’s courtship,
he cast a preliminary glance about the hall, that other amusing things
might not escape him. At once his attitude became tense, his ears
buzzed, and the blood rose like wine to his head. The woman of his
constant thoughts was warming her hand at the fire. He could not be
mistaken; there was nothing else like the glory of her youthful white
hair in either hemisphere; and without an instant’s hesitation he
brought himself before her, bowing, hat in hand, until his plume lay on
the floor.
The demoiselle made a like stately obeisance.
Dumb, then, they stood, just as the peasant couple had done; but in
this case too bounteous speech choked itself. It seemed to both that
their hearts beat aloud. Dollard felt himself vibrate from head to foot
with the action of his blood-valves. The pair looked up and stammered
to cover such noise within, speaking together, and instantly begged
each other’s pardon, then looked down and were silent again.
“How is it possible,” said Dollard, carefully modulating his voice,
“that I see you here, Mademoiselle Laval!”
“The Sieur des Ormeaux takes me for a king’s girl! How is it possible I
see _you_ here, monsieur?”
“I came to keep my man in countenance, while he picked himself a wife.
This instant is a drop from Paradise!”
“Monsieur is easily satisfied if he can call such surroundings a
paradise,” said Claire, smiling at the grim hall.
“Mademoiselle, when did you come from France?”
“Yesterday we arrived, Sieur des Ormeaux.”
“Then you came in the king’s ship?”
“Without a doubt.”
“This is wonderful! I thought you three thousand miles away from me.”
“Did you honor me with a thought at the other extremity of that
distance?” she asked carelessly, pushing towards the fire with the
point of her foot a bit of bark which its own steam had burst off a log.
“Claire!” he said, pressing his hand on his eyes.
“Monsieur, the abbess is near,” the young lady responded in tremor.
“You are not here to be a nun?”
“Why not?”
“But are you?”
“Monsieur, you have penetration. That is said to be my errand.”