The Lady of Fort St. John Part 11

"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 s.h.i.+eld 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 superst.i.tion 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 vanis.h.i.+ng. 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 carca.s.s," 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 woodp.e.c.k.e.r. 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.

"Take that sweet sight for my thanks," said Le Rossignol, pointing to 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.

"He, 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.