The Chase of Saint-Castin | Page 6

speak to Father Petit. This is heresy."
Madockawando's daughter stood up, and took her pail by the handle.
"Let me carry it," said Saint-Castin.
Her lifted palm barred his approach.
"I do not like men, sagamore. I wish them to keep away from me."
"But that is not Christian," he argued.
"It cannot be unchristian: the priest would lay me under penance for it."
"Father Petit is a lenient soul."
With the simplicity of an angel who would not be longer hindered by mundane society, she took up her pail, saying, "Good-day, sagamore," and swept on across the dead leaves.
Saint-Castin walked after her.
"Go back," commanded Madockawando's daughter, turning.
The officer of the Carignan-Sali��res regiment halted, but did not retreat.
"You must not follow me, sagamore," she remonstrated, as with a child. "I cannot talk to you."
"You must let me talk to you," said Saint-Castin. "I want you for my wife."
She looked at him in a way that made his face scorch. He remembered the year wife, the half-year wife, and the two-months wife at Pentegoet. These three squaws whom he had allowed to form his household, and had taught to boil the pot au feu, came to him from many previous experimental marriages. They were externals of his life, much as hounds, boats, or guns. He could give them all rich dowers, and divorce them easily any day to a succeeding line of legal Abenaqui husbands. The lax code of the wilderness was irresistible to a Frenchman; but he was near enough in age and in texture of soul to this noble pagan to see at once, with her eyesight, how he had degraded the very vices of her people.
"Before the sun goes down," vowed Saint-Castin, "there shall be nobody in my house but the two Etchemin slave men that your father gave me."
The girl heard of his promised reformation without any kindling of the spirit.
"I am not for a wife," she answered him, and walked on with the pail.
Again Saint-Castin followed her, and took the sap pail from her hand. He set it aside on the leaves, and folded his arms. The blood came and went in his face. He was not used to pleading with women. They belonged to him easily, like his natural advantages over barbarians in a new world. The slopes of the Pyrenees bred strong-limbed men, cautious in policy, striking and bold in figure and countenance. The English themselves have borne witness to his fascinations. Manhood had darkened only the surface of his skin, a milk-white cleanness breaking through it like the outflushing of some inner purity. His eyes and hair had a golden beauty. It would have been strange if he had not roused at least a degree of comradeship in the aboriginal woman living up to her highest aspirations.
"I love you. I have thought of you, of nobody but you, even when I behaved the worst. You have kept yourself hid from me, while I have been thinking about you ever since I came to Acadia. You are the woman I want to marry."
Madockawando's daughter shook her head. She had patience with his fantastic persistence, but it annoyed her.
"I am not for a wife," she repeated. "I do not like men."
"Is it that you do not like me?"
"No," she answered sincerely, probing her mind for the truth. "You yourself are different from our Abenaqui men."
"Then why do you make me unhappy?"
"I do not make you unhappy. I do not even think of you."
Again she took to her hurried course, forgetting the pail of sap. Saint-Castin seized it, and once more followed her.
"I beg that you will kiss me," he pleaded, trembling.
The Abenaqui girl laughed aloud.
"Does the sagamore think he is an object of veneration, that I should kiss him?"
"But will you not at least touch your lips to my forehead?"
"No. I touch my lips to holy things."
"You do not understand the feeling I have."
"No, I do not understand it. If you talked every day, it would do no good. My thoughts are different."
Saint-Castin gave her the pail, and looked her in the eyes.
"Perhaps you will some time understand," he said. "I lived many wild years before I did."
She was so glad to leave him behind that her escape was like a backward blow, and he did not make enough allowance for the natural antagonism of a young girl. Her beautiful free motion was something to watch. She was a convert whose penances were usually worked out afoot, for Father Petit knew better than to shut her up.
Saint-Castin had never dreamed there were such women. She was like a nymph out of a tree, without human responsiveness, yet with round arms and waist and rosy column of neck, made to be helplessly adored. He remembered the lonesome moods of his early youth. They must have been a premonition of his fate in falling completely