Part 5

“In these few days,” replied the girl, laughing, and she threw the light of her topaz eyes half towards him, “the way they call your name in this new country has become to me like a title.”

“You shall have more than a title,” burst out Dollard. “Heaven helping me, you shall yet have a name that will not die!”

They passed through the gate of the palisade, Jacques and Louise following with the loads of the expedition. To insure its safety the boat was afterwards dragged within the palisade.

The censitaire in charge, with his wife at his shoulder, stood grinning at Jacques’s approach.

“Thou got’st thyself a wife, hé, my pretty Jacques?”

“That did I, bonhomme Papillon. And a good wife, and a stout wife, and a handsome. Thou ’lt want to go to Quebec market thyself when the Indians carry off Joan.”

“Let me see him go to the Quebec market!” cried Joan, shaking her knuckled fist under his ear.

“It would trouble thee little to lose sight of him, Joan. But his coming back with such freight--it is _that_ would fire thee hotter than Iroquois torches. Alas, my children,” Jacques said, letting down his load inside the gate, “I bring much, but I leave much behind. If I am to hold this seigniory while my commandant is away, and feed ye both and my new wife, to say naught of Mademoiselle de Granville and our great lady, I need the cattle and swine and fowls which our king gave me for dower and my seignior made me throw over my shoulder.”

“But I thought,” said Louise, in dismay, “that thou had’st such stores of vegetables and other provisions here.”

“Have no fear, my spouse. Thou shalt see how this garrison is provisioned. But what prudent man can drop without a sigh the moiety of his wife’s fortune? Here are Papillon and Joan, who hold the next island under our seignior. And here, timid Joan, is thy soldierly new neighbor Louise Goffinet, who squealed not in the dangers of the river.”

“Wert thou afraid?” Joan asked Louise, kindly.

“I was until I saw Madame des Ormeaux was not. And the Indians have a wonderful skill.”

“Did the commandant also marry her at the wife market?” pressed Joan, walking by Louise’s side behind the men. “She is surely the fairest woman in New France. I could have crawled before her when she gave me a smile.”

“My mother nursed her,” said Louise, with pride.

“Did she so! And is our lady some great dame from the king’s court, who heard of the commandant at Montreal?”

“Thou hast woman wit. It is exactly as thou sayest,” bragged Jacques, turning towards the mummied face of Papillon’s simple wife. “She is cousin to our holy bishop himself; and even that great man she left grinning and biting his nails, for he and the abbess they would make a nun of her. Thou dost not know the mightiness of her family. My Louise can charm thee with all that. But this lady was a princess in France, and voyaged here by the king’s ship, being vilely sickened and tossed about; and all for my commandant. Is not the Sieur des Ormeaux known in France?” Jacques snapped his fingers high in air.

The lowest floor of the seigniory house was the rock on which it was based. Here and within the stockade were such domestic animals as belonged to the island. A sheep rubbed against Louise, passing out as she passed in.

She looked around the darkened strong walls, unpierced by even a loop-hole, at the stores of provender for dumb and human inmates. Jacques had underestimated his wealth in collected food. His magazine seemed still overflowing when it was spring and seed-time, and the dearth of winter nearly past.

A stone staircase twisted itself in giving ascent to the next floor. Here were sleeping-cells for the seignior’s servants, and a huge kitchen having pillars of cemented rock across its center, and a fire-place like a cave. Lancelike windows gave it light, and in the walls were loop-holes which had been stopped with stone to keep out the Canadian winter.

A broader stairway of tough and well-dried wood in one corner led up to the seignior’s apartment above, which was divided into several rooms. The largest one, the saloon of the mansion, had also its cavern fire-place where pieces of wood were smoldering. A brass candelabrum stood on the mantel. Rugs of fawn skin beautifully spotted, and of bear skin relieved the dark unpolished floor. The walls of all the rooms were finished with a coarse plaster glittering with river sand. Some slender-legged chairs, a high-backed cushioned bench, a couch covered by moth-eaten tapestry, and a round black table furnished this drawing-room. Some cast-off pieces of armor hung over the mantel, and an embroidery frame stood at one side of the hearth.

There was but one window, and it swung outward on hinges, the sash being fitted with small square panes.

When Claire appeared from the private chamber where she had been taken to refresh herself with Louise to attend on her, Dollard came down the room, took her by the hands, and led her to this window. He pushed the sash open quite out of their way, and thus set the landscape in a deep frame of stone wall.

The two young lovers still met each other with shyness and reserve. From the hour of his impetuous marriage Dollard had watched his wife with passionate solicitude. But that day when his boat approached Montreal he had it brought to the dock and went ashore by himself, spending what Claire considered the best hours of the afternoon at the fort and on the streets, coming back flushed and repressed.

She felt the energetic pulses still beating in his face as he touched her forehead.

“You see now the way we came,” said Dollard, indicating the St. Lawrence sweeping towards the east.

“A lovely way it was,” said Claire. The river’s breath came to them fresh and clean, leaving a touch of dampness on the skin. Already the wooded south shore was clothing itself in purple, but northward the expanse of water still held to what it had received from sunset. “That was very different from the voyage on shipboard.”

“Are you not tired?”

“I was tired only once--at Montreal,” hinted Claire, gazing at the extremity of the island.

“Again I beg you to pardon that. I had been nearly ten days away from my command and there were serious matters to attend to. Put it out of your mind and let us be very happy this evening.”

“And every following evening. That goes without saying.”

“I must report at my fortress at daybreak to-morrow.”

“You should have left my caskets at Montreal, monsieur,” exclaimed Claire. “I could do without them here one night.”

“You want to turn your back on poor St. Bernard immediately?”

“Monsieur, you do not mean to separate yourself from me?” she inquired lightly, keeping control of her trembling voice.

“I brought you here to take possession of my land,” said Dollard.

“I have taken possession. The keys of the house of course I do not want. They shall in all courtesy be left with the resident châtelaine, your sister. Monsieur, where is your sister?”

Dollard glanced over his shoulder at the embroidery frame.

“She has been here or is coming. I have hardly prepared you for poor Renée. She lives in delusions of her own, and pays little regard to the courtesies of the outside world. My excellent Jacques waits on her as on a child.”

“Doubtless I thought too little about her,” Claire said, visibly shrinking. “She may object to me.”

“She will not even see you unless I put you before her eyes.”

“What ails your sister, monsieur? Is she a religious devotee?”

“Not strictly that. She is a nurser of delusions. I cannot remember when she was otherwise, though we have lived little together, for poor Renée is but my half-sister. Her father was a De Granville. You will not feel afraid of her when you have seen her; she is not unkind. She has her own chambers at the rock side of the house and lives there weeks together. I see her embroidery frame is set out, and that means we may expect her presence.”

While he was speaking, Mademoiselle de Granville had opened a door at the end of the room.

Claire, with well-opened eyes, pressed backward against her husband, so moldered-looking a creature was this lady gliding on silent feet--not unlike some specter of the Des Ormeaux who had followed their last chevalier under the New World’s glaring skies. She wore a brocaded gown, the remnant of a court costume of some former reign, and her face was covered with a black silk mask. Though masks were then in common use, the eyes which looked through this one were like the eyes of a sleep-walker. She sat down by the embroidery frame as if alone in the room, but instead of a web of needlework she began to fasten in the frame one end of a priest’s stole much in need of mending.

Dollard led his wife to this silent figure.

“My dear Renée,” he said, taking hold of the stole and thereby establishing a nerve of communication, “let me present my beautiful wife.”

The figure looked up, unsurprised but attentive.

“She was Mademoiselle Laval-Montmorency.”

With deference the figure rose off its slim-legged chair and made a deep courtesy, Claire acknowledging it with one equally deep.

“Mademoiselle,” petitioned the bride, “I hope my sudden coming causes you no trouble, though we return to the fort soon.”

The mask gazed at her but said nothing.

“Are you never lonely here upon this island?” pursued Claire.

The mask’s steady gaze made her shiver.

“She does not talk,” Dollard explained. He drew his wife away from the silent woman and suggested, “Let us walk up and down until some supper is served, to get rid of the boat’s cramping.”

Mademoiselle de Granville sat down and continued to arrange her darning.

Whenever they were quite at the room’s end Claire drew a free breath, but always in passing the masked presence she shrunk bodily against Dollard, for the room was narrow. He, with tense nerves and far-looking eyes, failed to notice this. The eccentricities of any man’s female relatives appeal to his blindest side. Custom has used him to them, and his own blood speaks their apology.

The river air blew into the open window. There were no sounds except the footsteps of Dollard and Claire, and a stirring of the household below which was hint of sound only, so thick were the walls and floors.

In due time Jacques came up, bearing the supper. His seignior when at St. Bernard ate in the kitchen. But this was a descent unbefitting a grand bride. While Jacques was preparing the round table, Claire stole another look towards the mask which must now be removed. But by some sudden and noiseless process known to recluse women Mademoiselle de Granville had already taken herself and her embroidery frame out of the room.

X.

THE SEIGNIORY KITCHEN.

ABOUT 1 o’clock of the night Jacques rose from his sleeping-cell, as he was in the habit of doing, to put more wood on the kitchen fire.

The window slits let in some moonlight of a bluish quality, but the larger part of this wide space lay in shadow until Jacques sent over it the ruddiness of a revived fire. Out of uncertainty came the doors of the sleeping-cells, the rafters and dried herbs which hung from them, heavy table and benches and stools, cooking-vessels, guns, bags of stored grain, and the figures of the four Hurons, two at each side of the hearth, stretched out in their blankets with their heels to the fire--and Jacques himself, disordered from sleep and imperfectly thrust into lower garments. He lingered stupidly looking at the magician fire while it rose and crackled and cast long oblique shadows with the cemented posts.

Dollard descended the stairway from his apartment, pressing down his sword-hilt to keep the scabbard from clanking on each step. He was entirely dressed in his uniform. As he approached the fire and Jacques turned towards him, his face looked bloodless, his features standing high, the forehead well reared back.

“I am glad you are awake,” he said to Jacques, half aloud. “Are the others asleep?” indicating those cells occupied by Louise and the Papillon family. There was no questioning the deep slumber which inclosed his Indians.

“Yes, m’sieur.”

“Have you packed the provisions I directed you to pack?”

“Yes, m’sieur. M’sieur, you do not leave at this hour?”

“At once.”

“But, m’sieur, the Lachine is hard enough to run in daytime.”

“There is broad moonlight. Are you sure you understand everything?”

“M’sieur, I hope I do. Have you told madame?”

Dollard wheeled and flung his clinched hands above his head as men do on receiving gunshot wounds.

“O saints! I cannot tell her! I am a wretch, Jacques. She has been happy; I have not caused her a moment’s suffering. Let her sleep till morning. Tell her then merely that I have gone to my fortress; that I would not expose her to the dangers of the route by night. It will soon be over now. Sometime she can forgive this cruelty if a deed goes after it to make her proud. She has proud blood, my boy; she loves honor. Oh, what a raving madman I was to marry her, my beloved! I thought it could do _her_ no harm--that it could not shake _my_ purpose! O my Claire! O my poor New France! Torn this way, I deserve shame with death--no martyr’s crown--no touch of glory to lighten my darkness for ever and ever!”

“M’sieur,” whimpered Jacques, crouching and wiping nose and eyes with his palms, “don’t say that! My little master, my pretty, my dear boy! These women have the trick of tripping a man up when he sets his foot to any enterprise.”

“Hear me,” said Dollard, grasping him on each side of the collar. “She is the last of the Des Ormeaux to you. Serve her faithfully as you serve the queen of heaven. If she wants to go back to France, go with her. Before this I bequeathed you St. Bernard. Now I am leaving you a priceless charge. Your wife shall obey and follow her to the ends of the earth. To-day I altered my will in Montreal and gave her my last coin, gave her my seigniory, I gave her _you_! Do you refuse to obey my last commands? Do you disallow my rights in you?”

Jacques’s puckered face unflinchingly turned upward and met the stare of his master.

“M’sieur, I will follow my lady’s whims and do your commands to the hour of my death.”

Dollard, like a mastiff, shook him.

“Is there any treachery in you, Jacques Goffinet, free follower of the house of Des Ormeaux? If there is, out with it now, or my dead eyes will pry through you hereafter.”

“M’sieur,” answered Jacques, lifting his hand and making the sign of the cross, “I am true man to my core. I do love to pile good stuff together and call land mine, but thou knowest I love a bit of cloth from one of thy old garments better than all the seigniories in New France.”

Dollard let go Jacques’s collar and extended his arms around the stumpy man’s neck.

“My good old Jacques! My good old Jacques!”

“How proud I have always been of thee!” choked Jacques.

“I have told her to depend on you, Jacques. The will I brought home in my breast and placed among her caskets. She will provide for Louise and you, and she will provide for poor Renée, also. Kick the Indians and wake them up. There is not another moment to spare.”

The Indians were roused, and stood up taciturn and ready for action, drawing their blankets around themselves. These Hurons, vagrants from Annahotaha’s tribe, were hangers-on about the fortress at Montreal. Jacques gave them each a careful dram, and lighted at the fire a dipped candle. With this feeble light he penetrated the darkness of the cellar floor, leading the party down its tortuous staircase.

Dollard, who had stood with his hand on the door-latch, was the last to leave the upper room. His questions followed Jacques around the turns of the stairs.

“You are well provisioned, Jacques?”

“Yes, m’sieur.”

“At daybreak you will remember to have Papillon help you bring in an abundant supply of water?”

“Yes, m’sieur.”

“Bar the doors when you see any one approaching and keep watch on all sides every day.”

“Yes, m’sieur.”

Jacques jammed his candle-end into a crack of the rock floor, undid the fastenings, and with a jerk let the moonlight in on their semi-darkness.

They went out to the palisade gate, the Indians dragged the boat carefully to its launching, and Jacques stored in it Dollard’s provisions.

“Good-bye, my man,” said Dollard.

“M’sieur,” said Jacques, “I have always obeyed you. There is but one thing in my heart against you, and I will cleanse myself of that now.”

“Quickly, then.” The young man had one foot in the boat.

“It is the same old hard spot. Thou wouldst rule me out of this expedition. A man that loves thee as I love thee!”

“Jacques, if I had reasons before on Renée’s account, what reasons have I not now?”

“Bless thee, my master Adam Daulac!”

“Bless thee, my Jacques!”

The boat shot off, and Jacques went in and fastened the gate and the door.

XI.

MADEMOISELLE DE GRANVILLE’S BROTHER.

SOON after 1 o’clock Claire awoke and sat upright in her dim room. Her alarm at the absence of Dollard was swallowed instantly by greater alarm at the presence of some one else.

This small chamber, like the saloon, was lighted by one square window, and male housekeeping at St. Bernard, combined with the quality of glass manufactured for colonial use at that date, veiled generous moonlight which would have thrown up sharply every object in the severe place.

Claire’s garments, folded and laid upon a stool, were motionless to her expanding eyes; so were her boxes where Louise had placed them. All the luggage which a young lady of rank then carried with her to the ends of the earth could be lifted upstairs in the arms of a stout maid. Unstirring was the small black velvet cap which Claire had chosen from her belongings to wear during the voyage. It was stuck against the wall like a dim blot of ink. But nothing else visible seemed quite so motionless and unstirring as the figure by the bed. It was Mademoiselle de Granville. Except that her personality was oppressive, she seemed a lifeless lump without breath or sight, until Claire’s tenser pupils adapted to duskiness found eyes in the mask, eyes stiffly gazing.

The bride’s voice sunk in her throat, but she forced it to husky action.

“What do you want?”

Automatically, holding its elbows to its sides, the figure lifted one forearm and pointed to Claire’s garments.

“Do you require me to put them on?”

It continued to point.

“Be so kind as to withdraw, then, and I will put them on.”

It continued to point, without change of attitude or sound of human breath.

The girl crept out of her couch at that corner farthest from the figure, rolled up and pinned her white curls as best she could, and assimilated the garments from the stool, keeping her eye braced repellantly against the automaton pointing at her. She finished by drawing her mantle over her dress, and the velvet cap over her hair.

“Now I am ready, if you are determined I shall go somewhere with you.”

The figure turned itself about and opened the door into the saloon. Claire followed, keeping far behind those silent feet, and thus they walked through that grim room over which touches of beauty had never been thrown by a woman’s keeping.

Claire followed into another chamber and was shut in darkness. It was the rock side of the house, without moonlighted windows. Mademoiselle de Granville had left her, and she stood confused, forgetting which way she should turn to the door-latch of release. The absence of Dollard now rushed back over her, and helped the dark to heap her with terrors. The sanest people have felt sparks of madness flash across the brain. One such flash created for her a trap in the floor to swallow her to the depths of the island.

Directly her surroundings were lighted by a door opening to an inner room. A priest stood there in black cassock, his face smooth and dark, his eyes dark and attentive. He was not tonsured, but with hair clustering high upon his head he looked like Dollard grown to sudden middle age, his fire burnt to ashes, his shoulders bowed by penances, his soul dried as a fern might be dried betwixt the wooden lids of his breviary. Behind him stood an altar, two tall candles burning upon it, and above the altar hung a crucifix. She took note of nothing else in the room.

“Pardon me, father; I am lost in the house. Mademoiselle de Granville brought me here and has left me.”

“Yes.” His voice had depth and volume, and was like Dollard’s voice grown older. “She brought you at my request.”

“At _your_ request, father? Where is Mademoiselle de Granville?”

“In that closet,” he replied, showing a door at the corner of his chapel room. “My poor lifeless sister is at her devotions.”

“I see my way now. With your permission I will go back,” said Claire. This unwholesome priest like a demon presentation of Dollard made her shudder.

“Stop, Mademoiselle Laval.”

“I am Madame des Ormeaux; as you should know, being inmate of this house and evidently my husband’s brother.”

“Mademoiselle de Granville has but one brother,” said the priest.

“The Sieur des Ormeaux is her brother.”

“There is no Sieur des Ormeaux.” He smiled in making the assertion, his lips parting indulgently.

“I mean Dollard, commandant of the fort of Montreal.”

“There is no Dollard, commandant of the fort of Montreal. I am the Abbé de Granville.”

Claire silently observed him, gathering her convictions. The priest leaned towards her, rubbing his hands.

“This misguided soldier, sometimes called Dollard, he is but a bad dream of mine, my poor child. So keen is your beauty that it still pierces the recollection. In my last dream my conscience tells me I worked some harm to you. Return to your family, mademoiselle, and forgive me. I have become myself again, and these holy tokens recall me to my duty and my vows.”

“I know who you are,” said Claire. “You are Mademoiselle de Granville.”

“I am the Abbé de Granville. Look at me.” He took a candle from the altar and held it near his face. So masculine was the countenance that it staggered conviction. The razor had left sleekness there. The tone of flesh was man-like. “I am Dollard,” he said. “I am a priest. There can be, of course, no marriage between us. I sent for you to ask your pardon, and to send you from St. Bernard.”

This gross and stupid cruelty had on Claire merely the effect of steeping her in color. Her face and throat blushed.

“You are Mademoiselle de Granville,” she repeated.

The priest, as if weary of enforcing his explanations, waved his fingers with a gesture of dismissal in Dollard’s own manner.

“I am the Abbé de Granville. But we will discuss the subject no further. I must be at my prayers. A trustworthy witness shall confirm what I have told you.”

He opened the closet door, carrying the candle with him. His tread had body and sound, though his feet were shod in sandals.

Claire moved guardedly after him. He crossed the closet and entered a long passage so narrow that two persons could scarcely walk abreast in it, nor did she covet the privilege of stepping it thus with her conductor.

As she crossed the closet her rapid eye searched it for the chrysalis of Mademoiselle de Granville. The candle was already in the passage beyond, but distinct enough lay that brocaded figure prostrate on the floor beneath a crucifix, but the mask faced Claire.

She moved on behind Abbé de Granville as with masculine tread of foot he strode the length of the passage and opened a door leading out on the stairway.

“Here, Jacques,” he called in his mellow tones, “tell this demoiselle about me; and tell her the truth, or it shall be the worse for you.”

Claire, standing on the upper stairs, could see Jacques with his back to the fire and his mouth opened in consternation at this unpriestly threat. His candle was yet smoking, so lately had it been divorced from its flame.

Abbé de Granville closed the passage door and bolted it.