THE THREAT OF A RENEGADE
Iberville was used to the society of women. Even as a young lad, his father’s notable place in the colony, and the freedom and gaiety of life in Quebec and Montreal, had drawn upon him a notice which was as much a promise of the future as an accent of the present. And yet, through all of it, he was ever better inspired by the grasp of a common soldier, who had served with Carignan-Salieres, or by the greeting and gossip of such woodsmen as Du Lhut, Mantet, La Durantaye, and, most of all, his staunch friend Perrot, chief of the coureurs du bois. Truth is, in his veins was the strain of war and adventure first and before all. Under his tutor, the good Pere Dollier de Casson, he had never endured his classics, save for the sake of Hector and Achilles and their kind; and his knowledge of English, which his father had pressed him to learn,—for he himself had felt the lack of it in dealings with Dutch and English traders,—only grew in proportion as he was given Shakespeare and Raleigh to explore.
Soon the girl laughed up at him. “I have been a great traveller,” she said, “and I have ears. I have been as far west as Albany and south to Virginia, with my father, who, perhaps you do not know, is in England now. And they told me everywhere that Frenchmen are bold, dark men, with great black eyes and very fine laces and wigs, and a trick of bowing and making foolish compliments; and they are not to be trusted, and they will not fight except in the woods, where there are trees to climb. But I see that it is not all true, for you are not dark, your eyes are not big or black, your laces are not much to see, you do not make compliments—”
“I shall begin now,” he interrupted.
“—you must be trusted a little, or Count Frontenac would not send you, and—and—tell me, would you fight if you had a chance?”
No one of her sex had ever talked so to Iberville. Her demure raillery, her fresh, frank impertinence, through which there ran a pretty air of breeding, her innocent disregard of formality, all joined to impress him, to interest him. He was not so much surprised at the elegance and cleverness of her speech, for in Quebec girls of her age were skilled in languages and arts, thanks to the great bishop, Laval, and to Marie of the Incarnation. In response to her a smile flickered upon his lips. He had a quick fierce temper, but it had never been severely tried; and so well used was he to looking cheerfully upon things, so keen had been his zest in living, that, where himself was concerned, his vanity was not easily touched. So, looking with genial dryness, “You will hardly believe it, of course,” he said, “but wings I have not yet grown, and the walking is bad ‘twixt here and the Chateau St. Louis.”
“Iroquois traps,” she suggested, with a smile. “With a trick or two of English footpads,” was his reply.
Meanwhile his eye had loitered between the two men in council at the farther window and the garden, into which he and the girl were looking. Presently he gave a little start and a low whistle, and his eyelids slightly drooped, giving him a handsome sulkiness. “Is it so?” he said between his teeth: “Radisson—Radisson, as I live!”
He had seen a man cross a corner of the yard. This man was short, dark-bearded, with black, lanky hair, brass earrings, and buckskin leggings, all the typical equipment of the French coureur du bois. Iberville had only got one glance at his face, but the sinister profile could never be forgotten. At once the man passed out of view. The girl had not seen him, she had been watching her companion. Presently she said, her fingers just brushing his sleeve, for he stood eyeing the point where the man had disappeared: “Wonderful! You look now as if you would fight. Oh, fierce, fierce as the governor when he catches a French spy!”
He turned to her and, with a touch of irony, “Pardon!” he retorted. “Now I shall look as blithe as the governor when a traitor deserts to him.”