"He should then have military honors paid him on his marriage," observed Lady Dorinda, to whom patroon suggested the barbarous but splendid vision of a western pasha. "Salutes should be fired and drums sounded. In thus recommending I hope I have not overstepped my authority, Madame La Tour?"
"Certainly not, your ladyship," murmured Marie.
"The marriage ceremony hath length and solemnity, but I would have it longer, and more solemn. A woman in giving herself away should greatly impress a man with the charge he hath undertaken. There be not many bridegrooms like Sir Claude de la Tour, who fasted an entire day before his marriage with me. The ceremonial of that marriage hath scarce been forgotten at court to this hour."
Lady Dorinda folded her hands and closed her eyes to sigh. Her voice had rolled the last words in her throat. At such moments she looked very superior. Her double chins and dull light eyes held great reserves of self-respect. A small box of aromatic seeds lay in her lap, and as her hands encountered it she was reminded to put a seed in her mouth and find pensive comfort in chewing it.
"Edelwald should be here to give the proper grace to this event," added Lady Dorinda.
"I thought of him," said Marie. "Edelwald has so much the nature of a troubadour."
"The studies which adorn a man were well thought of when I was at court," said Lady Dorinda. "Edelwald is really thrown away upon this wilderness."
Antonia was too intent on Van Corlaer and his fell determination to turn her mind upon Edelwald. She had, indeed, seen very little of La Tour's second in command, for he had been away with La Tour on expeditions much of the time she had spent in Acadia. Edelwald was the only man of the fortress called by his baptismal name, yet it was spoken with respect and deference like a title. He was of the family of De Born. In an age when religion made political ties stronger than the ties of nature, the La Tours and De Borns had fought side by side through Huguenot wars. When a later generation of La Tours were struggling for foothold in the New World, it was not strange that a son of the De Borns, full of songcraft and spirit inherited from some troubadour soldier of the twelfth century, should turn his face to the same land. From his mother Edelwald took Norman and Saxon strains of blood. He had left France the previous year and made his voyage in the same ship with Madame La Tour and her mother-in-law, and he was now La Tour's trusted officer.
Edelwald could take up any stringed instrument, strike melody out of it and sing songs he had himself made. But such pastimes were brief in Acadia. There was other business on the frontier; sailing, hunting, fighting, persuading or defying men, exploring unyielded depths of wilderness. The joyous science had long fallen out of practice. But while the grim and bloody records of our early colonies were being made, here was an unrecorded poet in Acadia. La Tour held this gift of Edelwald's in light esteem. He was a man so full of action and of schemes for establishing power that he touched only the martial side of the young man's nature, though in that contact was strong comradeship. Every inmate of the fortress liked Edelwald. He mediated between commandant and men, and jealousies and bickerings disappeared before him.
"It would be better," murmured Antonia, breaking the stately silence by Lady Dorinda's fire, "if Mynheer Van Corlaer journeyed on to Montreal and returned here before any marriage takes place."