The Lady of Fort St. John Part 15

"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 s.h.i.+ps 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 acc.u.mulated 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 gla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ps, 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, br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 gla.s.s lately brought from France to master distances in the New World, wearied her hands before it a.s.sured her eyes.

D'Aulnay de Charnisay was actually coming to attack Fort St. John a second time. He warily anch.o.r.ed 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 s.h.i.+ne, 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 a.s.sured 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 s.h.i.+ps. 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 Zelie.

"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."