load. I must live a bachelor, it is true; but if I were a free man I
would have you to-morrow, though you scratched me with your wild hands.”
“I am not for your bolts and bars,” returned Massawippa, scornfully.
“If we were settled in the house I made upon my land,” said Jouaneaux,
tempting himself with the impossible while he leaned back smiling,
“little need you complain of bolts and bars. My case is this: I had a
grant of land on the western shore of this island of Montreal.”
“Not where the Ottawa comes in?” questioned Massawippa, impaling him
with interest.
“That was the exact spot.” Jouaneaux widened his mouth pinkly as he
became retrospective. “And never wouldst thou guess what turned me from
that freeholding to a holy life. I may say that I lead a holy life,
for are not vows laid upon me as strait as on the Sulpitian fathers?
And straiter; I am under writings to the nuns to serve them to the day
of my death, and they be under writings to me to maintain my sickness
and old age. It is likely my skeleton barn still stands where I set it
up to hold my produce. Down I falls from the ridge of it headlong to
the ground, and here in the Hôtel-Dieu I lay for many a month like a
rag, the Sisters tending me. It was then I said to myself, ‘Jouaneaux,
these be angels of pity and patience, yet they soil their hands feeding
pigs and bearing up such as thou.’ Though I am equal to most of my
betters, little Sister, I always held it well to be humble-minded. The
result is, I give up my land, I bind myself to serve the saints in this
Hôtel-Dieu, and therefore I cannot marry.”
Jouaneaux collapsed upon himself with a groaning sigh.
“Then your house and your barn were left to ruin?” questioned
Massawippa, passing without sympathy his nuptial restrictions.
“My house!” said Jouaneaux, looking up with reviving spirit. “Little
Sister, you would walk over the roof of my house and not perceive it.”
“In midwinter?”
“No, now, when young grass springs. I could endure to risk my store
of crops where the Iroquois might set torch to them, but this pretty
fellow, this outer man of me, I took no risks with him. I chooses me a
stump, a nice hollow stump.”
“And squeezed into it like a bear?”
“Jouaneaux is a fox, little Sister. Call your clumsy La Mouche the
bear. No: I burrows me out a house beneath the stump; a good house,
a sizable hole. Over there is my fire-place, and the stump furnishes
me a chimney. Any Iroquois seeing my stump smoking would merely say
to himself, ‘It is afire.’ Let a canoe spring out on the river or a
cry ring in the forest--down went Jouaneaux into his house, and, as
you may say, pulled the earth over his head. I also kept my canoe
dragged within there, for there was no telling what might happen to it
elsewhere.”
Massawippa regarded him with animation. “You had also a boat?”
“Indeed, yes!” the nuns’ man affirmed, kindled higher by such interest.
“A good birch craft it was, and large enough for two people.” Another
groaning sigh paid tribute to this lost instrument of happiness.
“But your house may be all crumbled in now.”
“Not that house, little Sister. Look you! it had ceiling and walls of
timbers well fastened together and covered with cement. Was not that a
snug house? It will endure like rock, and some day I must go and see it
once more.”
“Perhaps you could not find it now.”
Jouaneaux laughed.
“My house! I could walk straight to it, little Sister, and lay my hand
on the chimney. That chimney stump, it standeth near the river, the
central one in a row of five. Many other rows of five there be in the
field, but none, to my eye, exactly like this.”
Massawippa rose suddenly and dived like a swallow up the stairway. So
much keener was her ear than Jouaneaux’s that she was out of sight
before he realized the probability of an interruption.
A hand was on the chapel latch, and he turned himself on the step as
Sister Judith Brésoles entered, her night taper in her hand. When she
discovered him, instead of screaming, she stood and fixed a stern gaze
on him, her mouth compressed and her brows holding an upright wrinkle
betwixt them. Her servitor stood up in his most pious and depressed
attitude.
“Jouaneaux, what are you doing here?”
“Honored Superior, I have been sitting half an hour or so meditating
before the sacred images.”
“Where is the novice Massawippa?”
“That is what troubles my conscience, honored Superior.” Beneath his
childlike distress Jouaneaux was silently blessing St. Joseph that it
was not Sister Macé with her tendency to resort to the rood-loft. “Here
is the case I stand in: the little Sister you call Massawippa, she came
begging me for a breath of air by the river before I fastened the bolts
to-night.”
“You turned that child upon the street!” exclaimed Sister Brésoles. “I
cannot find her in any cell or anywhere about the Hôtel-Dieu. You have
exceeded your authority, Jouaneaux. It is a frightful thing you have
done!”
“Honored Superior, she will be back in the morning. Those half-Indians
are not like French girls; they have the bird in them. This one will
hop over all evil hap.”
“I would ring the tocsin,” said Sister Brésoles, “if alarming the town
would recall her. Without doubt, though,” she sighed, “the girl has
returned to her father.”
“Honored Superior, if she comes not back to matins as clean and fresh
as a brier-rose, turn me out of the Hôtel-Dieu.”
“Get you to bed, Jouaneaux, and, let me tell you, you must meddle no
more with novices. These young creatures are ever a weight on one’s
heart.”
“Especially this one,” lamented Jouaneaux, as, leaving the chapel
behind Sister Brésoles, he rolled his eyes in one last gaze at the
rood-loft.
XVI.
FIRST USE OF A KNIFE.
THE capeline, or small black velvet cap, which Claire had worn on her
journeys about New France sheltered her head from the highest and
softest of April morning skies. Though so early and humid that mists
were still curling and changing form around the mountain and in all the
distances, it promised to be a fine day.
Massawippa led the way across the clearing, leaning a little to one
side as a sail-boat does when it flies on the wind, her moccasined
feet just touching the little billows of ploughed ground; and Claire
followed eagerly, though she carried her draperies clutched in her
hands. The rising sun would shine on their backs, but before the sun
rose they were where he must grope for them among great trees.
One short pause had been made at the outset while Massawippa brought,
from some recess known to herself among rocks or stumps in the
direction of the mountain, a hempen sack filled with her supplies. She
carried this, and a package of what Claire had made up as necessaries
from her box in the Hôtel-Dieu, as if two such loads were wings placed
under the arms of a half-Huron maid to help her feet skim ploughed
ground.
When they had left the clearing and were well behind a massed shelter
of forest trunks, Claire was moist and pink with haste and exertion,
and here Massawippa paused.
They were, after all, but young girls starting on an excursion with the
morning sky for a companion, and they laughed together as they sat down
upon a low rock.
“When I closed the door of the parlor,” said Claire with very pink
lips, “I thought I heard some one stirring in the cells. But we have
not been followed, and I trust not seen.”
“They were rousing for matins,” said the half-Huron. “No, they think I
ran away last night; and you, madame, they do not expect to matins. We
are taking one risk which I dread, but it must be taken.”
“You mean leaving the palisade and entrance doors unfastened? My heart
smote me for those good nuns. Is the risk very great? We have seen no
danger abroad.”
“Not that. No, madame. Their man, that stupid, who ranks himself with
Sulpitian fathers, he is always astir early among his bolts and his
pigs. It is his suspicion I dread. For he knows I slept in the chapel
last night, and he told me of his house, and in that house we must
sleep to-night. Perhaps he dare not tell the Sisters, and in that
case he dare not follow to search his house for us. We have also his
stupidity to count on. Young men are not wise.”
Present discomfort, which puts coming risks farther into the future in
most minds, made Claire thrust out her pointed satin feet and look at
them dubiously.
“What would Dollard think of these, Massawippa? I have one other pair
of heeled shoes in that packet, but they will scarcely hold out for
such journeying.”
“Madame, that is why I stopped here,” said Massawippa, opening her
sack. “It was necessary for us to kneel in the chapel and ask the Holy
Family’s aid before we set out; but we have no time to spend here. Let
me get you ready.”
“Am I not ready?” inquired Claire, giving her companion a rosy laugh.
“No, madame; your feet must be moccasined and your dress cut off.”
The younger girl took from the sack a pair of new moccasins and knelt
on one knee before Claire--not as a menial would kneel, but as a
commanding junior who has undertaken maternal duty. She flung aside
the civilized foot-beautifiers of Louis’ reign and substituted Indian
shoes, lacing them securely with fine thongs.
“These are the best I had, madame, and I carried them out of the
Hôtel-Dieu under my blanket and hid them with our provisions last
night.”
“What a sensible, kind child you are, Massawippa! But while you were
doing this for me I took no thought of any special comfort for you.”
“They will bear the journey.”
Massawippa rose and took from her store two sheathed knives with
cross-hilts--not of the finest workmanship, but of good temper: their
pointed blades glittered as she displayed them. She showed her pupil
how to place one, sheathed, at a ready angle within her bodice, and
then took up the other like a naked sword.
“Now stand on the rock, madame, and let me cut your dress short.”
“Oh, no!” pleaded Claire for her draperies. “You do not understand,
Massawippa. This is simply the dress which women of my rank wear in
France, and because I am going into the woods must I be shorn to my
knees like a man?”
Retreating a step she stretched before her the skirt of dark glacé
satin with its Grecian border of embroidery at the foot, and in doing
so let fall from her arm the overskirt, which trailed its similar
border upon the ground behind her.
“Madame,” argued Massawippa, suspending the knife, “we have a road of
danger before us. That shining stuff hanging behind you will catch on
bushes, and weary you, and will soon be ragged though you nurse it on
your arm all the way.”
“Cut that off, therefore,” said Claire, turning. “I am not so childish
as to love the pall we hang over our gowns and elbows. But the skirt is
not too long if it be lifted by a girdle below the waist. Cut me out a
rope of satin, Massawippa.”
The hiss of a thick and rich fabric yielding to the knife could be
heard behind her back. Massawippa presently lifted the plenteous fleece
thus shorn, and pared away the border while the elder girl held it.
Together they tied the border about Claire’s middle for a support, and
over this pulled the top of her skirt in a pouting ruff.
It was now sunrise. Having thus finished equipping themselves they
took up each a load, Claire bearing her packet on the arm her surplus
drapery had burdened, and when Massawippa had thrust both cast-off
shoes and satin under a side of the rock they hurried on.
XVII.
JOUANEAUX’S HOUSE.
THE sun had almost described his arc before Claire and Massawippa
reached the extremity of the island. Massawippa could have walked
two leagues in half the day, but wisely did she forecast that the
young Frenchwoman would be like a liberated canary, obliged to grow
into uncaged use of herself by little flights and pauses. Besides,
Jouaneaux’s house would give them safe asylum until they crossed the
river.
“That must be his barn,” said Massawippa, pointing to a pile of hewed
timbers, too far up the bank and too recently handled by man to be
drift. They lay in angular positions, scarce an upright log marking
the site of the little structure Jouaneaux had tried to erect for his
granary.
Two slim figures casting long shadows eastward on the clearing, the
girls stood trying to discern in those tumultuous waters where the
Ottawa came in or where the St. Lawrence’s own current wrestled around
islands. The north shore looked far off, thick clothed with forests.
Massawippa held her blanket out to canopy her eyes, anxiously examining
the trackless way by which they must cross.
“But the first thing is to find Jouaneaux’s house,” she said, turning
to Claire.
“I was thinking of that,” Claire answered, “and counting the stumps in
rows of five. All this land is covered with stumps, Massawippa.”
“He said the row of five nearest the water.”
“Did he tell you how to enter?”
“That I had no time to learn. But, madame, if a man went in and out of
this underground house, surely you and I can do the same. Here be five
stumps--the row nearest the river.”
They went to the central stump. It had a nest of decayed yellow wood
within, crumbled down by the tooth of the air, but probing could not
make it hollow.
“Perhaps he deceived you about his house,” said Claire.
Massawippa met her apprehension with dark seriousness.
“It would be the worst about the boat,” she replied. “I counted on that
boat all day, so that I have not thought what to do without it.”
[Illustration: “Massawippa held her blanket out to canopy her eyes.”]
They moved along the bank, passing irregular groups of stumps, until
one standing by itself, much smoke-stained, as if it had leaked through
all its fibers, drew their notice. It was deeply charred and hollow.
Claire took up a pebble and dropped it into the stump. It rattled down
some unseen hopper and clinked smartly on a surface below. This was
Jouaneaux’s chimney.
“He himself forgot where it was!” sneered Massawippa.
“Or some one has occupied the house since,” suggested Claire, “and
taken the other stumps away.”
This was matter for apprehension.
“But stumps are not easily moved, madame. They crumble away or are
burned into their roots. Let us find the door.”
Massawippa dropped on her knees, and it happened that the first spot
of turf she struck with a stone reverberated. Claire stooped also, and
like two large children playing at mud pies they scraped the loam with
sticks and found a rusty iron handle. The door rose by the tugging of
four determined arms and left a square dark hole in the ground.[8]
“Wait,” said Claire, as Massawippa thrust her head within it. “Poison
vapors sometimes lie in such vaults. And let us see if anything is down
there.”
Massawippa took flint and steel from her sack, and Claire gingerly held
the bit of scorched linen which these were to ignite. The tinder being
set on fire, Massawippa lighted a candle and carefully put out her bit
of linen. They fastened a rope to the candle and let it down into the
cell.
The flame burned up steadily, revealing pavement and walls of gray
cement, a tiny hearth and flue of river stones, a flight of slab steps
descending from the door, and a small birch canoe, in which Jouaneaux
had probably slept.
Massawippa went down and set the candle securely on the hearth. Claire
waited until Massawippa had returned and filled both cups at the river.
Then they descended into Jouaneaux’s house and carefully shut the door.
“Oh!” Claire exclaimed as this lid cut off the sunlit world above her
head, “do you suppose we can easily open it again from within?”
“Yes, madame; as easily as the Iroquois could raise it from without.
Jouaneaux was skillful for a Frenchman. But he relied on secrecy, for
there are no fastenings to his door. A fox he called himself.”
“It would be charming,” said Claire, “if we could carry this pit with
us on our way.”
Drift-bark and small sticks, half charred, were piled against the
chimney-back. To these Massawippa set a light, blowing and cheering
it until it rose to cheer her and helped the candle illuminate their
retreat.
“Sit on the bottom of this boat, madame,” said Massawippa, folding her
blanket and placing it there. “Let us eat now, instead of nibbling bits
of bread.”
Claire took up one of the cups and drank reluctantly of river water,
saying, “I am so thirsty! While you are taking out the loaves and the
meat, show me all you have in the sack, Massawippa.”
Massawippa therefore sat on the floor with the sack’s mouth spread in
her lap, and Claire leaned forward from her seat on the boat.
“There were the cups and the candle and one rope and the tinder that we
have taken out,” said Massawippa. She did not explain that she despised
the promiscuous use of pewter cups, and would not use one in common
with the Queen of France.
Out of the bag, jostled by every step of the day’s journey, came
unsorted a loaf of bread, some cured eels, a second rope,--“I brought
ropes for rafts,” observed Massawippa,--a lump of salt, a piece of loaf
sugar,--“For you, madame,”--more bread, more eels, another length of
rope,--“I dared not buy all we needed at one place or at two places,”
explained Massawippa,--the tinder-box, a hatchet, and, last, half a
louis in coin, which Massawippa now returned to Claire.
“Be my purse-bearer still,” said Claire, pushing it back. “If there be
things we need to buy in the wilderness, you will know how to select
them.”
“We will keep it for the walking woman above Carillon,” said the
half-breed girl, sagely; and she put it in the careful bank of her
tinder-box, bestowing this in the safest part of her dress.
They ate a hearty supper of eels and bread, and breaking the sugar
in bits nibbled it afterwards, talking and looking at the coals on
Jouaneaux’s hearth.
Massawippa put their candle out. Their low voices echoed from the sides
of the underground house and made a booming in their heads, but all
sound of the river’s wash so near them, or of the organ murmur of the
forest trees, was shut away.
They cast stealthy occasional looks up at the trapdoor, but neither
said to the other that she dreaded to see a painted face peering there,
or even apprehended the nuns’ man.
While night and day were yet blended they turned the canoe over, and
propped it in a secure position with the help of the paddle. Claire
brought her cloak out of her packet, and this they made their cushion
in the canoe.
The half-breed took the European’s head upon her childish shoulder,
wrapping the older dependent well with her own blanket. Of all her
experiences Claire thought this the strangest--that she should be
resting like a sister on the breast of a little Indian maid in an
underground chamber of the wilderness.
“If it were not for you, madame,” spoke Massawippa, “I would put
this canoe to soak in the water to-night. We must lose time to do it
to-morrow. It has lain so long out of water it will scarcely be safe
for us to venture across in.”
“Massawippa, I thought we could take this boat and go directly up the
Ottawa in it.”
“Madame, you know nothing about the current. And at Carillon, above
Two Mountains Lake, there is a place so swift that I could not paddle
against it. We should have to carry around hard places. And there is
the danger of meeting the Iroquois or being overtaken by some.”
“For Dollard said there were hundreds coming up from the south,”
whispered Claire. “We must, indeed, hide ourselves from all canoes
passing on the river. I took no thought of that.”
“It will be best to go direct to the walking woman and get a boat of
her. We have only to keep the river in sight to find the expedition. If
they camp on the other shore, either below or above Carillon, we will
have to go to Carillon for a boat. The Chaudière rapids will be hard
for them to pass, madame.”
“Who is this walking woman you speak of, Massawippa?”
“I do not know, madame. The Hurons say she is an Indian woman, and some
French have claimed her for a saint of the Holy Church. She makes good
birch canoes, which are prized by those who can get them. She is under
a vow never to sit or lie down, and they say she goes constantly from
Mount Calvary to Carillon, for at Carillon she lives or walks about
working at her boats. On Mount Calvary are seven holy chapels built of
stone, and the walking woman tends these chapels, but she is too humble
to live near them. And even the Iroquois dare not touch her.”
“Did you ever see her?”
“I saw her walking along the side of the mountain, bent over upon a
stick like a very old woman. How tired she must be! for last summer it
was told along the Ottawa that she had been years upon her feet.”
“Were you afraid of her?”
“No, madame. I am not afraid of any holy person who lives in the woods.”
“But did you ever see her face, Massawippa? What did she cover herself
with?” inquired Claire, uncomfortably thinking of the recluse on St.
Bernard.
“Far up the mountain I saw her face like a dot. She was covered, head
and all, in a blanket the color of gray rock. And that is all I know
about her, madame.”
“Yet you count on getting a boat from her?”
“If she be a holy woman, madame, and sees us in trouble, will she not
help us?”
The rosiness of glowing embers tinted the walls of Jouaneaux’s house,
and perfectly the smoke sought its flue.
Lying quite still in weariness, and holding each other for warmth and
comfort, the two young creatures felt such thoughts rise and rush to
speech as semi-darkness fosters when we are on the edge of great perils.
“Madame,” said Massawippa, “do you understand how it will seem to be
dead?”
“I was just thinking of it, Massawippa, and that we shall soon know.
There is no imagining such a change; yet it may be no stranger than
stripping off a glove of kid-skin and leaving the naked hand, which is,
after all, the natural hand. Do you think it possible that anything has
happened to the expedition yet? They are three days out from Montreal.”
“They cannot be far up the Ottawa, madame. No, I think they have not
met the Iroquois.”
After such sleep as makes the whole night but a pause between two
sentences, they opened their eyes to behold a hint of daylight
glimmering down their stump chimney, and Claire exclaimed:
“Child, did you bear the weight of my head all night?”
“I don’t know, madame,” replied Massawippa, laughing. “This canoe
floated us wondrously in sleep. If it but carry us on the Ottawa as
well, we shall pass over without trouble.”
They drew it up the steps of Jouaneaux’s house before eating their
breakfast, and carried it between them to the river. Massawippa
fastened one of her ropes to it and knotted the other end around a
tree. She crept down to the water’s edge pushing the canoe, filled it
with small rocks, and sunk it. They left their craft thus until late
afternoon, while they staid cautiously underground, feeding the little
fire with slab chips from Jouaneaux’s barn, and exchanging low-voiced
chat.
Such close contact in a common peril and endeavor was not without its
effect on both of them. Claire from superior had changed to pupil,
and seemed developing hardihood without losing her soft refinements.
Massawippa, mature for her years, and exactly nice, as became a
princess, in all her personal habits, had from the moment of meeting
this European dropped her taciturn Indian speech. She unconsciously
imitated while she protected a creature so much finer than herself.
Venturing forth when shadows were stretching from the west across that
angry mass of waters, they emptied their canoe from its wetting and
wiped it out with the hempen sack. But Massawippa still shook her head
at it.
“Madame, I am afraid this canoe will not carry us well. Can you swim?”
“No, Massawippa; I never learned to do anything useful,” replied Claire.
“We might make a raft of those barn timbers. But, madame, the canoe
would take us swiftly, and the raft is clumsy in such swirls and
cross-waters as these. You must take one of the cups in your hand and
dip out the water while I paddle. Shall we wait until to-morrow?”
“Oh, no!” urged Claire. “We have lost one day for it. If the canoe will
carry us at all, Massawippa, I believe it will carry us now.”
They accordingly put their supplies back into the bag, but Massawippa
cautiously wound all the ropes around her waist and secured them like a
girdle. She brought the paddle from Jouaneaux’s house, and perhaps with
regret closed for the last time its trapdoor above it.