"It was no marriage in G.o.d"s sight, with a heretic," interposed Father Gilbert. "She repented her waywardness bitterly. G.o.d made her to see it through sore trial. But the child is hers."
"Not when you admit that she sent it to me, gave me the right," was the confident reply.
He pressed Jeanne closer and with a strength that said, "I will fight for you." The proud dignity of his carriage, the resolution in his face, indicated that he would not be an easy enemy to combat. There was a strange silence, as if no one could tell what would be the next move. He broke it, however.
"The child shall decide," he said. "She shall hear her mother"s story, and then mine. She shall select with whom she will spend the coming years. G.o.d knows I should have been glad enough to have had her then. By what sad mistake fate should have traversed the mother"s wishes, and given her these wasted years, I cannot divine."
They were only to guess at that. The Miami woman had grown tired of her charge, so unlike the papooses of the Indian mothers. Then, too, it was heavy to carry, difficult to feed. She met a party of her own tribe and resolved to cast in her destiny with them. They were going into Ohio to meet some scattered members of their people, and to effect a union with other Indian nations, looking to the recovery of much of their power.
She went up to Detroit in a canoe, and, taking the sleeping child, reconnoitered awhile; finally, seeing Pani sitting alone under a great tree, she dropped the child into her lap and ran swiftly away, feeling confident the father would in some way discover the little one, since her name was pinned to her clothing. Then she rowed rapidly back, her Indian ideas quite satisfied.
"I wonder if I might see"--what should he call her?--"Jeanne"s mother."
Word came back that the nun was too much enfeebled to grant him an interview. But she would receive the child. Jeanne clung to her father and glanced up with entreating eyes.
"I will wait for you. Yes, see her. Hear her story first." The child followed the sister reluctantly. Sieur Angelot, who had been standing, now took a seat.
"I should like to see the trinkets you spoke of--and the clothes," he said with an air of authority.
Father Rameau brought them. Father Gilbert and the sister retired to an adjoining room.
"Yes," the Sieur remarked, "this is our miniature. It was done in Boston. And the ring was my gift to the child when she was a year old; it was much too big," and he smiled. "And the little garments. You are to be thanked most sincerely for keeping them so carefully. Tell me something about the life of the child."
Father Rameau had been so intimately connected with it, that he was a most excellent narrator. The episode with the Bellestres and Monsieur"s kindly care, the efforts to subdue in some measure the child"s wildness and pa.s.sion for liberty, which made the father smile, thinking of his own exuberant spirits and adventures, her affection for the Indian woman, her desultory training, that Father Rameau believed now had been a sinful mistake, her strange disappearance--
"That gave me the clew," interrupted his hearer. "By some mysterious chain of events she was brought to her father"s house. I was up North at the time, and only recently heard the story. The name Jeanne Angelot roused me. There could not be a mistake. Some miracle must have intervened to save the child. Then I came at once. But you think she--the mother--believes her marriage was a sin?" What if she still cared?
The Sieur asked it with great hesitation. He thought of the proud, loving wife, the spirited, beautiful boys, the dainty little daughter--no, he could not relinquish them.
"She is vowed to the Church now, and is at rest. Nothing you can say will disturb her. The good Bishop of Montreal absolved her from her wrongful vow. While we hold marriage as sacred and indissoluble, it has to be a true marriage and with the sanction of the Church. This had no priestly blessing or benediction. And she repented of it. For years she has been in the service of the Lord."
He was glad to hear this. Down in his heart he knew how she had tormented her tender conscience with vain and rigorous questions and had made herself unhappy in pondering them. But he thought their new life together would neutralize this tendency and bring them closer in unison.
Had she, indeed, made such a sad mistake in her feelings as to give him only an enthusiastic but temporary affection, when she was ready to throw up all the beliefs and the training of her youth? But then the convent round looked dreary to her.
Jeanne came from the room where she had been listening to her mother"s story of self-blame and present abhorrence for the step she had so unwisely taken in yielding to one who should have been nothing to her.
"But you loved him then!" cried Jeanne, vehemently, thinking of the other woman whose joy and pride was centered in the Sieur Angelot.
"It was a sinful fancy, a temptation of the evil one. I should have struggled against it. I should have resigned myself to the life laid out for me. A man"s love is a delusion. Oh, my child, there is nothing like the continual service of G.o.d to keep one from evil. The joys of the world are but as dust and ashes, nay, worse, they leave an ineradicable stain that not even prayer and penance can wash out. And this is why I have come to warn, to reclaim you, if possible. When I heard the story from a devoted young sister, whose name in the world was Berthe Campeau, I said I must go and s.n.a.t.c.h the soul of my child from the shadow of perdition that hangs over her."
Berthe Campeau! How strange it was that the other mother, nearing the end of life, should have plead with her child to stay a little longer in the world and wait until she was gone before she buried herself in convent walls!
Was it a happy life, even a life of resignation, that had left such lines in her mother"s face? She was hardly in the prime of life, but she looked old already. Instead of being drawn to sympathize with her, Jeanne was repelled. Her mother did not want her for solace and human love and sympathy, but simply to keep her from evil. Was affection such a sin? She could love her father, yes, she could love M. St. Armand; and the Indian woman with her superst.i.tions, her ignorance, was very, very dear. And she liked brightness, happy faces, the wide out-of-doors with its birds" songs, its waving trees, its fragrant breathing from shrub and flower that filled one with joy. Pani kissed her and clasped her to her heart, held her in her arms, smoothed the tangled curls, sometimes kissed them, too, caressed her soft, dainty hands as if they were another human being. This woman was her mother, but there was no pa.s.sionate longing in her eyes, no tender possessing grasp in the hands that lay limp and colorless on her black gown. And Jeanne would have been still more horrified if she had known that those eyes looked upon her as part of a sinful life she had overcome by nights of vigil and days of solitude in work and prayer that she had once abhorred and fled from. Yet she pitied her profoundly. She longed to comfort her, but the nun did not want the comfort of human love.
"No, I cannot decide," Jeanne cried, and yet she knew in her soul she had decided.
She came out to her father with tears in her eyes, but the shelter of his arms was so strong and safe.
"Reverend fathers," the Sieur Angelot said, with a grave inclination of the head, "I thank you for your patience and courtesy. I can appreciate your feelings, too, but I think the law will uphold me in my claim to my daughter. And in my estimation Jeanne de Burre committed no sin in marrying me, and I would ever have been a faithful husband to her. But the decision of the Church seems most in consonance with her feelings. I have the honor of wishing you good day."
CHAPTER XIX.
THE HEART OF LOVE.
"And now," began the Sieur Angelot, when they were out in the sunshine, the choicest blessing of G.o.d, and had left the bare, gloomy room behind them, "and now, _pet.i.te_ Jeanne, let us find thy Indian mother."
Was there a prouder or happier girl in all Old Detroit than Jeanne Angelot? The narrow, crooked streets with their mean houses were glorified to her shining eyes, the crowded stores and shops, some of them with unfragrant wares, and the motley crowd running to and fro, dodging, turning aside, staring at this tall, imposing man, with his grand, free air and his soldierly tread, a stranger, with Jeanne Angelot hanging on his arm in all the bloom and radiance of girlhood. Several knew and bowed with deference.
M. Fleury came out of his warehouse.
"Mam"selle Jeanne, allow me to present my most hearty and sincere congratulations. M. St. Armand insisted if the truth could be evolved it would be found that you belonged to gentle people and were of good birth. And we are all glad it is so. I had the honor of being presented to your father this morning;" and he bowed with respect. "Mademoiselle, I have news that will give thee greatest joy, unless thou hast forgotten old friends in the delight of the new. The "Adventure" is expected in any time to-day, and M. St. Armand is a pa.s.senger. I beg your father to come and dine with him this evening, and if thou wilt not mind old graybeards, we shall be delighted with thy company. There will be my daughter to keep thee in countenance."
"M. St. Armand!" Jeanne"s face was in an exquisite glow and her voice shook a little. Her father gave a surprised glance from one to the other.
M. Fleury laughed softly and rubbed his hands together, his eyes shining with satisfaction.
"Ah, Monsieur," he exclaimed, "thou wilt be surprised at the friends Mam"selle Jeanne has in Old Detroit. I may look for thee at five this evening?"
They both promised.
Then Jeanne began to tell her story eagerly. The day the flag was raised, the after time when she had seen the brave General Wayne, the interest that M. St. Armand had taken in having her educated, and how she had struggled against her wild tendencies, her pa.s.sionate love of freedom and the woods, the birds, the denizens of the forests. They turned in and out, the soldiers at the Citadel saluted, and here was Pani on the doorstep.
"Oh, little one! It seemed as if thou wert gone forever!"
Jeanne hugged her foster mother in a transport of joy and affection.
What if Pani had not cared for her all these years? There were some orphan children in the town bound out for servants. To be sure, there had been M. Bellestre.
Pani did not receive the Sieur Angelot very graciously. Jeanne tried to explain the wonderful things that had happened, but Pani"s age and her limited understanding made it a hard task. "Thy mother was dead long ago," she kept saying. "And they will take thee away, little one--"
"Then they will take you, too, Pani; I shall never leave you. I love you. For years there was no one else to love. And how could I be ungrateful?"
She looked so charming in her eagerness that her father bent over and kissed her. If her mother had been thus faithful!
"I shall never leave Detroit, little one. You may take up a sapling and transplant it, but the old tree, never! It dies. The new soil is strange, unfriendly."
"Do not tease her," said her father in a low tone. "It is all strange to her, and she does not understand. Try to get her to tell her story of the night you came."
At first Pani was very wary with true Indian suspicion. The Sieur Angelot had much experience with these children of the forests and wilderness. He understood their limited power of expansion, their suspicions of anything outside of their own knowledge. But he led her on skillfully, and his voice had the rare quality of persuasion, of inducing confidence. In her French _patois_, with now and then an Indian word, she began to live over those early years with the unstudied eloquence of real love.
"Touchas is dead," interposed Jeanne. "But there is Wenonah, and, oh, there is all the country outside, the pretty farms, the houses that are not so crowded. In the spring many of them are whitewashed, and the trees are in bloom, and the roses everywhere, and the birds singing--"
She paused suddenly and flushed, remembering the lovely island home with all its beauty.
He laughed with a pleasant sound.
"I should think there would need to be an outside. I hardly see how one can get his breath in the crowded streets," he answered.