A Little Girl in Old Quebec Part 5

"Lalotte, thou wert hard to win in those early days. But now a dozen good kisses with more flavor in them than Burgundy wine, and I will prove to you I am the same old Antoine. And then--but thy supper smell is good to a hungry man. And a dish of shallots. It takes a man back to old Barbizon."

Stout and strong as was Madame Dubray, her husband almost kissed the breath out of her body in his rapturous embrace.

"But I had no word of your coming----"

"How could you, pardieu! But you knew the traders were coming in. And a man can't send messengers hundreds of miles."

"I looked last year----"

"Pouf! There are men who stay five or ten years, and have left a wife in France. You can't blame them for taking a new one when you are invited to. It is a wild, hard life, but not worse than a soldier's. And when you are your own master the hards.h.i.+ps are light. But some of this good supper."

"Out with you," she said to the Indian boys, who had s.n.a.t.c.hed a piece of the broiled fish. Then she put down a plate, took up two birds that dripped delicious gravy, and a squirrel browned to a turn. From the cupboard beside the great stone chimney, so cunningly devised that no one would have suspected it, she brought forth a bottle of wine from the old world, her last choice possession, that she had dreamed of saving for Antoine, and now her dream had come true.

There was much to tell on both sides, though her life had been comparatively uneventful. He related incidents of his wilder experiences far away from civilization that he had grown to enjoy in its perfect freedom that often lapped over into lawlessness. And he ate until squirrel, fish, and the cakes, both of rye and corn, had disappeared.

The slave boys fared ill that night.

Rose had eaten her supper more daintily. The great pile of raspberries was a delight; large, luscious; melting in one's mouth without the aid of sugar, and being picked up with the fingers. She had been startled at the sudden appearance of the husband she had heard talked of, but of course not seen. His loud voice grated on her ears, made more sensitive by illness, and when, a long while after, the pine torch that was flaring in the kitchen defined his brawny frame as he stood in the doorway, she wanted to scream.

"Oh--what have you here--a ghost?" he asked.

"A child who was left here more than a year ago. Jean Arlac lost his wife, and not knowing what to do with her--she was not his own child--left her here. He went out with the fur-hunters."

"Jean Arlac!" Antoine scratched among his rough locks as if to a.s.sist his memory. "Yes. And on the way he picked up a likely Indian girl who has given him a son. And he saddled her on you?"

"Oh, the Sieur will look after her--perhaps take her back to France,"

she answered, indifferently.

"The best place for her, no doubt. She looks a frail reed. And women need strength in this new world. A little infusion of Indian blood will do no harm. I wouldn't mind a son myself, but a girl--pouf!"

The child was glad he would not want her. She turned her face to the wall. She had not known what loneliness was before, but now she felt it through all her body, like a great pain.

On the opposite side of the room was another settle, part of which turned over and was upheld by drawing out two rounds of logs. Mere Dubray made up the wider bed now, and soon Antoine was snoring l.u.s.tily.

At first it frightened the child, though she was used to the screech of the owl that spent his nights in the great walnut tree inside the palisade.

Was it a dream, she wondered the next morning. She slept soundly at last and late and found herself alone in the house. She put on her simple frock and went to the doorway. Ah, what a splendid glowing morning it was! The suns.h.i.+ne lay in golden ma.s.ses and fairly gilded the green of the maize, the waving gra.s.ses, the bronze of the trees, and the river threw up lights and shadows like birds skimming about.

No one was in the garden. The table had been despoiled to the last crumb. Even the cupboard had been ransacked and all that remained was some raw fish. She was not hungry and the fragrant air was reviving. It seemed to speed through every pulse. Why, she suddenly felt strong again.

She wandered out of the enclosure and climbed the steps, sitting down now and then and drawing curious breaths that frightened her, they came so irregularly. There were workmen building additional fortifications around the post, there were houses going up. It was like a strange place. She reached the gallery presently and looked over what was sometime to be the city of Quebec. The long stretch was full of tents and tepees and throngs of men of every description, it would seem; Indians, swarthy Spaniards who had roamed half round the world, French from the jaunty trader, with a certain air of breeding, down to the rough, unkempt peasant, who had been lured away from his native land with visions of an easily-made fortune and much liberty in New France, and convicts who had been given a choice between death and expatriation.

Great stacks of furs still coming in from some quarter, haranguing, bargaining, shouting, coming to blows, and the interference of soldiers.

Was it so last summer when she sometimes ran out with Pani, though she had been forbidden to?

It was growing very hot up here. The sun that looked so glorious through the long stretches of the forest and played about the St. Lawrence as if in a game of hide-and-seek with the boats, grew merciless. All the air was full of dancing stars and she was so tired trying to reach out to them, as if they were a stairway leading up to heaven, so that one need not be put in the dark, wretched ground. Oh, yes, she could find the way, and she half rose.

It seemed a long journey in the darkness. Then there was a coolness on her brow, a soft hand pa.s.sed over it, and she heard some murmuring, caressing words. She opened her eyes, she tried to rise.

"Lie still, little one," said the voice that soothed and somehow made it easy to obey. She was fanned slowly, and all was peace.

"Did you climb up to the gallery all alone? And yesterday you seemed so weak, so fragile."

"I wanted--some one. They had all gone----"

"Quebec looks like a besieged camp. Laurent, that is my husband," with a bright color, "said I could see it from the gallery, and that it resembled a great show. I went out and found you. At first I thought you were dead. But the Indian woman, Jolette is her Christian name, but I should have liked Wanamee better, carried you in here and after a while brought you to. But I thought sure you were dead. Poor little white Rose! Truly named."

"But once I had red cheeks," in a faint voice.

"Then thou wouldst have been a red Rose."

She sang a delicious little chanson to a red rose from a lover. The child sighed in great content.

"Were they good to you down there? That woman seemed--well, hard. And were you left all alone?"

Rose began to tell the story of how the husband came home, and Madame Giffard could see that she shrank from him. "And when she woke they had all gone away. There was nothing to eat."

"Merci! How careless and unkind!" But Madame Giffard could not know the little slave boys had ransacked the place.

"I was not hungry. And it was so delightful to walk about again. Though I trembled all over and thought I should fall down."

"As you did. Now I have ordered you some good broth. And you must lie still to get rested."

"But it is so nice to talk. You were so beautiful yesterday I was afraid. I never saw such fine clothes."

Madame Giffard was in a soft gray gown to-day that had long wrinkled sleeves, a very short waist, and a square neck filled in with ruffles that stood up in a stiff fas.h.i.+on. She looked very quaint and pretty, more approachable, though the child felt rather than understood.

"Are there no women here, and no society? Merci! but it is a strange place, a wilderness. And no b.a.l.l.s or dinners or excursions, with gay little luncheons? There is war all the time at home, but plenty of pleasure, too. And what is one to do here!"

"The Indians have some ball games. But they often fight at the end."

The lady laughed. What a charming ripple it was, like the falls here and there, and there were many of them.

"Not that kind," she said, in her soft tone that could not wound the child. "A great room like a palace, and lights everywhere, hundreds of candles, and mirrors where you see yourself at every turn. Then festoons of gauzy things that wave about, and flowers--not always real ones, they fade so soon. And the men--there are officers and counts and marquises, and their habiliments are--well, I can't describe them so you would understand, but a hundred times finer than those of the Sieur de Champlain. And the women--oh, if I had worn a ball dress yesterday, you would have been speechless."

She laughed again gayly at the child's innocence. And just then Wanamee came in with the broth.

"Madame Dubray's husband has come," nodding to the child.

"Yes, yesterday, just at night."

"He has great stores, they say. He is shrewd and means to make money.

But there will be no quiet now for weeks. And it will hardly be safe to venture outside the palisades."

Jolette had been among the first converts, a prisoner taken in one of the numerous Indian battles, rescued and saved from torture by the Sieur himself, and though she had been a wife of one of the chiefs, she had been beaten and treated like a slave. Champlain found her amenable to the influences of civilization, and in some respects really superior to the emigrants that had been sent over, though most of them were eagerly seized upon as wives for the workmen. Frenchwomen were not anxious to leave their native land.

Madame Giffard fed her small _protegee_ in a most dainty and enticing manner. The little girl would have thought herself in an enchanted country if she had known anything about enchantment. But most of the stories she had heard were of Indian superst.i.tion, and so horrid she never wanted to recur to them. Madame Dubray was much too busy to allow her thoughts to run in fanciful channels, and really lacked any sort of imagination.

After she had been fed she leaned back on the pillow again. Madame soon sang her to sleep. The child was very much exhausted and in the quietude of slumber looked like a bit of carving.

"Her eyelashes are splendid," thought her watcher, "and her lips have pretty curves. There is something about her--she must have belonged to gentle people. But she will grow coa.r.s.e under that woman's training."