The sweetheart of Jacques dances for us to the well-cadenced rhythm of a Tea Song. I cannot spell her Indian name, but it means "Fat of the Flowers," by which term they express our word "nectar." The cree is a droll language.
"Ha! He! ne matatow,
Ha! He! ne saghehow."
she chants and rechants as the fitful flames make sharp high-lights on her dark skin, causing her to appear as the flying figure of a bronze Daphne, and, in truth, the boughs of the trees lend likeness to my fancy, for as she dances into them, they seem to absorb her, even as the laurel absorbed the Grecian nymph of old time.
Translated literally, the words of the Tea Song read thus—
"Ha! He! I love him,
Ha! He! I miss him."
This is a supremely cunning song, in that it utters in six words (if we exclude the interjections) the summary of all the love songs which have ever been written—"I love him: I miss him." I am glad it was framed in the unsophisticated North.
And Fat of the Flowers sings another song which is addressed to her lover. She is lonely for him, our interpreter explains, but drinks her tears in silence. Sometimes his presence comes to her in the hour of twilight, and she kneels to it as the poplar kneels to the wind. When he returns to the camp fire she will give to him a blanket made out of the claw skins of the lynx, and a white and scarlet belt from the young quills of the porcupine.
I can see that her honeyed words are agreeable to Jacques and give him fullness of pleasure, for there is a tell-tale joy in his face that refuses to be hid.
Jacques, who is a riverman, was educated at a mission school on the Mackenzie, and he tells me that Fat of the Flowers is nearly as "magneloquent" and clever as a man. He is almost sure there is a little white bird that sings in her heart.
After a time, our dusky friends steal away one by one to their rest, or two by two. The ship lolls lazily on the bank and there is no sound save the whimper of the fire and the deep breathing of some over-tired sleeper, but once a sleeper laughed aloud.