A HEARTACHE FOR SOME ONE.
"Jeanne," exclaimed Father Rameau, "thou art wanted at the Chapter house."
He stood in the doorway of the little cottage and glanced curiously at the two inmates. Pani often amused herself cutting fringe for Wenonah, under the impression that it was needed in haste, and she was very happy over it. A bowl of violets and wild honeysuckle stood on the table, and some green branches hung about giving the room the odor of the new season and an air of rejoicing.
"What now?" She took his wrinkled old hand in hers so plump and dimpled. "Have I committed some new sin? I have been so glad for days and days that I could only rejoice."
"No, not sin. It is to hear a strange story and to be happier, perhaps."
He looked curiously at her. "Oh, something has happened!" she cried. Was it possible M. St. Armand had returned? For days her mind had been full of him. And he would be the guest of the Fleurys.
"Yes, I should spoil it in the telling, and I had strict injunctions." There was an air of mystery about him.
Surely there was no trouble. But what could they want with her? A strange story! Could some one have learned about her mother or her father?
"I will change my attire in a moment. Pani, Margot will gladly come and keep you company."
"Nay, little one, I am not a baby to be watched," Pani protested.
Jeanne laughed. She looked very sweet and charming in her blue and white frock made in a plain fashion, for it did not seem becoming in her to simulate the style of the great ladies. A soft, white kerchief was drawn in a knot about her shoulders, showing the shapely throat that was nearer ivory than pearl. In the knot she drew a few violets. Head gear she usually disdained, but now she put over her curls a dainty white cap that made a delicious contrast with the dark rings nestling below the edge. A pretty, lissome girl, with a step so light it would not have crushed the grass under her feet, had there been any.
"There seems a great stir in the town," she said.
They had turned into St. Anne's street and were going toward the church.
"The new Governor General Hull is to come in a few weeks, and the officers have word to look him up a home, for governors have not lived in Detroit before. No doubt there will be fine times among the Americans."
"And there flies a white flag down at the river's edge—has that something to do with it?"
"Oh, the boat came in last evening. It is one of the great men up at the North, I think in the fur company. But he has much influence over the Indian tribes, and somehow there is a whisper that there may be disaffection and another union such as there was in Pontiac's time, which heaven forbid! He is called the White Chief."
"The White Chief!" Jeanne stopped short in a maze of astonishment.
"That has nothing to do with thee," said the priest. He preferred her interest to run in another channel.
"But—I was on his island. I saw his wife and children, you remember. Oh, I must see him—"
"Not now;"—and her guide put out his hand.
"Oh, no," and she gave a short laugh. "As if I would go running after a strange man; a great chief! But he is not an Indian. He is French."
"I do remember, yes. There seems a great commotion, as if all the ships had come in. The winter was so long and cold that business is all the more brisk. Here, child, pay a little attention to where you are going. There is a lack of reverence in you young people that pains me."
"Pardon me, father." Jeanne knelt on the church steps and crossed herself. She had run up here in the dark the first night she had been back in Detroit, just to kneel and give thanks, but she had told no one.
Then she walked decorously beside him. There was the Chapel of Retreat, a room where the nuns came and spent hours on their knees. They passed that, going down a wide hall. On one side some young girls sat doing fine embroidery for religious purposes. At the end a kind of reception room, and there were several people in this now, two priests and three woman in the garb of Ursuline nuns.
Jeanne glanced around. A sort of chill crept over her. The room was bare and plain except a statue of the Virgin, and some candles and crucifixes. Nearly in the center stood a table with a book of devotions on it.
"This is Jeanne Angelot," exclaimed Father Rameau. She, in her youth and health and beauty, coming out of the warm and glowing sunshine of May, brought with her an atmosphere and radiance that seemed like a sudden sunrise in the dingy apartment. The three women in the coif and gown of the Ursulines fingered their beads and, after sharp glances at the maid, dropped their eyes, and their faces fell into stolid lines.
Another woman rose from the far corner and her gown made a swish on the bare floor. She came almost up to Jeanne, who shrank back in an inexplicable terror, a motion that brought a spasm of color to the newcomer's face, and a gasp for breath.
She was, perhaps, a little above the medium height, slim alway and now very thin. Her eyes were sunken, with grayish shadows underneath, her cheeks had a hollow where fullness should have been, her lips were compressed in a nearly straight line. She was not old, but asceticism had robbed her of every indication of youth, had made severity the leading indication in her countenance.
"Jeanne Angelot," she repeated. "You are quite sure, Father, those garments belonged to her?"
The poor woman felt the secret antipathy and she, too, seemed to contract, to realize the mysterious distance between them, the unlikeness of which she had not dreamed. For in her narrow life of devotion she had endeavored to crucify all human feelings and affections. That was her bounden duty for her girlhood's sin. Girls were poor, weak creatures and their wills counseled them wrongly, wickedly. She had come to snatch this child, the result of her own selfish dreams, her waywardness, from a like fate. She should be housed, safe, kept from evil. The nun, too, had dreamed, although Berthê Campeau had said, "She is a wild little thing and it is suspected she has Indian blood in her veins." But it was the rescue of a soul to the service of God, the soul she was answerable for, not the ardor of human love.
The father made a slow inclination of the head.
"They were upon her that night she was dropped in the Pani's lap, and the card pinned to her. Then two letters curiously wrought upon her thigh."
"Jeanne, Jeanne, I am your mother."
It was the woman who was the suppliant, who felt a strange misgiving about this spirited girl with resolute eyes and poise of the head like a bird who would fly the next moment. And yet it was not the entreaty of starved and waiting love, that would have clasped arms about the slim, proud figure that stood almost defiant, suspicious, unbelieving.
The others had heard the story and there was no surprise in their countenances.
Jeanne seemed at first like a marble image. The color went out of her cheeks but her eyes were fixed steadfastly upon the woman, their blue so clear, so penetrating, that she shrank farther into herself, seemed thinner and more wan.
"Your mother," and Father Rameau would fain have taken the girl's hand, but she suddenly clasped them behind her back. There was incredulity in the look, repulsion. What if there were some plot? She glanced at Father Gilbert but his cold eyes expressed only disapprobation.
"My mother," she said slowly. "My mother has been dead years, and I owe love and gratitude to the Indian woman, Pani, who has cared for me with all fondness."
"You do not as yet understand," interposed Father Rameau. "You have not heard the story."
She had in her mind the splendid motherhood of Miladi as she had seen it in that beautiful island home.
"A mother would not desert her child and leave it to the care of strangers, Indian enemies perhaps, and send a message that she was dead," was the proud reply.
Jeanne Angelot's words cut like a knife. There was no sign of belief in her eyes, no dawning tenderness.
The woman bowed her head over her clasped hands and swayed as if she would fall.
"It is right," she answered in a voice that might have come from the grave. "It is part of my punishment. I had no right to bring this child into the world. Holy Mother, I accept, but let me snatch her soul from perdition!"
Jeanne's face flamed scarlet. "I trust the good Father above," she declared with an accent of uplifted faith that irradiated her with serene strength. "Once in great peril he saved me. I will trust my cause to him and he will clear my way."
"Thou ignorant child!" declared Father Gilbert. "Thou hast no human love in thy breast. There must be days and weeks of penance and discipline before thou art worthy even to touch this woman's hand. She is thy mother. None other hath any right to thee. Thou must be trained in obedience, in respect; thy pride and indifference must be cast out, evil spirits that they be. She hath suffered for thy sake; she must have amends when thou art in thy right mind. Thou wert given to the Church in Holy Baptism, and now she will reclaim thee."
Jeanne turned like a stag at bay, proud, daring, defiant. It was some evil plot. Could a true mother lend herself to such a cruel scheme? Why was she not drawn to her, instead of experiencing this fear and repulsion? Would they keep her here, shut her up in a dark room as they had years ago, when she had kicked and screamed until Father Rameau had let her out to liberty and the glorious sunlight? Could she not make one wild dash now—
There was a shuffling of steps in the hall and a glitter of trappings. The Commandant of the Fort stepped forward to the doorway and glanced in. The priests questioned with their eyes, the nuns turned aside.
"We were told we should find Father Rameau here. There is some curious business. Ah, here is the girl herself, Mademoiselle Jeanne Angelot. There is a gentleman here desirous of meeting her, and has a strange story for her ear. Can we have a private room—"
"Mademoiselle Jeanne Angelot is in the care of the Church and her mother, who has come to claim her;" was the emphatic reply.
"Her mother!" The man beside the Commandant stepped forward. "Her mother is dead," he said, gravely.
"The Sieur Gaston de la Touchê Angelot, better known by repute as the White Chief of the Island," announced the officer; and the guest bowed to them all.
The woman fell on her knees and bowed her head to the floor. The man glanced about the small concourse. He was tall, nearer forty than thirty, of a fine presence, and, though bronzed by exposure, was handsome, and not only that, but noble as to face; the kind of man to compel admiration and respect, and with the air of authority that sways in an unquestioning manner. His eyes rested on the girl. The same proud bearing, though with virginal softness and pliability, the same large steady eyes, both with the wondering look as they rushed to each other's glance.
"If the tale I have heard, or rather have pieced out from vague bits and suggestions, and the similarity of name be true, I think I have a right to claim this girl as my daughter, supposed dead for years. There were some trinkets found on her, and there were two initials wrought in her fair baby limb by my hand. Can I see these articles?"
Then he crossed to the girl and studied her from head to foot, smiled with a little triumph, and faced the astonished group.
"I have marked her with my eyes as well," he said with a smile. "Jeanne, do you not feel that the same blood flows through our veins? Does not some mysterious voice of nature assure you that I am your father, even before the proofs are brought to light? You must know—"
Ah, did she not know! The voice spoke with no uncertain sound. Jeanne Angelot went to her father's arms.
The little group were so astounded that no one spoke. The woman still knelt, nay, shriveled in a little heap.
"She has fainted," and one of the sisters went to her, "Help, let us carry her into the next room."
They bore her away. Father Gilbert turned fiercely to the Sieur Angelot.
"There might be some question as to rights in the child," he said, in a clear, cold tone. "When did the Sieur repudiate his early marriage? He has on his island home a new wife and children."
"Death ends the most sacred of all ties for this world. Coming to meet me the party were captured by a band of marauding Indians. Few escaped. Months afterward I had the account from one of the survivors. The child's preservation must have been a miracle. And that she has been here years—" he pressed her closer to his heart.
"Monsieur Angelot, I think you will not need us in the untangling of this strange incident, but we shall be glad to hear its ending. I shall expect you to dine with me as by previous arrangement. I wish you might bring your pretty daughter."
The Commandant bowed to the company and turned, attended by his suite. When their soldierly tread had ceased on the steps, Father Gilbert confronted the White Chief.
"Your wife," he began in an authoritative tone, fixing his keen eyes on the Sieur Angelot, "your wife whom you tempted from her vows and unlawfully married is still alive. I think she can demand her child."
Jeanne clung closer to her father and his inmost soul responded. But aloud he exclaimed in a horrified tone, "Good God!" Then in a moment, turning almost fiercely to the priest, "Why did she give away her child and let it be thought a foundling? For if the story is true she has been little better than a waif, a foundling of Detroit."
"She was dying and intended to send it to you. She had to intrust it to a kind-hearted squaw. What happened then will never be known, until one evening it was dropped in the lap of this Pani woman who has been foster mother."
"Is this so, Jeanne?" He raised the flushed face and looked into the eyes with a glance that would have been stern had it not been so full of love.
"It is so," she made answer in a soft, clear voice. "She has been a mother to me and I love her. She is old and I will never be separated from her."
"There spoke the loyal child. And now, reverend father, where is this wife? It is a serious complication. But if, as you say, I married her unlawfully—"
"You enticed her from the convent." There was the severity of the judge in the tone.
"Parbleu! It did not need much enticing," and a half smile crossed his handsome face while his eyes softened. "We were both in love and she abhorred the monotony of convent life. We were of different faiths; that should have made me pause, but I thought then that love righted everything. I was of an adventurous turn and mightily stirred by the tales of the new world. Huguenot faith was not in favor in France, and I resolved to seek my fortunes elsewhere. She could not endure the parting. Yes, Father, since she had not taken any vow, not even begun her novitiate, I overpersuaded her. We were married in my faith. We came to this new world, and in Boston this child was born. We were still very happy. But I could not idle my life doing things befitting womankind. We came to Albany, and there I found some traders who told stirring tales of the great North and the fortunes made in the fur trade. My wife did oppose my going, but the enthusiasm of love, if I may call it so, had begun to wane. She had misgivings as to whether she had done right in marrying me—"
"As a true daughter of the Church would," interrupted the priest severely.
"I was willing that she should return to her own faith, which she did. I left her in good hands. Fortune favored me. I liked the stir and excitement, the out-of-door life, the glamour of adventures. I found men who were of the same cast of mind. To be sure, there were dangers, there was also the pleasure and gratification of leadership, of subduing savage natures. When I had resolved to settle in the North I sent to my wife by a messenger and received answer that since I thought it best she would come to me. I felt that she had no longing for the wild life, but I meant to do my utmost to satisfy her. There was her Church at St. Ignace, there were kindly priests, and some charming and heroic women. With my love to shield her I felt she must be happy. There was a company to leave Albany, enough it was thought to make traveling safe, for Indians were still troublesome. I made arrangements for her to join them, and was to meet them at Detroit. Alas! word came that, while they were still some distance from their point of embarkation on Lake Erie, they were set upon and massacred by a body of roving Indians. Instead of my beloved wife I met one of the survivors in Detroit and heard the terrible story. Not a woman in the party had escaped. The Indians had not burthened themselves with troublesome prisoners. I returned to Michilimackinac with a heart bowed down with grief. There was the comfortable home awaiting my wife, made as pretty as it had been possible to do. I could not endure it and joined some members of the company going to Hudson Bay. I made some fresh efforts to learn if anything further had been heard, but no word ever came. It is true that I married again. It does not seem possible that a once wedded wife should have lived all these years and made no effort to communicate with her husband, who, after all, could have been found. And though for years I have been known as the White Chief, from a curious power I have gained over the Indians, the hunters, and traders, I am also known as the Sieur Angelot."
He stood proudly before them, his handsome, weather-bronzed face bearing the impress of truth, his eyes shining with the clearest, highest honor. The child Jeanne felt the stiffening of every muscle, and it went through her with a thrill of joy.
"It is a long story," began Father Rameau, gently, "a strange one, too. Through the courage and craftiness of a Miami squaw, who had been a sort of maid to Madame Angelot, she escaped death. They hid in the woods and subsisted on anything they could find until Madame could go no farther. She thought herself dying, and implored the woman to take her babe to Detroit and find its father, and she lay down in a leafy covert to die. In that hour she repented bitterly of her course in leaving the convent and listening to a forbidden love. She prayed God to believe if it were to do over again she would hearken to the voice of the Church, and hoped this fervent repentance would be remembered in her behalf. Then she resigned herself to death. But in the providence of the good All Father she was rescued by another party and taken to a farmhouse not far distant. Here were two devoted women who were going to Montreal to enter the convent, and were to embark at a point on Lake Ontario, where a boat going North would touch. They nursed her for several weeks before she was able to travel, and then she decided to cast in her lot with them. Her husband, no doubt, had the child. She was dead to the world. She belonged henceforward to the Church and to the service of God. Moreover, it was what she desired. She had tried worldly love and her own will, and been unhappy in it. Monsieur, she was born for a devotee. It was a sad mistake when she yielded to your persuasions. Her parents had destined her for the convent, and she had a double debt to pay. The marriage was unlawful and she was absolved from it."
"Then I was free also. It cannot bind on one side and loose on the other. I believe you have said rightly. She was not happy, though I think even now she will tell you that I did all in my power. I did not oppose her going back to her first faith, although then I would have fought against this disruption of the marriage tie."
"It was no marriage in God's sight, with a heretic," interposed Father Gilbert. "She repented her waywardness bitterly. God made her to see it through sore trial. But the child is hers."
"Not when you admit that she sent it to me, gave me the right," was the confident reply.
He pressed Jeanne closer and with a strength that said, "I will fight for you." The proud dignity of his carriage, the resolution in his face, indicated that he would not be an easy enemy to combat. There was a strange silence, as if no one could tell what would be the next move. He broke it, however.
"The child shall decide," he said. "She shall hear her mother's story, and then mine. She shall select with whom she will spend the coming years. God knows I should have been glad enough to have had her then. By what sad mistake fate should have traversed the mother's wishes, and given her these wasted years, I cannot divine."
They were only to guess at that. The Miami woman had grown tired of her charge, so unlike the papooses of the Indian mothers. Then, too, it was heavy to carry, difficult to feed. She met a party of her own tribe and resolved to cast in her destiny with them. They were going into Ohio to meet some scattered members of their people, and to effect a union with other Indian nations, looking to the recovery of much of their power. She went up to Detroit in a canoe, and, taking the sleeping child, reconnoitered awhile; finally, seeing Pani sitting alone under a great tree, she dropped the child into her lap and ran swiftly away, feeling confident the father would in some way discover the little one, since her name was pinned to her clothing. Then she rowed rapidly back, her Indian ideas quite satisfied.
"I wonder if I might see"—what should he call her?—"Jeanne's mother."
Word came back that the nun was too much enfeebled to grant him an interview. But she would receive the child. Jeanne clung to her father and glanced up with entreating eyes.
"I will wait for you. Yes, see her. Hear her story first." The child followed the sister reluctantly. Sieur Angelot, who had been standing, now took a seat.
"I should like to see the trinkets you spoke of—and the clothes," he said with an air of authority.
Father Rameau brought them. Father Gilbert and the sister retired to an adjoining room.
"Yes," the Sieur remarked, "this is our miniature. It was done in Boston. And the ring was my gift to the child when she was a year old; it was much too big," and he smiled. "And the little garments. You are to be thanked most sincerely for keeping them so carefully. Tell me something about the life of the child."
Father Rameau had been so intimately connected with it, that he was a most excellent narrator. The episode with the Bellestres and Monsieur's kindly care, the efforts to subdue in some measure the child's wildness and passion for liberty, which made the father smile, thinking of his own exuberant spirits and adventures, her affection for the Indian woman, her desultory training, that Father Rameau believed now had been a sinful mistake, her strange disappearance—
"That gave me the clew," interrupted his hearer. "By some mysterious chain of events she was brought to her father's house. I was up North at the time, and only recently heard the story. The name Jeanne Angelot roused me. There could not be a mistake. Some miracle must have intervened to save the child. Then I came at once. But you think she—the mother—believes her marriage was a sin?" What if she still cared?
The Sieur asked it with great hesitation. He thought of the proud, loving wife, the spirited, beautiful boys, the dainty little daughter—no, he could not relinquish them.
"She is vowed to the Church now, and is at rest. Nothing you can say will disturb her. The good Bishop of Montreal absolved her from her wrongful vow. While we hold marriage as sacred and indissoluble, it has to be a true marriage and with the sanction of the Church. This had no priestly blessing or benediction. And she repented of it. For years she has been in the service of the Lord."
He was glad to hear this. Down in his heart he knew how she had tormented her tender conscience with vain and rigorous questions and had made herself unhappy in pondering them. But he thought their new life together would neutralize this tendency and bring them closer in unison. Had she, indeed, made such a sad mistake in her feelings as to give him only an enthusiastic but temporary affection, when she was ready to throw up all the beliefs and the training of her youth? But then the convent round looked dreary to her.
Jeanne came from the room where she had been listening to her mother's story of self-blame and present abhorrence for the step she had so unwisely taken in yielding to one who should have been nothing to her.
"But you loved him then!" cried Jeanne, vehemently, thinking of the other woman whose joy and pride was centered in the Sieur Angelot.
"It was a sinful fancy, a temptation of the evil one. I should have struggled against it. I should have resigned myself to the life laid out for me. A man's love is a delusion. Oh, my child, there is nothing like the continual service of God to keep one from evil. The joys of the world are but as dust and ashes, nay, worse, they leave an ineradicable stain that not even prayer and penance can wash out. And this is why I have come to warn, to reclaim you, if possible. When I heard the story from a devoted young sister, whose name in the world was Berthê Campeau, I said I must go and snatch the soul of my child from the shadow of perdition that hangs over her."
Berthê Campeau! How strange it was that the other mother, nearing the end of life, should have plead with her child to stay a little longer in the world and wait until she was gone before she buried herself in convent walls!
Was it a happy life, even a life of resignation, that had left such lines in her mother's face? She was hardly in the prime of life, but she looked old already. Instead of being drawn to sympathize with her, Jeanne was repelled. Her mother did not want her for solace and human love and sympathy, but simply to keep her from evil. Was affection such a sin? She could love her father, yes, she could love M. St. Armand; and the Indian woman with her superstitions, her ignorance, was very, very dear. And she liked brightness, happy faces, the wide out-of-doors with its birds' songs, its waving trees, its fragrant breathing from shrub and flower that filled one with joy. Pani kissed her and clasped her to her heart, held her in her arms, smoothed the tangled curls, sometimes kissed them, too, caressed her soft, dainty hands as if they were another human being. This woman was her mother, but there was no passionate longing in her eyes, no tender possessing grasp in the hands that lay limp and colorless on her black gown. And Jeanne would have been still more horrified if she had known that those eyes looked upon her as part of a sinful life she had overcome by nights of vigil and days of solitude in work and prayer that she had once abhorred and fled from. Yet she pitied her profoundly. She longed to comfort her, but the nun did not want the comfort of human love.
"No, I cannot decide," Jeanne cried, and yet she knew in her soul she had decided.
She came out to her father with tears in her eyes, but the shelter of his arms was so strong and safe.
"Reverend fathers," the Sieur Angelot said, with a grave inclination of the head, "I thank you for your patience and courtesy. I can appreciate your feelings, too, but I think the law will uphold me in my claim to my daughter. And in my estimation Jeanne de Burre committed no sin in marrying me, and I would ever have been a faithful husband to her. But the decision of the Church seems most in consonance with her feelings. I have the honor of wishing you good day."