Thus the high authorities disapproved of my educational efforts. I related their comments to Archie, and added, 'The surgeon is the only one who has said nothing against it.'
'Prescott? O, he's too high and mighty to notice anybody, much less a half-breed girl. I never saw such a stiff, silent fellow; he looks as if he had swallowed all his straightlaced Puritan ancestors. I wish he'd exchange.'
'Gently, Archie—'
'O, yes, without doubt; certainly, and amen! I know you like him, Aunt Sarah,' said my handsome boy-soldier, laughing.
The lessons went on. We often saw the surgeon during study hours as the stairway leading to his room opened out of the little parlor. Sometimes he would stop awhile and listen as Jeannette slowly read, 'The good boy likes his red top'; 'The good girl can sew a seam', or watched her awkward attempts to write her name, or add a one and a two. It was slow work, but I persevered, if from no other motive than obstinacy. Had they not all prophesied a failure? When wearied with the dull routine, I gave an oral lesson in poetry. If the rhymes were of the chiming, rhythmic kind, Jeannette learned rapidly, catching the verses as one catches a tune, and repeating them with a spirit and dramatic gesture all her own. Her favorite was Macaulay's 'Ivry.' Beautiful she looked, as, standing in the centre of the room, she rolled out the sonorous lines, her French accent giving a charming foreign coloring to the well-known verses:—
'Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France,Charge for the golden lilies,—upon them with the lance!A thousand spears are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest,A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest;And in they burst, and on they rushed, while, like a guiding star,Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre.'
And yet, after all my explanations, she only half understood it; the 'knights' were always 'nights' in her mind, and the 'thickest carnage' was always the 'thickest carriage.'
One March day she came at the appointed hour, soon after our noon dinner. The usual clear winter sky was clouded, and a wind blew the snow from the trees where it had lain quietly month after month. 'Spring is coming,' said the old sergeant that morning, as he hoisted the storm-flag; it's getting wildlike.'
Jeannette and I went through the lessons, but towards three o'clock a north-wind came sweeping over the Straits and enveloped the island in a whirling snow-storm, partly eddies of white splinters torn from the ice-bound forest, and partly a new, fall of round snow pellets careering along on the gale, quite unlike the soft, feathery flakes of early winter. 'You cannot go home now, Jeannette,' I said, looking out through the little west window; our cottage stood back on the hill, and from this side window we could see the Straits, going down toward far Waugoschance; the steep fort-hill outside the wall; the long meadow, once an Indian burial-place, below; and beyond on the beach the row of cabins inhabited by the French fishermen, one of them the home of my pupil. The girl seldom went round the point into the village; its one street and a half seemed distasteful to her. She climbed the stone-wall on the ridge behind her cabin, took an Indian trail through the grass in summer, or struck across on the snow-crust in winter, ran up the steep side of the fort-hill like a wild chamois, and came into the garrison enclosure with a careless nod to the admiring sentinel, as she passed under the rear entrance. These French, half-breeds, like the gypsies, were not without a pride of their own. They held themselves aloof from the Irish of Shantytown, the floating sailor population of the summer, and the common soldiers of the garrison. They intermarried among themselves, and held their own revels in their beach-cabins during the winter, with music from their old violins, dancing and, songs, French ballads with a chorus after every two lines, quaint chansons handed down from voyageur ancestors. Small respect had they for the little Roman Catholic church beyond the old Agency garden; its German priest they refused to honor; but, when stately old Father Piret came over to the island from his hermitage in the Chenaux, they ran to meet him, young and old, and paid him reverence with affectionate respect. Father Piret was a Parisian, and a gentleman; nothing less would suit these far-away sheep in the wilderness!
Jeannette Leblanc had all the pride of her class; the Irish saloon-keeper with his shining tall hat, the loud-talking mate of the lake schooner, the trim sentinel pacing the fort walls, were nothing to her, and this somewhat incongruous hauteur gave her the air of a little princess.
On this stormy afternoon the captain's wife was in my parlor preparingto return to her own quarters with some coffee she had borrowed.Hearing my remark she said, 'O, the snow won't hurt the child, Mrs.Corlyne; she must be storm-proof, living down there on the beach!Duncan can take her home.'
Duncan was the orderly, a factotum in the garrison.
'Non,' said Jeannette, tossing her head proudly, as the door closed behind the lady, 'I wish not of Duncan; I go alone.'
It happened that Archie, my nephew, had gone over to the cottage of the commanding officer to decorate the parlor for the military sociable; I knew he would not return, and the evening stretched out before me in all its long loneliness. 'Stay, Jeannette,' I said. 'We will have tea together here, and when the wind goes down, old Antoine shall go back with you.' Antoine was a French wood-cutter, whose cabin clung half-way down the fort-hill like a swallow's nest.
Jeannette's eyes sparkled; I had never invited her before; in an instant she had turned the day into a high festival. 'Braid hair?' she asked, glancing toward the mirror, 'faut que je m' fasse belle.' And the long hair came out of its close braids enveloping her in its glossy dark waves, while she carefully smoothed out the bits of red ribbon that served as fastenings. At this moment the door opened, and the surgeon, the wind, and a puff of snow came in together. Jeannette looked up, smiling and blushing; the falling hair gave a new softness to her face, and her eyes were as shy as the eyes of a wild fawn.
Only the previous day I had noticed that Rodney Prescott listened with marked attention to the captain's cousin, a Virginia lady, as she advanced a theory that Jeannette had negro blood in her veins. 'Those quadroon girls often have a certain kind of plebeian beauty like this pet of yours, Mrs. Corlyne,' she said, with a slight sniff of her high-bred, pointed nose. In vain I exclaimed, in vain I argued; the garrison ladies were all against me, and, in their presence, not a man dared come to my aid; and the surgeon even added, 'I wish I could be sure of it.'
'Sure of the negro blood?' I said indignantly.
'Yes.'
'But Jeannette does not look in the least like a quadroon.'
'Some of the quadroon girls are very handsome, Mrs. Corlyne,' answered the surgeon, coldly.
'O yes!' said the high-bred Virginia lady. 'My brother has a number of them about his place, but we do not teach them to read, I assure you. It spoils them.'
As I looked at Jeannette's beautiful face, her delicate eagle profile, her fair skin and light blue eyes, I recalled this conversation with vivid indignation. The surgeon, at least, should be convinced of his mistake. Jeannette had never looked more brilliant; probably the man had never really scanned her features,—he was such a cold, unseeing creature; but to-night he should have a fair opportunity, so I invited him to join our storm-bound tea-party. He hesitated.
'Ah, do, Monsieur Rodenai,' said Jeannette, springing forward. 'I sing for you, I dance; but, no, you not like that. Bien, I tell your fortune then.' The young girl loved company. A party of three, no matter who the third, was to her infinitely better than two.
The surgeon stayed.
A merry evening we had before the hearth-fire. The wind howled around the block-house and rattled the flag-staff, and the snow pellets sounded on the window-panes, giving that sense of warm comfort within that comes only with the storm. Our servant had been drafted into service for the military sociable, and I was to prepare the evening meal myself.
'Not tea,' said Jeannette, with a wry face; 'tea,—c'est medecine!' She had arranged her hair in fanciful braids, and now followed me to the kitchen, enjoying the novelty like a child. 'Cafe?' she said. 'O, please, madame! I make it.'
The little shed kitchen was cold and dreary, each plank of its thin walls rattling in the gale with a dismal creak; the wind blew the smoke down the chimney, and finally it ended on our bringing everything into the cosey parlor, and using the hearth fire, where Jeannette made coffee and baked little cakes over the coals.
The meal over, Jeannette sang her songs, sitting on the rug before the fire,—Le Beau Voyageur, Les Neiges de la Cloche, ballads in Canadian patois sung to minor airs brought over from France two hundred years before.
The surgeon sat in the shade of the chimney-piece, his face shaded by his hand, and I could not discover whether he saw anything to admire in my protegee, until, standing in the centre of the room, she gave as 'Ivry' in glorious style. Beautiful she looked as she rolled out the lines,—
'And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may,—For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray,—Press where ye see my white plume shine amidst the ranks of war,And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre.'
Rodney sat in the full light now, and I secretly triumphed in his rapt attention.
'Something else, Jeannette,' I said in the pride of my heart. Instead of repeating anything I had taught her, she began in French:—
'"Marie, enfant, quitte l'ouvrage,Voici l'etoille du berger."—"Ma mere, un enfant du villageLanguit captif chez l'etranger;Pris sur mer, loin de sa patrie,Il c'est rendu,—mais le dernier."File, file, pauvre Marie,Pour secourir le prisonnier;File, file, pauvre Marie,File, file, pour le prisonnier.
'"Pour lui je filerais moi-memeMon enfant,—mais—j'ai tant vieilli!"—"Envoyez a celui que j'aimeTout le gain par moi recueilli.Rose a sa noce en vain me prie;—Dieu! j'entends le menetrier!"File, file, pauvre Marie,Pour secourir le prisonnier;File, file, pauvre Marie,File, file, pour le prisonnier.
'"Plus pres du feu file, ma cherie;La nuit vient de refroidir le temps"—"Adrien, m'a-t-on dit, ma mere,Gemit dans des cachots flottants.On repousse la main fletrieQu'il etend vers an pain grossier."File, file, pauvre Marie,Pour secourir le prisonnier;File, file, pauvre Marie,File, file pour le prisonnier.'[Footnote: 'Le Prisonnier de Guerre,' Beranger.]
Jeannette repeated these lines with a pathos so real that I felt a moisture rising in my eyes.
'Where did you learn that, child?' I asked.
'Father Piret, madame.'
'What is it?'
'Je n'sais.'
'It is Beranger,—'The Prisoner of War,' said Rodney Prescott. 'But you omitted the last verse, mademoiselle; may I ask why?'
'More sad so,' answered Jeannette. 'Marie she die now.'
'You wish her to die?'
'Mais oui: she die for love; c'est beau!'
And there flashed a glance from the girl's eyes that thrilled through me, I scarcely knew why. I looked towards Rodney, but he was back in the shadow again.
The hours passed. 'I must go,' said Jeannette, drawing aside the curtain. Clouds were still driving across the sky, but the snow had ceased falling, and at intervals the moon shone out over the cold white scene; the March wind continued on its wild career toward the south.
'I will send for Antoine,' I said, rising, as Jeannette took up her fur mantle.
'The old man is sick, to-day,' said Rodney. 'It would not be safe for him to leave the fire, to-night. I will accompany mademoiselle.'
Pretty Jeannette shrugged her shoulders. 'Mais, monsieur,' she answered, 'I go over the hill.'
'No, child; not tonight,' I said decidedly. 'The wind is violent, and the cliff doubly slippery after this ice-storm. Go round through the village.'
'Of course we shall go through the village,' said our surgeon, in his calm authoritative way. They started. But in another minute I saw Jeannette fly by the west window, over the wall and across the snowy road, like a spirit, disappearing down the steep bank, now slippery with glare ice. Another minute, and Rodney Prescott followed in her track.
With bated breath I watched for the reappearance of the two figures on the white plain, one hundred and fifty feet below; the cliff was difficult at any time, and now in this ice! The moments seemed very long, and, alarmed, I was on the point of arousing the garrison, when I spied the two dark figures on the snowy plain below, now clear in the moonlight, now lost in the shadow. I watched them for some distance; then a cloud came, and I lost them entirely.
Rodney did not return, although I sat late before the dying fire. Thinking over the evening, the idea came to me that perhaps, after all, he did admire my protegee, and, being a romantic old woman, I did not repel the fancy; it might go a certain distance without harm, and an idyl is always charming, doubly so to people cast away on a desert island. One falls into the habit of studying persons very closely in the limited circle of garrison life.
But, the next morning, the major's wife gave me an account of the sociable. 'It was very pleasant,' she said. 'Toward the last Dr. Prescott came in, quite unexpectedly. I had no idea he could be so agreeable. Augusta can tell you how charming he was!'
Augusta, a young lady cousin, of pale blond complexion, neutral opinions, and irreproachable manners, smiled primly. My idyl was crushed!
The days passed. The winds, the snows, and the high-up fort remained the same. Jeannette came and went, and the hour lengthened into two or three; not that we read much, but we talked more. Our surgeon did not again pass through the parlor; he had ordered a rickety stairway on the outside wall to be repaired, and we could hear him going up and down its icy steps as we sat by the hearth-fire. One day I said to him, 'My protegee is improving wonderfully. If she could have a complete education, she might take her place with the best in the land.'
'Do not deceive yourself, Mrs. Corlyne,' he answered. 'It is only the shallow French quickness.'
'Why do you always judge the child so harshly, Doctor?'
'Do you take her part, Aunt Sarah?' (For sometimes he used the title which Archie had made so familiar.)
'Of course I do, Rodney. A poor, unfriended girl living in this remote place, against a United States surgeon with the best of Boston behind him.'
'I wish you would tell me that every day, Aunt Sarah,' was the reply I received. It set me musing, but I could make nothing of it. Troubled without knowing why, I suggested to Archie that he should endeavor to interest our surgeon in the fort gayety; there was something for every night in the merry little circle,—games, suppers, tableaux, music, theatricals, readings, and the like.
'Why, he's in the thick of it already, Aunt Sarah,' said my nephew. 'He's devoting himself to Miss Augusta; she sings "The Harp that once—" to him every night.'
('The Harp that once through Tara's Halls', was Miss Augusta's dress-parade song. The Major's quarters not being as large as the halls aforesaid, the melody was somewhat overpowering.)
'O, does she?' I thought, not without a shade of vexation. But the vague anxiety vanished.
The real spring came at last,—the rapid, vivid spring of Mackinac. Almost in a day the ice moved out, the snows melted, and the northern wild-flowers appeared in the sheltered glens. Lessons were at an end, for my scholar was away in the green woods. Sometimes she brought me a bunch of flowers, but I seldom saw her; my wild bird had flown back to the forest. When the ground was dry and the pine droppings warmed by the sun, I, too, ventured abroad. One day, wandering as far as the Arched Rock, I found the surgeon there, and together we sat down to rest under the trees, looking off over the blue water flecked with white caps. The Arch is a natural bridge over a chasm one hundred and fifty feet above the lake,—a fissure in the cliff which has fallen away in a hollow, leaving the bridge by itself far out over the water. This bridge springs upward in the shape of an arch; it is fifty feet long, and its width is in some places two feet, in others only a few inches,—a narrow, dizzy pathway hanging between sky and water.
'People have crossed it,' I said.
'Only fools,' answered oar surgeon, who despised foolhardiness. 'Has a man nothing better to do with his life than risk it for the sake of a silly feat like that! I would not so much as raise my eyes to see any one cross.'
'O yes, you would, Monsieur Rodenai,' cried a voice behind us. We both turned and caught a glimpse of Jeannette as she bounded through the bushes and out to the very centre of the Arch, where she stood balancing herself and laughing gayly. Her form was outlined against the sky; the breeze, swayed her skirt; she seemed hovering over the chasm. I watched her, mute with fear; a word might cause her to lose her balance; but I could not turn my eyes away, I was fascinated with the sight. I was not aware that Rodney had left me until he, too, appeared on the Arch, slowly finding a foothold for himself and advancing toward the centre. A fragment of the rock broke off under his foot and fell in the abyss below.
'Go back, Monsieur Rodenai,' cried Jeannette, seeing his danger.
'Will you came back too, Jeannette?'
'Moi? C'est aut'chose,' answered the girl, gayly tossing her pretty head.
'Then I shall come out and carry you back, wilful child,' said the surgeon.
A peal of laughter broke from Jeannette as he spoke and then she began to dance on her point of rock, swinging herself from side to side, marking the time with a song. I held my breath; her dance seemed unearthly; it was as though she belonged to the Prince of the Powers of the Air.
At length the surgeon reached the centre and caught the mocking creature in his arms: neither spoke, but I could see the flash of their eyes as they stood for an instant motionless. Then they struggled on the narrow foothold and swayed over so far that I buried my face in my trembling hands, unable to look at the dreadful end. When I opened my eyes again all was still; the Arch was tenantless, and no sound came from below. Were they, then, so soon dead? Without a cry? I forced myself to the brink to look down, over the precipice; but while I stood there, fearing to look, I heard a sound behind me in the woods. It was Jeannette singing a gay French song. I called to her to stop. 'How could you!' I said severely, for I was still trembling with agitation.
'Ce n'est rien, madame. I cross l'Arche when I had five year. Mais, Monsieur Rodenai le Grand, he raise his eye to look this time, I think,' said Jeannette, laughing triumphantly.
'Where is he?'
'On the far side, gone on to Scott's Pic [Peak]. Feroce, O feroce, comme un loupgarou! Ah! c'est joli, ca!' And over-flowing with the wildest glee the girl danced along through the woods in front of me, now pausing to look at something in her hand, now laughing, now shouting like a wild creature, until I lost sight of her. I went back to the fort alone.
For several days I saw nothing of Rodney. When at last we met, I said,'That was a wild freak of Jeannette's at the Arch.'
'Planned, to get a few shilling out of us.'
'O Doctor! I do not think she had any such motive,' I replied, looking up deprecatingly into his cold scornful eyes.
'Are you not a little sentimental over that ignorant, half-wild creature, Aunt Sarah?'
'Well,' I said to myself, 'perhaps I am!'
The summer came, sails whitened the blue straits again, steamers stopped for an hour or two at the island docks, and the summer travellers rushed ashore to buy 'Indian curiosities,' made by the nuns in Montreal, or to climb breathlessly up the steep fort-hill to see the pride and panoply of war. Proud was the little white fort in those summer days; the sentinels held themselves stiffly erect, the officers gave up lying on the parapet half asleep, the best flag was hoisted daily, and there was much bugle-playing and ceremony connected with the evening gun, fired from the ramparts at sunset; the hotels were full, the boarding-house keepers were in their annual state of wonder over the singular taste of these people from 'below,' who actually preferred a miserable white-fish to the best of beef brought up on ice all the way from Buffalo! There were picnics and walks, and much confusion of historical dates respecting Father Marquette and the irrepressible, omnipresent Pontiac. The officers did much escort duty; their buttons gilded every scene. Our quiet surgeon was foremost in everything.
'I am surprised! I had no idea Dr. Prescott was so gay,' said the major's wife.
'I should not think of calling him gay,' I answered.
'Why, my dear Mrs. Corlyne! He is going all the time. Just askAugusta.'
Augusta thereupon remarked that society, to a certain extent, was beneficial; that she considered Dr. Prescott much improved; really, he was now very 'nice.'
I silently protested against the word. But then I was not a Bostonian.
One bright afternoon I went through the village, round the point into the French quarter, in search of a laundress. The fishermen's cottages faced the west; they were low and wide, not unlike scows drifted ashore and moored on the beach for houses. The little windows had gay curtains fluttering in the breeze, and the room within looked clean and cheery; the rough walls were adorned with the spoils of the fresh-water seas, shells, green stones, agates, spar, and curiously shaped pebbles; occasionally there was a stuffed water-bird, or a bright-colored print, and always a violin. Black-eyed children played in the water which bordered their narrow beach-gardens; and slender women, with shining black hair, stood in their doorways knitting. I found my laundress, and then went on to Jeannette's home, the last house in the row. From the mother, a Chippewa woman, I learned that Jeannette was with her French father at the fishing-grounds off Drummond's Island.
'How long has she been away?' I asked.
'Weeks four,' replied the mother, whose knowledge of English was confined to the price-list of white-fish and blueberries, the two articles of her traffic with the boarding-house keepers.
'When will she return?'
'Je n'sais.'
She knitted on, sitting in the sunshine on her little doorstep, looking out over the western water with tranquil content in her beautiful, gentle eyes. As I walked up the beach I glanced back several times to see if she had the curiosity to watch me; but no, she still looked out over the western water. What was I to her? Less than nothing. A white-fish was more.
A week or two later I strolled out to the Giant's Stairway and sat down in the little rock chapel. There was a picnic at the Lovers' Leap, and I had that side of the island to myself. I was leaning back, half asleep, in the deep shadow, when the sound of voices roused me; a birch-bark canoe was passing close in shore, and two were in it,—Jeannette and our surgeon. I could not hear their words, but I noticed Rodney's expression as he leaned forward. Jeannette was paddling slowly; her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes brilliant. Another moment and a point hid them from my view. I went home troubled.
'Did you enjoy the picnic, Miss Augusta?' I said with assumed carelessness, that evening. 'Dr. Prescott was there, as usual, I suppose?'
'He was not present, but the picnic was highly enjoyable,' repliedMiss Augusta, in her even voice and impartial manner.
'The Doctor has not been with us for some days,' said the major's wife, archly; 'I suspect he does not like Mr. Piper.'
Mr. Piper was a portly widower, of sanguine complexion, a Chicago produce-dealer, who was supposed to admire Miss Augusta, and was now going through a course of 'The Harp that once.'
The last days of summer flew swiftly by; the surgeon held himself aloof; we scarcely saw him in the garrison circles, and I no longer met him in my rambles.
'Jealousy!' said the major's wife.
September came. The summer visitors fled away homeward; the remaining 'Indian curiosities' were stored away for another season; the hotels were closed, and the forests deserted; the bluebells swung unmolested on their heights and the plump Indian-pipes grew in peace in their dark corners. The little white fort, too, began to assume its winter manners; the storm-flag was hoisted; there were evening fires upon the broad hearth-stones; the chaplain, having finished everything about Balak, his seven altars and seven rams, was ready for chess-problems; books and papers were ordered; stores laid in, and anxious inquiries made as to the 'habits' of the new mail carrier—for the mail carrier was the hero of the winter, and if his 'habits' led him to whiskey, there was danger that our precious letters might be dropped all along the northern curve of Lake Huron.
Upon this quiet matter-of-course preparation, suddenly, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, came orders to leave. The whole garrison, officers and men, were ordered to Florida.
In a moment all was desolation. It was like being ordered into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Dense everglades, swamp-fevers, malaria in the air, poisonous underbrush, and venomous reptiles and insects, and now and then a wily unseen foe picking off the men, one by one, as they painfully cut out roads through the thickets,—these were the features of military life in Florida at that period. Men who would have marched boldly to the cannon's mouth, officers who would have headed a forlorn hope, shrank from the deadly swamps.
Families must be broken up, also; no women, no children, could go to Florida. There were tears and the sound of sobbing in the little white fort, as the poor wives, all young mothers, hastily packed their few possessions to go back to their fathers' houses, fortunate if they had fathers to receive them. The husbands went about in silence, too sad for words. Archie kept up the best courage; but he was young, and had no one to leave save me.
The evening of the fatal day—for the orders had come in the early dawn—I was alone in my little parlor, already bare and desolate with packing-cases. The wind had been rising since morning, and now blew furiously from the west. Suddenly the door burst open and the surgeon entered. I was shocked at his appearance, as, pale, haggard, with disordered hair and clothing, he sank into a chair, and looked at me in silence.
'Rodney, what is it?' I said.
He did not answer, but still looked at me with that strange gaze.Alarmed, I rose, and went toward him, laying my hand on his shoulderwith a motherly touch. I loved the quiet, gray-eyed youth next afterArchie.
'What is it, my poor boy! Can I help you?'
'O Aunt Sarah, perhaps you can, for you know her.'
'Her?' I repeated, with sinking heart.
'Yes. Jeannette.'
I sat down and folded my hands; trouble had come, but it was not what I apprehended,—the old story of military life, love, and desertion; the ever-present ballad of the 'gay young knight who loves and rides away.' This was something different.
'I love her,—I love her madly, in spite of myself,' said Rodney, pouring forth his words with feverish rapidity. 'I know it is an infatuation, I know it is utterly unreasonable, and yet—I love her. I have striven against it, I have fought with myself, I have written out elaborate arguments wherein I have clearly demonstrated the folly of such an affection, and I have compelled myself to read them over slowly, word for word, when alone in my room, and yet—I love her! Ignorant, I know she would shame me; shallow, I know she could not satisfy me; as a wife she would inevitably drag me down to misery, and yet—I love her! I had not been on the island a week before I saw her, and marked her beauty. Months before you invited her to the fort I had become infatuated with her angular loveliness; but, in some respects, a race of the blood-royal could not be prouder than these French fishermen. They will accept your money, they will cheat you, they will tell you lies for an extra shilling; but make one step toward a simple acquaintance, and the door will be shut in your face. They will bow down before you as a customer, but they will not have you for a friend. Thus I found it impossible to reach Jeannette. I do not say that I tried, for all the time I was fighting myself; but I went far enough to see the barriers. It seemed a fatality that you should take a fancy to her, have her here, and ask me to admire her,—admire the face that haunted me by day and by night, driving me mad with its beauty.
'I realized my danger, and called to my aid all the pride of my race. I said to my heart, 'You shall not love this ignorant half-breed to your ruin.' I reasoned with myself, and said, 'It is only because you are isolated on this far-away island. Could you present this girl to your mother? Could she be a companion for your sisters? I was beginning to gain a firmer control over myself, in spite of her presence, when you unfolded your plan of education. Fatality again. Instantly a crowd of hopes surged up. The education you began, could I not finish? She was but young; a few years of careful teaching might work wonders. Could I not train this forest flower so that it could take its place in the garden? But, when I actually saw this full-grown woman unable to add the simplest sum or write her name correctly, I was again ashamed of my infatuation. It is one thing to talk of ignorance, it is another to come face to face with it. Thus I wavered, at one moment ready to give up all for pride, at another to give up all for love.
'Then came the malicious suggestion of negro blood. Could it be proved, I was free; that taint I could not pardon. [And here, even as the surgeon spoke, I noticed this as the peculiarity of the New England Abolitionist. Theoretically he believed in the equality of the enslaved race, and stood ready to maintain the belief with his life, but practically he held himself entirely aloof from them; the Southern creed and practice were the exact reverse.] I made inquiries of Father Piret, who knows the mixed genealogy of the little French colony as far back as the first voyageurs of the fur trade, and found—as I, shall I say hoped or feared?—that the insinuation was utterly false. Thus I was thrown back into the old tumult.
'Then came that evening in this parlor when Jeannette made the coffee and baked little cakes over the coals. Do you remember the pathos with which she chanted File, file, pauvre Marie; File, file, pour le prisonnier? Do you remember how she looked when she repeated 'Ivry'? Did that tender pity, that ringing inspiration come from a dull mind and shallow heart? I was avenged of my enforced disdain, my love gave itself up to delicious hope. She was capable of education, and then—! I made a pretext of old Antoine's cough in order to gain an opportunity of speaking to her alone; but she was like a thing possessed, she broke from me and sprang over the icy cliff, her laugh coming back on the wind as I followed her down the dangerous slope. On she rushed, jumping from rock to rock, waving her hand in wild glee when the moon shone out, singing and shouting with merry scorn at my desperate efforts to reach her. It was a mad chase, but only on the plain below could I come up with her. There, breathless and eager, I unfolded to her my plan of education. I only went as far as this: I was willing to send her to school, to give her opportunities of seeing the world, to provide for her whole future. I left the story of my love to come afterward. She laughed me to scorn. As well talk of education to the bird of the wilderness! She rejected my offers, picked up snow to throw in my face, covered me with her French sarcasms, danced around me in circles, laughed, and mocked, until I was at a loss to know whether she was human. Finally, as a shadow darkened the moon she fled away; and when it passed she was gone, and I was alone on the snowy plain.
'Angry, fierce, filled with scorn for myself, I determined resolutely to crush out my senseless infatuation. I threw myself into such society as we had; I assumed an interest in that inane Miss Augusta; I read and studied far into the night; I walked until sheer fatigue gave me tranquillity; but all I gained was lost in that encounter at the arch: you remember it? When I saw her on that narrow bridge, my love burst its bonds again, and, senseless as ever, rushed to save her,—to save her poised on her native rocks, where every inch was familiar from childhood! To save her,—sure-footed and light as a bird! I caught her. She struggled in my arms, angrily, as an imprisoned animal might struggle, but—so beautiful! The impulse came to me to spring with her into the gulf below, and so end the contest forever. I might have done it,—I cannot tell,—but, suddenly, she wrenched herself out of my arms and fled over the Arch, to the farther side. I followed, trembling, blinded, with the violence of my emotion. At that moment I was ready to give up my life, my soul, into her hands.
'In the woods beyond she paused, glanced over her shoulder toward me, then turned eagerly. 'Voila,' she said, pointing. I looked down and saw several silver pieces that had dropped from my pocket as I sprang over the rocks, and, with an impatient gesture, I thrust them aside with my foot.
'Non,' she cried, tuning toward me and stooping eagerly,—'so much! O, so much! See! four shilling!' Her eyes glistened with longing as she held the money in her hand and fingered each piece lovingly.
'The sudden revulsion of feeling produced by her words and gesture filled me with fury. 'Keep it, and buy yourself a soul if you can!' I cried; and turning away, I left her with her gains.
'Merci, monsieur,' she answered gayly, all unmindful of my scorn; and off she ran, holding her treasure tightly clasped in both hands. I could hear her singing far down the path.
'It is a bitter thing to feel a scorn for yourself! Did I love this girl who stooped to gather a few shillings from under my feet? Was it, then, impossible for me to conquer this ignoble passion? No; it could not and it should not be! I plunged again into all the gayety; I left myself not one free moment; if sleep came not, I forced it to come with opiates; Jeannette had gone to the fishing grounds, the weeks passed, I did not see her. I had made the hardest struggle of all, and was beginning to recover my self-respect when, one day, I met her in the woods with some children; she had returned to gather blueberries. I looked at her. She was more gentle than usual, and smiled. Suddenly, as an embankment which has withstood the storms of many winters gives away at last in a calm summer night, I yielded. Myself knew the contest was over and my other self rushed to her feet.
'Since then I have often seen her; I have made plan after plan to meet her; I have—O degrading thought!—paid her to take me out in her canoe, under the pretence of fishing. I no longer looked forward; I lived only in the present, and thought only of when and where I could see her. Thus it has been until this morning, when the orders came. Now, I am brought face to face with reality; I must go; can I leave her behind? For hours I have been wandering in the woods. Aunt Sarah,—it is of no use,—I cannot live without her; I must marry her.'
'Marry Jeannette!' I exclaimed.
'Even so.'
'An ignorant half-breed?'
'As you say, an ignorant half-breed.'
'You are mad, Rodney.'
'I know it.'
I will not repeat all I said; but, at last, silenced, if not convinced, by the power of this great love, I started with him out into the wild night to seek Jeannette. We went through the village and round the village and round the point, where the wind met us, and the waves broke at our feet with a roar. Passing the row of cabins, with their twinkling lights, we reached the home of Jeannette and knocked at the low door. The Indian mother opened it. I entered, without a word, and took a seat near the hearth, where a drift-wood fire was burning. Jeannette came forward with a surprised look. 'You little think what good fortune is coming to you, child,' I thought, as I noted her coarse dress and the poor furniture of the little room.
Rodney burst at once into his subject.
'Jeannette,' he said, going toward her, 'I have come to take you away with me. You need not go to school; I have given up that idea,—I accept you as you are. You shall have silk dresses and ribbons, like the ladies of the Mission-House this summer. You shall see all great cities, you shall hear beautiful music. You shall have everything you want,—money, bright shillings, as many as you wish. See! Mrs. Corlyne has come with me to show you that it is true. This morning we had orders to leave Mackinac; in a few days we must go. But—listen, Jeanette; I will marry you. You shall be my wife. Do not look so startled. I mean it; it is really true.'
'Qu'est-ce-que-c'est?' said the girl, bewildered by the rapid, eager words.
'Dr. Prescott wishes to marry you, child,' I explained, somewhat sadly, for never had the disparity between them seemed so great. The presence of the Indian mother, the common room, were like silent protests.
'Marry,' ejaculated Jeannette.
'Yes, love' said the surgeon, ardently. 'It is quite true; FatherPiret shall marry us. I will exchange into another regiment, or, ifnecessary, I will resign. Do you understand what I am saying,Jeannette? See! I give you my hand, in token that it is true.'
But, with a quick bound, the girl was across the room. 'What?' she cried. 'You think I marry you? Have you not heard of Baptiste? Know, then, that I love one finger of him more than all you, ten times, hundred times.'
'Baptiste?' repeated Rodney.
'Oui, mon cousin, Baptiste, the fisherman. We marry soon— tenez—la fete de Saint Andre.'
Rodney looked bewildered a moment, then his face cleared; 'Oh! a child engagement? That is one of your customs, I know. But never fear; Father Piret will absolve you from all that. Baptiste shall have a fine new boat; he will let you off for a handful of silver pieces. Do not think of that, Jeannette, but come to me—'
'Je vous abhorre; Je vous deteste,' cried the girl with fury as he approached. 'Baptiste not love me? He love me more than boat and silver dollar,—more than all the world! And I love him; I die for him! Allez-vous-en, traitre!'
Rodney had grown white; he stood before her, motionless, with fixed eyes.
'Jeannette,' I said in French, 'perhaps you do not understand. Dr. Prescott asks you to marry him; Father Piret shall marry you, and all your friends shall come. Dr. Prescott will take you away from this hard life; he will make you rich; he will support your father and mother in comfort. My child, it is wonderful good fortune. He is an educated gentleman, and loves you truly.'
'What is that to me?' replied Jeannette, proudly. 'Let him go, I care not.' She paused a moment. Then, with flashing eyes, she cried, 'Let him go with his fine new boat and silver dollars! He does not believe me? See, then, how I despise him!' And rushing forward, she struck him on the cheek.
Rodney did not stir, but stood gazing at her while the red mark glowed on his white face.
'You know not what love is,' said Jeannette, with indescribable scorn. 'You! You! Ah, mon Baptiste, ou es-tu? But thou wilt kill him,—kill him for his boats and silver dollars!'
'Child!' I said, startled by her fury.
'I am not a child. Je suis femme, moi!' replied Jeannette, folding her arms with haughty grace. 'Allez!' she said, pointing toward the door. We were dismissed. A queen could not have made a more royal gesture.
Throughout the scene the Indian mother had not stopped her knitting.
In four days we were afloat, and the little white fort was deserted. It was a dark afternoon, and we sat clustered on the stern of the steamer, watching the flag come slowly down from its staff in token of the departure of the commanding officer. 'Isle of Beauty, fare thee well,' sang the major's fair young wife with the sound of tears in her sweet voice.
'We shall return,' said the officers. But not one of them ever saw the beautiful island again.
Rodney Prescott served a month or two in Florida, 'taciturn and stiff as ever,' Archie wrote. Then he resigned suddenly, and went abroad. He has never returned, and I have lost all trace of him, so that I cannot say, from any knowledge of my own, how long the feeling lived,—the feeling that swept me along in its train down to the beach-cottage that wild night.
Each man who reads this can decide for himself.
Each woman has decided already.
Last year I met an islander on the cars going eastward. It was the first time he had ever been 'below'; but he saw nothing to admire, that dignified citizen of Mackinac!
'What has become of Jeannette Leblanc?' I asked.
'Jeannette? O, she married that Baptiste, a lazy, good-for-nothing fellow? They live in the same little cabin around the point, and pick up a living most anyhow for their tribe of young ones.'
'Are they happy?'
'Happy?' repeated my islander, with a slow stare. 'Well I suppose they are, after their fashion; I don't know much about them. In my opinion, they are a shiftless set, those French half-breeds round the point.'
'The buildings of the United States Indian Agency on the island ofMackinac were destroyed by fire December 31, at midnight.'—WESTERNNEWSPAPER ITEM.
The old house is gone then! But it shall not depart into oblivion unchronicled. One who has sat under its roof-tree, one who remembers well its rambling rooms and wild garden, will take the pen to write down a page of its story. It is only an episode, one of many; but the others are fading away, or already buried in dead memories under the sod. It was a quaint, picturesque old place, stretching back from the white limestone road that bordered the little port, its overgrown garden surrounded by an ancient stockade ten feet in height, with a massive, slow-swinging gate in front, defended by loopholes. This stockade bulged out in some places and leaned in at others; but the veteran posts, each a tree sharpened to a point, did not break their ranks, in spite of decrepitude; and the Indian warriors, could they have returned from their happy hunting-grounds, would have found the brave old fence of the Agency a sturdy barrier still. But the Indian warriors could not return. The United States agent had long ago moved to Lake Superior, and the deserted residence, having only a mythical owner, left without repairs year after year, and under a cloud of confusion as regarded taxes, titles, and boundaries, became a kind of flotsam property, used by various persons, but belonging legally to no one. Some tenant, tired of swinging the great gate back and forth, had made a little sally port alongside, but otherwise the place remained unaltered; a broad garden with a central avenue of cherry-trees, on each side dilapidated arbors, overgrown paths, and heart-shaped beds, where the first agents had tried to cultivate flowers, and behind the limestone cliffs crowned with cedars. The house was large on the ground, with wings and various additions built out as if at random; on each side and behind were rough outside chimneys clamped to the wall; in the roof over the central part dormer-windows showed a low second storey; and here and there at intervals were outside doors, in some cases opening out into space, since the high steps which once led up to them had fallen down, and remained as they fell, heaps of stones on the ground below. Within were suites of rooms, large and small, showing traces of workmanship elaborate for such a remote locality; the ceilings, patched with rough mortar, had been originally decorated with moulding, the doors were ornamented with scroll-work, and the two large apartments on each side of the entrance-hall possessed chimney-pieces and central hooks for chandeliers. Beyond and behind stretched out the wings; coming to what appeared to be the end of the house on west, there unexpectedly began a new series of rooms turning to the north, each with its outside door; looking for a corresponding labyrinth on the eastern side, there was nothing but a blank wall. The blind stairway went up in a kind of dark well, and once up it was a difficult matter to get down without a plunge from top to bottom, since the undefended opening was just where no one would expect to find it. Sometimes an angle was so arbitrarily walled up that you felt sure there must be a secret chamber there and furtively rapped on the wall to catch the hollow echo within. Then again you opened a door, expecting to step into the wilderness of a garden, and found yourself in a set of little rooms running off on a tangent, one after the other, and ending in a windowless closet and an open cistern. But the Agency gloried in its irregularities, and defied criticism. The original idea of its architect—if there was any—had vanished; but his work remained a not unpleasing variety to summer visitors accustomed to city houses, all built with a definite purpose, and one front door.
After some years of wandering in foreign lands, I returned to my own country, and took up the burden of old associations whose sadness time had mercifully softened. The summer was over; September had begun, but there came to me a great wish to see Mackinac once more; to look again upon the little white fort where I had lived with Archie, my soldier nephew killed at Shiloh. The steamer took me safely across Lake Erie, up the brimming Detroit River, through the enchanted region of the St. Clair flats, and out into broad Lake Huron; there, off Thunder Bay, a gale met us, and for hours we swayed between life and death.
The season for pleasure travelling was over; my fellow-passengers, with one exception, were of that class of Americans who dressed in cheap imitations of fine clothes, are forever travelling, travelling,—taking the steamers not from preference, but because they are less costly than an all-rail route. The thin, listless men, in ill-fitting black clothes and shining tall hats, sat on the deck in tilted chairs hour after hour silent and dreary; the thin listless women, clad in raiment of many colors, remained on the fixed sofas in the cabin hour after hour, silent and weary. At meals they ate indiscriminately everything within range, but continued the same, a weary, dreary, silent band. The one exception was an old man, tall and majestic, with silvery hair and bright, dark eyes, dressed in the garb of a Roman Catholic priest, albeit slightly tinged with frontier innovations. He came on board at Detroit, and as soon as we were under way he exchanged his hat for a cloth cap embroidered with Indian bead-work; and when the cold air, precursor of the gale, struck us on Huron, he wrapped himself in a large capote made of skins, with the fur inward.
In times of danger formality drops from us. During those long hours, when the next moment might have brough death, this old man and I were together; and when at last the cold dawn came, and the disabled steamer slowly ploughed through the angry water around the point, and showed us Mackinac in the distance, we discovered that the island was a mutual friend, and that we knew each other, at least by name; for the silver-haired priest was Father Piret, the hermit of the Chenaux. In the old days, when I was living at the little white fort, I had known Father Piret by reputation, and he had heard of me from the French half-breeds around the point. We landed. The summer hotels were closed, and I was directed to the old Agency, where occasionally a boarder was received by the family then in possession. The air was chilly, and a fine rain was falling, the afterpiece of the equinoctial; the wet storm-flag hung heavily down over the fort on the height, and the waves came in sullenly. All was in sad accordance with my feelings as I thought of the past and its dead, while the slow tears of age moistened my eyes. But the next morning Mackinac awoke, robed in autumn splendor; the sunshine poured down, the straits sparkled back, the forest glowed in scarlet, the larches waved their wild, green hands, the fair-weather flag floated over the little fort, and all was as joyous as though no one had ever died; and indeed it is in glorious days like these that we best realise immortality.
I wandered abroad through the gay forest to the Arch, the Lovers' Leap, and old Fort Holmes, whose British walls had been battered down, for pastime, so that only a caved-in British cellar remained to mark the spot. Returning to the Agency, I learned that Father Piret had called to see me.
'I am sorry that I missed him,' I said; 'he is a remarkable old man.'
The circle at the dinner-table glanced up with one accord. The little minister with the surprised eyes looked at me more surprised than ever; his large wife groaned audibly. The Baptist colporteur peppered his potatoes until they and the plate were black; the Presbyterian doctor, who was the champion of the Protestant party on the island, wished to know if I was acquainted with the latest devices of the Scarlet Woman in relation to the county school-fund.
'But my friends,' I replied, 'Father Piret and I both belong to the past. We discuss not religion, but Mackinac; not the school-fund, but the old associations of the island, which is dear to both of us.'
The four looked at me with distrust; they saw nothing dear about the island, unless it was the price of fresh meat; and as to old associations, they held themselves above such nonsense. So, one and all, they, took beef and enjoyed a season of well-regulated conversation, leaving me to silence and my broiled white-fish; as it was Friday, no doubt they thought the latter a rag of popery.
Very good rags.
But my hostess, a gentle little woman, stole away from these bulwarks of Protestantism in the late afternoon, and sought me in my room, or rather series of rooms, since there were five opening one out of the other, the last three unfurnished, and all the doorless doorways staring at me like so many fixed eyes, until, oppressed by their silent watchfulness, I hung a shawl over the first opening and shut out the whole gazing suite.
'You must not think, Mrs. Corlyne, that we islanders do not appreciateFather Piret,' said the little woman, who belonged to one of the oldisland families, descendants of a chief factor of the fur trade.'There has been some feeling lately against the Catholics—'
'Roman Catholics, my dear,' I said with Anglican particularity.
'But we all love and respect the dear old man as a father.'
'When I was living at the fort, fifteen years ago, I heard occasionally of Father Piret,' I said, 'but he seemed to be almost a mythic personage. What is his history?'
'No one knows. He came here fifty years ago, and after officiating on the island a few years, he retired to a little Indian farm in the Chenaux, where he has lived ever since. Occasionally he holds a service for the half-breeds at Point St. Ignace, but the parish of Mackinac proper has its regular priest, and Father Piret apparently does not hold even the appointment of missionary. Why he remains here—a man educated, refined, and even aristocratic—is a mystery. He seems to be well provided with money; his little house in the Chenaux contains foreign books and pictures, and he is very charitable to the poor Indians. But he keeps himself aloof, and seems to desire no intercourse with the world beyond his letters and papers, which come regularly, some of them from France. He seldom leaves the Straits; he never speaks of himself; always he appears as you saw him, carefully dressed and stately. Each summer when he is seen on the street, there is more or less curiosity about him among the summer visitors, for he is quite unlike the rest of us Mackinac people. But no one can discover anything more than I have told you, and those who have persisted so far as to sail over to the Chenaux either lose their way among the channels, or if they find the house, they never find him; the door is locked, and no one answers.'
'Singular,' I said. 'He has nothing of the hermit about him. He has what I should call a courtly manner.'
'That is it,' replied my hostess, taking up the word; 'some say he came from the French court,—a nobleman exiled for political offences; others think he is a priest under the ban; and there is still a third story, to the effect that he is a French count, who, owing to a disappointment in love, took orders and came to this far-away island, so that he might seclude himself forever from the world.'
'But no one really knows?'
'Absolutely nothing. He is beloved by all the real old island families, whether they are of his faith or not; and when he dies the whole Strait, from Bois Blanc light to far Waugoschance, will mourn for him.'
At sunset the Father came again to see me; the front door of my room was open, and we seated ourselves on the piazza outside. The roof of bark thatch had fallen away, leaving the bare beams overhead twined with brier-roses; the floor and house side were frescoed with those lichen colored spots which show that the gray planks have lacked paint for many long years; the windows had wooden shutters fastened back with irons shaped like the letter S, and on the central door was a brass knocker, and a plate bearing the words, 'United States Agency.'
'When I first came to the island,' said Father Piret, 'this was the residence par excellence. The old house was brave with green and white paint then; it had candelabra on its high mantles, brass andirons on its many hearthstones, curtains for all its little windows, and carpets for all its uneven floors. Much cooking went on, and smoke curled up from all these outside chimneys. Those were the days of the fur trade and Mackinac was a central mart. Hither twice a year came the bateaux from the Northwest, loaded with furs; and in those old, decaying warehouses on the back street of the village were stored the goods sent out from New York, with which the bateaux were loaded again, and after a few days of revelry, during which the improvident voyagers squandered all their hard-earned gains, the train returned westward into 'the countries,' as they called the wilderness beyond the lakes, for another six months of toil. The officers of the little fort on the height, the chief factors of the fur company, and the United States Indian agent, formed the feudal aristocracy of the island; but the agent had the most imposing mansion, and often have I seen the old house shining with lights across its whole broadside of windows, and gay with the sound of a dozen French violins. The garden, now a wilderness, was the pride of the island. Its prim arbors, its spring and spring-house, its flowerbeds, where, with infinite pains, a few hardy plants were induced to blossom; its cherry-tree avenue, whose early red fruit the short summer could scarcely ripen; its annual attempts at vegetables, which never came to maturity,—formed topics for conversation in court circles. Potatoes then as now were left to the mainland Indians, who came over with their canoes heaped with the fine, large thin-jacketed fellows, bartering them all for a loaf or two of bread and a little whiskey.
'The stockade which surrounds the place was at that day a not unnecessary defence. At the time of the payments the island swarmed with Indians, who came from Lake Superior and the Northwest, to receive the government pittance. Camped on the beach as far as the eye could reach, these wild warriors, dressed in all their savage finery, watched the Agency with greedy eyes, as they waited for their turn. The great gate was barred, and sentinels stood at the loopholes with loaded muskets; one by one the chiefs were admitted, stalked up to the office,—that wing on the right,—received the allotted sum, silently selected something from the displayed goods, and as silently departed, watched by quick eyes, until the great gate closed behind them. The guns of the fort were placed so as to command the Agency during payment time; and when, after several anxious, watchful days and nights, the last brave had received his portion, and the last canoe started away toward the north, leaving only the comparatively peaceful mainland Indians behind, the island drew a long breath of relief.'
'Was there any real danger?' I asked.
'The Indians are ever treacherous.' replied the Father. Then he was silent, and seemed lost in revery. The pure, ever-present breeze of Mackinac played in his long silvery hair, and his bright eyes roved along the wall of the old house; he had a broad forehead, noble features, and commanding presence, and as he sat there, recluse as he was,—aged, alone, without a history, with scarcely a name or a place in the world,—he looked, in the power of his native-born dignity, worthy of a royal coronet.
'I was thinking of old Jacques,' he said, after a long pause.
'He once lived in these rooms of yours, and died on that bench at the end of the piazza, sitting in the sunshine, with his staff in his hand.'
'Who was he?' I asked. 'Tell me the story, Father.'
'There is not much to tell, madame; but in my mind he is so associated with this old house, that I always think of him when I come here, and fancy I see him on that bench.
'When the United States agent removed to the Apostle Islands, at the western end of Lake Superior, this place remained for some time uninhabited. But one winter morning smoke was seen coming out of that great chimney on the side; and in the course of the day several curious persons endeavored to open the main gate, at that time the only entrance. But the gate was barred within, and as the high stockade was slippery with ice, for some days the mystery remained unsolved. The islanders, always slow, grow torpid in the winter like bears; they watched the smoke in the daytime and the little twinkling light by night; they talked of spirits both French and Indian as they went their rounds, but they were too indolent to do more. At length the fort commandant heard of the smoke, and saw the light from his quarters on the height. As government property, he considered the Agency under his charge, and he was preparing to send a detail of men to examine the deserted mansion in its ice-bound garden, when its mysterious occupant appeared in the village; it was an old man, silent, gentle, apparently French. He carried a canvas bag, and bought a few supplies of the coarsest description, as though he was very poor. Unconscious of observation, he made his purchases and returned slowly homeward, barring the great gate behind him. Who was he? No one knew. Whence and when came he? No one could tell.
'The detail of soldiers from the fort battered at the gate, and when the silent old man opened it they followed him through the garden, where his feet had made a lonely trail over the deep snow, round to the side door. They entered, and found some blankets on the floor, a fire of old knots on the hearth, a long narrow box tied with a rope; his poor little supplies stood in one corner,—bread, salted fish, and a few potatoes,—and over the fire hung a rusty tea-kettle, its many holes carefully plugged with bits of rag. It was a desolate scene; the old man in the great rambling empty house in the heart of an arctic winter. He said little, and the soldiers could not understand his language; but they left him unmolested, and going back to the fort, they told what they had seen. Then the major went in person to the Agency, and gathered from the stranger's words that he had come to the island over the ice in the track of the mail-carrier; that he was an emigrant from France on his way to the Red River of the North, but his strength failing, owing to the intense cold, he had stopped at the island, and seeing the uninhabited house, he had crept into it, as he had not enough money to pay for a lodging elsewhere. He seemed a quiet inoffensive old man, and after all the islanders had had a good long slow stare at him he was left in peace, with his little curling smoke by day and his little twinkling light by night, although no one thought of assisting him; there is a strange coldness of heart in these northern latitudes.
'I was then living at the Chenaux; there was a German priest on the island; I sent over two half-breeds every ten days for the mail, and through them I heard of the stranger at the Agency. He was French, they said, and it was rumored in the saloons along the frozen docks that he had seen Paris. This warmed my heart; for, madame, I spent my youth in Paris,—the dear, the beautiful city! So I came over to the island in my dog-sledge; a little thing is an event in our long, long winter. I reached the village in the afternoon twilight, and made my way alone to the Agency; the old man no longer barred his gate, and swinging it open with difficulty, I followed the trail through the snowy silent garden round to the side of this wing,—the wing you occupy. I knocked; he opened; I greeted him and entered. He had tried to furnish his little room with the broken relics of the deserted dwelling; a mended chair, a stool, a propped-up table, a shelf with two or three battered tin dishes, and some straw in one corner comprised the whole equipment, but the floor was clean, the old dishes polished, and the blankets neatly spread over the straw which formed the bed. On the table the supplies were ranged in order; there was a careful pile of knots on one side of the hearth; and the fire was evidently husbanded to last as long as possible. He gave me the mended chair, lighted a candle-end stuck in a bottle, and then seating himself on the stool, he gazed at me in his silent way until I felt like an uncourteous intruder. I spoke to him in French, offered my services; in short, I did my best to break down the barrier of his reserve; there was something pathetic in the little room and its lonely occupant, and, besides, I knew from his accent that we were both from the banks of the Seine.
'Well, I heard his story,—not then, but afterward; it came out gradually during the eleven months of our acquaintance; for he became my friend,—almost the only friend of fifty years. I am an isolated man, madame. It must be so. God's will be done!'
The Father paused, and looked off over the darkening water; he did not sigh, neither was his calm brow clouded, but there was in his face what seemed to me a noble resignation, and I have ever since felt sure that the secret of his exile held in it a self-sacrifice; for only self-sacrifice can produce that divine expression.
Out in the straits shone the low-down green light of a schooner; beyond glimmered the mast-head star of a steamer, with the line of cabin lights below, and away on the point of Bois Blanc gleamed the steady radiance of the lighthouse showing the way to Lake Huron; the broad overgrown garden cut us off from the village, but above on the height we could see the lighted windows of the fort, although still the evening sky retained that clear hue that seems so much like daylight when one looks aloft, although the earth lies in dark shadow below. The Agency was growing indistinct even to our near eyes; its white chimneys loomed up like ghosts, the shutters sighed in the breeze, and the planks of the piazza creaked causelessly. The old house was full of the spirits of memories, and at twilight they came abroad and bewailed themselves. 'The place is haunted,' I said, as a distant door groaned drearily.
'Yes,' replied Father Piret, coming out of his abstraction, 'and this wing is haunted by my old French friend. As time passed and the spring came, he fitted up in his fashion the whole suite of five rooms. He had his parlor, sleeping room, kitchen and store-room, the whole furnished only with the articles I have already described, save that the bed was of fresh green boughs instead of straw. Jacques occupied all the rooms with ceremonious exactness; he sat in the parlor, and too I must sit there when I came; in the second room he slept and made his careful toilet, with his shabby old clothes; the third was his kitchen and dining-room; and the fourth, that little closet on the right, was his store-room. His one indulgence was coffee; coffee he must and would have, though he slept on straw and went without meat. But he cooked to perfection in his odd way, and I have often eaten a dainty meal in that little kitchen, sitting at the propped-up table, using the battered tin dishes, and the clumsy wooden spoons fashioned with a jackknife. After we had become friends Jacques would accept occasional aid from me, and it gave me a warm pleasure to think that I had added something to his comfort, were it only a little sugar, butter, or a pint of milk. No one disturbed the old man; no orders came from Washington respecting the Agency property, and the major had not the heart to order him away. There were more than houses enough for the scanty population of the island, and only a magnate could furnish these large rambling rooms. So the soldiers were sent down to pick the red cherries for the use of the garrison, but otherwise Jacques had the whole place to himself, with all its wings, outbuildings, arbors, and garden beds.
'But I have not told you all. The fifth apartment in the suite—the square room with four windows and an outside door—was the old man's sanctuary, here were his precious relics, and here he offered up his devotions, half Christian, half pagan, with never-failing ardor. From the long narrow box which the fort soldiers had noticed came an old sabre, a worn and faded uniform of the French grenadiers, a little dried sprig, its two withered leaves tied in their places with thread, and a coarse woodcut of the great Napoleon; for Jacques was a soldier of the Empire. The uniform hung on the wall, carefully arranged on pegs as a man would wear it, and the sabre was brandished from the empty sleeve as though a hand held it; the woodcut framed in green, renewed from day to day, pine in the winter, maple in the summer, occupied the opposite side, and under it was fastened the tiny withered sprig, while on the floor below was a fragment of buffalo-skin which served the soldier for a stool when he knelt in prayer. And did he pray to Napoleon, you ask? I hardly know. He had a few of the Church's prayers by heart, but his mind was full of the Emperor as he repeated them, and his eyes were fixed upon the picture as though it was the face of a saint. Discovering this, I labored hard to bring him to a clearer understanding of the faith; but all in vain. He listened patiently, even reverently, although I was much the younger; at intervals he replied, "Oui, mon pere," and the next day he said his prayers to the dead Emperor as usual. And this was not the worst; in place of an amen, there came a fierce imprecation against the whole English nation. After some months I succeeded in persuading him to abandon this termination; but I always suspected that it was but a verbal abandonment, and that, mentally, the curse was as strong as ever.
'Jacques had been a soldier of the Empire, as it is called,—a grenadier under Napoleon; he had loved his General and Emperor in life, and adored him in death with the affectionate pertinacity of a faithful dog. One hot day during the German campaign, Napoleon, engaged in conference with some of his generals, was disturbed by the uneasy movements of his horse; looking around for some one to brush away the flies, he saw Jacques, who stood at a short distance watching his Emperor with admiring eyes. Always quick to recognize the personal affection he inspired, Napoleon signed to the grenadier to approach, "Here, mon brave," he said, smiling; "get a branch and keep the flies from my horse a few moments." The proud soldier obeyed; he heard the conversation of the Emperor; he kept the flies from his horse. As he talked, Napoleon idly plucked a little sprig from the branch as it came near his hand, and played with it; and when, the conference over, with a nod of thanks to Jacques, he rode away, the grenadier stopped, picked up the sprig fresh from the Emperor's hand and placed it carefully in his breast-pocket. The Emperor had noticed him; the Emperor had called him 'mon brave'; the Emperor had smiled upon him. This was the glory of Jacques's life. How many times have I listened to the story, told always in the same words, with the same gestures in the same places! He remembered every sentence of the conversation he had heard, and repeated them with automatic fidelity, understanding nothing of their meaning; even when I explained their probable connection with the campaign, my words made no impression upon him, and I could see that they conveyed no idea to his mind. He was made for a soldier; brave and calm, he reasoned not, but simply obeyed, and to this blind obedience there was added a heart full of affection which, when concentrated upon the Emperor, amounted to idolatry. Napoleon possessed a singular personal power over his soldiers; they all loved him, but Jacques adored him.