Chapter 6

During this cheerful time a burning unrest, which she concealed from her people, drove Marie about her domain. She fled up the turret stairs and stood on the cannon to look over the bay. Her husband had been away but eight days. "Yet he often makes swift journeys," she thought. The load of his misfortunes settled more heavily upon her as she drew nearer to the end of woman companionship.

In former times, before such bitterness had grown in the feud between D'Aulnay and La Tour, she had made frequent voyages from Cape Sable up Fundy Bay to Port Royal. The winters were then merry among noble Acadians, and the lady of Fort St. Louis at Cape Sable was hostess of a rich seigniory. Now she had the sickness of suspense, and the wasting of life in waiting. Frequently during the day she met Father Jogues, who also wandered about disturbed by the evident necessity of his return to Montreal.

"Monsieur," said Marie once, "can you on your conscience bless a heretic?"

"Madame," said Father Jogues, "heaven itself blesses a good and excellent woman."

"Well, monsieur, if you could lift up your hand, even with the sign which my house holds idolatrous, and say a few words of prayer, I should then feel consecrated to whatever is before me."

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 Penobscot 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 Penobscot 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 abutting 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 shipload 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 godly life she would not. So what could he do but set her ashore 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 grass 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 ashore 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 title, "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 ship 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 fashion 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 shipping. Some sails hung out there in the whirl of vapors with evident intention of making port.

Marie took a glass up to the turret and stood on the cannon to watch them. Rain fine as driven stings beat her face, and accumulated upon her muffling 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 ship. They could not be the ships 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 Massachusetts colony chose other courses. Fundy Bay was aside from the great sea paths. Port Royal sent out no ships 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 ship."

"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 courtship 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 mass of hair was twisted back in the plain fashion of the Greeks--that old sweet fashion 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 dayshine 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.

"Enter, Le Rossignol," said Madame La Tour. And Le Rossignol entered, and approached the hearth, standing at full length scarcely as high as her lady kneeling. The room was a dim one, for all apartments looking out of the fort had windows little larger than portholes, set high in the walls. Two or three screens hid its uses as bedchamber and dressing-room, and a few pieces of tapestry were hung, making occasional panels of grotesque figures. A couch stood near the fireplace. The dwarf's prominent features were gravely fixed, and her bushy hair stood in a huge auburn halo around them. She wet her lips with that sudden motion by which a toad may be seen to catch flies.

"Madame Marie, every one is running around below and saying that D'Aulnay de Charnisay is coming again to attack the fort."

"Your pretty voice has always been a pleasure to me, Nightingale."

"But is it so, madame?"

"There are three ships standing in."

Le Rossignol's russet-colored gown moved nearer to the fire. She stretched her claws to warm and then lifted one of them near her lady's nose.

"Madame Marie, if D'Aulnay de Charnisay be coming, put no faith in that Swiss!"

"In Klussman?"

"Yes, madame."

"Klussman is the best soldier now in the fort," said Madame La Tour laughing. "If I put no faith in him, whom shall I trust?"

"Madame Marie, you remember that woman you brought back with you?"

"I have not seen her or spoken with her," said Marie self-reproachfully, "since she vexed me so sorely about her child. She is a poor creature. But they feed and house her well in the barracks."

"Madame Marie, Klussman hath been talking with that woman every day this week."

The dwarf's lady looked keenly at her.

"Oh, no. There could be no talk between those two."

"But there hath been. I have watched him. Madame Marie, he took me up when I went into the fort before Madame Bronck's marriage--when I was but playing my clavier before that sulky knave to amuse her--he took me up in his big common-soldier fingers, gripping me around the waist, and flung me into the hall."

"Did he so?" laughed Marie. "I can well see that my Nightingale can put no more faith in the Swiss. But hearken to me, thou bird-child. There! Hear our salute!"

The cannon leaped almost over their heads, and the walls shook with its boom and rebound. Marie kept her finger up and waited for a reply. Minute succeeded minute. The drip of accumulated rain-drops from the door could be heard, but nothing else. Those sullen vessels paid no attention to the inquiry of Fort St. John.

"Our enemy has come."

She relaxed from her tense listening and with a deep breath looked at Le Rossignol.

"Do not undermine the faith of one in another in this fortress. We must all hold together now. The Swiss may have a tenderness for his wretched wife which thou canst not understand. But he is not therefore faithless to his lord."

Taking the glass and throwing on her wet cloak, Marie again ran up to the wall. But Le Rossignol sat down cross-legged by the fire, wise and brooding.

"If I could see that Swiss hung," she observed, "it would scratch in my soul a long-felt itch."

When calamity threatens, we turn back to our peaceful days with astonishment that they ever seemed monotonous. Marie watched the ships, and thought of the woman days with Antonia before Van Corlaer came; of embroidery, and teaching the Etchemins, and bringing sweet plunder from the woods for the child's grave; of paddling on the twilight river when the tide was up, brimming and bubble-tinted; of her lord's coming home to the autumn-night hearth; of the little wheels and spinning, and Edelwald's songs--of all the common joys of that past life. The clumsy glass lately brought from France to master distances in the New World, wearied her hands before it assured her eyes.

D'Aulnay de Charnisay was actually coming to attack Fort St. John a second time. He warily anchored his vessels out of the fort's range; and hour after hour boats moved back and forth landing men and artillery on the cape at the mouth of the river, a position which gave as little scope as possible to St. John's guns. All that afternoon tents and earthworks were rising, and detail by detail appeared the deliberate and careful preparations of an enemy who was sitting down to a siege.

At dusk camp-fires began to flame on the distant low cape, and voices moved along air made sensitively vibrant by falling damp. There was the suggested hum of a disciplined small army settling itself for the night and for early action.

Madame La Tour came out to the esplanade of the fort, and the Swiss met her, carrying a torch which ineffectual rain-drops irritated to constant hissing. He stood, tall and careworn, holding it up that his lady might see her soldiers. Everything in the fort was ready for the siege. The sentinels were about to be doubled, and sheltered by their positions.

"I have had you called together, my men," she spoke, "to say a word to you before this affair begins."

The torch flared its limited circle of shine, smoke wavering in a half-seen plume at its tip, and showed their erect figures in line, none very distinct, but all keenly suggestive of life. Some were black-bearded and tawny, and others had tints of the sun in flesh and hair. One was grizzled about the temples, and one was a smooth-cheeked youth. The roster of their familiar names seemed to her as precious as a rosary. They watched her, feeling her beauty as keenly as if it were a pain, and answering every lambent motion of her spirit.

All the buildings were hinted through falling mist, and glowing hearths in the barracks showed like forge lights; for the wives of the half dozen married soldiers had come out, one having a child in her arms. They stood behind their lady, troubled, but reliant on her. She had with them the prestige of success; she had led the soldiers once before, and to a successful defense of the fort.

"My men," said Marie, "when the Sieur de la Tour set out to northern Acadia he dreaded such a move as this on D'Aulnay's part. But I assured him he need not fear for us."

The soldiers murmured their joy and looked at one another smiling.

"The Sieur de la Tour will soon return, with help or without it. And D'Aulnay has no means of learning how small our garrison is. Bind yourselves afresh to me as you bound yourselves before the other attack."

"My lady, we do!"

Out leaped every right hand, Klussman's with the torch, which lost and caught its flame again with the sudden sweep.

"That is all: and I thank you," said Marie. "We will do our best."

She turned back to the tower under the torch's escort, her soldiers giving her a full cheer which might further have deceived D'Aulnay in the strength of the garrison.

XIII.

THE SECOND DAY.

The exhilaration of fighting quickened every pulse in the fort. By next dawn the cannon began to speak. D'Aulnay had succeeded in planting batteries on a height eastward, and his guns had immediate effect. The barracks were set on fire and put out several times during the day. All the inmates gathered in the stone hall, and at its fireplace the cook prepared and distributed rations. Great balls plowed up the esplanade, and the oven was shattered into a storm of stone and mortar, its adjoining mill being left with a gap in the side.

Responsive tremors from its own artillery ran through the fortress' walls. The pieces, except that one in the turret, were all brought into two bastions, those in the southeast bastion being trained on D'Aulnay's batteries, and the others on his camp. The gunner in the turret also dropped shot with effect among the tents, and attempted to reach the ships. But he was obliged to use nice care, for the iron pellets heaped on the stone floor behind him represented the heavy labor of one soldier who tramped at intervals up the turret stair, carrying ammunition.

The day had dawned rainless but sullen. It was Good Friday. The women huddling in the hall out of their usual haunts noticed Marguerite's refusal even of the broth the cook offered her. She was restless, like a leopard, and seemed full of electrical currents which found no discharge except in the flicker of her eyes. Leaving the group of settles by the fireplace where these simple families felt more at home and least intrusive on the grandeur of the hall, she put herself on a distant chair with her face turned from them. This gave the women a chance to backbite her, to note her roused mood, and to accuse her among themselves of wishing evil to the fort and consequently to their husbands.

"She hath the closest mouth in Acadia," murmured one. "Doth anybody in these walls certainly know that she came from D'Aulnay?"

"The Swiss, her husband, told it."

"And if she find means to go back to D'Aulnay, it will appear where she came from," suggested Zélie.

"I would he had her now," said the first woman. "I have that feeling for her that I have for a cat with its hairs on end."

Madame La Tour came to the hall and sat briefly and alone at her own table to take her dinner and supper. Later in the siege she stood and merely took food from the cook's hands, talking with and comforting her women while she ate. The surgeon of the fort was away with La Tour. She laid bandages ready, and felt obliged to dress not only the first but every wound received.

Pierre Doucett was brought from one of the bastions stunned and bleeding, and his wife rose up with her baby in her arms, filling the hall with her cries. The baby and her neighbors' children were moved to join her. But the eye of her lady was as awful as Pierre's wound. Her outcry sunk to a whimper; she hushed the children, and swept them off the settle so Pierre could lie there, and even paid out the roll of bandage with one hand while her lady used it. Marie controlled her own faintness; for a woman on whom a man's labors are imposed must bear them.

The four little children stood with fingers in their mouths, looking at these grim tokens of war. All day long they heard the crashing or thumping of balls, and felt the leap and rebound of cannon. The cook, when he came down from a bastion to attend to his kettles, gave them nice bits to eat, and in spite of solemnity, they counted it a holiday to be in the hall. Pierre Doucett groaned upon his settle, and Madame La Tour being on the lookout in the turret, Pierre Doucett's wife again took to wailing over him. The other women comforted her with their ignorant sympathy, and Marguerite sat with her back to it all. But the children adapted themselves to the situation, and trooped across to the foot of the stairway to play war. On that grim pavement door which led down into the keep they shot each other with merry cannonading and were laid out in turn on the steps.