Chapter XII: Book III: Arriving (3)

The family room was unlighted by candles, as often happened. For such an illumination in the chimney must have quenched any paler glare. We had a few moments of brief privacy from the swarming life which constantly passed in and out.

I placed Eagle by the fire and she sat there obediently, while I talked to Madame Ursule apart.

"Was her mind in this state when she came to you?"

"She was even a little wilder than she is now. The girls have been a benefit to her."

"They were not afraid of her?"

"Who could be afraid of the dear child? She is a lady--that's plain. Ah, M's'r Williams, what she must have gone through!"

"Yet see how happy she looks!"

"She always seemed happy enough. She would come to this house. So when the Jordans went to Canada, Pierre and I both said, 'Let her stay.'"

"Who were the Jordans?"

"The only family that escaped with their lives from the massacre when she lost her family. Madame Jordan told me the whole story. They had friends among the Winnebagoes who protected them."

"Did they give her their name?"

"No, the people in La Baye did that. We knew she had another name. But I think it very likely her title was not used in the settlement where they lived. Titles are no help in pioneering."

"Did they call her Madeleine?"

"She calls herself Madeleine."

"How long has she been with your family?"

"Nearly a year."

"Did the Jordans tell you when this change came over her?"

"Yes. It was during the attack when her child was taken from her. She saw other children killed. The Indians were afraid of her. They respect demented people; not a bit of harm was done to her. They let her alone, and the Jordans took care of her."

The daughter and adopted daughter of the house came in with a rush of outdoor air, and seeing Eagle first, ran to kiss her on the cheek one after the other.

"Madeleine has come down!" said Marie.

"I thought we should coax her in here sometime," said Katarina.

Between them, standing slim and tall, their equal in height, she was yet like a little sister. Though their faces were unlined, hers held a divine youth.

To see her stricken with mind-sickness, and the two girls who had done neither good nor evil, existing like plants in sunshine, healthy and sound, seemed an iniquitous contrast.

If ever woman was made for living and dying in one ancestral home, she was that woman. Yet she stood on the border of civilization, without a foothold to call her own. If ever woman was made for one knightly love which would set her in high places, she was that woman. Yet here she stood, her very name lost, no man so humble as to do her reverence.

"Paul has come," Eagle told Katarina and Marie. Holding their hands, she walked between them toward me, and bade them notice my height. "I am his Cloud-Mother," she said. "How droll it is that parents grow down little, while their children grow up big!"

Madame Ursule shook her head pitifully. But the girls really saw the droll side and laughed with my Cloud-Mother.

Separated from me by an impassable barrier, she touched me more deeply than when I sued her most. The undulating ripple which was her peculiar expression of joy was more than I could bear. I left the room and was flinging myself from the house to walk in the chill wind; but she caught me.

"I will be good!" pleaded my Cloud-Mother, her face in my breast.

Her son who had grown up big, while she grew down little, went back to the family room with her.

My Cloud-Mother sat beside me at table, and insisted on cutting up my food for me. While I tried to eat, she asked Marie and Katarina and Pierre Grignon and Madame Ursule to notice how well I behaved. The tender hearted host wiped his eyes.

I understood why she had kept such hold upon me through years of separateness. A nameless personal charm, which must be a gift of the spirit, survived all wreck and change. It drew me, and must draw me forever, whether she knew me again or not. One meets and wakes you to vivid life in an immortal hour. Thousands could not do it through eternity.

The river piled hillocks of water in a strong north wind, and no officer crossed from the stockade. Neither did any neighbor leave his own fire. It seldom happened that the Grignons were left with inmates alone. Eagle sat by me and watched the blaze streaming up the chimney.

If she was not a unit in the family group and had no part there, they were most kind to her.

"Take care!" the grandmother cried with swift forethought when Marie and Katarina marshaled in a hopping object from the kitchen. "It might frighten Madeleine."

Pierre Grignon stopped in the middle of a bear hunt. Eagle was not frightened. She clapped her hands.

"This is a pouched turkey!" Marie announced, leaning against the wall, while Katarina chased the fowl. It was the little negro, his arms and feet thrust into the legs of a pair of Pierre Grignon's trousers, and the capacious open top fastened upon his back. Doubled over, he waddled and hopped as well as he could. A feather duster was stuck in for a tail, and his woolly head gave him the uncanny look of a black harpy. To see him was to shed tears of laughter. The pouched turkey enjoyed being a pouched turkey. He strutted and gobbled, and ran at the girls; tried to pick up corn from the floor with his thick lips, tumbling down and rolling over in the effort; for a pouched turkey has no wings with which to balance himself. So much hilarity in the family room drew the Pawnee servants. I saw their small dark eyes in a mere line of open door, gazing solemnly.

When the turkey was relieved from his pouching and sent to bed, Pierre Grignon took his violin. The girls answered with jigs that ended a reel, when couples left the general figure to jig it off.

When Eagle had watched them awhile she started up, spread her skirts in a sweeping courtesy, and began to dance a gavotte. The fiddler changed his tune, and the girls rested and watched her. Alternately swift and languid, with the changes of the movement, she saluted backward to the floor, or spun on the tips of rapid feet. I had seen her dance many times, but never with such abandon of joy.

Our singular relationship was established in the house, where hospitality made room and apology for all human weakness.

Nobody of that region, except the infirm, stayed indoors to shiver by a fire. Eagle and the girls in their warm capotes breasted with me the coldest winter days. She was as happy as they were; her cheeks tingled as pink as theirs. Sometimes I thought her eyes must answer me with her old self-command; their bright grayness was so natural.

I believed if her delusions were humored, they would unwind from her like the cloud which she felt them to be. The family had long fallen into the habit of treating her as a child, playing some imaginary character. She seemed less demented than walking in a dream, her faculties asleep. It was somnambulism rather than madness. She had not the expression of insane people, the shifty eyes, the cunning and perverseness, the animal and torpid presence.

If I called her Madame de Ferrier instead of my Cloud-Mother, a strained and puzzled look replaced her usual satisfaction. I did not often use the name, nor did I try to make her repeat my own. It was my daily effort to fall in with her happiness, for if she saw any anxiety she was quick to plead:

"Don't you like me any more, Paul? Are you tired of me, because I am a Cloud-Mother?"

"No," I would answer. "Lazarre will never be tired of you."

"Do you think I am growing smaller? Will you love me if I shrink to a baby?"

"I will love you."

"I used to love you when you were so tiny, Paul, before you knew how to love me back. If I forget how"--she clutched the lapels of my coat--"will you leave me then?"

"Eagle, say this: 'Lazarre cannot leave me.'"

"Lazarre cannot leave me."

I heard her repeating this at her sewing. She boasted to Marie Grignon--"Lazarre cannot leave me!--Paul taught me that."

My Cloud-Mother asked me to tell her the stories she used to tell me. She had forgotten them.

"I am the child now," she would say. "Tell me the stories."

I repeated mythical tribe legends, gathered from Skenedonk on our long rides, making them as eloquent as I could. She listened, holding her breath, or sighing with contentment.

If any one in the household smiled when she led me about by the hand, there was a tear behind the smile.

She kept herself in perfection, bestowing unceasing care upon her dress, which was always gray.

"I have to wear gray; I am in a cloud," she had said to the family.

"We have used fine gray stuff brought from Holland, and wools that Mother Ursule got from Montreal," Katarina told me. "The Pawnees dye with vegetable colors. But they cannot make the pale gray she loves."

Eagle watched me with maternal care. If a hair dropped on my collar she brushed it away, and smoothed and settled my cravat. The touch of my Cloud-Mother, familiar and tender, like the touch of a wife, charged through me with torture, because she was herself so unconscious of it.

Before I had been in the house a week she made a little pair of trousers a span long, and gave them to me. Marie and Katarina turned their faces to laugh. My Cloud-Mother held the garment up for their inspection, and was not at all sensitive to the giggles it provoked.

"I made over an old pair of his father's," she said.

The discarded breeches used by the pouched turkey had been devoted to her whim. Every stitch was neatly set. I praised her beautiful needlework, and she said she would make me a coat.

Skenedonk was not often in the house. He took to the winter hunting and snow-shoeing with vigor. Whenever he came indoors I used to see him watching Madame de Ferrier with saturnine wistfulness. She paid no attention to him. He would stand gazing at her while she sewed; being privileged as an educated Indian and my attendant, to enter the family room where the Pawnees came only to serve. They had the ample kitchen and its log fire to themselves. I wondered what was working in Skenedonk's mind, and if he repented calling one so buffeted, a sorceress.

Kindly ridicule excited by the incongruous things she did, passed over without touching her. She was enveloped in a cloud, a thick case guarding overtaxed mind and body, and shutting them in its pellucid chrysalis. The Almighty arms were resting her on a mountain of vision. She had forgot how to weep. She was remembering how to laugh.

The more I thought about it the less endurable it became to have her dependent upon the Grignons. My business affairs with Pierre Grignon made it possible to transfer her obligations to my account. The hospitable man and his wife objected, but when they saw how I took it to heart, gave me my way. I told them I wished her to be regarded as my wife, for I should never have another; and while it might remain impossible for her to marry me, on my part I was bound to her.

"You are young, M's'r Williams," said Madame Ursule. "You have a long life before you. A man wants comfort in his house. And if he makes wealth, he needs a hand that knows how to distribute and how to save. She could never go to your home as she is."

"I know it, madame."

"You will change your mind about a wife."

"Madame, I have not changed my mind since I first wanted her. It is not a mind that changes."

"Well, that's unusual. Young men are often fickle. You never made proposals for her?"

"I did, madame, after her husband died."

"But she was still a wife--the wife of an old man--in the Pigeon Roost settlement."

"Her father married her to a cousin nearly as old as himself, when she was a child. Her husband was reported dead while he was in hiding. She herself thought, and so did her friends, that he was dead."

"I see. Eh! these girls married to old men! Madame Jordan told me Madeleine's husband was very fretful. He kept himself like silk, and scarcely let the wind blow upon him for fear of injuring his health. When other men were out toiling at the clearings, he sat in his house to avoid getting chills and fever in the sun. It was well for her that she had a faithful servant. Madeleine and the servant kept the family with their garden and corn field. They never tasted wild meat unless the other settlers brought them venison. Madame Jordan said they always returned a present of herbs and vegetables from their garden. It grew for them better than any other garden in the settlement. Once the old man did go out with a hunting party, and got lost. The men searched for him three days, and found him curled up in a hollow tree, waiting to be brought in. They carried him home on a litter and he popped his head into the door and said: 'Here I am, child! You can't kill me!'"

"What did Madame de Ferrier say?"

"Nothing. She made a child of him, as if he were her son. He was in his second childhood, no doubt. And Madame Jordan said she appeared to hold herself accountable for the losses and crosses that made him so fretful. The children of the emigration were brought up to hardship, and accepted everything as their elders could not do."

"I thought the Marquis de Ferrier a courteous gentleman."

"Did you ever see him?"

"Twice only."

"He used to tell his wife he intended to live a hundred years. And I suppose he would have done it, if he had not been tomahawked and scalped. 'You'll never get De Chaumont,' he used to say to her. 'I'll see that he never gets you!' I remember the name very well, because it was the name of that pretty creature who danced for us in the cabin on Lake George."

"De Chaumont was her father," I said. "He would have married Madame de Ferrier, and restored her estate, if she had accepted him, and the marquis had not come back."

"Saints have pity!" said Madame Ursule. "And the poor old man must make everybody and himself so uncomfortable!"

"But how could he help living?"

"True enough. God's times are not ours. But see what he has made of her!"

I thought of my Cloud-Mother walking enclosed from the world upon a height of changeless youth. She could not feel another shock. She was past both ambition and poverty. If she had ever felt the sweet anguish of love--Oh! she must have understood when she kissed me and said: "I will come to you sometime!"--the anguish--the hoping, waiting, expecting, receiving nothing, all were gone by. Even mother cares no longer touched her. Paul was grown. She could not be made anything that was base. Unseen forces had worked with her and would work with her still.

"You told me," I said to Madame Ursule, "the Indians were afraid of her when they burned the settlement. Was the change so sudden?"

"Madame Jordan's story was like this: It happened in broad daylight. Two men went into the woods hunting bee trees. The Indians caught and killed them within two miles of the clearing--some of those very Winnebagoes you treated with for your land. It was a sunshiny day in September. You could hear the poultry crowing, and the children playing in the dooryards. Madeleine's little Paul was never far away from her. The Indians rushed in with yells and finished the settlement in a few minutes. Madame Jordan and her family were protected, but she saw children dashed against trees, and her neighbors struck down and scalped before she could plead for them. And little good pleading would have done. An Indian seized Paul. His father and the old servant lay dead across the doorstep. His mother would not let him go. The Indian dragged her on her knees and struck her on the head. Madame Jordan ran out at the risk of being scalped herself, and got the poor girl into her cabin. The Indian came back for Madeleine's scalp. Madeleine did not see him. She never seemed to notice anybody again. She stood up quivering the whole length of her body, and laughed in his face. It was dreadful to hear her above the cries of the children. The Indian went away like a scared hound. And none of the others would touch her."

After I heard this story I was thankful every day that Eagle could not remember; that natural happiness had its way with her elastic body.

Madame Ursule told me the family learned to give her liberty. She rowed alone upon the river, and went where she pleased. The men in La Baye would step aside for her. Strangers disturbed her by bringing the consciousness of something unusual.

Once I surprised Marie and Katarina sitting close to the fire at twilight, talking about lovers. Eagle was near them on a stool.

"That girl," exclaimed Katarina, speaking of the absent with strong disapproval, "is one of the kind that will let another girl take her sweetheart and then sit around and look injured! Now if she could get him from me she might have him! But she'd have to get him first!"

Eagle listened in the attitude of a young sister, giving me to understand by a look that wisdom flowed, and she was learning.

We rose one morning to find the world buried in snow. The river was frozen and its channel padded thick. As for the bay, stretches of snow fields, with dark pools and broken gray ridges met ice at the end of the world.

It was so cold that paper stuck to the fingers like feathers, and the nails tingled with frost. The white earth creaked under foot, and when a sled went by the snow cried out in shrill long resistance, a spirit complaining of being trampled. Explosions came from the river, and elm limbs and timbers of the house startled us. White fur clothed the inner key holes. Tree trunks were black as ink against a background of snow. The oaks alone kept their dried foliage, which rattled like many skeletons, instead of rustling in its faded redness, because there was no life in it.

But the colder it grew the higher Grignon's log fires mounted. And when channels were cut in the snow both along the ridge above Green Bay, and across country in every direction, French trains moved out with jangling bells, and maids and men uttered voice sounds which spread as by miracle on the diffusing air from horizon to horizon. You could hear the officers speaking across the river; and dogs were like to shake the sky down with their barking. Echoes from the smallest noises were born in that magnified, glaring world.

The whole festive winter spun past. Marie and Katarina brought young men to the peaks of hope in the "twosing" seat, and plunged them down to despair, quite in the American fashion. Christmas and New Year's days were great festivals, when the settlement ate and drank at Pierre Grignon's expense, and made him glad as if he fathered the whole post. Madame Grignon spun and looked to the house. And a thousand changes passed over the landscape. But in all that time no one could see any change in my Cloud-Mother. She sewed like a child. She laughed, and danced gavottes. She trod the snow, or muffled in robes, with Madame Ursule and the girls, flew over it in a French train; a sliding box with two or three horses hitched tandem. Every evening I sat by her side at the fire, while she made little coats and trousers for me. But remembrance never came into her eyes. The cloud stood round about her as it did when I first tried to penetrate it.

My own dim days were often in mind. I tried to recall sensations. But I had lived a purely physical life. Her blunders of judgment and delusion of bodily shrinking were no part of my experience. The thinking self in me had been paralyzed. While the thinking self in her was alive, in a cloud. Both of us were memoryless, excepting her recollection of Paul.

After March sent the ice out of river and bay, spring came with a rush as it comes in the north. Perhaps many days it was silently rising from tree roots. In February we used to say:--"This air is like spring." But after such bold speech the arctic region descended upon us again, and we were snowed in to the ears. Yet when the end of March unlocked us, it seemed we must wait for the month of Mary to give us soft air and blue water. Then suddenly it was spring, and every living soul knew it. Life revived with passion. Longings which you had forgotten came and took you by the throat, saying, "You shall no longer be satisfied with negative peace. Rouse, and live!" Then flitting, exquisite, purple flaws struck across milk-opal water in the bay. Fishing boats lifted themselves in mirage, sailing lightly above the water; and islands sat high, with a cushion of air under them.

The girls manifested increasing interest in what they called the Pigeon Roost settlement affair. Madame Ursule had no doubt told them what I said. They pitied my Cloud-Mother and me with the condescending pity of the very young, and unguardedly talked where they could be heard.

"Oh, she'll come to her senses some time, and he'll marry her of course," was the conclusion they invariably reached; for the thing must turn out well to meet their approval. How could they foresee what was to happen to people whose lives held such contrasts?

"Father Pierre says he's nearly twenty-eight; I call him an old bachelor," declared Katarina; "and she was a married woman. They are really very old to be in love."

"You don't know what you'll do when you are old," said Marie.

"Ah, I dread it," groaned Katarina.

"So do I."

"But there is grandmother. She doesn't mind it. And beaux never trouble her now."

"No," sighed the other. "Beaux never trouble her now."

Those spring days I was wild with restlessness. Life revived to dare things. We heard afterwards that about that time the meteor rushed once more across France. Napoleon landed at a Mediterranean port, gathering force as he marched, swept Louis XVIII away like a cobweb in his path, and moved on to Waterloo. The greatest Frenchman that ever lived fell ultimately as low as St. Helena, and the Bourbons sat again upon the throne. But the changes of which I knew nothing affected me in the Illinois Territory.

Sometimes I waked at night and sat up in bed, hot with indignation at the injustice done me, which I could never prove, which I did not care to combat, yet which unreasonably waked the fighting spirit in me. Our natures toss and change, expand or contract, influenced by invisible powers we know not why.

One April night I sat up in the veiled light made by a clouded moon. Rain points multiplied themselves on the window glass; I heard their sting. The impulse to go out and ride the wind, or pick the river up and empty it all at once into the bay, or tear Eagle out of the cloud, or go to France and proclaim myself with myself for follower; and other feats of like nature, being particularly strong in me, I struck the pillow beside me with my fist. Something bounced from it on the floor with a clack like wood. I stretched downward from one of Madame Ursule's thick feather beds, and picked up what brought me to my feet. Without letting go of it I lighted my candle. It was the padlocked book which Skenedonk said he had burned.

And there the scoundrel lay at the other side of the room, wrapped in his blanket from head to foot, mummied by sleep. I wanted to take him by the scalp lock and drag him around on the floor.

He had carried it with him, or secreted it somewhere, month after month. I could imagine how the state of the writer worked on his Indian mind. He repented, and was not able to face me, but felt obliged to restore what he had withheld. So waiting until I slept, he brought forth the padlocked book and laid it on the pillow beside my head; thus beseeching pardon, and intimating that the subject was closed between us.

I got my key, and then a fit of shivering seized me. I put the candle stand beside the pillow and lay wrapped in bedding, clenching the small chilly padlock and sharp-cornered boards. Remembering the change which had come upon the life recorded in it, I hesitated. Remembering how it had eluded me before, I opened it.

The few entries were made without date. The first pages were torn out, crumpled, and smoothed and pasted to place again. Rose petals and violets and some bright poppy leaves, crushed inside its lids, slid down upon the bedcover.

VIII

The padlocked book--In this book I am going to write you, Louis, a letter which will never be delivered; because I shall burn it when it is finished. Yet that will not prevent my tantalizing you about it. To the padlocked book I can say what I want to say. To you I must say what is expedient.

That is a foolish woman who does violence to love by inordinate loving. Yet first I will tell you that I sink to sleep saying, "He loves me!" and rise to the surface saying, "He loves me!" and sink again saying, "He loves me!" all night long.

The days when I see you are real days, finished and perfect, and this is the best of them all. God forever bless in paradise your mother for bearing you. If you never had come to the world I should not have waked to life myself. And why this is I cannot tell. The first time I ever saw your tawny head and tawny eyes, though you did not notice me, I said, "Whether he is the king or not would make no difference." Because I knew you were more than the king to me.

Sire, you told me once you could not understand why people took kindly to you. There is in you a gentle dignity and manhood, most royal. As you come into a room you cast your eyes about unfearing. Your head and shoulders are erect. You are like a lion in suppleness and tawny color, which influences me against my will. You inspire Confidence. Even girls like Annabel, who feel merely at their finger ends, and are as well satisfied with one husband as another, know you to be solid man, not the mere image of a man. Besides these traits there is a power going out from you that takes hold of people invisibly. My father told me there was a man at the court of your father who could put others to sleep by a waving of his hands. I am not comparing you to this charlatan; yet when you touch my hand a strange current runs through me.

When we were in Paris I used to dress myself every morning like a priestess going to serve in a temple. And what was it for? To worship one dear head for half an hour perhaps.

You robbed me of the sight of you for two months.

* * * * *

Sophie Saint-Michel told me to beware of loving a man. To-day he says, "I love you! I need you! I shall go to the devil without you!" To-morrow he turns to his affairs. In six months he says, "I was a fool!" Next year he says, "Who was it that drove me wild for a time last year? What was her name?"

* * * * *

Is love a game where men and women try to outwit each other, and man boasts, "She loves me"--not "I love her"?

You are two persons. Lazarre belongs to me. He follows, he thinks about me. He used to slip past my windows at Lake George, and cast his eyes up at the panes. But Louis is my sovereign. He sees and thinks and acts without me, and his lot is apart from mine.

* * * * *

We are in a ship going to the side of the world where you are. Except that we are going towards you, it is like being pushed off a cliff. All my faith in the appearances of things is at an end. I have been juggled with. I have misjudged.

I could have insisted that we hold Mont-Louis as tenants. The count is our friend. It is not a strong man's fault that a weak man is weak and unfortunate. Yet seeing Cousin Philippe wince, I could not put the daily humiliation upon him. He is like my father come back, broken, helpless. And Paul and I, who are young, must take care of him where he will be least humbled.

I was over-pampered in Mont-Louis and Paris. I like easy living, carriages, long-tailed gowns, jewels, trained servants, music, and spectacles on the stage; a park and wide lands all my own; seclusion from people who do not interest me; idleness in enjoyment.

I am the devil of vanity. Annabel has not half the points I have. When the men are around her I laugh to think I shall be fine and firm as a statue when she is a mass of wrinkles and a wisp of fuzz. When she is a mass of wrinkles and a wisp of fuzz she will be riper and tenderer inside. But will the men see that? No. They will be off after a fresher Annabel. So much for men. On the other hand, I had but a few months of luxury, and may count on the hardness that comes of endurance; for I was an exile from childhood. There is strength in doing the right thing. If there were no God, if Christ had never died on the cross, I should have to do the right thing because it is right.

Why should we lay up grievances against one another? They must disappear, and they only burn our hearts.

Sometimes I put my arms around Ernestine, and rest her old head against me. She revolts. People incline to doubt the superiority of a person who will associate with them. But the closer our poverty rubs us the more Ernestine insists upon class differences.

There should be a colossal mother going about the world to turn men over her lap and give them the slipper. They pine for it.

Am I helping forward the general good, or am I only suffering Nature's punishment?

A woman can fasten the bonds of habit on a man, giving him food from her table, hourly strengthening his care for her. By merely putting herself before him every day she makes him think of her. What chance has an exiled woman against the fearful odds of daily life?

Yet sometimes I think I can wait a thousand years. In sun and snow, in wind and dust, a woman waits. If she stretched her hand and said "Come," who could despise her so much as she would despise herself?

What is so cruel as a man? Hour after hour, day after day, year after year, he presses the iron spike of silence in.

Coward!--to let me suffer such anguish!

Is it because I kissed you? That was the highest act of my life! I groped down the black stairs of the Tuileries blinded by light. Why are the natural things called wrong, and the unnatural ones just?

Is it because I said I would come to you sometime? This is what I meant: that it should give me no jealous pang to think of another woman's head on your breast; that there is a wedlock which appearances cannot touch.

No, I never would--I never would seek you; though sometimes the horror of doing without you turns into reproach. What is he doing? He may need me--and I am letting his life slip away. Am I cheating us both of what could have harmed no one?

It is not that usage is broken off.

Yet if you were to come, I would punish you for coming!

Fine heroic days I tell myself we are marching to meet each other. If the day has been particularly hard, I say, "Perhaps I have carried his load too, and he marches lighter."

You have faults, no doubt, but the only one I could not pardon would be your saying, "I repent!"

The instinct to conceal defeat and pain is so strong in me that I would have my heart cut out rather than own it ached. Yet many women carry all before them by a little judicious whining and rebellion.

I never believe in your unfaith. If you brought a wife and showed her to me I should be sorry for her, and still not believe in your unfaith.

Louis, I have been falling down flat and crawling the ground. Now I am up again. It didn't hurt.

It is the old German fairy story. Every day gold must be spun out of straw. How big the pile of straw looks every morning, and how little the handful of gold every night!

This prairie in the Indiana Territory that I dreaded as a black gulf, is a grassy valley.

I love the garden; and I love to hoe the Indian corn. It springs so clean from the sod, and is a miracle of growth. After the stalks are around my knees, they are soon around my shoulders. The broad leaves have a fragrance, and the silk is sweet as violets.

We wash our clothes in the river. Women who hoe corn, dig in a garden, and wash clothes, earn the wholesome bread of life.

To-day Paul brought the first bluebells of spring, and put them in water for me. They were buds; and when they bloomed out he said, "God has blessed these flowers."

We have to nurse the sick. The goodness of these pioneer women is unfailing. It is like the great and kind friendship of the Du Chaumonts. They help me take care of Cousin Philippe.

Paul meditated to-day, "I don't want to hurt the Father's feelings. I don't want to say He was greedy and made a better place for Himself in heaven than He made for us down here. Is it nicer just because He is there?"

His prayer: "God bless my father and mother and Ernestine. God keep my father and mother and Ernestine. And keep my mother with me day and night, dressed and undressed! God keep together all that love each other."

When he is a man I am going to tell him, and say: "But I have built my house, not wrecked it, I have been yours, not love's."

He tells me such stories as this: "Once upon a time there was such a loving angel came down. And they ran a string through his stomach and hung him on the wall. He never whined a bit."

The people in this country, which is called free, are nearly all bound. Those who lack money as we do cannot go where they please, or live as they would live. Is that freedom?

* * * * *

On a cool autumn night, when the fire crackles, the ten children of the settlement, fighting or agreeing, come running from their houses like hens. We sit on the floor in front of the hearth, and I suffer the often-repeated martyrdom of the "Fire Pig." This tale, invented once as fast as I could talk, I have been doomed to repeat until I dread the shades of evening.

The children bunch their heads together; their lips part, as soon as I begin to say:

Do you see that glowing spot in the heart of the coals? That is the house of the Fire Pig. One day the Fire Pig found he had no more corn, and he was very hungry. So he jumped out of his house and ran down the road till he came to a farmer's field.

"Good morning, Mr. Farmer," said the little pig. "Have you any corn for me to-day?"

"Why, who are you?" said the farmer.

"I'm a little Fire Pig."

"No, I haven't any corn for a Fire Pig."

The pig ran on till he came to another farmer's field.

"Good morning, Mr. Farmer, have you any corn for me to-day?"

"Who are you?" said the farmer.

"Oh, I'm the little Fire Pig."

"I don't know," said the farmer. "I would give you a great bagful if you could kill the snake which comes every night and steals my cattle."

The pig thought, "How can I kill that snake?" but he was so hungry he knew he should starve without corn, so he said he would try. The farmer told him to go down in the field, where the snake came gliding at night with its head reared high in air. The pig went down in the meadow, and the first creature he saw was a sheep.

"Baa!" said the sheep. That was its way of saying "How do you do?" "Who are you?"

"I'm the little Fire Pig."

"What are you doing here?"

"I've come to kill the great snake that eats the farmer's cattle."

"I'm very glad," said the sheep, "for it takes my lambs. How are you going to kill it?"

"I don't know," said the pig; "can't you help me?"

"I'll give you some of my wool."

The pig thanked the sheep, and went a little farther and met a horse. "He-ee-ee!" said the horse. That was his way of saying "How do you do?" "Who are you?"

"I am the little Fire Pig."

"What are you doing here?"

"I've come to kill the great snake that eats the farmer's cattle."

"I'm glad of that," said the horse; "for it steals my colts. How are you going to do it?"

"I don't know," said the pig. "Can't you help me?"

"I'll give you some of the long hairs from my tail," said the horse.

The pig took them and thanked the horse. And when he went a little farther he met a cow.

"Moo!" said the cow. That was her way of saying "How do you do?" "Who are you?"

"I'm the little Fire Pig."

"What are you doing here?"

"I've come to kill the great snake that eats the farmer's cattle."

"I am glad of that, for it steals my calves. How are you going to do it?"

"I don't know. Can't you help me?"

"I'll give you one of my sharp horns," said the cow.

So the pig took it and thanked her. Then he spun and he twisted, and he spun and he twisted, and made a strong woolen cord of the sheep's wool. And he wove and he braided, and he wove and he braided, and made a cunning snare of the horse's tail. And he whetted and sharpened, and he whetted and sharpened, and made a keen dart of the cow's horn.

--Now when the little pig has all his materials ready, and sees the great snake come gliding, gliding--I turn the situation over to the children. What did he do with the rope, the snare and the horn? They work it out each in his own way. There is a mighty wrangling all around the hearth.

One day is never really like another, though it seems so.

Perhaps being used to the sight of the Iroquois at Lake George, makes it impossible for me to imagine what the settlers dread, and that is an attack. We are shut around by forests. In primitive life so much time and strength go to the getting of food that we can think of little else.

It is as bad to slave at work as to slave at pleasure. But God may forgive what people cannot help.

There is a very old woman among the settlers whom they call Granny. We often sit together. She cannot get a gourd edge betwixt her nose and chin when she drinks, and has forgotten she ever had teeth. She does not expect much; but there is one right she contends for, and that is the right of ironing her cap by stretching it over her knee. When I have lived in this settlement long enough, my nose and chin may come together, and I shall forget my teeth. But this much I will exact of fate. My cap shall be ironed. I will not--I will not iron it by stretching it over my knee!

Count du Chaumont would be angry if he saw me learning to weave, for instance. You would not be angry. That makes a difference between you as men which I feel but cannot explain.

We speak English with our neighbors. Paul, who is to be an American, must learn his language well. I have taught him to read and write. I have taught him the history of his family and of his father's country. His head is as high as my breast. When will my head be as high as his breast?

Skenedonk loves you as a young superior brother. I have often wondered what he thought about when he went quietly around at your heels. You told me he had killed and scalped, and in spite of education, was as ready to kill and scalp again as any white man is for war.

I dread him like a toad, and wish him to keep on his side of the walk. He is always with you, and no doubt silently urges, "Come back to the wigwams that nourished you!"

Am I mistaken? Are we moving farther and farther apart instead of approaching each other? Oh, Louis, does this road lead to nothing?

I am glad I gave you that key. It was given thoughtlessly, when I was in a bubble of joy. But if you have kept it, it speaks to you every day.

Sophie Saint-Michel told me man sometimes piles all his tokens in a retrospective heap, and says, "Who the deuce gave me this or that?"

Sophie's father used to be so enraged at his wife and daughter because he could not restore their lost comforts. But this is really a better disposition than a mean subservience to misfortune.

The children love to have me dance gavottes for them. Some of their mothers consider it levity. Still they feel the need of a little levity themselves.

We had a great festival when the wild roses were fully in bloom. The prairie is called a mile square, and wherever a plow has not struck, acres of wild roses grow. They hedge us from the woods like a parapet edging a court. These volunteers are very thorny, bearing tender claws to protect themselves with. But I am nimble with my scissors.

We took the Jordan oxen, a meek pair that have broken sod for the colony, and twined them with garlands of wild roses. Around and around their horns, and around and around their bodies the long ropes were wound, their master standing by with his goad. That we wound also, and covered his hat with roses. The huge oxen swayed aside, looking ashamed of themselves. And when their tails were ornamented with a bunch at the tip, they switched these pathetically. Still even an ox loves festivity, whether he owns to it or not. We made a procession, child behind child, each bearing on his head all the roses he could carry, the two oxen walking tandem, led by their master in front. Everybody came out and laughed. It was a beautiful sight, and cheered us, though we gave it no name except the Procession of Roses.

Often when I open my eyes at dawn I hear music far off that makes my heart swell. It is the waking dream of a king marching with drums and bugles. While I am dressing I hum, "Oh, Richard, O my king!"

Louis! Louis! Louis!

I cannot--I cannot keep it down! How can I hold still that righteousness may be done through me, when I love--love--love--when I clench my fists and walk on my knees--

I am a wicked woman! What is all this sweet pretense of duty! It covers the hypocrite that loves--that starves--that cries, My king!--my king!

Strike me!--drive me within bounds! This long repression--years, years of waiting--for what?--for more waiting!--it is driving me mad!

You have the key.

I have nothing!

IX

My God! What had she seen in me to love? I sat up and held the book against my bosom. Its cry out of her past filled the world from horizon to horizon. The ox that she had wreathed in roses would have heard it through her silence. But the brutal, slow Bourbon had gone his way, turning his stupid head from side to side, leaving her to perish.

Punctuated by years, bursting from eternities of suppression, it brought an accumulated force that swept the soul out of my body.

All that had not been written in the book was as easily read as what was set down. I saw the monotony of her life, and her gilding of its rudeness, the pastimes she thought out for children; I saw her nursing the helplessness which leaned upon her, and turning aside the contempt of pioneer women who passionately admired strong men. I saw her eyes waiting on the distant laggard who stupidly pursued his own affairs until it was too late to protect her. I read the entries over and over. When day broke it seemed to me the morning after my own death, such knowing and experiencing had passed through me. I could not see her again until I had command of myself.

So I dressed and went silently down stairs. The Pawnees were stirring in the kitchen. I got some bread and meat from them, and also some grain for the horse; then mounted and rode to the river.

The ferryman lived near the old stockade. Some time always passed after he saw the signals before the deliberate Frenchman responded. I led my horse upon the unwieldly craft propelled by two huge oars, which the ferryman managed, running from one to another according to the swing of the current. It was broad day when we reached the other shore; one of those days, gray overhead, when moisture breaks upward through the ground, instead of descending. Many light clouds flitted under the grayness. The grass showed with a kind of green blush through its old brown fleece.

I saw the first sailing vessel of spring coming to anchor, from the straits of the great lakes. Once I would have hailed that vessel as possible bearer of news. Now it could bring me nothing of any importance.

The trail along the Fox river led over rolling land, dipping into coves and rising over hills. The Fox, steel blue in the shade, becomes tawny as its namesake when its fur of rough waves is combed to redness in the sunlight. Under grayness, with a soft wind blowing, the Fox showed his blue coat.

The prospect was so large, with a ridge running along in the distance, and open country spreading away on the other side, that I often turned in my saddle and looked back over the half-wooded trail. I thought I saw a figure walking a long way behind me, and being alone, tried to discern what it was. But under that gray sky nothing was sharply defined. I rode on thinking of the book in the breast of my coat.

It was certain I was not to marry. And being without breakfast and unstimulated by the sky, I began to think also what unstable material I had taken in hand when I undertook to work with Indians. Instinctively I knew then what a young southern statesman named Jefferson Davis whom I first met as a commandant of the fort at Green Bay--afterwards told me in Washington: "No commonwealth in a republic will stand with interests apart from the federated whole." White men, who have exclaimed from the beginning against the injustice done the red man, and who keep on pitying and exterminating him, made a federated whole with interests apart from his.

Again when I looked back I saw the figure, but it was afoot, and I soon lost it in a cove.

My house had been left undisturbed by hunters and Indians through the winter. I tied the horse to a gallery post and unfastened the door. A pile of refuse timbers offered wood for a fire, and I carried in several loads of it, and lighted the virgin chimney. Then I brought water from the spring and ate breakfast, sitting before the fire and thinking a little wearily and bitterly of my prospect in life.

Having fed my horse, I covered the fire, leaving a good store of fuel by the hearth, and rode away toward the Menominee and Winnebago lands.

The day was a hard one, and when I came back towards nightfall I was glad to stop with the officers of the stockade and share their mess.

"You looked fagged," said one of them.

"The horse paths are heavy," I answered, "and I have been as far as the Indian lands."

I had been as far as that remote time when Eagle was not a Cloud-Mother. To cross the river and see her smiling in meaningless happiness seemed more than I could do.

Yet she might notice my absence. We had been housed together ever since she had discovered me. Our walks and rides, our fireside talks and evening diversions were never separate. At Pierre Grignon's the family flocked in companies. When the padlocked book sent me out of the house I forgot that she was used to my presence and might be disturbed by an absence no one could explain.

"The first sailing vessel is in from the straits," said the lieutenant.

"Yes, I saw her come to anchor as I rode out this morning."

"She brought a passenger."

"Anybody of importance?"

"At first blush, no. At second blush, yes."

"Why 'no' at first blush?"

"Because he is only a priest."

"Only a priest, haughty officer! Are civilians and churchmen dirt under army feet?"

The lieutenant grinned.

"When you see a missionary priest landing to confess a lot of Canadians, he doesn't seem quite so important, as a prelate from Ghent, for instance."

"Is this passenger a prelate from Ghent?"

"That is where the second blush comes in. He is."

"How do you know?"

"I saw him, and talked with him."

"What is he doing in Green Bay?"

"Looking at the country. He was inquiring for you."

"For me!"

"Yes."

"What could a prelate from Ghent want with me?"

"Says he wants to make inquiries about the native tribes."

"Oh! Did you recommend me as an expert in native tribes?"

"Naturally. But not until he asked if you were here."

"He mentioned my name?"

"Yes. He wanted to see you. You'll not have to step out of your way to gratify him."

"From that I infer there is a new face at Pierre Grignon's."

"Your inference is correct. The Grignons always lodge the priests, and a great man like this one will be certainly quartered with them."

"What is he like?"

"A smooth and easy gentleman."

"In a cassock?"

"Tell a poor post lieutenant what a cassock is."

"The long-skirted black coat reaching to the heels."

"Our missionary priests don't wear it here. He has the bands and broad hat and general appearance of a priest, but his coat isn't very long."

"Then he has laid aside the cassock while traveling through this country."

The prelate from Ghent, no doubt a common priest, that the lieutenant undertook to dignify, slipped directly out of my mind.

Madame Ursule was waiting for me, on the gallery with fluted pillars at the front of the house.

"M's'r Williams, where is Madeleine?"

Her anxiety vibrated through the darkness.

"Isn't she here, madame?"

"She has not been seen to-day."

We stood in silence, then began to speak together.

"But, madame--"

"M's'r Williams--"

"I went away early--"

"When I heard from the Pawnees that you had gone off on horseback so early I thought it possible you might have taken her with you."

"Madame, how could I do that?"