"It never did grow here, Monsieur Crooks."
"You shall have plenty of it in your garden, when you come home with me."
"Oh, go away, and let me shut my door, monsieur. It seems no use to tell you I cannot come."
"No use at all. Until you come, then, good-night."
Seldom are two days alike on the island. Before sunrise the lost dews of paradise always sweeten those scented woods, and the birds begin to remind you of something you heard in another life, but have forgotten. Jenieve loved to open her door and surprise the east. She stepped out the next morning to fill her pail. There was a lake of translucent cloud beyond the water lake: the first unruffled, and the second wind-stirred. The sun pushed up, a flattened red ball, from the lake of steel ripples to the lake of calm clouds. Nearer, a schooner with its sails down stood black as ebony between two bars of light drawn across the water, which lay dull and bleak towards the shore. The addition of a schooner to the scattered fleet of sailboats, bateaux, and birch canoes made Jenieve laugh. It must have arrived from Sault Ste. Marie in the night. She had hopes of getting rid of Michel Pensonneau that very day. Since he was going to Cahokia, she felt stinging regret for the way she had treated him before the whole village; yet her mother could not be sacrificed to politeness. Except his capacity for marrying, there was really no harm in the old fellow, as Monsieur Crooks had said.
The humid blockhouse and walls of the fort high above the bay began to glisten in emerging sunlight, and Jenieve determined not to be hard on Mama Lalotte that day. If Michel came to say good-by, she would shake his hand herself. It was not agreeable for a woman so fond of company to sit in the house with nobody but her daughter. Mama Lalotte did not love the pine woods, or any place where she would be alone. But Jenieve could sit and spin in solitude all day, and think of that chill silver face she had seen at Pontiac's Lookout, and the floating away of the figure, a phosphorescent bar through the trees, and of that spoken word which had denounced the French and Indians as good for nothing. She decided to tell the priest, even if he rebuked her. It did not seem any stranger to Jenieve than many things which were called natural, such as the morning miracles in the eastern sky, and the growth of the boys, her dear torments. To Jenieve's serious eyes, trained by her grandmother, it was not as strange as the sight of Mama Lalotte, a child in maturity, always craving amusement, and easily led by any chance hand.
The priest had come to Mackinac in the schooner during the night. He combined this parish with others more or less distant, and he opened the chapel and began his duties as soon as he arrived. Mama Lalotte herself offered to dress the boys for confession. She put their best clothes on them, and then she took out all her own finery. Jenieve had no suspicion while the little figure preened and burnished itself, making up for the lack of a mirror by curves of the neck to look itself well over. Mama Lalotte thought a great deal about what she wore. She was pleased, and her flaxen curls danced. She kissed Jenieve on both cheeks, as if there had been no quarrel, though unpleasant things never lingered in her memory. And she made the boys kiss Jenieve; and while they were saddened by clothes, she also made them say they were sorry about the shoes.
By sunset, the schooner, which had sat in the straits all day, hoisted its sails and rounded the hooked point of the opposite island. The gun at the fort was like a parting salute, and a shout was raised by coureurs-de-bois thronging the log wharf. They trooped up to the fur warehouse, and the sound of a fiddle and the thump of soft-shod feet were soon heard; for the French were ready to celebrate any occasion with dancing. Laughter and the high excited voices of women also came from the little ball-room, which was only the office of the Fur Company.
Here the engagés felt at home. The fiddler sat on the top of the desk, and men lounging on a row of benches around the walls sprang to their feet and began to caper at the violin's first invitation. Such maids and wives as were nearest the building were haled in, laughing, by their relations; and in the absence of the agents, and of that awe which goes with making your cross-mark on a paper, a quick carnival was held on the spot where so many solemn contracts had been signed. An odor of furs came from the packing-rooms around, mixed with gums and incense-like whiffs. Added to this was the breath of the general store kept by the agency. Tobacco and snuff, rum, chocolate, calico, blankets, wood and iron utensils, fire-arms, West India sugar and rice,—all sifted their invisible essences on the air. Unceiled joists showed heavy and brown overhead. But there was no fireplace, for when the straits stood locked in ice and the island was deep in snow, no engagé claimed admission here. He would be a thousand miles away, toiling on snow-shoes with his pack of furs through the trees, or bargaining with trappers for his contribution to this month of enormous traffic.
Clean buckskin legs and brand-new belted hunting-shirts whirled on the floor, brightened by sashes of crimson or kerchiefs of orange. Indians from the reservation on Round Island, who happened to be standing, like statues, in front of the building, turned and looked with lenient eye on the performance of their French brothers. The fiddler was a nervous little Frenchman with eyes like a weasel, and he detected Jenieve Lalotte putting her head into the room. She glanced from figure to figure of the dancers, searching through the twilight for what she could not find; but before he could call her she was off. None of the men, except a few Scotch-French, were very tall, but they were a handsome, muscular race, fierce in enjoyment, yet with a languor which prolonged it, and gave grace to every picturesque pose. Not one of them wanted to pain Lalotte's girl, but, as they danced, a joyful fellow would here and there spring high above the floor and shout, "Good voyage to Michel Pensonneau and his new family!" They had forgotten the one who amused them yesterday, and remembered only the one who amused them to-day.