The girl stood on a bank above a river flowing north. At her back
crouched a dozen clean whitewashed buildings. Before her in
interminable journey, day after day, league on league into
remoteness, stretched the stern Northern wilderness, untrodden save
by the trappers, the Indians, and the beasts. Close about the
little settlement crept the balsams and spruce, the birch and
poplar, behind which lurked vast dreary muskegs, a chaos of
bowlder-splits, the forest. The girl had known nothing different
for many years. Once a summer the sailing ship from England felt
its frozen way through the Hudson Straits, down the Hudson Bay, to
drop anchor in the mighty River of the Moose. Once a summer a
six-fathom canoe manned by a dozen paddles struggled down the
waters of the broken Abitibi. Once a year a little band of
red-sashed _voyageurs_ forced their exhausted sledge-dogs across
the ice from some unseen wilderness trail. That was all.
Before her eyes the seasons changed, all grim, but one by the very
pathos of brevity sad. In the brief luxuriant summer came the
Indians to trade their pelts, came the keepers of the winter posts
to rest, came the ship from England bringing the articles of use or
ornament she had ordered a full year before. Within a short time
all were gone, into the wilderness, into the great unknown world.
The snow fell; the river and the bay froze. Strange men from the
North glided silently to the Factor's door, bearing the meat and
pelts of the seal. Bitter iron cold shackled the northland, the
abode of desolation. Armies of caribou drifted by, ghostly under
the aurora, moose, lordly and scornful, stalked majestically along
the shore; wolves howled invisible, or trotted dog-like in
organized packs along the river banks. Day and night the ice
artillery thundered. Night and day the fireplaces roared defiance
to a frost they could not subdue, while the people of desolation
crouched beneath the tyranny of winter.
Then the upheaval of spring with the ice-jams and terrors, the
Moose roaring by untamable, the torrents rising, rising foot by
foot to the very dooryard of her father's house. Strange spirits
were abroad at night, howling, shrieking, cracking and groaning in
voices of ice and flood. Her Indian nurse told her of them all--of
Mannabosho, the good; of Nenaubosho the evil--in her lisping
Ojibway dialect that sounded like the softer voices of the forest.
At last the sudden subsidence of the waters; the splendid eager
blossoming of the land into new leaves, lush grasses, an abandon of
sweetbrier and hepatica. The air blew soft, a thousand singing
birds sprang from the soil, the wild goose cried in triumph.
Overhead shone the hot sun of the Northern summer.
From the wilderness came the _brigades_ bearing their pelts, the
hardy traders of the winter posts, striking hot the imagination
through the mysterious and lonely allurement of their callings.
For a brief season, transient as the flash of a loon's wing on the
shadow of a lake, the post was bright with the thronging of many
people. The Indians pitched their wigwams on the broad meadows
below the bend; the half-breeds sauntered about, flashing bright
teeth and wicked dark eyes at whom it might concern; the traders
gazed stolidily over their little black pipes, and uttered brief
sentences through their thick black beards. Everywhere was gay
sound--the fiddle, the laugh, the song; everywhere was gay
color--the red sashes of the _voyageurs_, the beaded moccasins and
leggings of the _metis_, the capotes of the _brigade_, the
variegated costumes of the Crees and Ojibways. Like the wild roses
around the edge of the muskegs, this brief flowering of the year
passed. Again the nights were long, again the frost crept down
from the eternal snow, again the wolves howled across barren wastes.
Just now the girl stood ankle-deep in green grasses, a bath of
sunlight falling about her, a tingle of salt wind humming up the
river from the bay's offing. She was clad in gray wool, and wore
no hat. Her soft hair, the color of ripe wheat, blew about her
temples, shadowing eyes of fathomless black. The wind had brought
to the light and delicate brown of her complexion a trace of color
to match her lips whose scarlet did not fade after the ordinary and
imperceptible manner into the tinge of her skin, but continued
vivid to the very edge; her eyes were wide and unseeing. One hand
rested idly on the breech of an ornamented bronze field-gun.
McDonald, the chief trader, passed from the house to the store
where his bartering with the Indians was daily carried on; the
other Scotchman in the Post, Galen Albret, her father, and the head
Factor of all this region, paced back and forth across the veranda
of the factory, caressing his white beard; up by the stockade,
young Achille Picard tuned his whistle to the note of the curlew;
across the meadow from the church wandered Crane, the little Church
of England missionary, peering from short-sighted pale blue eyes;
beyond the coulee, Sarnier and his Indians _chock-chock-chocked_
away at the seams of the long coast-trading bateau. The girl saw
nothing, heard nothing. She was dreaming, she was trying to
remember.
In the lines of her slight figure, in its pose there by the old gun
over the old, old river, was the grace of gentle blood, the pride
of caste. Of all this region her father was the absolute lord,
feared, loved, obeyed by all its human creatures. When he went
abroad, he travelled in a state almost mediaeval in its
magnificence; when he stopped at home, men came to him from the
Albany, the Kenogami, the Missinaibe, the Mattagami, the
Abitibi--from all the rivers of the North--to receive his commands.
Way was made for him, his lightest word was attended. In his house
dwelt ceremony, and of his house she was the princess.
Unconsciously she bad taken the gracious habit of command. She had
come to value her smile, her word; to value herself. The lady of a
realm greater than the countries of Europe, she moved serene, pure,
lofty amid dependants.
And as the lady of this realm she did honor to her father's
guests--sitting stately behind the beautiful silver service, below
the portrait of the Company's greatest explorer, Sir George
Simpson, dispensing crude fare in gracious manner, listening
silently to the conversation, finally withdrawing at the last with
a sweeping courtesy to play soft, melancholy, and world-forgotten
airs on the old piano, brought over years before by the _Lady
Head_, while the guests made merry with the mellow port and ripe
Manila cigars which the Company supplied its servants. Then
coffee, still with her natural Old World charm of the _grande
dame_. Such guests were not many, nor came often. There was
McTavish of Rupert's House, a three days' journey to the northeast;
Rand of Fort Albany, a week's travel to the northwest; Mault of
Fort George, ten days beyond either, all grizzled in the Company's
service. With them came their clerks, mostly English and Scotch
younger sons, with a vast respect for the Company, and a vaster for
their Factors daughter. Once in two or three years appeared the
inspectors from Winnipeg, true lords of the North, with their
six-fathom canoes, their luxurious furs, their red banners trailing
like gonfalons in the water. Then this post of Conjuror's House
feasted and danced, undertook gay excursions, discussed in public
or private conclave weighty matters, grave and reverend advices,
cautions, and commands. They went. Desolation again crept in.
The girl dreamed. She was trying to remember. Far-off,
half-forgotten visions of brave, courtly men, of gracious,
beautiful women, peopled the clouds of her imaginings. She heard
them again, as voices beneath the roar of rapids, like far-away
bells tinkling faintly through a wind, pitying her, exclaiming over
her; she saw them dim and changing, as wraiths of a fog, as shadow
pictures in a mist beneath the moon, leaning to her with bright,
shining eyes full of compassion for the little girl who was to go
so far away into an unknown land; she felt them, as the touch of a
breeze when the night is still, fondling her, clasping her, tossing
her aloft in farewell. One she felt plainly--a gallant youth who
held her up for all to see. One she saw clearly--a dewy-eyed,
lovely woman who murmured loving, broken words. One she heard
distinctly--a gentle voice that said, "God's love be with you,
little one, for you have far to go, and many days to pass before
you see Quebec again." And the girl's eyes suddenly swam bright,
for the northland was very dreary. She threw her palms out in a
gesture of weariness.
Then her arms dropped, her eyes widened, her head bent forward in
the attitude of listening.
"Achille!" she called. "Achille! Come here!"
The young fellow approached respectfully.
"Mademoiselle?" he asked.
"Don't you hear?" she said.
Faint, between intermittent silences, came the singing of men's
voices from the south.
"_Grace a Dieu_!" cried Achille. "Eet is so. Eet is dat
_brigade_!"
He ran shouting toward the factory.