Part 16 (2/2)
”May I sit by your fire, your highness?” sweetly asked the dwarf. Lady Dorinda held out a finger to indicate the chimney-side and to stay further progress. The sallow and corpulent woman gazed at the beak-faced atom.
”It hath been repeated a thousand times, but I will say again I am no highness.”
Le Rossignol took the rebuke as a bird might have taken it, her bright round eyes reflecting steadily the overblown mortal opposite. She had never called Lady Dorinda anything except ”her highness.” The dullest soldier grinned at the apt sarcastic t.i.tle. When Marie brought her to account for this annoyance, she explained that she could not call Lady Dorinda anything else. Was a poor dwarf to be punished because people made light of every word she used? Yet this innocent creature took a pleasure of her own in laying the term like an occasional lash on the woman who so despised her. Le Rossignol sat with arms around her knees, on the hearth corner. Lady Dorinda in her cus.h.i.+oned chair chewed aromatic seeds.
The room, like a flower garden, exhaled all its perfumes at evening.
Bottles of essences and pots of pomade and small bags of powders were set out, for the luxurious use of its inmate when Zelie prepared her for the night. Le Rossignol enjoyed these scents. The sweet-odored atmosphere which clung about Lady Dorinda was her one attribute approved by the dwarf. Madame Marie never in any way appealed to the nose. Madame Marie's garments were scentless as outdoor air, and the freshness of outdoor air seemed to belong to them. Le Rossignol liked to have her senses stimulated, and she counted it a lucky thing to sit by that deep fire and smell the heavy fragrance, of the room. A branched silver candlestick held two lighted tapers on the dressing-table. The bed curtains were parted, revealing a huge expanse of resting-place within; and heavy folds shut the starlit-world from the windows. One could here forget that the oven was blown up, and the ground of the fort plowed with shot and sown with mortar.
”Is there no fire in the hall?” inquired Lady Dorinda.
”It hath all the common herd from the barracks around it,” explained Le Rossignol. ”And Pierre Doucett is stretched there, groaning over the loss of half his face.”
”Where is Madame La Tour?”
”She hath gone out on the walls since the firing stopped. Our gunner in the turret told me that two guns are to be moved back before moonrise into the bastions they were taken from. Madame Marie is afraid D'Aulnay will try to encompa.s.s the fort to-night.”
”And what business took thee into the turret?”
”Your highness”--
”Ladys.h.i.+p,” corrected Lady Dorinda.
--”I like to see D'Aulnay's torches,” proceeded the dwarf, without accepting correction. ”His soldiers are burying the dead over there. He needs a stone tower with walls seven feet thick like ours, does D'Aulnay.”
Lady Dorinda put another seed in her mouth, and reflected that Zelie's attendance was tardier than usual. She inquired with shadings of disapproval,--
”Is Madame La Tour's woman also on the walls?”
”Not Zelie, your highness”--
”Ladys.h.i.+p,” insisted Lady Dorinda.
”That heavy-foot Zelie,” chuckled the dwarf, deaf to correction, ”a fine bit of thistledown would she be to blow around the walls. Zelie is laying beds for the children, and she hath come to words with the cook through trying to steal eggs to roast for them. We have but few wild fowl eggs in store.”
”Tell her that I require her,” said Lady Dorinda, fretted by the irregularities of life in a siege. ”Madame La Tour will account with her if she neglects her rightful duties.”
Le Rossignol crawled reluctantly up to stand in her dots of moccasins.
”Yes, your highness”--
”Ladys.h.i.+p,” repeated Claude La Tour's widow, to whom the sting was forever fresh, reminding her of a once possible regency.
”But have you heard about the woman that was brought into the fortress before Madame Bronck went away?”
”What of her?”
”The Swiss says she comes from D'Aulnay.”
”It is Zelie that I require,” said Lady Dorinda with discouraging brevity. Le Rossignol dropped her face, appearing to give round-eyed speculation to the fire.
<script>