The Lady of Fort St. John Part 14

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 Pen.o.bscot 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 Pen.o.bscot 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 ab.u.t.ting 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 s.h.i.+pload of righteous people one Marguerite." She slammed her emphasis on the mandolin.

"There have ever been too many such women, and so the Sieur de Roberval found, though this one was his niece. Like all her kind, madame, she had a lover to her scandal. The Sieur de Roberval whipped her, and prayed over her, and shut her up in irons in the hold; yet live a G.o.dly life she would not. So what could he do but set her ash.o.r.e on the Island of Demons?"

"I do not want to hear it," was Marguerite's muttered protest.

But Le Rossignol advanced closer to her face.

"And what does the lover do but jump overboard and swim after her? And well was he repaid." Bang! went the mandolin. "So they went up the rocky island together, and there they built a hut. What a horrible land was that!

"All day long fiends twisted themselves in mist. The waves made a sadder moaning there than anywhere else on earth. Monsters crept out of the sea and grinned with dull eyes and clammy lips. No fruit, no flower, scarcely a blade of gra.s.s dared thrust itself toward the sky on that scaly island. Daylight was half dusk there forever. But the nights, the nights, madame, were full of howls, of contending beasts--the nights were storms of demons let loose to beat on that island!

"All the two people had to eat were the stores set ash.o.r.e by the Sieur de Roberval. Now a child was born in their hut, and the very next night a bear knocked at the door and demanded the child. Marguerite full freely gave it to him."

The girl shrunk back, and Le Rossignol was delighted until she herself noticed that Klussman had come in from some duty outside the gates. His eye detected her employment, and he sauntered not far off with his shoulder turned to the powder-house.

"Next night, madame," continued Le Rossignol, and her tone and the accent of the mandolin made an insult of that unsuitable t.i.tle, "a horned lion and two dragons knocked at the door and asked for the lover, and Marguerite full freely gave him to them. Kind soul, she would do anything to save herself!"

"Go away!" burst out the girl.

"And from that time until a s.h.i.+p took her off, the demons of Demon Island tried in vain to get Marguerite. They howled around her house every night, and gaped down her chimney, and whispered through the cracks and sat on the roof. But thou knowest, madame, that a woman of her kind, so soft and silent and downward-looking, is more than a match for any demon; sure to live full easily and to die a fat saint."

"Have done with this," said Klussman behind the dwarf, who turned her grotesque beak and explained,--

"I am but telling the story of the Island of Demons to Madame Klussman."

As soon as she had spoken the name the Swiss caught her in his hand, mandolin and all, and walked across the esplanade, holding her at arm's length, as he might have carried an eel. Le Rossignol ineffectually squirmed and kicked, raging at the spectacle she made for laughing women and soldiers. She tried to beat the Swiss with her mandolin, but he twisted her in another direction, a cat's weight of fury. Giving her no chance to turn upon him, he opened the entrance and shut her inside the hall, and stalked back to make his explanation to his wife. Klussman had avoided any glimpse of Marguerite until this instant of taking up her defense.

"I pulled that witch-midget off thee," he said, speaking for the fortress to hear, "because I will not have her raising tumults in the fort. Her place is in the hall to amuse her ladies."

Marguerite's chin rested on her breast.

"Go in the house," said Klussman roughly. "Why do you show yourself out here to be mocked at?"

The poor girl raised her swimming eyes and looked at him in the fas.h.i.+on he remembered when she was ill; when he had nursed her with agonies of fear that she might die. The old relations between them were thus suggested in one blinding flash. Klussman turned away so sick that the walls danced around him. He went outside the fort again, and wandered around the stony height, turning at every few steps to gaze and strain his eyes at that new clay in the graveyard.

"When she lies beside that," muttered the soldier, "then I can be soft to her," though he knew he was already soft to her, and that her look had driven through him.

XII.

D'AULNAY.

The swelling spring was chilled by cold rain, driving in from the bay and sweeping through the half budded woods. The tide went up St. John River with an impulse which flooded undiked lowlands, yet there was no storm dangerous to s.h.i.+pping. Some sails hung out there in the whirl of vapors with evident intention of making port.

Marie took a gla.s.s up to the turret and stood on the cannon to watch them. Rain fine as driven stings beat her face, and acc.u.mulated upon her m.u.f.fling to run down and drip on the wet floor. She could make out nothing of the vessels. There were three of them, each by its sails a s.h.i.+p. They could not be the s.h.i.+ps of Nicholas Denys carrying La Tour's recruits. She was not foolish enough, however great her husband's prosperity with Denys, to expect of him such a miraculous voyage around Cape Sable.

Sails were a rare sight on that side of the bay. The venturesome seamen of the Ma.s.sachusetts colony chose other courses. Fundy Bay was aside from the great sea paths. Port Royal sent out no s.h.i.+ps except D'Aulnay's, and on La Tour's side of Acadia his was the only vessel.

Certain of nothing except that these unknown comers intended to enter St. John River, Madame La Tour went downstairs and met Klussman on the wall. He turned from his outlook and said directly,--

"Madame, I believe it is D'Aulnay."

"You may be right," she answered. "Is any one outside the gates?"

"Two men went early to the garden, but the rain drove them back.

Fortunately, the day being bad, no one is hunting beyond the falls."

"And is our vessel well moored?"

"Her repairing was finished some days ago, you remember, madame, and she sits safe and comfortable. But D'Aulnay may burn her. When he was here before, my lord was away with the s.h.i.+p."

"Bar the gates and make everything secure at once," said Marie. "And salute these vessels presently. If it be D'Aulnay, we sent him back to his seigniory with fair speed once before, and we are no worse equipped now."

She returned down the stone steps where Van Corlaer's courts.h.i.+p had succeeded, and threw off her wet cloak to dry herself before the fire in her room. She kneeled by the hearth; the log had burned nearly away. Her ma.s.s of hair was twisted back in the plain fas.h.i.+on of the Greeks--that old sweet fas.h.i.+on created with the nature of woman, to which the world periodically returns when it has exhausted new devices. The smallest curves, which were tendrils rather than curls of hair, were blown out of her fleece over forehead and ears. A dark woman's beauty is independent of wind and light. When she is buffeted by weather the rich inner color comes through her skin, and the brightest days.h.i.+ne can do nothing against the dusk of her eyes.

If D'Aulnay was about to attack the fort, Marie was glad that Monsieur Corlaer had taken his bride, the missionaries, and his people and set out in the opposite direction. Barely had they escaped a siege, for they were on their way less than twenty-four hours. She had regretted their first day in a chill rain. But chill rain in boundless woods is better than sunlight in an invested fortress. Father Jogues' happy face with its forward droop and musing eyelids came before Marie's vision.

"I need another of his benedictions," she said in undertone, when a knock on her door and a struggle with its latch disturbed her.