Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1902-12-18

courteous gentleman
| did you ever see him?'
Twice only
! "He used to tell his wife he intended
to live a hundred years. And suppose
he would have done it. if he had not been
tomahawked and scalped. You'll never
get De Chaumont, he used to say to her.
| I'll see that he never gets youp re-
! member the name very well, because 1t
was the name OF that pretty creature who
danced for us in the cabin on Lake
/ George
| DE Chaumont was her father / said.
HE would have married Madame de
/ Terrier, and restored her estate, If she
had accepted him, and the marquis had
not come back"
Saints have pityl' said Madame Ursule.
| "And the poor old man must make every
body and himself so uncomfortable"
but how could he help living?
True enough. Gods times are not
ours. But see what he has made of her!"
/ thought of my Cloud Mother walking
4 enclosed from the world Upon a'height of
changeless youth. She could not feel an
other shock. She was past both ambition
/ and poverty. If she had ever felt the
sweet anguish of love-Ohl she must have
understood when she kissed me and said:
| "'I will come to you sometime!' THE an
| guish--the hoping, waiting, expecting. re-
\ ceiving nothing, all were gone by. Even
mother cares no longer touched her. Paul
: was grown. She could not be made any,
thing that was base. Unseen forces had
| worked with .-er and would work with
her still.
'You told me-" 1 said to Madame Ur-
, sule, "the Indians were afraid of her
when they. burned the settlement. Was
the change so sudden?''
Madame Jordans story was like this:
! 1t happened in broad. daylight. Two men
went into the woods hunting bee trees.
The Indians caught and killed them with
in two miles of the Clearinghouse of
those very Winnebagoes you treated with
| for your land 1t was sunshiny day in
| September. You could hear the poultry
growing. and the children playing in the
! dooryards Madeleine's little Paul was
never far away from her. The Indians
rushed in with yells and finished the set
| Element I'm a few minutes. Madame Jor-
dan and her family were protected, but
she saw children dashed against trees.
| and her neighbors struck down and
| scalped before she could plead for them.
| And little good pleading would have
done. An Indian seized Paul. His father
and the old servant lay dead across the
| doorstep. His mother would not let him
go. The Indian dragged her on her knees
| and struck her on the head Madame Jor-
dan ran out at the risk Of being scalped
herself, and got the poor girl into her
| cabin. The Indian came back for Made
leine's scalp. Madeleine did not see him.
| She never seemed to notice anybody
again She stood up quivering the whole
| length of her body, and laughed in his
! face. IT was dreadful to hear her above
the cries of the children. The Indian
went away like a scared hound. And none
| of the others would touch her."
After 1 heard this story / was thankful
every day that Eagle could not remem-
Der; that natural happiness had its way
with her elastic body.
Madame UrsuIe told me the family
learned to give her liberty. She rowed
alone upon the river. and went where she
pleased. The men In La -Baye would step
aside for her. Strangers disturbed her
by bringing the Consciousness Of some
| thing unusual. lt
Once surprised Marie and Katrina
sitting close to the fire at twilight, talk
ing about lovers. Eagle was near them
| on a stool.
THAT girl!'' exclaimed Katrina, speak
| ing of the absent with strong disapprov-
al, lis one of the kind that will let anoth-
| er girl take her sweetheart and then sit
around and look injured! Now If she
could get him from me she might have
him! But she'd have to get him first!'
Eagle listened In the attitude Of young
| sister, giving me to understand by a
look that wisdom flowed, and she was
! learning.
We rose one morning to find the world
/ buried in snow. The river was frozen
and it's channel padded thick. AS for the
| bay stretches of snow fields, with dark
pools and broken gray ridges met ice at
the end of the world.
1t was so cold that paper stuck to the
fingers like feathers. and the nails tingled
with frost. The white eartn crealSed un-
| der@foot and when a sled went by the
snow cried out in shrill long resistance,
| spirit complaining of being trampled.
Explosions came from the river and elm
F, limbs and timbers of the house startled us.
| White fur clothed the inner key holes.
Tree trunks We're black as ink against a
background of snow. The oaks alone
! kept their dried foliage which ratified ike
many skeletons, instead OF rustling in its
faded redness, because there was no life
in 1t.
But the colder it grew the higher Orig
| mons log fires mounted. And when chan
nels were cut in the snow both along the
| ridge above Green Bay, and across coun-
try in every direction, French trains
! moved out with janglings bells. and maids
| and men uttered voice sounds which
/ spread as by miracle on the diffusing air
! from the horizon to horizon. You could
hear the officers speaking across the riv-
er: and dogs were like to shake the sky
/ down with LNelE pafklHS. EGnO6S rum
the smallest noises were born in that mag
nihed. glaring world.
| The whole festive winter spun past.
Marie and Katrina brought young men to
the peaks of hope in the ''twosing" seat,
| and plunged them down to despair quite
! in the American fashion. Christmas and
New Years Days were great festivals,
when the settlement ate and drank at
Pierre Grignon's expense, and made him
| glad as If he fathered the whole post.
Madame Grignon spun and looked to the
house. And a thousand changes passed
| over the landscape. But in all that time
no one could see any change in my Cloud
Mother. She sewed like a child. She
laughed. and danced gavottes. She trod
the snow, and mufled in robes, with Mad
! anne Ursule and the girls. flew over it in
French train; a sliding box with two or
three horses hitched tandem. Every
evening sat by her side at the fire, while
she made little coats and trousers for me.
But remembrance never came into her
eyes. The. cloud stood round about her
as it did when 1 first tried to penetrate
il.
My own dim days we're often In mind.
| tried to recall sensations. But ] had
lived a purely physical life. Her blum
ders of judgment and delusion of bodily
| shrinking were no part of my experience.
| The thinking Of self in me had been par
alyzed While the thinking self in her
was alive in a cloud Both of us were
| ,,,av,orxyIoss avceptipv her recollection of