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

could not be," assentingly.

The demon within him that Louis Marsac called love raged and rose to white heat. If he could even carry her off! But that would be a foolish thing. She might be rescued, and he would lose the good opinion of many who gave him a flattering sympathy now.

So the weeks went on. The boats were loaded with provision, some of them started on their journey. He came one evening and found Jeanne and her protector sitting in their doorway. Jeanne was light-hearted. She had heard he was to sail to-morrow.

"I have come to bid my old playmate and friend good-by," and there was a sweet pathos in his voice that woke a sort of tenderness in the girl's heart, for it brought back a touch of the old pleasant days before he had really grown to manhood, when they sat under her oak and listened to Pani's legendary stories.

"I wish you _bon voyage_, Monsieur."

"Say Louis just once. It will be a bit of music to which I shall sail up the river."

"Monsieur Louis."

The tone was clear and no warmth penetrated it. He could see her face distinctly in the moonlight and it was passive in its beauty.

"Thou hast not forgiven me. If I knelt--"

"Nay!" she sprang up and stood at Pani's back. "There is nothing to kneel for. When you are away I shall strive to forget your insistence--"

"And remember that it sprang from love," he interrupted. "Jeanne, is your heart of marble that nothing moves it? There are curious stories of women who have little human warmth in them--who are born of strange parents."

"Monsieur, that is wrong. Jeanne hath ever been loving and fond from the time she put her little arms around my neck. She is kindly and tender--the poor tailor's lonely woman will tell you. And she spent hours with poor Madame Campeau when her own daughter left her and went away to a convent, comforting her and reading prayers. No, she is not cold hearted."

"Then you have taken all her love," complainingly.

"It is not that, either," returned the woman.

"Jeanne, I shall love thee always, cruel as thou hast been. And if thou art so generous as to pray for others, say a little prayer that will help me bear my loneliness through the cold northern winter that I had hoped might be made warm and bright by thy presence. Have a little pity if thou hast no love."

He was mournfully handsome as he stood there in the silvery light. Almost her heart was moved. She said a special prayer for only one person, but Louis Marsac might slip into the other class that was "all the world."

"Monsieur, I will remember," bowing a little.

"Oh, lovely icicle, you are enough to freeze a man's soul, and yet you rouse it to white heat! I can make no impression I see. Adieu, adieu."

He gave a sudden movement and would have kissed her mouth but she put her hand across it, and Pani, divining the endeavor, rose at the same instant.

"Mam'selle Jeanne Angelot, you will repent this some day!" and his tone was bitter with revenge.

Then he plunged down the street with an unsteady gait and was lost in the darkness.

"Pani, come in, bar the door. And the shutter must be fastened;" pulling the woman hastily within.

"But the night will be hot."

"It is cooler now. There has been a fresh breeze from the river. And--I am sore afraid."

It was true that the night dews and the river gave a coolness to the city at night, and on the other side was the great sweep of woods and hills.

Nothing came to disturb them. Jeanne was restless and had bad dreams, then slept soundly until after sunrise.

"Antoine," she said to the tailor's little lad, "go down to the wharf and watch until the 'Flying Star' sails up the river. The tide is early. I will reward you well."

"O Mam'selle, I will do it for love;" and he set off on a trot.

"There are many kinds of love," mused Jeanne. "Strange there should be a kind that makes one afraid."

At ten the "Flying Star" went up the river.

"Thou hast been a foolish girl, Jeanne Angelot!" declared one of the neighbors. "Think how thou mightst have gone up the river on a wedding journey, and a handsome young husband such as falls to the lot of few maids, with money in plenty and furs fit for a queen. And there is, no doubt, some Indian blood in thy veins! Thou hast always been wild as a deer and longing to live out of doors."

Jeanne only laughed. She was so glad to feel at liberty once more. For a month she had virtually been a prisoner.

Madame De Ber, though secretly glad, joined the general disapproval. She had half hoped he might fancy Rose, who sympathized warmly with him. She could have forgiven the alien blood if she had seen Rose go up the river, in state, to such a future.

And though Jeanne was not so much beyond childhood, it was settled that she would be an old maid. She did not care.

"Let us go out under the oak, Pani," she exclaimed. "I want to look at something different from the Citadel and the little old houses, something wide and free, where the wind can blow about, and where there are waves of sweetness bathing one's face like a delightful sea. And to-morrow we will take to the woods. Do you suppose the birds and the squirrels have wondered?"

She laughed gayly and danced about joyously.

Wenonah sat at her hut door making a cape of gull's feathers for an officer's wife.

"You did not go north, little one," and she glanced up with a smile of approval.

For to her Jeanne would always be the wild, eager, joyous child who had whistled and sung with the birds, and could never outgrow childhood. She looked not more than a dozen years old to-day.

"No, no, no. Wenonah, why do you cease to care for people, when you have once liked them? Yet I am sorry for Louis. I wish he had loved some one else. I hope he will."

"No doubt there are those up there who have shared his heart and his wigwam until he tired of them. And he will console himself again. You need not give him so much pity."

"Wenonah!" Jeanne's face was a study in surprise.

"I am glad, Mam'selle, that his honeyed tongue did not win you. I wanted to warn, but the careful Pani said there was no danger. My brave has told some wild stories about him when he has had too much brandy. And sometimes an Indian girl who is deserted takes a cruel revenge, not on the selfish man, but on the innocent girl who has trusted him, and is not to blame. He is handsome and double of tongue and treacherous. See--he would have given me money to coax you to go out in the canoe with me some day to gather reeds. Then he could snatch you away. It was a good deal of money, too!"

"O Wenonah!" She fell on the woman's neck and kissed the soft, brown cheek.

"He knew you trusted me, that was the evil of him. And I said to Pani, 'Do not let her go out on the river, lest the god of the Strait put forth his hand and pull her down to the depths and take her to his cave.' And Pani understood."

"Yes, I trust you," said the girl proudly.

"And I have no white blood in my veins."

She went down to the great oak with Pani and they sat shaded from the afternoon sunshine with the lovely river stretching out before them. She did not care for the old story any more, but she leaned against Pani's bosom and patted her hand and said: "No matter what comes, Pani, we shall never part. And I will grow old with you like a good daughter and wait on you and care for you, and cook your meals when you are ill."

Pani looked into the love-lit, shining eyes.

"But I shall be so very, very old," she replied with a soft laugh.


CHAPTER XIV.

A HIDDEN FOE.

Ah, what a day it was to Jeanne Angelot! They had gone early in the morning and taken some food with them in a pretty basket made of birch bark. How good it was to be alive, to be free! The sunshine had never been so golden, she thought, nor danced so among the branches nor shook out such dainty sprites. How they skipped over the turf, now hold of hands, now singly, now running away and disappearing, others coming in their places!

"The very woods are alive," she declared in glee.

Alive they were with the song of birds, the chirp of insects, the murmuring wind. Back of her was a rivulet fretting its way over pebbles down a hillside, making an irregular music. She kept time to it, then she changed to the bird song, and the rustle among the pines.

"It is so lovely, Pani. I seem to be drinking in a strange draught that goes to my very finger tips. Oh, I wonder how anyone can bear to die!"

"When they are old it is like falling asleep. And sometimes they are so tired it makes them glad."

"I should only be tired of staying in the house. But I suppose one cannot help death. One can refuse to go into a little cell and shut out the sunlight and all the beauty that God has made. It is wicked I think. For one can pray out of doors and sing hymns. I am sure God will hear."

They ate their lunch with a relish; Jeanne had found some berries and some ripe wild plums. There was a hollow tree full of honey, she could tell by the odorous, pungent smell. She would tell Wenonah and have some of the boys go at night and--oh, how hard to rob the poor bees, to murder and rob them! No, she would keep their secret.

She laid her head down in Pani's lap and went fast asleep; and the Indian woman's eyes were touched with the same poppy juice. Once Pani started, she thought she heard a step. In an instant her eyes were bent inquiringly around. There was no one in sight.

"It was the patter of squirrels," she thought.

The movement roused Jeanne. She opened her eyes and smiled with infantine joy.

"We have both been asleep," said the woman. "And now is it not time to go home?"

"Oh, look at the long shadows. They are purple now, and soft dark green. The spirits of the wood have trooped home, tired of their dancing."

She rose and gave herself a little shake.

"Pani," she exclaimed, "I saw some beautiful flowers before noon, over on the other side of the stream. I think they were something strange. I can easily jump across. I will not be gone long, and you may stay here. Poor Pani! I tired you out."

"No, Mam'selle, you were asleep first."

"Was I? It was such a lovely sleep. Oh, you dear woods;" and she clasped her hands in adoration.

Long, flute-like notes quivered through the branches--birds calling to their mates. Pani