CHANGING ABOUT
"If you are ready for your sail and have the courage----"
Laurent Giffard kissed his pretty wife as she sat with some needlework
in her hand, telling legendary tales, that were half fairy
embellishments, to the little Rose, who was listening eager-eyed and
with a delicious color in her cheeks. The child lived in a sort of fairy
land. Miladi was the queen, her gowns were gold and silver brocade, but
what brocade was, it would have been difficult for her to describe. She
was very happy in these days, growing strong so she could take walks
outside the fort, though she did not venture to do much climbing. The
old life was almost forgotten. Mere Dubray was very busy with her own
affairs, and her husband was as exigent as any new lover. Her cookery
appealed to him in the most important place, his stomach.
"And to think I have done without thee these two years," he would moan.
When she saw her, the little girl had a strange fear that at the last
moment they would seize her and take her up to the fur country with
them. Pani was to go; he was of some service, if you kept a sharp eye
on him, and had a switch handy.
"I'll tell you," he said to Rose when he waylaid her one day, "because
you never got me into trouble and had me beaten. I shall have to start
with them and I will go two days' journey, so they won't suspect. Then
at night I'll start back. I like Quebec, and you and the good gentleman
who throws you a laugh when he passes, instead of striking you. And I'll
hunt and fish, and be a sailor. I'll not starve. And you will not tell
even miladi, who is so beautiful and sweet. Promise."
Rose promised. And now they were to go down the river.
"The courage, of course," and Madame glanced up smilingly. "We take the
child for the present."
"I shall soon be jealous, _ma mie_, but it is a pleasure to see a bright
young thing about that can talk with her eyes and not chatter shrilly.
_Mon dieu!_ what voices most of the wives have, and they are
transmitting them to their children. Yes; we will start at noon, and be
gone two days. Destournier has some messages to deliver. Put on thy
plainest frock, we are not in sunny France now."
She had learned that and only dressed up now and then for her husband's
sake, or to please the child. And she had made her some pretty frocks
out of petticoats quite too fine for wear here.
Rose was overjoyed. Wanamee was to accompany them. When they were ready
they were piloted down to the wharf by Monsieur, and there was M. Ralph
to welcome them. The river was brisk with boats and canoes and shallops.
The sun glistened on the naked backs of Indian rowers bending with every
stroke of the paddles to a rhythmic sort of sound, that later on grew to
be regular songs. There were squaws handling canoes with grace and
dexterity. One would have considered Quebec a great _entrepot_.
But the river with its beautiful bank, its groves of trees that had not
yet been despoiled, its frowning rocks glinting in the sunshine, its
wild flowers, its swift dazzle of birds, its great flocks of geese,
snowy white, in the little coves that uttered shrill cries and then
huddled together, the islands that reared grassy heads a moment and were
submerged as the current swept over them.
"Why are they not drowned?" asked Rose. "Or can they swim like the
little Indian boys?"
M. Giffard laughed--he often did at her quaint questions.
"They are like the trees; they have taken root ever so far down, and the
tide cannot sweep them away."
"And is Quebec rooted that way? Do the rocks hold fast? And--all the
places, even France?"
"They have staunch foundations. The good God has anchored them fast."
A puzzled look wavered over her face. "Monsieur, it is said the great
world is round. Why does not the water spill out as it turns? It would
fall out of a pail."
"Ah, child, that once puzzled wiser heads than thine. And years must
pass over thy head before thou canst understand."
"When I am as big as miladi?"
"I am afraid I do not quite understand myself, though I learned it in
the convent, I am quite sure. And I could not see why we did not fall
off. Some of the good nuns still believed the world was flat," and
miladi laughed. "Women's brains were not made for over-much study."
"Is it far to France?"
"Two months' or so sail."
"On a river?"
"Oh, on a great ocean. We must look at the Sieur's chart. Out of sight
of any land for days and days."
"I should feel afraid. And if you did not know where the land was?"
"But the sailor can tell by his chart."
What a wonderful world it was. She had supposed Quebec the greatest
thing in it. And now she knew so much about France and the beautiful
city called Paris, where the King and Queen lived, and ladies who went
gowned just like Madame, the first time she saw her. And there was an
England. M. Ralph had been there and seen their island empire, which
could not compare with France. She had a vague idea France was all the
rest of the world.
What days they were, for the weather was unusually fine. Now and then
they paused to explore some small isle, or to get fresh game. As for
fish, in those days the river seemed full of them. So many small streams
emptied into the St. Lawrence. Berries were abundant, and they feasted
to their hearts' content. The Indians dried them in the sun for winter
use.
Tadoussac was almost as busy as Quebec. As the fur monopoly had been in
part broken up, there were trappers here with packs of furs, and several
Indian settlements. It was Champlain's idea which Giffard was to work
up, to enlist rival traders to become sharers in the traffic, and
enlarge the trade, instead of keeping in one channel.
Madame and the little girl, piloted by Wanamee, visited several of the
wigwams, and the surprise of the Indian women at seeing the white lady
and the child was great indeed. Rose was rather afraid at first, and
drew back.
"They take it that you are the wife of the great father in France, that
is the King," translated Wanamee, "because you have crossed the ocean.
And you must not blame their curiosity. They will do you no harm."
But they wanted to examine my lady's frock and her shoes, with their
great buckles that nearly covered her small foot. Her sleeves came in
for a share of wonder, and her white, delicate arms they loaded with
curious bracelets, made of shells ground and polished until they
resembled gems. Then, too, they must feast them with a dish of Indian
cookery, which seemed ground maize broken by curiously arranged
millstones, in which were put edible roots, fish, and strips of dried
meat, that proved quite too much for miladi's delicate stomach. The
child had grown accustomed to it, as Lalotte sometimes indulged in it,
but she always shook her head in disdain and frowned on it.
"Such _pot au feu_ no one would eat at home," she would declare
emphatically.
They were loaded with gifts when they came away. Beautifully dressed
deerskins, strips of work that were remarkable, miladi thought, and she
wondered how they could accomplish so much with so few advantages.
The child had been a great source of amusement to all on shipboard. Her
utter ignorance of the outside world, her quaint frankness and innocence
tempted Giffard to play off on her curiosity and tell wonderful tales of
the mother country. And then Wanamee would recount Indian legends and
strange charms and rites used by the sages of the Abenaquis in the time
of her forefathers, before any white man had been seen in the country.
Then their homeward route began, the pause at the Isle d'Orleans, the
narrowing river, the more familiar Point Levis, the frowning rocks, the
palisades, and the fort. All the rest was wildness, except the clearing
that had been made and kept free that no skulking enemy should take an
undue advantage and surprise them by a sudden onslaught.
The Sieur de Champlain came down to meet them. Rose was leaping from
point to point like a young deer. It was no longer a pale face, it had
been a little changed by sun and wind.
"Well, little one, hast thou made many discoveries?"
"Oh, yes, indeed. I would not mind going to France now. And we have
brought back some such queer things; beautiful, too. But we did not like
some of the cooking, miladi and I, and Quebec is dearer, for it is
home," and her eyes shone with delight.
"Home! Thanks, little maid, for your naming it on this wise," and he
smiled down in the eager face as he turned to greet Madame.
She was a little weary of the wildness and loneliness of dense woods and
great hills and banks of the river, that roared and shrieked at times as
if ghost-haunted. Wanamee's stories had touched the superstitious
threads of her brain.
M. Giffard took the Sieur's arm and drew him a trifle aside. Destournier
offered his to the lady and assisted her up the rocky steep. Many a
tragedy would pass there before old Quebec became new Quebec, with
famous and heroic story.
She leaned a little heavily on his arm. "The motion of the ship is still
swaying my brain," she remarked, with a soft laugh. "So, if I am
awkward, I crave your patience. Oh, see that child! She will surely
fall."
Rose was climbing this way and that, now hugging a young tree growing
out of some crevice, then letting it go with a great flap, now
snatching a handful of wild flowers, and treading the fragrance out of
wild grapes.
"She is sure-footed like any other wild thing. I saw her first perched
upon that great gray rock yonder."
"The daring little monkey! I believe they brave every danger. I wonder
if we shall ever learn anything about her. The Sieur has so much on
hand, and men are wont to drop the thread of a pursuit or get it tangled
up with other things, so it would be too much of a burthen to ask him.
And another year I shall go to Paris myself. If she does not develop too
much waywardness, and keeps her good looks, I shall take her."
"Then I think you may be quite sure of a companion."
Wanamee had preceded them and thrown open the room to the slant rays of
western sunshine. Madame sank down on a couch, exhausted. The Indian
girl brought in some refreshments.
"Stay and partake of some," she said, with a winsome smile. "I cannot be
bereft of everybody."
But the child came in presently, eager and full of news that was hardly
news to her, after all.
"Pani is here," she exclaimed. "Madame Dubray and her husband have gone
with the trappers. They took Pani. He said he would run away. They kept
him two days, and tied him at night, but he loosened the thongs and ran
nearly all night. Then he has hidden away, for some new people have
taken the house. And he wants to stay here. He will be my slave."
She looked eagerly at my lady.
"Thou art getting to be such a venturesome midge that it may be well to
have so devoted an attendant. Yet I remember he left thee alone and ill
and hungry not so long ago."
Rose laughed gayly.
"If he had not left me I could not have taken the courage to crawl out.
And no one else might have come. He wanted to see the ships. And Madame
Dubray whipped him well, so that score is settled," with a sound of
justice well-paid for in her voice.
"We will see"--nodding and laughing.
"Then can I tell him?"
"The elders had better do that. But there will be room enough in Quebec
for him and us, I fancy," returned miladi.
Rose ran away. Pani was waiting out on the gallery.
"They will not mind," she announced. "But you must have some place to
sleep, and"--studying him critically from the rather narrow face, the
bony shoulders, and slim legs--"something to eat. Mere Dubray had
plenty, except towards spring when the stores began to fail."
"I can track rabbits and hares, and catch fish on the thin places in the
rivers. Oh, I shall not starve. But I'm hungry."
The wistful look in his eyes touched her.
"Let us find Wanamee," she exclaimed, leading the way to the culinary
department.
Miladi had been surprised and almost shocked at the rough manner of
living in this new France. The food, too, was primitive, lacking in the
delicacies to which she had been used, and the manners she thought
barbarous. But for M. Destournier and the courtesy of the Sieur she
would have prayed to return at once.
"Wait a little," pleaded Laurent. "If there is a fortune to be made in
this new world, why should we not have our share? And I can see that
there is. Matters are quite unsettled at home, but if we go back with
gold in our purses we shall do well enough."
Then the child had appealed to her. And it was flattering to be the only
lady of note and have homage paid to her.
So the children sought Wanamee, and while Pani brought some sticks and
soon had a bed of coals, Wanamee stirred up some cakes of rye and maize,
and the boy prepared a fish for cooking. He was indeed hungry, and his
eyes glistened with the delight of eating.
"It smells so good," said Rose. "Wanamee, bring me a piece. I can always
eat now, and a while ago I could not bear the smell of food."
"You were so thin and white. And Mere Dubray thought every morning you
would be dead. You wouldn't like to be put in the ground, would you?"
"Oh, no, no!" shivering.
"Nor burned. Then you go to ashes and only the bones are left."
"That is horrid, too. Burning hurts. I have burned my fingers with
coals."
"But my people don't mind it. They are very brave. And you go to the
great hunting grounds way over to the west, where the good Manitou has
everything, and you don't have to work, and no one beats you."
"The white people have a heaven. That is above the sky. And when the
stars come out it is light as day on the other side, and there are
flowers and trees, and rivers and all manner of fruit such as you never
see here."
"I'd rather hunt. When I get to be a man I shall go off and discover
wonderful things. In some of the mountains there is gold. And out by the
great oceans where the Hurons have encamped there are copper and silver.
The company talked about it. Some were for going there. And there were
fur animals, all the same."
Rose had been considering another subject.
"Pani," she began, with great seriousness, "you are not any one's slave
now."
"No"--rather hesitatingly. "The Dubrays will never come back, or if they
should next summer, with furs, I will run away again up to the Saguenay,
where they will not look. But there are Indian boys in plenty where the
tribes fight and take prisoners."
"You shall be my slave."
The young Indian's cheek flushed.
"The slave of a girl!" he said, with a touch of disdain.
"Why not? I should not beat you."
"Oh, you couldn't"--triumphantly.
"But you might be miladi's slave," suggested Wanamee, "and then you
could watch the little one and follow her about to see that nothing
harmed her."
"There shouldn't anything hurt her." He sprang up. "You see I am growing
tall, and presently I shall be a man. But I won't be a slave always."
"No, no," said the Indian woman.
"That was very good, excellent," pointing to the two empty birch-bark
dishes, which he picked up and threw on the coals, a primitive way to
escape dish washing. "I will find you a heap more. I will get fish or
berries, and oh, I know where the bees have stored a lot of honey in a
hollow tree."
"You let them alone for another month," commanded Wanamee. "Honey--that
will be a treat indeed."
Miladi had missed the sweets of her native land, though there they had
not been over-plentiful, since royalty must needs be served first. They
bought maple sugar and a kind of crude syrup of the Abenaqui women, who
were quite experts in making it. When the sun touched the trees in the
morning when the hoarfrost had disappeared, they inserted tubes of bark,
rolled tightly, and caught the sap in the troughs. Then they filled
their kettles that swung over great fires, and the fragrance arising
made the forests sweet with a peculiar spiciness. It was a grand time
for the children, who snatched some of the liquid out of the kettle on a
birch-bark ladle, and ran into the woods for it to cool. Pani had often
been with them.
"Let us go down to the old house," exclaimed Rose. "Do you know who is
there?"
"Pierre Gaudrion. He gets stone for the new walls they are laying
against the fort. And there are five or six little ones."
"It must be queer. Oh, let us go and see them."
She was off like a flash, but he followed as swiftly. Here was the
garden where she had pulled weeds with a hot hatred in her heart that
she would have liked to tear up the whole garden and throw it over in
the river. She glanced around furtively--what if Mere Dubray should come
suddenly in search of Pani.
Three little ones were tumbling about on the grass. The oldest girl was
grinding at the rude mill, a boy was making something out of birch
branches, interlaced with willow. A round, cheerful face glanced up from
patching a boy's garment, and smiled. Madame Gaudrion's mother had been
a white woman left at the Saguenay basin in a dying condition, it was
supposed, but she had recovered and married a half-breed. One daughter
had cast in her lot with a roving tribe. Pierre Gaudrion had seen the
other in one of the journeys up to Tadoussac and brought her home.
The Sieur did not discourage these marriages, for the children
generally affiliated with the whites, and if the colony was to prosper
there must be marriages and children.
Rose stopped suddenly, rather embarrassed, for all her bravado.
"I used to live here," as if apologizing.
"Yes. But Mere Dubray was not your mother."
"No. Nor Catherine Arlac."
The woman shook her head. "I know not many people. We live on the other
side. And the babies come so fast I have not much time. But Pierre say
now we must have bigger space and garden for the children to work in. So
we are glad when Mere Dubray go up to the fur country with her man. You
were ill, they said. But you do not look ill. Did you not want to go
with her?"
"Oh, no, no. And I live clear up there," nodding to the higher altitude.
"M'sieu Hebert is there and Madame. And a beautiful lady, Madame
Giffard. I did not love Mere Dubray."
"If I have a child that will not love me, it would break my heart. What
else are little ones for until they grow up and marry in turn?"
"But--I was not her child."
"And your mother."
"I do not know. She was dead before I could remember. Then I was brought
from France."
Suddenly she felt the loss of her mother. She belonged to no one in the
world.
"Poor _petite_." She made a sudden snatch at her own baby and hugged it
so tightly that it shrieked, at which she laughed.
"Some day a man will hug thee and thou wilt not scream," she said in
good humor.
Pani came from round the corner and then darted back. The boy left his
work and came forward.
"Who was that?" he asked. "My father said 'get an Indian boy to work in
the garden.' I am making a chair for the little one. And I can't tell
which are weeds. Yesterday I pulled up some onions and father was angry,
but he could set them out again."
Rose laughed at that, and thought it remarkable that his father did not
beat him.
"Pani might show you a little. He belongs to me now. We both used to
work in the garden. Mere Dubray was always knitting and cooking."
Pani emerged again. "Yes, let us go," and Rose led the way, but she
would have liked to throw herself down among the babies, who seemed all
arms and legs.
"Can you read?" the boy said suddenly. "We have a book and I can read
quite well. My father knows how. And I want to be a great man like the
Sieur, and some of the soldiers. I want to know how to keep accounts,
and to go to France some time in the big ships."
Rose colored. "I am going to learn to read this winter, when we have to
stay in. But it is very difficult--tiresome. I'd rather climb the rocks
and watch the birds. I had some once that would come for grains and bits
of corn cake. And the geese were so tame down there by the end of the
garden."
The rows of corn stood up finely, shaking out their silken heads,
turning to a bronze red. Then there were potatoes. These were of the
Dubrays' planting, as well as some of the smaller beds.
"M'sieu Hebert gave father some of these plants. He knows a great deal,
and he can make all kinds of medicine. It is very fine to know a great
deal, isn't it?"
"But it must be hard to study so much," returned Rose, with a sigh.
"I don't think so. I wish I had ever so many books like the Sieur and M.
Hebert. And you can find out places--there are so many of them in the
world. And do you know there are English people working with all their
might down in Virginia, and Spanish and Dutch! But some day we shall
drive them all out and it will be New France as far as you can go. And
the Indians----"
"You can't drive the Indians out," exclaimed Pani decisively. "The whole
country is theirs. And there are so many of them. There are tribes and
tribes all over the land. And they know how to fight."
"They are fighting each other continually. M. Hebert says they will
sweep each other off after a while. And they are very cruel. You will
see the French do not fight the French."
Alas, young Pierre Gaudrion, already Catholic and Huguenot were at war:
one fighting for the right to live in a certain liberty of belief, the
other thinking they did God a service by undertaking their
extermination.
The argument rather floored Pani, whose range of knowledge was only wide
enough to know that many tribes were at bitter enmity with each other.
"Do you want to work in the garden? There are weeds enough to keep you
busy," said Pierre presently.
"No," returned Pani stoutly.
"And Pani belongs to me," declared Rose.
Pierre turned to look at the girl. Her beauty stirred him strangely.
Sometimes, when his father sang the old songs of home, the same quiver
went through every pulse.
"I'm sorry," he said, in a gentler tone. "Now I must go back to my
chair."
"Is it to be a chair?"
"I can't weave the grasses just right, though some one showed me, only I
was thinking of other things."
"Let's see." Pani was a little mollified.
They went back to the boy's work.
"I'm only making a little one for Marie. Then I shall try a larger one.
There are two in the room."
Yes, Rose knew them well. The place was about the same, with the great
bunk on one side and the smaller one on the other. Mere Dubray's bright
blankets were gone, with the pictures of the Virgin, and the high
candlestick, that was alight on certain days. Little mattresses filled
with dried grass were piled on top of the bunk. It looked like, and yet
unlike. Rose was glad she did not live here.
Pani inspected the boy's work.
"Oh, you haven't it right. You must put pegs in here, then you can pull
it up. And this is the way you go."
Pani's deft fingers went in and out like a bit of machinery. It was
forest lore, and he was at home in it.
"You make it beautiful," exclaimed Pierre. "Oh, go slower, so I can
understand."
Pani smiled with the praise and put in a word of explanation now and
then. The boys were fast becoming friends.
"Maman," Pierre cried, "come and see how fine the boy does it. If he
would come and live with us!"
"I might come a little while and look after the garden. And I could
catch fish and I know the best places for berries, and the grapes will
soon be ripening. And the plums. I can shoot birds with an arrow. But I
belong to mam'selle."
"If she will let you come now and then," wistfully.
"Yes, I might," with an air of condescension.
"Thou art a pretty little lady," was Mere Gaudrion's parting benison to
the little girl, and Rose smiled. "Come again often."
When they were out of the narrow passageway she said, "Now let us have a
race. I am glad Mere Dubray is there no longer, are you not? But what a
funny pile of children!"
They had their race, and a climb, and on the gallery they found miladi
looking for them, and they told over their adventure.
"Yes," she said smilingly. "I think we can find a place for Pani, and
between us all I fancy we can keep him so well employed he will not want
to run away."