Part 4 (1/2)
”Sieur de la Salle, have I not often told you what a sinner I am? It ridicules me to call me saint.”
”Since you have grown to be a young demoiselle I ought to call you Mademoiselle le Ber.”
”Call me Sainte Jeanne rather than that. I do not want to be a young demoiselle, or in this glittering company. It is my father who insists.”
”Nor do I want to be in this glittering company, Sainte Jeanne.”
”The worst of all the other enemies, Sieur de la Salle, are vanity and a dread of enduring pain. I am very fond of dress.” The young creature drew a deep regretful breath.
”But you mortify this fondness?” said La Salle, accompanying with whimsical sympathy every confession of Jeanne le Ber's.
”Indeed I have to humiliate myself often--often. When this evil desire takes strong hold, I put on the meanest rag I can find. But my father and mother will never let me go thus humbled to Ma.s.s.”
”Therein do I commend your father and mother,” said La Salle; ”though the outside we bear toward men is of little account. But tell me how do you school yourself to pain, Sainte Jeanne? I have not learned to bear pain well in all my years.”
Jeanne again met his face with swarming lights in her eyes. Seeing that no one observed them she bent her head toward La Salle and parted the hair over her crown. The straight fine growth was very thick and of a brown color. It reminded him of midwinter swamp gra.s.ses springing out of a bed of snow. A mat of burrs was pressed to this white scalp. Some of the hair roots showed red stains.
”These hurt me all the time,” said Jeanne. ”And it is excellent torture to comb them out.”
She covered the burrs with a swift pressure, tightly closing her mouth and eyes with the spasm of pain this caused, and once more took and folded the crucifix within her hands.
The explorer made no remonstrance against such self-torture, though his practical gaze remained on her youthful brier-crowned head. He heard a girl in front of him laugh to a courtier who was flattering her.
”He, monsieur, I have myself seen Quebec women who dressed with odious taste.”
But Jeanne, wrapped in her own relation, continued with a tone which slighted mere physical pain,--
”There is a better way to suffer, Sieur de la Salle, and that is from ill-treatment. Such anguish can be dealt out by the hands we love; but I have no friend willing to discipline me thus. My father's servant Jolycoeur is the only person who makes me as wretched as I ought to be.”
”Discipline through Jolycoeur,” said La Salle, laughing, ”is what my proud stomach could never endure.”
”Perhaps you have not such need, Sieur de la Salle. My father has many times turned him off, but I plead until he is brought back. He hath this whole year been a means of grace to me by his great impudence. If I say to him, 'Jolycoeur, do this or that,' he never fails to reply, 'Do it yourself, Mademoiselle Jeanne,' and adds profanity to make Heaven blush.
Whenever he can approach near enough, he whispers contemptuous names at me, so that I cannot keep back the tears. Yet how little I endure, when Saint Lawrence perished on a gridiron, and all the other holy martyrs shame me!”
”Your father does not suffer these things to be done to you?”
”No, Sieur de la Salle. My father knows naught of it except my pity. He did once kick Jolycoeur, who left our house three days, so that I was in danger of sinking in slothful comfort. But I got him brought back, and he lay drunk in our garden with his mouth open, so that my soul shuddered to look at him. It was excellent discipline,”[5] said Jeanne, with a long breath.
”Jolycoeur will better adorn the woods and risk his worthless neck on water for my uses, than longer chafe your tender nature,” said La Salle.
”He has been in my service before, and craved to-day that I would enlist him again.”
”Had my father turned him off?” asked Jeanne, with consternation.
”He said Jacques le Ber had lifted a hand against him for innocently neglecting to carry bales of merchandise to a booth.”
”I did miss the smell of rum downstairs before we came away,” said the girl, sadly. ”And will you take my scourge from me, Sieur de la Salle?”
”I will give him a turn at suffering himself,” answered La Salle. ”The fellow shall be whipped on some pretext when I get him within Fort Frontenac, for every pang he hath laid upon you. He is no stupid. He knew what he was doing.”