CHAPTER VII.
"Mon pere, it is Paul, and there is with him Monsieur Scott; why, I wonder, has he come?" While the question yet remained unanswered, Paul entered the room accompanied by young Scott.
"Monsieur will explain the cause of his visit," Paul said.
"Monsieur and mademoiselle," young Scott began, inclining his head first to the father and then to the daughter, "as you may expect, only great urgency brought me here under these circ.u.mstances. A half-breed to whom I did a kindness since coming to the territories, is one of Monsieur Riel"s agents, and is in the confidence of that dangerous person. He tells me that this very night, probably before the rise of the moon, a party is to surround your house, and make you and your daughter captives. The charge against you is, that you are both in league with Canadian spies, and enemies of Red River.
One of the said spies is myself! It appears that you are to be taken to the common jail; and mademoiselle Marie is to be lodged in the house of a Metis hag, who is a depraved instrument of Riel"s will. Therefore, I have brought hither an escort sufficient to accomplish your safe retreat to some refuge beyond the American frontier.
Paul tells me that you had proposed going to your brother"s.
I do not consider this a safe plan. Your malignant persecutor will very speedily learn from your neighbours all information respecting the existence of relatives, and where they reside. You would be no safer from the vengeance of this monster in adjacent, thinly settled American territory, than you would be in Red River. Will you therefore come with me to my uncle"s in a town not far beyond the line?--only too happy will he be to serve you in your need." The proposal was very gladly accepted.
Tears stood in old Jean"s eyes; and I doubt not that they came there when he began to reflect that, but for Marie, he should now have been acting in league with his miscreant persecutor against this n.o.ble, generous-hearted young fellow.
Within an hour, most of the little valuables in the dear old homestead, which neither Jean nor Marie ever again expected to see, were made up into small packs, each one to be carried by one of the escorts. With a deep sigh Marie looked at the home of her happy youth, drowsing in the deep shadow of the oaks, and then mounted her horse.
All that night she rode by her lover"s side, and stole many a glance of admiring pride at his handsome, manly figure. When they were a couple of hours out, a dusky yellow appeared in the south-east, and then the bright, greenish-yellow rim of the Autumn moon appeared, and began to flood the illimitable prairie with a thick, wizard light.
"So this miscreant has been hunting you, Marie?" said the young man, for both had unconsciously dropped in rear. "I did not like his glances this morning, and had resolved to keep my eyes upon him. I suppose, ma pet.i.te, if I had the right to keep you from the fans of water-mills, that I also hold the right of endeavouring to preserve you from a man whose arms would be worse than the rending wheel?" She said nothing, but there was grat.i.tude enough in her eye to reward for the most daring risk that man ever run.
"You do not love this sooty persecutor, do you, ma chere?"--and then, seeing that such a question pained and confused her, he said, "Hush now, ma pet.i.te fille; I shall not tease you any more." The confusion pa.s.sed away, and her little olive face brightened, as does the moon when the cloud drifts off its disc.
"I am very glad. O, if you only knew how I shudder at the sound of his name!"
"There now, let us forget about him, I can protect you from him; can I not?" and he reined his horse closer to hers, and leaned tenderly over towards the girl. She said nothing, for she was very much confused. But the confusion was less embarra.s.sment than a bewildered feeling of delight. But for the dull thud, thud of the hoofs upon the sod, her escort might plainly enough have heard the riotous beating of the little maiden"s heart.
"And now, about that flower which I gave you this morning.
What did you do with it?"
"Ah, Monsieur, where were your eyes? I have worn it in my hair all day. It is there now; it was there when you came to our cottage this evening."
"Ah, I see. I am concerned with your head,--not with your heart. Is that it, ma pet.i.te bright eye? You know our white girls wear the flowers we give them under their throats, or upon their bosom. This they do as a sign that the donor occupies a place in their heart." He did not perceive in the dusky moonlight, that he was covering her with confusion. Upon no point was this little maiden so sensitive, as when it was revealed to her that a particular habit or act of hers differed from that of the civilized white girl. Her dear little heart was almost bursting with shame, and this thought was running through her mind.
"Oh! what a savage I must seem in his eyes." Her own unspoken words seemed to burn through her whole body.
"But how could I know where to wear my rose? I have read in English books that gentle ladies wear them there."
And these lines of Tennyson came running through her head.
"She went by dale, and she went by down, With a single rose in her hair."
And they gave her some relief, for she thought, after all, that he might be only joking When the blood had gone back from her forehead, she turned towards her lover, who had been looking at her since speaking with somewhat of a tender expression in his mischievous eyes.
"Do white girls never wear roses in their hair? I thought they did. Can it be wrong for me to wear mine in the same place?"
"Ah, my little barbarian, you do not understand me. If an old bachelor, whose head shone like the moon there in the sky, were to give to some blithe young belle a rose or a lily, she would, most likely, twist it in her hair; but if some other hand had presented the flower, one whose eye was brighter, whose step was quicker, whose laugh was cheerier, whose years were fewer; in short, ma chere Marie, if some one for whom she cared just a little bit more than for any other man that walked over the face of creation, had presented it to her, she would not put it in her hair. No, my little unsophisticated one, she would feel about with her unerring fingers, for the spot nearest her heart, and there she would fasten the gift.
Now, ma Marie, suppose you had possessed all this information this morning when I gave you the flower, where would you have pinned it?"
"n.o.body has ever done so much for me as has Monsieur.
He leaped into the flood, risking his life to save mine.
I would be an ungrateful girl, then, if I did not think more of him than of any other man; therefore, I would have pinned your flower on the spot nearest my heart,"
Then, deftly, and before he could determine what her supple arms and nimble little brown fingers were about, she had disengaged the lily from her hair, and pinned it upon her bosom. "There now, Monsieur, is it in the right place?" and she looked at him with a glance exhibiting the most curious commingling of innocence and coquetry.
"I cannot answer. I do not think that you understand me yet. If the act of saving you from drowning were to determine the place you should wear the rose, then the head, as you first chose, was the proper spot, Do you know what the word love means?"
"O, I could guess, perhaps, if I don"t know. I have heard a good deal about it, and Violette, who is desperately fond of a handsome young Frenchman, has explained it so fully to me, that I think I know. Yes, Monsieur, I _do_ know."
"Well, you little rogue, it takes one a long time to find out whether you do or not. In fact I am not yet quite satisfied on the point. However, let me suppose that you do know what love is; the all-consuming sort, the kind that sighs like the very furnace. Well, that part of the statement is clear. Then, supposing that a flower is worn over the heart only to express love, of the sort I mentioned, for the donor, where would you, with full knowledge of this fact, have pinned the flower that I plucked for you this morning?"
"Since I do not understand the meaning of the word love with very great clearness,--I think Monsieur has expressed the doubt that I do understand it--I would not have known where to pin the flower. I would not have worn it at all.
I would, Monsieur, have set it in a goblet, and taking my st.i.tching, would have gazed upon it all the day, and prayed my guardian angel to give me some hint as to where I ought to put it on."
"You little savage, you have eluded me again. Do you remember me telling you that some day, if you found out for me a couple of good flocks of turkeys, I would bring you some coppers?"
"I do."
"Well, if you discovered a hundred flocks now, I would not give you one." And then he leaned towards her again as if his lips yearned for hers; but his love of mischief was too strong for every other desire. For her part, she took him exactly as she should have done. She never pouted;--If she had done so, I fancy that there would have been soon an end of the wild, boyish, sunny raillery.
"Hallo! Little one, we are away, away in the rear. Set your pony going, for we must keep up with our escort."
Away they went over the level plain, through flowers of every name and dye, the fresh, exquisite, autumn breeze bearing the scent of the myriad petals upon their faces.
After a sharp gallop over about three miles of plain, they overtook the main body of the escort.
They now reached the border, and the pavements of the little town of Pembina rang with the hoofs of their horses. Away still to the south, they rode through the glorious autumn night, under the calm, bountiful moon.
"Now, Monsieur Riel, I think we are some distance from your foul talons," Scott said, as turning in his saddle, he saw the steeples of Pembina, gloom-wrapped, almost sunk in the horizon. "I fancy I can hear the curses of his willing tools in the air, after they swooped down upon your cottage, Marie, and found the inmates flown."
"What is your uncle"s cottage like, Monsieur Scott?"
"It is not unlike your own. It is in a grove of pines, and a happy brook goes chattering by it all the summer.
Will you come fishing in it with me, ma pet.i.te?"
"Oui, avec le plus grand plaisir, Monsieur," and she looked so happy, there was so much sun in her eyes, so many divine little dimples in her cheek, in contemplation of all the promised happiness, that it would not require much keenness to discover the secret of the dear little maiden.
"Of course, you shall fish with a pin-hook. I am not going to see you catch yourself with one of the barbed hooks, like those which I shall use."
"O, Monsieur Scott! Why will you always treat me as a baby!" and there was the most delicate, yet an utterly indescribable sort of reproach in her voice and att.i.tude, as she spoke these words.
"Then it is not a baby by any means," and he looked with undisguised admiration upon the maiden, with all the mystic grace and perfect development of her young womanhood.
"It is a woman, a perfect little woman, a fairer a sweeter, my own mignonette, than any girl ever seen in this part of the plains since first appeared here human footprint."
"O, Monsieur is now gone to the other extreme. He is talking dangerously; for he will make me vain."
"Does the ceaseless wooing of the sweet wild rose by soft winds, make that blossom vain? or is the moon spoilt because all the summer night ten thousand streams running under it sing to it unnumbered praises? As easy, ma Marie, to make vain the rose or the moon as to turn your head by telling your perfections."
"Monsieur covers me with confusion!" and the little sweet told the truth. But it was a confusion very exquisite to her. It sang like entrancing music through her veins; and gave her a delightful delirium about the temples, flow fair all the glorious great round of the night, and the broad earth lit by the moon, seemed to her now, with the music of his words coursing through her being.
Everything was transfigured by a holy beauty, for Love had sanctified it, and clothed it with his own mystic, wonderful garments. It was with poor Marie, then, as it has some time or other been with us all: when every bird that sang, every leaf that whispered, had in its tone a cadence caught from the one loved voice. I have seen the steeple strain, and rock, and heard the bells peal out in all their clangourous melody, and I have fancied that this delirious ecstasy of sound that bathed the earth and went up to heaven was the voice of one slim girl with dimples and sea-green eyes.
The mischievous young Scotchman had grown more serious than Marie had ever seen him before.
"I hope, my child, that you will be happy here; the customs of the people differ from yours, but your nature is receptive to everything good and elevated, so that I am certain you will soon grow to cherish our civilization."
I must say here for the benefit of the drivelling, cantankerous critic, with a squint in his eye, who never looks for anything good in a piece of writing, but is always on the search for a flaw, that I send pa.s.sages from Tennyson floating through my Marie"s brain with good justification. She had received a very fair education at a convent in Red River. She could speak and write both French and English with tolerable accuracy; and she could with her supple, tawny little fingers, produce a nice sketch of a prairie tree-clump, upon a sheet of cartridge paper, or a piece of birch rind.