The Lady of Fort St. John Part 26

"He was stuck in a bog," said Antonia.

"He was stuck in no bog," said Le Rossignol, "for I alone was beside him at the time. And I ride from Port Royal to tell thee the whole of it and free my mind, lest I be obliged to fling it in my new lady's face the next time she speaks of his happy memory. Widows who take second husbands have no sense about the first one."

Antonia slightly coughed. It is not pleasant to have your cla.s.s disapproved of, even by a dwarf. And she did still secretly respect her first husband's prophecy. Had it not been fulfilled on the friend she best loved, if not on the husband she took?

"Mynheer Van Corlaer will soon be home from New Amsterdam, whither he made a voyage to confer with the governor," said Antonia. "Let me take you to the house, where we can talk at our ease."

"I talk most at my ease on Shubenacadie's back," answered Le Rossignol, holding her swan's head and rubbing her cheek against his bill. "You will not keep me a moment at Fort Orange. I fell out of patience with every place while we lived so long in poverty at that stockade at the head of Fundy Bay."

"Did you live there long?" inquired Antonia.

"Until D'Aulnay de Charnisay died out of my lord's way. What could my lord do for us, indeed, with nothing but a ship and scarce a dozen men?

He left some to keep the stockade and took the rest to man his ship when he started to Newfoundland to send her forlorn old highness back to England. Her old highness hath had many a dower fee from us since that day."

"Your lord hath mended his fortunes," remarked Antonia without approval.

"Yes, we are now the greatest people in Acadia; we live in grand state at Port Royal. You would never know him for the careworn man he was--except once, indeed, when he came from viewing the ruins of Fort St. John. It is no longer maintained as a fortress. But I like not all these things. I rove more now than when Madame Marie lived."

Silence was kept a moment after Madame La Tour's name, between Antonia and her illusive visitor. The dwarf seemed clad in sumptuous garments. A cap of rich velvet could be discerned on her flaring hair instead of the gull-breast covering she once made for herself.

"Yet I roved much out of the peasants' way at the stockade," she continued, sending the night sounds again into background. "Peasants who have no master over them become like swine. We had two goats, and I tended them, and sat ages upon ages on the bank of a tide-creek which runs up among the marshes at the head of Fundy Bay. Madame Antonia, you should see that tide-creek. It shone like wet sleek red carnelian when the water was out of it. I loved its basin; and the goats would go down to lick the salt. They had more sense than D'Aulnay de Charnisay, for they knew where to venture. I thought D'Aulnay de Charnisay was one of our goats by his bleat, until I looked down and saw him part sunk in a quicksand at the bottom of the channel. The tide was already frothing in like yeast upon him. How gloriously the tide shoots up that tide-creek!

It hisses. It comes like thousands of horses galloping one behind the other and tumbling over each other,--fierce and snorting spray, and climbing the banks, and still trampling down and flying over the ones who have galloped in first."

"But what did D'Aulnay de Charnisay do?" inquired Antonia.

"He stuck in the quicksand," responded Le Rossignol.

"But did he not call for help?"

"He did nothing else, indeed, until the tide's horses trampled him under."

"But what did you do?"

"I sat down and watched him," said the dwarf.

"How could you?" shuddered Antonia, feeling how little this tiny being's humanity was developed.

"We had some chat," said Le Rossignol. "He promised me a seigniory if I would run and call some men with ropes. 'I heard a Swiss's wife say that you promised him a seigniory,' quoth I. 'And you had enough ropes then.' He pledged his word and took oath to make me rich if I would get him only a priest. 'You pledged your word to the lady of Fort St. John,'

said I. The water kept rising and he kept stretching his neck above it, and crying and shouting, and I took his humor and cried and shouted with him, naming the glorious waves as they rode in from the sea:--

"'Glaud Burge!'

"'Jean le Prince!'

"'Renot Babinet!'

"'Ambroise Tibedeaux!'

"And so on until Francois Bastarack the twenty-third roller flowed over his head, and Edelwald did not even know he was beneath."

Antonia dropped her face upon her hands.

"So that is the true story," said Le Rossignol. "He died a good salt death, and his men pulled him out before the next tide."

Presently Antonia looked up. Her eye was first caught by a coming sail on the river. It shone in the moonlight, moving slowly, for there was so little wind. Her husband must be there. She turned to say so to Le Rossignol; who was gone.

Antonia opened the gate and stepped outside, looking in every direction for dwarf and swan. She had not even noticed a rustle, or the pat of Shubenacadie's feet upon sand. But Le Rossignol and her familiar had disappeared in the wide expanse of moonlight; whether deftly behind tree or rock, or over wall, or through air above, Antonia had no mind to find out.

Even the approaching sail took weirdness. The ship was too distant for her to yet hear the hiss of water around its prow. But in that, Van Corlaer and the homely good happiness of common life was approaching.

With the dwarf had disappeared that misty sweet sorrowful Acadian world.