seignior they call the patroon, and his name is Van Corlaer."
"Do you know him, Antonia?"
"Yes."
"And is he kindly disposed to you?"
"He was the friend of my husband, Jonas Bronck," trembled Antonia.
"Admit him," said Marie to her lieutenant.
"Alone, madame?"
"With all his followers, if he wills it. And bring him as quickly as you
can to this table."
"We need Edelwald to manage these affairs," added the lady of the fort,
as her subaltern went out. "The Swiss is faithful, but he has manners as
rugged as his mountains."
IV.
THE WIDOW ANTONIA.
Antonia sat in tense quiet, though whitened even across the lips where
all the color of her face usually appeared; and a stalwart and courtly
man presented himself in the hall. Some of the best blood of the Dutch
Republic had evidently gone to his making. He had the vital and reliable
presence of a master in affairs, and his clean-shaven face had firm
mouth-corners. Marie rose up without pause to meet him. He was freshly
and carefully dressed in clothes carried for this purpose across the
wilderness, and gained favor even with Lady Dorinda, as a man bearing
around him in the New World the atmosphere of Europe. He made his
greeting in French, and explained that he was passing through Acadia on
a journey to Montreal.
"We stand much beholden to monsieur," said Marie with a quizzical face,
"that he should travel so many hundred leagues out of his way to visit
this poor fort. I have heard that the usual route to Montreal is that
short and direct one up the lake of Champlain."
Van Corlaer's smile rested openly on Antonia as he answered,--
"Madame, a man's most direct route is the one that leads to his object."
"Doubtless, monsieur. And you are very welcome to this fort. We have
cause to love the New Netherlanders."
Marie turned to deliver Antonia her guest, but Antonia stood without
word or look for him. She seemed a scared Dutch child, bending all her
strength and all her inherited quiet on maintaining self-control. He
approached her, searching her face with his near-sighted large eyes.
"Had Madame Bronck no expectation of seeing Arendt Van Corlaer in
Acadia?"
"No, mynheer," whispered Antonia.
"But since I have come have you nothing to say to me?"
"I hope I see you well, mynheer."
"You might see me well," reproached Van Corlaer, "if you would look at
me."
She lifted her eyes and dropped them again.
"This Acadian air has given you a wan color," he noted.
"Did you leave Teunis and Marytje Harmentse well?" quavered Antonia,
catching at any scrap. Van Corlaer stared, and answered that Teunis and
Marytje were well, and would be grateful to her for inquiring.
"For they also helped to hide this priest from the Mohawks," added
Antonia without coherence. Marie could hear her heart laboring.
"What priest?" inquired Van Corlaer, and as he looked around his eyes
fell on the cassocked figure at the other table.
"Monsieur Corlaer," spoke Father Jogues, "I was but waiting fit
opportunity to recall myself and your blessed charity to your memory."
Van Corlaer's baffled look changed to instant glad recognition.
"That is Father Jogues!"
He met the priest with both hands, and stood head and shoulders taller
while they held each other like brothers.
"I thought to find you in Montreal, Father Jogues, and not here, where
in my dim fashion I could mistake you for the chaplain of the fort."
"Monsieur Corlaer, I have not forgot one look of yours. I was a great
trouble to you with, my wounds, and my hiding and fever. And what pains
you took to put me on board the ship in the night! It would be better
indeed to see me at Montreal than ever in such plight again at Fort
Orange, Monsieur Corlaer!"
"Glad would we be to have you at Fort Orange again, without pain to
yourself, Father Jogues."
"And how is my friend who so much enjoyed disputing about religion?"
"Our dominie is well, and sent by my hand his hearty greeting to that
very learned scholar Father Jogues. We heard you had come back from
France."
Van Corlaer dropped one hand on the donné's shoulder and leaned down to
examine his smiling face.
"It is my brother Lalande, the donné of this present mission," said the
priest.
"My young monsieur," said Van Corlaer, "keep Father Jogues out of the
Mohawks' mouths henceforth. They have really no stomach for religion,
though they will eat saints. It often puzzles a Dutchman to handle that
Iroquois nation."
"Our lives are not our own," said the young Frenchman.
"We must bear the truth whether it be received or not," said Father
Jogues.
"Whatever errand brought you into Acadia," said Van Corlaer, turning
back to the priest, "I am glad to find you here, for I shall now have
your company back to Montreal."
"Impossible, Monsieur Corlaer. For I have set out to plant a mission
among the Abenakis. They asked for a missionary. Our guides deserted us,
and we have wandered off our course and been obliged to throw away
nearly all the furniture of our mission. But we now hope to make our way
along the coast."
"Father Jogues, the Abenakis are all gone northward. We passed through
their towns on the Penobscot."
"But they will come back?"
"Some time, though no man at Penobscot would be able to say when."
Father Jogues' perplexed brows drew together. Wanderings, hunger, and
imprisonment he could bear serenely as incidents of his journey. But to
have his flock scattered before he could reach it was real calamity.
"We must make shift to follow them," he said.
"How will you follow them without supplies, and without knowing where
they may turn in the woods?"
"I see we shall have to wait for them at Penobscot," said Father Jogues.
"Take a heretic's advice instead. For I speak not as the enemy of your
religion when I urge you to journey with me back to Montreal. You can
make another and better start to establish this mission."
The priest shook his head.
"I do not see my way. But my way will be shown to me, or word will come
sending me back."
Some sign from the lady of the fortress recalled Van Corlaer to his duty
as a guest. The supper grew cold while he parleyed. So he turned quickly
to take the chair she had set for him, and saw that Antonia was gone.
"Madame Bronck will return," said Marie, pitying his chagrin, and
searching her own mind for Antonia's excuse. "We brought a half-starved
baby home from our last expedition, and it lies dead upstairs. Women
have soft hearts, monsieur: they cannot see such sights unmoved. She
hath lost command of herself to-night."
Van Corlaer's face lightened with tenderness. Bachelor though he was, he
had held infants in his hands for baptism, and not only the children of
Fort Orange but dark broods of the Mohawks often rubbed about his knees.
"You brought your men into the fort, Monsieur Corlaer?"
"No, madame. I sent them back to camp by the falls. We are well
provisioned. And there was no need for them to come within the walls."
"If you lack anything I hope you will command it of us."
"Madame, you are already too bounteous; and we lack nothing."
"The Sieur de la Tour being away, the conduct and honor of this fort are
left in my hands. And he has himself ever been friendly to the people of
the colonies."
"That is well known, madame."
Soft waxlight, the ample shine of the fire, trained service, and housing
from the chill spring night, abundant food and flask, all failed to
bring up the spirits of Van Corlaer. Antonia did not return to the
table. The servingmen went and came betwixt hall and cook-house. Every
time one of them opened the door, the world of darkness peered in, and
over the night quiet of the fort could be heard the tidal up-rush of the
river.
"The men can now bring our ship to anchor," observed Marie. Father
Jogues and his donné, eating with the habitual self-denial of men who
must inure themselves to hunger, still spoke with Van Corlaer about
their mission. But during all his talk he furtively watched the
stairway.
The dwarf sat on her accustomed stool beside her lady, picking up bits
from a well heaped silver platter on her knees; and she watched Van
Corlaer's discomfiture when Lady Dorinda took him in hand and Antonia
yet remained away.
V.
JONAS BRONCK'S HAND.
The guests had deserted the hall fire and a sentinel was set for the
night before Madame La Tour knocked at Antonia's door.
Antonia was slow to open it. But she finally let Marie into her chamber,
where the fire had died on the hearth, and retired again behind the
screen to continue dabbing her face with water. The candle was also
behind the screen, and it threw out Antonia's shadow, and showed her
disordered flax-white hair flung free of its cap and falling to its
length. Marie sat down in the little world of shadow outside the screen.
The joists directly above Antonia flickered with the flickering light.
One window high in the wall showed the misty darkness which lay upon
Fundy Bay. The room was chilly.
"Monsieur Corlaer is gone, Antonia," said Marie.
Antonia's shadow leaped, magnifying the young Dutchwoman's start.
"Madame, you have not sent him off on his journey in the night?"
"I sent him not. I begged him to remain. But he had such cold welcome
from his own countrywoman that he chose the woods rather than the
hospitality of Fort St. John."
Much as Antonia stirred and clinked flasks, her sobs grew audible behind
the screen. She ran out with her arms extended and threw herself on the
floor at Marie's knees, transformed by anguish. Marie in full compassion
drew the girlish creature to her breast, repenting herself while Antonia
wept and shook.
"I was cruel to say Monsieur Corlaer is gone. He has only left the
fortress to camp with his men at the falls. He will be here two more
days, and to-morrow you must urge him to stay our guest."
"Madame, I dare not see him at all!"
"But why should you not see Monsieur Corlaer?"
Antonia settled to the floor and rested her head and arms on her
friend's lap.
"For you love him."
"O madame! I did not show that I loved him? No. It would be horrible for
me to love him."
"What has he done? And it is plain he has come to court you."
"He has long courted me, madame."
"And you met him as a stranger and fled from him as a wolf!--this
Hollandais gentleman who hath saved our French people--even
priests--from the savages!"
"All New Amsterdam and Fort Orange hold him in esteem," said Antonia,
betraying pride. "I have heard he can do more with the Iroquois tribes
than any other man of the New World." She uselessly wiped her eyes. She
was weak from long crying.
"Then why do you run from him?"
"Because he hath too witching a power on me, madame. I cannot spin or
knit or sew when he is by; I must needs watch every motion of his if he
once fastens my eyes."
"I have noticed he draws one's heart," laughed Marie.
"He does. It is like witchcraft. He sets me afloat so that I lose my
feet and have scarce any will of my own. I never was so disturbed by my
husband Jonas Bronck," complained Antonia.
"Did you love your husband?" inquired Marie.
"We always love our husbands, madame. Mynheer Bronck was very good to
me."
"You have never told me much of Monsieur Bronck, Antonia."
"I don't like to speak of him now, madame. It makes me shiver."
"You are not afraid of the dead?"
"I was never afraid of him living. I regarded him as a father."
"But one's husband is not to be regarded as a father."
"He was old enough to be my father, madame. I was not more than sixteen,
besides being an orphan, and Mynheer Bronck was above fifty, yet he
married me, and became the best husband in the colony. He was far from
putting me in such states as Mynheer Van Corlaer does."
"The difference is that you love Monsieur Corlaer."
"Do not speak that word, madame."
"Would you have him marry another woman?"
"Yes," spoke Antonia in a stoical voice, "if that pleased him best. I
should then be driven to no more voyages. He followed me to New
Amsterdam; and I ventured on a long journey to Boston, where I had
kinspeople, as you know. But there I must have broken down, madame, if I
had not met you. It was fortunate for me that the English captain
brought you out of your course. For mynheer set out to follow me there.
And now he has come across the wilderness even to this fort!"
"Confess," said Marie, giving her a little shake, "how pleased you are
with such a determined lover!"
But instead of doing this, Antonia burst again into frenzied sobbing and
hugged her comforter.
"O madame, you are the only person I dare love in the world!"
Marie smoothed the young widow's damp hair with the quieting stroke
which calms children.
"Let mother help thee," she said; and neither of them remembered that
she was scarcely as old as Antonia. In love and motherhood, in military
peril, and contact with riper civilizations, to say nothing of inherited
experience, the lady of St. John had lived far beyond Antonia Bronck.
"Your husband made you take an oath not to wed again,--is it so?"
"No, madame, he never did."
"Yet you told me he left you his money?"
"Yes. He was very good to me. For I had neither father nor mother."
"And he bound you by no promise?
"None at all, madame."
"What, then, can you find to break your heart upon in the suit of
Monsieur Corlaer? You are free. Even as my lord--if I were dead--would
be free to marry any one; not excepting D'Aulnay's widow."
Marie smiled at that improbable union.
"No, I do not feel free." Antonia shivered close to her friend's knees.
"Madame, I cannot tell you. But I will show you the token."
"Show me the token, therefore. And a sound token it must be, to hold you
wedded to a dead man whom in life you regarded as a father."
Antonia rose upon her feet, but stood dreading the task before her.
"I have to look at it once every month," she explained, "and I have
looked at it once this month already."
The dim chill room with its one eye fixed on darkness was an eddy in
which a single human mind resisted that century's current of
superstition. Marie sat ready to judge and destroy whatever spell the
cunning old Hollandais had left on a girl to whom he represented law and
family.
Antonia beckoned her behind the screen, and took from some ready
hiding-place a small oak box studded with nails, which Marie had never
before seen. How alien to the simple and open life of the Dutch widow
was this secret coffer! Her face changed while she looked at it; grieved
girlhood passed into sunken age. Her lips turned wax-white, and drooped
at the corners. She set the box on a dressing-table beside the candle,
unlocked it and turned back the lid. Marie was repelled by a faint odor
aside from its breath of dead spices.
Antonia unfolded a linen cloth and showed a pallid human hand, its stump
concealed by a napkin. It was cunningly preserved, and shrunken only by
the countless lines which denote approaching age. It was the right hand
of a man who must have had imagination. The fingers were sensitively
slim, with shapely blue nails, and without knobs or swollen joints. It
was a crafty, firm-possessing hand, ready to spring from its nest to
seize and eternally hold you.
The lady of St. John had seen human fragments scattered by cannon, and
sword and bullet had done their work before her sight. But a faintness
beyond the touch of peril made her grasp the table and turn from that
ghastly hand.
"It cannot be, Antonia"--
"Yes, it is Mynheer Bronck's hand," whispered Antonia, subduing herself
to take admonition from the grim digits.
"Lock it up; and come directly away from it. Come out of this room. You
have opened a grave here."
VI.
The Mending.
But Antonia delayed to set in order her hair and cap and all her
methodical habits of life. When Jonas Bronck's hand was snugly locked in
its case and no longer obliged her to look at it, she took a pensive
pleasure in the relic, bred of usage to its company. She came out of her
chamber erect and calm. Marie was at the stairs speaking to the soldier
stationed in the hall below. He had just piled up his fire, and its
homely splendor sent back to remoteness all human dreads. He hurried up
the stairway to his lady.
"Go knock at the door of the priest, Father Jogues, and demand his
cassock," she said.
The man halted, and asked,--
"What shall I do with it?"
"Bring it hither to me."
"But if he refuses to have it brought?"
"The good man will not refuse. Yet if he asks why," said Madame La Tour
smiling, "tell him it is the custom of the house to take away at night
the cassock of any priest who stays here."
"Yes, madame."
The soldier kept to himself his opinion of meddling with black gowns,
and after some parleying at the door of Father Jogues' apartment,
received the garment and brought it to his lady.
"We will take our needles, and sit by the hall fire," said Marie to
Antonia. "Did you note the raggedness of Father Jogues' cassock? I am an
enemy to papists, especially D'Aulnay de Charnisay; but who can harden
her heart against a saint because he patters prayers on a rosary? Thou
and I will mend his black gown. I cannot see even a transient member of
my household uncomfortable."
The soldier put two waxlights on the table by the hearth, and withdrew
to the stairway. He was there to guard as prisoner the priest for whom
his lady set herself to work. She drew her chair to Antonia's and they
spread the cassock between them. It had been neatly beaten and picked
clear of burrs, but the rents in it were astonishing. Even within
sumptuous fireshine the black cloth taxed sight; and Marie paused
sometimes to curtain her eyes with her hand, but Antonia worked on with
Dutch steadiness. The touch of a needle within a woman's fingers cools
all her fevers. She stitches herself fast to the race. There is safety
and saneness in needlework.
"This spot wants a patch," said Antonia.
"Weave it together with stitches," said Marie. "Daughter of presumption!
would you add to the gown of a Roman priest?"
"Priest or dominie," commented Antonia, biting a fresh thread, "he would
be none the worse for a stout piece of cloth to his garment."
"But we have naught to match with it. I would like to set in a little
heresy cut from one of the Sieur de la Tour's good Huguenot doublets."
The girlish faces, bent opposite, grew placid with domestic interest.
Marie's cheeks ripened by the fire, but the whiter Hollandaise warmed
only through the lips. This hall's glow made more endurable the image of
Jonas Bronck's hand. "When was it cut off, Antonia?" murmured Marie,
stopping to thread a needle.
The perceptible blight again fell over Antonia's face as she replied,--
"After he had been one day dead."
"Then he did not grimly lop it off himself?"
"Oh, no," whispered Antonia with deep sighing. "Mynheer the doctor did
that, on his oath to my husband. He was the most learned cunning man in
medicine that ever came to our colony. He kept the hand a month in his
furnace before it was ready to send to me."
"Did Monsieur Bronck, before he died, tell you his intention to do
this?" pressed Marie, feeling less interest in the Dutch embalmer's
method than in the sinuous motive of a man who could leave such a
bequest.
"Yes, madame."
"I do marvel at such an act!" murmured the lady of St. John, challenging
Jonas Bronck's loyal widow to take up his instant defense.
"Madame, he was obliged to do it by a dream he had."
"He dreamed that his hand would keep off intruders?" smiled Marie.
"Yes," responded Antonia innocently, "and all manner of evil fortune. I
have to look at it once a month as long as I live, and carry it with me
everywhere. If it should be lost or destroyed trouble and ruin would
fall not only on me but on every one who loved me."
The woman of larger knowledge did not argue against this credulity.
Antonia was of the provinces, bred out of their darkest hours of
superstition and savage danger. But it was easy to see how Jonas
Bronck's hand must hold his widow from second marriage. What lover could
she ask to share her monthly gaze upon it, and thus half realize the
continued fleshly existence of Jonas Bronck? The rite was in its nature
a secret one. Shame, gratitude, the former usages of her life, and a
thousand other influences, were yet in the grip of that rigid hand. And
if she lost or destroyed it, nameless and weird calamity, foreseen by a
dying man, must light upon the very lover who undertook to separate her
from her ghastly company.
"The crafty old Hollandais!" thought Marie. "He was cunning in his
knowledge of Antonia. But he hath made up this fist at a younger
Hollandais who will scarce stop for dead hands."
The Dutch gentlewoman snuffed both waxlights. Her lips were drawn in
grieved lines. Marie glanced up at one of the portraits on the wall, and
said:--
"The agonies which men inflict on the beings they love best, must work
perpetual astonishment in heaven. Look at the Sieur Claude de la Tour, a
noble of France who could stoop to become the first English knight of
Acadia, forcing his own son to take up arms against him."
The elder La Tour frowned and flickered in his frame.
"Yet he had a gracious presence," said Antonia. "Lady Dorinda says he
was the handsomest man at the English court."
"I doubt it not; the La Tours are a beautiful race. And it was that very
graciousness which made him a weak prisoner in the hands of the English.
They married him to one of the queen's ladies, and granted him all
Acadia, which he had only to demand from his son, if he would turn it
over to England and declare himself an English subject I can yet see his
ships as they rounded Cape Sable; and the face of my lord when he read
his father's summons to surrender the claims of France. We were to be
loaded with honors. France had driven us out on account of our faith;
England opened her arms. We should be enriched, and live forever a happy
and united family, sole lords of Acadia."
Marie broke off another thread.
"The king of France, who has outlawed my husband and delivered him to
his enemy, should have seen him then, Antonia. Sieur Claude La Tour put
both arms around him and pleaded. It was, 'My little Charles, do not
disgrace me by refusal;' and 'My father, I love you, but here I
represent the rights of France.' 'The king of France is no friend of
ours,' says Sieur Claude. 'Whether he rewards or punishes me,' says
Charles, 'this province belongs to my country, and I will hold it while
I have life to defend it.' And he was obliged to turn his cannon against
His own father; and the ships were disabled and driven off."
"Was the old mynheer killed?"
"His pride was killed. He could never hold up his head in England again,
and he had betrayed France. My lord built him a house outside our fort,
yet neither could he endure Acadia. He died in England. You know I
brought his widow thence with me last year. She should have her dower of
lands here, if we can hold them against D'Aulnay de Charnisay."
The lady of the fort shook out Father Jogues' cassock and rose from the
mending. Antonia picked up their tools and flicked bits of thread from
her skirt.
"I am glad it is done, madame, for you look heavy-eyed, as any one
ought, after tossing two nights on Fundy Bay and sewing on a black gown
until midnight cock-crow of the third."
"I am not now fit to face a siege," owned Marie. "We must get to bed.
Though first I crave one more look at the dead baby Zélie hath in
charge. There is a soft weakness in me which mothers even the outcast
young of my enemy."
VII.
A FRONTIER GRAVEYARD.
The next morning was gray and transparent: a hemisphere of mist filled
with light; a world of vapor palpitating with some indwelling spirit.
That lonesome lap of country opposite Fort St. John could scarcely be
defined. Scraps of its dawning spring color showed through the mobile
winding and ascending veil. Trees rose out of the lowlands between the
fort and the falls.
Van Corlaer was in the gorge, watching that miracle worked every day in
St. John River. The tide was racing inland. The steep rapids within
their throat of rock were clear of fog. Foam is the flower of water; and
white petal after white petal was swept under by the driving waves. As
the tide rose the tumult of falls ceased. The channel filled. All rocks
were drowned. For a brief time another ship could have passed up that
natural lock, as La Tour's ship had passed on the cream-smooth current
at flood tide the day before.
Van Corlaer could not see its ragged sails around the breast of rock,
but the hammering of its repairers had been in his ears since dawn; and
through the subsiding wash of water he now heard men's voices.