Part 3
Dumb, then, they stood, just as the peasant couple had done; but in this case too bounteous speech choked itself. It seemed to both that their hearts beat aloud. Dollard felt himself vibrate from head to foot with the action of his blood-valves. The pair looked up and stammered to cover such noise within, speaking together, and instantly begged each other’s pardon, then looked down and were silent again.
“How is it possible,” said Dollard, carefully modulating his voice, “that I see you here, Mademoiselle Laval!”
“The Sieur des Ormeaux takes me for a king’s girl! How is it possible I see _you_ here, monsieur?”
“I came to keep my man in countenance, while he picked himself a wife. This instant is a drop from Paradise!”
“Monsieur is easily satisfied if he can call such surroundings a paradise,” said Claire, smiling at the grim hall.
“Mademoiselle, when did you come from France?”
“Yesterday we arrived, Sieur des Ormeaux.”
“Then you came in the king’s ship?”
“Without a doubt.”
“This is wonderful! I thought you three thousand miles away from me.”
“Did you honor me with a thought at the other extremity of that distance?” she asked carelessly, pushing towards the fire with the point of her foot a bit of bark which its own steam had burst off a log.
“Claire!” he said, pressing his hand on his eyes.
“Monsieur, the abbess is near,” the young lady responded in tremor.
“You are not here to be a nun?”
“Why not?”
“But are you?”
“Monsieur, you have penetration. That is said to be my errand.”
“But why do you come to New France?”
“That is what the bishop said. I hope we may choose our convents, we poor nuns.”
“O Claire! I cannot endure this,” Dollard sobbed in his throat. It was a hoarse note of masculine anguish, but the girl observed him with radiant eyes.
“I never was a man fit to touch the tip of your white finger. Mademoiselle, have you forgotten those messages that I sent you by my cousin when she was with you at the convent?”
“It was very improper, Sieur des Ormeaux. Yes, indeed, I have forgotten every one of them.”
“You have not thought of me, and I have lived on thoughts of you. I hoped to ennoble myself in your eyes--and you are thrown in my way to turn me mad at the last instant!”
“Forgive my misfortune which throws me in your way, monsieur,” she said sedately. “I am driven here a fugitive.”
“From what?” Dollard’s hand caught the hilt of his sword.
“From something very unpleasant. In fact, from marriage.”
His face cleared, and he laughed aloud with satisfaction.
“Do you hate marriage?”
“I detest it.”
“You came to live under the bishop’s protection?”
“His penance and discipline, you mean.”
“This is a rude country for you. How often have I presumed to plan your life and mine together, arranging the minutest points of our perfect happiness! I have loved you and been yours since the first moment I saw you. And how I have followed your abbess’s carriage when it contained you! I was to distinguish myself in military service, and become able to demand your hand of your guardian. But that takes so long! There was a rumor that you were to be married. Angel! I could throw myself on the floor with my cheek against your foot!”
“O Sieur des Ormeaux! do not say that. It is a surprise to find you in this country, though it is very natural that you should be here. I must now go back to the convent.”
“Wait. Do not go for a moment. Let me speak to you. Remember how long I have done without seeing you.”
“Oh, I only came in a moment because I was curious.”
“Then stay a moment because you are merciful.”
“But I must go back to the convent, Sieur des Ormeaux,” she urged, her throat swelling, her face filling with blood. “Because----”
“Because what?”
“Because I must go back to the convent. It is the best place for me, monsieur. And you will soon forget.”
The two poor things stood trembling, though Dollard’s face gathered splendor.
“Claire, you are mine. You know that you are mine! This is love! O saints!”
He threw himself on his knees before her without a thought of any spectator, his sword clanking against the flags of the hearth.
“Monsieur----”
“Say ‘My husband!’”
“My husband,” she did whisper; and at that word he rose up and took her in his arms.
V.
JACQUES HAS SCRUPLES.
ALL other business in the hall was suspended. Perhaps the fire and success of Dollard’s courtship kindled envy in ruder breasts; but in Mother Mary’s it kindled that beacon which a vestal keeps ready against the inroads of the cloister’s despoilers.
Pallid and stately she placed herself before the pair. And during this conference she made dabs forward with her head, as a poor hen may be seen to do when the hawk has stolen her chicken.
“We did not understand, monsieur, that the commandant of Montreal sought a wife.”
“Reverend mother,” said Dollard, shielding the side of Claire’s face with his hand as he held her head against him, “I never dared seek such a blessing as this. The saints have given it to me.”
“But mademoiselle is not here to be married, monsieur.”
“I understand that, reverend mother.”
“And do you understand that she is the cousin of the Bishop of New France?”
“All Mademoiselle Laval’s history is known to me. I have adored her a lifetime.”
“And was it to meet this young seignior, mademoiselle, that you insisted on coming into the wife market?”
“Reverend mother,” replied Dollard, himself glowing as he felt Claire’s face burn under his hand, “blame the saints, not us. We have been flung together from the ends of the earth. It is a blessed miracle.”
Mother Mary made a dab with her head which meant, “Do not be deceived, my son.”
Dollard understood a movement Claire made, and gave her his arm to lead her away.
“And the demoiselle takes this young commandant for her husband?”
“I do, reverend mother,” the demoiselle replied, lifting up a countenance set in the family cast of stern stubbornness.
“It will be my duty to send an instant message to the bishop.”
“The bishop may still be found at the council. I have just been with him,” said Dollard. “Let your messenger make haste, reverend mother, for I leave Quebec directly.”
“Then there is no need of haste. The Sieur des Ormeaux can present his suit to the bishop next time he comes to Quebec.”
“I shall never come to Quebec again, reverend mother.”
Claire looked above the level of her own eyes to understand this riddle.
Dollard was scarcely twenty-five years old. His crystal love, so strong that it had him in possession, shone through a face set in lines of despair.
“Surely you can come again in a week?”
“My darling, it may take nearly that long to reach Montreal. How little you know of distances in this savage country!”
“Monsieur, I will send for the bishop,” said Mother Mary of the Incarnation.
As her black robe moved away, the other people in the hall, seeing nothing further to gaze at, resumed their wooing and bargaining.
“What did you mean when you said you shall never come to Quebec again?” inquired Claire.
Dollard penetrated her with his look.
“Will you marry me this moment?”
“Monsieur, how can I marry you this moment?”
“By going to the notary, who has a table downstairs, and afterward to Father de Casson, who, fortunately, is waiting for me in the cathedral now. I see what will happen if I wait to demand you in marriage of the bishop. There will be delays and obstacles, if not a flat refusal.”
“The commandant truly takes me for a king’s girl,” she said, her teeth showing in laughter, though her black eyelashes started into crescent-like prominence on whitening cheeks.
“Have you I will, however I take you; the whole world shall not prevent that now. And listen: suppose I had taken vows,--wait!--honorable vows. It will surely be as well with you after my pledges are fulfilled as it was before we met here. This hard convent life in New France, you cannot endure that. You will be the lady of my poor seigniory, and perhaps I may add some glory to the name. My Claire, do you love me?”
“Sieur des Ormeaux, is not that enough to admit in one day?”
“No, it is not. When was a day ever granted to us before? If we lose this point of time, the dead wall of separation will rise again, and I shall be robbed of you forever.”
“But why can you not come back again?”
“Because the bounds are set for me. Yet, if I could come again, would I prosper any better? Claire, if my suit is even listened to, there will be messages to the king, and to the Montmorency in France, and a year’s or two years’ delay. As for me, I shall be dead long before then. We can go to the notary this moment. We can go to the cathedral to Father de Casson. We can go forthwith to my boat and start up the St. Lawrence. O my love!”--Dollard’s voice was searching and deep in pleading,--“can you not stoop to this haste for me? I shall carry you into hardship, but carry you like the cross. While we stand here the abbess sends for the bishop; the bishop comes and says, ‘Go back, fair cousin, into the convent; and you, Dollard, whoever you may be, get yourself off to Montreal.’ I could not then urge you against your kinsman’s authority. But now the word is unspoken. Shall we stand here and wait until it is spoken?”
“I see no reason why we should, monsieur,” she replied, pink as a flower.
“Then you will consent to be married at once?”
“There is, I believe, but one staircase,” said Claire. “It would not be pleasant to meet the bishop or Mother Mary of the Incarnation as we go down.”
“Let us make haste, therefore,” he deduced from her evasive reply; and haste they made, so that several pairs were kept waiting by the notarial table while the commandant was served.
The cathedral of Notre Dame in Quebec stood, and still stands, on the opposite side of the square. It was a massive pile of masonry, compared to the cabins of Lower Town, and held its cross far up in their northern sky. Within were holy dimness and silence, broken only by the footfalls of occasionally coming and going devotees. Though not yet rich in altars and shrines, paintings, and glittering crystal and metal, the young cathedral had its worthy relics, and its humble offerings of tinsel and ribbon-tied paper flowers. The merchant people from Lower Town, and peasants from adjacent river côtes and Laval’s great seigniory, came here to bathe their souls in thoughts of heaven, and to kneel on the pavement beside governor or high dame.
At this hour of morning only two persons sat in the church as if waiting for some kind of service.
There were three nuns, indeed, kneeling in a row before the chancel rail, their three small red noses just appearing beyond their black veils--noses expressing quiet sanctity. And a confessional was perhaps occupied.
But the pair who waited were neither nuns nor penitents. They had taken the usual moisture from the font of holy water, wherein many devout fingers had deposited considerable sediment. They had bowed towards the altar and told their prayers from station to station, and were now anxious to be joined in matrimony lest Dollard should arrive and cut off all chance of collecting the governor’s bounty by his impatient haste.
Still, as no priest appeared, Jacques and Louise sat in repose with their eyes cast down. The feverish activity of this new world would never touch their veins or quicken the blood of any of their descendants. How many generations before them had been calmed into this pastoral peace on sun-soaked lands! Years of dwelling among pines and mountains and azure lakes, of skimming on snow-shoes over boundless winter whiteness, of shooting rapids, and of standing on peaks, would all fail to over-exhilarate blood so kindly bovine and unhurried in its action.
The penitent came out of the confessional closet and stalked away--an Algonquin Indian, with some slight smell of rum about him and a rebuked expression of countenance. A fringe or thread of his blanket trailed on the pavement as he went. Then Dollier de Casson, who never omitted confessing any sinner that appealed to him, strode out of the confessional himself on gigantic soles, though with the soft tread which nature and training impart to a priest. He saw the waiting couple, and as serenely as he would have prepared for such an office in some river cabin, he took his stole out of a large inner pocket of his cassock and invested himself in it.
During this pause Dollard came hastily into the cathedral with a muffled lady on his arm. He took her at once to Father de Casson, and beckoned Jacques to follow them to the altar.
Jacques followed with Louise, his face waxing in anxiety, until a heavy heart brought down his knees with a bump behind Dollard and that unknown dame.
“How is this, my son?” inquired Father de Casson of Dollard as he rested his eyes on the commandant’s bride.
“Father, let the service go on at once, and I will make all due explanation when there is more time. The civil marriage is completed.”
Father de Casson took his book to administer the sacrament of marriage to these two pairs, when Jacques, walking on his knees, brought himself behind Dollard’s ear.
“Father,” he whispered to the priest, the hisses of his suppressed voice scattering through the place, “I have on my mind what must first be said to my master.”
“When did ye all confess last?” inquired Dollier de Casson.
“Father,” urged Dollard, “believe me, we are all prepared for the sacrament of marriage.”
“But, m’sieur,” anxiously hissed Jacques at his ear, “I did not know you were going to take a wife too.”
“Suppose you didn’t know,” exclaimed Dollard, turning towards him in impatience; “what is it to you?”
“You will have to change your will, m’sieur.”
“Certainly I will have to change my will; but you shall not be injured.”
“That’s not it, m’sieur,” persisted Jacques. “Whatever is right to you will be right to me. But here’s this girl. I’ve nearly promised her the seigniory, and what will she say when she’s cut out of it?”
“Get back to your place and let the service go on,” said Dollard, half rising in menace.
“But I ought to take her out and explain this to her first,” insisted Jacques. “Then if she chooses to go into the marriage she can blame no one but herself.”
“Will you get back to your place and cease your interruption,” whispered Dollard, with fierceness, “or must I take you by the neck and toss you out of the cathedral?”
“No, m’sieur, I’ll not interrupt it. I’ll marry her. But what she will do with me afterwards is the load upon my mind.”
So, rubbing his knees on the pavement, Jacques returned like a crab to his immovable bride, and dejectedly bore his part in the service. Yet before this ordeal of marriage was over, the pastoral peace had returned to his countenance, and solemn relief appeared in his eyes. As Louise Bibelot became transmuted into Louise Goffinet, he said within himself:
“Now, if she be well contented with the commandant’s change of mind, all will go right. But if she turns rebellious at these new orders, threatening to desert, and wanting the entire earth with the seigniory thrown in, there’ll be only one thing for me to do. I’ll whip her!”
VI.
A RIVER CÔTE.
THE four Huron Indians, cut off abruptly from the luxury of a Lower Town drinking-shop, sat in sulky readiness with their grasp upon the oars. Dollard was at the stern of the boat beside Claire, whom he had wrapped in bear-skins, because at high noon the April air was chill upon the river.
Dollier de Casson had likewise taken to his canoe with his servant and pack of sacred utensils, and this small craft rested against the larger one to resist the current’s dragging. Dollard’s rope yet held to the shore. His impatient eyes watched Quebec Heights for the appearance of Jacques and Louise.
Water lapping the two boats brought them together with faint jars and grindings of the edges. Dollier de Casson, sitting thus facing the contraband bride, beheld her with increasing interest.
Jacques and Louise, carrying the bride’s caskets and impedimenta of their own, finally appeared on Quebec’s slopes, descending with deliberation to the landing.
They had no breath to spend in chat, but Jacques realized with voiceless approval that Louise carried manfully her portion of the freight.
He rolled his keg into the boat, slipped the boxes aboard, and helped Louise to a bench in front of himself; then, untying the rope, he sprung in.
The Hurons bent to their oars and the boat shot out into the river, Dollier de Casson’s canoe-man following. Above water murmur and rhythmic splash of oars Dollard then called his vassal to account, addressing him over the Indians’ swaying shoulders.
“What have you been doing this hour by the sun, Jacques Goffinet?”
“Hour, m’sieur? I have trotted myself into a sweat since we left the cathedral, and thrown away all my bounty the king pays a bachelor on his marriage, except this keg of salt meat and eleven crowns in money. That because of your hot haste, m’sieur. I lose an ox, a cow, a pair of fine hogs, and such chickens as never crowed on St. Bernard, and yet I have been an hour, have I?--May the saints never let ruin and poverty tread on my heels so fast another hour while I live!”
Claire held out to Dollard, from her furs, a square watch having a mirror set in its back, saying:
“You see, we waited scarcely twenty-five minutes.”
Dollard laughed, but called again to his vassal:
“A cow, an ox, a load of swine, and a flock of chickens! And having freighted the boat with these, where did you intend to carry the lady of St. Bernard, your seignior, your wife, yourself, and the rowers, my excellent Jacques? Were we to be turned out as guests to the bishop?”
“Saints forbid, m’sieur,” Jacques called back sincerely. “The bishop and the abbess stood by while my wife brought madame’s caskets from the convent, and they smiled so ’twould make a man’s teeth chatter. I am not skilled in the looks of holy folks, but I said to my wife as we came away, ‘These Quebec Jesuits, they begrudge the light of day to Montreal.’ So it would be cold cheer you got of bishop or abbess, m’sieur.”
Dollard and the fur-wrapped bride looked up at Quebec promontory which they were rounding, heights of sheer rock stretching up and holding the citadel in mid-heaven. The Indians steadily flung the boat up-stream.
Claire turned over in her mind that mute contempt which Mother Mary evidently felt for what she would call a girl’s fickleness. Her ungracious leave-taking of the upright and duty-loving abbess was a pain to her. As to the bishop, she could not regret that his first benediction had been final. Resentment still heated her against both those strict devotees. She was yet young enough to expect perfect happiness, for the children of man live much before they learn to absorb the few flawless joys which owe their perfection to briefness.
One such moment Claire had when her soldier leaned over her in silence.
“We are going farther from France. Are you homesick, dear?”
“No; I am simply in a rage at the bishop of New France and the abbess of the Ursulines.”
“There they go behind the rock of Quebec, entirely separated from us. Have you regrets that you bore such a wedding for my sake?”
“Sieur des Ormeaux, I have but a single fault to find with you.”
“What is that?” Dollard anxiously inquired.
“The edge of your hat is too narrow.”
“Why, it is the usual head-cover of a French officer of my rank; but I will throw it into the river.”
“O, monsieur! that would be worse than ever. If you despise me for seizing on you as I did----”
“O Claire!”
“What will you think when I own my depravity now? The abbess might well smile. She doubtless knows I will say this to you. Are those yellow-feathered men watching us?”
“Not at all. They watch the St. Lawrence.”
“Louise’s back is turned. But your servant?”
“Can he do anything but stare at Louise?”
“I forgot the priest.”
“His boat is many lengths behind.”
“Sieur des Ormeaux, this is a lovely voyage. But do you remember climbing the convent wall and dropping into the garden once where your cousin and I sat with our needlework?”
“Once? Say many times. I spent much of my life on that convent wall. You saw me once.”
“You fell on one knee, monsieur, and seized my work and kissed it. That silk mess; I often looked at it afterward. Men have very queer tastes, have they not? It is a shocking thing when a girl has just flown the convent and her own family, but, O Sieur des Ormeaux! I want to kiss you!”
A sail-boat, perhaps venturing down from Three Rivers, cut past them in the distance. Other craft disappeared. No stealthy canoe shot from cover of rock or headland. As Claire half closed her eyes and leaned against the rest provided for her, she thought she saw a heron rise from shallows at the water’s edge, trailing its legs in flight. Catbirds and blue jays could be seen like darting specks, describing lineless curves against the sky or shore.
Sometimes Dollier de Casson’s boat lagged, or again it shot close behind Dollard’s. The first stop was made on a flat rocky island where there was a spring of clear water. Louise and Jacques spread out as a bridal repast such provisions as Dollard had hurriedly bought in Quebec, with dried eels and cured fish from the St. Bernard cellar. The pause was a brief one. And no tale of this island was dropped in Claire’s ear, or of another island nearer the St. Lawrence’s mouth: how two hundred Micmac Indians camped there for the night, beaching their canoes and hiding their wives and children in a recess of the rocks; how the Iroquois surprised and blotted them all out. That dreaded war-cry, “Kohe--Kohe!” might well be living in the air along the river yet.
Before reëntering the boat Claire went to the spring for a last cup of water, taking Louise with her.
“And what did the bishop say?” she seized this chance to inquire.
“Mademoiselle--madame, he did nothing but look, as my husband said. We were all four surprised, the bishop, the abbess, my husband, and I.”
“Did the abbess accept my purse I bade you leave for the convent?”
“Madame, I left it lying on the floor where she dropped it. She has no doubt picked it up and counted the coins out to charity by this. The whole marriage seems a miracle, with my mother helping the blessed saints.”
“Were you, then, pleased, my child?”
“Mademoiselle, I was stupid with delight. For you will now be my mistress and have me to wait on you the rest of our lives. Had _you_ no terrors at coming away with a strange man, mademoiselle?”
“Strange man, tongue of pertness! when the Sieur des Ormeaux has been my lover these many years.”
“Was he, indeed, one of those troublesome wooers who drove you out of France? You said this morning you would never be yoked in marriage, and long before the sun goes down you are a bride! Ah, madame, the air of this country must be favorable to women!”
Again the boats pushed up-river, following the afternoon westward.
They had passed Cap Rouge, a cluster of cabins, the seignior’s substantial stone hut forming one side of the fort-like palisades. The strip farms extended in long ribbons back from the shore. Their black stubble of stumps, mowed by ax and fire, crouched like the pitiful impotence of man at the flanks of unmeasured forest.
Before nightfall the voyagers came near a low beach where sand and gravel insensibly changed to flat clearing, and a côte of three or four families huddled together.
Wild red-legged children came shouting to the water’s edge before Dollier de Casson’s canoe was beached, and some women equally sylvan gathered shyly among the stumps to welcome him.
As the priest stepped from his boat he waved a hand in farewell to the other voyagers, and Dollard stood up, lifting his hat.