Bottles of essences and pots of pomade and small bags of powders were
set out, for the luxurious use of its inmate when Zélie prepared her for
the night. Le Rossignol enjoyed these scents. The sweet-odored
atmosphere which clung about Lady Dorinda was her one attribute approved
by the dwarf. Madame Marie never in any way appealed to the nose. Madame
Marie's garments were scentless as outdoor air, and the freshness of
outdoor air seemed to belong to them. Le Rossignol liked to have her
senses stimulated, and she counted it a lucky thing to sit by that deep
fire and smell the heavy fragrance, of the room. A branched silver
candlestick held two lighted tapers on the dressing-table. The bed
curtains were parted, revealing a huge expanse of resting-place within;
and heavy folds shut the starlit-world from the windows. One could here
forget that the oven was blown up, and the ground of the fort plowed
with shot and sown with mortar.
"Is there no fire in the hall?" inquired Lady Dorinda.
"It hath all the common herd from the barracks around it," explained Le
Rossignol. "And Pierre Doucett is stretched there, groaning over the
loss of half his face."
"Where is Madame La Tour?"
"She hath gone out on the walls since the firing stopped. Our gunner in
the turret told me that two guns are to be moved back before moonrise
into the bastions they were taken from. Madame Marie is afraid D'Aulnay
will try to encompass the fort to-night."
"And what business took thee into the turret?"
"Your highness"--
"Ladyship," corrected Lady Dorinda.
--"I like to see D'Aulnay's torches," proceeded the dwarf, without
accepting correction. "His soldiers are burying the dead over there. He
needs a stone tower with walls seven feet thick like ours, does
D'Aulnay."
Lady Dorinda put another seed in her mouth, and reflected that Zélie's
attendance was tardier than usual. She inquired with shadings of
disapproval,--
"Is Madame La Tour's woman also on the walls?"
"Not Zélie, your highness"--
"Ladyship," insisted Lady Dorinda.
"That heavy-foot Zélie," chuckled the dwarf, deaf to correction, "a fine
bit of thistledown would she be to blow around the walls. Zélie is
laying beds for the children, and she hath come to words with the cook
through trying to steal eggs to roast for them. We have but few wild
fowl eggs in store."
"Tell her that I require her," said Lady Dorinda, fretted by the
irregularities of life in a siege. "Madame La Tour will account with her
if she neglects her rightful duties."
Le Rossignol crawled reluctantly up to stand in her dots of moccasins.
"Yes, your highness"--
"Ladyship," repeated Claude La Tour's widow, to whom the sting was
forever fresh, reminding her of a once possible regency.
"But have you heard about the woman that was brought into the fortress
before Madame Bronck went away?"
"What of her?"
"The Swiss says she comes from D'Aulnay."
"It is Zélie that I require," said Lady Dorinda with discouraging
brevity. Le Rossignol dropped her face, appearing to give round-eyed
speculation to the fire.
"It is believed that D'Aulnay sent by that strange woman a box of poison
into the fort to work secret mischief. But," added the dwarf, looking up
in open perplexity, "that box cannot now be found."
"Perhaps you can tell what manner of box it was," said Lady Dorinda with
irony, though a dull red was startled into her cheeks.
"Madame Marie says it was a tiny box of oak, thick set with nails. She
would not alarm the fort, so she had search made for it in Madame
Bronck's name."
Lady Dorinda, incredulous, but trembling, divined at once that the dwarf
had hid that coffer in her chest. Perhaps the dwarf had procured the
hand and replaced some valuable of Madame Bronck's with it. She longed
to have the little beast shaken and made to confess. While she was
considering what she could do with dignity, Zélie rapped and was
admitted, and Le Rossignol escaped into outside darkness.
Hours passed, however, before Shubenacadie's mistress sought his
society. She undressed in her black cell which had but one loophole
looking toward the north, and taking the swan upon her bed tried to
reconcile him to blankets. But Shubenacadie protested with both wings
against a woolly covering which was not in his experience. The times
were disjointed for him. He took no interest in Lady Dorinda and the
box of Madame Bronck, and scratched the pallet with his toes and the
nail at the end of his bill. But Le Rossignol pushed him down and
pressed her confidences upon this familiar.
"So her highness threw that box out into the fort. I had to shiver and
wait until Zélie left her, but I knew she would choose to rid herself of
it through a window, for she would scarce burn it, she hath not
adroitness to drop it in the hall, show it to Madame Marie she would
not, and keep it longer to poison her court gowns she dare not. She hath
found it before this. Her looking-glass was the only place apter than
that chest. I would give much to know what her yellow highness thought
of that hand. Here, mine own Shubenacadie, I have brought thee this
sweet biscuit moistened with water. Eat, and scratch me not.
"And little did its studding of nails avail the box, for the fall split
it in three pieces; and I hid them under rubbish, for mortar and stones
are plentiful down there. You should have seen my shade stretch under
the moon like a tall hobgoblin. The nearest sentinel on the wall
challenges me. 'Who is there?' 'Le Rossignol.' 'What are you doing?'
'Looking: for my swan's yoke.' Then he laughs--little knowing how I
meant to serve his officer. The Hollandais mummy hath been of more use
to me than trinkets. I frightened her highness with it, and now it is
set to torment the Swiss. Let me tell thee, Shubenacadie: punishment
comes even on a swan who would stretch up his neck and stand taller than
his mistress. Wert thou not blown up with the oven? Hide thy head and
take warning."
XIV.
THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN POWERS.
The dwarf's report about Klussman forced Madame La Tour to watch the
strange girl; but Marguerite seemed to take no notice of any soldier who
came and went in the hall. As for the Swiss, he carried trouble on his
self-revealing face, but not treachery. Klussman camped at night on the
floor with other soldiers off guard; screens and the tall settles being
placed in a row between this military bivouac and women and children of
the household protected near the stairs. He awoke as often as the guard
was changed, and when dawn-light instead of moonlight appeared with the
last relief, he sprang up, and took the breastplate which had been laid
aside for his better rest. Out of its hollow fell Jonas Bronck's hand,
bare and crouching with stiff fingers on the pavement. The soldiers
about to lie down laughed at themselves and Klussman for recoiling from
it, and fury succeeded pallor in his blond face.
"Did you do that?" he demanded of the men, but before they could utter
denials, his suspicion leaped the settles. Spurning Jonas Bronck's
treasured fragment with his boot in a manner which Antonia could never
have forgiven, Klussman sent it to the hearth and strode after it. He
had not far to look for Marguerite. As his eye traveled recklessly into
the women's camp, he encountered her beside him, sitting on the floor
behind a settle and matching the red of a burning tree trunk with the
red of her bruised eyelids.
"Did you put that in my breastplate?" said Klussman, pointing to the
hand as it lay palm upwards. Marguerite shuddered and burst out crying.
This had been her employment much of the night, but the nervous fit of
childish weeping swept away all of Klussman's self-control.
"No; no;" she repeated. "You think I do everything that is horrible."
And she sobbed upon her hands.
Klussman stooped down and tossed the hand like an escaped coal behind
the log. As he stooped he said,--
"I don't think that. Don't cry. If you cry I will shoot myself."
Marguerite looked up and saw his helplessness in his face. He had sought
her before, but only with reproaches. Now his resentment was broken.
Twice had the dwarfs mischief thrown Marguerite on his compassion, and
thereby diminished his resistance to her. Jonas Bronck's hand, in its
red-hot seclusion behind the log, writhed and smoked, discharging its
grosser parts up the chimney's shaft. Unseen, it lay a wire-like outline
of bone; unseen, it became a hand of fairy ashes, trembling in every
filmy atom; finally an ember fell upon it, and where a hand had been
some bits of lime lay in a white glow.
Klussman went out and mounted one of the bastions, where the gunners
were already preparing for work. The weather had changed in the night,
and the sky seemed immeasurably lifted while yet filled with the
uncertainties of dawn. Fundy Bay revealed more and more of its clean
blue-emerald level, and far eastward the glassy water shaded up to a
flushing of pink. Smoke rose from the mess fires in D'Aulnay's camp. The
first light puff of burnt powder sprung from his batteries, and the
artillery duel again began.
"If we had but enough soldiers to make a sally," said Madame La Tour to
her officer, as she also came for an instant to the bastion, "we might
take his batteries. Oh, for monsieur to appear on the bay with a stout
shipload of men."
"It is time he came," said the Swiss.
"Yes, we shall see him or have news of him soon."
In the tumult of Klussman's mind Jonas Bronck's hand never again came
uppermost. He cared nothing and thought nothing about that weird
fragment, in the midst of living disaster. It had merely been the
occasion of his surrendering to Marguerite. He determined that when La
Tour returned and the siege was raised, if he survived he would take his
wife and go to some new colony. Live without her he could not. Yet
neither could he reëspouse her in Fort St. John, where he had himself
openly denounced her.
Spring that day leaped forward to a semblance of June. The sun poured
warmth; the very air renewed life. But to Klussman it was the brilliancy
of passing delirium. He did not feel when gun-metal touched his hands.
The sound of the incoming tide, which could be heard betwixt artillery
boomings, and the hint of birds which that sky gave, were mute against
his thoughts.
Though D'Aulnay's loss was visibly heavy, it proved also an ill day for
the fort. The southeast bastion was raked by a fire which disabled the
guns and killed three men. Five others were wounded at various posts.
The long spring twilight sunk through an orange horizon rim and filled
up the measure which makes night, before firing reluctantly stopped.
Marie had ground opened near the powder magazine to make a temporary
grave for her three dead. They had no families. She held a taper in her
hand and read a service over them. One bastion and so many men being
disabled, a sentinel was posted in the turret after the gunners
descended. The Swiss took this duty on himself, and felt his way up the
pitch-black stairs. He had not seen Marguerite in the hall when he
hurriedly took food, but she was safe in the tower. No woman ventured
out in the storm of shot. The barracks were charred and battered.
As Klussman reached the turret door he exclaimed against some human
touch, but caught his breath and surrendered himself to Marguerite's
arms, holding her soft body and smoothing her silk-stranded hair.
"I heard you say you would come up here," murmured Marguerite. "And the
door was unlocked."
"Where have you been since morning?"
"Behind a screen in the great hall. The women are cruel."
Klussman hated the women. He kissed his wife with the first kiss since
their separation, and all the toils of war failed to unman him like that
kiss.
"But there was that child!" he groaned.
"That was not my child," said Marguerite.
"The baby brought here with you!"
"It was not mine."
"Whose was it?"
"It was a drunken soldier's. His wife died. They made me take care of
it," said Marguerite resentfully.
"Why didn't you tell me that?" exclaimed Klussman. "You made me lie to
my lady!"
Marguerite had no answer. He understood her reticence, and the
degradation which could not be excused.
"Who made you take care of it?"
"He did."
"D'Aulnay?" Klussman uttered through his teeth.
"Yes; I don't like him."
"_I_ like him!" said the savage Swiss.
"He is cruel," complained Marguerite, "and selfish."
The Swiss pressed his cheek to her soft cheek.
"I never was selfish and cruel to thee," he said, weakly.
"No, you never were."
"Then why," burst out the husband afresh, "did you leave me to follow
that beast of prey?"
Marguerite brought a sob from her breast which was like a sword through
Klussman. He smoothed and smoothed her hair.
"But what did I ever do to thee, Marguerite?"
"I always liked you best," she said. "But he was a great lord. The women
in barracks are so hateful, and a common soldier is naught."
"You would be the lady of a seignior," hissed Klussman.
"Thou knowest I was fit for that," retorted Marguerite with spirit.
"I know thou wert. It is marrying me that has been thy ruin." He groaned
with his head hanging.
"We are not ruined yet," she said, "if you care for me."
"That was a stranger child?" he repeated.
"All the train knew it to be a motherless child. He had no right to
thrust it on me."
"I demand no testimony of D'Aulnay's followers," said Klussman roughly.
He let her go from his arms, and stepped to the battlements. His gaze
moved over the square of the fortress, and eastward to that blur of
whiteness which hinted the enemy's tents, the hint being verified by a
light or two.
"I have a word to tell you," said Marguerite, leaning beside her
husband.
"I have this to tell thee," said the Swiss. "We must leave Acadia." His
arm again fondled her, and he comforted his sore spirit with an
instant's thought of home and peace somewhere.
"Yes. We can go to Penobscot," she said.
"Penobscot?" he repeated with suspicion.
"The king will give you a grant of Penobscot."
"The king will give it to--me?"
"Yes. And it is a great seigniory."
"How do you know the king will do that?"
"He told me to tell you; he promised it."
"The king? You never saw the king."
"No."
"D'Aulnay?"
"Yes."
"I would I had him by the throat!" burst out Klussman. Marguerite leaned
her cheek on the stone and sighed. The bay seemed full of salty spice.
It was a night in which the human soul must beat against casements to
break free and roam the blessed dark. All of spring was in the air.
Directly overhead stood the north star, with slow constellations
wheeling in review before him.
"So D'Aulnay sent you to spy on my lord, as my lord believed?"
"You shall not call me a spy. I came to my husband. I hate him," she
added in a resentful burst. "He made me walk the marshes, miles and
miles alone, carrying that child."
"Why the child?"
"Because the people from St. John would be sure to pity it."
"And what word did he send you to tell me?" demanded Klussman. "Give me
that word."
Marguerite waited with her face downcast.
"It was kind of him to think of me," said the Swiss; "and to send you
with the message!"
She felt mocked, and drooped against the wall. And in the midst of his
scorn he took her face in his hands with a softness he could not master.
"Give me the word," he repeated. Marguerite drew his neck down and
whispered, but before she finished whispering Klussman flung her against
the cannon with an oath.
"I thought it would be, betray my lord's fortress to D'Aulnay de
Charnisay! Go down stairs, Marguerite Klussman. When I have less matter
in hand, I will flog thee! Hast thou no wit at all? To come from a man
who broke faith with thee, and offer his faith to me! Bribe me with
Penobscot to betray St. John to him!"
Marguerite sat on the floor. She whispered, gasping,--
"Tell not the whole fortress."
Klussman ceased to talk, but his heels rung on the stone as he paced the
turret. He felt himself grow old as silence became massive betwixt his
wife and him. The moon rose, piercing the cannon embrasure, and showed
Marguerite weeping against the wall. The mass of silence drove him
resistless before her will. That soft and childlike shape did not
propose treason to him. He understood that she thought only of herself
and him. It was her method of bringing profit out of the times. He heard
his relief stumble at the foot of the turret stairs, and went down the
winding darkness to stop and send the soldier back to bed.
"I am not sleepy," said Klussman. "I slept last night. Go and rest till
daybreak." And the man willingly went. Marguerite had not moved a fold
of her gown when her husband again came into the lighted tower. The
Swiss lifted her up and made her stand beside him while he stanched her
tears.
"You hurt me when you threw me against the cannon," she said.
"I was rough. But I am too foolish fond to hold anger. It has worn me
out to be hard on thee. I am not the man I was."
Marguerite clung around him. He dumbly felt his misfortune in being
thralled by a nature of greater moral crudity than his own. But she was
his portion in the world.
"You flung me against the cannon because I wanted you made a seignior."
"It was because D'Aulnay wanted me made a traitor."
"What is there to do, indeed?" murmured Marguerite. "He said if you
would take the sentinels off the wall on the entrance side of the fort,
at daybreak any morning, he will be ready to scale that wall."
"But how will he know I have taken the sentinels off?"
"You must hold up a ladder in your hands."
"The tower is between that side of the fort and D'Aulnay's camp. No one
would see me standing with a ladder in my hands."
"When you set the ladder against the outside wall, it is all you have to
do, except to take me with you as you climb down. It is their affair to
see the signal."
"So D'Aulnay plans an ambush between us and the river? And suppose I did
all that and the enemy failed to see the signal? I should go down there
to be hung, or my lady would have me thrown into the keep here, and
perhaps shot. I ought to be shot."
"They will see the signal," insisted Marguerite. "I know all that is to
be done. He made me say it over until I tired of it. You must mount the
wall where the gate is: that side of the fort toward the river, the camp
being on another side."
Klussman again smoothed her hair and argued with her as with a child.
"I cannot betray my lady. You see how madame trusts me."
She grieved against his hard breastplate with insistence which pierced
even that.
"I am indeed not fit to be thought on beside the lady!"
"I would do anything for thee but betray my lady."
"And when you have held her fort for her will she advance you by so much
as a handful of land?"
"I was made lieutenant since the last siege."
"But now you may be a seignior with a holding of your own," repeated
Marguerite. So they talked the night away. She showed him on one hand a
future of honor and plenty which he ought not to withhold from her; and
on the other, a wandering forth to endless hardships. D'Aulnay had
worked them harm; but this was in her mind an argument that he should
now work them good. Being a selfish lord, powerful and cruel, he could
demand this service as the condition of making her husband master of
Penobscot; and the service itself she regarded as a small one compared
to her lone tramping of the marshes to La Tour's stockade. D'Aulnay was
certain to take Fort St. John some time. He had the king and all France
behind him; the La Tours had nobody. Marguerite was a woman who could
see no harm in advancing her husband by the downfall of his mere
employers. Her husband must be advanced. She saw herself lady of
Penobscot.
The Easter dawn began to grow over the world. Klussman remembered what
day it was, and lifted her up to look over the battlements at light
breaking from the east.
Marguerite turned her head from point to point of the dewy world once
more rising out of chaos. She showed her husband a new trench and a line
of breastworks between the fort and the river. These had been made in
the night, and might have been detected by him if he had guarded his
post. The jutting of rocks probably hid them from sentinels below.
"D'Aulnay is coming nearer," said the Swiss, looking with haggard
indifferent eyes at these preparations, and an occasional head venturing
above the fresh ridge. Marguerite threw her arms around her husband's
neck, and hung on him with kisses.
"Come on, then," he said, speaking with the desperate conviction of a
man who has lost himself. "I have to do it. You will see me hang for
this, but I'll do it for you."
XV.
A SOLDIER.
Marie felt herself called through the deepest depths of sleep, and sat
up in the robe of fur which she had wrapped around her for her night
bivouac. There was some alarm at her door. The enemy might be on the
walls. She tingled with the intense return of life, and was opening the
door without conscious motion. Nobody stood outside in the hall except
the dwarf, whose aureole of foxy hair surrounded features pinched by
anxiety.
"Madame Marie--Madame Marie! The Swiss has gone to give up the fort to
D'Aulnay."
"Has gone?"
"He came down from the turret with his wife, who persuaded him. I
listened all night on the stairs. D'Aulnay is ready to mount the wall
when he gives the signal. I had to hide me until the woman and the Swiss
passed below. They are now going to the wall to give the signal."
Through Marie passed that worst shock of all human experience. To see
your trusted ally transmuted into your secret most deadly foe, sickens
the heart as death surely cannot sicken it. Like many a pierced wretch
who has collapsed suddenly into the dust while the stab yet held the
knife, she whispered feebly,--
"He could not do that!"
The stern blackness of her eyes seemed to annihilate all the rest of her
face. Was rock itself stable under-foot? Why should one care to prolong
life, when life only proved how cruel and worthless are the people for
whom we labor?
"Madame Marie, he is now doing it. He was to hold up a ladder on the
wall."
"Which wall?"
"This one--where the gate is."
Marie looked through the glass in her door which opened toward the
battlements, rubbed aside moisture, and looked again. While one breath
could be drawn Klussman was standing in the dawn-light with a ladder
raised overhead. She caught up a pair of long pistols which had lain
beside her all night.
"Rouse the men below--quick!" she said to Le Rossignol, and ran up the
steps to the wall. No sentinels were there. The Swiss had already
dropped down the ladder outside and was out of sight, and she heard the
running, climbing feet of D'Aulnay's men coming to take the advantage
afforded them. Sentinels in the other two bastions turned with surprise
at her cry. They had seen Klussman relieving the guard, but his subtle
action escaped their watch-worn eyes. They only noticed that he had the
strange woman with him.
D'Aulnay's men were at the foot of the wall planting ladders. They were
swarming up. Marie met them with the sentinels joining her and the
soldiers rushing from below. The discharge of firearms, the clash of
opposing metals, the thuds of falling bodies, cries, breathless
struggling, clubbed weapons sweeping the battlements--filled one vast
minute. Ladders were thrown back to the stones, and D'Aulnay's repulsed
men were obliged to take once more to their trench, carrying the stunned
and wounded. A cannon was trained on their breastworks, and St. John
belched thunder and fire down the path of retreat. The Swiss's treason
had been useless to the enemy. The people of the fort saw him hurried
more like a prisoner than an ally towards D'Aulnay's camp, his wife
beside him.
"Oh, Klussman," thought the lady of St. John, as she turned to station
guards at every exposed point and to continue that day's fight, "you
knew in another way what it is to be betrayed. How could you put this
anguish upon me?"
The furious and powder-grimed men, her faithful soldiers, hooted at the
Swiss from their bastions, not knowing what a heart he carried with
him. He turned once and made them a gesture of defiance, more pathetic
than any wail for pardon, but they saw only the treason of the man, and
shot at him with a good will. Through smoke and ball-plowed earth,
D'Aulnay's soldiers ran into camp, and his batteries answered. Artillery
echoes were scattered far through the woods, into the very depths of
which that untarnished Easter weather seemed to stoop, coaxing growths
from the swelling ground.