"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.