A Little Girl in Old Detroit - Amanda Minnie Douglas (children's ebooks online txt) 📗

was hot now against Pani's cool one, throbbing with girlish confusion.

"Because thou art beautiful, child."

"Then I wish I were ugly. Oh, no, I do not, either." Would M. St. Armand like her so well if she were ugly? "Ah, I do not wonder women become nuns--sometimes. And I am sincerely sorry for Pierre. I suppose the De Bers will never speak to me again. Pani, it is growing cooler now, let us go out in the woods. I feel stifled. I wish we had a wigwam up in the forest. Come."

Pani put away her work.

"Let us go the other way, the _chemin du ronde_, to the gate. Rose may be gossiping with some of the neighbors."

They walked down that way. There was quite a throng at King's wharf. Some new boats had come in. One and another nodded to Jeanne; but just as she was turning a hand touched her arm, too lightly to be the jostle of the throng. She was in no mood for familiarities, and shook it off indignantly.

"Mam'selle Jeanne Angelot," a rather rich voice said in a laughing tone.

She guessed before she even changed the poise of her head. What cruel fate followed her!

"Nay, do not look so fierce! How you have grown, yet I should have known you among a thousand."

"Louis Marsac!" The name seemed wrested from her. She could feel the wrench in her mind.

"Then you have not forgotten me! Mam'selle, I cannot help it--" with a deprecation in his voice that was an apology and begged for condonation. "You were pretty before, but you have grown wonderfully beautiful. You will allow an old friend to say it."

His eyes seemed to devour her, from her dusky head to the finger tips, nay, even to the slim ankles, for skirts were worn short among the ordinary women. Only the quality went in trailing gowns, and held them up carefully in the unpaved ways.

"If you begin to compliment, I shall dismiss you from the list of my acquaintances. It is foolish and ill-bred. And if you go around praising every pretty girl in Le Detroit, you will have no time left for business, Monsieur."

Her face set itself in resolute lines, her voice had a cold scornfulness in it.

"Is this all the welcome you have for me? I have been in but an hour, and busy enough with these dolts in unloading. Then I meant to hunt you up instead of going to sup with Monsieur Meldrum, with whom I have much business, but an old friend should have the first consideration."

"I am not sure, Monsieur, that I care for friends. I have found them troublesome. And you would have had your effort for nothing. Pani and I would not be at home."

"You are the same briery rose, Jeanne," with an amused laugh. "So sweet a one does well to be set in thorns. Still, I shall claim an old friend's privilege. And I have no end of stirring adventures for your ear. I have come now from Quebec, where the ladies are most gracious and charming."

"Then I shall not please you, Monsieur," curtly. "Come, Pani," linking her arm in that of the woman, "let us get out of the crowd," and she nodded a careless adieu.

They turned into a sort of lane that led below the palisades.

"Pani," excitedly, "let us go out on the river. There will be an early moon, and we shall not mind so that we get in by nine. And we need not stop to gossip with people, canoes are not so friendly as woodland paths."

Her laugh was forced and a little bitter.

Pani had hardly recovered from her surprise. She nodded assent with a feeling that she had been stricken dumb. It was not altogether Louis Marsac's appearance, he had been expected last summer and had not come. She had almost forgotten about him. It was Jeanne's mood that perplexed her so. The two had been such friends and playmates, one might say, only a few years ago. He had been a slave to her pretty whims then. She had decorated his head with feathers and called him Chief of Detroit, or she had twined daisy wreaths and sweet grasses about his neck. He had bent down the young saplings that she might ride on them, a graceful, fearless child. They had run races,--she was fleet as the wind and he could not always catch her. He had gathered the first ripe wild strawberries, not bigger than the end of her little finger, but, oh, how luscious! She had quarreled with him, too, she had struck him with a feathery hemlock branch, until he begged her pardon for some fancied fault, and nothing had suited him better than to loll under the great oak tree, listening to Pani's story and all the mysterious suppositions of her coming. Then he told wild legends of the various tribes, talked in a strange, guttural accent, danced a war dance, and was almost as much her attendant as Pani.

But the three years had allowed him to escape from the woman's memory, as any event they might expect again in their lives. Hugh de Marsac had turned into something of an explorer, beside his profitable connection with the fur company. The copper mines on Lake Superior had stirred up a great interest, and plans were being made to work them to a better advantage than the Indians had ever done. Fortunes were the dream of mankind even then; though this was destined to end in disappointment.

Jeanne chose her canoe and they pushed out. She was in no haste, and few people were going down the river, not many anywhere except on business. The numerous holy days of the Church, which gave to religion an hour or two in the morning and devoted to pleasure the rest of the day, set the river in a whirl of gayety. Ordinary days were for work.

The air was soft and fragrant. Some sea gulls started from a sandy nook with disturbed cries, then returned as if they knew the girl. A fishhawk darted swiftly down, having seen his prey in the clear water and captured it. There were farms stretching down the river now, with rough log huts quite distinct from the whitewashed or vine-covered cottages of the French. But the fields betrayed a more thrifty cultivation. There were young orchards nodding in the sunshine, great stretches of waving maize fields, and patches of different grains. Little streams danced out here and there and gurgled into the river, as if they were glad to be part of it.

"Pani, do you suppose we could go ever so far down and build a tent or a hut and live there all the rest of the summer?"

"But I thought you liked the woods!"

"I like being far away. I am tired of Detroit."

"Mam'selle, it would hardly be safe. There are still unfriendly Indians. And--the loneliness of it! For there are some evil spirits about, though Holy Church has banished them from the town."

Occasionally her old beliefs and fears rushed over the Indian woman and shook her in a clutch of terror. She felt safest in her own little nest, under the shadow of the Citadel, with the high, sharp palisades about her, when night came on.

"Art thou afraid of Madame De Ber?" she asked, hesitatingly. "For of a truth she did not want you for her son's wife."

"I know it. Pierre made them all agree to it. I am sorry for Pierre, and yet he has the blindness of a mole. I am not the kind of wife he wants. For though there is so much kissing and caressing at first, there are dinners and suppers, and the man is cross sometimes because other things go wrong. And he smells of the skins and oils and paints, and the dirt, too," laughing. "Faugh! I could not endure it. I would rather dwell in the woods all my life. Why, I should come to hate such a man! I should run away or kill myself. And that would be a bitter self-punishment, for I love so to live if I can have my own life. Pani, why do men want one particular woman? Susette is blithe and merry, and Angelique is pretty as a flower, and when she spins she makes a picture like one the schoolmaster told me about. Oh, yes, there are plenty of girls who would be proud and glad to keep Pierre's house. Why does not the good God give men the right sense of things?"

Pani turned her head mournfully from side to side, and the shrunken lips made no reply.

Then they glided on and on. The blue, sunlit arch overhead, the waving trees that sent dancing shadows like troops of elfin sprites over the water, the fret in one place where a rock broke the murmurous lapping, the swish somewhere else, where grasses and weeds and water blooms rooted in the sedge rocked back and forth with the slow tide--how peaceful it all was!

Yet Jeanne Angelot was not at peace. Why, when the woods or the river always soothed her? And it was not Pierre who disturbed the current, who lay at the bottom like some evil spirit, reaching up long, cruel arms to grasp her. Last summer she had put Louis Marsac out of her life with an exultant thrill. He would forget all about her. He would or had married some one up North, and she was glad.

He had come back. She knew now what this look in a man's eyes meant. She had seen it in a girl's eyes, too, but the girl had the right, and was offering incense to her betrothed. Oh, perhaps--perhaps some other one might attract him, for he was very handsome, much finer and more manly than when he went away.

Why did not Pani say something about him? Why did she sit there half asleep?

"Wasn't it queer, Pani, that we should go so near the wharf, when we were trying to run away--"

She ended with a short laugh, in which there was neither pleasure nor mirth.

Pani glanced up with distressful eyes.

"Eh, child!" she cried, with a sort of anguish, "it is a pity thou wert made so beautiful."

"But there are many pretty girls, and great ladies are lovely to look at. Why should I not have some of the charm? It gives one satisfaction."

"There is danger for thee in it. Perhaps, after all, the Recollet house would be best for thee."

"No, no;" with a passionate protest. "And, Pani, no man can make me marry him. I would scream and cry until the priest would feel afraid to say a word."

Pani put her thin, brown hand over the plump, dimpled one; and her eyes were large and weird.

"Thou art afraid of Louis Marsac," she said.

"Oh, Pani, I am, I am!" The voice was tremulous, entreating. "Did you see something in his face, a curious resolve, and shall I call it admiration? I hope he has a wife. Oh, I know he has not! Pani, you must help me, guard me."

"There is M. Loisel, who would not have thee marry against thy will. I wish Father Rameau were home--he comes in the autumn."

"I do not want to marry anyone. I am a strange girl. Marie Beeson said some girls were born old maids, and surely I am one. I like the older men who give you fatherly looks, and