Part 19 (1/2)

”When you set the ladder against the outside wall, it is all you have to do, except to take me with you as you climb down. It is their affair to see the signal.”

”So D'Aulnay plans an ambush between us and the river? And suppose I did all that and the enemy failed to see the signal? I should go down there to be hung, or my lady would have me thrown into the keep here, and perhaps shot. I ought to be shot.”

”They will see the signal,” insisted Marguerite. ”I know all that is to be done. He made me say it over until I tired of it. You must mount the wall where the gate is: that side of the fort toward the river, the camp being on another side.”

Klussman again smoothed her hair and argued with her as with a child.

”I cannot betray my lady. You see how madame trusts me.”

She grieved against his hard breastplate with insistence which pierced even that.

”I am indeed not fit to be thought on beside the lady!”

”I would do anything for thee but betray my lady.”

”And when you have held her fort for her will she advance you by so much as a handful of land?”

”I was made lieutenant since the last siege.”

”But now you may be a seignior with a holding of your own,” repeated Marguerite. So they talked the night away. She showed him on one hand a future of honor and plenty which he ought not to withhold from her; and on the other, a wandering forth to endless hards.h.i.+ps. D'Aulnay had worked them harm; but this was in her mind an argument that he should now work them good. Being a selfish lord, powerful and cruel, he could demand this service as the condition of making her husband master of Pen.o.bscot; and the service itself she regarded as a small one compared to her lone tramping of the marshes to La Tour's stockade. D'Aulnay was certain to take Fort St. John some time. He had the king and all France behind him; the La Tours had n.o.body. Marguerite was a woman who could see no harm in advancing her husband by the downfall of his mere employers. Her husband must be advanced. She saw herself lady of Pen.o.bscot.

The Easter dawn began to grow over the world. Klussman remembered what day it was, and lifted her up to look over the battlements at light breaking from the east.

Marguerite turned her head from point to point of the dewy world once more rising out of chaos. She showed her husband a new trench and a line of breastworks between the fort and the river. These had been made in the night, and might have been detected by him if he had guarded his post. The jutting of rocks probably hid them from sentinels below.

”D'Aulnay is coming nearer,” said the Swiss, looking with haggard indifferent eyes at these preparations, and an occasional head venturing above the fresh ridge. Marguerite threw her arms around her husband's neck, and hung on him with kisses.

”Come on, then,” he said, speaking with the desperate conviction of a man who has lost himself. ”I have to do it. You will see me hang for this, but I'll do it for you.”

XV.

A SOLDIER.

Marie felt herself called through the deepest depths of sleep, and sat up in the robe of fur which she had wrapped around her for her night bivouac. There was some alarm at her door. The enemy might be on the walls. She tingled with the intense return of life, and was opening the door without conscious motion. n.o.body stood outside in the hall except the dwarf, whose aureole of foxy hair surrounded features pinched by anxiety.

”Madame Marie--Madame Marie! The Swiss has gone to give up the fort to D'Aulnay.”

”Has gone?”

”He came down from the turret with his wife, who persuaded him. I listened all night on the stairs. D'Aulnay is ready to mount the wall when he gives the signal. I had to hide me until the woman and the Swiss pa.s.sed below. They are now going to the wall to give the signal.”

Through Marie pa.s.sed that worst shock of all human experience. To see your trusted ally trans.m.u.ted into your secret most deadly foe, sickens the heart as death surely cannot sicken it. Like many a pierced wretch who has collapsed suddenly into the dust while the stab yet held the knife, she whispered feebly,--

”He could not do that!”

The stern blackness of her eyes seemed to annihilate all the rest of her face. Was rock itself stable under-foot? Why should one care to prolong life, when life only proved how cruel and worthless are the people for whom we labor?

”Madame Marie, he is now doing it. He was to hold up a ladder on the wall.”

”Which wall?”