SUMMER TIME
The child sat in a dream on a rude, squarely-built settle with a coarse
blanket on it of Indian make and some skins thrown over the back, for
often at sundown the air grew cool and as yet women were not spinning or
weaving as in old France. A few luxuries had been brought thither, but
the mother government had a feeling that the colonists ought mostly to
provide for themselves, and was often indifferent to the necessary
demands.
Mere Dubray went out to the kitchen and began to prepare supper. There
was a great stone chimney with a bench at each side, and for a fireplace
two flat stones that would be filled in with chunks of wood. When the
blaze had burned them to coals the cooking began. Corn bread baked on
both sides, sometimes rye or wheaten cakes, a kettle boiled, though the
home-brewed beer was the common drink in summer, except among those who
used the stronger potions. The teas were mostly fragrant herbs, thought
to be good for the stomach and to keep the blood pure.
Mere Dubray dressed half a dozen birds in a trice. It was true that in
the summer they could live on the luxuries of the land in some
respects. Fish and game of all kinds were abundant, and as there were
but few ways of keeping against winter it was as well to feast while one
could. They dried and smoked eels and some other fish, and salted them,
but they had learned that too much of this diet induced scurvy.
The birds were hung on an improvised spit, with a pan below to catch the
drippings with which they were basted. Between whiles the worthy woman
unexpectedly bolted out to the garden with a switch in her hand and laid
it about the two Indian boys, who did not bear it with the stoicism of
their race, as they learned the greater the noise the shorter their
punishment.
The little girl did not heed the screams or the shrill scolding, or even
the singing of the birds that grew deliciously tender toward nightfall.
She often watched the waving branches as the wind blew among them until
it seemed as if they must be alive, bending over caressing each other
and murmuring in low tones. If she could only know what they said. Of
course they must be alive; she heard them cry piteously in winter when
they were stripped of their covering. Why did God do it? Why did He send
winter when summer was so much better, when people were merry and happy
and could hunt and fish and wander in the woods and fight Indians? She
had not had much of an idea of God hitherto only as a secret charm
connected with Mere Dubray's beads, but now it was some great power
living beyond the sky, just as the Indians believed. You could only go
there by growing cold and stiff and being put in the ground. She shrank
from that thought.
Something new had come in her life now. There was a vague, confused idea
of gods and goddesses, that she had gathered from the Latin verses that
she no more understood than the language. And this must be one that
descended upon her this afternoon. The soft, sweet voice still lingered
in her ears, entrancing her. The graceful figure that was like some
delicate swaying branch, the attire the like of which she had never even
dreamed of. How could she indeed, when the finest things she had seen
were the soldiers' trappings?
And this beautiful being had kissed her. Only once she remembered being
kissed, but Catherine's lips were so cold that for days when she thought
of it she shuddered and connected it with that mysterious going away,
that horrid, underground life. This was warm and sweet and strange, like
the nectar of flowers she had held to her lips. Oh, would the lovely
being come again? But M'sieu Ralph had said so, and what he promised
came to pass. There was a sudden ecstasy as if she could not wait, as if
she could fly out of the body after her charmer. Whither was she going?
Oh, M'sieu Ralph would know. But could she wait until to-morrow?
Into this half-delirious vision broke the strong, rather harsh voice
that filled her for an instant with a curious hate so acute that if she
had been large enough, strong enough, she would have thrust the woman
out of doors.
"Oh, have you been asleep? Your eyes look wild. And your cheeks! Is it
the fever coming back again? That chatter went through my head. And to
be gowned as if she were going to have audience with the Queen! I don't
know about such things. There is a King always--I suppose there must be
a Queen."
The child had recovered herself a little and the enraptured dream was
slipping by.
"And here is your supper. Such a great dish of raspberries, and some
juice pressed out for wine. And the birds broiled to a turn. Here is a
little wheaten cake. The Sieur sent the wheat and it is a great rarity.
And now eat like a hungry child."
She raised her up and put a cushion of dried hay at her back. The food
was on a small trencher with a flat bottom, and was placed on the settle
beside her.
"No, no, the tea first," she said, holding a birch-bark cup to her lips.
Rose made a wry face, but drank it, nevertheless. Then she took the
raspberry juice, which was much pleasanter.
"Yes, a great lady, no doubt. We have few of them. This is no place for
silken hose and dainty slippers, and gowns slipping off the shoulders,
and my lady will soon find that out. I wondered at M. Destournier. The
saints forbid that we should import these kind of cattle to New
France."
"She is very sweet"--protestingly.
"Oh, yes. So is the flower sweet, and it drops off into withered leaves.
And her eyes looked askance at M'sieu Ralph, yet she hath a husband.
Come, eat of thy bird and bread, and to-morrow maybe thou wilt run about
lest thy limbs stiffen up to a palsy."
"Mistress, mistress," called Pani--"here is a man to see thee."
She went through both rooms. The man stood without, rather rough,
unkempt, with buckskin breeches, fringed leggings, an Indian blanket, a
grizzled beard hanging down on his breast, and his tousled hair well
sprinkled with white; his face wrinkled with the hardships he had passed
through, but the gray-blue eyes twinkled.
"Ha! ha!" A coarse, but not unfriendly laugh finished the greeting as he
caught both hands in an impetuous embrace. "Lalotte, old girl, has thy
memory failed in two years? Or hast thou gotten another husband?"
The woman gave a shriek of mingled surprise and delight. "The saints be
praised, it is Antoine. And how if thou hast taken some Indian woman to
wife? Braves do not consort with white women who cannot be made into
slaves," she answered, with spirit.
"Lalotte, thou wert hard to win in those early days. But now a dozen
good kisses with more flavor in them than Burgundy wine, and I will
prove to you I am the same old Antoine. And then--but thy supper smell
is good to a hungry man. And a dish of shallots. It takes a man back to
old Barbizon."
Stout and strong as was Madame Dubray, her husband almost kissed the
breath out of her body in his rapturous embrace.
"But I had no word of your coming----"
"How could you, pardieu! But you knew the traders were coming in. And a
man can't send messengers hundreds of miles."
"I looked last year----"
"Pouf! There are men who stay five or ten years, and have left a wife in
France. You can't blame them for taking a new one when you are invited
to. It is a wild, hard life, but not worse than a soldier's. And when
you are your own master the hardships are light. But some of this good
supper."
"Out with you," she said to the Indian boys, who had snatched a piece of
the broiled fish. Then she put down a plate, took up two birds that
dripped delicious gravy, and a squirrel browned to a turn. From the
cupboard beside the great stone chimney, so cunningly devised that no
one would have suspected it, she brought forth a bottle of wine from the
old world, her last choice possession, that she had dreamed of saving
for Antoine, and now her dream had come true.
There was much to tell on both sides, though her life had been
comparatively uneventful. He related incidents of his wilder experiences
far away from civilization that he had grown to enjoy in its perfect
freedom that often lapped over into lawlessness. And he ate until
squirrel, fish, and the cakes, both of rye and corn, had disappeared.
The slave boys fared ill that night.
Rose had eaten her supper more daintily. The great pile of raspberries
was a delight; large, luscious; melting in one's mouth without the aid
of sugar, and being picked up with the fingers. She had been startled at
the sudden appearance of the husband she had heard talked of, but of
course not seen. His loud voice grated on her ears, made more sensitive
by illness, and when, a long while after, the pine torch that was
flaring in the kitchen defined his brawny frame as he stood in the
doorway, she wanted to scream.
"Oh--what have you here--a ghost?" he asked.
"A child who was left here more than a year ago. Jean Arlac lost his
wife, and not knowing what to do with her--she was not his own
child--left her here. He went out with the fur-hunters."
"Jean Arlac!" Antoine scratched among his rough locks as if to assist
his memory. "Yes. And on the way he picked up a likely Indian girl who
has given him a son. And he saddled her on you?"
"Oh, the Sieur will look after her--perhaps take her back to France,"
she answered, indifferently.
"The best place for her, no doubt. She looks a frail reed. And women
need strength in this new world. A little infusion of Indian blood will
do no harm. I wouldn't mind a son myself, but a girl--pouf!"
The child was glad he would not want her. She turned her face to the
wall. She had not known what loneliness was before, but now she felt it
through all her body, like a great pain.
On the opposite side of the room was another settle, part of which
turned over and was upheld by drawing out two rounds of logs. Mere
Dubray made up the wider bed now, and soon Antoine was snoring lustily.
At first it frightened the child, though she was used to the screech of
the owl that spent his nights in the great walnut tree inside the
palisade.
Was it a dream, she wondered the next morning. She slept soundly at last
and late and found herself alone in the house. She put on her simple
frock and went to the doorway. Ah, what a splendid glowing morning it
was! The sunshine lay in golden masses and fairly gilded the green of
the maize, the waving grasses, the bronze of the trees, and the river
threw up lights and shadows like birds skimming about.
No one was in the garden. The table had been despoiled to the last
crumb. Even the cupboard had been ransacked and all that remained was
some raw fish. She was not hungry and the fragrant air was reviving. It
seemed to speed through every pulse. Why, she suddenly felt strong
again.
She wandered out of the enclosure and climbed the steps, sitting down
now and then and drawing curious breaths that frightened her, they came
so irregularly. There were workmen building additional fortifications
around the post, there were houses going up. It was like a strange
place. She reached the gallery presently and looked over what was
sometime to be the city of Quebec. The long stretch was full of tents
and tepees and throngs of men of every description, it would seem;
Indians, swarthy Spaniards who had roamed half round the world, French
from the jaunty trader, with a certain air of breeding, down to the
rough, unkempt peasant, who had been lured away from his native land
with visions of an easily-made fortune and much liberty in New France,
and convicts who had been given a choice between death and expatriation.
Great stacks of furs still coming in from some quarter, haranguing,
bargaining, shouting, coming to blows, and the interference of soldiers.
Was it so last summer when she sometimes ran out with Pani, though she
had been forbidden to?
It was growing very hot up here. The sun that looked so glorious through
the long stretches of the forest and played about the St. Lawrence as if
in a game of hide-and-seek with the boats, grew merciless. All the air
was full of dancing stars and she was so tired trying to reach out to
them, as if they were a stairway leading up to heaven, so that one need
not be put in the dark, wretched ground. Oh, yes, she could find the
way, and she half rose.
It seemed a long journey in the darkness. Then there was a coolness on
her brow, a soft hand passed over it, and she heard some murmuring,
caressing words. She opened her eyes, she tried to rise.
"Lie still, little one," said the voice that soothed and somehow made it
easy to obey. She was fanned slowly, and all was peace.
"Did you climb up to the gallery all alone? And yesterday you seemed so
weak, so fragile."
"I wanted--some one. They had all gone----"
"Quebec looks like a besieged camp. Laurent, that is my husband," with a
bright color, "said I could see it from the gallery, and that it
resembled a great show. I went out and found you. At first I thought you
were dead. But the Indian woman, Jolette is her Christian name, but I
should have liked Wanamee better, carried you in here and after a while
brought you to. But I thought sure you were dead. Poor little white
Rose! Truly named."
"But once I had red cheeks," in a faint voice.
"Then thou wouldst have been a red Rose."
She sang a delicious little chanson to a red rose from a lover. The
child sighed in great content.
"Were they good to you down there? That woman seemed--well, hard. And
were you left all alone?"
Rose began to tell the story of how the husband came home, and Madame
Giffard could see that she shrank from him. "And when she woke they had
all gone away. There was nothing to eat."
"Merci! How careless and unkind!" But Madame Giffard could not know the
little slave boys had ransacked the place.
"I was not hungry. And it was so delightful to walk about again. Though
I trembled all over and thought I should fall down."
"As you did. Now I have ordered you some good broth. And you must lie
still to get rested."
"But it is so nice to talk. You were so beautiful yesterday I was
afraid. I never saw such fine clothes."
Madame Giffard was in a soft gray gown to-day that had long wrinkled
sleeves, a very short waist, and a square neck filled in with ruffles
that stood up in a stiff fashion. She looked very quaint and pretty,
more approachable, though the child felt rather than understood.
"Are there no women here, and no society? Merci! but it is a strange
place, a wilderness. And no balls or dinners or excursions, with gay
little luncheons? There is war all the time at home, but plenty of
pleasure, too. And what is one to do here!"
"The Indians have some ball games. But they often fight at the end."
The lady laughed. What a charming ripple it was, like the falls here and
there, and there were many of them.
"Not that kind," she said, in her soft tone that could not wound the
child. "A great room like a palace, and lights everywhere, hundreds of
candles, and mirrors where you see yourself at every turn. Then festoons
of gauzy things that wave about, and flowers--not always real ones, they
fade so soon. And the men--there are officers and counts and marquises,
and their habiliments are--well, I can't describe them so you would
understand, but a hundred times finer than those of the Sieur de
Champlain. And the women--oh, if I had worn a ball dress yesterday, you
would have been speechless."
She laughed again gayly at the child's innocence. And just then Wanamee
came in with the broth.
"Madame Dubray's husband has come," nodding to the child.
"Yes, yesterday, just at night."
"He has great stores, they say. He is shrewd and means to make money.
But there will be no quiet now for weeks. And it will hardly be safe to
venture outside the palisades."
Jolette had been among the first converts, a prisoner taken in one of
the numerous Indian battles, rescued and saved from torture by the Sieur
himself, and though she had been a wife of one of the chiefs, she had
been beaten and treated like a slave. Champlain found her amenable to
the influences of civilization, and in some respects really superior to
the emigrants that had been sent over, though most of them were eagerly
seized upon as wives for the workmen. Frenchwomen were not anxious to
leave their native land.
Madame Giffard fed her small _protegee_ in a most dainty and enticing
manner. The little girl would have thought herself in an enchanted
country if she had known anything about enchantment. But most of the
stories she had heard were of Indian superstition, and so horrid she
never wanted to recur to them. Madame Dubray was much too busy to allow
her thoughts to run in fanciful channels, and really lacked any sort of
imagination.
After she had been fed she leaned back on the pillow again. Madame soon
sang her to sleep. The child was very much exhausted and in the quietude
of slumber looked like a bit of carving.
"Her eyelashes are splendid," thought her watcher, "and her lips have
pretty curves. There is something about her--she must have belonged to
gentle people. But she will grow coarse under that woman's training."
She sighed a little. Did she want the child, she wondered. If Laurent
could make a fortune here in this curious land where most of the
population seemed barbarians.
She drew from a work-bag a purse she was knitting of silken thread, and
worked as she watched the sleeping child. Once she rose, but the view
from the window did not satisfy her, so she went out on the gallery. A
French vessel was coming up into port, with its colors at half mast and
its golden lilies shrouded with crape. Some important personage must be
dead--was it the King?
She heard her husband's voice calling her and turned, took a few steps
forward. "Oh, what has happened?" she cried.
"The King! Our heroic Bearnese! For though we must always regret his
change of religion, yet it was best for France and his rights. And a
wretched miscreant stabbed him in his carriage, but he has paid the
penalty. And the new King is but a child, so a woman will rule. There is
no knowing what policies may be overturned."
"Our brave King!" There were tears in her eyes.
"They are loading vessels to return. Ah, what a rich country, even if
they cannot find the gold the Spaniards covet. Such an array of choice
furs bewilders one, and to see them tossed about carelessly makes one
almost scream with rage. Ah, my lady, you shall have in the winter what
the Queen Mother would envy."
"Then you mean to stay"--uncertainly.
"Yes, unless there should be great changes. I have not seen the Sieur
since the news came. He was to go to Tadoussac the first of the week,
and I had permission to go with him. One would think to-day that Quebec
was one of the most flourishing of towns, and it is hard to believe the
contrary. But every soldier is on the watch. They trust no one. What
have you been doing, _ma mie_?"
"Oh, I have something to show you. Come."
She placed her finger to her lips in token of silence and led him back
to the room she had left. The child was still sleep.
"What an angel," he murmured. "Is it--how did it come here? I thought
you said the little girl was ill."
"She was, and is. Doesn't she look like a marvellous statue? But no one
seems to regard her beauty here."
"She is too delicate."
"But she was well and strong and daring, and could climb like a deer, M.
Destournier says. She will be well again with good care. I want to keep
her."
"She will be a good plaything for thee when I am away. Though this may
change many plans. The Sieur is bent on discoveries, and now he has
orders to print his book. The maps are wonderful. What a man! He should
be a king in this new world. France does not understand the mighty
empire he is founding for her."
"Then you do not mind--if I keep the child? She has crept into the empty
niche in my heart. I must have been directed by the saints when I felt
the desire to go out. She would have died from exhaustion in the
broiling sun."
"Say the good Father, rather."
"And yet we must adore the saints, the old patriarchs. Did not the
disciples desire to build a memento to them?"
"They were not such men as have disgraced the holy calling by fire and
sword and persecution. And if one can draw a free breath in this new
land. The English with all their faults allow freedom in religion. It is
these hated Jesuits. And I believe they are answerable for the murder of
our heroic King."
Wanamee summoned them to the midday repast. The plain walnut boards
that formed the table had been polished until the beautiful grain and
the many curvings were brought out like the shades of a painting. If the
dishes were a motley array, a few pieces of silver and polished pewter
with common earthenware and curious cups of carved wood as well as
birch-bark platters, the viands were certainly appetizing.
"One will not starve in this new country," he said.
"But it is the winter that tries one, M. Destournier says."
"There must be plenty of game. And France sends many things. But a
colony must have agricultural resources. And the Indian raids are so
destructive. We need more soldiers."
He was off again to plunge in the thick of business. It was supposed the
fur company and the concessions ruled most of the bargain-making, but
there were independent trappers who had not infrequently secured skins
that were well-nigh priceless when they reached the hands of the Paris
furrier. And toward night, when wine and whiskey had been passed around
rather freely, there were broils that led to more than one fatal ending.
Indian women thronged around as well, with curious handiwork made in
their forest fastnesses.
The child slept a long while, she was so exhausted.
"Why, the sun is going over the mountains," she began, in vague alarm.
"I must go home. I did not mean to run away."
She sprang up on her feet, but swayed so that she would have fallen had
not Madame caught her.
"Nay, nay, thou art not well enough to run away from me, little one. I
will send word down to the cabin of Mere Dubray. She has her husband,
whom she has not seen for two years, and will care naught for thee.
Women are all alike when a man's love is proffered," and she gave a gay
little laugh.
"My head feels light and swims around as if it was on the rapid river.
But I must go home, I----"
"Art afraid? Well, I promise nothing shall harm thee. Lie down again. I
will send Wanamee with the word. Will it make thee happy--content?"
The child looked at her hostess as if she was studying her, but her
intellect had never been roused sufficiently for that. There was a vague
delight stealing over her as slumber does at times, a confusion of what
might have been duty if she had understood that even, in staying away
from what was really her home. Mere Dubray would be angry. She would
hardly beat her, she had only slapped her once during her illness, and
that was to make her swallow some bitter tea. And something within her
seemed to cry out for the adjuncts of this place. She had been in the
room before, she had even peered into the Sieur's study. He always had a
kindly word for her, she was different from the children of the workmen,
and looked at one with sober, wondering eyes, as if she might fathom
many things.
"You do not want to go back?"--persuasively.
Was it the pretty lady who changed the aspect of everything for her?
"Oh, if I could stay here always!" she cried, with a vehemence of more
years than had passed over her head. "It is better than the beautiful
world where I sit on the rocks and wonder, and dream of the great beyond
that goes over and meets the sky. There are no cruel Indians then, and I
want to wander on and on and listen to the voices in the trees, the
plash of the great river, and the little stream that plays against the
stones almost like the song you sung. If one could live there always and
did not get hungry or cold----"
"What a queer, visionary child! One would not look for it in these
wilds. The ladies over yonder talk of them because it is a fashion, but
when they ride through the parks and woods they want a train of
admirers. And with you it is pure love. Could you love any one as you do
nature? Was any one ever so good to you that you could fall down at
their feet and worship them? Surely you do not love Madame Dubray?"
"M'sieu Ralph has been very kind. But you are like a wonderful flower
one finds now and then, and dares not gather it lest the gods of the
woods and trees should be angry."
"But I will gather you to my heart, little one," and she slipped down
beside the couch, encircling the child in her arms, and pressing kisses
on brow and legs and pallid cheeks, bringing a roseate tint to them.
"And you must love me, you must want to stay with me. Oh, there was a
little one once who was flesh of my flesh, on whom I lavished the
delight and tenderness of my soul, and the great Father took her. He
sent nothing in her place, though I prayed and prayed. And now I shall
put you there. Surely the good God cannot be angry, for you have no
one."
She had followed a sudden impulse, and was not quite sure it was for the
best. Only her mother heart cried out for love.
The child stared, motionless, and it dampened her ardor for the moment.
She could not fathom the eyes.
"Are you not glad? Would you not like to live with me?"
"Oh, oh!" It was a cry of rapture. She caught the soft white hands and
kissed them. The joy was so new, so unexpected, she had no words for
it.