Mary Hartwell Catherwood

“ All these figures, and the spectacles swarming around the beaver fair, like combinations in a kaleidoscope to be seen once and seen no more, gave Tonty such condensed knowledge of the New World as no ordinary days could offer.
La Salle alone, though fresh from audiences at court and distinguished by royal favor, stood abashed and annoyed by the part he must play toward civilized people.
“Look at the Sieur de la Salle,” observed Du Lhut to Tonty. “There is a man who stands and fights off the approach of every other creature.”
“There never was a man better formed for friendship,” retorted Tonty. ”

“ When he left the chapel it glowed with the resurrected welcome it had given many a primitive congregation of Indians and French settlers, when the lake beat up icy winter foam.
Beside the fireplace was a window so high that its log sill met Barbe’s chin as she looked out. Jutting roof and outer chimney wall made a snug spot like a sentry-box without. She dried her feet, holding them one at a time to the red hot glow, and glanced through this window at the mission house’s sodden logs and crumbled chinking. The excitement of her sally out of Fort Frontenac died away. ”

“ To me the finest fact in the Norman explorer’s career is the devotion he commanded in Henri de Tonty. No stupid dreamer, no ruffian at heart, no betrayer of friendship, no mere blundering woodsman—as La Salle has been outlined by his enemies—could have bound to himself a man like Tonty. The love of this friend and the words this friend has left on record thus honor La Salle. And we who like courage and steadfastness and gentle courtesy in men owe much honor which has never been paid to Henri de Tonty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sometimes when I rise in the night to pray, and think of living apart from my dear father, the cold sweat stands on my forehead. Too many dear people throng between the soul and heaven. Even you, Sieur de la Salle,—I have to pray against thoughts of you.”
“Do not pray against me, Sainte Jeanne,” said the explorer, with a wistful tremor of the lower lip. “Consider how few there be that love me well.” ”

“ When I have prayers for penances they make me so tired I have to get up and hop between them. But Jeanne le Ber would pray all the time if her father did not pull her off her knees. My father and mother died in France. If they were alive they would not have to pull me off my knees.”
“But a woman should learn to pray, even as a man should learn to fight,” observed Tonty. “He stands between her and danger, and she should stand linking him to heaven.”
“I can fight for myself,” said Barbe. “And everybody ought to say his own prayers; but it makes one disagreeable to say more than his share. ”

“ Montreal merchants on the wharf singled out La Salle with jealous eye, which saw in the drooping point and flaring base of his nose an endless smile of scorn. He was a man who had only to use his monopolies to become enormously rich, cutting off the trade of the lakes from Montreal. That he was above gain, except as he could use it for hewing his ambitious road into the wilderness, they did not believe. The merchants of Montreal readily translated the shyness and self-restraint of his solitary nature into the arrogance of a recently ennobled and successful man. ”

“ Ste. Helen’s Island and even Mount Royal, the seminary and stone windmill, the row of wooden houses and palisade tips, all had their edges blurred by hazy light.
Amusement could hardly be lacking in any gathering of French people not assembled for ceremonies of religion. In Quebec the governor’s court were inclined to entertain themselves with their own performance of spectacles. But Montreal had beheld too many spectacles of a tragic sort, had grasped too much the gun and spade, to have any facility in mimic play.
Still the beaver fair was enlivened by music and tricksy gambols. ”

“ Mademoiselle Cavelier’s wardrobe was by no means equal to that gorgeous period in which she lived, being planned by her uncle the Abbé and executed by the frugal and exact hands of a self-denying sisterhood. But who can hide a girl’s supple slimness in a gown plain as a nun’s, or take the blossom-burnish off her face with colonial caps? Dark curls showed around her temples. Barbe’s aquiline face had received scarcely a mark since Tonty saw it at Fort Frontenac. ”

“ Every man for his own purse among them. But thou seest it, Tonty. I see it. And we are no knights on a crusade. Nor are we unpractised courtiers shredding our finery away on the briers of the wilderness. This western enterprise is based on geographical facts. No mind can follow all the development of that rich land. It is an empire,” declared La Salle, striding between hearth and chancel-rail, unconscious that he lifted his voice to the rafters of a sanctuary, “which Louis might drop France itself to grasp!” ”

“ Crosses, beads, old iron implements, and countless remains of La Salle’s time, turn up everywhere in the valley soil.
Ferns spring, lush and vivid, from the lichened lips of that great sandstone body. The stunted cedars lean over its edge still singing the music of the sea. Sunshine and shade and nearness to the sky are yet there. You see depressions in the soil like grass-healed wounds, made by the tearing out of huge trees; but local tradition tells you these are the remains of pits dug down to the rock by Frenchmen searching for Tonty’s money. ”

“ 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, Jolycœur 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. ”

“ The moccasins of a frontiersman could make no sound above flap of wind and pat of water. Tonty paced from window to chapel front, believing that he kept out of Barbe’s sight. But after an interval he was amused to see, rising over the sill within, a topknot of curls, and eyes filled with the alert, shy spirit of the deer whose flesh she had just eaten. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yes, monsieur, that is the strangest thing,—I have cried of homesickness for Fort St. Louis of the Illinois!”
“Mademoiselle,” said Tonty, his voice vibrating, “there is a stranger thing. It is this,—that a man with a wretched hand of iron should suddenly find within himself a heart of fire!”
When this confession had burst from him he turned his back without apology, and Barbe’s forehead sunk upon the window-sill. ”

“ A row of booths for merchants had been built all along the outside of Montreal’s palisades, and traders were thus early setting their goods in array.
At the north extremity of the town that huge stone windmill built by the seigniors for defence, cast a long dewy shadow toward the west. Its loopholes showed like dark specks on the body of masonry.
Sun-sparkles on the river were no more buoyant and changeable than the child at Tonty’s side. Dimples came and went in her cheeks. Her blood was stirred by the swarming life around her. ”

“ La Salle’s face relaxed and softened as he sat down beside this sixteen-year-old maid in her colonial gown. She held her crucifix in her hands, and waited for him to talk. Jeanne made melody of his silences. As a child she had never rubbed against him for caresses, but looked into his eyes with sincere meditation. Having no idea of the explorer’s aim, Jeanne le Ber was yet in harmony with him across their separating years. She also could stake her life on one supreme idea. La Salle was formed to subdue the wilderness ”

“ With cannon booming overhead, Tonty passed its base followed by the people who were to ascend with him, and landed west of it, on a sandy strip where the voyager could lay his hand on that rugged fern-tufted foundation. Barbe and the Demoiselle Bellefontaine followed him along a path cut through thickets, around moss-softened irregular heights of sandstone, girdled in below and bulging out above, so that no man could obtain foothold to scale them. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ More than one Montreal girl accusing gold-embroidered young soldiers of finding the Quebec women charming, turned her eyes to follow La Salle. Possible lord of the vast and unknown west, in the flower of his years, he was next to Frontenac the most considerable figure in the colony.
Severe study in early youth and ambition in early manhood had crowded the lover out of La Salle. His practical gaze was oppressed by so many dames. It dwelt upon the floor, until, travelling accidentally to a corner, it rose and encountered Jacques le Ber’s daughter sitting beside her mother. ”

“ Father Hennepin and Du Lhut caught Tonty’s arms. Du Lhut then dragged him with expostulations inside the palisade gate, repeating Frontenac’s strict orders that all quarrels should be suppressed during the beaver fair, and as the young man’s furious looks still sought the merchant, reminding him of the harm he might do La Salle by an open quarrel with Montreal traders.
“I, who am not bound to La Salle as close as thou art,—I tell you it will not do,” declared Du Lhut.
“Let the man keep his distance, then!”
“Why, you hot-blooded fellow! why do you take these Frenchmen so seriously?” ”

“ Father Hennepin’s cross stood up, a huge white landmark between habitant settlement on the lake, and Indian village farther west but visible through the clearing. Ontario seemed to rise higher and top the world, its green curves breaking at their extremities into white spatter, the one boat in sight making deep obeisance to heaving water.
“Do you see a canoe riding yonder?” exclaimed Barbe to Colin, as they ran along wet sand.
“Any one may see a canoe riding yonder. Was it to race with that canoe we came out, mademoiselle?” ”

“ But Frontenac faced every individual of his Indian children, moving before them, their natural leader, as he made his address of greeting, admonition, and approval, through Du Lhut as interpreter. The old courtier loved Indians. They appealed to that same element in him which the coureurs de bois knew how to reach. The Frenchman has a wild strain of blood. He takes kindly and easily to the woods. He makes himself an appropriate and even graceful figure against any wilderness background, and goes straight to Nature’s heart, carrying all the refinements of civilization with him. ”

“ 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 Jolycœur he had left behind him bound with hide thongs and lying in Father Hennepin’s inner room. ”