Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  He straightened in his stirrups, blue eyes ablaze, face burning under its heavy mask of tan and dust.

  “If I know a man when I see him, I know you,” he said. “God save our country, friend, upon this sweet May day.”

  “Amen, sir,” I replied, tingling. “And God save the King the whole year round!”

  “Yes,” he repeated, with a disagreeable laugh, “God save the King; he is past all human aid now, and headed straight to hell. Friend, let us part ere we quarrel. You will be with me or against me this day week. I knew it was a man I addressed, and no tavern-post.”

  “Yet this brawl with Boston is no affair of mine,” I said, troubled. “Who touches the ancient liberties of Englishmen touches my country, that is all I know.”

  “Which country, sir?”

  “Greater Britain.”

  “And when Greater Britain divides?”

  “It must not!”

  “It has.”

  I unbound the scarlet handkerchief which I wore for a cap, and held it between my fingers to dry its sweat in the breeze. Watching it flutter, I said:

  “Friend, in my country we never cross the branch till we come to it, nor leave the hammock till the river-sands are beneath our feet. No hunting-shirt is sewed till the bullet has done its errand, nor do men fish for gray mullet with a hook and line. There is always time to pray for wisdom.”

  “Friend,” replied Mount, “I wear red quills on my moccasins, you wear bits of sea-shell. That is all the difference between us. Good-bye. Varick Manor is the first house four miles ahead.”

  He wheeled his horse, then, as at a second thought, checked him and looked back at me.

  “You will see queer folk yonder at the patroon’s,” he said. “You are accustomed to the manners of your peers; you were bred in that land where hospitality, courtesy, and deference are shown to equals; where dignity and graciousness are expected from the elders; where duty and humility are inbred in the young. So is it with us — except where you are going. The great patroon families, with their vast estates, their patents, their feudal systems, have stood supreme here for years. Theirs is the power of life and death over their retainers; they reign absolute in their manors, they account only to God for their trusts. And they are great folk, sir, even yet — these Livingstons, these Van Rensselaers, these Phillipses, lords of their manors still; Dutch of descent, polished, courtly, proud, bearing the title of patroon as a noble bears his coronet.”

  He raised his hand, smiling. “It is not so with the Varicks. They are patroons, too, yet kin to the Johnsons, of Johnson Hall and Guy Park, and kin to the Ormond-Butlers. But they are different from either Johnson or Butler — vastly different from the Schuylers or the Livingstons—”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders and dropped his hand: “The Varicks are all mad, sir. Good-bye.”

  He struck his horse with his soft leather heels; the animal bounded out into the western road, and his rider swung around once more towards me with a gesture partly friendly, partly, perhaps, in menace. “Tell Sir Lupus to go to the devil!” he cried, gayly, and cantered away through the golden dust.

  I sat my horse to watch him; presently, far away on the hill’s crest, the sun caught his rifle and sparkled for a space, then the point of white fire went out, and there was nothing on the hill-top save the dust drifting.

  Lonelier than I had yet been since that day, three months gone, when I had set out from our plantation on the shallow Halifax, which the hammock scarcely separates from the ocean, I gathered bridle with listless fingers and spoke to my mare. “Isene, we must be moving eastward — always moving, sweetheart. Come, lass, there’s grain somewhere in this Northern land where you have carried me.” And to myself, muttering aloud as I rode: “A fine name he has given to my cousins the Varicks, this giant forest-runner, with his boy’s face and limbs of iron! And he was none too cordial concerning the Butlers, either — cousins, too, but in what degree they must tell me, for I don’t know—”

  The road entering the forest, I ceased my prattle by instinct, and again for the thousandth time I sniffed at odors new to me, and scanned leafy depths for those familiar trees which stand warden in our Southern forests. There were pines, but they were not our pines, these feathery, dark-stemmed trees; there were oaks, but neither our golden water oaks nor our great, green-and-silver live-oaks. Little, pale flowers bloomed everywhere, shadows only of our bright blossoms of the South; and the rare birds I saw were gray and small, and chary of song, as though the stillness that slept in this Northern forest was a danger not to be awakened. Loneliness fell on me; my shoulders bent and my head hung heavily. Isene, my mare, paced the soft forest-road without a sound, so quietly that the squatting rabbit leaped from between her forelegs, and the slim, striped, squirrel-like creatures crouched paralyzed as we passed ere they burst into their shrill chatter of fright or anger, I know not which.

  Had I a night to spend in this wilderness I should not know where to find a palmetto-fan for a torch, where to seek light-wood for splinter. It was all new to me; signs read riddles; tracks were sealed books; the east winds brought rain, where at home they bring heaven’s own balm to us of the Spanish grants on the seaboard; the northwest winds that we dread turn these Northern skies to sapphire, and set bees a-humming on every bud.

  There was no salt in the air, no citrus scent in the breeze, no heavy incense of the great magnolia bloom perfuming the wilderness like a cathedral aisle where a young bride passes, clouded in lace.

  But in the heat a heavy, sweetish odor hung; balsam it is called, and mingled, too, with a faint scent like our bay, which comes from a woody bush called sweet-fern. That, and the strong smell of the bluish, short-needled pine, was ever clogging my nostrils and confusing me. Once I thought to scent a ‘possum, but the musky taint came from a rotting log; and a stale fox might have crossed to windward and I not noticed, so blunted had grown my nose in this unfamiliar Northern world.

  Musing, restless, dimly confused, and doubly watchful, I rode through the timber-belt, and out at last into a dusty, sunny road. And straightway I sighted a house.

  The house was of stone, and large and square and gray, with only a pillared porch instead of the long double galleries we build; and it had a row of windows in the roof, called dormers, and was surrounded by a stockade of enormous timbers, in the four corners of which were set little forts pierced for rifle fire.

  Noble trees stood within the fortified lines; outside, green meadows ringed the place; and the grass was thick and soft, and vivid as a green jewel in color — such grass as we never see save for a spot here and there in swampy places where the sun falls in early spring.

  The house was yet a hundred rods away to the eastward. I rode on slowly, noticing the neglected fences on either hand, and thought that my cousin Varick might have found an hour to mend them, for his pride’s sake.

  Isene, my mare, had already scented the distant stables, and was pricking forward her beautiful ears as I unslung my broad hat of plaited palmetto and placed it on my head, the better to salute my hosts when I should ride to their threshold in the Spanish fashion we followed at home.

  So, cantering on, I crossed a log bridge which spanned a ravine, below which I saw a grist-mill; and so came to the stockade. The gate was open and unguarded, and I guided my mare through without a challenge from the small corner forts, and rode straight to the porch, where an ancient negro serving-man stood, dressed in a tawdry livery too large for him. As I drew bridle he gave me a dull, almost sullen glance, and it was not until I spoke sharply to him that he shambled forward and descended the two steps to hold my stirrup.

  “Is Sir Lupus at home?” I asked, looking curiously at this mute, dull-eyed black, so different from our grinning lads at home.

  “Yaas, suh, he done come home, suh.”

  “Then announce Mr. George Ormond,” I said.

  He stared, but did not offer to move.

  “Did you hear me?” I asked, astonished.

  “Y
aas, suh, I done hear yoh, suh.”

  I looked him over in amazement, then walked past him towards the door.

  “Is you gwine look foh Mars’ Lupus?” he asked, barring my way with one wrinkled, blue-black hand on the brass door-knob. “Kaze ef you is, you don’t had better, suh.”

  I could only stare.

  “Kaze Mars’ Lupus done say he gwine kill de fustest man what ‘sturb him, suh,” continued the black man, in a listless monotone. “An’ I spec’ he gwine do it.”

  “Is Sir Lupus abed at this hour?” I asked.

  “Yaas, suh.”

  There was no emotion in the old man’s voice. Something made me think that he had given the same message to visitors many times.

  I was very angry at the discourtesy, for he must have known when to expect me from my servant, who had accompanied me by water with my boxes from St. Augustine to Philadelphia, where I lingered while he went forward, bearing my letter with him. Yet, angry and disgusted as I was, there was nothing for me to do except to swallow the humiliation, walk in, and twiddle my thumbs until the boorish lord of the manor waked to greet his invited guest.

  “I suppose I may enter,” I said, sarcastically.

  “Yaas, suh; Miss Dorry done say: ‘Cato,’ she say, ‘ef de young gem’man come when Mars’ Lupus am drunk, jess take care n’ him, Cato; put him mos’ anywhere ‘cep in mah bed, Cato, an’ jess call me ef I ain’ busy ‘bout mah business—’”

  Still rambling on, he opened the door, and I entered a wide hallway, dirty and disordered. As I stood hesitating, a terrific crash sounded from the floor above.

  “Spec’ Miss Dorry busy,” observed the old man, raising his solemn, wrinkled face to listen.

  “Uncle,” I said, “is it true that you are all mad in this house?”

  “We sho’ is, suh,” he replied, without interest.

  “Are you too crazy to care for my horse?”

  “Oh no, suh.”

  “Then go and rub her down, and feed her, and let me sit here in the hallway. I want to think.”

  Another crash shook the ceiling of solid oak; very far away I heard a young girl’s laughter, then a stifled chorus of voices from the floor above.

  “Das Miss Dorry an’ de chilluns,” observed the old man.

  “Who are the others?”

  “Waal, dey is Miss Celia, an’ Mars’ Harry, an’ Mars’ Ruyven, an’ Mars’ Sam’l, an’ de babby, li’l Mars’ Benny.”

  “All mad?”

  “Yaas, suh.”

  “I’ll be, too, if I remain here,” I said. “Is there an inn near by?”

  “De Turkle-dove an’ Olives.”

  “Where?”

  “‘Bout five mile long de pike, suh.”

  “Feed my horse,” I said, sullenly, and sat down on a settle, rifle cradled between my knees, and in my heart wrath immeasurable against my kin the Varicks.

  II

  IN THE HALLWAY

  So this was Northern hospitality! This a Northern gentleman’s home, with its cobwebbed ceiling, its little window-panes opaque with stain of rain and dust, its carpetless floors innocent of wax, littered with odds and ends — here a battered riding-cane; there a pair of tarnished spurs; yonder a scarlet hunting-coat a-trail on the banisters, with skirts all mud from feet that mayhap had used it as a mat in rainy weather!

  I leaned forward and picked up the riding-crop; its cane end was capped with heavy gold. The spurs I also lifted for inspection; they were beautifully wrought in silver.

  Faugh! Here was no poverty, but the shiftlessness of a sot, trampling good things into the mire!

  I looked into the fireplace. Ashes of dead embers choked it; the andirons, smoke-smeared and crusted, stood out stark against the sooty maw of the hearth.

  Still, for all, the hall was made in good and even noble proportion; simple, as should be the abode of a gentleman; over-massive, perhaps, and even destitute of those gracious and symmetrical galleries which we of the South think no shame to take pride in; for the banisters were brutally heavy, and the rail above like a rampart, and for a newel-post some ass had set a bronze cannon, breech upward; and it was green and beautiful, but offensive to sane consistency.

  Standing, the better to observe the hall on all sides, it came to me that some one had stripped a fine English mansion of fine but ancient furniture, to bring it across an ocean and through a forest for the embellishment of this coarse house. For there were pictures in frames showing generals and statesmen of the Ormond-Butlers, one even of the great duke who fled to France; and there were pictures of the Varicks before they mingled with us Irish — apple-cheeked Dutchmen, cadaverous youths bearing match-locks, and one, an admiral, with star and sash across his varnish-cracked corselet of blue steel, looking at me with pale, smoky eyes.

  Rusted suits of mail, and groups of weapons made into star shapes and circles, points outward, were ranged between the heavy pictures, each centred with a moth-ravaged stag’s head, smothered in dust.

  As I slowly paced the panelled wall, nose in air to observe these neglected trophies, I came to another picture, hung all alone near the wall where it passes under the staircase, and at first, for the darkness, I could not see.

  Imperceptibly the outlines of the shape grew in the gloom from a deep, rich background, and I made out a figure of a youth all cased in armor save for the helmet, which was borne in one smooth, blue-veined hand.

  The face, too, began to assume form; rounded, delicate, crowned with a mass of golden hair; and suddenly I perceived the eyes, and they seemed to open sweetly, like violets in a dim wood.

  “What Ormond is this?” I muttered, bewitched, yet sullen to see such feminine roundness in any youth; and, with my sleeve of buckskin, I rubbed the dust from the gilded plate set in the lower frame.

  “The Maid-at-Arms,” I read aloud.

  Then there came to me, at first like the far ring of a voice scarcely heard through southern winds, the faint echo of a legend told me ere my mother died — perhaps told me by her in those drifting hours of a childhood nigh forgotten. Yet I seemed to see white, sun-drenched sands and the long, blue swell of a summer sea, and I heard winds in the palms, and a song — truly it was my mother’s; I knew it now — and, of a sudden, the words came borne on a whisper of ancient melody:

  “This for the deed she did at Ashby Farms,

  Helen of Ormond, Royal Maid-at-Arms!”

  Memory was stirring at last, and the gray legend grew from the past, how a maid, Helen of Ormond, for love of her cousin, held prisoner in his own house at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, sheared off her hair, clothed her limbs in steel, and rode away to seek him; and how she came to the house at Ashby and rode straight into the gateway, forcing her horse to the great hall where her lover lay, and flung him, all in chains, across her saddle-bow, riding like a demon to freedom through the Desmonds, his enemies. Ah! now my throat was aching with the memory of the song, and of that strange line I never understood— “Wearing the ghost-ring!” — and, of themselves, the words grew and died, formed on my silent lips:

  “This for the deed she did at Ashby Farms,

  Helen of Ormond, Royal Maid-at-Arms!

  “Though for all time the lords of Ormond be

  Butlers to Majesty,

  Yet shall new honors fall upon her

  Who, armored, rode for love to Ashby Farms;

  Let this her title be: A Maid-at-Arms!

  “Serene mid love’s alarms,

  For all time shall the Maids-at-Arms,

  Wearing the ghost-ring, triumph with their constancy.

  And sweetly conquer with a sigh

  And vanquish with a tear

  Captains a trembling world might fear.

  “This for the deed she did at Ashby Farms,

  Helen of Ormond, Royal Maid-at-Arms!”

  Staring at the picture, lips quivering with the soundless words, such wretched loneliness came over me that a dryness in my throat set me gulping, and I groped my way back to the settle by the fir
eplace and sat down heavily in homesick solitude.

  “I SAT DOWN HEAVILY IN HOMESICK SOLITUDE”.

  Then hate came, a quick hatred for these Northern skies, and these strangers of the North who dared claim kin with me, to lure me northward with false offer of council and mockery of hospitality.

  I was on my feet again in a flash, hot with anger, ready with insult to meet insult, for I meant to go ere I had greeted my host — an insult, indeed, and a deadly one among us. Furious, I bent to snatch my rifle from the settle where it lay, and, as I flung it to my shoulder, wheeling to go, my eyes fell upon a figure stealing down the stairway from above, a woman in flowered silk, bare of throat and elbow, fingers scarcely touching the banisters as she moved.

  She hesitated, one foot poised for the step below; then it fell noiselessly, and she stood before me.

  Anger died out under the level beauty of her gaze. I bowed, just as I caught a trace of mockery in the mouth’s scarlet curve, and bowed the lower for it, too, straightening slowly to the dignity her mischievous eyes seemed to flout; and her lips, too, defied me, all silently — nay, in every limb and from every finger-tip she seemed to flout me, and the slow, deep courtesy she made me was too slow and far too low, and her recovery a marvel of plastic malice.

  “My cousin Ormond?” she lisped;— “I am Dorothy Varick.”

  We measured each other for a moment in silence.

  There was a trace of powder on her bright hair, like a mist of snow on gold; her gown’s yoke was torn, for all its richness, and a wisp of lace in rags fell, clouding the delicate half-sleeve of China silk.

  Her face, colored like palest ivory with rose, was no doll’s face, for all its symmetry and a forgotten patch to balance the dimple in her rounded chin; it was even noble in a sense, and, if too chaste for sensuous beauty, yet touched with a strange and pensive sweetness, like ‘witched marble waking into flesh.