The Lady of Fort St. John Part 10

"What is it, Antonia?" demanded Marie.

"Madame, it is nothing."

Antonia owned her suitor's baring of his head, and turned upon the stairs.

"But some alarm drove you out."

Marie leaned over the cell inclosing the stone steps. It was not easy to judge from Antonia's erect bearing what had so startled her. Her friend followed her to the door below, and the voices of the two women hummed indistinctly in that vault-like hollow.

"You have told him," accused Antonia directly. "He is laughing about Mynheer Bronck's hand!"

"He does take a cheerful view of the matter," conceded the lady of the fort. Antonia looked at her with all the asperity which could be expressed in a fair Dutch face.

"As long as I kept my trouble to myself I could bear it. But I show it to another, and the worst befalls me."

"Is that hand lost, Antonia?"

"I cannot find it, or even the box which held it."

"Never accuse me with your eye," said Marie with droll pathos. "If it were lost or destroyed by accident, I could bear without a groan to see you so bereaved. But the slightest thing shall not be filched in Fort St. John. When did you first miss it?"

"A half hour since. I left the box on my table last night instead of replacing it in my chest;--being so disturbed."

"Every room shall be searched," said Marie. "Where is Le Rossignol?"

"She went after breakfast to call her swan in the fort."

"I saw her not. And I have neglected to send her to the turret for her punishment. That little creature has a magpie's fondness for plunder.

Perhaps she has carried off your box. I will send for her."

Marie left the room. Antonia lingered to glance through a small square pane in the door--an eye which the commandants of the fort kept on their battlements. It had an inner tapestry, but this remained as Marie had pushed it aside that morning to take her early look at the walls. Van Corlaer was waiting on the steps, and as he detected Antonia in the guilty act of peeping at him, his compelling voice reached her in Dutch.

She returned into the small stone cell formed by the stairs, and closed the door, submitting defiantly to the interview.

"Will you sit here?" suggested Van Corlaer, taking off his cloak and making for her a cushion upon the stone. Antonia reflected that he would be chilly and therefore hold brief talk, so she made no objection, and sat down on one end of the step while he sat down on the other. They spoke Dutch: with their formal French fell away the formal phases of this meeting in Acadia. The sentinel's walk moved almost overhead, and died away along the wall and returned again, but noises within the fort scarcely intruded to their rocky cell. They did not hear even the voices of Lalande and Father Jogues descending the ladder.

"We have never had any satisfactory talk together, Antonia," began Van Corlaer.

"No, mynheer," breathed the girlish relict of Bronck, feeling her heart labor as she faced his eyes.

"It is hard for a man to speak his mind to you."

"It hath seemed easy enough for Mynheer Van Corlaer, seeing how many times he hath done so," observed Antonia, drawing her m.u.f.flings around her neck.

"No. I speak always with such folly that you will not hear me. It is not so when I talk among men or work on the minds of savages. Let us now begin reasonably. I do believe you like me, Antonia."

"A most reasonable beginning," noted Antonia, biting her lips.

"Now I am a man in the stress and fury of mid-life, hard to turn from my purpose, and you well know my purpose. Your denials and puttings-off and flights have pleased me. But your own safety may waste no more good time in further play. I have not come into Acadia to tinkle a song under your window, but to wed you and carry you back to Fort Orange with me."

Antonia stirred, to hide her trembling.

"Are you cold?" inquired Van Corlaer.

"No, mynheer."

"If the air chills you I will warm your hands in mine."

"My hands are well m.u.f.fled, mynheer."

He adjusted his back against the wall and again opened the conversation.

"I brought a young dominie with me. He wished to see Montreal. And I took care to have with him such papers as might be necessary to the marriage."

"He had best get my leave," observed Madame Bronck.

"That is no part of his duty. But set your mind at rest; he is a young dominie of credit. When I was in Boston I saw a rich sedan chair made for the viceroy of Mexico, but brought to the colonies for sale. It put a thought in my head, and I set skilled fellows to work, and they made and we have carried through the woods the smallest, most cunning-fashioned sedan chair that woman ever stepped into. I brought it for the comfortable journeying of Madame Van Corlaer."

"That unknown lady will have much satisfaction in it," murmured Antonia.

"I hope so. And be better known than she was as Jonas Bronck's wife."

She colored, but hid a smile within her m.u.f.fling. Her good-humored suitor leaned toward her, resting his arms upon his knees.

"Touching a matter which has never been mentioned between us;--was the curing of Bronck's hand well approved by you?"

"Mynheer, I am angry at Madame La Tour. Or did he," gasped Antonia, not daring to accuse by name the colonial doctor who had managed her dark secret, "did he show that to you?"

"Would the boldest chemist out of Amsterdam cut off and salt the member of any honest burgher without leave of the patroon?" suggested Van Corlaer. "Besides, my skill was needed, for I was once learned in chemistry."

It was so surprising to see this man over-ride her terror that Antonia stared at him.

"Mynheer, had you no dread of the sight?"

"No; and had I known you would dread it the hand had spoiled in the curing. I thought less of Jonas Bronck, that he could bequeath a morsel of himself like dried venison."

"Mynheer Bronck was a very good man," a.s.serted Antonia severely.

"But thou knowest in thy heart that I am a better one," laughed Van Corlaer.

"He was the best of husbands," she insisted, trembling with a woman's anxiety to be loyal to affection which she has not too well rewarded.

"It was on my account that he had his hand cut off."

"I will outdo Bronck," determined Van Corlaer. "I will have myself skinned at my death and spread out as a rug to your feet. So good a housekeeper as Antonia will beat my pelt full often, and so be obliged to think on me."

Afloat in his large personality as she always was in his presence, she yet tried to resist him.

"The relic that you joke about, Mynheer Van Corlaer, I have done worse with; I have lost it."