fort. Again she sat in her husband's tent, holding Marie's dying head on
her arm while grief worked its swift miracle in a woman formed to such
fullness of beauty and strength. Again she saw two graves and a long
trench made in the frontier graveyard for Marie and her officer Edelwald
and her twenty-three soldiers, all in line with her child. Once more
Antonia saw the household turn from that spot weeping aloud; and De
Charnisay's ships already sailing away with the spoil of the fort to
Penobscot; and his sentinels looking down from the walls of St. John.
She saw her husband dividing his own party, and sending all the men he
could spare to navigate La Tour's ship and carry the helpless women and
children to the head of Fundy Bay. All these things revolved before
her, in that bubble of an instant, before her own voice broke it,
saying,--
"Is this you, Le Rossignol?"
"Shubenacadie and I," responded the dwarf, lilting up sweetly.
"Where do you come from?" inquired Antonia, feeling the weirdness of her
visitor as she had never felt it in the hall at Fort St. John.
"Port Royal. I have come from Port Royal on purpose to speak with you."
"With me?"
"With you, Madame Antonia."
"You must then go directly to the house and eat some supper," said
Antonia, speaking her first thought but reserving her second: "Our
people will take to the fields when they see the poor little creature by
daylight, and as for the swan, it is worse than a drove of Mynheer's
Indians."
"I am not eating to-night, I am riding," answered Le Rossignol, bold in
mystery while the moon made half uncertain the draggled state of
Shubenacadie's feathers. She placed her hands on his back and pressed
him downward, as if his plumage foamed up from an over-full
packing-case. Shubenacadie waddled a step or two reluctantly, and
squatted, spreading his wings and curving his head around to look at
her. The dwarf sat upon him as upon a throne, stroking his neck with her
right hand while she talked. She seemed a part of the river's whisper,
or of that world of summer night insects which shrilled around.
"I have come to tell you about the death of D'Aulnay de Charnisay," said
this pigmy.
"We have long had that news," responded Antonia, "and worse which
followed it."
Madame Van Corlaer despised Charles La Tour for repossessing himself of
all he had lost and becoming the first power in Acadia by marrying
D'Aulnay's widow.
"No ear," declared the dwarf, "hath ever heard how D'Aulnay de Charnisay
died."
"He was stuck in a bog," said Antonia.
"He was stuck in no bog," said Le Rossignol, "for I alone was beside him
at the time. And I ride from Port Royal to tell thee the whole of it and
free my mind, lest I be obliged to fling it in my new lady's face the
next time she speaks of his happy memory. Widows who take second
husbands have no sense about the first one."
Antonia slightly coughed. It is not pleasant to have your class
disapproved of, even by a dwarf. And she did still secretly respect her
first husband's prophecy. Had it not been fulfilled on the friend she
best loved, if not on the husband she took?
"Mynheer Van Corlaer will soon be home from New Amsterdam, whither he
made a voyage to confer with the governor," said Antonia. "Let me take
you to the house, where we can talk at our ease."
"I talk most at my ease on Shubenacadie's back," answered Le Rossignol,
holding her swan's head and rubbing her cheek against his bill. "You
will not keep me a moment at Fort Orange. I fell out of patience with
every place while we lived so long in poverty at that stockade at the
head of Fundy Bay."
"Did you live there long?" inquired Antonia.
"Until D'Aulnay de Charnisay died out of my lord's way. What could my
lord do for us, indeed, with nothing but a ship and scarce a dozen men?
He left some to keep the stockade and took the rest to man his ship when
he started to Newfoundland to send her forlorn old highness back to
England. Her old highness hath had many a dower fee from us since that
day."
"Your lord hath mended his fortunes," remarked Antonia without approval.
"Yes, we are now the greatest people in Acadia; we live in grand state
at Port Royal. You would never know him for the careworn man he
was--except once, indeed, when he came from viewing the ruins of Fort
St. John. It is no longer maintained as a fortress. But I like not all
these things. I rove more now than when Madame Marie lived."
Silence was kept a moment after Madame La Tour's name, between Antonia
and her illusive visitor. The dwarf seemed clad in sumptuous garments. A
cap of rich velvet could be discerned on her flaring hair instead of the
gull-breast covering she once made for herself.
"Yet I roved much out of the peasants' way at the stockade," she
continued, sending the night sounds again into background. "Peasants who
have no master over them become like swine. We had two goats, and I
tended them, and sat ages upon ages on the bank of a tide-creek which
runs up among the marshes at the head of Fundy Bay. Madame Antonia, you
should see that tide-creek. It shone like wet sleek red carnelian when
the water was out of it. I loved its basin; and the goats would go down
to lick the salt. They had more sense than D'Aulnay de Charnisay, for
they knew where to venture. I thought D'Aulnay de Charnisay was one of
our goats by his bleat, until I looked down and saw him part sunk in a
quicksand at the bottom of the channel. The tide was already frothing in
like yeast upon him. How gloriously the tide shoots up that tide-creek!
It hisses. It comes like thousands of horses galloping one behind the
other and tumbling over each other,--fierce and snorting spray, and
climbing the banks, and still trampling down and flying over the ones
who have galloped in first."
"But what did D'Aulnay de Charnisay do?" inquired Antonia.
"He stuck in the quicksand," responded Le Rossignol.
"But did he not call for help?"
"He did nothing else, indeed, until the tide's horses trampled him
under."
"But what did you do?"
"I sat down and watched him," said the dwarf.
"How could you?" shuddered Antonia, feeling how little this tiny being's
humanity was developed.
"We had some chat," said Le Rossignol. "He promised me a seigniory if I
would run and call some men with ropes. 'I heard a Swiss's wife say
that you promised him a seigniory,' quoth I. 'And you had enough ropes
then.' He pledged his word and took oath to make me rich if I would get
him only a priest. 'You pledged your word to the lady of Fort St. John,'
said I. The water kept rising and he kept stretching his neck above it,
and crying and shouting, and I took his humor and cried and shouted with
him, naming the glorious waves as they rode in from the sea:--
"'Glaud Burge!'
"'Jean le Prince!'
"'Renot Babinet!'
"'Ambroise Tibedeaux!'
"And so on until François Bastarack the twenty-third roller flowed over
his head, and Edelwald did not even know he was beneath."
Antonia dropped her face upon her hands.
"So that is the true story," said Le Rossignol. "He died a good salt
death, and his men pulled him out before the next tide."
Presently Antonia looked up. Her eye was first caught by a coming sail
on the river. It shone in the moonlight, moving slowly, for there was so
little wind. Her husband must be there. She turned to say so to Le
Rossignol; who was gone.
Antonia opened the gate and stepped outside, looking in every direction
for dwarf and swan. She had not even noticed a rustle, or the pat of
Shubenacadie's feet upon sand. But Le Rossignol and her familiar had
disappeared in the wide expanse of moonlight; whether deftly behind tree
or rock, or over wall, or through air above, Antonia had no mind to find
out.
Even the approaching sail took weirdness. The ship was too distant for
her to yet hear the hiss of water around its prow. But in that, Van
Corlaer and the homely good happiness of common life was approaching.
With the dwarf had disappeared that misty sweet sorrowful Acadian world.