Part 9 (1/2)

The lady of the fort shook out Father Jogues' ca.s.sock and rose from the mending. Antonia picked up their tools and flicked bits of thread from her skirt.

”I am glad it is done, madame, for you look heavy-eyed, as any one ought, after tossing two nights on Fundy Bay and sewing on a black gown until midnight c.o.c.k-crow of the third.”

”I am not now fit to face a siege,” owned Marie. ”We must get to bed.

Though first I crave one more look at the dead baby Zelie hath in charge. There is a soft weakness in me which mothers even the outcast young of my enemy.”

VII.

A FRONTIER GRAVEYARD.

The next morning was gray and transparent: a hemisphere of mist filled with light; a world of vapor palpitating with some indwelling spirit.

That lonesome lap of country opposite Fort St. John could scarcely be defined. Sc.r.a.ps of its dawning spring color showed through the mobile winding and ascending veil. Trees rose out of the lowlands between the fort and the falls.

Van Corlaer was in the gorge, watching that miracle worked every day in St. John River. The tide was racing inland. The steep rapids within their throat of rock were clear of fog. Foam is the flower of water; and white petal after white petal was swept under by the driving waves. As the tide rose the tumult of falls ceased. The channel filled. All rocks were drowned. For a brief time another s.h.i.+p could have pa.s.sed up that natural lock, as La Tour's s.h.i.+p had pa.s.sed on the cream-smooth current at flood tide the day before.

Van Corlaer could not see its ragged sails around the breast of rock, but the hammering of its repairers had been in his ears since dawn; and through the subsiding wash of water he now heard men's voices.

The Indians whose village he had joined were that morning breaking up camp to begin their spring pilgrimage down the coast along various fis.h.i.+ng haunts; for agriculture was a thing unknown to these savages.

They were a seafaring people in canoes. At that time even invading Europeans had gained little mastery of the soil. Camp and fortress were on the same side of the river. Lounging braves watched indifferently some figures wading fog from the fort, perhaps bringing them a farewell word, perhaps forbidding their departure. The Indian often humored his invader's feudal airs, but he never owned the mastery of any white man.

Squaws took down cone-shaped tents, while their half-naked babies sprawled in play upon the ashes of last winter's fires. Van Corlaer's men sauntered through the vanis.h.i.+ng town, trying at times to strike some spark of information from Dutch and Etchemin jargon.

Near the river bank, between camp and fort, was an alluvial spot in which the shovel found no rock. A rough line of piled stones severed it from surrounding lands, and a few trees stood there, promising summer shade, though, darkly moist along every budded twig, they now swayed in tuneless nakedness. Here the dead of Fort St. John were buried; and those approaching figures entered a gap of the inclosure instead of going on to the camp. Three of La Tour's soldiers, with Father Jogues and his donne, had come to bury the outcast baby. One of the men was Zelie's husband, and she walked beside him. Marguerite lay sulking in the barracks. The lady had asked Father Jogues to consecrate with the rites of his church the burial of this little victim probably born into his faith. But he would have followed it in any case, with that instinct which drove him to baptize dying Indian children with rain-drops and attempt to pluck converts from the tortures of the stake.

”Has this child been baptized?” he inquired of Zelie on the path down from the fort.

She answered, shedding tears of resentment against Marguerite, and with fervor she could not restrain,--

”I'll warrant me it never had so much as a drop of water on its head, and but little to its body, before my lady took it.”

”But hath it not believing parents?”

”Our Swiss says,” stated Zelie, with a respectful heretic's sparing of this priest, ”that it is the child of D'Aulnay de Charnisay.” And she added no comment. The soldiers set their spades to last year's sod, cut an oblong wound, and soon had the earth heaped out and a grave made.

Father Jogues, perplexed, and heavy of heart for the sins of his enlightened as well as his savage children, concluded to consecrate the baby's bed. The Huguenot soldiers stood sullenly by while a Romish service went on. They or their fathers had been driven out of France by the bitterness of that very religion which Father Jogues expressed in sweetness. They had not the broad sympathy of their lady, who could excuse and even stoop to mend a priest's ca.s.sock; and they made their pause as brief as possible.

While the spat and clink of spades built up one child's hillock, Zelie was on her knees beside another some distance from it, sc.r.a.ping away dead leaves. Her lady had bid her look how this grave fared, and she noticed fondly that fern was beginning to curl above the buried lad's head. The heir of the La Tours lay with his feet toward the outcast of the Charnisays, but this was a chance arrangement. Soldiers and servants of the house were scattered about the frontier burial ground, and Zelie noted to report to her lady that winter had partly effaced and driven below the surface some recent graves. Instead of being marked by a cross, each earthen door had a narrow frame of river stones built around it.

Van Corlaer left the drowned falls and pa.s.sed his own tents, and waited outside the knee-high inclosure for Father Jogues. The missionary, in his usual halo of prayer, dwelt upon the open breviary. Many a tree along the Mohawk valley yet bore the name of Jesu which he had carved in its bark, as well as rude crosses. Such marks helped him to turn the woods into one wide oratory. But unconverted savages, tearing with their teeth the hands lifted up in supplication for them, had scarcely taxed his heart as heretics and sinful believers taxed it now. The soldiers, having finished, took up their tools, and Van Corlaer joined Father Jogues as the party came out of the cemetery.

The day was brightening. Some sea-birds were spreading their white b.r.e.a.s.t.s and wing-linings like flashes of silver against s.h.i.+fting vapor.

The party descended to a wrinkle in the land which would be dry at ebb-tide. Now it held a stream flowing inland upon gra.s.s--unshriveled long gra.s.s bowed flat and sleeked to this daily service. It gave beholders a delicious sensation to see the clean water rus.h.i.+ng up so verdant a course. A log which would seem a misplaced and useless foot-bridge when the tide was out, was crossed by one after another; and as Van Corlaer fell back to step beside Father Jogues, he said:--

”The Abenakis take to the woods and desert their fis.h.i.+ng, and these Etchemins leave the woods and take to the coast. You never know where to have your savage. Did you note that the village was moving?”

”Yes, I saw that, Monsieur Corlaer; and I must now take leave of the lady of the fort and join myself to them.”