ALMOST A WOMAN
Peace followed in the blighted trails of the Red Terror. Again the
forest world breathed without fear; but from Hudson's Bay to Athabasca,
and as far south as the thousand waters of the Reindeer country, the
winds whispered of a terrible grief that would remain until babes were
men and men went to their graves.
Life had been torn and broken in a cataclysm more fearful than that
which levels cities and disrupts the earth. Slowly it began its
readjustment. There was no other life to give aid or sympathy; and just
as they had suffered alone, so now the forest people struggled back
into life alone, building up from the wreck of what had been, the
things that were to be.
For months the Crees wailed their death dirges as they sought out the
bones of their dead. Men dragged themselves into the posts, wifeless
and childless, leaving deep in the wilderness all that they had known
to love and give them comfort. Now and then came a woman, and around
the black scars of burned cabins and teepees dogs howled mournfully for
masters that were gone.
The plague had taken a thousand souls, and yet the laughing, dancing
millions in that other big world beyond the edge of the wilderness
caught only a passing rumor of what had happened.
Lac Bain suffered least of the far northern posts, with the exception
of Churchill, where the icy winds down-pouring from the Arctic had sent
the Red Terror shivering to the westward. In the late snows, word came
that Cummins was to take Williams' place as factor, and Per-ee at once
set off for the Fond du Lac to bring back Jean de Gravois as "chief
man." Croisset gave up his fox-hunting to fill Mukee's place.
The changes brought new happiness to Mélisse. Croisset's wife was a
good woman who had spent her girlhood in Montreal, and Iowaka, now the
mother of a fire-eating little Jean and a handsome daughter, was a
soft-voiced young Venus who had grown sweeter and prettier with her
years--which is not usually the case with half-breed women.
"But it's good blood in her, beautiful blood," vaunted Jean proudly,
whenever the opportunity came. "Her mother was a princess, and her
father a pure Frenchman, whose father's father was a chef de bataillon.
What better than that, eh? I say, what better could there be than that?"
So, for the first time in her life, Mélisse discovered the joys of
companionship with those of her own kind.
This new companionship, pleasant as it was, did not come between her
and Jan. If anything, they were more to each other than ever. The
terrible months through which they had passed had changed them both,
and had given them, according to their years, the fruits which are
often ripened in the black gloom of disaster rather than in the
sunshine of prosperity.
To Mélisse they had opened up a new world of thought, a new vision of
the things that existed about her. The sternest teacher of all had
brought to her the knowledge that comes of grief, of terror, and of
death, and she had passed beyond her years, just as the cumulative
processes of generations made the Indian children pass beyond theirs.
She no longer looked upon Jan as a mere playmate, a being whose
diversion was to amuse and to love her. He had become a man. In her
eyes he was a hero, who had gone forth to fight the death of which she
still heard word and whisper all about her. Croisset's wife and Iowaka
told her that he had done the bravest thing that a man might do on
earth. She spoke proudly of him to the Indian children, who called him
the "torch-bearer." She noticed that he was as tall as Croisset, and
taller by half a head than Jean, and that he lifted her now with one
arm as easily as if she were no heavier than a stick of wood.
Together they resumed their studies, devoting hours to them each day,
and through all that summer he taught her to play upon his violin. The
warm months were a time of idleness at Lac Bain, and Jan made the most
of them in his teaching of Mélisse. She learned to read the books which
he had used at Fort Churchill, and by midsummer she could read those
which he had used at York Factory. At night they wrote letters to each
other and delivered them across the table in the cabin, while Cummins
looked on and smoked, laughing happily at what they read aloud to him.
One night, late enough in the season for a fire to be crackling merrily
in the stove, Jan was reading one of these letters, when Mélisse cried:
"Stop, Jan--stop THERE!"
Jan caught himself, and he blushed mightily when he read the next lines:
"'I think you have beautiful eyes. I love them.'"
"What is it?" cried Cummins interestedly. "Read on, Jan."
"Don't!" commanded Mélisse, springing to her feet and running around
the table. "I didn't mean you to read that!"
She snatched the paper from Jan's hand and threw it into the fire.
Jan's blood filled with pleasure, and at the bottom of his next letter
he wrote back:
"I think you have beautiful hair. I love it."
That winter Jan was appointed post hunter, and this gave him much time
at home, for meat was plentiful along the edge of the barrens. The two
continued at their books until they came to the end of what Jan knew in
them. After that, like searchers in strange places, they felt their way
onward, slowly and with caution. During the next summer they labored
through all the books which were in the little box in the corner of the
cabin.
It was Mélisse who now played most on the violin, and Jan listened, his
eyes glowing proudly as he saw how cleverly her little fingers danced
over the strings, his face flushed with a joy that was growing stronger
in him every day. One day she looked curiously into the F-hole of the
instrument, and her pretty mouth puckered itself into a round, red "O"
of astonishment when Jan quickly snatched the violin from her hands.
"Excuses-moi, ma belle Mélisse," he laughed at her in French. "I am
going to play you something new!"
That same day he took the little cloth-covered roll from the violin and
gave it another hiding-place. It recalled to him the strange spirit
which had once moved him at Fort Churchill, and which had remained with
him for a time at Lac Bain. That spirit was now gone, luring him no
longer. Time had drawn a softening veil over things that had passed. He
was happy.
The wilderness became more beautiful to him as Mélisse grew older. Each
summer increased his happiness; each succeeding winter made it larger
and more complete. Every fiber of his being sang in joyful response as
he watched Mélisse pass from childhood into young girlhood. He marked
every turn in her development, the slightest change in her
transformation, as if she had been a beautiful flower.
He possessed none of the quick impetuosity of Jean de Gravois. Years
gave the silence of the North to his tongue, and his exultation was
quiet and deep in his own heart. With an eagerness which no one guessed
he watched the growing beauty of her hair, marked its brightening
luster when he saw it falling in thick waves over her shoulders, and he
knew that at last it had come to be like the woman's. The changing
lights in her eyes fascinated him, and he rejoiced again when he saw
that they were deepening into the violet blue of the bakneesh flowers
that bloomed on the tops of the ridges.
To him, Mélisse was growing into everything that was beautiful. She was
his world, his life, and at Post Lac Bain there was nothing to come
between the two. Jan noticed that in her thirteenth year she could
barely stand under his outstretched arm. The next year she had grown so
tall that she could not stand there at all. Very soon she would be a
woman!
The thought leaped from his heart, and he spoke it aloud. It was on the
girl's fifteenth birthday. They had come up to the top of the ridge on
which he had fought the missionary, to gather red sprigs of the
bakneesh for the festival that they were to have in the cabin that
night. High up on the face of a jagged rock, Jan saw a bit of the
crimson vine thrusting itself out into the sun, and, with Mélisse
laughing and encouraging him from below, he climbed up until he had
secured it. He tossed it down to her.
"It's the last one," she cried, seeing his disadvantage, "and I'm going
home. You can't catch me!"
She darted away swiftly along the snow-covered ridge, taunting him with
merry laughter as she left him clambering in cautious descent down the
rock. Jan followed in pursuit, shouting to her in French, in Cree, and
in English, and their two voices echoed happily in their wild frolic.
Jan slackened his steps. It was a joy to see Mélisse springing from
rock to rock and darting across the thin openings close ahead of him,
her hair loosening and sweeping out in the sun, her slender figure
fleeing with the lightness of the pale sun-shadows that ran up and down
the mountain.
He would not have overtaken her of his own choosing, but at the foot of
the ridge Mélisse gave up. She returned toward him, panting and
laughing, shimmering like a sea-naiad under the glistening veil of her
disheveled hair. Her face glowed with excitement; her eyes, filled with
the light of the sun, dazzled Jan in their laughing defiance. Before
her he stopped, and made no effort to catch her. Never had he seen her
so beautiful, still daring him with her laugh, quivering and panting,
flinging back her hair. Half reaching out his arms, he cried:
"Mélisse, you are beautiful--you are almost a woman!"
The flush deepened in her cheeks, and there was no longer the sweet,
taunting mischief in her eyes. She made no effort to run from him when
he came to her.
"Do you think so, Brother Jan?"
"If you did your hair up like the pictures we have in the books, you
would be a woman," he answered softly. "You are more beautiful than the
pictures!"
He drew a step back, and her eyes flashed at him again with the sparkle
of the old fun in them.
"You say that I am pretty, and that I am almost a woman," she pouted.
"And yet--" She shrugged her shoulders at him in mock disdain. "Jan
Thoreau, this is the third time in the last week that you have not
played the game right! I won't play with you any more!"
In a flash he was at her side, her face between his two hands and,
bending down, he kissed her upon the mouth.
"There," she said, as he released her. "Isn't that the way we have
played it ever since I can remember? Whenever you catch me, you may
have that!"
"I am afraid, Mélisse," he said seriously. "You are growing so tall and
so pretty that I am afraid."
"Afraid! My brother afraid to kiss me! And what will you do when I get
to be a woman, Jan--which will be very soon, you say?"
"I don't know, Mélisse."
She turned her back to him and flung out her hair; and Jan, who had
done this same thing for her a hundred times before, divided the silken
mass into three strands and plaited them into a braid.
"I don't believe that you care for me as much as you used to, Jan. I
wish I were a woman, so that I might know if you are going to forget me
entirely!"
Her shoulders trembled; and when he had finished his task, he found
that she was laughing, and that her eyes were swimming with a new
mischief which she was trying to hide from him. In that laugh there was
something which was not like Mélisse. Slight as the change was, he
noticed it; but instead of displeasing him, it set a vague sensation of
pleasure trilling like a new song within him.
When they reached the post, Mélisse went to the cabin with her
bakneesh, and Jan to the company's store. Tossing the vines upon the
table, Mélisse ran back to the door and watched him until he
disappeared. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips half parted in
excitement; and no sooner had he gone from view than she hurried to
Iowaka's home across the clearing.
It was fully three quarters of an hour later when Jan saw Mélisse, with
Iowaka's red shawl over her head, walking slowly and with extreme
precision of step back to the cabin.
"I wonder if she has the earache," he said to himself, watching her
curiously. "That is Iowaka's shawl, and she has it all about her head."
"A clear half-inch of the rarest wool from London," added the cheery
voice of Jean de Gravois, whose moccasins had made no sound behind him.
He always spoke in French to Jan. "There is but one person in the world
who looks better in it than your Mélisse, Jan Thoreau, and that is
Iowaka, my wife. Blessed saints, man, but is she not growing more
beautiful every day?"
"Yes," said Jan. "She will soon be a woman."
"A woman!" shouted Jean, who, not having his caribou whip, jumped up
and down to emphasize his words. "She will soon be a woman, did you
say, Jan Thoreau? And if she is not a woman at thirty, with two
children--God send others like them!--when will she be, I ask you?"
"I meant Mélisse," laughed Jan.
"And I meant Iowaka," said Jean. "Ah, there she is now, come out to see
if her Jean de Gravois is on his way home with the sugar for which she
sent him something like an hour ago; for you know she is chef de
cuisine of this affair to-night. Ah, she sees me not, and she turns
back heartily disappointed, I'll swear by all the saints in the
calendar! Did you ever see a figure like that, Jan Thoreau? And did you
ever see hair that shines so, like the top-feathers of a raven who's
nibbling at himself in the hottest bit of sunshine he can find? Deliver
us, but I'll go with the sugar this minute!"
The happy Jean hopped out, like a cricket over-burdened with life,
calling loudly to his wife, who came to meet him.
A few minutes later Jan thrust his head in at their door, as he was
passing.
"I knew I should get a beating, or something worse, for forgetting that
sugar," cried the little Frenchman, holding up his bared arms.
"Dough--dough--dough--I'm rolling dough--dough for the bread, dough for
the cakes, dough for the pies--dough, Jan Thoreau, just common flour
and water mixed and swabbed--I, Jean de Gravois, chief man at Post Lac
Bain, am mixing dough! She is as beautiful as an angel and sweeter than
sugar--my Iowaka, I mean; but there is more flesh in her earthly
tabernacle than in mine, so I am compelled to mix this dough, mon ami.
Iowaka, my dear, tell Jan what you were telling me, about Mélisse and--"
"Hush!" cried Iowaka in her sweet Cree. "That is for Jan to find out
for himself."
"So--so it is," exclaimed the irrepressible Jean, plunging himself to
the elbows in his pan of dough. "Then hurry to the cabin, Jan, and see
what sort of a birthday gift Mélisse has got for you."