A Little Girl in Old Detroit

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"I want to ask your pardon for my rudeness yesterday," bowing to the
child and the woman. "Perhaps my handling of the canoe did not impress
you with the idea of superior knowledge, but I have been used to it from
boyhood, and have shot rapids, been caught in gales, oh, almost
everything!"

"It was not that, Monsieur. We had seen the tree with its branches like
so many clinging arms, and it was getting purple and dun as you came up,
so we thought it best to warn."

"And I obstinately ran right into danger, which shows how much good
advice is thrown away. You see the paddle caught and over I went. But
the first thing this morning some boatmen went down and removed it.
However, I did not mind the wetting. It was not the first time."

"And Monsieur did not take cold? The nights are chilly now along the
river's edge. The sun slips down suddenly," was Pani's anxious comment.

"Oh, no. I am inured to such things. I have been a traveler, too. It was
a gay day yesterday, Mam'selle."

"Yes," answered Jeanne. Yet she had felt strangely solitary. "Your
father, Monsieur, is in France. I have been learning about that
country."

"Oh, no, not yet. There was some business in Washington. To-morrow I
leave Detroit to rejoin him in New York, from which place we set sail,
though the journey is a somewhat dangerous one now, what with pirate
ships and England claiming a right of search. But we shall trust a good
Providence."

"You go also," she said with a touch of disappointment. It gave a
bewitching gravity to her countenance.

"Oh, yes. My father and I are never long apart. We are very fond of each
other."

"And your mother--" she asked hesitatingly.

"I do not remember her, for I was an infant when she died. But my father
keeps her in mind always. And I must give you his message."

He took out a beautifully embossed leathern case with silver mountings
and ran over the letters.

"Ah--here. 'I want you to see my little friend, Jeanne Angelot, and
report her progress to me. I hope the school has not frightened her.
Tell her there are little girls in other cities and towns who are
learning many wonderful things and will some day grow up into charming
women such as men like for companions. It will be hard and tiresome, but
she must persevere and learn to write so that she can send me a letter,
which I shall prize very highly. Give her my blessing and say she must
become a true American and honor the country of which we are all going
to feel very proud in years to come. But with all this she must never
outgrow her love for her foster mother, to whom I send respect, nor her
faith in the good God who watches over and will keep her from all harm
if she puts her trust in him.'"

Jeanne gave a long sigh. "O Monsieur, it is wonderful that people can
talk this way on paper. I have tried, but the master could not help
laughing and I laughed, too. It was like a snail crawling about and the
pen would go twenty ways as if there was an evil sprite in my fingers.
But I shall keep on although it is very tiresome and I have such a
longing to be out in the fields and woods, chasing squirrels and singing
to the birds, which sometimes light on my shoulder. And I know a good
many English words, but the reading looks so funny, as if there were no
sense to it!"

"But there is a great deal. You will be very glad some day. Then I may
take a good account to him and tell him you are trying to obey his
wishes?"

"Yes, Monsieur, I shall be very glad to. And he will write me the letter
that he promised?"

"Indeed he will. He always keeps his promises. And I shall tell him you
are happy and glad as a bird soaring through the air?"

"Not always glad. Sometimes a big shadow falls over me and my breath
throbs in my throat. I cannot tell what makes the strange feeling. It
does not come often, and perhaps when I have learned more it will
vanish, for then I can read books and have something for my thoughts.
But I am glad a good deal of the time."

"I don't wonder my father was interested in her," Laurent St. Armand
thought. He studied the beautiful eyes with their frank innocence, the
dainty mouth and chin, the proud, uplifted expression that indicated
nobleness and no self-consciousness.

"And now I must bid thee good-by with my own and my father's blessing.
We shall return to America and find you again. You will hardly go away
from Detroit?"

She was quite ready at that moment to give up M. Bellestre's plans for
her future.

He took her hand. Then he pressed his lips upon it with the grave
courtesy of a gentleman.

"Adieu," he said softly. "Pani, watch well over her."

The woman bowed her head with a deeper feeling than mere assent.

Jeanne sat down on the doorstep, leaning her elbow on her knee and her
chin in her hand. Grave thoughts were stirring within her, the
awakening of a new life on the side she had seen, but never known. The
beautiful young women quite different from the gay, chattering
demoiselles, their proudly held heads, their dignity, their soft voices,
their air of elegance and refinement, all this Jeanne Angelot felt but
could not have put into words, not even into thought. And this young man
was over on that side. Oh, all Detroit must lie between, from the river
out to the farms! Could she ever cross the great gulf? What was it made
the difference--education? Then she would study more assiduously than
ever. Was this why Monsieur St. Armand was so earnest about her trying?

She glanced down at her little brown hand. Oh, how soft and warm his
lips had been, what a gentle touch! She pressed her own lips to it, and
a delicious sensation sped through her small body.

"What art thou dreaming about, Jeanne? Come to thy dinner."

She glanced up with a smile. In a vague way she had known before there
were many things Pani could not understand; now she felt the keen,
far-reaching difference between them, between her and the De Bers, and
Louis Marsac, and all the people she had ever known. But her mother, who
could tell most about her, was dead.

It was not possible for a glad young thing to keep in a strained mood
that would have no answering comprehension, and Jeanne's love of nature
was so overwhelming. Then the autumn at the West was so glowing, so
full of richness that it stirred her immeasurably. She could hardly
endure the confinement on some days.

"What makes you so restless?" asked the master one noon when he was
dismissing some scholars kept in until their slow wits had mastered
their tasks. She, too, had been inattentive and willful.

"I am part of the woods to-day, a chipmunk running about, a cricket
which dares not chirp," and she glanced up into the stern eyes with a
merry light, "a grasshopper who takes long strides, a bee who goes
buzzing, a glad, gay bird who says to his mate, 'Come, let us go to the
unknown land and spend a winter in idleness, with no nest to build, no
hungry, crying babies to feed, nothing but just to swing in the trees
and laugh with the sunshine.'"

"Thou art a queer child. Come, say thy lesson well and we will spend the
whole afternoon in the woods. Thou shalt consort with thy brethren the
birds, for thou art brimming over."

The others were dismissed with some added punishment. The master took
out his luncheon. He was not overpaid, he had no family and lived by
himself, sleeping in the loft over the school.

"Oh, come home with me!" the child cried. "Pani's cakes of maize are so
good, and no one cooks fish with such a taste and smell. It would make
one rise in the middle of the night."

"Will the tall Indian woman give me a welcome?"

"Oh, Pani likes whomever I like;" with gay assurance.

"And dost thou like me, child?"

"Yes, yes." She caught his hand in both of hers. "Sometimes you are
cross and make ugly frowns, and often I pity the poor children you beat,
but I know, too, they deserve it. And you speak so sharp! I used to jump
when I heard it, but now I only give a little start, and sometimes just
smile within, lest the children should see it and be worse. It is a
queer little laugh that runs down inside of one. Come, Pani will be
waiting."

She took his hand as they picked their way through the narrow streets,
having to turn out now and then for a loaded wheelbarrow, or two men
carrying a big plank on their shoulders, or a heavy burthen, one at each
end. For there were some streets not even a wagon and two horses could
get through.

To the master's surprise Pani did not even seem put out as Jeanne
explained the waiting. Had fish toasted before the coals ever tasted so
good? The sagamite he had learned to tolerate, but the maize cakes were
so excellent it seemed as if he could never get enough of them.

The golden October sun lay warm everywhere and was tinting the hills and
forests with richness that glowed and glinted as if full of life. Afar,
one could see the shine of the river, the distant lake, the undulations
where the tall trees did not cut it off. Crows were chattering and
scolding. A great flock of wild geese passed over with their hoarse,
mysterious cry, and shaped like two immense wings each side of their
leader.

"Now you shall tell me about the other countries where you have been,"
and Jeanne dropped on the soft turf, motioning him to be seated.

In all his journeying through the eastern part of the now United
Colonies, he thought he had never seen a fairer sight than this. It
warmed and cheered his old heart. And sure he had never had a more
enraptured listener.

But in a brief while the glory of wood and field was gone. The shriveled
leaves were blown from the trees by the fierce gusts. The beeches stood
like bare, trembling ghosts, the pines and firs with their rough dark
tops were like great Indian wigwams and were enough to terrify the
beholder. Sharp, shrill cries at night of fox and wolf, the rustle of
the deer and the slow, clumsy tread of the bear, the parties of Indians
drawing nearer civilization, braves who had roamed all summer in
idleness returning to patient squaws, told of the approach of winter.

New pickets were set about barns and houses, and coverings of skin made
added warmth. The small flocks were carefully sheltered from marauding
Indians. Doors and windows were hung with curtains of deer skins, floors
were covered with buffalo or bear hide, and winter garments were brought
out. Even inside the palisade one could see a great change in apparel
and adornment. The booths were no longer invitingly open, but here and
there were inns and places of evening resort where the air was not only
enough to stifle one, but so blue with smoke you could hardly see your
neighbor's face. No merry parties sang songs upon the river nor went up
to the lake in picnic fashion.

Still there was no lack of hearty good cheer. On the farms one and
another gave a dance to celebrate some special occasion. There was
husking corn and shelling it, there were meats and fish to be salted,
some of it dried, for now the inhabitants within and without knew that
winter was long and cold.

They had sincerely mourned General Wayne. A new commandant had been
sent, but the general government was poor and deeply in debt and there
were many vexed questions to settle. So old Detroit changed very little
under the new regime. There was some delightful social life around the
older or, rather, more aristocratic part of the town, where several
titled English people still remained. Fortnightly balls were given,
dinners, small social dances, for in that time dancing was the amusement
of the young as card playing was of the older ones.

Then came days of whirling, blinding snow when one could hardly stir
out, succeeded by sunshine of such brilliance that Detroit seemed a
dazzle of gems. Parties had merry games of snowballing, there were
sledging, swift traveling on skates and snowshoes, and if the days were
short the long evenings were full of good cheer, though many a gruesome
story was told of Pontiac's time, and the many evil times before that,
and of the heroic explorers and the brave fathers who had gone to plant
the cross and the lilies of France in the wilderness.

Jeanne wondered that she should care so little for the defection of the
De Bers. Pierre passed her with a sullen nod when he met her face to
face and sometimes did not notice her at all. Marie was very important
when she recovered from the surprise that a man should want to marry
her, and that she should be the first of Delisse Graumont's maids to
marry, she who was the youngest of them all.

"I had a beau in my cup at the tea drinking, and he was holding out his
hand, which was a sign that he would come soon. And, Rose, I mean to
have a tea drinking. I hope you will get the beau."

"I am in no hurry," and Rose tossed her pretty head.

Marie and her mother went down to the Beeson house to see what
plenishings were needed. It was below the inclosure, quite a farm, in
the new part running down to the river, where there was a dock and a
rough sort of basin, quite a boat yard, for Antoine Beeson had not yet
aspired to anything very grand in ship building. They pulled out the
great fur rugs and hangings and put the one up and the other down, and
Antoine coming in was so delighted with the homelikeness that he caught
his betrothed about the waist and whirled her round and round.

"Really, I think some day I shall learn to dance," and he gave his
broad, hearty laugh that Marie had grown quite accustomed to.

Madame De Ber looked amazed and severe.

CHAPTER IX.

CHRISTMAS AND A CONFESSION.

Ah, how the bells rang out on Christmas morning! A soft, muffled sound
coming through the roofs of white snow that looked like peaked army
tents, the old Latin melody that had rejoiced many a heart and carried
the good news round the world.

It was still dark when Jeanne heard Pani stirring, and she sprang out of
bed.

"I am going to church with you, Pani," she declared in a tone that left
no demur.

"Ah, child, if thou hadst listened to the good father and been
confirmed, then thou mightst have partaken of the mass."

Jeanne almost wished she had. But the schoolmaster had strengthened her
opposition, or rather her dread, a little, quite unknowingly, and yet he
had given her more reverence and a longing for real faith.

"But I shall be thinking of the shepherds and the glad tidings. I
watched the stars last night, they were so beautiful. 'And they came and
stood over the place,' the schoolmaster read it to me. That was way over
the other side of the world, Pani."

The Indian woman shook her head. She was afraid of this strange
knowledge, and she had a vague idea that it must have happened here in
Detroit, since the Christ was born anew every year.

The stars were not all gone out of the sky. The crisp snow crunched
under their feet, although the moccasins were soft and warm; and
everybody was muffled in furs, even to hoods and pointed caps. Some
people were carrying lanterns, but they could find their way, straight
along St. Anne's street. The bell kept on until they stood in the church
porch.

"Thou wilt sit here, child."

Jeanne made no protest. She rather liked being hidden here in the
darkness.

There were the De Bers, then Marie and her lover, then Rose and Pierre.
How much did dull Pierre believe and understand? The master's faith
seemed simpler to her.

A little later was the regular Christmas service with the altar decked
in white and gold and the two fathers in their beautiful robes of
rejoicing, the candlesticks that had been sent from France a century
before, burnished to their brightest and the candles lighted. Behind the
screen the sisters and the children sang hymns, and some in the
congregation joined, though the men were much more at home in the music
of the violins and in the jollity.

Jeanne felt strangely serious, and half wished she was among the
children. It was the fear of having to become a nun that deterred her.
She could not understand how Berthe Campeau could leave her ailing
mother and go to Montreal for religion's sake. Madame Campeau was not
able to stand the journey even if she had wanted to go, but she and her
sister had had some differences, and, since Berthe would go, her son's
wife had kindly offered to care for her.

"And what there is left thou shalt have, Catherine," she said to her
daughter-in-law. "None of my money shall go to Montreal. It would be
only such a little while for Berthe to wait. I cannot last long."

So she had said for three years and Berthe had grown tired of waiting.
Her imagination fed on the life of devotion and exaltation that her aunt
wrote about.

At noon Marie De Ber was married. She shivered a little in her white
gown, for the church was cold. Her veil fell all over her and no one
could see whether her face was joyful or not. Truth to tell, she was
sadly frightened, but everybody was merry, and her husband wrapped her
in a fur cloak and packed her in his sledge. A procession followed, most
of them on foot, for there was to be a great dinner at Tony Beeson's.

Then, although the morning had been so lovely, the sky clouded over with
leaden gray and the wind came in great sullen gusts from Lake Huron. You
could hear it miles away, a fierce roar such as the droves of bisons
made, as if they were breaking in at your very door. Pani hung the
bearskin against the door and let down the fur curtains over the
windows. There was a bright log fire and Jeanne curled up on one side in
a wolfskin, resting her head on a cushion of cedar twigs that gave out a
pleasant fragrance. Pani sat quietly on the other side. There was no
light but the blaze. Neither was the Indian woman used to the small
industries some of the French took up when they had passed girlhood. In
a slow, phlegmatic fashion she used to go over her past life, raising up
from their graves, as it were, Madame de Longueil, Madame Bellestre, and
then Monsieur, though he never came from the shadowy grave, but a garden
that bore strange fruit, and where it was summer all the year round. She
had the gift of obedient faith, so she was a good Catholic, as far as
her own soul was concerned, but her duty toward the child often troubled
her.

Jeanne watched the blaze in a strange mood, her heart hot and angry at
one moment, proud and indifferent at the next. She said a dozen times a
day to herself that she didn't care a dead leaf for Marie, who had grown
so consequential and haughty, and Rose, who was full of her own
pleasure. It seemed as if other children had dropped out as well, but
then in this cold weather she could not run out to the farms or lead a
group of eager young people to see her do amazing feats. For she could
walk out on the limb of a tree and laugh while it swung up and down with
her weight, and then catch the limb of the next tree and fling herself
over, amid their shouts. No boy dared climb higher. She had caught
little owls who blinked at her with yellow eyes, but she always put them
back in the trees again.

"You wouldn't like to be carried away by fierce Indians," she said when
the children begged they might keep them. "They like their homes and
their mothers."

"As if an owl could tell who its mother was!" laughed a boy
disdainfully.

She had hardly known the feeling of loneliness. What did she do last
winter, she wondered? O yes, she played with the De Ber children, and
there were the Pallents, whom she seldom went to visit now, they seemed
so very ignorant. Ah--if it would come summer again!

"For the trees and the flowers and the birds are better than most
people," she ruminated. It must be because everybody had gone out of her
life that it appeared wide and strange. After all she did not care for
the De Bers and yet it seemed as if she had been stabbed to the heart.
Pierre and Marie had pretended to care so much for her. Then, in spite
of her sadness, she laughed.

"What is it amuses thee so, little one?" asked the Indian woman.

"I am not old enough to have a lover, Pani, am I?" and she looked out of
her furry wrap.

"No, child, no. What folly! Marie's wedding has set thee astray."

"And Pierre is a slow, stupid fellow."

"Pierre would be no match for thee, and I doubt if the De Bers would
countenance such a thing if he were older. That is nonsense."

"Pierre asked me to be his wife. He said twice that he wanted to marry
me--at the raising of the flag, when we were on the water, and one
Sunday in the autumn. I am not as old as Rose De Ber, even, so Marie
need not feel set upon a pinnacle because Tony Beeson marries her when
she is barely fifteen."

"Jeanne!" Pani's tone was horror stricken. "And it will make no end of
trouble. Madame De Ber is none too pleasant now."

"It will make no trouble. I said 'no' and 'no' and 'no,' until it was
like this mighty wind rushing through the forest, and he was very angry.
So I should not go to the De Bers any more. And, Pani, if I had a father
who would make me marry him when I was older, I should go and throw
myself into the Strait."

"His father sends him up in the fur country in the spring."

"What makes people run crazy when weddings are talked of? But if I
wanted to hold my head high and boast--"

"Oh, child, you could not be so silly!"

"No, Pani. And I shall be glad to have him go away. I do not want any
lovers."

The woman was utterly amazed, and then consoled herself with the thought
that it was merely child's play. They both lapsed into silence again.
But Jeanne's thoughts ran on. There was Louis Marsac. What if he
returned next summer and tormented her? A perplexing mood, half pride,
half disgust, filled her, and a serious elation at her own power which
thrills young feminine things when they first discover it; as well as
the shrinking into a new self-appropriation that thrusts out all such
matters. But she did not laugh over Louis Marsac. She felt afraid of
him, and she scrubbed her mouth where he had once kissed it.

There was another kiss on her hand. She held it up in the firelight. Ah,
if she had a father like M. St. Armand, and a brother like the young
man!

She was seized with an awful pang as if a swift, dark current was
bearing her away from every one but Pani. Why had her father and mother
been wrenched out of her life? She had seen a plant or a young shrub
swept out of its rightful place and tossed to and fro until some
stronger wave threw it upon the sandy edge, to droop and die. Was she
like that? Where had she been torn from? She had been thrown into Pani's
lap. She had never minded the little jeers before when the children had
called her a wild Indian. Was she nobody's child?

She had an impulse to jump about and storm around the room, to drag some
secret out of Pani, to grasp the world in her small hands and compel it
to disclose its knowledge. She looked steadily into the red fire and her
heart seemed bursting with the breath that could not find an outlet.

The bells began to ring again. "Come," "come," they said. Had she better
not go to the sisters and live with them? The Church would be father and
mother.

She bent down her head and cried very softly, for it seemed as if all
joy had gone out of her life. Pani fell asleep and snored.

But the next morning the world was lovelier than ever with the new
fallen snow. Men were shoveling it away from doorways and stamping it
down in the streets with their great boots, the soles being wooden and
the legs of fur. And they snowballed each other. The children joined and
rolled in the snow. Now and then a daring young fellow caught a
demoiselle and rubbed roses into her cheeks.

All the rest of the week was given over to holiday life. There were
great doings at the Citadel and in some of the grand houses. There were
dances and dinners, and weddings so brilliant that Marie De Ber's was
only a little rushlight in comparison.

The master went down to Marietta for a visit. Jeanne seemed like a
pendulum swinging this way and that. She was lonely and miserable. One
day the Church seemed a refuge, the next she shrank with a sort of
terror and longed for spring, as a drowning man longs for everything
that promises succor.

One morning Monsieur Loisel, the notary, came in with a grave and solemn
mien.

"I have news for thee, Pani and Mam'selle, a great word of sorrow, and
it grieves me to be the bearer of it. Yet the good Lord has a right to
his own, for I cannot doubt but that Madame Bellestre's intercession has
been of some avail. And Monsieur Bellestre was an upright, honorable,
kindly man."

"Monsieur Bellestre is dead," said Pani with the shock of a sudden
revelation.

Jeanne stood motionless. Then he could never come back! And, oh, what if
Monsieur St. Armand never came back!

"Yes. Heaven rest his soul, say I, and so does the good Father Rameau.
For his gift to the Church seems an act of faith."

"And Jeanne?" inquired the woman tremblingly.

"It is about the child I have come to talk. Monsieur Bellestre has made
some provision for her, queerly worded, too."

"Oh, he does not take her away from me!" cried the foster mother in
anguish.

"No. He had some strange notions not in accord with the Church, we all
know, that liberty to follow one's opinion is a good thing. It is not
always so in worldly affairs even, but of late years it has come largely
in vogue in religious matters. And here is the part of his will that
pertains to her. You would not understand the preamble, so I will tell
it in plain words. To you, Pani, is given the house and a sum of money
each year. To the child is left a yearly portion until she is sixteen,
then, if she becomes a Catholic and chooses the lot of a sister, it
ceases. Otherwise it is continued until she is married, when she is
given a sum for a dowry. And at your death your income reverts to the
Bellestre estate."

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