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"Make it, then. Come, Annet, don't be ill-natured. And, besides, you ought to see that I go there, for I have not called upon Miss Lois this year."
"As this year only began last week, you are not so very far behind," said the girl, smiling. "Why can you not go and see Miss Lois alone?"
"I should be welcome, at any rate; she adores me."
"Does she, indeed!"
"Yes, Miss Douglas, she does. She pretends otherwise, but that is always the way with women. Oh! I know the world."
"You are only one year older than I am."
"In actual time, perhaps; but twenty years older in knowledge."
"What will you be, then, when you come back from college? An old man?"
"By no means; for I shall stay where I am. But in the mean time you will catch up with me."
Handsome Rast had passed through his novitiate, so he thought. His knowledge of the world was derived partly from Lieutenant Walters, who, although fresh from West Point, was still several years older than young Pronando, and patronized him accordingly, and partly from a slender, low-voiced Miss Carew, who was thirty, but appeared twenty, after the manner of slender yellow-white blondes who have never possessed any rose-tints, having always been willowy and amber-colored. Miss Carew sailed, for a summer's amusement through the Great Lakes of the West; and then returned Eastward with the opinion that they were but so many raw, blank, inland oceans, without sensations or local coloring enough to rouse her. The week on the island, which was an epoch in Rast's life, had held for her but languid interest; yet even the languid work of a master-hand has finish and power, and Rast was melancholy and silent for fifteen days after the enchantress had departed. Then he wrote to her one or two wild letters, and received no answer; then he grew bitter. Then Walters came, with his cadet's deep experience in life, and the youth learned from him, and re-appeared on the surface again with a tinge of cynicism which filled Anne with wonder. For he had never told her the story of the summer; it was almost the only event in his life which she had not shared. But it was not that he feared to tell her, they were as frank with each other as two children; it was because he thought she would not understand it.
"I do not like Mr. Walters," she said, one day.
"He was very much liked at the Point, I assure you," said Rast, with significant emphasis. "By the ladies, I mean, who come there in the summer."
"How could they like him, with that important, egotistical air?"
"But it is to conquer him they like," said Tita, looking up from her corner.
"Hear the child!" said Rast, laughing. "Are you going to conquer, Tita?"
"Yes," said Tita, stroking the cat which shared the corner with her – a soft coated yellow pussy that was generally sleepy and quiet, but which had, nevertheless, at times, extraordinary fits of galloping round in a circle, and tearing the bark from the trees as though she was possessed – an eccentricity of character which the boys attributed to the direct influence of Satan.
Miss Lois lived in the church-house. It was an ugly house; but then, as is often said of a plain woman, "so good!" It did not leak or rattle, or fall down or smoke, or lean or sag, as did most of the other houses in the village, in regard to their shingles, their shutters, their chimneys, their side walls, and their roof-trees. It stood straightly and squarely on its stone foundation, and every board, nail and latch was in its proper position. Years before, missionaries had been sent from New England to work among the Indians of this neighborhood, who had obtained their ideas of Christianity, up to that time, solely from the Roman Catholic priests, who had succeeded each other in an unbroken line from that adventurous Jesuit, the first explorer of these inland seas, Father Marquette. The Presbyterians came, established their mission, built a meeting-house, a school-house, and a house for their pastor, the buildings being as solid as their belief. Money was collected for this enterprise from all over New England, that old-time, devout, self-sacrificing community whose sternness and faith were equal; tall spare men came westward to teach the Indians, earnest women with bright steadfast eyes and lath-like forms were their aiders, wives, and companions. Among these came Miss Lois – then young Lois Hinsdale – carried Westward by an aunt whose missionary zeal was burning splendidly up an empty chimney which might have been filled with family loves and cares, but was not: shall we say better filled? The missionaries worked faithfully; but, as the Indians soon moved further westward, the results of their efforts can not be statistically estimated now, or the accounts balanced.
"The only good Indian is a dead Indian," is a remark that crystallizes the floating opinion of the border. But a border population has not a missionary spirit. New England, having long ago chased out, shot down, and exterminated all her own Indians, had become peaceful and pious, and did not agree with these Western carriers of shot-guns. Still, when there were no more Indians to come to this island school, it was of necessity closed, no matter which side was right. There were still numbers of Chippewas living on the other islands and on the mainland; but they belonged to the Roman Catholic faith, and were under the control of Père Michaux.
The Protestant church – a square New England meeting-house, with steeple and bell – was kept open during another year; but the congregation grew so small that at last knowledge of the true state of affairs reached the New England purses, and it was decided that the minister in charge should close this mission, and go southward to a more promising field among the prairie settlers of Illinois. All the teachers connected with the Indian school had departed before this – all save Miss Lois and her aunt; for Priscilla Hinsdale, stricken down by her own intense energy, which had consumed her as an inward fire, was now confined to her bed, partially paralyzed. The New England woman had sold her farm, and put almost all her little store of money into island property. "I shall live and die here," she had said; "I have found my life-work." But her work went away from her; her class of promising squaws departed with their pappooses and their braves, and left her scholarless.
"With all the blessed religious privileges they have here, besides other advantages, I can not at all understand it – I can not understand it," she repeated many times, especially to Sandy Forbes, an old Scotchman and fervent singer of psalms.
"Aweel, aweel, Miss Priscilla, I donnot suppose ye can," replied Sandy, with a momentary twinkle in his old eyes.
While still hesitating over her future course, illness struck down the old maid, and her life-work was at last decided for her: it was merely to lie in bed, motionless, winter and summer, with folded hands and whatever resignation she was able to muster. Niece Lois, hitherto a satellite, now assumed the leadership. This would seem a simple enough charge, the household of two women, poor in purse, in a remote village on a Northern frontier. But exotics of any kind require nursing and vigilance, and the Hinsdale household was an exotic. Miss Priscilla required that every collar should be starched in the New England fashion, that every curtain should fall in New England folds, that every dish on the table should be of New England origin, and that every clock should tick with New England accuracy. Lois had known no other training; and remembering as she did also the ways of the old home among the New Hampshire hills with a child's fidelity and affection, she went even beyond her aunt in faithfulness to her ideal; and although the elder woman had long been dead, the niece never varied the habits or altered the rules of the house which was now hers alone.
"A little New England homestead strangely set up here on this far Western island," William Douglas had said.
The church house, as the villagers named it, was built by the Presbyterian missionaries, many of them laboring with their own hands at the good work, seeing, no doubt, files of Indian converts rising up in another world to call them blessed. When it came into the hands of Miss Priscilla, it came, therefore, ready-made as to New England ideas of rooms and closets, and only required a new application of white and green paint to become for her an appropriate and rectangular bower. It stood near the closed meeting-house, whose steeple threw a slow-moving shadow across its garden, like a great sun-dial, all day. Miss Lois had charge of the key of the meeting-house, and often she unlocked its door, went in, and walked up and down the aisle, as if to revive the memories of the past. She remembered the faith and sure hope that used to fill the empty spaces, and shook her head and sighed. Then she upbraided herself for sighing, and sang in her thin husky voice softly a verse or two of one of their old psalms by way of reparation. She sent an annual report of the condition of the building to the Presbyterian Board of Missions, but in it said nothing of the small repairs for which her own purse paid. Was it a silent way of making amends to the old walls for having deserted their tenets?
"Cod-fish balls for breakfast on Sunday morning, of course," said Miss Lois, "and fried hasty-pudding. On Wednesdays a boiled dinner. Pies on Tuesdays and Saturdays."
The pins stood in straight rows on her pincushion; three times each week every room in the house was swept, and the floors as well as the furniture dusted. Beans were baked in an earthen pot on Saturday night, and sweet-cake was made on Thursday. Rast Pronando often dropped in to tea on Thursday. Winter or summer, through scarcity or plenty, Miss Lois never varied her established routine, thereby setting an example, she said, to the idle and shiftless. And certainly she was a faithful guide-post, continually pointing out an industrious and systematic way, which, however, to the end of time, no French-blooded, French-hearted person will ever travel, unless dragged by force. The villagers preferred their lake trout to Miss Lois's salt cod-fish, their savory stews and soups to her corned beef, their tartines to her corn-meal puddings, and their eau-de-vie to her green tea; they loved their disorder and their comfort; her bar soap and scrubbing-brush were a horror to their eyes. They washed the household clothes two or three times a year: was not that enough? Of what use the endless labor of this sharp-nosed woman with glasses over her eyes at the church-house? Were not, perhaps, the glasses the consequences of such toil? And her figure of a long leanness also?
The element of real heroism, however, came into Miss Lois's life in her persistent effort to employ Indian servants. The old mission had been established for their conversion and education; any descendant of that mission, therefore, should continue to the utmost of her ability the beneficent work. The meeting-house was closed, the school-house abandoned, she could reach the native race by no other influence save personal; that personal influence, then, she would use. Through long years had she persisted, through long years would she continue to persist. A succession of Chippewa squaws broke, stole, and skirmished their way through her kitchen with various degrees of success, generally in the end departing suddenly at night with whatever booty they could lay their hands on. It is but justice to add, however, that this was not much, a rigid system of keys and excellent locks prevailing in the well-watched household. Miss Lois's conscience would not allow her to employ half-breeds, who were sometimes endurable servants; duty required, she said, that she should have full-blooded natives. And she had them. She always began to teach them the alphabet within three days after their arrival, and the spectacle of a tearful, freshly caught Indian girl, very wretched in her calico dress and white apron, worn out with the ways of the kettles and brasses, dejected over the fish-balls, and appalled by the pudding, standing confronted by a large alphabet on the well-scoured table, and Miss Lois by her side with a pointer, was frequent and even regular in its occurrence, the only change being in the personality of the learners. No one of them had ever gone through the letters; but Miss Lois was not discouraged. Patiently she began over again – she was always beginning over again. And in the mean time she was often obliged not only to do almost all the household work with her own hands, but to do it twice over in order to instruct the new-comer. By the unwritten law of public opinion, Dr. Gaston was obliged to employ only Protestant servants; by the unwritten law of her own conscience, Miss Lois was obliged to employ only Indians. But in truth she did not employ them so much as they employed her.
Miss Lois received her young friends in the sitting-room. There was a parlor with Brussels carpet and hair-cloth sofa across the hall, but its blinds were closed, and its shades drawn down. The parlor of middle-class households in the cold climate of the Northern States generally is a consecrated apartment, with the chill atmosphere and much of the solemnity of a tomb. It may be called the high altar of the careful housewife; but even here her sense of cleanliness and dustless perfection is such that she keeps it cold. No sacred fire burns, no cheerful ministry is allowed; everything is silent and veiled. The apartment is of no earthly use – nor heavenly, save perhaps for ghosts. But take it away, and the housewife is miserable; leave it, and she lives on contentedly in her sitting-room all the year round, knowing it is there.
Miss Lois's sitting-room was cheery; it had a rag-carpet, a bright fire, and double-glass panes instead of the heavy woollen curtains which the villagers hung over their windows in the winter – curtains that kept out the cold, but also the light. Miss Lois's curtains were of white dimity with knotted fringe, and her walls were freshly whitewashed. Her framed sampler, and a memorial picture done with pen and ink, representing two weeping-willows overshadowing a tombstone, ornamented the high mantel-piece, and there were also two gayly colored china jars filled with dried rose-leaves. They were only wild-brier roses; the real roses, as she called them, grew but reluctantly in this Northern air. Miss Lois never loved the wild ones as she had loved the old-fashioned cinnamon-scented pink and damask roses of her youth, but she gathered and dried these leaves of the brier from habit. There was also hanging on the wall a looking-glass tilted forward at such an angle that the looker-in could see only his feet, with a steep ascent of carpet going up hill behind him. This looking-glass possessed a brightly hued picture at the top, divided into two compartments, on one side a lovely lady with a large bonnet modestly concealing her face, very bare shoulders, leg-of-mutton sleeves, and a bag hanging on her arm; on the other old Father Time, scythe in hand, as if he was intended as a warning to the lovely lady that minutes were rapid and his stroke sure.
"Why do you keep your glass tilted forward so far that we can not look in it, Miss Lois?" Rast had once asked.
Miss Lois did it from habit. But she answered: "To keep silly girls from looking at themselves while they are pretending to talk to me. They say something, and then raise their eyes quickly to see how they looked when they said it. I have known them keep a smile or a particular expression half a minute while they studied the effect – ridiculous calves!"
"Calves have lovely eyes sometimes," said Rast.
"Did I say the girls were ugly, Master Pert? But the homely girls look too."
"Perhaps to see how they can improve themselves."
"Perhaps," said the old maid, dryly. "Pity they never learn!"
In the sitting-room was a high chest of drawers, an old clock, a chintz-covered settle, and two deep narrow old rocking-chairs, intended evidently for scant skirts; on an especial table was the family Bible, containing the record of the Hinsdale family from the date of the arrival of the Mayflower. Miss Lois's prayer-book was not there; it was up stairs in a bureau drawer. It did not seem to belong to the old-time furniture of the rooms below, nor to the Hinsdale Bible.
The story of Miss Lois's change from the Puritan to the Episcopal ritual might to-day fill a volume if written by one of those brooding, self-searching woman-minds of New England – those unconscious, earnest egotists who bring forth poetry beautiful sometimes to inspiration, but always purely subjective. And if in such a volume the feelings, the arguments, and the change were all represented as sincere, conscientious, and prayerful, they would be represented with entire truth. Nevertheless, so complex are the influences which move our lives, and so deep the under-powers which we ourselves may not always recognize, that it could be safely added by a man of the world as a comment that Lois Hinsdale would never have felt these changes, these doubts, these conflicts, if William Douglas had not been of another creed. For in those days Douglas had a creed – the creed of his young bride.
"Miss Hinsdale, we have come to offer you our New-Year's good wishes," said Rast, taking off his cap and making a ceremonious bow. "Our equipage will wait outside. How charming is your apartment, madam! And yourself – how Minerva-like the gleam of the eye, the motion of the hand, which – "
"Which made the pies now cooling in the pantry, Rast Pronando, to whose fragrance, I presume, I owe the honor of this visit."
"Not for myself, dear madam, but for Anne. She has already confided to me that she feels a certain sinking sensation that absolutely requires the strengthening influence of pie."
Anne laughed. "Are you going to stay long?" she asked, still standing at the doorway.
"Certainly," replied Rast, seating himself in one of the narrow rocking-chairs; "I have a number of subjects to discuss with our dear Miss Lois."
"Then I will leave you here, for Tita is waiting for me. I have promised to take them all over to Père Michaux's house this afternoon."
Miss Lois groaned – two short abrupt groans on different keys.
"Have you? Then I'm going too," said Rast, rising.
"Oh no, Rast; please do not," said the girl, earnestly. "When you go, it is quite a different thing – a frolic always."
"And why not?" said Rast.
"Because the children go for religious instruction, as you well know; it is their faith, and I feel that I ought to give them such opportunities as I can to learn what it means."
"It means mummery!" said Miss Lois, loudly and sternly.
Anne glanced toward her old friend, but stood her ground firmly. "I must take them," she said; "I promised I would do so as long as they were children, and under my care. When they are older they can choose for themselves."
"To whom did you make that promise, Anne Douglas?"
"To Père Michaux."
"And you call yourself a Protestant!"
"Yes; but I hope to keep a promise too, dear Miss Lois."
"Why was it ever made?"
"Père Michaux required it, and – father allowed it."
Miss Lois rubbed her forehead, settled her spectacles with her first and third fingers, shook her head briskly once or twice to see if they were firmly in place, and then went on with her knitting. What William Douglas allowed, how could she disallow?
Rast, standing by Anne's side putting on his fur gloves, showed no disposition to yield.
"Please do not come, Rast," said the girl again, laying her hand on his arm.
"I shall go to take care of you."
"It is not necessary; we have old Antoine and his dogs, and the boys are to have a sled of their own. We shall be at home before dark, I think, and if not, the moon to-night is full."
"But I shall go," said Rast.
"Nonsense!" said Miss Lois. "Of course you will not go; Anne is right. You romp and make mischief with those children always. Behave now, and you shall come back this evening, and Anne shall come too, and we will have apples and nuts and gingerbread, and Anne shall recite."
"Will you, Annet? I will yield if you promise."
"If I must, I must," said Anne, reluctantly.
"Go, then, proud maid; speed upon your errand. And in the mean time, Miss Lois, something fragrant and spicy in the way of a reward now would not come amiss, and then some music."
Among the possessions which Miss Lois had inherited from her aunt was a small piano. The elder Miss Hinsdale, sent into the world with an almost Italian love of music, found herself unable to repress it even in cold New England; turning it, therefore, into the channel of the few stunted psalms and hymns and spiritual songs of the day, she indulged it in a cramped fashion, like a full-flowing stream shut off and made to turn a mill. When the missionary spirit seized her in its fiery whirlwind, she bargained with it mentally that her piano should be included; she represented to the doubting elder that it would be an instrument of great power among the savages, and that even David himself accompanied the psalms with a well-stringed harp. The elder still doubted; he liked a tuning-fork; and besides, the money which Miss Priscilla would pay for the transportation of "the instrument" was greatly needed for boots for the young men. But as Miss Priscilla was a free agent, and quite determined, he finally decided, like many another leader, to allow what he could not prevent, and the piano came. It was a small, old-fashioned instrument, which had been kept in tune by Dr. Douglas, and through long years the inner life of Miss Lois, her hopes, aspirations, and disappointments, had found expression through its keys. It was a curious sight to see the old maid sitting at her piano alone on a stormy evening, the doors all closed, the shutters locked, no one stirring in the church-house save herself. Her playing was old-fashioned, her hands stiff; she could not improvise, and the range of the music she knew was small and narrow, yet unconsciously it served to her all the purposes of emotional expression. When she was sad, she played "China"; when she was hopeful, "Coronation." She made the bass heavy in dejection, and played the air in octaves when cheerful. She played only when she was entirely alone. The old piano was the only confidant of the hidden remains of youthful feeling buried in her heart.
Rast played on the piano and the violin in an untrained fashion of his own, and Anne sang; they often had small concerts in Miss Lois's parlor. But a greater entertainment lay in Anne's recitations. These were all from Shakspeare. Not in vain had the chaplain kept her tied to its pages year after year; she had learned, almost unconsciously, as it were, large portions of the immortal text by heart, and had formed her own ideals of the characters, who were to her real persons, although as different from flesh-and-blood people as are the phantoms of a dream. They were like spirits who came at her call, and lent her their personality; she could identify herself with them for the time being so completely, throw herself into the bodies and minds she had constructed for them so entirely, that the effect was startling, and all the more so because her conceptions of the characters were girlish and utterly different from those that have ruled the dramatic stage for generations. Her ideas of Juliet, of Ophelia, of Rosalind, and Cleopatra were her own, and she never varied them; the very earnestness of her personations made the effect all the more extraordinary. Dr. Gaston had never heard these recitations of his pupil; William Douglas had never heard them; either of these men could have corrected her errors and explained to her her mistakes. She herself thought them too trifling for their notice; it was only a way she had of amusing herself. Even Rast, her playmate, found it out by chance, coming upon her among the cedars one day when she was Ophelia, and overhearing her speak several lines before she saw him; he immediately constituted himself an audience of one, with, however, the peremptory manners of a throng, and demanded to hear all she knew. Poor Anne! the great plays of the world had been her fairy tales; she knew no others. She went through her personations timidly, the wild forest her background, the open air and blue Straits her scenery. The audience found fault, but, on the whole, enjoyed the performance, and demanded frequent repetitions. After a while Miss Lois was admitted into the secret, and disapproved, and was curious, and listened, and shook her head, but ended by liking the portraitures, which were in truth as fantastic as phantasmagoria. Miss Lois had never seen a play or read a novel in her life. For some time the forest continued Anne's theatre, and more than once Miss Lois had taken afternoon walks, for which her conscience troubled her: she could not decide whether it was right or wrong. But winter came, and gradually it grew into a habit that Anne should recite at the church-house now and then, the Indian servant who happened to be at that time the occupant of the kitchen being sent carefully away for the evening, in order that her eye should not be guiltily glued to the key-hole during the exciting visits of Ophelia and Juliet. Anne was always reluctant to give these recitations now that she had an audience. "Out in the woods," she said, "I had only the trees and the silence. I never thought of myself at all."
"But Miss Lois and I are as handsome as trees; and as to silence, we never say a word," replied Rast. "Come, Annet, you know you like it."
"Yes; in – in one way I do."
"Then let us take that way," said Rast.
CHAPTER IV
– "Sounding names as any on the page of history – Lake Winnipeg, Hudson Bay, Ottaway, and portages innumerable; Chipeways, Gens de Terre, Les Pilleurs, the Weepers, and the like. An immense, shaggy, but sincere country, adorned with chains of lakes and rivers, covered with snows, with hemlocks and fir-trees. There is a naturalness in this traveller, and an unpretendingness, as in a Canadian winter, where life is preserved through low temperature and frontier dangers by furs, and within a stout heart. He has truth and moderation worthy of the father of history, which belong only to an intimate experience; and he does not defer much to literature."
– Thoreau.
Immediately after the early dinner the little cavalcade set out for the hermitage of Père Michaux, which was on an island of its own at some distance from the village island; to reach it they journeyed over the ice. The boys' sled went first, André riding, the other two drawing: they were to take turns. Then came old Antoine and his dogs, wise-looking, sedate creatures with wide-spread, awkward legs, big paws, and toes turned in. René and Lebeau were the leaders; they were dogs of age and character, and as they guided the sledge they also kept an eye to the younger dogs behind. The team was a local one; it was not employed in carrying the mails, but was used by the villagers when they crossed to the various islands, the fishing grounds, or the Indian villages on the mainland. Old Antoine walked behind with Anne by his side: she preferred to walk. Snugly ensconced in the sledge in a warm nest of furs was Tita, nothing visible of her small self save her dark eyes, which were, however, most of the time closed: here there was nothing to watch. The bells on the dogs sounded out merrily in the clear air: the boys had also adorned themselves with bells, and pranced along like colts. The sunshine was intensely bright, the blue heavens seemed full of its shafts, the ice below glittered in shining lines; on the north and south the dark evergreens of the mainland rose above the white, but toward the east and west the fields of ice extended unbroken over the edge of the horizon. Here they were smooth, covered with snow; there they were heaped in hummocks and ridges, huge blocks piled against each other, and frozen solid in that position where the wind and the current had met and fought. The atmosphere was cold, but so pure and still that breathing was easier than in many localities farther toward the south. There was no dampness, no strong raw wind; only the even cold. A feather thrown from a house-top would have dropped softly to the ground in a straight line, as drop one by one the broad leaves of the sycamore on still Indian summer days. The snow itself was dry; it had fallen at intervals during the winter, and made thicker and thicker the soft mantle that covered the water and land. When the flakes came down, the villagers always knew that it was warmer, for when the clouds were steel-bound, the snow could not fall.
"I think we shall have snow again to-morrow," said old Antoine in his voyageur dialect. "Step forward, then, genteelly, René. Hast thou no conscience, Lebeau?"
The two dogs, whose attention had been a little distracted by the backward vision of André conveying something to his mouth, returned to their duty with a jerk, and the other dogs behind all rang their little bells suddenly as they felt the swerve of the leaders back into the track. For there was a track over the ice toward Père Michaux's island, and another stretching off due eastward – the path of the carrier who brought the mails from below; besides these there were no other ice-roads; the Indians and hunters came and went as the bird flies. Père Michaux's island was not in sight from the village; it was, as the boys said, round the corner. When they had turned this point, and no longer saw the mission church, the little fort, and the ice-covered piers, when there was nothing on the shore side save wild cliffs crowned with evergreens, then before them rose a low island with its bare summer trees, its one weather-beaten house, a straight line of smoke coming from its chimney. It was still a mile distant, but the boys ran along with new vigor. No one wished to ride; André, leaving his place, took hold with the others, and the empty sled went on toward the hermitage at a fine pace.
"You could repose yourself there, mademoiselle," said Antoine, who never thoroughly approved the walking upon her own two feet kept up – nay, even enjoyed – by this vigorous girl at his side. Tita's ideas were more to his mind.
"But I like it," said Anne, smiling. "It makes me feel warm and strong, all awake and joyous, as though I had just heard some delightful news."
"But the delightful news in reality, mademoiselle – one hears not much of it up here, as I say to Jacqueline."
"Look at the sky, the ice-fields; that is news every day, newly beautiful, if we will only look at it."
"Does mademoiselle think, then, that the ice is beautiful?"
"Very beautiful," replied the girl.
The cold air had brought the blood to her cheeks, a gleaming light to her strong, fearless eyes that looked the sun in the face without quailing. Old Antoine caught the idea for the first time that she might, perhaps, be beautiful some day, and that night, before his fire, he repeated the idea to his wife.
"Bah!" said old Jacqueline; "that is one great error of yours, my friend. Have you turned blind?"
"I did not mean beautiful in my eyes, of course; but one kind of beauty pleases me, thank the saints, and that is, without doubt, your own," replied the Frenchman, bowing toward his withered, bright-eyed old spouse with courtly gravity. "But men of another race, now, like those who come here in the summer, might they not think her passable?"
But old Jacqueline, although mollified, would not admit even this. A good young lady, and kind, it was to be hoped she would be content with the graces of piety, since she had not those of the other sort. Religion was all-merciful.
The low island met the lake without any broken ice at its edge; it rose slightly from the beach in a gentle slope, the snow-path leading directly up to the house door. The sound of the bells brought Père Michaux himself to the entrance. "Enter, then, my children," he said; "and you, Antoine, take the dogs round to the kitchen. Pierre is there."
Pierre was a French cook. Neither conscience nor congregation requiring that Père Michaux should nourish his inner man with half-baked or cindered dishes, he enjoyed to the full the skill and affection of this small-sized old Frenchman, who, while learning in his youth the rules, exceptions, and sauces of his profession, became the victim of black melancholy on account of a certain Denise, fair but cold-hearted, who, being employed in a conservatory, should have been warmer. Perhaps Denise had her inner fires, but they emitted no gleam toward poor Pierre; and at last, after spoiling two breakfasts and a dinner, and drawing down upon himself the epithet of "imbécile," the sallow little apprentice abandoned Paris, and in a fit of despair took passage for America, very much as he might have taken passage for Hades viâ the charcoal route. Having arrived in New York, instead of seeking a place where his knowledge, small as it was, would have been prized by exiled Frenchmen in a sauceless land, the despairing, obstinate little cook allowed himself to drift into all sorts of incongruous situations, and at last enlisted in the United States army, where, as he could play the flute, he was speedily placed in special service as member of the band. Poor Pierre! his flute sang to him only "Denise! Denise!" But the band-master thought it could sing other tunes as well, and set him to work with the score before him. It was while miserably performing his part in company with six placid Germans that Père Michaux first saw poor Pierre, and recognizing a compatriot, spoke to him. Struck by the pathetic misery of his face, he asked a few questions of the little flute-player, listened to his story, and gave him the comfort and help of sympathy and shillings, together with the sound of the old home accents, sweetest of all to the dulled ears. When the time of enlistment expired, Pierre came westward after his priest: Père Michaux had written to him once or twice, and the ex-cook had preserved the letters as a guide-book. He showed the heading and the postmark whenever he was at a loss, and travelled blindly on, handed from one railway conductor to another like a piece of animated luggage, until at last he was put on board of a steamer, and, with some difficulty, carried westward; for the sight of the water had convinced him that he was to be taken on some unknown and terrible voyage.
The good priest was surprised and touched to see the tears of the little man, stained, weazened, and worn with travel and grief; he took him over to the hermitage in his sharp-pointed boat, which skimmed the crests of the waves, the two sails wing-and-wing, and Pierre sat in the bottom, and held on with a death-grasp. As soon as his foot touched the shore, he declared, with regained fluency, that he would never again enter a boat, large or small, as long as he lived. He never did. In vain Père Michaux represented to him that he could earn more money in a city, in vain he offered to send him Eastward and place him with kind persons speaking his own tongue, who would procure a good situation for him; Pierre was obstinate. He listened, assented to all, but when the time came refused to go.
"Are you or are you not going to send us that cook of yours?" wrote Father George at the end of two years. "This is the fifth time I have made ready for him."
"He will not go," replied Père Michaux at last; "it seems that I must resign myself."
"If your Père Michaux is handsomer than I am," said Dr. Gaston one day to Anne, "it is because he has had something palatable to eat all this time. In a long course of years saleratus tells."
Père Michaux was indeed a man of noble bearing; his face, although benign, wore an expression of authority, which came from the submissive obedience of his flock, who loved him as a father and revered him as a pope. His parish, a diocese in size, extended over the long point of the southern mainland; over the many islands of the Straits, large and small, some of them unnoted on the map, yet inhabited perhaps by a few half-breeds, others dotted with Indian farms; over the village itself, where stood the small weather-beaten old Church of St. Jean; and over the dim blue line of northern coast, as far as eye could reach or priest could go. His roadways were over the water, his carriage a boat; in the winter, a sledge. He was priest, bishop, governor, judge, and physician; his word was absolute. His party-colored flock referred all their disputes to him, and abided by his decisions – questions of fishing-nets as well as questions of conscience, cases of jealousy together with cases of fever. He stood alone. He was not propped. He had the rare leader's mind. Thrown away on that wild Northern border? Not any more than Bishop Chase in Ohio, Captain John Smith in Virginia, or other versatile and autocratic pioneers. Many a man can lead in cities and in camps, among precedents and rules, but only a born leader can lead in a wilderness where he must make his own rules and be his own precedent every hour.
The dogs trotted cheerfully, with all their bells ringing, round to the back door. Old Pierre detested dogs, yet always fed them with a strange sort of conscientiousness, partly from compassion, partly from fear. He could never accustom himself to the trains. To draw, he said, was an undoglike thing. To see the creatures rush by the island on a moonlight night over the white ice, like dogs of a dream, was enough to make the hair elevate itself.
"Whose hair?" Rast had demanded. "Yours, or the dogs'?" For young Pronando was a frequent visitor at the hermitage, not as pupil or member of the flock, but as a candid young friend, admiring impartially both the priest and his cook.
"Hast thou brought me again all those wide-mouthed dogs, brigands of unheard-of and never-to-be-satisfied emptiness, robbers of all things?" demanded Pierre, appearing at the kitchen door, ladle in hand. Antoine's leathery cheeks wrinkled themselves into a grin as he unharnessed his team, all the dogs pawing and howling, and striving to be first at the entrance of this domain of plenty.
"Hold thyself quiet, René. Wilt thou take the very sledge in, Lebeau?" he said, apostrophizing the leaders. But no sooner was the last strap loosened than all the dogs by common consent rushed at and over the little cook and into the kitchen in a manner which would have insured them severe chastisement in any other kitchen in the diocese. Pierre darted about among their gaunt yellow bodies, railing at them for knocking down his pans, and calling upon all the saints to witness their rapacity; but in the mean time he was gathering together quickly fragments of whose choice and savory qualities René and Lebeau had distinct remembrance, and the other dogs anticipation. They leaped and danced round him on their awkward legs and shambling feet, bit and barked at each other, and rolled on the floor in a heap. Anywhere else the long whip would have curled round their lank ribs, but in old Pierre's kitchen they knew they were safe. With a fiercely delivered and eloquent selection from the strong expressions current in the Paris of his youth, the little cook made his way through the snarling throng of yellow backs and legs, and emptied his pan of fragments on the snow outside. Forth rushed the dogs, and cast themselves in a solid mass upon the little heap.
"Hounds of Satan?" said Pierre.
"They are, indeed," replied Antoine. "But leave them now, my friend, and close the door, since warmth is a blessed gift."
