Gabrielle, transgressor

Chapter I

^ ^ W HAT ! Dumb House ? For the troops t ’ ^

Amador, the voyageur, who had turned carpenter in his old age, shivered and glanced apprehensively at the long brick wall which surrounded Dumb House garden. It was a sturdy, massive wall, without break or gate or crevice, rising many feet higher than the roof of Amador^ s flimsy cypress hut. Amador clenched his huge hands nervously ; muscles gathered in knots along his brawny arms ,* his veins swelled and crawled beneath his hairy skin as dark blue bayous go pulsing through the reeds.

^^Eh bien ! And why nott’^ Burly Pierre maintained. ’Twould shelter a regiment.’’

^^Why not?” snapped Amador. ^^No man durst enter it these twenty years j ’twould be a brave fool that stepped foot within that garden where Paul- Marie’ s ghost tends his flowers. Hgh ! By the Virgin, I feared him in his life time. Mon Dieu ! I lay up much religion against that day when I see Paul- Marie.”

Amador furtively scanned that ominous barrier which shut out the garden of fear, and glanced at the three tall pines which lifted their heads above it ; he peeped askance at the unblinking windows of Dumb House itself — deep sunken windows, shut as the eyes of men long dead. Then Amador turned away, relieved that he had seen naught of Paul-Marie. His hair-grown chest billowed up like a goatskin bag and slowly collapsed.

“ Dumb House ! he grunted ; it is always still — like that. IJgh ! it wears on a man^s courage — no sound, no life, nothing. Except on Friday, when the jay-birds, instead of going to hell, flock into that garden. Such a chatter ! Such a noise ! ^Tis said the devil sits cross-legged on Paul-Marie’ s grave and talks with them — just beneath that midmost pine. Sometimes one may see a ball of blue fire hanging like a ship’s lantern against the fork. If one looks again it is gone.” Amador drew deeply from his pipe, releasing a cloud of smoke vast enough to create a dozen genii.

Then he shifted his position and looked away from Dumb House, straight across the yellow Mississippi. Around him were a few scattered huts, and squatty white-washed buildings which crouched between a river and a forest — the tiny settlement of New Orleans. Amador puffed his pipe. Again and again his fascinated gaze swung back to Dumb House. Once for many moments he looked down at Burly Pierre, the bronze-bearded giant of the North, who sprawled on the grass like a clumsy bear stretching himself in play.

Pierre lay flat of his back, his coarse lips parted, staring at the sky. Two braids of thick red hair rambled away from his temples in front of his ears, and two golden ear-rings dangled as the red bear shook himself. A leathern coat, fringed and beaded — the work of many an Indian woman concerning whom 10

Pierre practised neither conscience nor concealment — was tossed carelessly across a stump. Pierre^ s unbuttoned shirt exposed a magnificent breadth of chest. Pierre’s creed was simple : A stout paddle, a long rifie, a sharp fight, with kiss of jug and woman at the end of every trail. In this, and this only, did Pierre believe.

Dull, unimaginative, matter-of-fact Pierre stared upward at nothing, striving to comprehend this new idea of fear which Amador thrust at him. The brilliance of a summer afternoon glittered on the river. A drowsy idleness, sensuous, intangible, irresistible, floated downward from the vacant heavens to lie languid on the earth.

The voyageur’s boat which had brought Pierre from Frontenac, some thousand leagues away, swung lazily at its mooring. His thick lips smiled ; he stretched himself luxuriously. “ Eh ! How good it is to live. There’s something in this air of yours to make a man lie flat of his back and watch the lazy eagles that go to sleep against the sky. Shake myself out of that? Yes, yes ”

To shake himself out of his indolence he raised suddenly on his elbows and looked aggressively at Dumb House wall running straight back from the river through the palmettoes and the reeds. ^‘Ugh!” he grunted, nodding at the jagged glass and spikes of steel along its summit. “Monsieur Paul-Marie invites one to keep out.”

A pathway which colonial courtesy spoke of as “the street” twisted along in front of Dumb House, between it and the river. Beyond, following the curve of the river, some straggling huts had taken root along 11 this path, hap-hazard and aimlessly as wind-blown seed. Farther still amongst a thicker cluster of shacks and shanties was the Government House, the seat of French dominion in the south.

have looked upon much houses of the great — Montreal — Quebec — Frontenac. I make bold to look at this.^’ Pierre rose and swaggered down the street the full length of Dumb House, then back again to the door whose inhospitable jaws clenched most determinedly.

The house itself was of brick, two stories high, faced with gray stone ; a red- tiled roof projected all around like the brim of a mandarin’s hat. The four windows below were mere slits in the wall, defended by iron bars ingeniously interlaced. In vain did Pierre seek chink or crack in the solid boards through which to pry.

With sudden access of courage he stepped into the doorway, a space scarce wide enough for him to stand, closed and guarded with weather-beaten oak, studded by heavy-headed nails. Neither knocker nor bell suggested that he enter, yet Pierre raised his fist and struck the door. Then he trembled at his own temerity.

Somewhere, from within the silence that he had profaned, there came an odd murmuring which disconcerted the voyageur ; it sounded like whispers and voices — whispers without tongues, and voices without bodies. Pierre suddenly remembered something else that he believed in. His courage played like frozen lightning up and down his back, as one might polish the barrel of a rifle.

Pierre stopped pounding the door. It required all 12 his fortitude to stand a moment and listen to the echoes which went rumbling through those empty rooms. Amador shivered and crossed himself. Pierre held his backbone rigidly straight and set his teeth tight together so Amador might not hear them chattering. Then he glanced over his shoulder at Amador, and strolled back to his seat beside the carpenter.

^^’Tis a stout house, he said, for he must say something. After that he fell to looking at the wall and thinking — a process about which Burly Pierre rarely troubled himself.

This wall enclosed a square garden of perchance two hundred paces across. Above the wall Pierre could see the crests of three towering pines, a cottonwood tree, some dark green magnolias, and the topmost leaves of a banana clump waving in the wind. More than this he could only guess. Even as he looked, two wary old crows flapped out of the forest ; they barely skimmed the top of the wall and settled down within. The woodsman shrugged his shoulders ; it needed nothing more to convince him the garden was deserted.

He turned to Amador, then nodded scornfully towards the slender line of stakes driven into the ground which protected the settlement.

^^Bah!’’ he laughed, puckering his lips as if he meant to blow them over. ^^Bah! Tis a fence for children. Such baby barricades may do well enough for your lazy Houmas and womanish Bayou-Goulas, but ^twould make a man^s heart strangle his gullet to hear the Five Nations whooping in yonder forest and know that these play-time pickets were all that stood between.”

Amador turned in Ms seat and compared the colony’s inefficient defences with that mighty wall, as he had done a thousand times before. A man must think much and ponder many things when he sits alone evening after evening smoking and nodding at that solemn river.

^^The governor ought to take it for the troops j” Pierre returned to his original assertion.

^^Aye, ’twould make a noble fortress,” Amador admitted.

^ ^ Then why not use it ! ”

Amador merely shrugged his shoulders.

“It is too far from the water,” Pierre objected, measuring with his eye the hundred yards of space between Dumb House and the river.

“Water!” Amador scarcely stopped puffing his pipe. “Water! See you not those tanks? One — ,two — three — four tanks : water enough for an army. Paul-Marie had his fountains and his fish-ponds. The tanks supplied them.”

“Fountains? — and fish-ponds?” Pierre repeated vaguely. What was a fountain ? Why should a man want fish-ponds ? Pierre could not conceive. ^N'either would he reveal his ignorance, and inquire.

“Aye 5 heard you never of fountains or fish-ponds?” Ajnador questioned stolidly.

Pierre rolled over on his elbows. “ Many of them, in Quebec, along La Chine.”

Amador saw that Pierre would speak no more, so he volunteered the story that itched his tongue.

“There were two brothers of them,” he began j and though Pierre betrayed no curiosity he composed Ms stalwart limbs to listen. “ Paul-Marie was the older, 14 and Jean the younger. Jean was tall, with the stride of a moose and the quickness of a panther. We called him Grosjean because he was so big. They were great lords in France, no doubt of it j princes, maybe j no doubt of it. People used to whisper a tale of some fine lady — that the king himself sent those brothers away, a kingdom being too small for Paul- Marie and the king. Wealth they had in plenty j else whence came the ship -loads of brick and the slaves to build a house like that ? A house like that for two men ! Think of it ! And no women j never a woman has stepped her foot across that threshold.

Pierre rolled over on his elbows again, and looked up : Eh ! Too much woman on the mind ; too little in the heart.’’ He lay back disgustedly, and lost interest.

“One day,” Amador went on in the same voice, for he could recite this story to its uttermost syllable — ^ ^ One day a gentleman came with a ship of his own, and brought his daughter j she was Jean’s wife. Paul-Marie raved and stormed and swore — no woman should come beneath his roof. Had they not had enough of women? Were they forever to be fools about a petticoat ? ”

“Jean never swore; ’tis not his way to swear. But when the ship sailed back to France it left the lady. Jean placed her in the convent until he could build a house of his own. Eight speedily he built his house — that small one yonder adjoining his brother’s wall.”

Pierre stiffened his ears. With the entry of a woman the little house gained somewhat of interest.

“Paul-Marie never spoke to Jean again, though 15

Hwere hard to understand how man could bear grudge against so sweet a lady. Two years afterward she died, and Jean bore his babe on a pillow to the convent. That same night Paul-Marie died — died standing bolt upright beneath ' the limb of yonder pine where the crow perches.”

Amador^ s voice lowered to a whisper of dread :

^Tis said he stiffened like a post there in the garden. Paul-Marie bent to no man ; and when dead he bent not to God Almighty. Folk say that Grosjean found him standing there, and buried him — buried him in damnation, for certain it is that no priest was called and no prayers were said. That’s why Paul- Marie gains no rest in the grave, and one may hear him mumbling to himself if one but listens at the keyhole.”

Pierre nodded. It was this mumbling which had frightened him when he rapped on Dumb House door. Verily he’d have a brave tale to tell beside the fires on those long journeys through the north wood. He listened with keen attention now, for he meant to adopt Amador’s story.

^^The child grew up in the convent, brown as an Indian and more restless than Grosjean when there is war amongst the tribes. She out-climbed the squirrels and out ran the deer. If the sisters punished her she’d scale the convent fence and scurry home to old Margot like a wild creature of the forest. It gave me the chills to see her fiy past at dusk, the tiny imp with thin legs and great blue eyes. Folk shook their heads and said Paul-Marie’ s spirit had entered the child — she being bom on the very night he died. I do not believe that, do you! Paul-Marie’ s spirit is 16 in the garden j one may often hear him talking with the devil and the jays. A man cannot have two spirits 5 that is snre.^^ Burly Pierre said nothing.

“Dumb House fell to Grosjean. He shut the cursed door as you see, and went to the Indian wars.^^

“Grosjean ! Grosjean ! The voyageur sprang up in great excitement. “Mother of God, and all the Saints ! I knew him well. Tall, seasoned like a hickory — arm which would dent the edge of a knife t eyes that snap and sparkle in the night ? hair gray — but gray as a man still young? Eh? Eh?^^ Burly Pierre questioned eagerly, and Amador assented to each item of the catalogue.

Pierre grasped Amador’s arm, and his eyes lighted with enthusiasm: “But one must see Grosjean to understand ; must see him in fight, when he laughs and begs that you pardon him if he but jostle you. It matters not how tall or broad Grosjean may be, ’tis something else — something I cannot understand, which makes one remember him. He always came when there was fighting, and went away when there was none. I knew him well — as well as any man knows Grosjean,” Pierre added presently.

For a long while both Pierre and Amador were silent.

“And who lives there now?” asked Pierre.

“ Paul-Marie, none other j earth cannot cover him j Paul-Marie’ s ghost, the crows, the rabbits, the owls, the bats, they live there — God himself knows what else.”

Amador chuckled to himself : “ And there’s Mother Margot lives next door, housekeeper to Grosjean ; she’s stone blind, yet she walks down this path every 17 day to the convent and back again. She steps on the same blade of grass and the same clod each time she passes — and she blinder than a bat. When she gets right there, abreast this log— she always says/ Good day, Amador,^ ^Good day, Madame,^ ^May the saints grant you peace, good Amador,’ ^Merci, Madame.’ Always the same, no change j and she passes on. Should the sun forget the hour, one might set him right by Margot’s marching down the path. Once the girl — but no matter.”

Pierre’s practical mind revolted at the idea of such a stronghold going to waste. ^^The governor should order ’ ’ he began.

“ Order who ? Not Grosjean ? The governor gives no orders to Grosjean ; nay, not even the king. And the good God himself gave none to Paul-Marie. More than that, I warrant you if Paul-Marie were alive not even yon banana tree would be flapping its wings against his wall, prying into his secrets. Look ! There he is.”

Pierre wheeled like a weather-cock ; a sickly pallor rushed across his face. He shook with palsy, and the scared eyes of him turned towards the garden.

^^Here ! Here, on the levee !” Amador plucked his sleeve and pointed : “ That’s Grosjean.”

Pierre gasped and smiled, smiled again, then laughed outright, looking behind him at the banana leaf that waved from the top of Paul-Marie’ s wall.

There! That’s Grosjean,” Amador repeated. Neither of them had observed Grosjean when he stepped out of his door immediately beyond the Dumb House. When they first noticed him he was standing on the levee beside the river — square- shouldered as an 18 oaken block hewn out by Pierre’s broad-axe. He stood at the water’s edge, his hands clasped behind his back, in silent contemplation.

Grosjean turned his head very slowly, following the curve and sweep of the river until his gaze rested on the Government House, then wandered far beyond as if he sought to peer around the distant bend which barred the road to France. For some moments he watched this barrier of trees round which the curving river swept. Then he sighed his relief because no ship appeared upon the shimmering pathway.

The giant of the North started forward. “Grosjean!” he ejaculated; “Grosjean! I should have known there could be only one.”

Pierre had already taken two quick strides towards the levee when Amador sprang up and grasped his arm. ^ ‘ What mean you ? Fool ! ’ ’

“I know him well ; we are friends.”

Pierre struggled to loose himself, but Amador clung to the big fellow’s arm.

“Let Grosjean be,” he admonished. “No man speaks first to Grosjean, not even the governor.”

“The more fools they!” retorted Pierre; “he’s the prince of boon companions ’ ’

W'ith another glance towards the motionless figure on the river’s brink Pierre hesitated ; then he sat down. A better thought deterred him from intruding upon that silent man.

“But I know him well ; I know every scar on his face,” Pierre grumbled.

“Aye,” responded Amador ; “’tis said the history of Louisiana is writ in those scars — one for each battle. ’ ’

Pierre laughed aloud: “Then I warrant you the 19 whole map of North A merica is traced on his breast and legs — never saw I man so criss-crossed.”

Presently Grosjean came down from the levee and walked quickly back to his door. His was a smaller and a cheerier abode than Dumb House, but every whit as strong, with the same narrow doors and ironguarded windows. Standing shoulder to shoulder with the big house, it turned no eye towards its fellow, and opened no window upon the other^s spacious garden. The houses leaned against each other with eyes averted, as two good friends who had quarreled in the wilderness but who stood ready to help against a common foe. Grosjean stepped within the door and called : “Margot, place the honeysuckle on her table, and the magnolias. Have all ready, for it is near the time.”

Grosjean’ s voice rang out impatiently, and Margot answered him from the upper floor. He heard the woman’s swift movement from room to room and knew the loving exactitude with which she made everything ready for Gabrielle.

Grosjean smiled and stepped into the hall. Upon the marble top of a richly carven table there rested a vase. Grosjean stopped before it and smiled at the painted shepherd who lay stretched at the feet of his mistress, singing the same old song. The flowers in the vase he had gathered himself and arranged with peculiar stiffness. He took them out, spread them on the table, then tried to put them back again more gracefully — for these would be the flrst things to catch Gabrielle’ s eye when she entered the door.

“That’s worse,” he said ; “stiffer than a file of wooden men. But she’ll know I plucked them.”

Grosjean strode out of the door, glancing back and smiling at the vase.

As he passed beyond the shadow of his house Grosjean stopped and measured the height of the sun. ^^Full early, he grumbled, and checked his steps when he reached the governor’s new-made levee. Pierre and Amador watched him swinging along towards the convent. Pierre nodded wisely, and whispered, ^^I’ve seen him keep that hell-to-split gait for days and days together, as if his legs hungered to devour all the trail at a gulp.”

Grosjean was unchanged : Tall, broad-shouldered, gaunt ; a man of the forest, made of bone, muscle, sinews and determination. Two exceedingly black eyes looked out from either side of a high straight nose — looked defiantly at a hostile world. His garments were of the woods, tough in texture and void of decoration. There was no feather in his cap, nor bead- work of women on his coat. The lips were thin, perhaps a trifie harsh and cruel until he smiled. Grosjean was smiling now.

He passed on, his eyes fixed upon the white-washed fence around the convent. He was yet too early, and must consume time upon the way. To his right lay the river, bank -full and yellow, which like the circling rim of a cup pressed the colony back against the forest. To his left were a few log-houses thatched with cypress bark. Many ditches crossed each other at right angles and marked untrodden streets. Instead of draining the marshes these only collected water for frogs to croak in.

To the few strollers along the levee — officers, artisans, African slaves, and voyageurs — Grosjean said 21 nothing. They took no offence because he did not even nod as he passed. He had come to a path which turned down the slope of the levee towards the convent, when he observed a small fleet of pirogues and a wide, flat-bottomed barge, moored against the levee. Half a dozen voyageurs were stowing away baggage for a long expedition, while a line of negroes brought yet other packages from the convent. Grosjean looked at the sun. He must wait. So he walked on to where the men were working. His experienced eye took in every detail of their preparations — seven pirogues and a barge, thirty men or more — jerked beef, sagamite, beans, rice, powder, lead, cloth, beads, knives, hatchets — everything. He nodded approvingly. But there were other bundles and baskets which had never before been seen going into the wilderness.

‘ ‘ Raoul, he said to one of the men, pointing with his finger to an awkward-looking package,- Raoul, you go upon a journey ?

“Aye, Grosjean,^’ answered the man with great deference,* “we convey two sisters to the mission above the Falls of St. Anthony.

“ Two women

The voyageur merely shrugged his shoulders in that helpless fashion which means, “ I did all I could to prevent.

“Yes, yes,^^ said Grosjean to himself j “I know the place. St. Esprit, Lake Superior, between the Ojibways and the Sioux.’’

Silent Raoul had said his say. He then went on balancing the boxes and packages carefully in each boat.

Grosjean turned his eyes thoughtfully to the river, 22 pondering those dim magnificent stretches of waste between the gulf and the lakes.

Ah ! these sisters ! these sisters ! They go beyond the boundaries of the earth. ^Twould be reasonably safe for men, but — Ah ! well.’’

He came slowly back along the path and pursued his way to the convent.

Chapter II

The convent gate stood broadly open. A file of negroes passed out carrying boxes and bales of various shapes to be laden in the boats that lay moored against the levee. They laughed and sang as they worked, with gleaming teeth and happy voices, bearing lightly their burdens of the body, for they bore no burdens of the mind.

Grosjean reached the clumsy green gate. Before he had lifted the knocker the small grille was opened j he saw the kindly but regretful eyes of Sister Conflans peering through.

Ah ! It is you,’^ she said f and the crippled sister opened the gate.

“This way,^’ she beckoned, leading him along a sandy path beneath the white- washed trellis, and into the main building. “May you be pleased to wait.’^ Sister Conflans pointed to the door of a prim little parlor, and motioned deferentially for Grosjean to enter.

Grosjean did not seat himself 5 neither did he glance at the wonders of painting and embroidery which the good nuns displayed as their pupils’ handiwork.

Presently Mother Louise came in as noiselessly as a soft gray shadow, with the other woman at her back. She found Grosjean standing at a window contemplating their well-ordered garden, and the patch of bright 24 green sugar-cane to the left. Hearing the rustle of their garments, he turned.

Greeting, good mother,’^ he said, and bent his head in stately courtesy.

Peace be with you, my lord

^^Grosjean,^^ he corrected decisively.

Sister Conflans looked wonderingly from this roughclad man of the woods whom she had known only as Gabrielle’s father, to the Mother Superior who addressed him with the respect due exalted rank.

“ Grosjean,^^ the mother went on, accepting his correction, though she hesitated at the word j “ Grosjean, I am glad to see you, yet my heart is heavy that you have come for Gabrielle. Such a flower should have bloomed for our Blessed Church.’^

Grosjean smiled and refrained from debating a matter which had long been settled.

“Yes, mother, I am come for Gabrielle. The house is ready. Her husband is expected on Le Due d^ Anjou within the week. A week — Tis brief space for a father who scarcely knows his own child.”

Mother Louise nodded to Sister Conflans, who hobbled up the stair with trembling speed. Almost immediately an upper door opened j light steps came running through the hall, and a radiant girl bounded down the stair.

“Jean! Jean!” she cried joyfully, and sprang into her father’s arms.

Even the austere face of Mother Louise relaxed, schooled as she was against betraying the slightest emotion.

Grosjean, the exile, hardened by tempests and scarred by wars, folded his daughter to his heart as 25 tightly and as lightly as the husk enfolds the tender corn. The convent and its people faded from his thought. He brushed back the hair from Gabrielle’s forehead and gazed into her eyes. Tears came, and dimness, and silence.

At the head of the stair three other pale-faced women leaned over the rail, striving to peer into the parlor. Grosjean saw nothing of them j he only saw his daughter, and deep in her eyes he saw again that other Gabrielle who had blest his banishment — she who had died in giving him this precious token of her love.

Slender as the nodding lilies in the convent garden, flushed with the glorious color of a rich Provencal rose, Gabrielle pressed her cheek against the tanned one of her father. The suns and storms and the rains which had beat upon Grosjean^ s cheeks were all forgotten. Her eyes looked up to his like twin blue flowers of paradise.

Gabrielle was dressed in gray, the simple convent garb, with bands of white at throat and wrists and waist. Her home-knit stockings did not wholly destroy the trimness of her ankles, nor did her sturdy little shoes seem made for peasant's wear. The sisters, looking down from above, marvelled that so rough a woodsman should have so fair a child.

Gabrielle, he whispered, ^4s all prepared V’

She cuddled her head upon his bosom, but could not speak.

Come then,’^ he said ; “let us be gone.’^

Grosjean passed his arm about her waist, and in his eye there was a challenge to any who might dare detain them. This daughter was his sole possession, and Grosjean meant to claim it.

Mother Louise made a sign to Sister Conflans, who opened an inner door and brought out a basket — the belongings of a young girl. Carefully tucked on top was a dress of coarse gray cloth similar to the one she wore. Gabrielle glanced from her father to the basket and her eyes grew dim again.

^^What are these, good mother Grosjean asked.

^^Her clothing ’’

“She has no need of them. Keep them for the poor.^^ Grosjean dropped a heavy purse into the basket.

“But Jean!^^ Gabrielle protested; “I shall be lonely. I have some trinkets, and

“ Very well,^^ he answered with a smile, lifting the basket and leaving the purse with Mother Louise. “Come.^^

They were moving slowly through the hallway when a sob came from the top of the stair. Gabrielle saw Sister Therese bending over the rail.

“Oh Jean,’^ she said; “they are going away to-morrow ; I shall never see them again. I must

She broke from her father and ran up the stair. Grosjean let the girl have her wish, and waited.

“ Good mother,’’ he inquired, nodding towards the group above ; “ they go to the Sioux Mission ? ”

“Yes, two ; Sisters Therese and Claire.”

“ They are very brave.”

“Daughters of the Church need have no fears,” Mother Louise answered proudly.

Presently Gabrielle came down again very slowly and kissed Mother Louise. “Good-by, mother; may I come back to see you every single day ?”

“ Certainly, my child, this shall always be your 27 home. God grant you may seek it in gladness, and never be driven hither by distress.’’

Father and daughter turned from the foot of the stair. The front door stood open j the outer gate was ajar. Beyond that lay the world, the only world of which Gabrielle had knowledge — a world of swamp and sedge, of pools where frogs croaked and reptiles lurked. That world was bounded by a wall of mosshung trees and by a glittering river. Through the gate she saw the crouching huts, the palmettoes spreading their fan-like leaves from the ground, thickets of cane and bramble, ditches of stagnant water where hideous serpents made their home. She saw the negroes carrying packages to the boats. And the great river held them all in its hollow.

Her eyes sped along the sandy walk, beneath the trellis, through the open gate, across the bayous and the marsh to the grim mysterious woods beyond. She shrank and glanced backwards.