A Little Girl in Old Detroit Part 23

"A safe return."

Then they shook hands and he went his way, thinking with great comfort that she had not flouted him.

It was quite a great thing to see the boats go out. Sweethearts and wives congregated on the wharves. Some few brave women went with their husbands. Other s.h.i.+ps were setting out for Montreal well loaded, and one or two were carrying a gay lot of pa.s.sengers.

After a few weeks, quiet returned, the streets were no longer crowded and the noisy reveling was over for a while. The farmers were busy out of doors, cattle were lowing, chanticleer rang out his call to work in the early morn, and busy hens were caroling in cheerful if unmusical voices. Trees budded into a beautiful haze and then sprang into leaf, into bloom. The rough social hilarity was over for a while.

A few of the emigrant farmers laughed at the clumsy, wasteful French methods and tried their own, which were laughed at in turn, but there was little disputing.

Easter had fallen early and it had been cold, but Whitsuntide made amends, and was, if anything, a greater festival. For a procession formed at St. Anne's, young girls in gala attire, smart, middle-aged women with new caps and kerchiefs, husbands and sons, and not a few children, and marched out of the Pontiac gate, as it was called in remembrance of the long siege. Forty years before Jacques Campeau had built the first little outside chapel on his farm, which had a great stretch of ground. The air was full of the fragrance of fruit blossoms and hardly needed incense. Ah, how beautiful it was in a sort of pastoral simplicity! And after saying ma.s.s, Father Frechette blessed and prayed for fertile fields and good crops and generous hearts that t.i.thes might not be withheld, and the faithful rewarded. Then they went to the Fulcher farm, where, in a chapel not much more than a shrine, the service was again said with the people kneeling around in the gra.s.s. The farmers and good housewives placed more faith in this than in the methods of the newcomers with their American wisdom. But it was a pleasing service. The procession changed about a little,--the young men walking with the demoiselles and whispering in their listening ears.

Jeanne was with them. Madame De Ber was quite gracious, and Marie Beeson singled her out. It had been a cold winter and a backward spring and Marie had not gone anywhere. Tony was so exigent, and she laughed and bridled. It was a very happy thing to be married and have some one care for you. And soon she would give a tea drinking and she would send for Jeanne, who must be sure to come.

But Jeanne had a strange, dreary feeling. She seemed between everything, no longer a child and not a woman, not a part of the Church, not a part of anything. She felt afraid of the future. Oh, what was her share of the bright, beautiful world?

CHAPTER X.

BLOOMS OF THE MAY.

The spring came in with a quickening glory. A fortnight ago the snow was everywhere, the skaters were still out on the streams, the young fellows having rough s...o...b..lling matches, then suddenly one morning the white blanket turned a faint, sickly, soft gray, and withered. The pallid skies grew blue, the brown earth showed in patches, there were cheerful sounds from the long-housed animals, rivulets were all afloat running in haste to swell the streams, and from thence to the river and the lakes.

The tiny rings of fir and juniper brightened, the pine branches swelled with great furry buds, bursting open into pale green ta.s.sels that moved with every breath of wind. The hemlocks shot out feathery fronds, the spruce spikes of bluish green, the maples shook around red blossoms and then uncurled tiny leaves. The hickories budded in a strange, pale yellow, but the oaks stood st.u.r.dy with some of the winter's brown leaves clinging to them.

The long farms outside the stockade awoke to new vigor as well.

Everybody set to work, for the summer heats would soon be upon them, and the season was short. There was a stir in the town proper, as well.

And now, at mid-May, when some of the crops were in, there was a day of merrymaking, beginning with a procession and a blessing of the fields, and then the fiddles were taken down, for the hard work lasting well into the evening made both men and women tired enough to go to bed early, when their morning began in the twilight.

The orchards were abloom and sweetened all the air. The evergreens sent out a resinous, pungent fragrance, the gra.s.s was odorous with the night dews. The maypole was raised anew, for generally the winter winds blowing fiercely over from the great western lake demolished it, though they always let it stand as long as it would, and in the autumn again danced about it. It had been the old French symbol of welcome and good wishes to their Seigneurs, as well as to the spring. And now it was a legend of past things and a merrymaking.

The pole had bunches of flowers tied here and there, and long streamers that it was fun to jerk from some one's hand and let the wind blow them away. Girls and youths did this to rivals, with mischievous laughter.

The habitans were in their holiday garb, which had hardly changed for two hundred years except when it was put by for winter furs, clean blue tunics, scarlet caps and sashes, deerskin breeches trimmed with yellow or brown fringe, sometimes both, leggings and moccasins with bead embroidery and brightly dyed threads.

There were shopkeepers, too, there were boatmen and Indians, and some of the quality with their wives in satin and lace and gay brocades.

Soldiers as well in their military gear, and officers in buff and blue with c.o.c.ked hats and pompons.

The French girls had put on their holiday attire and some had festooned a light skirt over one of cloth and placed in it a bright bow. Gowns that were family heirlooms, never seeing day except on some festive occasion, strings of beads, belts studded with wampum sh.e.l.ls, high-heeled shoes with a great buckle or bow, but not as easy to dance in as moccasins.

Two years had brought more changes to the individual, or rather the younger part of the community, than to the town. A few new houses had been built, many old ones repaired and enlarged a little. The streets were still narrow and many of them winding about. The greatest signs of life were at the river's edge. The newer American emigrant came for land and secured it outside. Every week some of the better cla.s.s English who were not in the fur trade went to Quebec or Montreal to be under their own rulers.

There was not an entire feeling of security. Since Pontiac there had been no great Indian leader, but many subordinate chiefs who were very sore over the treaties. There was an Indian prophet, twin brother to the chief Tec.u.mseh who afterward led his people to a b.l.o.o.d.y war, who used his rude eloquence to unite the warring tribes in one nation by wild visions he foresaw of their greatness.

Marauding tribes still hara.s.sed parties of travelers, but about Detroit they were peaceable; and many joined in the festivities of a day like this. While as farm laborers they were of little worth, they were often useful at the wharves, and as boatmen.

Two years had brought a strange, new life to Jeanne, so imperceptibly that she was now a puzzle to herself. The child had disappeared, the growing girl she hardly knew. The wild feats that had once been the admiration of the children pleased her no longer. The children had grown as well. The boys tilled the fields with their fathers, worked in shops or on the docks, or were employed about the Fort. Some few, smitten with military ardor, were in training for future soldiers. The field for girls had grown wider. Beside the household employments there were spinning and sewing. The Indian women had made a coa.r.s.e kind of lace worked with beads that the French maidens improved upon and disposed of to the better cla.s.s. Or the more hoydenish ones delighted to work in the fields with their brothers, enjoying the outdoor life.

For a year Jeanne had kept on with her master, though at spring a wild impulse of liberty threatened to sweep her from her moorings.

"Why do I feel so?" she inquired almost fiercely of the master.

"Something stifles me! Then I wish I had been made a bird to fly up and up until I had left the earth. Oh, what glorious thing is in the bird's mind when he can look into the very heavens, soaring out of sight?"

"There is nothing in the bird's mind, except to find a mate, build a nest and rear some young; to feed them until they can care for themselves, and, though there is much romance about the mother bird, they are always eager to get rid of their offspring. He sings because G.o.d has given him a song, his language. But he has no thought of heaven."

"Oh, he must have!" she cried pa.s.sionately.

The master studied her.

"Art thou ready to die, to go out of the world, to be put into the dark ground?"

"Oh, no! no!" Jeanne shuddered. "It is because I like to live, to breathe the sweet air, to run over the gra.s.s, to linger about the woods and hear all the voices. The pines have one tone, the hemlocks and spruces another, and the soft swish of the larches is like the last tender notes of some of the hymns I sing with the sisters occasionally.

And the sun is so glorious! He clasps the baby leaves in his unseen hands and they grow, and he makes the blades of gra.s.s to dance for very joy. I catch him in my hands, too; I steep my face in the floods of golden light and all the air is full of stars. Oh, no, I would not, could not die! I would like to live forever. Even Pani is in no haste to die."

"Thou art a strange child, surely. I have read of some such in books.

And I wonder that the heaven of the nuns does not take more hold of thee."

"But I do not like the black gowns, and the coifs so close over their ears, and the little rooms in which one is buried alive. For it seems like dying before one's time, like being half dead in a gay, glad world.

Did not G.o.d give it to us to enjoy?"

The master nodded. He wondered when she was in these strange moods. And he noticed that the mad pranks grew less, that there were days when she studied like a soul possessed, and paid little heed to those about her.

But when a foreign letter with a great waxen seal came to her one day her delight knew no bounds. It was not a noisy joy, however.

"Let us go out under the oak," she said to Pani.

The children were playing about. Wenonah looked up from her work and smiled.

"No, children," said Jeanne with a wave of the hand, "I cannot have you now. You may come to-morrow. This afternoon is all mine."

It was a pleasant, grave, fatherly letter. M. St. Armand had found much to do, and presently he would go to England. Laurent was at a school where he should leave him for a year.

"Listen," said Jeanne when they were both seated on the short turf that was half moss, "a grown man at school--is it not funny?" and she laughed gayly.

"But there are young men sent to Quebec and Montreal, and to that southern town, New York. And young women, too. But I hope thou wilt know enough, Jeanne, without all this journeying."

Pani studied her with great perplexity.

"But he wants me to know many things--as if I were a rich girl! I know my English quite well and can read in it. And, Pani, how wonderful that a letter can talk as if one were beside you!"

She read it over and over. Some words she wondered at. The great city with its handsome churches and gardens and walks and palaces, how beautiful it must be! It was remarkable that she had no longing, envious feeling. She was so full of delight there was no room.

They sat still a long while. She patted the thin, brown hand, then laid her soft cheek on it or made a cradle of it for her chin.

"Pani," she said at length, "how splendid it would be to have M. St.