Marguerite below. The miserable girl had come out of the barracks and
was sitting in the sun beside the oven. She rested her head against it
and met the sky light with half-shut eyes, lovely in silken hair and
pallid flesh through all her sullenness and dejection. As Klussman saw
her he uttered an oath under his breath, which the dwarf's hand on the
mandolin echoed with a bang. He turned his back on the sight and betook
himself to the stairway, the dwarf's laughter following him. She felt
high in the world and played with a good spirit. The sentinel below
heard her, but he took care to keep a steady and level eye. When the
swan rose past him, spreading its wings almost against his face, he
prudently trod the wall without turning his head.
"Hé, Shubenacadie," said the human morsel to her familiar as the wide
wings composed themselves beside her. "We had scarce said good-morning
when I must be haled before my lady for that box of the Hollandaise."
The swan was a huge white creature of his kind, with fiery eyes. There
was satin texture delightful to the touch in the firm and glistening
plumage of his swelling breast. Le Rossignol smoothed it.
"They have few trinkets in that barbarous Fort Orange in the west. I
detest that Hollandaise more since she carries about such a casket. Let
us be cozy. Kiss me, Shubenacadie."
The swan's attachment and obedience to her were struggling against some
swan-like instinct which made him rear a lofty head and twist it
riverward.
"Kiss me, I say! Shall I have to beat thee over the head with my clavier
to teach thee manners?"
Shubenacadie darted his snake neck downward and touched bills with her.
She patted his coral nostrils.
"Not yet. Before you take to the water we must have some talk. I am shut
up here to stay this whole day. And for what? Not because of the casket,
for they know not what I have done with it. But because thou and I
sometimes go out without the password. Stick out thy toes and let me
polish them."
Shubenacadie resisted this mandate, and his autocrat promptly dragged
one foot from under him, causing him to topple on the parapet. He
hissed at her. Le Rossignol looked up at the threatening flat head and
hissed back.
"You are as bad as that Swiss," she laughed. "I will put a yoke on you.
I will tie you to the settle in the hall. Why have all man creatures
such tempers? Thank heaven I was not born to hose and doublet. Never did
I see a mild man in my life except Edelwald. As for this Swiss, I am
done with him. He hath a wife, Shubenacadie. She sits down there by the
oven now; a miserable thing turned off by D'Aulnay de Charnisay. Have I
told thee the Swiss had a soul above a common soldier and I picked him
out to pay court to me? Beat me for it. Pull the red hair he condemned.
I would have had him sighing for me that I might pity him. The populace
is beneath us, but we must amuse ourselves. Beat me, I demand. Punish me
well for abasing my eyes to that Swiss."
Shubenacadie understood the challenge and the tone. He was used to
rendering such service when his mistress repented of her sins. Yet he
gave his tail feathers a slight flirt and quavered some guttural to
sustain his part in the conversation, and to beg that he might be
excused from holding the sword this time. As she continued to prod him,
however, he struck her with his beak. Le Rossignol was human in never
finding herself able to bear the punishment she courted. She flew at the
swan, he spread his wings for ardent warfare, and they both dropped to
the stone floor in a whirlwind of mandolin, arms, and feathers. The
dwarf kept her hold on him until he cowered and lay with his neck along
the pavement.
"Thou art a Turk, a rascal, a horned beast!" panted Le Rossignol.
Shubenacadie quavered plaintively, and all her wrath was gone. She
spread out one of his wings and smoothed the plumes. She nursed his head
in her lap and sung to him. Two of his feathers, plucked out in the
contest, she put in her bosom. He flirted his tail and gathered himself
again to his feet, and she broke her loaf and fed him and poured water
into her palm for his bill.
Le Rossignol esteemed the military dignity given to her imprisonment,
and she was a hardy midget who could bear untold exposure when wandering
at her own will. She therefore received with disgust her lady's summons
to come down long before the day was spent, the messenger being only
Zélie.
"Ah--h, mademoiselle," warned the maid, stumping ponderously out of the
stone stairway, "are you about to mount that swan again?"
"Who has ever seen me mount him?"
"I would be sworn there are a dozen men in the fort that have."
"But you never have."
"No. I have been absent with my lady."
"Well, you shall see me now."
The dwarf flung herself on Shubenacadie's back, and thrust her feet down
under his wings. He began to rise, and expanded, stretching his neck
forward, and Zélie uttered a yell of terror. The weird little woman
leaped off and turned her laughing beak toward the terrified maid. Her
ear-hoops swung as she rolled her mocking head.
"Oh, if it frightens you I will not ride to-day," she said. Shubenacadie
sailed across the battlements, and though they could no longer see him
they knew he had taken to the river.
"If I tell my lady this," shivered Zélie, "she will never let you out of
the turret. And she but this moment sent me to call you down out of the
chill east wind."
"Tell Madame Marie," urged the dwarf insolently.
"And do you ride that way over bush and brier, through mirk and
daylight?"
"I was at Penobscot this week," answered Le Rossignol.
Zélie gazed with a bristling of even the hairs upon her lip.
"It goeth past belief," she observed, setting her hands upon her sides.
"And the swan, what else can he do besides carry thee like a dragon?"
"He sings to me," boldly asserted Le Rossignol. "And many a good bit of
advice have I taken from his bill."
"It would be well if he turned his mind more to thinking and less to
roving," respectfully hinted Zélie. "I will go before you downstairs and
leave the key in the turret door," she suggested.
"Take up these things and go when you please, and mind that I do not
hear my clavier striking the wall."
"Have you not felt the wind in this open donjon?"
"The wind and I take no note of each other," answered the dwarf, lifting
her chilled nose skyward. "But the cold water and bread have worked me
most discomfort in this imprisonment. Go down and tell the cook for me
that he is to make a hot bowl of the broth I like."
"He will do it," said Zélie.
"Yes, he will do it," said the dwarf, "and the sooner he does it the
better."
"Will you eat it in the hall?"
"I will eat it wherever Madame Marie is."
"But that you cannot do. There is great business going forward and she
is shut with Madame Bronck in our other lady's room."
"I like it when you presume to know better than I do what is going
forward in this fort!" exclaimed the dwarf jealously, a flush mounting
her slender cheeks.
"I should best know what has happened since you left the hall,"
contended Zélie.
"Do you think so, poor heavy-foot? You can only hearken to what is
whispered past your ear; but I can sit here on the battlements and read
all the secrets below me."
"Can you, Mademoiselle Nightingale? For instance, where is Madame
Bronck's box?"
The maid drew a deep breath at her own daring.
"It is not about Madame Bronck's box that they confer. It is about the
marriage of the Hollandaise," answered Le Rossignol with a bold guess.
"I could have told you that when you entered the turret."
Zélie experienced a chill through her flesh which was not caused by the
damp breath of Fundy Bay.
"How doth she find out things done behind her back--this clever little
witch? And perhaps you will name the bridegroom, mademoiselle?"
"Who could that be except the big Hollandais who hath come out of the
west after her? Could she marry a priest or a common soldier?"
"That is true," admitted Zélie, feeling her superstition allayed.
"There must be as few women as trinkets in that wilderness Fort of
Orange from which he came," added the dwarf.
"Why?" inquired Zélie, wrinkling her nose and squinting in the sunlight.
But Le Rossignol took no further trouble than to give her a look of
contempt, and lifted the furred garment to descend the stairs.
X.
AN ACADIAN POET.
"The woman who dispenses with any dignity which should attend her
marriage, doth cheapen herself to her husband," said Lady Dorinda to
Antonia Bronck, leaning back in the easiest chair of the fortress. It
was large and stiff, but filled with cushions. Lady Dorinda's chamber
was the most comfortable one in Fort St. John. It was over the front of
the great hall, and was intended for a drawing-room, being spacious,
well warmed by a fireplace and lighted by windows looking into the fort.
A stately curtained bed, a toilet table with swinging mirror, bearing
many of the ornaments and beauty-helpers of an elderly belle, and
countless accumulations which spoke her former state in the world, made
this an English bower in a French fort.
Her dull yellow hair was coifed in the fashion of the early Stuarts. She
held a hand-screen betwixt her face and the fire, but the flush which
touched its usual sallowness was not caused by heat. A wedding was a
diversion of her exile which Lady Dorinda had never hoped for. There had
been some mating in the fort below among soldiers and peasant women, to
which she did not lower her thoughts. The noise of resulting
merrymakings sufficiently sought out and annoyed her ear. But the
wedding of the guest to a man of consequence in the Dutch colony was
something to which she might unbend herself.
Antonia had been brought against her will to consult with this faded
authority by Marie, who sat by, supporting her through the ordeal. There
was never any familiar chat between the lady of the fort and the widow
of Claude La Tour. Neither forgot their first meeting behind cannon, and
the tragedy of a divided house. Lady Dorinda lived in Acadia because she
could not well live elsewhere. And she secretly nursed a hope that in
her day the province would fall into English hands, her knight be
vindicated, and his son obliged to submit to a power he had defied to
the extremity of warring with a father.
If the two women had no love for each other they at least stinted no
ceremony. Marie presented the smallest surface of herself to her
mother-in-law. It is true they had been of the same household only a few
months; but months and years are the same betwixt us and the people who
solve not for us this riddle of ourselves. Antonia thought little of
Lady Dorinda's opinions, but her saying about the dignity of marriage
rites had the force of unexpected truth. Arendt Van Corlaer had used up
his patience in courtship. He was now bent on wedding Antonia and
setting out to Montreal without the loss of another day. His route was
planned up St. John River and across-country to the St. Lawrence.
"I would therefore give all possible state to this occasion," added
Lady Dorinda. "Did you not tell me this Sir Van Corlaer is an officer?"
"He is the real patroon of Fort Orange, my lady."
"He should then have military honors paid him on his marriage," observed
Lady Dorinda, to whom patroon suggested the barbarous but splendid
vision of a western pasha. "Salutes should be fired and drums sounded.
In thus recommending I hope I have not overstepped my authority, Madame
La Tour?"
"Certainly not, your ladyship," murmured Marie.
"The marriage ceremony hath length and solemnity, but I would have it
longer, and more solemn. A woman in giving herself away should greatly
impress a man with the charge he hath undertaken. There be not many
bridegrooms like Sir Claude de la Tour, who fasted an entire day before
his marriage with me. The ceremonial of that marriage hath scarce been
forgotten at court to this hour."
Lady Dorinda folded her hands and closed her eyes to sigh. Her voice had
rolled the last words in her throat. At such moments she looked very
superior. Her double chins and dull light eyes held great reserves of
self-respect. A small box of aromatic seeds lay in her lap, and as her
hands encountered it she was reminded to put a seed in her mouth and
find pensive comfort in chewing it.
"Edelwald should be here to give the proper grace to this event," added
Lady Dorinda.
"I thought of him," said Marie. "Edelwald has so much the nature of a
troubadour."
"The studies which adorn a man were well thought of when I was at
court," said Lady Dorinda. "Edelwald is really thrown away upon this
wilderness."
Antonia was too intent on Van Corlaer and his fell determination to turn
her mind upon Edelwald. She had, indeed, seen very little of La Tour's
second in command, for he had been away with La Tour on expeditions
much of the time she had spent in Acadia. Edelwald was the only man of
the fortress called by his baptismal name, yet it was spoken with
respect and deference like a title. He was of the family of De Born. In
an age when religion made political ties stronger than the ties of
nature, the La Tours and De Borns had fought side by side through
Huguenot wars. When a later generation of La Tours were struggling for
foothold in the New World, it was not strange that a son of the De
Borns, full of songcraft and spirit inherited from some troubadour
soldier of the twelfth century, should turn his face to the same land.
From his mother Edelwald took Norman and Saxon strains of blood. He had
left France the previous year and made his voyage in the same ship with
Madame La Tour and her mother-in-law, and he was now La Tour's trusted
officer.
Edelwald could take up any stringed instrument, strike melody out of it
and sing songs he had himself made. But such pastimes were brief in
Acadia. There was other business on the frontier; sailing, hunting,
fighting, persuading or defying men, exploring unyielded depths of
wilderness. The joyous science had long fallen out of practice. But
while the grim and bloody records of our early colonies were being made,
here was an unrecorded poet in Acadia. La Tour held this gift of
Edelwald's in light esteem. He was a man so full of action and of
schemes for establishing power that he touched only the martial side of
the young man's nature, though in that contact was strong comradeship.
Every inmate of the fortress liked Edelwald. He mediated between
commandant and men, and jealousies and bickerings disappeared before
him.
"It would be better," murmured Antonia, breaking the stately silence by
Lady Dorinda's fire, "if Mynheer Van Corlaer journeyed on to Montreal
and returned here before any marriage takes place."
"Think of the labor you will thereby put upon him," exclaimed Marie. "I
speak for Monsieur Corlaer and not for myself," she added; "for by that
delay I should happily keep you until summer. Besides, the priest we
have here with us himself admits that the town of Montreal is little to
look upon. Ville-Marie though it be named by the papists, what is it but
a cluster of huts in the wilderness?"
"I was six months preparing to be wedded to Mynheer Bronck," remembered
Antonia.
"And will Monsieur Corlaer return here from Montreal?"
"No, madame. He will carry me with him."
"I like him better for it," said Marie smiling, "though it pleases me
ill enough."
This was Antonia's last weak revolt against the determination of her
stalwart suitor. She gained a three days' delay from him by submitting
to the other conditions of his journey. It amused Marie to note the
varying phases of Antonia's surrender. She was already resigned to the
loss of Jonas Bronck's hand, and in no slavish terror of the
consequences.
"And it is true I am provided with all I need," she mused on, in the
line of removing objections from Van Corlaer's way.
"I have often promised to show you the gown I wore at my marriage," said
Lady Dorinda, roused from her rumination on the aromatic seed, and
leaving her chair to pay this gracious compliment to the Dutch widow.
"It hath faded, and been discolored by the sea air, but you will not
find a prettier fashion of lace in anything made since."
She had no maid, for the women of the garrison had all been found too
rude for her service. When she first came to Acadia with Claude La Tour,
an English gentlewoman gladly waited on her. But now only Zélie gave her
constrained and half-hearted attention, rating her as "my other lady,"
and plainly deploring her presence. Lady Dorinda had one large box
bound with iron, hidden in a nook beyond her bed. She took the key from
its usual secret place and busied herself opening the box. Marie and
Antonia heard her speak a word of surprise, but the curtained bed hid
her from them. The raised lid of her box let out sweet scents of
England, but that breath of old times, though she always dreaded its
sweep across her resignation, had not made her cry out.
She found a strange small coffer on the top of her own treasures. Its
key stood in its lock, and Lady Dorinda at once turned that key, as a
duty to herself. Antonia's loss of some precious casket had been
proclaimed to her, but she recollected that in her second thought, when
she had already laid aside the napkin and discovered Jonas Bronck's
hand. Lady Dorinda snapped the lid down and closed her own chest. She
rose from her place and stretched both arms toward the couch at the foot
of her bed. Having reached the couch she sank down, her head meeting a
cushion with nice calculation.
"I am about to faint," said Lady Dorinda, and having parted with her
breath in one puff, she sincerely lost consciousness and lay in extreme
calm, her clay-colored eyelids shut on a clay-colored face. Marie was
used to these quiet lapses of her mother-in-law, for Lady Dorinda had
not been a good sailor on their voyage; but Antonia was alarmed. They
bathed her face with a few inches of towel dipped in scented water, and
rubbed her hands and fanned her. She caught life in again with a gasp,
and opened her eyes to their young faces.
"Your ladyship attempted too much in opening that box," said Marie. "It
is not good to go back through old sorrows."
"Madame La Tour may be right," gasped Claude's widow.
"I could not now look at that gown, Lady Dorinda," protested Antonia.
When her ladyship was able to sit again by the fire, she asked both of
them to leave her; and being alone, she quieted her anxiety about her
treasures in the chest by a forced search. Nothing had been disturbed.
The coals burned down red while Lady Dorinda tried to understand this
happening. She dismissed all thought of the casket's belonging to
Antonia Bronck;--a mild and stiff-mannered young provincial who had
nothing to do with ghastly tokens of war. That hand was a political
hint, mysteriously sent to Lady Dorinda and embodying some important
message.
D'Aulnay de Charnisay may have sent it as a pledge that he intended to
do justice to the elder La Tour while chastising the younger. There was
a strange girl in the fort, accused of coming from D'Aulnay. Lady
Dorinda could feel no enmity towards D'Aulnay. Her mind swarmed with
foolish thoughts, harmless because ineffectual. She felt her importance
grow, and was sure that the seed of a deep political intrigue lay hidden
in her chest.
XI.
MARGUERITE.
The days which elapsed before Antonia Bronck's marriage were lived
joyfully by a people who lost care in any festival. Van Corlaer brought
the sleek-faced young dominie from camp and exhibited him in all his
potency as the means of a Protestant marriage service. He could not
speak a word of French, but only Dutch was required of him. All
religious rites were celebrated in the hall, there being no chapel in
Fort St. John, and this marriage was to be witnessed by the garrison.
During this cheerful time a burning unrest, which she concealed from her
people, drove Marie about her domain. She fled up the turret stairs and
stood on the cannon to look over the bay. Her husband had been away but
eight days. "Yet he often makes swift journeys," she thought. The load
of his misfortunes settled more heavily upon her as she drew nearer to
the end of woman companionship.
In former times, before such bitterness had grown in the feud between
D'Aulnay and La Tour, she had made frequent voyages from Cape Sable up
Fundy Bay to Port Royal. The winters were then merry among noble
Acadians, and the lady of Fort St. Louis at Cape Sable was hostess of a
rich seigniory. Now she had the sickness of suspense, and the wasting of
life in waiting. Frequently during the day she met Father Jogues, who
also wandered about disturbed by the evident necessity of his return to
Montreal.
"Monsieur," said Marie once, "can you on your conscience bless a
heretic?"
"Madame," said Father Jogues, "heaven itself blesses a good and
excellent woman."
"Well, monsieur, if you could lift up your hand, even with the sign
which my house holds idolatrous, and say a few words of prayer, I
should then feel consecrated to whatever is before me."
Perhaps Father Jogues was tempted to have recourse to his vial of holy
water and make the baptismal signs. Many a soul he truly believed he had
saved from burning by such secret administration. And if savages could
be thus reclaimed, should he hold back from the only opportunity ever
given by this beautiful soul? His face shone. But with that gracious
instinct to refrain from intermeddling which was beyond his times, he
only lifted his stumps of fingers and spoke the words which she craved.
A maimed priest is deprived of his sacred offices, but the pope had made
a special dispensation for Father Jogues.
"Thanks, monsieur," said Marie. "Though it be sin to declare it, I will
say your religion hath mother-comfort in it. Perhaps you have felt, in
the woods among Iroquois, that sometime need of mother-comfort which a
civilized woman may feel who has long outgrown her childhood."
The mandolin was heard in the barracks once during those days, for Le
Rossignol had come out of the house determined to seek out Marguerite.
She found the Swiss girl beside the powder magazine, for Marguerite had
brought out a stool, and seemed trying to cure her sick spirit in the
sun. The dwarf stood still and looked at her with insolent eyes.
Soldiers' wives hid themselves within their doors, cautiously watching,
or thrusting out their heads to shake at one another or to squall at any
child venturing too near the encounter. They did not like the strange
girl, and besides, she was in their way. But they liked the Nightingale
less, and pitied any one singled out for her attack.
"Good day to madame the former Madame Klussman," said the dwarf.
Marguerite gathered herself in defense to arise and leave her stool. But
Le Rossignol gathered her mandolin in equal readiness to give pursuit.
And not one woman in the barracks would have invited her quarry.
"I was in Penobscot last week," announced Le Rossignol, and heads popped
out of all the doors to lift eyebrows and open mouths at each other. The
swan-riding witch! She confessed to that impossible journey!
"I was in Penobscot last week," repeated Le Rossignol, holding up her
mandolin and tinkling an accompaniment to her words, "and there I saw
the house of D'Aulnay de Charnisay, and a very good house it is; but my
lord should burn it. It is indeed of rough logs, and the windows are so
high that one must have wings to look through them; but quite good
enough for a woman of your rank, seeing that D'Aulnay hath a palace for
his wife in Port Royal."
"I know naught about the house," spoke Marguerite, a yellow sheen of
anger appearing in her eyes.
"Do you know naught about the Island of Demons, then?"
The Swiss girl muttered a negative and looked sidewise at her
antagonist.
"I will tell you that story," said Le Rossignol.
She played a weird prelude. Marguerite sat still to be baited, like a
hare which has no covert. The instrument being heavy for the dwarf, she
propped it by resting one foot on the abutting foundation of the
powder-house, and all through her recital made the mandolin's effects
act upon her listener.
"The Sieur de Roberval sailed to this New World, having with him among a
shipload of righteous people one Marguerite." She slammed her emphasis
on the mandolin.