Early Candlelight. Maud Hart Lovelace
and she thought it interesting. She lifted down a brown leather-bound volume and opened it in the middle. But to her discomfiture, the letters on the page were unfamiliar. She looked at M’sieu Page.
He said consolingly, “That book is written in Greek, Delia. These are mostly in Greek and Latin. But there are some in French, and a few in English.” He turned to Mrs. Boles. “May I lend you something to read?”
“No, thank you. I’m not at all clever, you know.”
“I’ve Cooper and Scott, and Miss Sedgwick?”
“I don’t read novels,” she answered, smiling gently.
“Poetry? Here is Lord Byron.”
She did not answer. She merely turned her head away in the meekest of rebukes.
“Perhaps he isn’t exactly a lady’s poet,” said Jasper Page amusedly.
Mme. Elmire came in to announce dinner. Her black eyes snapped at Deedee’s toes. Deedee found that funny, and her mouth began to curve into its smile. Since M’sieu Page and Mrs. Boles had come, she had been too perplexed to be happy, but now she remembered her bliss.
Sitting at the white and glittering table, she recaptured it completely. With shining eyes but with her usual slow, unhurried manner, she examined the two-tined silver fork. She held her red goblet up to the light to see the world turn rosy. She studied the picture of a farmyard on her plate.
Mme. Elmire gave them each a bowl of soup. It was good soup, and Deedee was enjoying hers when she noticed a pause in the conversation going on between her elders. She looked up to find them smiling at her. What was the matter, she wondered, putting down her spoon? After a moment they continued to eat; observing them, she discovered that they gave none of the noisy smacks of enjoyment which accompanied a meal in the DuGay cabin. Well, then, neither would she. It wasn’t so hard to take soup quietly.
They resumed their conversation. Slowly it came to Deedee that Mowrie was Major Boles. Major Boles was a favorite with the children. He threw potatoes into the air and shot them as they fell, to display his prowess for their delight.
Mrs. Boles was saying, “He goes off with Captain Frenshaw . . .”
That reminded Deedee. “Has the baby come?” she inquired, lifting concerned eyes.
Mrs. Boles put down her spoon. She turned her head away.
“You mean,” asked M’sieu Page, growing red, “Mrs. Frenshaw?”
“Mrs. Frenshaw’s baby. Ma was with her, you know. She was hollering pretty bad when I was there.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said gravely. “No, there’s no news.”
Mme. Elmire came in and took out the empty soup plates. Deedee started to help her, but M’sieu Page said, “Wait a minute, Delia. We’re going to have pilau.”
He started to talk about the birds he had shot the day before. They were partridges, and Mme. Elmire always cooked them in a pilau. Gradually Mrs. Boles brought her face around to the table.
The pilau was followed by crackers and tea. Deedee wondered why it had not all been placed on the table at once. But she wondered more why Mrs. Boles had acted so about Mrs. Frenshaw. Finally she took advantage of a pause to state slowly, “You were there when she hollered.”
Mrs. Boles put up her handkerchief as though she were about to swoon. “Mr. Page,” she said faintly, “really . . .”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Boles,” said M’sieu Page, and putting down the saucer from which he was elegantly sipping his tea, he threw back his handsome head and laughed aloud.
Book 1-Chapter 5
V
WINTER held the fort at the junction of the rivers. Until the new year it had held a willing captive. The first falling of snow, the first covering of the naked hillsides with feathery white, the first glassing over of the waters, these had been pleasant. The children of the garrison floundered joyfully upon new skates. The children of the settlement screamed down the slopes on barrel staves. And the ladies and gentlemen of the command glided forth in tinkling, fur-laden sleighs to the mill at the Falls of St. Anthony, where a sergeant served hot little suppers and one returned beneath a spangled sky.
One enjoyed Christmas in the wilderness. In the decade and more which had passed since the founding of the fort, the Indians had learned the nature of this holiday. They came solemnly to call and send their pipes about the circle, not unmindful of the forthcoming presentations of tobacco and pork. And there was a dancing assembly in the evening, with hot whiskey punch, and all the ladies wearing their diamonds as though Fort Snelling had been West Point.
One enjoyed the New Year’s Eve so dear to the French Canadians. One could see the candles twinkling in their little cabins, and hear the songs of old Canada with which they greeted the jour de l’an. These river-men might seem to be drinking by their fires, but there was a tradition at the Entry. On this night the voyageurs returned to the scenes of their youth. They went at the moment of midnight, their canoes riding high through the snow-filled air, to kneel in old churches, visit old hearths, and kiss old loves back in Quebec.
Memory walked through old men’s minds like a choir boy swinging a censer. Old Jacques would talk of his Marguerite. He had left this Marguerite behind him at St. Anne’s when he set out as a lad. And in a day which never seemed to come, he meant to go back and marry her.
“Wid de curé,” old Jacques, pensive with liquor, would assure the circle of smiling young lieutenants. “Wid de curé, we marry ourselves. She wait for me, my Marguerite. N’est-ce pas, Denis?”
“She true lak de stars,” Denis would nod.
“She wan pretty girl. Black eye. Black hair. Her fader farmeur, beeg farmeur près de St. Anne’s. Annie,” he would call to Indian Annie, who came obediently, “a leetle w’eesky for de gen’lemen. We drink wan toas’ to my Marguerite, de mos’ pretty girl in Canada.”
But with January—the hard moon, the Indians called it—winter grew less charming. It snowed, and it snowed, and it snowed. Drifts to the height of fifteen feet blockaded the prairie. Snow and ice and bitter cold held the fort in relentless barricade.
Mountains of wood were chopped, to vanish in hungry fireplaces. Hunting was impossible; rations grew monotonous. Officers drank too heavily, gambled, called one another atheists and seducers, and quarreled with their wives. Soldiers were flogged until their bare backs bled. They threw their moldy black bread on the parade ground in attempted mutiny. They drank forbidden liquor, and were frozen to death in snowdrifts, or drunkenly invaded the Indian huts, to the wrath of the good Taliaferro who braved many an icy midnight to eject them.
Sometimes death broke the winter’s hold. Perhaps for an Indian child; and the Major sent calico with which to enwrap her, and gartering with which to tie her, and she was hoisted up on a scaffold and not put below ground until spring. Perhaps for a soldier, who was buried with the solemn beat of black-draped drums echoing down the empty valleys, with his comrades stamping their feet and blowing on their fingers. And day by day the sky continued overcast, the snow billowed higher on the prairies, and hours of melting warmth were quickly followed by weeks of cold more biting than before.
The human animal, however, will not stomach too much misery. Led by a buoyant spirit, the soldiers formed a Thespians’ Club. Officers in gala dress, from cocked hats to sashes, ladies in low-cut ball gowns, attended the performance of “The Poor Gentleman.” They applauded the Miss Emily of a slim dragoon who had borrowed a dress and bonnet from his captain’s wife, enjoyed themselves heartily, and acknowledged a good example.
The