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Updated: June 11, 2025
"No, mynheer," breathed the girlish relict of Bronck, feeling her heart labor as she faced his eyes. "It is hard for a man to speak his mind to you." "It hath seemed easy enough for Mynheer Van Corlaer, seeing how many times he hath done so," observed Antonia, drawing her mufflings around her neck. "No. I speak always with such folly that you will not hear me.
The sentinel trod back and forth without disturbing this intent conference, but other feet came rushing up the stone steps which let from Marie's room to the level of the wall. "Madame madame!" exclaimed Antonia Bronck; but her flaxen head was arrested in ascent beside Van Corlaer's feet, and her distressed eyes met in his a whimsical look which stung her through with suspicion and resentment.
She dismissed all thought of the casket's belonging to Antonia Bronck; a mild and stiff-mannered young provincial who had nothing to do with ghastly tokens of war. That hand was a political hint, mysteriously sent to Lady Dorinda and embodying some important message.
It was so surprising to see this man over-ride her terror that Antonia stared at him. "Mynheer, had you no dread of the sight?" "No; and had I known you would dread it the hand had spoiled in the curing. I thought less of Jonas Bronck, that he could bequeath a morsel of himself like dried venison." "Mynheer Bronck was a very good man," asserted Antonia severely.
"A dozen, counting Indians. But all of them he sends back to camp with our Etchemins." "And well he may. We want no strange followers in the barracks. Have you questioned him? Whence does he come?" "From Fort Orange, in the New Netherlands, madame." "He is then Hollandais." Marie turned to Antonia Bronck, and was jarred by her blanching face. "What is it, Antonia?
"Had Madame Bronck no expectation of seeing Arendt Van Corlaer in Acadia?" "No, mynheer," whispered Antonia. "But since I have come have you nothing to say to me?" "I hope I see you well, mynheer." "You might see me well," reproached Van Corlaer, "if you would look at me." She lifted her eyes and dropped them again. "This Acadian air has given you a wan color," he noted.
"But thou knowest in thy heart that I am a better one," laughed Van Corlaer. "He was the best of husbands," she insisted, trembling with a woman's anxiety to be loyal to affection which she has not too well rewarded. "It was on my account that he had his hand cut off." "I will outdo Bronck," determined Van Corlaer. "I will have myself skinned at my death and spread out as a rug to your feet.
Marie smoothed the young widow's damp hair with the quieting stroke which calms children. "Let mother help thee," she said; and neither of them remembered that she was scarcely as old as Antonia. In love and motherhood, in military peril, and contact with riper civilizations, to say nothing of inherited experience, the lady of St. John had lived far beyond Antonia Bronck.
"You have never told me much of Monsieur Bronck, Antonia." "I don't like to speak of him now, madame. It makes me shiver." "You are not afraid of the dead?" "I was never afraid of him living. I regarded him as a father." "But one's husband is not to be regarded as a father." "He was old enough to be my father, madame.
He had with him a bundle in a towel, and setting it down on my paepae, introduced himself nonchalantly as Broken Bronck, "Late manager of the stable of native fighters of the Count de M of the island of Tahaa, near Tahiti." "I'm here to stay," he said carelessly. "I have a few francs, and I hear they're pretty hospitable in the Markeesies.
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