Anne Part 18

"Is it not rather late in the season for a forest fire?"

"Well, there it is," answered the captain, declining discussion of the point in face of obvious fact.

Anne had already questioned him on the subject of light-houses. Would he like to live in a light-house?

No, he would not.

But they might be pleasant places in summer, with the blue water all round them: she had often thought she would like to live in one.

Well, _he_ wouldn't.

But why?

Resky places sometimes when the wind blew: give him a good stiddy boat, now.

After a time they came nearer to the burning forest. Anne could see the great columns of flame shoot up into the sky; the woods were on fire for miles. She knew that the birds were flying, dizzy and blinded, before the terrible conqueror, that the wild-cats were crying like children, that the small wolves were howling, and that the more timid wood creatures were cowering behind fallen trunks, their eyes dilated and ears laid flat in terror. She knew all this because she had often heard it described, fires miles long in the pine forests being frequent occurrences in the late summer and early autumn; but she had never before seen with her own eyes the lurid splendor, as there was no unbroken stretch of pineries on the Straits. She sat silently watching the great clouds of red light roll up into the dark sky, and the shower of sparks higher still. The advance-guard was of lapping tongues that caught at and curled through the green wood far in front; then came a wall of clear orange-colored roaring fire, then the steady incandescence that was consuming the hearts of the great trees, and behind, the long range of dying fires like coals, only each coal was a tree. It grew late; she went to her state-room in order that the captain might be relieved from his duty of guard. But for several hours longer she sat by her small window, watching the flames, which turned to a long red line as the steamer's course carried her farther from the sh.o.r.e. She was thinking of those she had left behind, and of the island; of Rast, and her own betrothal. The betrothal seemed to her quite natural; they had always been together in the past, and now they would always be together in the future; she was content that it was so. She knew so little of the outside world that few forebodings as to her own immediate present troubled her. She was on her way to a school where she would study hard, so as soon to be able to teach, and help the children; the boys were to be educated one by one, and after the first year, perhaps, she could send for t.i.ta, since Miss Lois never understood the child aright, failing to comprehend her peculiar nature, and making her, poor little thing, uncomfortable. It would be a double relief--to Miss Lois as well as t.i.ta. It was a pity that her grand-aunt was so hard and ill-tempered; but probably she was old and infirm. Perhaps if she could see t.i.ta, she might take a fancy to the child; t.i.ta was so small and so soft-voiced, whereas she, Anne, was so overgrown and awkward. She gave a thought of regret to her own deficiencies, but hardly a sigh. They were matters of fact which she had long ago accepted. The coast fire had now faded into a line of red dots and a dull light above them; she knelt down and prayed, not without the sadness which a lonely young traveller might naturally feel on the broad dark lake.

At the lower-lake port she was met by an old French priest, one of Pere Michaux's friends, who took her to the railway station in a carriage, bought her ticket, checked her trunk, gave her a few careful words of instruction as to the journey, and then, business matters over, sat down by her side and talked to her with enchanting politeness and ease until the moment of departure. Pere Michaux had arranged this: although not of their faith, Anne was to travel all the way to New York in the care of the Roman Catholic Church, represented by its priests, handed from one to the next, and met at the entrance of the great city by another, who would cross the river for the purpose, in order that her young island eyes might not be confused by the crowd and turmoil. At first Dr. Gaston had talked of escorting Anne in person; but it was so long since he had travelled anywhere, and he was so absent-minded, that it was evident even to himself that Anne would in reality escort him. Miss Lois had the children, and of course could not leave them.

"I would go myself if there was any necessity for it," said Pere Michaux, "but there is not. Let me arrange it, and I promise you that Anne shall reach her school in safety; I will have competent persons to meet her all along the route--unless, indeed, you have friends of your own upon whom you prefer to rely?"

This was one of the little winds which Pere Michaux occasionally sent over the self-esteem of his two Protestant companions: he could not help it. Dr. Gaston frowned: he had not an acquaintance between New York and the island, and Pere Michaux knew it. But Miss Lois, undaunted, rushed into the fray.

"Oh, certainly, it would be quite easy for us to have her met by friends on the way," she began, making for the moment common and Protestant cause with Dr. Gaston; "it would require only a few letters. In New England I should have my own family connections to call upon--persons of the highest respectability, descendants, most of them, of the celebrated patriot Israel Putnam."

"Certainly," replied Pere Michaux. "I understand. Then I will leave Anne to you."

"But unfortunately, as Anne is going to New York, not Boston, my connections do not live along the route, exactly," continued Miss Lois, the adverb standing for a small matter of a thousand miles or so; "nor,"

she added, again admitting Dr. Gaston to a partners.h.i.+p, "can we make them."

"There remain, then, the pastors of your church," said the priest.

"Certainly--the pastors. It will be the simplest thing in the world for Dr. Gaston to write to them; they will be delighted to take charge of any friend of ours."

The chaplain pushed his wig back a little, and murmured, "Church Almanac."

Miss Lois glanced at him angrily. "I am sure I do not know what Dr.

Gaston means by mentioning 'Church Almanac' in that way," she said, sharply. "We know most of the prominent pastors, of course. Dr.

Shepherd, for instance, and Dr. Dell."

Dr. Shepherd and Dr. Dell, who occasionally came up to the island during the summer for a few days of rest, lived in the lower-lake town where Anne's long railway journey began. They were not pastors, but rectors, and the misuse of the terms grated on the chaplain's Anglican ear. But he was a patient man, and accustomed now to the heterogeneous phrasing of the Western border.

"And besides," added Miss Lois, triumphantly, "there is the bishop!"

Now the bishop lived five miles farther. It was not evident, therefore, to the ordinary mind what aid these reverend gentlemen could give to Anne, all living, as they did, at the western beginning of her railway journey; but Miss Lois, who, like others of her s.e.x, possessed the power (unattainable by man) of rising above mere logical sequence, felt that she had conquered.

"I have no bishops to offer," said Pere Michaux, with mock humility; "only ordinary priests. I will therefore leave Anne to your care, Miss Lois--yours and Dr. Gaston's."

So the discussion ended, and Miss Lois came off with Protestant colors flying. None the less Pere Michaux wrote his letters; and Dr. Gaston did not write his. For the two men understood each other. There was no need for the old chaplain to say, plainly, "I have lived out of the world so long that I have not a single clerical friend this side of New York upon whom I can call"; the priest comprehended it without words. And there was no need for Pere Michaux to parade the close ties and net-work of communication which prevailed in the ancient Church to which he belonged; the chaplain knew them without the telling. Each understood the other; and being men, they could do without the small teasing comments, like the buzzing of flies, with which women enliven their days. Thus it happened that Anne Douglas travelled from the northern island across to the great city on the ocean border in the charge of the Roman Catholic Church.

She arrived in New York worn out and bewildered, and having lost her sense of comparison by the strangeness and fatigue of the long journey, she did not appreciate the city's size, the crowded streets, and roar of traffic, but regarded everything vaguely, like a tired child who has neither surprise nor attention to give.

At length the carriage stopped; she went up a broad flight of stone steps; she was entering an open door. Some one was speaking to her; she was in a room where there were chairs, and she sank down. The priest who had brought her from the other side of the river was exchanging a few words with a lady; he was going; he was gone. The lady was coming toward her.

"You are very tired, my child;" she said. "Let me take you a moment to Tante, and then you can go to your room."

"To Tante?" said Anne.

"Yes, to Tante, or Madame Moreau, the princ.i.p.al of the school. She expects you."

CHAPTER IX.

"Manners--not what, but _how_. Manners are happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love--now repeated and hardened into usage. Manners require time; nothing is more vulgar than haste."--EMERSON.

Madame Moreau was a Frenchwoman, small and old, with a thin shrewd face and large features. She wore a plain black satin gown, the narrow skirt gathered in the old-fas.h.i.+oned style, and falling straight to the floor; the waist of the gown, fastened behind, was in front plaited into a long rounded point. Broad ruffles of fine lace s.h.i.+elded her throat and hands, and her cap, garnished with violet velvet, was trimmed with the same delicate fabric. She was never a handsome woman even in youth, and she was now seventy-five years of age; yet she was charming.

She rose, kissed the young girl lightly on each cheek, and said a few words of welcome. Her manner was affectionate, but impersonal. She never took fancies; but neither did she take dislikes. That her young ladies were all charming young persons was an axiom never allowed to be brought into question; that they were simply and gracefully feminine was with equal firmness established. Other schools of modern and American origin might make a feature of public examinations, with questions by bearded professors from boys' colleges; but the establishment of Madame Moreau knew nothing of such innovations. The Frenchwoman's idea was not a bad one; good or bad, it was inflexible. She was a woman of marked character, and may be said to have accomplished much good in a mannerless generation and land. Thoroughly French, she was respected and loved by all her American scholars; and it will be long ere her name and memory fade away.

Miss Vanhorn did not come to see her niece until a week had pa.s.sed. Anne had been a.s.signed to the lowest French cla.s.s among the children, had taken her first singing lesson from one Italian, fat, rosy, and smiling, and her first Italian lesson from another, lean, old, and soiled, had learned to answer questions in the Moreau French, and to talk a little, as well as to comprehend the fact that her clothes were remarkable, and that she herself was considered an oddity, when one morning Tante sent word that she was to come down to the drawing-room to see a visitor.

The visitor was an old woman with black eyes, a black wig, s.h.i.+ning false teeth, a Roman nose, and a high color (which was, however, natural), and she was talking to Tante, who, with her own soft gray hair, and teeth which if false did not appear so, looked charmingly real beside her.

Miss Vanhorn was short and stout; she was m.u.f.fled in an India shawl, and upon her hands were a pair of cream-colored kid gloves much too large for her, so that when she fumbled, as she did every few moments, in an embroidered bag for aromatic seeds coated with sugar, she had much difficulty in finding them, owing to the empty wrinkled ends of the glove fingers. She lifted a gold-rimmed eye-gla.s.s to her eyes as Anne entered, and coolly inspected her.

"Dear me! dear me!" she said. Then, in execrable French, "What can be done with such a young savage as this?"

"How do you do, aunt?" said Anne, using the conventional words with a slight tremor in her voice. This was the woman who had brought up her mother--her dear, unremembered mother.

"Grandaunt," said Miss Vanhorn, tartly. "Sit down; I can not bear to have people standing in front of me. How old are you?"

"I am seventeen, grandaunt."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "DEAR ME, WHAT CAN BE DONE WITH SUCH A YOUNG SAVAGE?"]

Miss Vanhorn let her eyegla.s.s drop, and groaned. "_Can_ anything be done with her?" she asked, closing her eyes tightly, and turning toward Tante, while Anne flushed crimson, not so much from the criticism as the unkindness.

"Oh yes," said Tante, taking the opportunity given by the closed eyes to pat the young girl's hand encouragingly. "Miss Douglas is very intelligent; and she has a fine mezzo-soprano voice. Signor Belzini is much pleased with it. It would be well, also, I think, if you would allow her to take a few dancing lessons."

"She will have no occasion for dancing," answered Miss Vanhorn, still with her eyes closed.

"It was not so much for the dancing itself as for grace of carriage,"

replied Tante. "Miss Douglas has a type of figure rare among American girls."

"I should say so, indeed!" groaned the other, shaking her head gloomily, still voluntarily blinded.