The Story of Tonty Part 4

"Sieur de la Salle, have I not often told you what a sinner I am? It ridicules me to call me saint."

"Since you have grown to be a young demoiselle I ought to call you Mademoiselle le Ber."

"Call me Sainte Jeanne rather than that. I do not want to be a young demoiselle, or in this glittering company. It is my father who insists."

"Nor do I want to be in this glittering company, Sainte Jeanne."

"The worst of all the other enemies, Sieur de la Salle, are vanity and a dread of enduring pain. I am very fond of dress." The young creature drew a deep regretful breath.

"But you mortify this fondness?" said La Salle, accompanying with whimsical sympathy every confession of Jeanne le Ber's.

"Indeed I have to humiliate myself often--often. When this evil desire takes strong hold, I put on the meanest rag I can find. But my father and mother will never let me go thus humbled to Ma.s.s."

"Therein do I commend your father and mother," said La Salle; "though the outside we bear toward men is of little account. But tell me how do you school yourself to pain, Sainte Jeanne? I have not learned to bear pain well in all my years."

Jeanne again met his face with swarming lights in her eyes. Seeing that no one observed them she bent her head toward La Salle and parted the hair over her crown. The straight fine growth was very thick and of a brown color. It reminded him of midwinter swamp gra.s.ses springing out of a bed of snow. A mat of burrs was pressed to this white scalp. Some of the hair roots showed red stains.

"These hurt me all the time," said Jeanne. "And it is excellent torture to comb them out."

She covered the burrs with a swift pressure, tightly closing her mouth and eyes with the spasm of pain this caused, and once more took and folded the crucifix within her hands.

The explorer made no remonstrance against such self-torture, though his practical gaze remained on her youthful brier-crowned head. He heard a girl in front of him laugh to a courtier who was flattering her.

"He, monsieur, I have myself seen Quebec women who dressed with odious taste."

But Jeanne, wrapped in her own relation, continued with a tone which slighted mere physical pain,--

"There is a better way to suffer, Sieur de la Salle, and that is from ill-treatment. Such anguish can be dealt out by the hands we love; but I have no friend willing to discipline me thus. My father's servant Jolycoeur is the only person who makes me as wretched as I ought to be."

"Discipline through Jolycoeur," said La Salle, laughing, "is what my proud stomach could never endure."

"Perhaps you have not such need, Sieur de la Salle. My father has many times turned him off, but I plead until he is brought back. He hath this whole year been a means of grace to me by his great impudence. If I say to him, 'Jolycoeur, do this or that,' he never fails to reply, 'Do it yourself, Mademoiselle Jeanne,' and adds profanity to make Heaven blush.

Whenever he can approach near enough, he whispers contemptuous names at me, so that I cannot keep back the tears. Yet how little I endure, when Saint Lawrence perished on a gridiron, and all the other holy martyrs shame me!"

"Your father does not suffer these things to be done to you?"

"No, Sieur de la Salle. My father knows naught of it except my pity. He did once kick Jolycoeur, who left our house three days, so that I was in danger of sinking in slothful comfort. But I got him brought back, and he lay drunk in our garden with his mouth open, so that my soul shuddered to look at him. It was excellent discipline,"[5] said Jeanne, with a long breath.

"Jolycoeur will better adorn the woods and risk his worthless neck on water for my uses, than longer chafe your tender nature," said La Salle.

"He has been in my service before, and craved to-day that I would enlist him again."

"Had my father turned him off?" asked Jeanne, with consternation.

"He said Jacques le Ber had lifted a hand against him for innocently neglecting to carry bales of merchandise to a booth."

"I did miss the smell of rum downstairs before we came away," said the girl, sadly. "And will you take my scourge from me, Sieur de la Salle?"

"I will give him a turn at suffering himself," answered La Salle. "The fellow shall be whipped on some pretext when I get him within Fort Frontenac, for every pang he hath laid upon you. He is no stupid. He knew what he was doing."

"Oh, Sieur de la Salle, Jolycoeur was only the instrument of Heaven.

He is not to blame."

"If I punish him not, it will be on your promise to seek no more torments, Sainte Jeanne."

"There are no more for me to seek; for who in our house will now be unkind to me? But, Sieur de la Salle, I feel sure that during my lifetime I shall be permitted to suffer as much as Heaven could require."

Man and child, each surrounded by his peculiar world, sat awhile longer together in silence, and then La Salle joined the governor.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] The asceticism here attributed to Mademoiselle Jeanne le Ber was really practised by the wife of an early colonial n.o.ble.

See Parkman's Old Regime, p. 355.

VI.

THE PROPHECY OF JOLYCOEUR.

By next mid-day the beaver fair was at its height, and humming above the monotone of the St. Lawrence.

Montreal, founded by religious enthusiasts and having the Sulpitian priests for its seigniors, was a quiet town when left to itself,--when the factions of Quebec did not meet its own factions in the street with clubs; or coureurs de bois roar along the house sides in drunken joy; or sudden glares on the night landscape with attendant screeching proclaim an Iroquois raid; or this annual dissipation in beaver skins crowd it for two days with strangers.

Among colonists who had thronged out to meet the bearers of colonial riches as soon as the first Indian canoe was beached, were the coureurs de bois. They still swarmed about, making or renewing acquaintances, here acting as interpreters and there trading on their own account.

Before some booths Indians pressed in rows, demanding as much as the English gave for their furs, though the price was set by law. French merchants poked their fingers into the satin pliancy of skins to search for flaws. Dealers who had no booths pressed with their interpreters from tribe to tribe,--small merchants picking the crumbs of profit from under their brethren's tables. There was greedy demand for the first quality of skins; for beaver came to market in three grades: "Castor gras, castor demi-gras, et castor sec."

The booths were hung with finery, upon which squaws stood gazing with a stoical eye to be envied by civilized woman.

The ca.s.socks of Sulpitians and gray capotes of Recollet Fathers--favorites of Frontenac who hated Jesuits--penetrated in constant supervision every recess of the beaver fair. Yet in spite of this religious care rum was sold, its effects increasing as the day moved on.

A hazy rosy atmosphere had shorn the sun so that he hung a large red globe in the sky. The land basked in melting tints. Scarcely any wind flowed on the river. Ste. Helen's Island and even Mount Royal, the seminary and stone windmill, the row of wooden houses and palisade tips, all had their edges blurred by hazy light.

Amus.e.m.e.nt could hardly be lacking in any gathering of French people not a.s.sembled for ceremonies of religion. In Quebec the governor's court were inclined to entertain themselves with their own performance of spectacles. But Montreal had beheld too many spectacles of a tragic sort, had grasped too much the gun and spade, to have any facility in mimic play.

Still the beaver fair was enlivened by music and tricksy gambols.

Through all the ever opening and closing avenues a pageant went up and down, at which no colonist of New France could restrain his shouts of laughter,--a Dutchman with enormous stomach, long pipe, and short breeches, walking beside a lank and solemn Bostonnais. The two youths who had attired themselves for this masking were of Saint-Castin's train. That one who acted Puritan had drawn austere seams in his face with charcoal. His plain collar was severely turned down over a black doublet, which, with the sombre breeches and hose, had perhaps been stripped from some enemy that troubled Saint-Castin's border. The Bostonnais sung high shrill airs from a book he carried in one hand, only looking up to shake his head with cadaverous warning at his roaring spectators. One arm was linked in the Dutchman's, who took his pipe out of his mouth to say good-humoredly, "Ya-ya, ya-ya," to every sort of taunt.

These types of rival colonies were such an exhilaration to the traders of New France that they pointed out the show to each other and pelted it with epithets all day.

La Salle came out of the palisade gate of the town, leading by the hand a frisking little girl. He restrained her from farther progress into the moving swarm, although she dragged his arm.

"Thou canst here see all there is of it, Barbe. The nuns did well to oppose your looking on this roaring commerce. You should be housed within the Hotel Dieu all this day, had I not spoken a careless word yesterday. You saw the governor's procession. To-morrow he will start on his return. And I with my men go to Fort Frontenac."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The beaver fair was enlivened by music and tricksy gambols."--_Page 59._]

"And at day dawn naught of the Indians can be found," added Barbe, "except their ashes and litter and the broken flasks they leave. The trader's booths will also be empty and dirty."