Part 14 (1/2)
AN ORDEAL.
”When I have seen Mademoiselle le Ber,” La Salle replied to the blanket of Tegahkouita, ”I shall understand from herself what her wishes are in this matter.”
”Sieur de la Salle cannot see her,” spoke Tegahkouita. ”She hath no word but this, and she will not see Sieur de la Salle again.”
”I say he shall see her!” exclaimed the Montreal merchant, with asperity created by so many influences working upon his daughter. ”He may look upon her this minute!”
Jeanne le Ber's presence in Fort Frontenac scarcely surprised Barbe, so great was her amazement at the att.i.tude of her uncle La Salle. That he should be suing to Le Ber's daughter seemed as impossible as any rejection of his suit. She felt toward the saint she had pinched at convent that jealous resentment peculiar to women who desire to have the men of their families married, yet are never satisfied with the choice those men make. Even Barbe, however, considered it a sacrilegious act when Le Ber shook his daughter's door and demanded admittance.
Jeanne's complete silence, like a challenge, drew out his imperative force. He broke through every fastening and threw the door wide open.
The small, bare room, scarcely wider than its entrance, afforded no hiding-places. There was little to catch the eye, from rude berth to hooks in the ruder wall, from which the commandant's clothing had so lately been removed.
Jeanne, the focus of this small cell, had flown to its extremity. As the door burst from its fastenings, everybody in the outer room could see her standing against the wall with n.o.ble instinct, facing the breakers of her privacy, but without looking at them. Her eyes rested on her beads, which she told with rapid lips and fingers. A dormer window spread its background of light around her head.
The recoil of inaction which followed Le Ber's violence was not felt by Tegahkouita. With the swift silence of an Indian and the intuition of a devotee, she at once put herself in the sleeping cell, and kneeled holding up a crucifix before Jeanne. As this symbol of religion was lifted, Jeanne fell upon her knees.
Le Ber had not intended to enter, but indignation drove him on after Tegahkouita. He stood aside and did not approach his child,--a jealous, remorseful, anxious, irritated man.
La Salle could see Jeanne, though with giddy and indistinct vision. Her wool gown lay around her in carven folds, as she knelt like a victim ready for the headsman's axe.
One of the proudest and most reticent men who ever trod the soil of the New World was thus reduced to woo before his enemy and his kindred; to argue against those unseen forces represented by the Indian girl, and to fight death in his own body with every pleading respiration. For blindness was growing over his eyes. His lungs were tightened. When his back was turned in the room below, Jolycoeur had mixed a dish for him.
La Salle's hardihood was the marvel of his followers. A body and will of electric strength carried him thousands of miles through ways called impa.s.sable. Defeat could not defeat him. But this struggle with Jeanne le Ber was harder than any struggle with an estranged king, harder than again bringing up fortune from the depths of ruin, harder than tearing his breath of life from the reluctant air. He reared himself against the chimney-side, pressing with palms and stretched fingers for support, yet maintaining a roused erectness.
”Jeanne!” he spoke; and eyes less blind than his could detect a sinking of her figure at the sound, ”I have this to say.”
With a plunging gait which terrified Barbe by its unnaturalness, La Salle attempted to place himself nearer the silent object he was to move. As he pa.s.sed through the doorway he caught at the sides, and then stretched out and braced one palm against the wall. Thus propped he proceeded, articulating thickly but with careful exactness.
”Jeanne, when I have again brought success out of failure, I shall demand you in marriage. Your father permits it.”
Her trembling lips prayed on, and she gave no token of having heard him, except the tremor which shook even the folds of her gown.
Too proud to confess his peril and make its appeal to her, and suppressing before so many witnesses her tender name of Sainte, he labored on as La Salle the explorer with the statement of his case.
”Perhaps I cannot see you again for some years. I do not ask words--of acceptance now. It is enough--if you look at me.”
La Salle leaned forward. His eyeb.a.l.l.s appeared to swell and protrude as he strained sight for the slightest lifting of the veil before that self-restraining spirit.
Barbe's wailing suddenly broke all bounds in the outer room. ”My uncle the Abbe! Look at my uncle La Salle! He cannot breathe--he is going to die! Somebody has poisoned or stabbed my uncle La Salle!”
Jean Cavelier with lower outcry ran to help the explorer. But even a brother and a priest has his limitations. La Salle pushed him off.
When Barbe saw this, she threw herself to the floor and hid her face upon the bench. Her kinsman and the hero of her childhood was held over the abyss of death in the hand of Jeanne le Ber, while those who loved him must set their teeth in silence.
But neither this childish judge, nor the father watching for any slight motion of eyelids which might direct all his future hopes and plans, knew what sickening moisture started from every pore of Jeanne le Ber.
Still she lifted her fainting eyes only as high as the crucifix Tegahkouita held before her. Compared to her duty as she saw it, she must count as nothing the life of the man she loved.