CHAPTER XV.
NANON’S LOVERS.
MARRIAGEABLE women were at a premium in the colony. Nanon in her comeliness, activity, and audacity had since her arrival in New France attracted many lovers. Most of these followed her for a while, then, discouraged by her disdain, fell away from their allegiance and married some meeker damsel. The two who had remained most persistently faithful to her charms, patiently enduring her tempers and caprices year after year, were Jean the valet and Baptiste Leroux, familiarly known as Bras de Fer.
Baptiste was an enormous man, over six feet two in height, and stout in proportion. His round face expressed an exaggeration of simplicity. His beard was black, but the long hair he wore floating on his shoulders was a warm auburn. His eyes, which were nearly always half closed, gave him the appearance of stupidity; but when moved by any unusual emotion they opened wide, their keen brightness changing the whole character of his countenance. The extreme slowness of his movements imparted an air of apathetic indolence to the massive frame. He wore a striped blue shirt and grey trousers, with a red sash knotted around his waist, its fringed ends hanging down on the left side. On his head, winter and summer, was a beaver cap. His feet were protected by Indian boots, the upper part, of sheepskin, drawn up over the trousers, and fastened under the knee by narrow strips of sealskin. The sleeves of his jacket were turned up at the elbows, displaying a pair of huge muscular arms tattooed curiously. Malicious people sometimes insinuated that all the good fellow’s force lay in his physical powers, and that his intellectual faculties were not of the brightest.
The eldest of a family of nineteen children born to a poor colonist, Baptiste had been obliged from early childhood to make his way through the world as best he could. When still a very young lad he had entered Le Ber’s service, where later he had shared the games and escapades of du Chesne and his cousins, the young le Moynes, teaching the boys the secrets of woodcraft and the delights of forest life. Afterwards he became a noted coureur de bois, wandering at will through the trackless woods of Canada, the great North-West and Louisiana, camping, hunting, fishing, fighting, everywhere renowned among white men and Indians for his unerring skill as a marksman and his extraordinary strength and courage. When severe laws were enacted against the bushrangers, prohibiting that lawless, delightful freedom of the wilderness to which his heart ever clung, Leroux again took service with the Le Ber family, for whom he felt an unswerving devotion. Among the colonists many marvellous tales concerning Bras de Fer’s adventures were told. Even allowing for the exaggeration of national pride, it must be admitted that many of these stories had a substantial foundation in fact.
Once it happened that on the shores of Lake Champlain Baptiste and a younger brother were taken prisoners by the Iroquois. The Indians, in triumph at having secured so redoubtable an adversary, fastened their captives to two oaken stakes planted firmly in the ground. Fancying that Bras de Fer, who was much the stronger of the two, would endure torture the longer, they selected the brother as their first victim. A savage heated his hatchet red hot and applied it to the boy’s naked breast. Baptiste, resigned to his fate, had prepared to chant his death-song with a stoicism borrowed from his Iroquois foes, but the sight of his brother’s torture roused him to superhuman effort.
“Forty thousand tribes of demons!” he shouted, bending himself double, and by a supreme effort bursting the bonds that held him; then tearing the stake out of the earth, with it he struck down four of the Iroquois in quick succession. The assault was so unexpected, and his attitude so terrifying, that the remainder of the party, believing in their consternation that they were attacked by a species of avenging Manitou, swiftly fled, leaving Baptiste and his brother to make their way home undisturbed.
All Bras de Fer’s brave exploits, his renown, or the friendly consideration with which his employers treated him, seemed unavailing to give him advantage over his voluble rival. Baptiste was far too modest to boast of his own merits, and Jean was only too ready to vaunt imaginary virtues which he liberally attributed to himself. Nanon accepted the homage of both in a sharp, imperious, scornful way, never directly favoring either. Through all Baptiste endured the most hopeless jealousy of Jean’s fluent, deceiving tongue.
“Aye,” Jean declared easily and lightly, “It is the taste of Nanon, as of all women, to coquette. It is their privilege, and I for one would not deny it to them.”
His charmer was never without a ready retort.
“Aye, as it is the wont of all men to be fools and heartless apes, to run to death after any proud turkey, and never to perceive those of real worth.”
Nothing daunted, Jean continued to smoke his pipe reflectively.
“I have never been greatly inclined to matrimony myself. When I picture the perils through which I have passed—aye, I myself, Jean Ameron—with damsels of every description to choose from, brown and blonde, fat and lean, tall and short, all awaiting but a look, and some not absolutely ill-favored; one, indeed, with a barrel of bacon entirely her own, was offered me, but I found myself obliged to decline, my friends trying in vain to persuade me to accept the King’s gift.”
Bras de Fer was taking his supper in the same room. In general the stalwart voyageur had an inordinate capacity for devouring the various colonial dainties, such as eels in sailor guise, pigeons with cabbages, partridges served with onions, soup with plums, eggs and tripe, brown bread and cheese. He had been hungry when he entered the house, but the Frenchman’s facility of utterance quite reduced the big Canadian’s enjoyment of his food. Were he but master of such captivating eloquence he might long ago have won the desire of his heart. Nanon never appeared more attractive. Her full lips took a richer red, a livelier crimson suffused her sunburnt cheek, there was a dancing merriment in her bright, dark eyes as she asked demurely:
“Was it not the damsels who escaped so sad a fate? To me it is equal. I see on every side husbands and wives who quarrel and spit at each other like cats, and where is the gain, my heart? In this country it is not difficult to marry. Brown and lean as a weasel is Mam’selle Anne, yet even she could become a wife if she would.”
Baptiste felt that to sit silently listening was the hardest trial he had ever endured. He had been no stranger to manifold dangers and adventures, having served as guide in nine expeditions against the Five Cantons. He had killed with his own hand more than sixty Iroquois, had twice been tied to the stake waiting to be burned alive; had bravely sung the death-song, while the joints of two of his fingers had been broken, after they had been smoked in an Indian pipe; had in genuine savage fashion learned to mock at his own torments, when a necklace of hatchets, heated red hot, had been suspended round his neck, causing wounds of which he still kept the scars; yet with all this his valor failed him when he had most need of it. He could have demolished his paltry rival at a blow, yet he dared not contemplate the possibility of having Nanon turn on him with scorn and anger.
“Nanon!”
By a tremendous effort Baptiste concentrated his will. Rising, he left his untasted supper with the determination to crush his rival’s pretensions, plead his own suit, or perish in the attempt! At the impassioned utterance of her name the girl quickly turned her head. When he felt the sharp, bright glance of his beloved resting upon him, the giant’s courage oozed away. With a long drawn sigh he sank back on his chair disconsolately.
“If you please, Bras de Fer?” Nanon inquired politely.
Baptiste shook his head with the most helpless and mournful resignation; both ideas and words had escaped him; he felt himself turning hot and cold all over as he gazed at her deprecatingly. Nanon shrugged her plump shoulders with an air of amused amazement.
“What wouldst thou say, Bras de Fer? Surely thou wouldst not make sugar-plum compliments like those of Jean? Is it the week of the three Thursdays, that thou shouldst attempt to make compliments? Even Balaam’s ass had the power of speech conferred upon it at times, but thine eloquence is overpowering. Ta, ta, ta! there would be no peace in Paradise if thou wert there, unless thou couldst contrive to mend thy manners, my friend.” Nanon’s brown face dimpled with coquettish smiles, and Jean indulged in a malicious grin for which the Canadian could have found it in his heart to slay him.
“It was constancy to thy attractions, it was disinclination to marriage with another, that prevented me from entering the forest, engaging in warfare against the Iroquois, becoming a renowned fighter, and making my fortune in the fur trade,” pursued the imperturbable Jean.
“Think, then, and is it truly so?” Nanon interposed with exasperating simplicity, “and I had really believed that it was thine own cowardice that made thee prefer the ease of home to ranging the woods with the savages and wild beasts.”
“Indeed, yes, such is really the case. A cow, a pair of swine, a pair of fowls, two barrels of salted meat, and eleven crowns in good money have my own constancy and thine hard-heartedness cost me. Surely some recompense may be considered my due. And during all these long years I have been pursued by a frightful nightmare, a dream of awakening to find myself a husband against my will. Consider how sad a fate, my good Nanon; and when once the ceremony is performed, no redress, for when the Church binds she ties fast; one fastens a knot with the tongue which the hands cannot untie.”
Nanon smiled complacently upon all this, until Baptiste, who felt that he had reached the extreme limit of endurance, rushed out. Then the girl promptly gathered up her work and prepared to ascend to her mistress’s apartment. Jean made another attempt to detain her.
“And Nanon, I have observation, me. I see many things. I would tell a secret but between ourselves. It is the blonde English demoiselle whom the Sieur du Chesne adores, and not the most noble the demoiselle de Monesthrol.”
The ruddy peasant face flamed into fiery wrath. That her lady’s attractions should be cheapened, that her pretensions should be slighted, infuriated the devoted maid. Such a dread had awakened in her own mind—would another dare to put it into words?
“Guard thy mouth! And is it a good-for-nothing of thy species who will dare to compare my demoiselle—the daughter of great nobles who fought and bled for the King—to any dirt of bourgeois? It is with such as the Comte de Frontenac—except that M. le Gouverneur has already had the ill-luck to make choice of a lady, and if report speaks true, of one not so admirable either—that our demoiselle should mate. Bête! cease, then, thy bellowing and mend thy manners. Like a serpent thou wouldst bite the hand that nourishes thee.”
In terror Jean fled from the storm he had evoked. Nanon stood wringing her hands and stamping her feet.
“In truth, I know not whether to weep like a watering-pot or to scratch somebody’s eyes out. Ah! if I could but reach that craven-hearted wolf with my nails. The worst sting of all is that it is all true. And this English girl will pay him with his own coin, loving herself always best and last, with but small thought to spare for anyone else. My noble, proud mistress who smiles and is happy, seeing nothing, decking that other one in her best, and never weary of praising that one’s beauty and sweetness. Sweetness?—it is the look of the cat at the cream. The neuvena I made in honor of that worthless St. Joseph, with the intention of securing our little lady’s happiness, all goes for nothing. That useless image shall no longer delude innocent believers.”
Like a whirlwind the serving-woman swept to the altar where stood the figure of St. Joseph, serenely unconscious of the enormity of his own offences, or of the storm which was about to descend upon him. It was the work of an instant to snatch him from his eminence, to shake and belabor him viciously, pouring out the while a flood of abuse as eloquently vituperative as a fertile brain and fluent tongue could devise, to rush down the garden and with all the strength inspired by fury to hurl him over the stone wall. Then, and then only, when her vengeance was accomplished, did Nanon pause for breath, drawing a long sigh of relief.
“Now shall my eyes, even mine, have the consolation of seeing that valueless saint lying in the dust shattered into a thousand pieces.”
With a bang which was intended as a further vent for her distressed feelings, Nanon threw wide open the side gate leading from the secluded greenery of the garden into the dusty street. Then she stopped suddenly as though she had received a shock; the gleam of triumphant satisfaction faded from her eyes, her ruddy color turned to gray pallor. The ecclesiastical authorities would likely view with strong disfavor any disrespect paid to the saints; some thought of the consequences of her action began to penetrate Nanon’s agitated mind.
Looking thoughtfully down at the fragments of the ill-used St. Joseph stood a priest. He was a large, powerfully-built man, in a narrow collar, long dusty black coat and three-cornered hat. As she met his kindly piercing gaze Nanon’s wrath faded, and she bent her head while he raised his hands with a slight gesture of benediction before he blessed her. Her quick feminine intuition taught her that she would fare much better with this man than if she had fallen into the hands of the Jesuits. There were few in Ville Marie but had unqualified faith in the gigantic soldier priest, Father Dollier de Casson, Superior of the Seminary of St. Sulpice.
“Why, what is this? Didst thou imagine, my good Nanon, that the passers-by were heathen Iroquois, that thou shouldst assault them by means of the holy saints?”
Nanon in the excitement of the moment forgot her fear and recovered her natural audacity. As she remembered her grievances her breast shook with great sobs; for a second the passion struggling in her throat could find no utterance. At last she broke forth:
“The worthless, deceiving saint! My little noble, gentle mistress, pure and guileless as the holy saints themselves, cast aside for any tag of rubbish! Of all the great and noble ladies whom God has sent into this world to beautify His creation, to glorify His name, and for the relief and happiness of their fellow-creatures, none ever fulfilled the object of the Creator more perfectly than our demoiselle. Yet, behold that kite of an Anne, stuck all over with feathers of spite and hypocrisy, her very look enough to turn milk sour, and she boasts that she receives of the saints every favor she demands. And if the saints fail us what is to become of us poor common people who have no other protection?”
The priest listened with silent attention to the confused, vehement recital. He was too thoroughly versed in the intricacies of human nature not to readily comprehend the faithful serving-woman’s meaning. He had himself a passion for duty and discipline, a genius for command and obedience, while his whole soul loathed dastards and renegades. A good Christian, laboring manfully at his calling, he had made the joys and sorrows, hopes and fears of his flock his own. In the most cordial fashion he worked for the people, dogmatized, and stormed at them, but, however strict to his ideal of duty, he never lost patience with human frailty.
“Ah, the good-for-nothing saint! Figure to yourself, my Father, a neuvena in his honor—never a word omitted though the poor bones ached and the eyes were drowsy with sleep—four candles burning perpetually before his altar, and all of the very best. Nothing did I grudge if only the little demoiselle could have her heart’s desire. It was I that took her from the arms of her dying mother—me, but a slip of a girl myself—and she has been my charge, my first thought, ever since.” Here beating her hands together, Nanon yielded to a new transport of exasperation.
The Sulpician cast a keen glance from under the white eyebrows which contrasted with his hale, sunburned face.
“Voyons, my daughter. You would desire high place and favor in this world for Mademoiselle de Monesthrol.”
“Oh! but yes, my Father,” she replied, coloring deeply, smoothing down her apron the while with her shapely brown hands. “Perhaps I have not the air of it, but I have seen things in my time. The people here know nothing of all that, but I remember the life over there in France. It is at the Court of our lord the King that my demoiselle should shine, among the great dames and brilliant demoiselles. Ah! that is what I would have for our little one. To see all the world admire her state, but with reverence, be it understood; to walk behind, to see and to share her glory, to repay the rebuffs we have received in our fallen fortunes, to hear it whispered as I pass, ‘There goes Nanon, serving-woman to Her Grace, Madame la Duchesse de’—— that is as it should be.”
A smile of irrepressible humor curved de Casson’s firm lips.
“Thou covetest this world’s glory, yet thou wouldst grudge her high place in the Heavenly Kingdom. My brave and loyal Nanon, thou wouldst generously sacrifice much to win happiness for thy mistress. I also would it were God’s will that the demoiselle should travel His way by a smooth and sunny road, but if there is no easier path to heaven, then bless her in taking that which is offered, my daughter. The roads leading to perfection are often dark and thorny.”
“And that is what I cannot bear,” sobbed Nanon, as the priest continued thoughtfully as though thinking aloud:
“To love is to serve. If service and affection are considered separately, the very essence of love, that which gives it life, is lost. After all, love, when unselfish, whether joyous or unfortunate in its results, must be splendid and lofty.” Then recalling his attention by an effort he added, “Thy loyal affection, my good Nanon, is not as wise and tender as that of thy Master, who knows all things and judges with clearer eyes than we poor mortals. Thine would deprive Mademoiselle of the crown and grace of suffering; His will uphold her amidst the fiery ordeal of tribulation. See to it, Nanon. Yield the child’s future up to the care of Him who is the loving Father of all.”
The clear tones had a sort of inspiring ring in them; the composed, benevolent countenance was illumined by the cheering light of faith and courage. Nanon hung her head. This philosophy, so high and pure, was beyond her comprehension; what she really craved was assurance of success.
“What you say is doubtless all true, M. le Superior, and it has the sound of beautiful language; it is suited to the quality, of that I am firmly convinced; but, faith of Nanon Benest, the heavenly glory is too fine, too far off for such as I. I would rather that other, me, that I could touch with the hands, and talk about, and let all the world see. Let Mam’selle Anne, who is ugly as a spider and cross as an enraged sheep, keep the first; I grudge it not. If M. le Superior will but give himself the trouble to consider, he will certainly perceive that no one thinks of the little one’s interests but her own poor servant Nanon. Madam la Marquise made the sacrifice of all when she left her own country, and it appears quite natural to her that others should do the same. The Sieur Le Ber adores Mademoiselle, but keeps steadily in mind his plans for ennobling his own family. M. Pierre would have her a saint and a martyr against her will, and now this English cuckoo has settled herself comfortably in Mademoiselle’s own nest in order to pick the feathers from her at her ease.”
“Thou wouldst undertake to play the part of Providence, and without having the means of doing so at thy disposal. Va, faithless one, it is well the good God should take the child’s destiny out of thy rash and reckless hands. What signifies the mode to him who goes to glory—the shorter cut from the battle-field or a little longer way through a world of trouble? Thy loyal affection will be to thee a crown, but thy pride will prove a thorn to prick thee to the heart, my poor girl.”
“Not that the most noble the demoiselle de Monesthrol could condescend to wed with the son of the bourgeois Le Ber”—Nanon hastened to qualify her rash admissions, and to vindicate her feminine right of having the last word; “but of right he should kneel humbly at her feet, thankful for a glance or a gracious word.”