Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  I told her how exquisite her beauty was, I protested at her coldness, I dedicated myself to her service, vowing eternal constancy; and presently my elaborate expressions rang truer and grew more simple, and she withdrew her hand with a laugh, looking at me out of those beautiful eyes which now were touched with curiosity.

  “For a jester, Carus, you are too earnest,” she said.

  “Does pretense frighten you?”

  She regarded me, silent, smiling, her fan at her lips.

  “You are playing with fire,” she said.

  “Tell me, heart of flint, am I the steel to strike a spark from?” I asked, laughing.

  “I do not know yet of what metal you are made, Carus,” she said thoughtfully, yet with that dim smile hovering ever upon her lips.

  She dropped her fan and held up one finger. “Listen; let me read you. Here is my measure of such a man as you: First of all, generous! — look at your mouth, which God first fashions, then leaves for us to make or mar. Second, your eyes — sincere! for though you blush like a maiden, Carus, your eyes are steady to the eyes that punish. Third, dogged! spite of the fierce impatience that sets your chiseled nose a-quiver at the nostrils. There! Am I not a very gipsy for a fortune? Read me, now.”

  After a long silence I said, “I can not.”

  “Truly?”

  “Truly. I can not read you, Elsin.”

  She opened her palm and held her fingers, one by one, frowning in an effort to be just: “First, I am a fool; second, I am a fool; third, I am a fool; fourth — —”

  I caught her hand, and she looked at me with a charming laugh.

  “I am,” she insisted, her hand resting in mine.

  “Why?”

  “Why, because I — I am in love with Walter Butler — and — and I never liked a man as well as I like you!”

  I was astounded. She sighed, slowly shaking her head. “That is it, you see. Love is very different from having a good time. He is so proud, so sad, so buried in noble melancholy, so darkly handsome, and all afire with passion — which advances him not a whit with me nor commends him to my mercy — only when he stands before me, his dark golden eyes lost in delicious melancholy; then, then, Carus, I know that it must be love I feel; but it is not a very cheerful sentiment.” She sighed again, picking up her fan with one hand — I held the other.

  “Now, with you — and I have scarce known you a dozen hours — it is so charming, so pleasant and cheerful — and I like you so much, Carus! — oh, the sentiment I entertain for you is far pleasanter than love. Have you ever been in love?”

  “I am, Elsin — almost.”

  “Almost? Mercy on us! What will the lady say to ‘almost’?”

  “God knows,” I said, smiling.

  “Good!” she said approvingly; “leave her in God’s care, and practise on me to perfect your courtship. I like it, really I do. It is strange, too,” she mused, with a tender smile of reminiscence, “for I have never let Captain Butler so much as touch my hand. But discretion, you see, is love; isn’t it? So if I am so indiscreet with you, what harm is there?”

  “Are you unhappy away from him?” I asked.

  “No, only when with him. He seems to wring my heart — I don’t know why, but, oh, I do so pity him!”

  “Are you — plighted?”

  “Oh, dear me, yes — but secretly. Ah, I should not have told you that! — but there you are, Carus; and I do believe that I could tell you everything I know if our acquaintance endures but twelve more hours. And that,” she added, considering me calmly, “is rather strange, I think. Don’t you?”

  Ere I could reply came Sir Peter, talking loudly, protesting that it was a monstrous shame for me to steal away their guest, that I was a villain and all knew it, he himself best of all; and without more ado he tucked her arm under his and marched triumphantly away, leaving me there alone in the deserted room.

  But as Elsin gained the door she turned, looking back, and, laying her hand upon her lips, threw me a kiss behind Sir Peter’s shoulders.

  CHAPTER III

  THE COQ D’OR

  The days that followed were brilliant links in a fierce sequence of gaiety; and this though the weather was so hot that the very candles in their sconces drooped, dripping their melted wax on egrette and lace, scarlet coat and scarf. A sort of midsummer madness attacked the city; we danced in the hot moonlit nights, we drove at noontide, with the sun flaring in a sky of sapphire, we boated on the Bronx, we galloped out to the lines, escorted by a troop of horse, to see the Continental outposts beyond Tarrytown — so bold they had become, and no “skinners,” either, but scouts of Heath, blue dragons if our glasses lied not, well horsed, newly saddled, holsters of bearskin, musket on thigh, and the July sun a-flashing on crested helmet and crossed sling-buckles. And how my heart drummed and the red blood leaped in me to beat in neck and temple, at sight of my own comrades! And how I envied them, free to ride erect and proud in the light of day, harnessed for battle, flying no false colors for concealment — all fair and clean and aboveboard! And I a spy!

  We were gay, I say, and the town had gone mid-summer mad of its own fancy — a fevered, convulsive reaction from a strain too long endured; and while the outlook for the King was no whit better here, and much worse in the South, yet, as it was not yet desperate, the garrison, the commander, and the Governor made a virtue of necessity, and, rousing from the pent inertia of the dreadful winter and shaking off the lethargy of spring, paced their cage with a restlessness that quickened to a mania for some relief in the mad distraction of folly and frivolity.

  And first, Sir Peter gave a ball at our house in honor of Elsin Grey, and we danced in the state drawing-room, and in the hallway, and in the south drawing-room, and Sir Henry walked a minuet with the Hon. Elsin Grey, and I had her to wine and later in a Westchester reel. Too much punch was drunk, iced, which is a deadly thing, and worse still when the foundation is laid in oranged tea! Too many officers, too many women, and all so hot, so suffocating, that the red ran from lip and cheek, streaking the face-powder, and the bare enameled shoulders of the women were frosted with perspiration like dew on wet roses.

  That was the first frolic given in her honor, followed by that wild dance at the Governor’s, where the thickets of clustered candles drooped like lilies afire, and great islands of ice melted in the punch-bowls ere they had been emptied a third. And yet the summer madness continued; by day we drove in couples, in Italian chaises, or made cherry-parties to Long Island, or sailed the bay to the Narrows, or played rustic and fished in the bay; at night we danced, danced, danced, and I saw little of Elsin Grey save through a blaze of candle-light to move a minuet with her, to press her hand in a reel, or to conduct her to some garden pavilion where servants waited with ices amid a thirsty, breathless, jostling throng.

  The heat abated nothing; so terrible was it in the city that spite of the shade afforded by elm, lime, and honey-locust, men and horses were stricken on the streets, and the Tea Water ran low, and the Collect, where it flows out into a stream, dried up, and Mr. Rutger’s swamps stank. Also, as was noted by men like me, who, country-bred, concern themselves with trifles, the wild birds which haunted the trees in street and lane sang no more, and I saw at times Lord Baltimore’s orioles and hedge-birds, beaks open, eyes partly closed, panting from the sun, so fierce it beat upon us in New York that summertide.

  As for the main Sir Peter had meant to fight with his Flatbush birds, we tried a shake-bag, stags, which, though fairly matched and handled by past masters, billed and pecked and panted without a blow from wing or spur, till we understood that the heat had stunned them, and so gave up to wait for cooler sport.

  We waited, but not in idleness; the cage-fever drove us afield, and the De Lanceys had us to the house for bowls and cricket, which the ladies joined, spoiling it somewhat for my taste; and we played golf at Mr. Lispenard’s, which presently lost all charm for me, as Elsin Grey remained at the pavilion and touched no club, neither wood nor iron, save
to beat the devil’s tattoo upon the grass and smile into the bold eyes of Captain O’Neil.

  At Rivington’s we found tennis, too, and good rackets, and I played one whole morning with Elsin Grey, nor wearied of her delight that she beat me easily; though why I permitted it and why her victory gave me pleasure is more than I can comprehend, I always desiring to appear well in trials of skill at which it is a shame for gentlemen not to excel, and not ungallant to do one’s best with ladies to oppose.

  Every Tuesday, at Bayard’s Hill near the pump, a bull was baited; but that bloody sport, and the matching of dogs, was never to my taste, although respectable gentlemen of fashion attended.

  However, there was racing at many places — at Newmarket on Salisbury plain, and at Jamaica; also Mr. Lispenard had a fine course at Greenwich village, near the country house of Admiral Warren, and Mr. De Lancey another between First and Second streets, near the Bowery Lane; but mostly we drove to Mr. Rutger’s to see the running horses; and I was ashamed not to bet when Elsin Grey provoked me with her bantering challenge to a wager, laying bets under my nose; but I could not risk money and remember how every penny saved meant to some prisoner aboard the Jersey more than a drop of water to a soul in torment.

  And how it hurt me — I who love to please, and who adore in others that high disregard of expense that I dared now never disregard! And to appear poor-spirited in her eyes, too! and to see the others stare at times, and to be aware of quiet glances exchanged, and of meaning eyes!

  It was late in July that the cooling change came — a delicious breath from the Narrows blowing steady as a trade; and the change having been predicted a week since by Venus, a negro wench of Lady Coleville’s, Sir Peter had wisely taken precaution to send word to Horrock in Flatbush; and now the main was to be fought at the cockpit in Great George Street, at the Frenchman’s “Coq d’Or,” a tavern maintained most jealously by the garrison’s officers, and most exclusive though scarce decent in a moral sense, it being notorious for certain affairs in which even the formality of Gretna Green was dispensed with.

  Many a daintily cloaked figure stole, masked, to the rendezvous in the garden under the cherry-trees, and many a duel was fought in the pleasant meadows to the south which we called Vauxhall; and there I have seen silent men waiting at dawn, playing with the coffee they scarce could swallow, while their seconds paced the path beyond the stile, whistling reflectively, switching the wild roses, with a watchful eye for the coming party.

  But now, concerning that cocking-main at the Coq d’Or, and how it came about. The day was to be a merry one, Lady Coleville and Elsin Grey sleeping until afternoon from the dissipation of the dance at the Assembly, which lasted until the breakfast hour; Sir Peter, Captains Harkness and O’Neil, and I to see the main in the morning, lunch at the tavern, and return to rest until time to dress for the great ball and supper given by the officers of the artillery at Fort George.

  The day, the 28th of July, broke cloudless and sweetly cool. Dressing, I saw the jack flying straight in the sea-wind and a schooner in the North River heeled over and scudding south, with a white necklace of foam trailing from her sprit back along half her water-line.

  Sir Peter, in riding-boots and coat, came in high spirits to drink a morning cup with me, saying his birds had arrived and Horrock had gone forward with them, and that we must bolt breakfast and mount, for the Fifty-fourth’s officers were early risers, and we should not detain them. And so he chattered on, joyously, pacing my chamber while Dennis buckled my spurs.

  At breakfast we bolted what was set before us, with many a glance through the windows where, in the garden drive, our horses stood saddled in the shade of an elm, a black at each bit, and the whole stable-force out, all a-grinning to wish the master luck of his Flatbush birds and the main to boot.

  “Carus,” said Sir Peter, fork poised, glass in hand, “it’s a thousand on the main, a hundred on each battle, and I must win. You know that!”

  I knew it only too well and said so, speaking cheerfully yet seriously of his affairs, which had become so complicated since the closer blockade of the city. But he was ever gaily impatient of details and of pounds and pence. Accounts he utterly refused to audit, leaving it to me to pay his debts, patch up gaps left by depreciated securities, and find a fortune to maintain him and his wife in the style which, God knows, befitted him, but which he could no longer properly afford. And when it came to providing money to fling from race-track to cockpit, and from coffee-house to card-room, I told him plainly he had none, which made him laugh and swear and vow I was treating him most shabbily. And it was no use; he would have his pin-money, and I must sell or pledge or borrow, at an interest most villainous, from the thrifty folk in Duke Street.

  So now, when I offered to discuss the danger of extravagance, he swore he would not have a day’s pleasure ruined by a sermon, and presently we rose and went into the garden to mount, and I saw Sir Peter distributing silver among the servants, so that all could share the pleasure and lay wagers among their kind for the honor of the Flatbush birds and the master who bred them.

  “Come, Carus,” he sang out from his saddle, and I followed him at a gallop out into Broadway and up the street, keeping under the shade of the trees to save our horses, though the air was cool and we had not far to go.

  Presently he drew bridle, and we walked our horses past Partition Street, past Barckley, and the common, where I glanced askance at the ominous row of the three dread buildings, the Bridewell, the Almshouse, the Prison, with the Provost’s gallows standing always ready between; and it brought sullen thoughts to me which four years of patience could not crush; nor had all these years of inaction dulled the fierce spark that flashed to fire within me when I looked up at the barred windows and at the sentinels, and thought of mine own people rotting there, and of Mr. Cunningham, the Provost, whom hell should one day be the worse for.

  “Is aught amiss, Carus?” asked Sir Peter, catching my eye.

  “Yes, the cruelty practised yonder!” I blurted out. Never before had I said as much to any man.

  “You mean the debtors — or those above in the chain-room?” he asked, surprised.

  “I was not speaking of the Bridewell, but of the Prison,” I said.

  “What cruelty, Carus? You mean the rigor Cunningham uses?”

  “Rigor!” I said, laughing, and my laugh was unpleasant.

  He looked at me narrowly. We rode past Warren Street and the Upper Barracks in silence, saluting an officer here and there with preoccupied punctiliousness. Already I was repenting of my hardiness in mixing openly with politics or war — matters I had ever avoided or let pass with gay indifference.

  “Carus,” he said, patting his horse’s mane, “you will lay a bet for the honor of the family this time — will you not?”

  “I have no money,” I replied, surprised; for never before had he offered to suggest an interference into my own affairs — never by word or look.

  “No money!” he repeated, laughing. “Gad, you rake, what do you do with it all?” And as I continued silent, he said more gravely, “May I speak plainly to a kinsman and dear friend?”

  “Always,” I said uneasily.

  “Then, without offense, Carus, I think that, were I you, I should bet a little — now and again — fling the guineas for a change — now and then — if I were you, Carus.”

  “If you were I you would not,” I said, reddening to the temples.

  “I think I should, nevertheless,” he persisted, smiling. “Carus, you know that if you need money to bet with — —”

  “I’ll tell you what I need, Sir Peter,” said I, looking him in the eye. “I need your faith in me that I am not by choice a niggard.”

  “God forbid!” he cried.

  “Yet I pass among many for that,” I said hotly. “I know it, I suffer. Yet I can not burn a penny; it belongs to others, that’s all.”

  “A debt!” he murmured.

  “Call it as you will. The money you overpay me for my p
oor services is not even my own to enjoy.”

  Sir Peter dropped his bridle and slapped his gloved hands together with a noise that made his horse jump. “I knew it,” he cried, “I knew it, and so I told Elsin when she came to me, troubled, because in you this one flaw appeared; yet though she questioned me, in the same breath she vowed the marble perfect, and asked me if you had parents or kin dependent. She is a rare maid, my pretty kinswoman—” He hesitated, glancing cornerwise at me.

  “Do you know Walter Butler well?” I asked carelessly.

  “No, only a little. Why, Carus?”

  “Is he married?”

  “I never heard it. He is scarcely known to me save through Sir John Johnson, and that his zeal led him to what some call a private reprisal.”

  “Yes, he burned our house, or his Indians did, making pretense that they did not know who lived there, but thought the whole Bush a rebel hotbed. It is true the house was new, built while Sir John lay brooding there in Canada over his broken parole. Perhaps Walter Butler did not know the house was ours.”

  “You are very generous, Carus,” said Sir Peter gravely.

  “No, not very. You see, my father and my mother were in France, and I here, and Butler’s raiders only murdered one old man — a servant, all alone there, a man too old and deaf to understand their questions. I know who slew that ancient body-servant to my father, who often held me on his knees. No, Sir Peter, I am not generous, as you say. But there are matters which must await the precedence of great events ere their turn comes in the mills which grind so slow, so sure, and so exceeding fine.”

  Sir Peter looked at me in silence, and in silence we rode on until we came to the tavern called the Coq d’Or.

  They were there, the early risers of the Fifty-fourth — a jolly, noisy crowd, all scarlet and gold; and they set up a cheer, which was half welcome, half defiance, when we rode into the tavern yard and dismounted, bowing right and left; and the landlord came to receive us, and servants followed with champagne-cup, iced; and there was old Horrock, too, hat in hand, to attend Sir Peter, with a shake of his wise old head and a smile on his furrowed face — Horrock, the prince of handlers, with his chicken-men, and his scales, and his Flatbush birds a-crowing defiance to the duck-wings, spangles, pyles, and Lord knows what, that his Majesty’s Fifty-fourth Regiment of Foot had backed to win with every penny and farthing they could scrape to lay against us.