MOOSEHEART MAGAZINE
Page Six
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Jeanne the untamed
JIMooseheart Stoiy byFlorence Ward
tune in the great city . . . Sheecawgo, where was the mail-order . . . would take her and from Marie everyone at Mooseheart should know the wickedness of Jeanne. For such as she there were black cellars, a feast of bread and water . . .
It might have been another of Marie’s lies . . . but Marie had told the truth, it seemed, about Daddy Duchesne. A tree had fallen. Jeanne, of course, knew nothing of the inquiry that set in motion the train of events hurrying her to Mooseheart that December. She knew nothing of the Tupins’ disregard of regulations by which children are brought to the school the first and fifteenth of every month. She only knew that for a fortnight she had been almost a prisoner, that on the blackest of nights they had taken her shrieking from the Tupin cabin and put her with Marie aboard a hot, ill-smelling train and that with every phrase Marie vouchsafed her a blacker despair settled on her.
The train slowed with a grind of brakes. Outside the tracks skirted a river, black between white banks, the stripped branches of the trees standing against the gray sky like gray lace. The door of the car slammed open letting in a blast of cold air and Marie stood up, her fingers gripping Jeanne’s arm, jerking her into the aisle.
Jeanne shook back her black hair and peered toward a winding walk that disappeared among clumps of firs, snow-weighted like those of her own forest. Somewhere that walk led . . . away from Marie and the shame to which Marie was taking her. She slipped from Marie’s grasp and darted forward, up the slope, between the great snowy boulders. Her eyes, beneath her flying black mane were flaming with the fear of a hunted animal. Behind her she heard Marie’s panting scream and fled faster, dodging in and out between the groups she met. A big boy loomed before her, laughing . . . dodged as she dodged. His
THEY had left the clattering, smoky city with its rows of dirty streets cutting obliquely beneath the tracks. The train was rolling through a country of wide fields, their white darkened here and there with thin clumps of trees. Beyond the fields the sky lowered, threatening and dull. Snow flakes eddied lazily through a gray mist and clustered in thick blotches on the branches of the trees.
Jeanne, her nose pressed fiercely against the cold window, counted the telegraph poles with an intentness that eased a little the black rage and dread in her heart. She had been angry many times in her short life with the Tupins, but never had she known such anger as now—
“Are we , . . almost there?” she asked in a hushed, jerky voice.
Marie Tupin’s lips set in a thin line. Her sharp eyes looked down from beneath drooping lids at the sullen, impudent little face.
“You are not so eager, eh?” she said mockingly, “now that you are close? Not so eager for the black cellars and the feast of bread and water that they have for such as you. You leet’ devil,” she added viciously.
Jeanne showed her teeth at the word, but the train was no place for a fight. She shrugged her thin shoulders, crowding back as far from Marie as possible, and sat silent, a black-eyed, shock-haired twelve-year-old, ragged and dirty.
As far back as Jeanne could remember she had hated Marie Tupin. Jeanne had lived with the Tupins 'since her own mother died. Around the Tupin cabin was the great loneliness of the woods of fir and pine with an occasional clump of white birch shining unexpectedly against the darker green. There were two cabins in the clearing. One, to which Pierre Duchesne had brought Jeanne, his bride, and in which Jeanne, his baby, was born, was closed and empty. Its doorstep faced the. road that dropped through half-cleared, burnt-over land to a white village clustering about a pointed spire. Sometimes Jeanne and Daddy Duchesne sat and talked. They talked of the days before Jeanne’s mamma died and left them, when they still had a home. But now Daddy slept wherever his was—and Jeanne lived with the Tupins, whom she hated.
For long stretches Daddy Duchesne was gone to the lumbering camps further north. Jeanne always knew when he was coming home again because, suddenly, there would be new things for her, ordered by Mother Tupin from the mail-order house, new dresses, new shoes, a new hat. And Mother Tupin displaying them, explaining volubly how they were costly . . . Mon Dieu! . . . what ravages on the purse! Duchesne, impressed, always gave her much money, far more than the things had cost, as Jeanne well knew. Jeanne knew that Mother Tupin was lying and cheating her father. Jeanne hated her for the lies as she hated Marie for her blows. Jeanne did not complain, however. With Marie, Jeanne could hold her own, and she knew that Daddy Duchesne wanted her happy and believed that she was as happy as he wanted her to be. Mother Tupin was not unkind. On the day the money-order came for Jeanne’s keep, she was always very kind indeed, almost sickening.
Her kindness ended sharply. Marie explained vindictively that Jeane was alone now, that her Daddy was never coming back again. There was something about a tree falling . . . Jeanne screamed at her lying and struck savagely. But for once Mother Tupin’s blows echoed Marie’s. They rained on Jeanne’s thin shoulders ... on her bent head. She had crowded into the corner, striking back breathlessly when the door opened and three men came in. They had come up from the village, they explained in a roughly gentle fashion. Jeanne was to go far away to a school ... a place called Mooseheart.
“Tscah. When ? ” Mother Tupin asked, arms akimbo. “When? When? Does she stay here long . . . the p’tite sauvage . . . eating my bread? I ask you, when?”
As soon, the older man said, as room could be made. It was a place crowded with children. These things took a little time. Afterward, Marie explained that also. Jeanne was to be sent away because she was a wicked young devil, wickeder than anyone in the village, the wickedest child in the world. Marie who was going to seek her for-
hand caught her shoulder and with a snarl of rage, she turned and bit at it, shaking her head impishly at his gasp of pain. But the hand held.
“You’re frightened, kid,” he said. “What are you afraid of?”
“Marie • • • takin’ me . . . Mooseheart . . . ’” “There’s nothing to be afraid of here. You’ll like it.” He turned the small trembling figure toward a great tree at which men were working with ladders. “That’s the Mooseheart Christmas tree,” he said. “I’m helping string the wires. All Christmas week it’s lighted every night. You can see it all up and down the river. You know tomorrow’s Christmas, kid, don’t you? Wish you a merry one. Merry Christmas.”
Marie came up and dragged Jeanne away. For a wonder she did not fight. She walked on, thinking. Christmas! On Christmas Daddy Duchesne had always sent her a present. Wherever he was, the present had come. This year before he went away he had promised she should have a pair of skates. Wherever he was he would send the skates he said . . . Jeanne settled back into deep speculation. Marie had pushed her into a chair near the stove in the Information Office at the fork of the roads. Opposite her were long pictures . . . pictures of many children sitting on a bank in the sunshine. Marie’s voice came to her, telling lies, pretending stupidity at Mrs. Dailey’s questions. Mr. Dailey, tipped back in a swivel chair, listened with a bored air.
“She wasn’t expected,” he said finally. “Not till the first. You’d no business bringing her.”
Jeanne knew vaguely that something was awry. She sat sullenly, refusing to look at Marie when she departed with Mrs. Dailey, refusing to answer when Andrew spoke to her. An hour passed. Dusk came down deepening the gray.
When a woman came for her, Jeanne went quiet-
(Continued on vane 18)