Conjurors House | Page 2

voyageurs, the beaded moccasins
and leggings of the mètis, the capotes of the brigade, the variegated
costumes of the Crees and Ojibways. Like the wild roses around the
edge of the muskegs, this brief flowering of the year passed. Again the
nights were long, again the frost crept down from the eternal snow,
again the wolves howled across barren wastes.
Just now the girl stood ankle-deep in green grasses, a bath of sunlight
falling about her, a tingle of salt wind humming up the river from the
bay's offing. She was clad in gray wool, and wore no hat. Her soft hair,
the color of ripe wheat, blew about her temples, shadowing eyes of
fathomless black. The wind had brought to the light and delicate brown
of her complexion a trace of color to match her lips, whose scarlet did
not fade after the ordinary and imperceptible manner into the tinge of
her skin, but continued vivid to the very edge; her eyes were wide and
unseeing. One hand rested idly on the breech of an ornamented bronze
field-gun.

McDonald, the chief trader, passed from the house to the store where
his bartering with the Indians was daily carried on; the other
Scotchman in the Post, Galen Albret, her father, and the head Factor of
all this region, paced back and forth across the veranda of the factory,
caressing his white beard; up by the stockade, young Achille Picard
tuned his whistle to the note of the curlew; across the meadow from the
church wandered Crane, the little Church of England missionary,
peering from short-sighted pale blue eyes; beyond the coulee, Sarnier
and his Indians chock-chock-chocked away at the seams of the long
coast-trading bateau. The girl saw nothing, heard nothing. She was
dreaming, she was trying to remember.
In the lines of her slight figure, in its pose there by the old gun over the
old, old river, was the grace of gentle blood, the pride of caste. Of all
this region her father was the absolute lord, feared, loved, obeyed by all
its human creatures. When he went abroad, he travelled in a state
almost mediæval in its magnificence; when he stopped at home, men
came to him from the Albany, the Kenógami, the Missináibe, the
Mattágami, the Abítibi--from all the rivers of the North--to receive his
commands. Way was made for him, his lightest word was attended. In
his house dwelt ceremony, and of his house she was the princess.
Unconsciously she had taken the gracious habit of command. She had
come to value her smile, her word, to value herself. The lady of a realm
greater than the countries of Europe, she moved serene, pure, lofty
amid dependants.
And as the lady of this realm she did honor to her father's
guests--sitting stately behind the beautiful silver service, below the
portrait of the Company's greatest explorer, Sir George Simpson,
dispensing crude fare in gracious manner, listening silently to the
conversation, finally withdrawing at the last with a sweeping courtesy
to play soft, melancholy, and world-forgotten airs on the old piano,
brought over years before by the Lady Head, while the guests made
merry with the mellow port and ripe Manila cigars which the Company
supplied its servants. Then coffee, still with her natural Old World
charm of the grande dame. Such guests were not many, nor came often.
There was McTavish of Rupert's House, a three days' journey to the

northeast; Rand of Fort Albany, a week's travel to the northwest; Mault
of Fort George, ten days beyond either, all grizzled in the Company's
service. With them came their clerks, mostly English and Scotch
younger sons, with a vast respect for the Company, and a vaster for
their Factor's daughter. Once in two or three years appeared the
inspectors from Winnipeg, true lords of the North, with their
six-fathom canoes, their luxurious furs, their red banners trailing like
gonfalons in the water. Then this post of Conjuror's House feasted and
danced, undertook gay excursions, discussed in public or private
conclave weighty matters, grave and reverend advices, cautions, and
commands. They went. Desolation again crept in.
The girl dreamed. She was trying to remember. Far-off, half-forgotten
visions of brave, courtly men, of gracious, beautiful women, peopled
the clouds of her imaginings. She heard them again, as voices beneath
the roar of rapids, like far-away bells tinkling faintly through a wind,
pitying her, exclaiming over her; she saw them dim and changing, as
wraiths of a fog, as shadow pictures in a mist beneath the moon,
leaning to her with bright, shining eyes full of compassion for the little
girl who was to go so far away into an unknown land; she felt them, as
the touch of a breeze when the night is still, fondling her, clasping her,
tossing