“Where did you learn that, child?” I asked.
“Father Piret, madame.”
“What is it?”
“Je n’ sais.”
“It is Béranger,—‘The Prisoner of War,’” said Rodney Prescott. “But you omitted the last verse, mademoiselle; may I ask why?”
“More sad so,” answered Jeannette. “Marie she die now.”
“You wish her to die?”
“Mais oui: she die for love; c’est beau!”
And there flashed a glance from the girl’s eyes that thrilled through me, I scarcely knew why. I looked toward Rodney, but he was back in the shadow again.
The hours passed. “I must go,” said Jeannette, drawing aside the curtain. Clouds were still driving across the sky, but the snow had ceased falling, and at intervals the moon shone out over the cold white scene; the March wind continued on its wild career toward the south.
“I will send for Antoine,” I said, rising, as Jeannette took up her fur mantle.
“The old man is sick to-day,” said Rodney. “It would not be safe for him to leave the fire to-night. I will accompany mademoiselle.”
Pretty Jeannette shrugged her shoulders. “Mais, monsieur,” she answered, “I go over the hill.”
“No, child; not to-night,” I said decidedly. “The wind is violent, and the cliff doubly slippery after this ice-storm. Go round through the village.”
“Of course we shall go through the village,” said our surgeon, in his calm, authoritative way. They started. But in another minute I saw Jeannette fly by the west window, over the wall, and across the snowy road, like a spirit, disappearing down the steep bank, now slippery with glare ice. Another minute, and Rodney Prescott followed in her track.
With bated breath I watched for the reappearance of the two figures on the white plain, one hundred and fifty feet below; the cliff was difficult at any time, and now in this ice! The moments seemed very long, and, alarmed, I was on the point of arousing the garrison, when I spied the two dark figures on the snowy plain below, now clear in the moonlight, now lost in the shadow. I watched them for some distance; then a cloud came, and I lost them entirely.
Rodney did not return, although I sat late before the dying fire. Thinking over the evening, the idea came to me that perhaps, after all, he did admire my protégée, and, being a romantic old woman, I did not repel the fancy; it might go a certain distance without harm, and an idyl is always charming, doubly so to people cast away on a desert island. One falls into the habit of studying persons very closely in the limited circle of garrison life.
But, the next morning, the Major’s wife gave me an account of the sociable. “It was very pleasant,” she said. “Toward the last Dr. Prescott came in, quite unexpectedly. I had no idea he could be so agreeable. Augusta can tell you how charming he was!”
Augusta, a young lady cousin, of pale blond complexion, neutral opinions, and irreproachable manners, smiled primly. My idyl was crushed!
The days passed. The winds, the snows, and the high-up fort remained the same. Jeannette came and went, and the hour lengthened into two or three; not that we read much, but we talked more. Our surgeon did not again pass through the parlor; he had ordered a rickety stairway on the outside wall to be repaired, and we could hear him going up and down its icy steps as we sat by the hearth-fire. One day I said to him, “My protégée is improving wonderfully. If she could have a complete education, she might take her place with the best in the land.”
“Do not deceive yourself, Mrs. Corlyne,” he answered. “It is only the shallow French quickness.”
“Why do you always judge the child so harshly, Doctor?”
“Do you take her part, Aunt Sarah?” (For sometimes he used the title which Archie had made so familiar.)
“Of course I do, Rodney. A poor, unfriended girl living in this remote place, against a United States surgeon with the best of Boston behind him.”
“I wish you would tell me that every day, Aunt Sarah,” was the reply I received. It set me musing, but I could make nothing of it. Troubled without knowing why, I suggested to Archie that he should endeavor to interest our surgeon in the fort gayety; there was something for every night in the merry little circle,—games, suppers, tableaux, music, theatricals, readings, and the like.
“Why, he ’s in the thick of it already, Aunt Sarah,” said my nephew. “He ’s devoting himself to Miss Augusta; she sings ‘The Harp that once—’ to him every night.”
(“The Harp that once through Tara’s Halls” was Miss Augusta’s dress-parade song. The Major’s quarters not being as large as the halls aforesaid, the melody was somewhat overpowering.)
“O, does she?” I thought, not without a shade of vexation. But the vague anxiety vanished.
The real spring came at last,—the rapid, vivid spring of Mackinac. Almost in a day the ice moved out, the snows melted, and the northern wild-flowers appeared in the sheltered glens. Lessons were at an end, for my scholar was away in the green woods. Sometimes she brought me a bunch of flowers; but I seldom saw her; my wild bird had flown back to the forest. When the ground was dry and the pine droppings warmed by the sun, I, too, ventured abroad. One day, wandering as far as the Arched Rock, I found the surgeon there, and together we sat down to rest under the trees, looking off over the blue water flecked with white caps. The Arch is a natural bridge over a chasm one hundred and fifty feet above the lake,—a fissure in the cliff which has fallen away in a hollow, leaving the bridge by itself far out over the water. This bridge springs upward in the shape of an arch; it is fifty feet long, and its width is in some places two feet, in others only a few inches,—a narrow, dizzy pathway hanging between sky and water.
“People have crossed it,” I said.
“Only fools,” answered our surgeon, who despised foolhardiness. “Has a man nothing better to do with his life than risk it for the sake of a silly feat like that? I would not so much as raise my eyes to see any one cross.”
“O yes, you would, Monsieur Rodenai,” cried a voice behind us. We both turned and caught a glimpse of Jeannette as she bounded through the bushes and out to the very centre of the Arch, where she stood balancing herself and laughing gayly. Her form was outlined against the sky; the breeze swayed her skirt; she seemed hovering over the chasm. I watched her, mute with fear; a word might cause her to lose her balance; but I could not turn my eyes away, I was fascinated with the sight. I was not aware that Rodney had left me until he, too, appeared on the Arch, slowly finding a foothold for himself and advancing toward the centre. A fragment of the rock broke off under his foot and fell into the abyss below.
“Go back, Monsieur Rodenai,” cried Jeannette, seeing his danger.
“Will you come back too, Jeannette?”
“Moi? C’est aut’ chose,” answered the girl, gayly tossing her pretty head.
“Then I shall come out and carry you back, wilful child,” said the surgeon.
A peal of laughter broke from Jeannette as he spoke, and then she began to dance on her point of rock, swinging herself from side to side, marking the time with a song. I held my breath; her dance seemed unearthly; it was as though she belonged to the Prince of the Powers of the Air.
At length the surgeon reached the centre and caught the mocking creature in his arms: neither spoke, but I could see the flash of their eyes as they stood for an instant motionless. Then they struggled on the narrow foothold and swayed over so far that I buried my face in my trembling hands, unable to look at the dreadful end. When I opened my eyes again all was still; the Arch was tenantless, and no sound came from below. Were they, then, so soon dead? Without a cry? I forced myself to the brink to look down over the precipice; but while I stood there, fearing to look, I heard a sound behind me in the woods. It was Jeannette singing a gay French song. I called to her to stop. “How could you?” I said severely, for I was still trembling with agit
ation.
“Ce n’est rien, madame. I cross l’Arche when I had five year. Mais, Monsieur Rodenai le Grand, he raise his eye to look this time, I think,” said Jeannette, laughing triumphantly.
“Where is he?”
“On the far side, gone on to Scott’s Pic [Peak]. Féroce, O féroce, comme un loupgarou! Ah! c’est joli, ça!” And, overflowing with the wildest glee, the girl danced along through the woods in front of me, now pausing to look at something in her hand, now laughing, now shouting like a wild creature, until I lost sight of her. I went back to the fort alone.
For several days I saw nothing of Rodney. When at last we met, I said, “That was a wild freak of Jeannette’s at the Arch.”
“Planned, to get a few shillings out of us.”
“O Doctor! I do not think she had any such motive,” I replied, looking up deprecatingly into his cold, scornful eyes.
“Are you not a little sentimental over that ignorant, half-wild creature, Aunt Sarah?”
“Well,” I said to myself, “perhaps I am!”
The summer came, sails whitened the blue straits again, steamers stopped for an hour or two at the island docks, and the summer travellers rushed ashore to buy “Indian curiosities,” made by the nuns in Montreal, or to climb breathlessly up the steep fort-hill to see the pride and panoply of war. Proud was the little white fort in those summer days; the sentinels held themselves stiffly erect, the officers gave up lying on the parapet half asleep, the best flag was hoisted daily, and there was much bugle-playing and ceremony connected with the evening gun, fired from the ramparts at sunset; the hotels were full, the boarding-house keepers were in their annual state of wonder over the singular taste of these people from “below,” who actually preferred a miserable white-fish to the best of beef brought up on ice all the way from Buffalo! There were picnics and walks, and much confusion of historical dates respecting Father Marquette and the irrepressible, omnipresent Pontiac. The fort officers did much escort duty; their buttons gilded every scene. Our quiet surgeon was foremost in everything.
“I am surprised! I had no idea Dr. Prescott was so gay,” said the major’s wife.
“I should not think of calling him gay,” I answered.
“Why, my dear Mrs. Corlyne! He is going all the time. Just ask Augusta.”
Augusta thereupon remarked that society, to a certain extent, was beneficial; that she considered Dr. Prescott much improved; really, he was now very “nice.”
I silently protested against the word. But then I was not a Bostonian.
One bright afternoon I went through the village, round the point into the French quarter, in search of a laundress. The fishermen’s cottages faced the west; they were low and wide, not unlike scows drifted ashore and moored on the beach for houses. The little windows had gay curtains fluttering in the breeze, and the rooms within looked clean and cheery; the rough walls were adorned with the spoils of the fresh-water seas, shells, green stones, agates, spar, and curiously shaped pebbles; occasionally there was a stuffed water-bird, or a bright-colored print, and always a violin. Black-eyed children played in the water which bordered their narrow beach-gardens; and slender women, with shining black hair, stood in their doorways knitting. I found my laundress, and then went on to Jeannette’s home, the last house in the row. From the mother, a Chippewa woman, I learned that Jeannette was with her French father at the fishing-grounds off Drummond’s Island.
“How long has she been away?” I asked.
“Veeks four,” replied the mother, whose knowledge of English was confined to the price-list of white-fish and blueberries, the two articles of her traffic with the boarding-house keepers.
“When will she return?”
“Je n’ sais.”
She knitted on, sitting in the sunshine on her little doorstep, looking out over the western water with tranquil content in her beautiful, gentle eyes. As I walked up the beach I glanced back several times to see if she had the curiosity to watch me; but no, she still looked out over the western water. What was I to her? Less than nothing. A white-fish was more.
A week or two later I strolled out to the Giant’s Stairway and sat down in the little rock chapel. There was a picnic at the Lovers’ Leap, and I had that side of the island to myself. I was leaning back, half asleep, in the deep shadow, when the sound of voices roused me; a birch-bark canoe was passing close in shore, and two were in it,—Jeannette and our surgeon. I could not hear their words, but I noticed Rodney’s expression as he leaned forward. Jeannette was paddling slowly; her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes brilliant. Another moment, and a point hid them from my view. I went home troubled.
“Did you enjoy the picnic, Miss Augusta?” I said, with assumed carelessness, that evening. “Dr. Prescott was there, as usual, I suppose?”
“He was not present, but the picnic was highly enjoyable,” replied Miss Augusta, in her even voice and impartial manner.
“The Doctor has not been with us for some days,” said the major’s wife, archly; “I suspect he does not like Mr. Piper.”
Mr. Piper was a portly widower, of sanguine complexion, a Chicago produce-dealer, who was supposed to admire Miss Augusta, and was now going through a course of “The Harp that once.”
The last days of summer flew swiftly by; the surgeon held himself aloof; we scarcely saw him in the garrison circles, and I no longer met him in my rambles.
“Jealousy!” said the major’s wife.
September came. The summer visitors fled away homeward; the remaining “Indian curiosities” were stored away for another season; the hotels were closed, and the forests deserted; the bluebells swung unmolested on their heights, and the plump Indian-pipes grew in peace in their dark corners. The little white fort, too, began to assume its winter manners; the storm-flag was hoisted; there were evening fires upon the broad hearth-stones; the chaplain, having finished everything about Balak, his seven altars and seven rams, was ready for chess-problems; books and papers were ordered; stores laid in, and anxious inquiries made as to the “habits” of the new mail-carrier,—for the mail-carrier was the hero of the winter, and if his “habits” led him to whiskey, there was danger that our precious letters might be dropped all along the northern curve of Lake Huron.
Upon this quiet matter-of-course preparation, suddenly, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, came orders to leave. The whole garrison, officers and men, were ordered to Florida.
In a moment all was desolation. It was like being ordered into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Dense everglades, swamp-fevers, malaria in the air, poisonous underbrush, and venomous reptiles and insects, and now and then a wily unseen foe picking off the men, one by one, as they painfully cut out roads through the thickets,—these were the features of military life in Florida at that period. Men who would have marched boldly to the cannon’s mouth, officers who would have headed a forlorn hope, shrank from the deadly swamps.
Families must be broken up, also; no women, no children, could go to Florida. There were tears and the sound of sobbing in the little white fort, as the poor wives, all young mothers, hastily packed their few possessions to go back to their fathers’ houses, fortunate if they had fathers to receive them. The husbands went about in silence, too sad for words. Archie kept up the best courage; but he was young, and had no one to leave save me.
The evening of the fatal day—for the orders had come in the early dawn—I was alone in my little parlor, already bare and desolate with packing-cases. The wind had been rising since morning, and now blew furiously from the west. Suddenly the door burst open and the surgeon entered. I was shocked at his appearance, as, pale, haggard, with disordered hair and clothing, he sank into a chair, and looked at me in silence.
“Rodney, what is it?” I said.
He did not answer, but still looked at me with that strange gaze. Alarmed, I rose and went toward him, laying my hand on his shoulder with a
motherly touch. I loved the quiet, gray-eyed youth next after Archie.
“What is it, my poor boy? Can I help you?”
“O Aunt Sarah, perhaps you can, for you know her.”
“Her?” I repeated, with sinking heart.
“Yes. Jeannette.”
I sat down and folded my hands; trouble had come, but it was not what I apprehended,—the old story of military life, love, and desertion; the ever-present ballad of the “gay young knight who loves and rides away.” This was something different.
“I love her,—I love her madly, in spite of myself,” said Rodney, pouring forth his words with feverish rapidity. “I know it is an infatuation, I know it is utterly unreasonable, and yet—I love her. I have striven against it, I have fought with myself, I have written out elaborate arguments wherein I have clearly demonstrated the folly of such an affection, and I have compelled myself to read them over slowly, word for word, when alone in my own room, and yet—I love her! Ignorant, I know she would shame me; shallow, I know she could not satisfy me; as a wife she would inevitably drag me down to misery, and yet—I love her! I had not been on the island a week before I saw her, and marked her beauty. Months before you invited her to the fort I had become infatuated with her singular loveliness; but, in some respects, a race of the blood-royal could not be prouder than these French fishermen. They will accept your money, they will cheat you, they will tell you lies for an extra shilling; but make one step toward a simple acquaintance, and the door will be shut in your face. They will bow down before you as a customer, but they will not have you for a friend. Thus I found it impossible to reach Jeannette. I do not say that I tried, for all the time I was fighting myself; but I went far enough to see the barriers. It seemed a fatality that you should take a fancy to her, have her here, and ask me to admire her,—admire the face that haunted me by day and by night, driving me mad with its beauty.
“I realized my danger, and called to my aid all the pride of my race. I said to my heart, ‘You shall not love this ignorant half-breed girl to your ruin.’ I reasoned with myself, and said, ‘It is only because you are isolated on this far-away island. Could you present this girl to your mother? Could she be a companion for your sisters?’ I was beginning to gain a firmer control over myself, in spite of her presence, when you unfolded your plan of education. Fatality again. Instantly a crowd of hopes surged up. The education you began, could I not finish? She was but young; a few years of careful teaching might work wonders. Could I not train this forest flower so that it could take its place in the garden? But, when I actually saw this full-grown woman unable to add the simplest sum or write her name correctly, I was again ashamed of my infatuation. It is one thing to talk of ignorance, it is another to come face to face with it. Thus I wavered, at one moment ready to give up all for pride, at another to give up all for love.
Constance Fenimore Woolson Page 5
