CHAPTER XIV
A PROVISIONAL BARGAIN
I began my day as early as I thought it wise to disturb the sleepers around me, and by the time the sun was two hours high I had accomplished several things. I had confessed to the priest, had had a clean lodge of green boughs built for the woman, and had bargained and bantered with the Indians, and blustered over them with knowledge of their language till they accorded me reluctant grins. They had a village of seven or eight hundred souls, and I found them a marked people. They were cleaner than any savages I had seen,—the women were modest and almost neat,—and their manners had a somewhat European air. I judged them to be politicians rather than warriors, for the braves, though well shaped and wiry, lacked the look of ferocious hardihood that terrified white men in the Iroquois race. But I found them keen traders.
One purchase that I made took time. I wished a new suit of skins for the woman, and I went from lodge to lodge, searching and brow-beating and dangling my trinkets till I was ready to join with the squaws in their laughter at my expense. But my purchase once completed pleasured me greatly. I had found it a little here and a little there, and it was worthy any princess of the woods. I had gathered blouse, skirt, leggings, and moccasins, all new, and made of white dressed deerskin pliable as velvet to the hand. They looked to me full of feminine bravery. The leggings and moccasins were beaded and quill broidered, and the skirt was fringed and trimmed with tiny hawk's bells.
I took the garments to the green lodge, laid them out in order, saw that there were trenchers of fresh water, and brought what conveniences we had from the canoe. The pity of the situation came upon me hard. I had to be father and friend,—lover I could not be. The woman had great self-control, but she would need it. Well, I could trust her to do her best. I went to find her.
As yet I had not said good-morning to her, although I had seen her from the distance, and knew that she had breakfasted and had talked with Father Nouvel. She was sitting now under a beech tree on the headland, and when I bent before her she shook her head.
"It is not real," she said, with a look over water and forest. "It is all a dream."
I stopped to send a group of curious squaws upon their way. It was indeed like a pictured spectacle,—the green wood, the Indian village, and the headland-guarded bay opening northward over rolling water.
"Yes, it is a dream," I agreed. "You will soon wake. Where would you like the wakening to take place, mademoiselle? At Meudon?"
She looked up with a smile. "What would you like to know about me?" she asked, with a sober directness, which, like her smile, was friendly and brave. "You heard something last night. I am entirely willing to tell you more. But is it not wise for us to know as little as possible about each other?"
"Why, mademoiselle?"
She hesitated. "As we stand now," she explained slowly, "we have no past nor future. We live in a fantasy. We are cold and hungry, but life is so strange that we forget our bodies. It is all as unreal as a mirage. When it is over, we part. If we part knowing nothing of each other, it will all seem like a dream."
I thought a moment. "Then you think that we must guard against growing interested in each other, mademoiselle?"
She looked at me gravely. "Yes. Do you not think so, monsieur?
'Friends for the night's bivouac.' Those were your words."
Now was here a woman who felt deeply and talked lightly? I had not met such. "It is wise," I rejoined, "but difficult." I took the crayon from my pocket and began drawing faces on the white limestone rock at my side. I drew idly and scowled at my work. "The Indians can do better," I lamented. "Was your cousin, Benjamin Starling, clever with his pencil, mademoiselle?"
She drew back, but she answered me fairly. "Very clever," she said quietly. "It was a talent. Why do you ask, monsieur?"
"I find myself thinking of him." I dropped the crayon. "Listen, mademoiselle. I must ask you some questions. Believe me, I have reasons. Now as to your cousin,—is he alive?"
She looked off at the water. "I do not know, monsieur."
She had become another woman. I hated Benjamin Starling that his name could so instantly sap the life from her tone.
"Please look at me," I begged irritably. "Mademoiselle, I think that I must ask you to tell me more,—to tell me much more."
She rose. "Is it necessary?"
I bowed. "Else I should not ask it. Please sit, mademoiselle."
She sat where my hand pointed. "You know that we were Tories," she began, in the quiet monotone I had learned to expect from her under stress, "and that our family followed King James to France. My parents died. I had no brothers or sisters, and so, a year ago, I came to the Colonies where I had friends. Later, my cousin followed, and we were betrothed. We had the same cause at heart, and our joint estates would give us some power. We planned to use them for that purpose."
"And your capture? Did your cousin know of it?"
"Monsieur, you say that this is necessary? My nurse had come to America, and married a settler, in a village on the frontier. She was ill, and I went to see her, and stayed some days. My cousin followed, and stayed at a neighboring house. One night the Indians came. The woman's husband was away, and the little maid-servant ran at the first outcry. I was alone with the woman, who could not leave her bed. I cut my hair roughly, put on a suit of her husband's clothing, and took a musket. It was a blockhouse, and I hoped that I might hold the Indians off for a time if they thought me a man."
"And your cousin?"
"He came to me. He was running. He said it was of no use. He had seen men brained. There were legions of Indians. He said there was nothing left but flight. He tried to take me with him."
"And when you would not go? When you would not desert?"
"Monsieur, he went alone."
I laid myself down on the grass before her, and covered her hands with mine. "I am not quite a brute," I said. "I had to ask it. Look, look, mademoiselle, it is all over. See, the sky is gentle, and the Indians are friendly, and my sword—— Well, I will not leave you, mademoiselle, until you tell me to go. But I must say more. Your cousin—— Is he Lord Starling?"
"Yes."
"Lord Starling is probably alive. If he is, he is searching for you.
Have you thought of that?"
"But the wilderness,—the terrible leagues of wilderness! He could not track me, monsieur."
"When there is money and influence, even the wilderness has messengers.
He was close to the person of James. Is he a Catholic?"
"He professed it, monsieur."
I shook my head. "You are very bitter. You need not be. He was insane that night. I have known the sight of Indian butchery to turn good men into whimpering animals. He was not responsible. I know that he is lavishing time and fortune and strength to find you now."
I thought she winced. "You know this, monsieur?"
It was my turn to look away. "I know something of a man's heart," I answered deliberately. "If I loved you, mademoiselle, and lost you—lost you, and played the craven,—I should find you. The wilderness would not matter. I should find you. I should find you, and retrieve myself—some way. Lord Starling has wit and daring, else he would not be an exile, else you would not have promised to marry him. Be assured that he is following you, and is probably not far behind. Do you want him to find you, mademoiselle?"
I turned with the last word, and looked her full in the face. It was a stupid trick, but it served. I had her answer.
"There!" I cried, and I laughed a little jerkily. "Never mind. Don't answer. We have talked enough, mademoiselle. We will be married at noon to-day. Ah, you never loved him, else, no matter what he had done, you could never look as you look now. Wherever he is, or whatever kind of man he may be, I do him no wrong in giving you my name to-day." I took the pictured birch bark from my pocket, and tore it in fine strips. "A useless map," I said in explanation. "Mademoiselle, may I have your finger to measure?"
She gave me her hand, and I circled her finger with a grass blade, and warned her that the ring that I should give her would be almost as crude. She was trying to keep herself from asking questions, and was going to succeed. I liked that. It was useless to terrify her with fables of prowling Indians, and profiles on bark. And then, what was there to tell? I knew at once too much and too little. I took some bent gold wire from my pocket, and showed it to her.
"I am going to plait it into a braid for the ring," I said. "I think that I can file the ends, and make it serve. It is all I have. I wear no jewelry, and would not give you one of the brass rings we use in trade. This is at least gold."
She watched me straighten the kinks in the wire. "You took that from something you valued," she said. "I will wear the brass ring. Surely you can replace this wire where it belongs."
I shook my head. "It was a filigree frame," I volunteered.
I had spoken with as little thought as a dog barks, and quite as witlessly. I knew that as soon as I heard my words. I looked at the woman. But she was not going to question me.
"If it was a frame, it held a miniature," she said quietly. "Please twist the wire around it again. I prefer the brass ring."
"Because?"
"I would not rob any one. If you have carried the picture all these leagues, it is a token from some one you love; some one who loves you. I have no part in that."
I went on plaiting the wire. "The woman of the miniature will know no robbery," I said, "because she knew no possession. Mademoiselle, you seem in every way to be a woman with whom it is wisest to have a clear understanding."
"You need tell me nothing."
"It is better to tell the whole, now that you have stumbled on a part. I was nothing to that woman whose face I carried with me. She did not know I had the picture. I might never have told her. It was nothing, you see. It was all in a man's mind, and the man now has sterner matters to fill his thought. I would like you to wear this ring."
"Why not the other?"
I laughed at her a little. "I shall try not to give you spurious metal,—even granted that our bargain is provisional. Now, mademoiselle, may I take you to the lodge I have had made? In two hours we are to be married."
She followed at my side, and I took her to the lodge, and pointed her within. She glanced at what I had done, and I saw her bite her lip. She turned to me without a smile.
"It all makes it harder," she said indefinitely. "Harder to think of the wrong that I am doing you and the other woman."
I cannot abide misapprehension. We were alone. "Wait!" I begged. "Mademoiselle, you cannot probe a man's thought. Often he cannot probe his own. But I am not unhappy. A man marries many brides, and Ambition, if the truth be told, is, perhaps, the dearest. I shall embrace her. You should be able to understand."
"But the woman. She must have seen that you loved her. She may have cared more in return than you knew."
I looked at her. "The lady of the miniature," I said slowly, "had many lovers. If she showed me special favor, I assure you I did not know. But even if her fancy did stray toward me,—which I think it did not,—why, she was—— She was a winsome, softly smiling, gentle lady, mademoiselle. She was not fire, and spirit, and courage, and loyalty, and temper, and tenderness. No, she was not in the least like that. I think that she would soon forget. Have we dropped this subject forever, mademoiselle?"
She made me a grave curtsy. "Till we reach Montreal," she promised, and she did not raise her eyes.
We were married at noon. The altar stood under an oak tree, and the light sifted in patterns on the ground. I wore satin, and ribbon, and shining buckle, for I carried those gewgaws in my cargo, but my finery did not shame my bride's attire. She stood proud, and rounded, and supple in her deerskins, and a man might have gloried in her. Seven hundred Indians, glistening like snakes with oil and vermilion, squatted around us, but they held themselves as lifeless as marionettes. It was so still that I heard the snore of a sleeping dog and the gulls in the harbor squawking over a floating fish. Father Nouvel spoke very slowly. This was a real marriage, a sacrament, to him.
As we turned from the ceremony, Onanguissé came forward. He was not painted, but he wore a mantle of embroidered buffalo skin, and his hair, which was dressed high with eagle's feathers, was powdered with down from the breasts of white gulls. He stood in front of the woman.
"Listen," he said. "I speak to the white thrush. She cannot understand my words, but her heart has called to my heart, and that will teach her to know my meaning. Brethren, bear witness. An eagle cares naught for a partridge, but an eagle calls to an eagle though there be much water and many high rocks between. You know the lodge of Onanguissé. It has fire, but no warmth. I am old, and age needs love to warm it, but I am alone. First my wife, then my two sons, last of all, at the time the chestnuts were in blossom, my daughter Mimi,—the Master of Life called them one by one. I have washed my face, and I have combed my hair, yet who can say I have not mourned? My life has been as dead as the dried grass that thatches the muskrat's lodges. When have any of you seen Onanguissé smile? Yet think not that I stretch out my hands to the country of souls. I will live, and sit at the council fire till many of you who are before me have evaporated like smoke from a pipe. For I am of the race of the bear, and the bear never yields while one drop of blood is left. And the Master of Life has been kind. He has brought me at last a woman who has an eagle's eyesight and a bear's endurance. She is worthy to be of my family. I have waited for such an one. Her speech is strange, but her blood answers mine. It is idle to mourn. I will replace the dead with the living. This woman shall be no more the white thrush. She shall be Mimi, the turtle dove, the daughter of Onanguissé. Brethren, bear witness. Mimi is no longer dead. She stands here." He stepped closer to the woman. "I give you this cloak that you may wrap me in your memory," he went on. "I hereby confirm my words;" and thereupon, he threw over her shoulders a long, shining mantle made of the small skins of the white hare. It was a robe for an empress.
I stepped forward, then stood still, and resolved to trust the woman as she had asked.
"You are adopted," I prompted softly, with no motion of my lips.
She understood. Wrapped in her white cloak, she curtsied low before Onanguissé. Then she turned to me. "Tell him," she said, "that my heart is wiser than my tongue; the one is dumb, but the other answers. Say to him that I see his face, and it tells me that he has lived wisely and with honor. I am now of his family. I, too, will strive to live wisely, that he need not be shamed. Say to him that I will not forget." She stopped with her glance upon the old chief, and her eyes held something I had not seen in them before. With me, their self-reliance had sometimes been hard, almost provocative, as if the spirit behind them defied the world to break it down. But as she met this kindness—this kindness that was instinctive, and not a matter of prudence or reason—all hardness vanished, and her dignity was almost wistful. I thought of my mother, the saddened head of a great house, who had seen the ruin of home and heart, but whose spirit would not die. Something in this woman's face, as she stood silent, suddenly gave me back the vision of my mother as I had seen her last. I looked with my heart beating hard. The hush lasted fully a moment, then the woman drew her cloak closer, curtsied again, and walked back to her green lodge.
I turned to the chief, and would have translated what had been said, but after the first phrase, he motioned me to silence. "She has taken my robe. She has become of my family. That is sufficient." He lifted his calumet, and went to give orders for the feasting.
So the priest and I stood alone. He looked at me, and shook his head. His mouth was smiling, but I saw him brush at his eyes. "You have married a woman of great spirit, monsieur," he said, with a touch of his hand on my sleeve. "They are rare,—most rare." He stopped. "Yet the roedeer is not made for the paddock," he said impersonally.
I laughed, and it sounded exultant. I felt the blood hammer in my temples. "Nor can the thrush be tamed to sit the finger like the parrakeet," I completed. "I understand that, Father Nouvel."
The wedding feast followed. Madame de Montlivet, the priest, Onanguissé, and I sat in a semicircle on the ground, and slaves served us with wooden trenchers of food. We each had our separate service, like monks in a refectory, but we were not treated with equal state, for the woman drank from a copper-trimmed ladle, made from the polished skull of a buffalo, while my cup was a dried gourd. We ate in ceremonial silence, and were sunk in our own thoughts. There was food till the stomach sickened at its gross abundance: whitefish, broth, sagamité, the feet of a bear, the roasted tail of a beaver. I watched the slaves bring the food and bear it away, and I said to myself that I was sitting at my wedding feast,—a feast to celebrate a false marriage.
After the feast, the calumet was danced before us. Still there was silence between the woman and myself as we sat side by side. I wondered if she realized that this strange dance was still further confirmation of what we had done; that it was part of the ceremony of our marriage. It was a picture as unreal, as incomprehensible, as the fate we had invited. The sun was westering, and shone full upon the dancing braves. Their corded muscles and protruding eyes made them ghastly as tortured wretches of some red-lit inferno. There was no laughter nor jesting. The kettle-drum rumbled like water in a cave, and the chant of the singers wailed, and died, and wailed again. And this was for my wedding. I looked down at the woman's hand that bore my ring, and saw that the strong, nervous fingers were gripped till they were bloodless. What was she thinking? I tried to meet her look, but it was rapt and awed. A wave of heat ran through me; the wild music beat into my blood. This savage ritual that I had looked at with alien eyes suddenly took to itself the dignity of the terrible wilderness that bound us. The pageantry of its barbarism seized upon me; it was a fitting setting for one kind of marriage,—not a marriage of flowers and dowry, but the union of two great, stormy hearts who, through clash and turmoil, had found peace at last. But ours was a mock marriage, and we had not found peace. My breath choked me. I leaped to my feet, and begged Onanguissé to end the ceremony, and let me do my share. I knew what was my part as bridegroom, and Pierre and Labarthe were waiting with their arms laden. I distributed hatchets, Brazil tobacco, and beads from Venice. Then I turned to Onanguissé.
"We go to the land of the Malhominis, to the wild rice people. They live toward the south-west?"
He nodded. "Across La Baye des Puants as the wild goose flies. Then down till you find the mouth of the wild rice river. But why go till another sunrise?"
I hesitated. But I thought of the shadowing Huron, and decided that I could elude him best at night. "We are in haste," I told Onanguissé, and I pointed the men toward their work.
But before I myself had time to step toward the canoes, I felt the woman's touch upon my arm. Though, in truth, it was odd that I felt it, for the movement was light as the brushing of a grass stalk.
"Monsieur, do we go now?" she asked. "You have had no opportunity for council with these Indians, yet I see that they are powerful."
She was watching my interests. I laid my fingers on hers, and looked full at her as I had not done since we had been man and wife. Her eyes were mournful as they often were, but they were starry with a thought I could not read. The awe and the wonder were still there, and her fingers were unsteady under mine. I dropped to my knees.
"I have done more than you saw," I said, with my eyes on hers. "I have talked with Onanguissé, and have smoked a full pipe with the old men in council. Thank you for your interest. Thank you, Madame de Montlivet."
But she would not look at me bent before her. "That I wish you to do your best, unhampered by me, does not mean that I wish you success," she said, with her head high, and she went to Onanguissé, and curtsied her adieus. Her last words were with Father Nouvel, and she hid her eyes for a moment, while he blessed her and said good-by.
Our canoes pointed to the sunset as we rounded the headland and slid outward. On the shore, the Indian women chanted a hymn to Messou,—to Messou, the Maker of Life, and the God of Marriage, to whom, on our behalf, many pipes had been smoked that day.