Part 21 (1/2)

”I am going to church with you, Pani,” she declared in a tone that left no demur.

”Ah, child, if thou hadst listened to the good father and been confirmed, then thou mightst have partaken of the ma.s.s.”

Jeanne almost wished she had. But the schoolmaster had strengthened her opposition, or rather her dread, a little, quite unknowingly, and yet he had given her more reverence and a longing for real faith.

”But I shall be thinking of the shepherds and the glad tidings. I watched the stars last night, they were so beautiful. 'And they came and stood over the place,' the schoolmaster read it to me. That was way over the other side of the world, Pani.”

The Indian woman shook her head. She was afraid of this strange knowledge, and she had a vague idea that it must have happened here in Detroit, since the Christ was born anew every year.

The stars were not all gone out of the sky. The crisp snow crunched under their feet, although the moccasins were soft and warm; and everybody was m.u.f.fled in furs, even to hoods and pointed caps. Some people were carrying lanterns, but they could find their way, straight along St. Anne's street. The bell kept on until they stood in the church porch.

”Thou wilt sit here, child.”

Jeanne made no protest. She rather liked being hidden here in the darkness.

There were the De Bers, then Marie and her lover, then Rose and Pierre.

How much did dull Pierre believe and understand? The master's faith seemed simpler to her.

A little later was the regular Christmas service with the altar decked in white and gold and the two fathers in their beautiful robes of rejoicing, the candlesticks that had been sent from France a century before, burnished to their brightest and the candles lighted. Behind the screen the sisters and the children sang hymns, and some in the congregation joined, though the men were much more at home in the music of the violins and in the jollity.

Jeanne felt strangely serious, and half wished she was among the children. It was the fear of having to become a nun that deterred her.

She could not understand how Berthe Campeau could leave her ailing mother and go to Montreal for religion's sake. Madame Campeau was not able to stand the journey even if she had wanted to go, but she and her sister had had some differences, and, since Berthe would go, her son's wife had kindly offered to care for her.

”And what there is left thou shalt have, Catherine,” she said to her daughter-in-law. ”None of my money shall go to Montreal. It would be only such a little while for Berthe to wait. I cannot last long.”

So she had said for three years and Berthe had grown tired of waiting.

Her imagination fed on the life of devotion and exaltation that her aunt wrote about.

At noon Marie De Ber was married. She s.h.i.+vered a little in her white gown, for the church was cold. Her veil fell all over her and no one could see whether her face was joyful or not. Truth to tell, she was sadly frightened, but everybody was merry, and her husband wrapped her in a fur cloak and packed her in his sledge. A procession followed, most of them on foot, for there was to be a great dinner at Tony Beeson's.

Then, although the morning had been so lovely, the sky clouded over with leaden gray and the wind came in great sullen gusts from Lake Huron. You could hear it miles away, a fierce roar such as the droves of bisons made, as if they were breaking in at your very door. Pani hung the bearskin against the door and let down the fur curtains over the windows. There was a bright log fire and Jeanne curled up on one side in a wolfskin, resting her head on a cus.h.i.+on of cedar twigs that gave out a pleasant fragrance. Pani sat quietly on the other side. There was no light but the blaze. Neither was the Indian woman used to the small industries some of the French took up when they had pa.s.sed girlhood. In a slow, phlegmatic fas.h.i.+on she used to go over her past life, raising up from their graves, as it were, Madame de Longueil, Madame Bellestre, and then Monsieur, though he never came from the shadowy grave, but a garden that bore strange fruit, and where it was summer all the year round. She had the gift of obedient faith, so she was a good Catholic, as far as her own soul was concerned, but her duty toward the child often troubled her.

Jeanne watched the blaze in a strange mood, her heart hot and angry at one moment, proud and indifferent at the next. She said a dozen times a day to herself that she didn't care a dead leaf for Marie, who had grown so consequential and haughty, and Rose, who was full of her own pleasure. It seemed as if other children had dropped out as well, but then in this cold weather she could not run out to the farms or lead a group of eager young people to see her do amazing feats. For she could walk out on the limb of a tree and laugh while it swung up and down with her weight, and then catch the limb of the next tree and fling herself over, amid their shouts. No boy dared climb higher. She had caught little owls who blinked at her with yellow eyes, but she always put them back in the trees again.

”You wouldn't like to be carried away by fierce Indians,” she said when the children begged they might keep them. ”They like their homes and their mothers.”

”As if an owl could tell who its mother was!” laughed a boy disdainfully.

She had hardly known the feeling of loneliness. What did she do last winter, she wondered? O yes, she played with the De Ber children, and there were the Pallents, whom she seldom went to visit now, they seemed so very ignorant. Ah--if it would come summer again!

”For the trees and the flowers and the birds are better than most people,” she ruminated. It must be because everybody had gone out of her life that it appeared wide and strange. After all she did not care for the De Bers and yet it seemed as if she had been stabbed to the heart.

Pierre and Marie had pretended to care so much for her. Then, in spite of her sadness, she laughed.

”What is it amuses thee so, little one?” asked the Indian woman.

”I am not old enough to have a lover, Pani, am I?” and she looked out of her furry wrap.

”No, child, no. What folly! Marie's wedding has set thee astray.”

”And Pierre is a slow, stupid fellow.”