Part 8 (2/2)
Marie's cheeks ripened by the fire, but the whiter Hollandaise warmed only through the lips. This hall's glow made more endurable the image of Jonas Bronck's hand. ”When was it cut off, Antonia?” murmured Marie, stopping to thread a needle.
The perceptible blight again fell over Antonia's face as she replied,--
”After he had been one day dead.”
”Then he did not grimly lop it off himself?”
”Oh, no,” whispered Antonia with deep sighing. ”Mynheer the doctor did that, on his oath to my husband. He was the most learned cunning man in medicine that ever came to our colony. He kept the hand a month in his furnace before it was ready to send to me.”
”Did Monsieur Bronck, before he died, tell you his intention to do this?” pressed Marie, feeling less interest in the Dutch embalmer's method than in the sinuous motive of a man who could leave such a bequest.
”Yes, madame.”
”I do marvel at such an act!” murmured the lady of St. John, challenging Jonas Bronck's loyal widow to take up his instant defense.
”Madame, he was obliged to do it by a dream he had.”
”He dreamed that his hand would keep off intruders?” smiled Marie.
”Yes,” responded Antonia innocently, ”and all manner of evil fortune. I have to look at it once a month as long as I live, and carry it with me everywhere. If it should be lost or destroyed trouble and ruin would fall not only on me but on every one who loved me.”
The woman of larger knowledge did not argue against this credulity.
Antonia was of the provinces, bred out of their darkest hours of superst.i.tion and savage danger. But it was easy to see how Jonas Bronck's hand must hold his widow from second marriage. What lover could she ask to share her monthly gaze upon it, and thus half realize the continued fleshly existence of Jonas Bronck? The rite was in its nature a secret one. Shame, grat.i.tude, the former usages of her life, and a thousand other influences, were yet in the grip of that rigid hand. And if she lost or destroyed it, nameless and weird calamity, foreseen by a dying man, must light upon the very lover who undertook to separate her from her ghastly company.
”The crafty old Hollandais!” thought Marie. ”He was cunning in his knowledge of Antonia. But he hath made up this fist at a younger Hollandais who will scarce stop for dead hands.”
The Dutch gentlewoman snuffed both waxlights. Her lips were drawn in grieved lines. Marie glanced up at one of the portraits on the wall, and said:--
”The agonies which men inflict on the beings they love best, must work perpetual astonishment in heaven. Look at the Sieur Claude de la Tour, a n.o.ble of France who could stoop to become the first English knight of Acadia, forcing his own son to take up arms against him.”
The elder La Tour frowned and flickered in his frame.
”Yet he had a gracious presence,” said Antonia. ”Lady Dorinda says he was the handsomest man at the English court.”
”I doubt it not; the La Tours are a beautiful race. And it was that very graciousness which made him a weak prisoner in the hands of the English.
They married him to one of the queen's ladies, and granted him all Acadia, which he had only to demand from his son, if he would turn it over to England and declare himself an English subject I can yet see his s.h.i.+ps as they rounded Cape Sable; and the face of my lord when he read his father's summons to surrender the claims of France. We were to be loaded with honors. France had driven us out on account of our faith; England opened her arms. We should be enriched, and live forever a happy and united family, sole lords of Acadia.”
Marie broke off another thread.
”The king of France, who has outlawed my husband and delivered him to his enemy, should have seen him then, Antonia. Sieur Claude La Tour put both arms around him and pleaded. It was, 'My little Charles, do not disgrace me by refusal;' and 'My father, I love you, but here I represent the rights of France.' 'The king of France is no friend of ours,' says Sieur Claude. 'Whether he rewards or punishes me,' says Charles, 'this province belongs to my country, and I will hold it while I have life to defend it.' And he was obliged to turn his cannon against His own father; and the s.h.i.+ps were disabled and driven off.”
”Was the old mynheer killed?”
”His pride was killed. He could never hold up his head in England again, and he had betrayed France. My lord built him a house outside our fort, yet neither could he endure Acadia. He died in England. You know I brought his widow thence with me last year. She should have her dower of lands here, if we can hold them against D'Aulnay de Charnisay.”
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