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 att.i.tude 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 n.o.ble 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 impa.s.sable. 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 pa.s.sed 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 eyeb.a.l.l.s 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 Abbe! 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. Pa.s.sionately 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.

G.o.d 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!"

Hoa.r.s.e 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 Abbe 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 pa.s.sed his hand piteously across her bruised forehead.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "She twisted her hands in tense knots against her neck."--_Page 152._]

X.

HEMLOCK.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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 Abbe 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 Abbe then dragged him along, and it seemed an immense detour he was obliged to make to pa.s.s 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.