The Lady of Fort St. John Part 7

One window high in the wall showed the misty darkness which lay upon Fundy Bay. The room was chilly.

"Monsieur Corlaer is gone, Antonia," said Marie.

Antonia's shadow leaped, magnifying the young Dutchwoman's start.

"Madame, you have not sent him off on his journey in the night?"

"I sent him not. I begged him to remain. But he had such cold welcome from his own countrywoman that he chose the woods rather than the hospitality of Fort St. John."

Much as Antonia stirred and clinked flasks, her sobs grew audible behind the screen. She ran out with her arms extended and threw herself on the floor at Marie's knees, transformed by anguish. Marie in full compa.s.sion drew the girlish creature to her breast, repenting herself while Antonia wept and shook.

"I was cruel to say Monsieur Corlaer is gone. He has only left the fortress to camp with his men at the falls. He will be here two more days, and to-morrow you must urge him to stay our guest."

"Madame, I dare not see him at all!"

"But why should you not see Monsieur Corlaer?"

Antonia settled to the floor and rested her head and arms on her friend's lap.

"For you love him."

"O madame! I did not show that I loved him? No. It would be horrible for me to love him."

"What has he done? And it is plain he has come to court you."

"He has long courted me, madame."

"And you met him as a stranger and fled from him as a wolf!--this Hollandais gentleman who hath saved our French people--even priests--from the savages!"

"All New Amsterdam and Fort Orange hold him in esteem," said Antonia, betraying pride. "I have heard he can do more with the Iroquois tribes than any other man of the New World." She uselessly wiped her eyes. She was weak from long crying.

"Then why do you run from him?"

"Because he hath too witching a power on me, madame. I cannot spin or knit or sew when he is by; I must needs watch every motion of his if he once fastens my eyes."

"I have noticed he draws one's heart," laughed Marie.

"He does. It is like witchcraft. He sets me afloat so that I lose my feet and have scarce any will of my own. I never was so disturbed by my husband Jonas Bronck," complained Antonia.

"Did you love your husband?" inquired Marie.

"We always love our husbands, madame. Mynheer Bronck was very good to me."

"You have never told me much of Monsieur Bronck, Antonia."

"I don't like to speak of him now, madame. It makes me s.h.i.+ver."

"You are not afraid of the dead?"

"I was never afraid of him living. I regarded him as a father."

"But one's husband is not to be regarded as a father."

"He was old enough to be my father, madame. I was not more than sixteen, besides being an orphan, and Mynheer Bronck was above fifty, yet he married me, and became the best husband in the colony. He was far from putting me in such states as Mynheer Van Corlaer does."

"The difference is that you love Monsieur Corlaer."

"Do not speak that word, madame."

"Would you have him marry another woman?"

"Yes," spoke Antonia in a stoical voice, "if that pleased him best. I should then be driven to no more voyages. He followed me to New Amsterdam; and I ventured on a long journey to Boston, where I had kinspeople, as you know. But there I must have broken down, madame, if I had not met you. It was fortunate for me that the English captain brought you out of your course. For mynheer set out to follow me there.

And now he has come across the wilderness even to this fort!"

"Confess," said Marie, giving her a little shake, "how pleased you are with such a determined lover!"

But instead of doing this, Antonia burst again into frenzied sobbing and hugged her comforter.

"O madame, you are the only person I dare love in the world!"

Marie smoothed the young widow's damp hair with the quieting stroke which calms children.

"Let mother help thee," she said; and neither of them remembered that she was scarcely as old as Antonia. In love and motherhood, in military peril, and contact with riper civilizations, to say nothing of inherited experience, the lady of St. John had lived far beyond Antonia Bronck.

"Your husband made you take an oath not to wed again,--is it so?"

"No, madame, he never did."

"Yet you told me he left you his money?"

"Yes. He was very good to me. For I had neither father nor mother."

"And he bound you by no promise?

"None at all, madame."

"What, then, can you find to break your heart upon in the suit of Monsieur Corlaer? You are free. Even as my lord--if I were dead--would be free to marry any one; not excepting D'Aulnay's widow."

Marie smiled at that improbable union.

"No, I do not feel free." Antonia s.h.i.+vered close to her friend's knees.

"Madame, I cannot tell you. But I will show you the token."

"Show me the token, therefore. And a sound token it must be, to hold you wedded to a dead man whom in life you regarded as a father."

Antonia rose upon her feet, but stood dreading the task before her.

"I have to look at it once every month," she explained, "and I have looked at it once this month already."