Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  I heard old Horrock whisper to Sir Peter, who was reading over the match-list, “They’re the best we can do, sir; combs low-cut, wings rounded, hackle and saddle trimmed to a T, and the vanes perfect.” He laughed: “What more can I do, sir? They had aniseed in their bread on the third day, and on the weighing-day sheep-heart, and not two teacups of water in the seven. They came from the walks in prime condition, and tartar and jalap did the rest. They sparred free in the boots and took to the warm ale and sweet-wort, and the rooms were dark except at feeding. What more can I do, sir, except heel them to a hair’s-breadth?”

  “You have no peer, Horrock, and you know it,” said Sir Peter, kindly, and the old man’s furrowed face shone as he trotted off to the covert-room.

  Meanwhile I had been hailed by a dozen friends of a dozen different regiments, good fellows all: Major Jamison of the Partisans; Ensign Halvar, young Caryl of the Fortieth Foot; Helsing of the Artillery, and apparently every available commissioned officer of the Fifty-fourth, including Colonel Eyre, a gentleman with a scientific taste for the pit that gained him the title of “The Game ‘Un” from saucy subalterns, needless to say without his knowledge.

  “A good bird, well handled, freely backed — what more can a gentleman ask?” said Major Neville, waddling beside Sir Peter as we filed into the tavern. “My wife calls it a shameful sport, but the cockpit is a fashionable passion, damme! and a man out o’ fashion is worse than an addled cluck-egg! Eh, Renault? Good gad, sir! Do not cocks fight unurged, and are not their battles with nature’s spurs more cruel than when matched by man and heeled with steel or even silver, which mercifully ends the combat in short order? And so I tell my wife, Sir Peter, but she calls me brute,” he panted plaintively.

  “Pooh!” said Sir Peter, laughing, “I can always find a reason for any transgression in the list from theft to murder, and justify each crime by logic — if I put my mind to do so. But my mind is not partial to logic. I fight game-fowl and like it, be the fashion and the ethics what they may.”

  He was unjust to himself as usual; to him there was no difference between the death of a pheasant afield and the taking off of a good bird in the pit.

  Seated around the pit, there was some delay in showing, and Dr. Carmody of the brigade staff gave me, unsolicited, his mature opinions upon game-fowl:

  “Show me a bird of bold carriage, comb bright red and upright, eye full and bright, beak strong and in good socket, breast full, body broad at shoulder and tapering to tail, thigh short, round, and hard as a nail, leg stout, flat-footed, and spur low — a bird with bright, hard feathers, strong in a quill, warm and firm to the hand — and I care not what breed he be, spangle or black-red, I’ll lay my last farthing with you, Mr. Renault, if it shall please you.”

  “And what am I to back?” said I, laughing— “a full plume, a long, soft hackle, a squirrel-tail, a long-thighed, in-kneed, weak-beaked, coarse-headed henning-fowl selected by you?”

  The little doctor roared with laughter; the buzz and hum of conversation increased around us — bits of banter, jests tossed from friend to friend.

  “Who dubs your birds for you. Sir Peter?” cried Helsing— “the Bridewell barber?”

  “Ten guineas to eight with you on the first battle,” retorted Sir Peter, courteously; and, “Done with you, sir!” said Helsing, noting the bet, while Sir Peter booked his memorandum and turned to meet a perfect shower of offers, all of which he accepted smilingly. And I — oh, I was sick to sit there without a penny laid to show my loyalty to Sir Peter. But it must be so, and I bit my lip and strove to smile and parry with a jest the well-meant offers which now and then came flying my way. But O’Neil and Harkness backed the Flatbush birds right loyally, cautioned by Sir Peter, who begged that they wait; but they would not — and one was Irish — so nothing would do but a bold front and an officer snapped with, “Done, sir!”

  The judges and the referee had been chosen, the color-writers selected, and Sir Peter had won the draw, choosing, of course, to weigh first, the main being governed by rules devised by the garrison regiments, partly Virginian, partly New York custom. Matches had been made in camera, the first within the half-ounce, and allowing a stag four ounces; round heels were to be used; all cutters, twists, and slashers barred; the metal was steel, not silver.

  And now the pitters had taken station, Horrock and a wall-eyed Bat-man of the Train, and the birds had billed three times and had been fairly delivered on the score — a black brass-back of ours against a black-red of the Fifty-fourth. Scarcely a second did they eye one another when crack! slap! they were at it, wing and gaffle. Suddenly the black-red closed and held, struck like lightning five or six times, and it was all over with Sir Peter’s Flatbush brass-back, done for in a single heat.

  “Fast work,” observed Sir Peter calmly, taking snuff, with a pleasant nod to the enemy.

  Then odds on the main flew like lightning, all taken by Sir Peter and O’Neil and a few others of ours, and I biting my lip and fixing my eyes on the roof. Had I not dreaded to hurt Sir Peter I should never, never have come.

  We again showed a brass-back and let him run in the pit before cutting a feather, whereupon Sir Peter rashly laid ten to five and few takers, too, for the Fifty-fourth showed a pyle of five-pounds-three — a shuffler which few fancied. But Lord! the shuffler drummed our brass-back to the tune of Sir Daniel O’Day, and though two ounces light, took just eight minutes to crow for victory.

  Again we showed, this time a duck-wing, and the Fifty-fourth a blue hackle, heavily backed, who proved a wheeler, but it took twenty minutes for him to lay the duck-wing upon the carpet; and we stood three to the bad, but game, though the odds on the main were heavily against us. Our fourth, a blinker, blundered to victory; our fifth hung himself twice to the canvas and finally to the heels of a bewildered spangle; our sixth, a stag, and a wheeling lunatic at that, gave to the Fifty-fourth a bad quarter of an hour, and then, when at the last moment our victory seemed certain, was sent flying to eternity in one last feathered whirlwind, leaving us four to split and four to go, with hopeless odds against us, and Sir Peter calmly booking side-bets on anything that anybody offered.

  When the call came we all rose, leaving the pit by the side-entrance, which gave on the cherry garden, where tables were spread for luncheon and pipes fetched for all who cared not to scorch their lips with Spanish cigars.

  Sir Peter, hard hit, moved about in great good humor, a seed-cake in one hand, a mug of beer in t’other; and who could suppose he stood to lose the thousand guineas he had such need of — and more besides! — so much more that it turned me cold to think of Duke Street, and how on earth I was to find funds for the bare living, luxuries aside.

  As for O’Neil, the crazy, warm-hearted Irishman went about blustering for odds — pure, generous bravado! — and the Fifty-fourth, to their credit, let him go unharmed, and Harkness, too. As for me, I was very quiet, holding my peace and my opinions to myself, which was proper, as I had laid not one penny on a feather that day.

  Sir Peter, seeing me sitting alone under a cherry-tree, came strolling over, followed by Horrock.

  “Well, Carus,” he said, smiling blandly, “more dealing with Duke Street, eh? Pooh! There’s balm in Gilead and a few shillings left still in the Dock-Ward!” He laughed, but I said nothing. “Speak out, man!” he said gaily; “what do you read by the pricking of your thumbs?”

  “Ask Horrock,” I said bluntly. He turned to the grim-visaged retainer, laying his hand familiarly on the old man’s shoulder.

  “Horrock begs me to ride for an even break,” he said; “don’t you, O paragon among pitters?”

  “Yes, sir, I do. Ask Mr. Renault what Sir William Johnson’s Huron Reds did to the Patroon’s Tartars in every main fought ‘twixt Johnstown and Albany in ‘72 and ‘73.”

  I looked up, astounded. “Have you four Hurons to show?” I asked Sir Peter, incredulously.

  “I have,” he said.

  A desperate hope glimmered in my mind — na
y, not merely a hope but a fair certainty that ruin could be held at arm’s length for a while. So possessed was I by absolute faith in Sir William Johnson’s strain, called Hurons, that I listened approvingly to Sir Peter’s plans for a dashing recoup. After all, it was now or never; the gamblers’ fever seized me, too, in a vise-like grip. Why should I not win a thousand guineas for my prisoners, risking but a few hundred on such a hazard!

  “You will be there, of course,” he said. And after a long silence, I answered:

  “No, I shall walk in the garden until you finish. The main should be ended at five.”

  “As you choose, Carus,” he answered pleasantly, glancing at his watch. Then turning, he cried: “Time, gentlemen — and four to ten we split the main!”

  “Done with you, Sir Peter!” came the answering shout as from a single throat; and Sir Peter, smiling to himself, booked briefly and sauntered toward the tavern door, old Horrock trotting faithfully at heel.

  I had risen and was nervously pacing the grass under the cherry-trees, miserable, full of bitterness, depressed, already bitterly regretting the chance lost, arguing that it was a certainty and no hazard. Yet, deep in my heart, I knew no gentleman can bet on certainty, and where there is no certainty there is risk. That risk I had not taken; the prisoners were to gain or suffer nothing. Thinking of these matters I started to stroll through the cherry grove, and as I stepped from the shade out upon the sunny lawn the shadow of an advancing figure warned me, and I looked up to behold a young officer, in a black and green uniform, crossing my path, his head turned in my direction, his dark, luminous gaze fastened curiously upon me.

  Dazzled somewhat by the sun in my eyes, I peered at him as he passed, noting the strange cut of his regimentals, the silver buttons stamped with a motto in relief, the curious sword-knot of twisted buck-thong heavily embroidered in silver and scarlet wampum. Wampum? And what was that devil’s device flashing on button and shoulder-knot?

  “Butler’s Rangers!”

  Slowly I turned to stare; he halted, looking back at me, a slim, graceful figure in forest-green, his own black hair gathered in a club, his dark amber eyes fixed on mine with that veiled yet detached glare I had not forgotten.

  “Captain Butler,” I said mechanically.

  Hats in hand, heels together, we bowed low in the sunshine — so low that our hands on our hilts alone retained the blades in their scabbards, while our hats swept the short grass on the lawn; then, leisurely erect, once more we stood face to face, a yard of sod betwixt us, the sunshine etching our blue shadows motionless.

  “Mr. Renault,” he said, in that colorless voice he used at times, “I had thought to know you, but you are six years older. Time’s alchemy” — he hesitated, then with a perfect bow— “refines even the noblest metal. I trust your health and fortune are all that you could desire. Is madam, your mother, well, and your honorable father?”

  “I thank you, Captain Butler.”

  He looked at me a moment, then with a melancholy smile and a gesture wholly graceful: “It is poor reparation to say that I regret the error of my Cayugas which committed your house to the flames.”

  “The fortune of war, Captain Butler. I trust your home at Butlersbury still survives intact.”

  A dull color crept into his pallid cheeks.

  “The house at Butlersbury stands,” he said, “as do Johnson Hall, Guy Park, and old Fort Johnson. We hope erelong to open them again to our friends, Mr. Renault.”

  “I have understood so,” I said politely. “When do you march from Thendara?”

  Again the dark color came into his face. “Sir Frederick Haldimand is a babbler!” he said, between tightening lips. “Never a secret, never a plan, but he must bawl it aloud to all who care to listen, or sound it as he gads about from camp to city — aye, and chatters it to the forest trees for lack of audience, I suppose. All New York is humming with it, is it not, Mr. Renault?”

  “And if it is, what harm?” I said pleasantly. “Who ever heard of Thendara, save as a legend of a lost town somewhere in the wilderness? Who in New York knows where Thendara lies?”

  He looked at me with unwinking eyes — the empty stare of a bird of prey.

  “You know, for one,” he said; and his eyes suddenly became piercing.

  I smiled at him without comprehension, and he took the very vagueness of my smile for acquiescence.

  Like the luminous shadow of summer lightning the flame flickered in his eyes, and went out, leaving them darkly drowned in melancholy. He stepped nearer.

  “Let us sit under the trees for a moment — if I am not detaining you, Mr. Renault,” he said in a low, pleasant voice. I bowed. We turned, walking shoulder to shoulder toward the shade of the cherry-trees, now in full foliage and heavily fruited. With perfect courtesy he halted, inclining his head, a gesture for me to pass before him. We seated ourselves at a rustic table beneath the trees; and I remember the ripe cherries which had dropped upon it from the clusters overhead, and how, as we talked, I picked them up, tasting them one by one.

  “I am here,” he began abruptly, “of my own idea. No one, not even Sir Henry, is aware that I am in New York. I came from Halifax by the Gannet, schooner, landing at Coenties Slip among the fishing-smack in time for breakfast; then to Sir Peter Coleville’s, learning he was here — cock-fighting!” A trace of a sneer edged his finely cut nostrils.

  “If you desire concealment, is it wise to wear that uniform?” I asked.

  “I am known on the fighting-line, not in this peaceful garrison of New York,” he said haughtily. “We of the landed gentry of Tryon County make as little of New York as New York makes of us!” A deeper sneer twitched his upper lip. “Had I my way, this port should be burned from river to river, fort, shipping, dock — all, even to the farms outlying on the hills — and the enervated garrison marched out to take the field!” He made a violent gesture toward the north. “I should fling every man and gun pell-mell on that rebels’ rat-nest called West Point, and uproot and tear it from the mountain flank! I should sweep the Hudson with fire; I should hurl these rotting regiments into Albany and leave it a smoking ember, and I should tread the embers into the red-wet earth! That is the way to make war! But this—” He stared south across the meadows where in the distance the sunlit city lay, windows a-glitter, spires swimming in the blue, and on the bay white sails glimmering off shores of living green.

  “Mr. Renault,” he said, “I am here to submit this plan to Sir Henry Clinton. Lord Cornwallis advocated the abandonment of New York last May. I am here to urge it. If Sir Henry will approve, then the war ends before the snow flies; if he will not, I still shall act my part, and lay the north in ashes so that not one ear of corn may be garnered for the rebel army, not one grain of wheat be milled, not a truss of hay remain betwixt Johnstown and Saratoga! Nothing in the north but blackened desolation and the silence of annihilation. That is how I make war.”

  “That is your reputation,” I said calmly.

  His smile was ghastly — a laugh without sound, that touched neither eyes nor mouth.

  At that moment I heard cries and laughter and a great babel of voices from the tavern. He rose instantly, I also; the stable-lads were bringing up the horses; the tavern door was flung wide, and out of it poured the cockers, a turbulent river of scarlet and gold, the noisy voices and laughter increasing to tumult as the officers mounted with jingle of spur and scabbard, draining the stirrup-cup and hastening to their duties.

  “By gad, sir!” cried Jamison, turning in his saddle as he passed me, “those Hurons did the trick for Sir Peter. He’s split the main, so help me! and stands to win a fortune.”

  And Dr. Carmody, galloping past, waved his hand with a hopeless laugh. “We’re cleaned out! cleaned out!” he cried; “that main has beggared the brigade staff. Damme, he’s beggared the entire garrison!”

  Others rode by, gaily uproarious in defeat, clean, gallant sportsmen all, saluting misfortune as cheerily and as recklessly as they might have greeted vict
ory.

  “Have at thee, buck!” shouted young Caryl, waving his hand as he passed me. “We’ll try it again, you villain, if there’s life left in our fasting mess!”

  And Helsing, passing at a canter, grinned and beat his gold-laced breast in mock despair, shouting back to me: “I’m for Duke Street and Mendoza! Dine well, Carus, you who can afford to sup on chicken!”

  Then came Sir Peter, cool, debonair, surrounded by a crowd afoot, Horrock at heel, his old eyes dim with joy, his grim mouth set; and after him two lads leading our horses, and O’Neil and Harkness mounted, curbing the triumph that glittered in their eyes.

  “Yonder comes Sir Peter,” I said to Walter Butler. “Shall I have the honor of making you known to one another?”

  “He has forgotten me, I think,” said Butler slowly, as Sir Peter raised his hat in triumphant greeting to me and then included Butler in a graver salute.

  “You have heard the news, Carus?” he asked gaily.

  “I give you joy,” I said. Then, with colorless ceremony, I made them known to one another, and with greater ceremony they exchanged salutes and compliments — a pair matched in flawless breeding and the usages of perfect courtesy.

  “I bear a letter,” said Walter Butler, “and have this morning done myself the honor of waiting upon Lady Coleville and the ‘Hon. Elsin Grey.’”

  And as Sir Peter acknowledged the courtesy, I looked suddenly at Walter Butler, remembering what Elsin Grey had told me.

  “The letter is from General Sir Frederick Haldimand,” he said pleasantly, “and I fear it bears you news not too agreeable. The Hon. Miss Grey is summoned home, Sir Peter — pending a new campaign.”