Chapter IV: Book II: Fort Frontenac (2)

La Salle's face relaxed into tenderness as he laid his hands upon his friend's shoulders. The Italian's ardent temperament was the only agent which ever fused and made facile of tongue and easy of confidence that man of cold reserve known as La Salle. The Italian guessed what he had to say. They both glanced at Barbe and flushed. But the nebulous thought surrounding the name of Jeanne le Ber was never condensed to spoken word.

Tonty's sentinel opened the chapel door and broke up this council. He said an Indian stood there with him demanding to be admitted.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Relation of Henri de Tonty (cited in Margry, I). "Comme cette
rivière se divise en trois chenaux, M. de la Salle fut
descouvrér celuy de la droite, je fus à celuy du mileu et le
Sieur d'Autray à celuy de la gauche."

[13] Abridged from Francis Parkman's version of La Salle's
proclamation. The Procès Verbal is a long document.

VII.

AN ADOPTION.

"What does he want?" inquired Tonty.

"He is determined to speak with you, Monsieur de Tonty, from what I can gather out of his words."

"Let him wait in the mission house, then," said Tonty, "until Monsieur de la Salle has ended his business."

"I have ended," said La Salle. "It is time I ordered my men and baggage and canoes out of Fort Frontenac."

"Monsieur, remain, and let an order from you be taken to the gate."

"Some of those sulky fellows need my hand over them, Tonty. Besides, there are matters which must be definitely settled before I leave the fort. I have need to go myself, besides the obligation to deliver this runaway girl, on whom her uncle La Salle is always bringing penances."

Barbe sprung up and put herself in the attitude of accompanying him.

"Mademoiselle," said Tonty, "the rain is still falling. If Monsieur de la Salle can carry this hide over you, it will be some protection."

He took up the buffalo skin, and shook it to loosen any dust which might be clinging to the shag.

"Monsieur, you are very good," she answered. "But it is not necessary for me."

"Mademoiselle cares very little about a wetting," said La Salle. "She was born to be a princess of the backwoods. Call in your Indian before we go, Tonty. He may have some news for us."

Tonty spoke to the sentinel, whose fingers visibly held the door, and he let pass a tall Iroquois brave carrying such a bundle of rich furs as one of that race above the condition of squaw rarely deigned to lift. His errand was evidently peaceable. He paused and stood like a prince. Neither La Salle nor Tonty remembered his face, though both felt sure he came from the mission village of friendly Iroquois near Fort Frontenac.

"What does my brother want?" inquired La Salle, with sympathy he never showed to his French subordinates.

"He waits to speak to his white brother with the iron hand," answered the Iroquois.

"Have you brought us bad news?" again inquired La Salle.

"Good news."

"What is it?"

"It is only to my brother with the iron hand."

"Can you not speak in the presence of Monsieur de la Salle?" demanded Tonty.

With exquisite reserve the Indian stood silent, waiting the conditions he needed for the delivery of his message.

"It is nothing which concerns me," said La Salle to Tonty. He prepared to stalk into the weather with Barbe.

Tonty spoke a few words to the waiting savage, who heard without returning any sign, and then followed Barbe, stretching the buffalo hide above her head. When La Salle observed this he failed to ridicule his lieutenant, but took one side of the shaggy canopy in his own hold. It was impossible for the girl to go dry-shod, but Tonty directed her way over the best and firmest ground. They made a solemn procession, for not a word was spoken. When they came to the fortress gate, Tonty again bestowed the robe around her as he had done when she entered the chapel, and stood bareheaded while Barbe--whispering "Adieu, monsieur"--passed out of his sight.

"I have thought of this, Tonty," said La Salle as he entered; "when she is a few years older she shall come to the fort on the Illinois, if I again reap success."

"Monsieur de la Salle, I am bound to tell you it will be dangerous for me ever to see mademoiselle again."

"Monsieur de Tonty," responded the explorer with his close smile, "I am bound to tell you I think it will be the safest imaginable arrangement for her."

The gate closed behind him, and Tonty carried back an exhilarated face to the waiting Iroquois.

He entered Father Hennepin's chapel again, and the Indian followed him to the hearth.

They stood there, ready for conference, the small black savage eye examining Tonty's face with open approval.

"Now let me have your message," said the Italian. "Have I ever seen you before? What is your name?"

"Sanomp," answered the Iroquois. "My white brother with the iron hand has not seen me before."

He spread open on the bench Barbe had occupied a present of fine furs and dried meat.

"Why does my brother bring me these things?" inquired Tonty, realizing as he looked at the gift how much of this barbarian's wealth was bestowed in such an offering.

"Listen," said Sanomp.[14] He had a face of benevolent gravity,--the unhurried, sincere face of man living close to Nature. "It is a chief of the Seneca tribe who speaks to my white brother."

"I have met a chief of the Seneca tribe before," remarked Tonty, smiling. "It was in the country of the Illinois, and he wrapped my scalp-lock around his fingers."

Sanomp smiled, too, without haste, and continued his story.

"I left my people to live near the fort of my French brothers because it was told me the man with a hand of iron was here. When I came here the man with a hand of iron was gone. So I waited for him. Our lives are consumed in waiting for the best things. Five years have I stood by the mouth of Cataraqui. And this morning the man with a hand of iron passed before my face."

He spoke a mixture of French and Iroquois which enabled Tonty to catch his entire meaning.

"But this hand could not betray me from the lake, to eyes that had never seen me before," objected the Italian.

Advancing one foot and folding his arms in the attitude of a narrator, the Indian said,--

"Listen. At that time of life when a young Iroquois retires from his tribe to hide in the woods and fast until his okie[15] is revealed to him, four days and four nights the boy Sanomp lay on the ground, rain and dew, moonlight and sunlight passing over him. The boy Sanomp looked up, for an eagle dropped before his eyes. He then knew that the eagle was his okie, and that he was to be a warrior, not a hunter or medicine-man. But the eagle dropped before the feet of a soldier the image of my white brother, and the soldier held up a hand of yellow metal. The boy heard a voice coming from the vision that said to him, 'Warrior, this is thy friend and brother. Be to him a friend and brother. After thou hast seven times followed the war path go and wait by the mouth of Cataraqui until he comes.' So when I had seven times followed the war path I came, and my brother being passed by, I waited."

Tonty's square brown Italian face was no more sincere than the redder aquiline visage fronting him and telling its vision.

"My brother Sanomp comes in a good time," he remarked.

The Iroquois next took out his peace pipe and pouch of tobacco. While he filled the bowl and stooped for an ember, Tonty stripped the copper hand of its glove. He held it up before Sanomp as he received the calumet in the other. An aboriginal grunt of strong satisfaction echoed in the chapel.

"Hand of yellow metal," said Sanomp.

Tonty gravely smoked the pipe and handed it back to Sanomp. Sanomp smoked it, shook the ashes out and put it away.

Thus was the ceremony of adoption finished. Without more talk, the red friend and brother turned from his white friend and brother and went back to his own world.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Sanomp was suggested to the romancer by La Salle's faithful
Shawanoe follower, Nika, and an Indian friend and brother in
"Pontiac."

[15] Guardian Manitou. See Introduction to "Jesuits in North America."

VIII.

TEGAHKOUITA.

Barbe ran breathless up the stairway, glad to catch sight of her uncle the Abbé so occupied at the lower hearth that he took no heed of her return.

She had counted herself the only woman in Fort Frontenac, yet she found a covered figure standing in front of the chamber door next her own.

Though Barbe had never seen Catharine Tegahkouita[16] she knew this must be the Iroquois virgin who lived a hermit life of devotion in a cabin at Lachine, revered by French and Indians alike. How this saint had reached Fort Frontenac or in whose behalf she was exerting herself Barbe could not conjecture. Tegahkouita had interceded for many afflicted people and her prayers were much sought after.

The Indian girl kept her face entirely covered. No man knew that it was comely or even what its features were like. The chronicler tells us when she was a young orphan beside her uncle's lodge-fire her eyes were too weak to bear the light of the sun, and in this darkness began the devotion which distinguished her life. What was first a necessity, became finally her choice, and she shut herself from the world.

To Barbe, Tegahkouita was an object of religious awe tempered by that criticism in which all young creatures secretly indulge. She sat on the bench as if in meditation, but her eyes crept up and down that straight and motionless and blanket-eclipsed presence. She knew that Tegahkouita was good; was it not told of the Indian girl that she rolled three days in a bed of thorns, and that she often walked barefooted in ice and snow, to discipline her body? She was not afraid of Tegahkouita. But she wished somebody else would come into the room who could break the saint's death-like silence. Sainthood was a very safe condition, but Barbe found it impossible to admire the outward appearance of a living saint.

La Salle had stopped at the barracks to order out his men, and Colin who had taken to that part of the fort for amusement, watched their transfer with much interest.

Wind was conquering rain. It blew keenly from the southwest, and sung at the corners of Frontenac, whirling dead leaves like fugitive birds into the area of the fort. La Salle's men turned out of their quarters with reluctance to exchange safety and comfort for exposure and a leaky camp. The explorer stood and saw them pass before him bearing their various burdens, excepting one man who slouched by the door of the bakehouse as if he had stationed himself there to see that they passed in order out of the gate.

"Come here, you Jolycoeur," called La Salle, lifting his finger.

Jolycoeur, savagely hairy, approached with that look of sulky menace La Salle never appeared to see in his servants.

"Where is your load of goods?" inquired the explorer.

Jolycoeur lifted a quick look, and dropping it again, replied, "Sieur de la Salle, I was waiting for the cook to hand me out the dishes you ordered against you came back."

La Salle examined him through half-shut eyes. It was this man's constant duty to prepare his food. Tonty and his brother Jean had so occupied his morning that he had found no time for eating. A man inured to hardships can fast with very little thought about the matter, but he decided if Jolycoeur had not yet handled this meal he might hazard some last service from a man who had missed so many opportunities.

"Did you cook my breakfast?" he inquired.

"Sieur de la Salle, I dared not put my nose in the bakehouse. This cook is the worst man in Fort Frontenac."

The cook appearing with full hands in his door, La Salle said to Jolycoeur, "Carry those platters into the lodge," and he watched the minutest action of the man's elbows, walking behind him into the lower apartment of the dwelling. A table stood there on which Jolycoeur began to arrange the dishes with surly carelessness.

The explorer forgot him the moment they entered, for two people occupied this room in close talk. Challenging whatever ill Jacques le Ber and the Abbé Cavelier had prepared, La Salle advanced beyond the table with the chill and defiant bearing natural to him.

"Monsieur le Ber and I have been discussing this alliance you are so anxious to make with his family," spoke the Abbé.

The explorer met Le Ber's face full of that triumphant contempt which men strangely feel for other men who have fallen and become stepping-stones of fortune to themselves. He turned away without answer, and began to eat indifferently from the dishes Jolycoeur had left ready, standing beside the table while he ate.

"If Jacques le Ber were as anxious for the marriage as yourself,--but I told you this morning, my brother La Salle, what madness it must seem to all sane men,--it could not be arranged. His daughter hath refused to see you."

"My thanks are due to my brother the Abbé for his nice management of all my affairs," sneered La Salle. "I comprehend there is nothing which he will not endeavor to mar for me. It surely is madness which induces a man against all experience to confide in his brother."

Jean Cavelier replied with a shrug and a spread of the hands which said, "In such coin of gratitude am I always paid."

"Sieur de la Salle," volunteered Le Ber, rising and coming forward with natural candor, "it is not so long ago that your proposal would have made me proud, and the Abbé hath not ill managed it now. Monsieur, I wish my girl to marry. I have been ready for any marriage she would accept. She has indeed shown more liking for you than for any other man in New France. Monsieur, I would far rather have her married than bound to the life she leads. But if you were in a position to marry, Jeanne refuses your hand."

"Has she said this to you?" inquired La Salle.

"I have not seen her to-day," replied Le Ber. "She has the Iroquois virgin Tegahkouita with her. I brought Tegahkouita here because she was besought for some healing in our Iroquois lodges near the fort."

Jacques le Ber stopped. But La Salle calmly heard him thus claim everything pertaining to Fort Frontenac.

"We must do what we can to hold these unstable Indians," continued Le Ber. "Monsieur, before I could carry your proposal to Jeanne, she sends me Tegahkouita, as if they had some holy contrivance for reading people's minds. Your brother will confirm to you the words Tegahkouita brought."

"Mademoiselle le Ber will pray for you always, my brother La Salle. But she refuses even to see you."

"It is easy enough for Jeanne to put you in her prayers," remarked the discontented father, "she hath room enough there for all New France."

The man who had more than once sprung into the midst of hostile savages and carried their admiration by a word, now stood silent and musing. But his face expressed nothing except determination.

"You shall see her yourself," Jacques le Ber exclaimed, with the shrewdness of a man holding present advantage, yet gauging fully his antagonist's force. "You and I were once friends, Sieur de la Salle. I might obtain a worse match for my girl."

"I will see her," said La Salle, more in the manner of affirming his own wish than of accepting a concession.

He mounted the stairs, with Le Ber behind him, the Abbé Cavelier following Le Ber.

As the father expected, Tegahkouita stood as a bar in front of Jeanne's chamber door. Slightly spreading her blanketed arms this Indian girl of peculiar gifts said slowly and melodiously in a voice tuned by much low-spoken prayer, "Mademoiselle Jeanne le Ber says, 'Tell Sieur de la Salle I will pray for him always, but I must never see his face again.'"

FOOTNOTES:

[16] The romancer differs from the historian--Charlevoix, tome 2--who
records that Catharine Tegahkouita died in 1678.

IX.

AN ORDEAL.

"When I have seen Mademoiselle le Ber," La Salle replied to the blanket of Tegahkouita, "I shall understand from herself what her wishes are in this matter."

"Sieur de la Salle cannot see her," spoke Tegahkouita. "She hath no word but this, and she will not see Sieur de la Salle again."

"I say he shall see her!" exclaimed the Montreal merchant, with asperity created by so many influences working upon his daughter. "He may look upon her this minute!"

Jeanne le Ber's presence in Fort Frontenac scarcely surprised Barbe, so great was her amazement at the attitude of her uncle La Salle. That he should be suing to Le Ber's daughter seemed as impossible as any rejection of his suit. She felt toward the saint she had pinched at convent that jealous resentment peculiar to women who desire to have the men of their families married, yet are never satisfied with the choice those men make. Even Barbe, however, considered it a sacrilegious act when Le Ber shook his daughter's door and demanded admittance.

Jeanne's complete silence, like a challenge, drew out his imperative force. He broke through every fastening and threw the door wide open.

The small, bare room, scarcely wider than its entrance, afforded no hiding-places. There was little to catch the eye, from rude berth to hooks in the ruder wall, from which the commandant's clothing had so lately been removed.

Jeanne, the focus of this small cell, had flown to its extremity. As the door burst from its fastenings, everybody in the outer room could see her standing against the wall with noble instinct, facing the breakers of her privacy, but without looking at them. Her eyes rested on her beads, which she told with rapid lips and fingers. A dormer window spread its background of light around her head.

The recoil of inaction which followed Le Ber's violence was not felt by Tegahkouita. With the swift silence of an Indian and the intuition of a devotee, she at once put herself in the sleeping cell, and kneeled holding up a crucifix before Jeanne. As this symbol of religion was lifted, Jeanne fell upon her knees.

Le Ber had not intended to enter, but indignation drove him on after Tegahkouita. He stood aside and did not approach his child,--a jealous, remorseful, anxious, irritated man.

La Salle could see Jeanne, though with giddy and indistinct vision. Her wool gown lay around her in carven folds, as she knelt like a victim ready for the headsman's axe.

One of the proudest and most reticent men who ever trod the soil of the New World was thus reduced to woo before his enemy and his kindred; to argue against those unseen forces represented by the Indian girl, and to fight death in his own body with every pleading respiration. For blindness was growing over his eyes. His lungs were tightened. When his back was turned in the room below, Jolycoeur had mixed a dish for him.

La Salle's hardihood was the marvel of his followers. A body and will of electric strength carried him thousands of miles through ways called impassable. Defeat could not defeat him. But this struggle with Jeanne le Ber was harder than any struggle with an estranged king, harder than again bringing up fortune from the depths of ruin, harder than tearing his breath of life from the reluctant air. He reared himself against the chimney-side, pressing with palms and stretched fingers for support, yet maintaining a roused erectness.

"Jeanne!" he spoke; and eyes less blind than his could detect a sinking of her figure at the sound, "I have this to say."

With a plunging gait which terrified Barbe by its unnaturalness, La Salle attempted to place himself nearer the silent object he was to move. As he passed through the doorway he caught at the sides, and then stretched out and braced one palm against the wall. Thus propped he proceeded, articulating thickly but with careful exactness.

"Jeanne, when I have again brought success out of failure, I shall demand you in marriage. Your father permits it."

Her trembling lips prayed on, and she gave no token of having heard him, except the tremor which shook even the folds of her gown.

Too proud to confess his peril and make its appeal to her, and suppressing before so many witnesses her tender name of Sainte, he labored on as La Salle the explorer with the statement of his case.

"Perhaps I cannot see you again for some years. I do not ask words--of acceptance now. It is enough--if you look at me."

La Salle leaned forward. His eyeballs appeared to swell and protrude as he strained sight for the slightest lifting of the veil before that self-restraining spirit.

Barbe's wailing suddenly broke all bounds in the outer room. "My uncle the Abbé! Look at my uncle La Salle! He cannot breathe--he is going to die! Somebody has poisoned or stabbed my uncle La Salle!"

Jean Cavelier with lower outcry ran to help the explorer. But even a brother and a priest has his limitations. La Salle pushed him off.

When Barbe saw this, she threw herself to the floor and hid her face upon the bench. Her kinsman and the hero of her childhood was held over the abyss of death in the hand of Jeanne le Ber, while those who loved him must set their teeth in silence.

But neither this childish judge, nor the father watching for any slight motion of eyelids which might direct all his future hopes and plans, knew what sickening moisture started from every pore of Jeanne le Ber. Still she lifted her fainting eyes only as high as the crucifix Tegahkouita held before her. Compared to her duty as she saw it, she must count as nothing the life of the man she loved.

The Indian girl's weak sight had no plummet for the face of this greater devotee. Passionately white, its lips praying fast, it stared at the crucifix. Cold drops ran down from the dew which beaded temples and upper lip. Sieur de la Salle--Sieur de la Salle was dying, and asking her for a look! The lifting of her eyelids, the least wavering of her sight, would sweep away the vows she had made to Heaven, and loosen her soul for its swift rush to his breast. To be the wife of La Salle! Her mutter became almost audible as she slid the beads between her fingers. God would keep her from this deadly sin.

The gigantic will of La Salle, become almost material and visible, fell upon her with a cry which must have broken any other endurance.

"Jeanne! look at me now--you _shall_ look at me now!"

Hoarse shouts of battle never tingled through blood as did the voice of this isolated man.

Jeanne's lips twitched on; she twisted her hands in tense knots against her neck, and her eyes maintained the level of the cross.

Silence--that fragment of eternity--then filled up the room, submerging strained ears. There were remote sounds, like the scream of wind cut by the angles of Fort Frontenac; but no sound which pierced the silence between La Salle and Jeanne le Ber.

He turned around and cast himself through the doorway with a lofty tread as if he were trying to mount skyward. The Abbé Cavelier extended both arms and kept him from stumbling over the settle which Barbe was baptizing with her anguish. She looked up with the distorted visage of one who weeps terribly, and saw the groping explorer led to the staircase. His feet plunged in the descent.

To this noise was added a distinct thud from Jeanne le Ber's room as her head struck the floor. She lay relaxed and prostrate, and her father lifted her up. Before rising to his feet with her he passed his hand piteously across her bruised forehead.

X.

HEMLOCK.

Jolycoeur, lounging with his shoulders against the barrack wall, gave furtive attention to La Salle as the explorer appeared within the fort. Even his eye was deceived by his master's bearing in giving him the signal to approach.

The wind was helpful to La Salle, but he only half met daylight and saw Jolycoeur taking strange shapes.

"Go to Father Hennepin's old mission house," he slowly commanded, "and send Monsieur de Tonty directly to me."

The man, not daring to disobey until he could take refuge in Fort Frontenac with the gates closed behind the explorer, went on this errand.

"What ails Sieur de la Salle?" inquired the cook, coming out of his bakehouse to get this news of a sentinel.

They both watched the Abbé Cavelier making vain efforts to get hold of his misdirected brother.

"Gone mad with pride," suggested the sentinel. "The less he prospers the loftier I have always heard he bears himself. Would the governor of New France climb the wind with a tread like that?"

Outside the gate La Salle's limbs failed. The laboring Abbé then dragged him along, and it seemed an immense détour he was obliged to make to pass the extended foundation.

"Now you will believe my words which I spoke this morning concerning the peril we all stand in," panted this sorely taxed brother. "The Cavelier family is destroyed. My brother La Salle--Robert--my child! Shall I give you absolution?"

"Not yet," gasped La Salle.

"If you had ever taken my advice, this miserable end had not come upon you."

"I am not ended," gasped La Salle.

"Oh, my brother," lamented Jean Cavelier, tucking up his cassock as he bent to the strain, "I have but one consolation in my wretchedness. This is better for you than the marriage you would have made. What business have you to ally yourself with Le Ber? What business have you with marriage at all? For my part, I would object to any marriage you had in view, but Le Ber's daughter was the worst marriage for you in New France."

"Tonty!" gasped La Salle. With the swiftness of an Indian, Tonty was flying across the clearing. The explorer's unwary messenger Jolycoeur he had left behind him bound with hide thongs and lying in Father Hennepin's inner room.

"Yes, yonder comes your Monsieur de Tonty who so easily gave up your post on the Illinois," panted the Abbé Cavelier. "Like all your worthless followers he hath no attachment to your person."

"There is more love in his iron hand," La Salle's paralyzing mouth flung out, "than in any other living heart!"

Needing no explanation from the Abbé, the commandant from Fort St. Louis took strong hold of La Salle and hurried him to the mission house. They faced the wind, and Tonty's cap blew off, his rings of black hair flaring to a fierce uprightness.

The surgeon ran out of the dwelling and met and helped them in, and thus tardily resistance to the poison was begun, but it had found its hardiest victim since the day of Socrates.

Tonty's iron hand brought out of Jolycoeur immediate confession of the poison he had used.

In an age when most cunning and deadly drugs were freely handled, and men who would not shed blood thought it no sin to take enemies neatly off the scene by the magic of a dish, Jolycoeur was not without knowledge of a plant called hemlock, growing ready to the hand of a good poisoner in the New World.

Noon stood in the sky, half shredding vapors, and lighting cool sparkles upon the lake. Afternoon dragged its mute and heavy hours westward.

Men left the mission house and entered it again, carrying wood or water.

The sun set in the lake, parting clouds before his sinking visage and stretching his rays like long arms of fire to smite the heaving water.

Twilight rose out of the earth and crept skyward, blotting all visible shore. Fort Frontenac stood an indistinct mass beside the Cataraqui, as beside another lake. Stars seemed to run and meet and dive in long ripples. The wash of water up the sand subsided in force as the wind sunk, leaving air space for that ceaseless tune breathed by a great forest.

Overhead, from a port of cloud, the moon's sail pushed out suddenly, less round than it had been the night before, and owning by such depression that she had begun tacking toward her third quarter. Fort and settlements again found their proportions, and Father Hennepin's cross stood clear and fair, throwing its shadow across the mission house.

Within the silent mission house warmth and redness were diffused from logs piled in the chimney.

The Abbé Cavelier's cassock rose and fell with that sleep which follows great anxiety and exhaustion. He reclined against the lowest step of a broken ladder-way which once ascended from corner to loft. The men, except one who stood guard outside in the shadow of the house, were asleep in the next room.

La Salle rested before the hearth on some of the skins Tonty had received from his Indian friend and brother. Whenever the explorer opened his eyes he saw Tonty sitting awake on the floor beside him.

"Sleep," urged La Salle.

"I shall not sleep again," said Tonty, "until I see you safely on your way toward France."

"This has been worse than the dose of verdigris I once got."

"Jolycoeur says he used hemlock," responded Tonty. "He accused everybody in New France of setting him on to the deed, but I silenced that."

"I had not yet dismissed him, Tonty. The scoundrel hath claims on me for two years' wages."

"He should have got his wages of me," exclaimed Tonty, "if this proved your death. He should have as many bullets as his body could hold."

"Tonty, untie the fellow and turn him out and discharge his wages for me with some of the skins you have put under me." La Salle rose on his elbow and then sat up. His face was very haggard, but the practical clear eye dominated it. "These fellows cannot balk me. I have lost all that makes life, except my friend. But I shall come back and take the great west yet! A man with a purpose cannot be killed, Tonty. He goes on. He must go on."