The Lady of Fort St. John | Page 7

tongue, and the very
baby on your knees. You never bring any good, and words are wasted
on you. Don't smile under your sly mouth, and think you are hiding

anything from Le Rossignol."
The girl crouched deeper into her clothes, until those unwinking eyes
relieved her by turning with indifference toward the chimney.
"I have no pity for any Marguerite," Le Rossignol added, and she
tossed from her head the entire subject with a cap made of white gull
breasts. A brush of red hair stood up in thousands of tendrils,
exaggerating by its nimbus the size of her upper person. Never had
dwarf a sweeter voice. If she had been compressed in order to produce
melody, her tones were compensation, enough. She made lilting sounds
while dangling her feet to the blaze, as if she thought in music.
Le Rossignol was so positive a force that she seldom found herself
overborne by the presence of large human beings. The only man in the
fortress who saw her without superstition was Klussman. He inclined to
complain of her antics, but not to find magic in her flights and returns.
At that period deformity was the symbol of witchcraft. Blame fell upon
this dwarf when toothache or rheumatic pains invaded the barracks,
especially if the sufferer had spoken against her unseen excursions with
her swan. Protected from childhood by the family of La Tour, she had
grown an autocrat, and bent to nobody except her lady.
"Where is my clavier?" exclaimed Le Rossignol. "I heard a tune in the
woods which I must get out of my clavier,--a green tune, the color of
quickening lichens; a dropping tune with sap in it; a tune like the wind
across inland lakes."
She ran along the settle, and thrust her head around its high back.
Zélie, with white garments upon one arm, was setting solidly forth
down the uncovered stairs, when the dwarf arrested her by a cry.
"Go back, heavy-foot,--go back and fetch me my clavier."
"Mademoiselle the nightingale has suddenly returned," muttered Zélie,
ill pleased.

"Am I not always here when my lady comes home? I demand the box
wherein my instrument is kept."
"What doth your instrument concern me? Madame has sent me to dress
the baby."
"Will you bring my clavier?"
The dwarf's scream was like the weird high note of a wind-harp. It had
its effect on Zélie. She turned back, though muttering against the
overruling of her lady's commands by a creature like a bat, who could
probably send other powers than a decent maid to bring claviers.
"And where shall I find it?" she inquired aloud. "Here have I been in
the fortress scarce half an hour, after all but shipwreck, and I must
search out the belongings of people who do naught but idle."
"Find it where you will. No one hath the key but myself. The box may
stand in Madame Marie's apartment, or it may be in my own chamber.
Such matters are blown out of my head by the wind along the coast.
Make haste to fetch it so I can play when Madame Marie appears."
Le Rossignol drew herself up the back of the settle, and perched at ease
on the angle farthest from the fire. She beat her heels lightly against her
throne, and hummed, with her face turned from the listless girl, who
watched all her antics.
Zélie brought the instrument case, unlocked it, and handed up a
crook-necked mandolin and its small ivory plectrum to her tyrant. At
once the hall was full of tinkling melody. The dwarf's threadlike fingers
ran along the neck of the mandolin, and as she made the ivory disk
quiver among its strings her head swayed in rapturous singing.
Zélie forgot the baby. The garments intended for its use were spread
upon the settle near the fire. She folded her arms, and wagged her head
with Le Rossignol's. But while the dwarf kept an eye on the stairway,
watching like a lover for the appearance of Madame La Tour, the outer
door again clanked, and Klussman stepped into the hall. His big

presence had instant effect on Le Rossignol. Her music tinkled louder
and faster. The playing sprite, sitting half on air, gamboled and made
droll faces to catch his eye. Her vanity and self-satisfaction, her pliant
gesture and skillful wild music, made her appear some soulless little
being from the woods who mocked at man's tense sternness.
Klussman took little notice of any one in the hall, but waited by the
closed door so relentless a sentinel that Zélie was reminded of her duty.
She made haste to bring perfumed water in a basin, and turned the linen
on the settle. She then took the child from its mother's limp hands, and
exclaimed and