A Little Girl in Old Detroit by Amanda Minnie Douglas (best new books to read .txt) 📕

daintiness, though Pierre would have been at loss to describe it, since his vocabulary was limited, but he felt it in every slow beating pulse. He had resolved to speak, but she never gave him the opportunity. She flashed by him as if she had never known him.

But he must say good-by to her. There was Madelon Dace, who had quarreled with her lover and gone to a dance with some one else and held her head high, never looking to the right or the left, and then as suddenly melted into sweetness and they would be married. Yet Madelon had said to his sister Marie, "I will never speak to him, never!" What had he done to offend Jeanne so deeply? Girls were not usually angered at a man falling in love with them.

So Pierre's pack was made up. In the autumn they could send again. He took tea the last time with Marie. The boats were all ready to start up the Huron.

He went boldly to the little cottage and said courageously to Pani, though his heart seemed to quake almost down to his feet, "I am going away at noon. I have come to say good-by to Jeanne--and to you," put in as an afterthought.

"What a great fellow you are, Pierre! I wish you good luck. Jeanne--"

Jeanne had almost forgotten her childish anger, and the love making was silly, even in remembrance.

"Surely I wish thee good luck, Pierre," she said formally, with a smile not too warm about her rosy lips. "And a fortunate hunting and trading."

"A safe return, Mam'selle, put that in," he pleaded.

"A safe return."

Then they shook hands and he went his way, thinking with great comfort that she had not flouted him.

It was quite a great thing to see the boats go out. Sweethearts and wives congregated on the wharves. Some few brave women went with their husbands. Other ships were setting out for Montreal well loaded, and one or two were carrying a gay lot of passengers.

After a few weeks, quiet returned, the streets were no longer crowded and the noisy reveling was over for a while. The farmers were busy out of doors, cattle were lowing, chanticleer rang out his call to work in the early morn, and busy hens were caroling in cheerful if unmusical voices. Trees budded into a beautiful haze and then sprang into leaf, into bloom. The rough social hilarity was over for a while.

A few of the emigrant farmers laughed at the clumsy, wasteful French methods and tried their own, which were laughed at in turn, but there was little disputing.

Easter had fallen early and it had been cold, but Whitsuntide made amends, and was, if anything, a greater festival. For a procession formed at St. Anne's, young girls in gala attire, smart, middle-aged women with new caps and kerchiefs, husbands and sons, and not a few children, and marched out of the Pontiac gate, as it was called in remembrance of the long siege. Forty years before Jacques Campeau had built the first little outside chapel on his farm, which had a great stretch of ground. The air was full of the fragrance of fruit blossoms and hardly needed incense. Ah, how beautiful it was in a sort of pastoral simplicity! And after saying mass, Father Frechette blessed and prayed for fertile fields and good crops and generous hearts that tithes might not be withheld, and the faithful rewarded. Then they went to the Fulcher farm, where, in a chapel not much more than a shrine, the service was again said with the people kneeling around in the grass. The farmers and good housewives placed more faith in this than in the methods of the newcomers with their American wisdom. But it was a pleasing service. The procession changed about a little,--the young men walking with the demoiselles and whispering in their listening ears.

Jeanne was with them. Madame De Ber was quite gracious, and Marie Beeson singled her out. It had been a cold winter and a backward spring and Marie had not gone anywhere. Tony was so exigent, and she laughed and bridled. It was a very happy thing to be married and have some one care for you. And soon she would give a tea drinking and she would send for Jeanne, who must be sure to come.

But Jeanne had a strange, dreary feeling. She seemed between everything, no longer a child and not a woman, not a part of the Church, not a part of anything. She felt afraid of the future. Oh, what was her share of the bright, beautiful world?


CHAPTER X.

BLOOMS OF THE MAY.

The spring came in with a quickening glory. A fortnight ago the snow was everywhere, the skaters were still out on the streams, the young fellows having rough snowballing matches, then suddenly one morning the white blanket turned a faint, sickly, soft gray, and withered. The pallid skies grew blue, the brown earth showed in patches, there were cheerful sounds from the long-housed animals, rivulets were all afloat running in haste to swell the streams, and from thence to the river and the lakes.

The tiny rings of fir and juniper brightened, the pine branches swelled with great furry buds, bursting open into pale green tassels that moved with every breath of wind. The hemlocks shot out feathery fronds, the spruce spikes of bluish green, the maples shook around red blossoms and then uncurled tiny leaves. The hickories budded in a strange, pale yellow, but the oaks stood sturdy with some of the winter's brown leaves clinging to them.

The long farms outside the stockade awoke to new vigor as well. Everybody set to work, for the summer heats would soon be upon them, and the season was short. There was a stir in the town proper, as well.

And now, at mid-May, when some of the crops were in, there was a day of merrymaking, beginning with a procession and a blessing of the fields, and then the fiddles were taken down, for the hard work lasting well into the evening made both men and women tired enough to go to bed early, when their morning began in the twilight.

The orchards were abloom and sweetened all the air. The evergreens sent out a resinous, pungent fragrance, the grass was odorous with the night dews. The maypole was raised anew, for generally the winter winds blowing fiercely over from the great western lake demolished it, though they always let it stand as long as it would, and in the autumn again danced about it. It had been the old French symbol of welcome and good wishes to their Seigneurs, as well as to the spring. And now it was a legend of past things and a merrymaking.

The pole had bunches of flowers tied here and there, and long streamers that it was fun to jerk from some one's hand and let the wind blow them away. Girls and youths did this to rivals, with mischievous laughter.

The habitans were in their holiday garb, which had hardly changed for two hundred years except when it was put by for winter furs, clean blue tunics, scarlet caps and sashes, deerskin breeches trimmed with yellow or brown fringe, sometimes both, leggings and moccasins with bead embroidery and brightly dyed threads.

There were shopkeepers, too, there were boatmen and Indians, and some of the quality with their wives in satin and lace and gay brocades. Soldiers as well in their military gear, and officers in buff and blue with cocked hats and pompons.

The French girls had put on their holiday attire and some had festooned a light skirt over one of cloth and placed in it a bright bow. Gowns that were family heirlooms, never seeing day except on some festive occasion, strings of beads, belts studded with wampum shells, high-heeled shoes with a great buckle or bow, but not as easy to dance in as moccasins.

Two years had brought more changes to the individual, or rather the younger part of the community, than to the town. A few new houses had been built, many old ones repaired and enlarged a little. The streets were still narrow and many of them winding about. The greatest signs of life were at the river's edge. The newer American emigrant came for land and secured it outside. Every week some of the better class English who were not in the fur trade went to Quebec or Montreal to be under their own rulers.

There was not an entire feeling of security. Since Pontiac there had been no great Indian leader, but many subordinate chiefs who were very sore over the treaties. There was an Indian prophet, twin brother to the chief Tecumseh who afterward led his people to a bloody war, who used his rude eloquence to unite the warring tribes in one nation by wild visions he foresaw of their greatness.

Marauding tribes still harassed parties of travelers, but about Detroit they were peaceable; and many joined in the festivities of a day like this. While as farm laborers they were of little worth, they were often useful at the wharves, and as boatmen.

Two years had brought a strange, new life to Jeanne, so imperceptibly that she was now a puzzle to herself. The child had disappeared, the growing girl she hardly knew. The wild feats that had once been the admiration of the children pleased her no longer. The children had grown as well. The boys tilled the fields with their fathers, worked in shops or on the docks, or were employed about the Fort. Some few, smitten with military ardor, were in training for future soldiers. The field for girls had grown wider. Beside the household employments there were spinning and sewing. The Indian women had made a coarse kind of lace worked with beads that the French maidens improved upon and disposed of to the better class. Or the more hoydenish ones delighted to work in the fields with their brothers, enjoying the outdoor life.

For a year Jeanne had kept on with her master, though at spring a wild impulse of liberty threatened to sweep her from her moorings.

"Why do I feel so?" she inquired almost fiercely of the master. "Something stifles me! Then I wish I had been made a bird to fly up and up until I had left the earth. Oh, what glorious thing is in the bird's mind when he can look into the very heavens, soaring out of sight?"

"There is nothing in the bird's mind, except to find a mate, build a nest and rear some young; to feed them until they can care for themselves, and, though there is much romance about the mother bird, they are always eager to get rid of their offspring. He sings because God has given him a song, his language. But he has no thought of heaven."

"Oh, he must have!" she cried passionately.

The master studied her.

"Art thou ready to die, to go out of the world, to be put into the dark ground?"

"Oh, no! no!" Jeanne shuddered. "It is because I like to live, to breathe the sweet air, to run over the grass, to linger about the woods and hear all the voices. The pines have one tone, the hemlocks and spruces another, and the soft swish of the larches is like the last tender notes of some of the hymns I sing with the sisters occasionally. And the sun is so glorious! He clasps the baby leaves in his unseen hands and they grow, and he makes the blades