Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  I have never known whether or not I am what men call brave, for I understand fear and I turn cold at thought of death. Often I have sat alone in the house watching the sober folk along Broadway and Wall Street, knowing all the while that these same good people might to-morrow all go flocking to Catiemuts Hill near the Fresh Water, or to that open space in the “Fields” between the jail and the Almshouse, to see me on the gallows. If such thoughts do not assail the brave — if restless nights, wakeful dawns, dull days are not their portion — I must own that all these were mine, not often, perhaps, but too frequent to flatter self-esteem. And, fight them as I might, it was useless; for such moments came without warning — often when I had been merry with friends, at times when, lulled by long-continued security, I had nigh forgotten through eventless months that there was a war and that I had become a New Yorker only because of war.

  It was harder now, in one sense; four years as secretary to my kinsman, Sir Peter Coleville, had admitted me to those social intimacies so necessary to my secret office; and, alas! friendships had been made and ties formed not only in the line of duty, but from impulse and out of pure affection.

  I had never found it was required of me to pose as a rabid loyalist, and so did not, being known as disinterested and indifferent, and perhaps for that reason not suspected. My friends were from necessity among the best among the loyalists — from choice, too, for I liked them for their own sakes, and it was against their cause I worked, not against them.

  It went hard with me to use them as I did — I so loathing perfidy in others; yet if it be perfidy to continue in duty as I understood duty, then I practised it, and at times could scarce tolerate myself, which was a weakness, because in my own heart I knew that his Excellency could set no man a task unworthy of his manhood. Yet it were pleasanter had my duties thrown me with the army, or with Colonel Willett in my native north, whence, at his request, I had come to live a life of physical sloth and mental intrigue under the British cannon of New York — here in the household of Sir Peter Coleville, his secretary, his friend, his welcomed guest, the intimate of his family, his friends! — that was the hardest of all; and though for months at a time I managed to forget it, the recurring thought of what I was, and what they believed me to be, stabbed me at intervals so I could scarce endure it.

  Nothing, not even the belief that God was with us, I fear, could have held me there when the stress of such emotion left me staring at the darkness in my restless bed — only blind faith in his Excellency that he would do no man this shame, if shame it was — that he knew as well as I that the land’s salvation was not to be secured through the barter of men’s honor and the death of souls.

  The door being secured, as I say, and the heat of that July day abating nothing, though the sun hung low over Staten Island, I opened my windows, removed coat and waistcoat, and, drawing a table to the window, prepared to write up that portion of my daily journal neglected lately, and which, when convenient opportunity offered, was to find its way into the hands of Colonel Marinus Willett in Albany. Before I wrote I turned back a leaf or two so that I might correct my report in the light of later events; and I read rapidly:

  July 12, 1781. — Nothing remarkable. Very warm weather, and a bad odor from the markets. There is some talk in the city of rebuilding the burned district. Two new cannon have been mounted in the southwest bastion of the fort (George). I shall report caliber and particulars later.

  July 13th. — This day Sir Peter left to look over the lands in Westchester which he is, I believe, prepared to purchase from Mr. Rutgers. The soldiers are very idle; a dozen of ’em caught drawing a seine in the Collect, and sent to the guard-house — a dirty trick for anybody but Hessians, who are accustomed to fish in that manner. The cannon in the southwest bastion are twelve-pounders and old — trunnions rusted, carriages rotten. It seems they are trophies taken from the Carolina militia.

  July 14th. — A ship arrived in the lower bay. Details later. In Nassau Street, about noon, a tall fellow, clothed like a drover, muttered a word or two as I passed, and I had gone on ere it struck me that he had meant his words for my ear. To find him I turned leisurely, retracing my steps as though I had forgotten something, and as I brushed him again, he muttered, “Thendara; tell me where it is.”

  At that moment Captain Enderley of the Fifty-fourth Foot greeted me, linking his arm in mine, and I had no excuse to avoid him. More of this to-night, when, if the message was truly for me, I shall doubtless be watched and followed when I leave the house for a stroll.

  July 15th. — Last night there was no chance, Enderley and Captain O’Neil coming to take me to the theater, where the Thirty-eighth Regiment gave a frolic and a play — the latter most indifferent, save for Mrs. Barry’s acting. I saw my drover in John Street, too, but could not speak to him.

  This morning, however, I met the drover, and he was drunk, or made most marvelous pretense — a great six-foot, blue-eyed lout in smock and boots, reeking of Bull’s Head gin, his drover’s whip a-trail in the dust, and he a-swaggering down Nassau Street, gawking at the shop-windows and whistling Roslyn Castle with prodigious gusto.

  I made it convenient to pause before Berry and Roger’s show of jewels, and he stopped, too, swaying there gravely, balanced now on hobnail heel, now on toe. Presently he ceased his whistling of Roslyn Castle, and in a low but perfectly distinct voice he said, “Where is the town of Thendara, Mr. Renault?” Without looking at him or even turning my head, I answered, “Why do you ask me?”

  He stared stupidly at the show-window. “Pro patria et gloria,” he replied under his breath; “why do you serve the land?”

  “Pro gloria,” I muttered. “Give your message; hasten.”

  He scratched his curly head, staring at the gewgaws. “It is this,” he said coolly; “find out if there be a lost town in the north called Thendara, or if the name be used to mask the name of Fort Niagara. When you have learned all that is possible, walk some evening up Broadway and out along Great George Street. We will follow.”

  “Who else besides yourself?”

  “A brother drover — of men,” he said slyly; “a little wrinkled fellow, withered to the bone, wide-eared, mild-eyed. He is my running mate, sir, and we run sometimes, now this way, now that, but always at your service, Mr. Renault.”

  “Are you drunk, or is it a pretense?” I demanded.

  “Not too drunk,” he replied, with elaborate emphasis. “But once this matter of Thendara is settled I hope to be so drunk that no friend of mine need be ashamed of me. Good day, sir. God save our country!”

  “Have a care,” I motioned, turning away. And so I left him to enter the shop and purchase a trinket, thinking it prudent in case any passer-by had observed how long I lingered.

  July 16th. — Sir Peter not yet returned from Mr. Rutgers. The name “Thendara” ringing in my ears like a dull bell all night, and I awake, lying there a-thinking. Somewhere, in some long-forgotten year, I had heard a whispering echo of that name — or so it seemed to me — and, musing, I thought to savor a breeze from the pines, and hear water flowing, unseen, far in the forest silence.

  Thendara! Thendara!

  The name is not Iroquois — yet it may be, too — a soft, gracious trisyllable stolen from the Lenape. Lord! how the name intrigues me, sweetly sonorous, throbbing in my ears — Thendara, Thendara — and always I hear the pine breeze high blowing and the flowing undertone of waters.

  July 17th. — Nothing extraordinary. The Hon. Elsin Grey arrived from Halifax by the Swan packet to visit Sir Peter’s family, she being cousin twice removed to Lady Coleville. I have not seen her; she keeps her chamber with the migraine. As she comes from her kinsman, General Sir Frederick Haldimand, Governor of Canada, she may be useful, being lately untethered from the convent and no more than seventeen or eighteen, and vain, no doubt, of her beauty, and so, I conclude, prone to babble if flattered.

  Here my journal ended; I dipped my quill into the inkhorn and wrote slowly:

 
July 18th. — Nothing remarkable. The Hon. Elsin Grey still keeps her chamber. The heat in New York is very great. I am, without suspicion, sending money through Ennis to our prisoners aboard the ships in the Wallabout, and next week shall have more for the unfortunates in the Provost, the prisons, jails, and the sugar-house — my salary being due on the 20th inst. I have ever in mind a plan for a general jail delivery the instant his Excellency assaults by land and sea, but at present it is utterly hopeless, Mr. Cunningham executing the laws with terrible rigor, and double guards patrolling the common. As for those wretched patriots aboard the “Hell” and on those hulks — the Falconer, Good Hope, and Scorpion — which lie southeast of the Jersey, there can be no delivery save through compassion of that Dark Jailer who one day shall free us all.

  I dropped my pen, listening intently. Close to my door the garret stairs creaked, ever so lightly; and I bent forward across the table, gathering my papers, on which the ink lay still wet.

  Listening, I heard nothing more. Perhaps the great heat was warping the new stairway, which led past my door, up through the attic, and out to the railed cupola upon the roof.

  I glanced at my journal; there was nothing more to add, and so, sanding the sheets, I laid them back behind the swinging panel which I myself had fashioned so cunningly that none might suspect a cupboard in the simple wainscot. Then to wash hands and face in fresh water, and put on my coat without the waistcoat, prepared to take the air on the cupola, where it should soon blow cool from the bay.

  Slipping lock and bolt, I paused, hand on the knob, to glance back around the room — a habit formed of caution. Then, satisfied, I opened the door and left it standing wide so that the room might air. As I ascended the attic stairs a little fresh puff of wind cooled me. Doubtless a servant had opened the flaps to the cupola, for they were laid back; and as I mounted, I could see a square of blue sky overhead.

  I had taken my pipe, and paused on the stairs to light it; then, pouching flint and tinder-box, I emerged upon the roof, to find myself face to face with a young girl I had never before seen — the Hon. Miss Grey, no doubt — and very dainty in her powder and one coquette patch that emphasized the slow color tinting a skin of snow.

  My bow, I think, covered my vexation — I being all unpowdered and wearing no waistcoat over an unfrilled shirt, for I do love fine clothes when circumstances require; but the lady was none the less punctilious, and as I made to toss my pipe into the street below, she forbade me with perfect courtesy and a smile that only accented her youthful self-possession.

  “Mr. Renault need neither retire nor sacrifice his pleasure,” she said. “I have missed Sir Frederick’s pipe-smoke dreadfully — so much, indeed, that I had even thought to try Sir Peter’s snuff to soothe me.”

  “Shall I fetch it, madam?” I asked instantly; but she raised a small hand in laughing horror.

  “Snuff and picquet I am preparing for — a youth of folly — an old age of snuff and cards, you know. At present folly suffices, thank you.”

  And as I stood smiling before her, she said: “Pray you be seated, sir, if you so desire. There should be sufficient air for two in this half-charred furnace which you call New York. Tell me, Mr. Renault, are the winters here also extreme in cold?”

  “Sometimes,” I said. “Last winter the bay was frozen to Staten Island so that the artillery crossed on the ice from the city.”

  She turned her head, looking out over the water, which was now all a golden sparkle under the westering sun. Then her eyes dropped to the burned district — that waste of blackened ruins stretching south along Broadway to Beaver Street and west to Greenwich Street.

  “Is that the work of rebels?” she asked, frowning.

  “No, madam; it was an accident.”

  “Why do the New Yorkers not rebuild?”

  “I think it is because General Washington interrupts local improvements,” I said, laughing.

  She looked around at me, pretty brows raised in quaint displeasure.

  “Does the insolence of a rebel really amuse you, Mr. Renault?”

  I was taken aback. Even among the British officers here in the city it had become the fashion to speak respectfully of the enemy, and above all of his Excellency.

  “Why should it not amuse me?” I asked lightly.

  She had moved her head again, and appeared to be absorbed in the view. Presently she said, still looking out over the city: “That was a noble church once, that blackened arch across the way.”

  “That is Trinity — all that is left of it,” I said. “St. Paul’s is still standing — you may see it there to the north, just west of Ann Street and below Vesey.”

  She turned, leaning on the railing, following with curious eyes the direction of my outstretched arm.

  “Please tell me more about this furnace you call a city, Mr. Renault,” she said, with a pretty inflection of voice that flattered; and so I went over beside her, and, leaning there on the cupola rail together, we explored the damaged city from our bird’s perch above it — the city that I had come to care for strangely, nay, to love almost as I loved my Mohawk hills. For it is that way with New York, the one city that we may love without disloyalty to our birthplace, a city which is home in a larger sense, and, in a sense, almost as dear to men as the birth-spot which all cherish. I know not why, but this is so; no American is long strange here; for it is the great hearth of the mother-land where the nation gathers as a family, each conscious of a share in the heritage established for all by all.

  And so, together, this fair young English girl and I traced out the wards numbered from the cardinal points of the compass, and I bounded for her the Out-Ward, too, and the Dock-Ward. There was no haze, only a living golden light, clear as topaz, and we could see plainly the sentinels pacing before the Bridewell — that long two-storied prison, built of gloomy stone; and next to it the Almshouse of gray stone, and next to that the massive rough stone prison, three stories high, where in a cupola an iron bell hung, black against the sky.

  “You will hear it, some day, tolling for an execution,” I said.

  “Do they hang rebels there?” she asked, looking up at me so wonderingly, so innocently that I stood silent instead of answering, surprised at such beauty in a young girl’s eyes.

  “Where is King’s College?” she asked. I showed her the building bounded by Murray, Chapel, Barckley and Church streets, and then I pointed out the upper barracks behind the jail, and the little lake beyond divided by a neck of land on which stood the powder-house.

  Far across the West Ward I could see the windows of Mr. Lispenard’s mansion shining in the setting sun, and the road to Greenwich winding along the river.

  She tired of my instruction after a while, and her eyes wandered to the bay. A few ships lay off Paulus Hook; the Jersey shore seemed very near, although full two miles distant, and the islands, too, seemed close in-shore where the white wings of gulls flashed distantly.

  A jack flew from the Battery, another above the fort, standing out straight in the freshening breeze from the bay. Far away across the East River I saw the accursed Jersey swinging, her black, filthy bulwarks gilded by the sun; and below, her devil’s brood of hulks at anchor, all with the wash hung out on deck a-drying in the wind.

  “What are they?” she asked, surprising something else than the fixed smile of deference in my face.

  “Prison ships, madam. Yonder the rebels die all night, all day, week after week, year after year. That black hulk you see yonder — the one to the east — stripped clean, with nothing save a derrick for bow-sprit and a signal-pole for mast, is the Jersey, called by another name, sometimes — —”

  “What name?”

  “Some call her ‘The Hell,’” I answered. And, after a pause: “It must be hot aboard, with every porthole nailed.”

  “What can rebels expect?” she asked calmly.

  “Exactly! There are some thousand and more aboard the Jersey. When the wind sets from the south, on still mornings, I have heard a s
trange moaning — a low, steady, monotonous plaint, borne inland over the city. But, as you say, what can rebels expect, madam?”

  “What is that moaning sound you say that one may hear?” she demanded.

  “Oh, the rebels, dying from suffocation — clamoring for food, perhaps — perhaps for water! It is hard on the guards who have to go down every morning into that reeking, stifling hold and drag out the dead rebels festering there — —”

  “But that is horrible!” she broke out, blue eyes wide with astonishment — then, suddenly silent, she gazed at me full in the face. “It is incredible,” she said quietly; “it is another rebel tale. Tell me, am I not right?”

  I did not answer; I was thinking how I might use her, and the thought was not agreeable. She was so lovely in her fresh young womanhood, so impulsive and yet so self-possessed, so utterly ignorant of what was passing in this war-racked land of mine, that I hesitated to go gleaning here for straws of information.

  “In the north,” she said, resting her cheek on one slender wrist, “we hear much of rebel complaint, but make nothing of it, knowing well that if cruelty exists its home is not among those sturdy men who are fighting for their King.”

  “You speak warmly,” I said, smiling.

  “Yes — warmly. We have heard Sir John Johnson slandered because he uses the Iroquois. But do not the rebels use them, too? My kinsman, General Haldimand, says that not only do the rebels employ the Oneidas, but that their motley congress enlists any Indian who will take their paper dollars.”

  “That is true,” I said.

  “Then why should we not employ Brant and his Indians?” she asked innocently. “And why do the rebels cry out every time Butler’s Rangers take the field? We in Canada know Captain Walter Butler and his father, Colonel John Butler. Why, Mr. Renault, there is no more perfectly accomplished officer and gentleman than Walter Butler. I know him; I have danced with him at Quebec and at Niagara. How can even a rebel so slander him with these monstrous tales of massacre and torture and scalps taken from women and children at Cherry Valley?” She raised her flushed face to mine and looked at me earnestly.