During all this delay Edelwald stood with his beautiful head erect above the noose, and his self-repressed gaze still following Marie. The wives of other soldiers were wailing for their husbands. But he must die without wife, without love. He saw Antonia holding her and weeping with her. His blameless passion filled him like a great prayer. That changing phantasm which we call the world might pass from before his men and him at the next breath; yet the brief last song of the last troubadour burst from his lips to comfort the lady of Fort St. John.
There was in this jubilant cry a gush and grandeur of power outmastering force of numbers and brute cunning. It reached and compelled every spirit in the fortress. The men in line with him stood erect and lifted their firm jaws, and gazed forward with shining eyes. Those who had faded in the slightest degree from their natural flush of blood felt the strong throbs which paint a man's best on his face. They could not sing the glory of death in duty, the goodness of God who gave love and valor to man; but they could die with Edelwald.
The new master of Fort St. John was jealous of such dying as the song ceased and he lifted his hand to signal his executioners. Father Jogues turned away praying with tremulous lips. The Capuchin strode toward the hall. But Van Corlaer and Lady Dorinda and Antonia held with the strength of all three that broken-hearted woman who struggled like a giantess with her arms stretched toward the scaffold.
"I will save them—I will save them! My brave Edelwald—all my brave soldiers shall not die!—Where are my soldiers, Antonia? It is dark. I cannot see them any more!"
POSTLUDE.
A TIDE-CREEK.
When ordinary days had settled flake on flake over this tragedy in Acadia until memory looked back at it as at the soft outlines of a snow-obliterated grave, Madame Van Corlaer stood one evening beside the Hudson River, and for half an hour breathed again the salt breath of Fundy Bay. Usually she was abed at that hour. But Mynheer had been expected all day on a sailing vessel from New Amsterdam, and she could not resist coming down once more through her garden to the wharf.
Van Corlaer's house, the best stone mansion in Rensselaerswyck—that overflow of settlement around the stockade of Fort Orange—stood up the slope, and had its farm appended. That delight of Dutchmen, an ample garden, extended its central path almost like an avenue to the river. Antonia need scarcely step off her own domain to meet her husband at the wharf. She had lingered down the garden descent; for sweet herbs were giving their souls to the summer night there; and not a cloud of a sail yet appeared on the river. Some fishing-boats lay at the wharf, but no men were idling around under the full moon. It was pleasanter to visit and smoke from door to door in the streets above.
Antonia was not afraid of any savage ambush. Her husband kept the Iroquois on friendly terms with the settlement. The years through which she had borne her dignity of being Madame Van Corlaer constantly increased her respect for that colonial statesman. The savages in the Mohawk valley used the name Corlaer when they meant governor. Antonia felt sure that the Jesuit missionary, Father Isaac Jogues, need not have died a martyr's death if Van Corlaer had heard in time of his return to the Mohawks.