camp to begin their spring pilgrimage down the coast along various
fishing haunts; for agriculture was a thing unknown to these savages.
They were a seafaring people in canoes. At that time even invading
Europeans had gained little mastery of the soil. Camp and fortress were
on the same side of the river. Lounging braves watched indifferently
some figures wading fog from the fort, perhaps bringing them a farewell
word, perhaps forbidding their departure. The Indian often humored his
invader's feudal airs, but he never owned the mastery of any white man.
Squaws took down cone-shaped tents, while their half-naked babies
sprawled in play upon the ashes of last winter's fires. Van Corlaer's
men sauntered through the vanishing town, trying at times to strike some
spark of information from Dutch and Etchemin jargon.
Near the river bank, between camp and fort, was an alluvial spot in
which the shovel found no rock. A rough line of piled stones severed it
from surrounding lands, and a few trees stood there, promising summer
shade, though, darkly moist along every budded twig, they now swayed in
tuneless nakedness. Here the dead of Fort St. John were buried; and
those approaching figures entered a gap of the inclosure instead of
going on to the camp. Three of La Tour's soldiers, with Father Jogues
and his donné, had come to bury the outcast baby. One of the men was
Zélie's husband, and she walked beside him. Marguerite lay sulking in
the barracks. The lady had asked Father Jogues to consecrate with the
rites of his church the burial of this little victim probably born into
his faith. But he would have followed it in any case, with that instinct
which drove him to baptize dying Indian children with rain-drops and
attempt to pluck converts from the tortures of the stake.
"Has this child been baptized?" he inquired of Zélie on the path down
from the fort.
She answered, shedding tears of resentment against Marguerite, and with
fervor she could not restrain,--
"I'll warrant me it never had so much as a drop of water on its head,
and but little to its body, before my lady took it."
"But hath it not believing parents?"
"Our Swiss says," stated Zélie, with a respectful heretic's sparing of
this priest, "that it is the child of D'Aulnay de Charnisay." And she
added no comment. The soldiers set their spades to last year's sod, cut
an oblong wound, and soon had the earth heaped out and a grave made.
Father Jogues, perplexed, and heavy of heart for the sins of his
enlightened as well as his savage children, concluded to consecrate the
baby's bed. The Huguenot soldiers stood sullenly by while a Romish
service went on. They or their fathers had been driven out of France by
the bitterness of that very religion which Father Jogues expressed in
sweetness. They had not the broad sympathy of their lady, who could
excuse and even stoop to mend a priest's cassock; and they made their
pause as brief as possible.
While the spat and clink of spades built up one child's hillock, Zélie
was on her knees beside another some distance from it, scraping away
dead leaves. Her lady had bid her look how this grave fared, and she
noticed fondly that fern was beginning to curl above the buried lad's
head. The heir of the La Tours lay with his feet toward the outcast of
the Charnisays, but this was a chance arrangement. Soldiers and
servants of the house were scattered about the frontier burial ground,
and Zélie noted to report to her lady that winter had partly effaced and
driven below the surface some recent graves. Instead of being marked by
a cross, each earthen door had a narrow frame of river stones built
around it.
Van Corlaer left the drowned falls and passed his own tents, and waited
outside the knee-high inclosure for Father Jogues. The missionary, in
his usual halo of prayer, dwelt upon the open breviary. Many a tree
along the Mohawk valley yet bore the name of Jesu which he had carved in
its bark, as well as rude crosses. Such marks helped him to turn the
woods into one wide oratory. But unconverted savages, tearing with their
teeth the hands lifted up in supplication for them, had scarcely taxed
his heart as heretics and sinful believers taxed it now. The soldiers,
having finished, took up their tools, and Van Corlaer joined Father
Jogues as the party came out of the cemetery.
The day was brightening. Some sea-birds were spreading their white
breasts and wing-linings like flashes of silver against shifting vapor.
The party descended to a wrinkle in the land which would be dry at
ebb-tide. Now it held a stream flowing inland upon grass--unshriveled
long grass bowed flat and sleeked to this daily service. It gave
beholders a delicious sensation to see the clean water rushing up so
verdant a course. A log which would seem a misplaced and useless
foot-bridge when the tide was out, was crossed by one after another; and
as Van Corlaer fell back to step beside Father Jogues, he said:--
"The Abenakis take to the woods and desert their fishing, and these
Etchemins leave the woods and take to the coast. You never know where to
have your savage. Did you note that the village was moving?"
"Yes, I saw that, Monsieur Corlaer; and I must now take leave of the
lady of the fort and join myself to them."
"If you do you will give deep offense to La Tour," said the Dutchman,
pushing back some strands of light hair which had fallen over his
forehead, and turning his great near-sighted eyes on his friend. "These
Indians are called Protestant. They are in La Tour's grant. Thou knowest
that he and D'Aulnay de Charnisay have enough to quarrel about without
drawing churchmen into their broil."
Father Jogues trod on gently. He knew he could not travel with any
benighted soul and not try to convert it. These poor Etchemins appealed
to his conscience; but so did the gracious lady of the fort.
"If I could mend the rents in her faith," he sighed, "as she hath mended
the rents in my cassock!"
Two of the soldiers turned aside with their spades to a slope behind the
fortress, where there was a stable for the ponies and horned cattle, and
where last year's garden beds lay blackened under last year's refuse
growth. Having planted the immortal seed, their next duty was to
prepare for the trivial resurrections of the summer. Frenchmen love
green messes in their soup. The garden might be trampled by besiegers,
but there were other chances that it would yield something. Zélie's
husband climbed the height to escort the priest and report to his lady,
but he had his wife to chatter beside him. Father Jogues' donné walked
behind Van Corlaer, and he alone overheard the Dutchman's talk.
"This lady of Fort St. John, Father Jogues, so housed, and so ground
between the millstones of La Tour and D'Aulnay--she hath wrought up my
mind until I could not forbear this journey. It is well known through
the colonies that La Tour can no longer get help, and is outlawed by his
king. This fortress will be sacked. La Tour would best stay at home to
defend his own. But what can any other man do? I am here to defend my
own, and I will take it and defend it."
Van Corlaer looked up at the walls, and his chest swelled with a large
breath of regret.
"God He knoweth why so sweet a lady is set here to bear the brunts of a
frontier fortress, where no man can aid her without espousing her
husband's quarrel!--while hundreds of evil women degrade the courts of
Europe. But I can only do mine errand and go. And you will best mend
your own expedition at this time by a new start from Montreal, Father
Jogues."
The priest turned around on the ascent and looked toward the vanishing
Indian camp. He was examining as self-indulgence his strong and
gentlemanly desire not to involve Madame La Tour in further troubles by
proselyting her people.
"Whatever way is pointed out to me, Monsieur Corlaer," he answered,
"that way I must take. For the mending of an expedition rests not in the
hands of the poor instrument that attempts it."
Their soldier signaled for the gates to be opened, and they entered the
fort. Marie was on her morning round of inspection. She had just given
back to a guard the key of the powder magazine. Well, storehouse,
fuel-house, barracks, were in military readiness. But refuse stuff had
been thrown in spots which her people were now severely cleaning. She
greeted her returning guests, and heard the report of Zélie's husband. A
lace mantle was drawn over her head and fastened under the chin,
throwing out from its blackness the warm brown beauty of her face.
"So our Indians are leaving the falls already?" she repeated, fixing
Zélie's husband with a serious eye.
"Yes, madame," witnessed Zélie. "I myself saw women packing tents."
"Have they heard any rumor which scared them off early,--our good lazy
Etchemins, who hate fighting?"
"No, madame," Van Corlaer answered, being the only person who came
directly from the camp, "I think not, though their language is not clear
to me like our western tongues. It is simply an early spring, calling
them out."
"They have always waited until Pâques week heretofore," she remembered.
But the wandering forth of an irresponsible village had little to do
with the state of her fort. She was going upon the walls to look at the
cannon, and asked her guests to go with her.
The priest and his donné and Van Corlaer ascended a ladder, and Madame
La Tour followed.
"I do not often climb like a sailor," she said, when Van Corlaer gave
her his hand at the top. "There is a flight of steps from mine own
chamber to the level of the walls. And here Madame Bronck and I have
taken the air on winter days when we felt sure of its not blowing us
away. But you need not look sad over our pleasures, monsieur. We have
had many a sally out of this fort, and monsieur the priest will tell you
there is great freedom on snowshoes."
"Madame Bronck has allowed herself little freedom since I came to Fort
St. John," observed Van Corlaer.
They all walked the walls from bastion to bastion, and Marie examined
the guns, and spoke with her soldiers. On the way back Father Jogues and
Lalande paused to watch the Etchemins trail away, and to commune on what
their duty directed them to do. Marie walked on with Van Corlaer toward
the towered bastion, talking quickly, and ungloving her right hand to
help his imagination with it. A bar of sunlight rested with a long slant
through vapor on the fortress. Far blue distances were opened on the
bay. The rippling full river had already begun to subside and sink line
by line from its island.
Van Corlaer gave no attention to the beautiful world. He listened to
Madame La Tour with a broadening humorous face and the invincible port
of a man who knows nothing of defeat. The sentinel trod back and forth
without disturbing this intent conference, but other feet came rushing
up the stone steps which let from Marie's room to the level of the wall.
"Madame--madame!" exclaimed Antonia Bronck; but her flaxen head was
arrested in ascent beside Van Corlaer's feet, and her distressed eyes
met in his a whimsical look which stung her through with suspicion and
resentment.
VIII.
VAN CORLAER.
"What is it, Antonia?" demanded Marie.
"Madame, it is nothing."
Antonia owned her suitor's baring of his head, and turned upon the
stairs.
"But some alarm drove you out."
Marie leaned over the cell inclosing the stone steps. It was not easy to
judge from Antonia's erect bearing what had so startled her. Her friend
followed her to the door below, and the voices of the two women hummed
indistinctly in that vault-like hollow.
"You have told him," accused Antonia directly. "He is laughing about
Mynheer Bronck's hand!"
"He does take a cheerful view of the matter," conceded the lady of the
fort. Antonia looked at her with all the asperity which could be
expressed in a fair Dutch face.
"As long as I kept my trouble to myself I could bear it. But I show it
to another, and the worst befalls me."
"Is that hand lost, Antonia?"
"I cannot find it, or even the box which held it."
"Never accuse me with your eye," said Marie with droll pathos. "If it
were lost or destroyed by accident, I could bear without a groan to see
you so bereaved. But the slightest thing shall not be filched in Fort
St. John. When did you first miss it?"
"A half hour since. I left the box on my table last night instead of
replacing it in my chest;--being so disturbed."
"Every room shall be searched," said Marie. "Where is Le Rossignol?"
"She went after breakfast to call her swan in the fort."
"I saw her not. And I have neglected to send her to the turret for her
punishment. That little creature has a magpie's fondness for plunder.
Perhaps she has carried off your box. I will send for her."
Marie left the room. Antonia lingered to glance through a small square
pane in the door--an eye which the commandants of the fort kept on their
battlements. It had an inner tapestry, but this remained as Marie had
pushed it aside that morning to take her early look at the walls. Van
Corlaer was waiting on the steps, and as he detected Antonia in the
guilty act of peeping at him, his compelling voice reached her in Dutch.
She returned into the small stone cell formed by the stairs, and closed
the door, submitting defiantly to the interview.
"Will you sit here?" suggested Van Corlaer, taking off his cloak and
making for her a cushion upon the stone. Antonia reflected that he would
be chilly and therefore hold brief talk, so she made no objection, and
sat down on one end of the step while he sat down on the other. They
spoke Dutch: with their formal French fell away the formal phases of
this meeting in Acadia. The sentinel's walk moved almost overhead, and
died away along the wall and returned again, but noises within the fort
scarcely intruded to their rocky cell. They did not hear even the voices
of Lalande and Father Jogues descending the ladder.
"We have never had any satisfactory talk together, Antonia," began Van
Corlaer.
"No, mynheer," breathed the girlish relict of Bronck, feeling her heart
labor as she faced his eyes.
"It is hard for a man to speak his mind to you."
"It hath seemed easy enough for Mynheer Van Corlaer, seeing how many
times he hath done so," observed Antonia, drawing her mufflings around
her neck.
"No. I speak always with such folly that you will not hear me. It is not
so when I talk among men or work on the minds of savages. Let us now
begin reasonably. I do believe you like me, Antonia."
"A most reasonable beginning," noted Antonia, biting her lips.
"Now I am a man in the stress and fury of mid-life, hard to turn from my
purpose, and you well know my purpose. Your denials and puttings-off and
flights have pleased me. But your own safety may waste no more good time
in further play. I have not come into Acadia to tinkle a song under your
window, but to wed you and carry you back to Fort Orange with me."
Antonia stirred, to hide her trembling.
"Are you cold?" inquired Van Corlaer.
"No, mynheer."
"If the air chills you I will warm your hands in mine."
"My hands are well muffled, mynheer."
He adjusted his back against the wall and again opened the conversation.
"I brought a young dominie with me. He wished to see Montreal. And I
took care to have with him such papers as might be necessary to the
marriage."
"He had best get my leave," observed Madame Bronck.
"That is no part of his duty. But set your mind at rest; he is a young
dominie of credit. When I was in Boston I saw a rich sedan chair made
for the viceroy of Mexico, but brought to the colonies for sale. It put
a thought in my head, and I set skilled fellows to work, and they made
and we have carried through the woods the smallest, most
cunning-fashioned sedan chair that woman ever stepped into. I brought it
for the comfortable journeying of Madame Van Corlaer."
"That unknown lady will have much satisfaction in it," murmured Antonia.
"I hope so. And be better known than she was as Jonas Bronck's wife."
She colored, but hid a smile within her muffling. Her good-humored
suitor leaned toward her, resting his arms upon his knees.
"Touching a matter which has never been mentioned between us;--was the
curing of Bronck's hand well approved by you?"
"Mynheer, I am angry at Madame La Tour. Or did he," gasped Antonia, not
daring to accuse by name the colonial doctor who had managed her dark
secret, "did he show that to you?"
"Would the boldest chemist out of Amsterdam cut off and salt the member
of any honest burgher without leave of the patroon?" suggested Van
Corlaer. "Besides, my skill was needed, for I was once learned in
chemistry."
It was so surprising to see this man over-ride her terror that Antonia
stared at him.
"Mynheer, had you no dread of the sight?"
"No; and had I known you would dread it the hand had spoiled in the
curing. I thought less of Jonas Bronck, that he could bequeath a morsel
of himself like dried venison."
"Mynheer Bronck was a very good man," asserted Antonia severely.
"But thou knowest in thy heart that I am a better one," laughed Van
Corlaer.
"He was the best of husbands," she insisted, trembling with a woman's
anxiety to be loyal to affection which she has not too well rewarded.
"It was on my account that he had his hand cut off."
"I will outdo Bronck," determined Van Corlaer. "I will have myself
skinned at my death and spread out as a rug to your feet. So good a
housekeeper as Antonia will beat my pelt full often, and so be obliged
to think on me."
Afloat in his large personality as she always was in his presence, she
yet tried to resist him.
"The relic that you joke about, Mynheer Van Corlaer, I have done worse
with; I have lost it."
"Bronck's hand?"
"Yes. It hath been stolen."
"Why, I commend the taste of the thief!"
"And misfortune is sure to follow."
"Well, let misfortune and the hand go together."
"It was not so said." She looked furtively at Bronck's powerful rival,
loath to reveal to him the sick old man's prophecies.
"I have heard of the hearts of heroes being sealed in coffers and
treasured in the cities from which they sprung," said Van Corlaer,
taking his hat from the step and holding it to shield his eyes from
mounting light. "But Jonas was no hero. And I have heard of papists
venerating little pieces of saints' bones. Father Jogues might do so,
and I could behold him without smiling. But a Protestant woman should
have no superstition for relics."
"What I cannot help dreading," confessed Antonia, moving her hands
nervously in their wrapping, "is what may follow this loss."
"Why, let the hand go! What should follow its loss?"
"Some trouble might befall the people who are kindest to me."
"Because Bronck's hand has been mislaid?" inquired Van Corlaer with
shrewd light in his eyes.
"Yes, mynheer," hesitated Antonia. He burst into laughter and Antonia
looked at him as if he had spoken against religion.
She sighed.
"It was my duty to open the box once every month."
Van Corlaer threw his hat down again on the step above.
"Are you cold, mynheer?" inquired Antonia considerately.
"No. I am fired like a man in mid-battle. Will nothing move you to show
me a little love, madame? Why, look you, there were French women among
captives ransomed from the Mohawks who shed tears on these hands of
mine. Strangers and alien people have some movement of feeling, but you
have none."
"Mynheer," pleaded Antonia, goaded to inconsistent and trembling
asperity, "you make my case very hard. I could not tell you why I dare
not wed again, but since you know, why do you cruelly blame me? A woman
does not weep the night away without some movement of feeling. Yes,
mynheer, you have taunted me, and I will tell you the worst. I have
thought of you more than of any other person in the world, and felt such
satisfaction in your presence that I could hardly forego it. Yet holding
me thus bound to you, you are by no means satisfied," sobbed Antonia.
Van Corlaer glowed over her a moment with some smiling compunction, and
irresistibly took her in his arms. From the instant that Antonia found
herself there unstartled, her point of view was changed. She looked at
her limitations no longer alone, but through Van Corlaer's eyes, and saw
them vanishing. The sentinel, glancing down from time to time with a
furtive cast of his eye, saw Antonia nodding or shaking her flaxen head
in complete unison with Van Corlaer's nods and negations, and caught the
sweet monotone of her voice repeating over and over:--
"Yes, mynheer. Yes, mynheer."
IX.
THE TURRET.
While Antonia continued her conference on the stone steps leading to the
wall, the dwarf was mounting a flight which led to the turret. Klussman
walked ahead, carrying her instrument and her ration for the day. There
was not a loophole to throw glimmers upon the blackness. The ascent
wound about as if carved through the heart of rock, and the tall Swiss
stooped to its slope. Such a mountain of unseen terraces made Le
Rossignol pant. She lifted herself from step to step, growing dizzy with
the turns and holding to the wall.
"Wait for me," she called up the gloom, and shook her fist at the unseen
soldier because he gave her no reply. Klussman stepped out on the turret
floor and set down his load. Stretching himself from the cramp of the
stairway, he stood looking over bay and forest and coast. The
battlemented wall was quite as high as his shoulder. One small cannon,
brought up with enormous labor, was here trained through an embrasure to
command the mouth of the river.
Le Rossignol emerged into the unroofed light and the sea air like a
potentate, dragging a warm furred robe. She had fastened great hoops of
gold in her ears, and they gave her peaked face a barbaric look. It was
her policy to go in state to punishment. The little sovereign stalked
with long steps and threw out her arm in command.
"Monsieur the Swiss, stoop over and give me thy back until I mount the
battlement."
Klussman, full of his own bitter and confused thinking, looked blankly
down at her heated countenance.
"Give me thy back!" sang the dwarf in the melodious scream which anger
never made harsh in her.
"Faith, yes, and my entire carcass," muttered the Swiss. "I care not
what becomes of me now."
"Madame Marie sent you to escort me to this turret. You have the honor
because you are an officer. Now do your duty as lieutenant of this
fortress, and make me a comfortable prisoner."
Klussman set his hands upon his sides and smiled down upon his prisoner.
"What is your will?"
"Twice have I told you to stoop and give me your back, that I may mount
from the cannon to the battlements. Am I to be shut up here without an
outlook?"
"May I be hanged if I do that," exclaimed Klussman. "Make a footstool of
myself for a spoiled puppet like thee?"
Le Rossignol ran towards him and kicked his boots with the heel of her
moccasin. The Swiss, remonstrating and laughing, moved back before her.
"Have some care--thou wilt break a deer-hoof on my stout leather. And
why mount the battlements? A fall from this turret edge would spread
thee out like a raindrop. Though the fewer women there are in the world
the better," added Klussman bitterly.
"Presume not to call me a woman!"
"Why, what art thou?"
"I am the nightingale."
"By thy red head thou art the woodpecker. Here is my back, clatterbill.
Why should I not crawl the ground to be walked over? I have been worse
used than that."
He grinned fiercely as he bent down with his hands upon his knees. Le
Rossignol mounted the cannon, and with a couple of light bounds, making
him a perch midway, reached an embrasure and sat arranging her robes.
"Now you may hand me my clavier," she said, "and then you shall have my
thanks and my pardon."
The Swiss handed her the instrument. His contempt was ruder than he
knew. Le Rossignol pulled her gull-skin cap well down upon her ears,
for though the day was now bright overhead, a raw wind came across the
bay. She leaned over and looked down into the fortress to call her swan.
The cook was drawing water from the well, and that soft sad note lifted
his eyes to the turret. Le Rossignol squinted at him, and the man went
into the barracks and told his wife that he felt shooting pains in his
limbs that instant.
"Come hither, gentle Swiss," said the dwarf striking the plectrum into
her mandolin strings, "and I will reward thee for thy back and all thy
courtly services."
Klussman stepped to the wall and looked with her into the fort.