Part 8 (1/2)
The dim chill room with its one eye fixed on darkness was an eddy in which a single human mind resisted that century's current of superst.i.tion. Marie sat ready to judge and destroy whatever spell the cunning old Hollandais had left on a girl to whom he represented law and family.
Antonia beckoned her behind the screen, and took from some ready hiding-place a small oak box studded with nails, which Marie had never before seen. How alien to the simple and open life of the Dutch widow was this secret coffer! Her face changed while she looked at it; grieved girlhood pa.s.sed into sunken age. Her lips turned wax-white, and drooped at the corners. She set the box on a dressing-table beside the candle, unlocked it and turned back the lid. Marie was repelled by a faint odor aside from its breath of dead spices.
Antonia unfolded a linen cloth and showed a pallid human hand, its stump concealed by a napkin. It was cunningly preserved, and shrunken only by the countless lines which denote approaching age. It was the right hand of a man who must have had imagination. The fingers were sensitively slim, with shapely blue nails, and without k.n.o.bs or swollen joints. It was a crafty, firm-possessing hand, ready to spring from its nest to seize and eternally hold you.
The lady of St. John had seen human fragments scattered by cannon, and sword and bullet had done their work before her sight. But a faintness beyond the touch of peril made her grasp the table and turn from that ghastly hand.
”It cannot be, Antonia”--
”Yes, it is Mynheer Bronck's hand,” whispered Antonia, subduing herself to take admonition from the grim digits.
”Lock it up; and come directly away from it. Come out of this room. You have opened a grave here.”
VI.
The Mending.
But Antonia delayed to set in order her hair and cap and all her methodical habits of life. When Jonas Bronck's hand was snugly locked in its case and no longer obliged her to look at it, she took a pensive pleasure in the relic, bred of usage to its company. She came out of her chamber erect and calm. Marie was at the stairs speaking to the soldier stationed in the hall below. He had just piled up his fire, and its homely splendor sent back to remoteness all human dreads. He hurried up the stairway to his lady.
”Go knock at the door of the priest, Father Jogues, and demand his ca.s.sock,” she said.
The man halted, and asked,--
”What shall I do with it?”
”Bring it hither to me.”
”But if he refuses to have it brought?”
”The good man will not refuse. Yet if he asks why,” said Madame La Tour smiling, ”tell him it is the custom of the house to take away at night the ca.s.sock of any priest who stays here.”
”Yes, madame.”
The soldier kept to himself his opinion of meddling with black gowns, and after some parleying at the door of Father Jogues' apartment, received the garment and brought it to his lady.
”We will take our needles, and sit by the hall fire,” said Marie to Antonia. ”Did you note the raggedness of Father Jogues' ca.s.sock? I am an enemy to papists, especially D'Aulnay de Charnisay; but who can harden her heart against a saint because he patters prayers on a rosary? Thou and I will mend his black gown. I cannot see even a transient member of my household uncomfortable.”
The soldier put two waxlights on the table by the hearth, and withdrew to the stairway. He was there to guard as prisoner the priest for whom his lady set herself to work. She drew her chair to Antonia's and they spread the ca.s.sock between them. It had been neatly beaten and picked clear of burrs, but the rents in it were astonis.h.i.+ng. Even within sumptuous fires.h.i.+ne the black cloth taxed sight; and Marie paused sometimes to curtain her eyes with her hand, but Antonia worked on with Dutch steadiness. The touch of a needle within a woman's fingers cools all her fevers. She st.i.tches herself fast to the race. There is safety and saneness in needlework.
”This spot wants a patch,” said Antonia.
”Weave it together with st.i.tches,” said Marie. ”Daughter of presumption!
would you add to the gown of a Roman priest?”
”Priest or dominie,” commented Antonia, biting a fresh thread, ”he would be none the worse for a stout piece of cloth to his garment.”
”But we have naught to match with it. I would like to set in a little heresy cut from one of the Sieur de la Tour's good Huguenot doublets.”
The girlish faces, bent opposite, grew placid with domestic interest.