Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “I must go, Nick,” I said in a low voice.

  He said with a slight sneer, “Noblesse oblige — —” and then, sorry, laid a quick hand on my arm.

  “Forgive me, Jack. My father wears two gold rings in his ears. Your father wore them on his fingers. I know I am a boor until your kindness makes me forget it.”

  I said quietly: “We are two comrades and friends to liberty. It is not what we are born to but what we are that matters a copper penny in the world.”

  “It is easy for you to say so.”

  “It is important for you to believe so. As I do.”

  “Do you really so?” he asked with that winning upward glance that revealed his boyish faith in me.

  “I really do, Nick; else, perhaps, I had been with Guy Johnson in Canada long ago.”

  “Then I shall try to believe it, too,” he murmured, “ — whether ears or fingers or toes wear the rings.”

  We laughed.

  “How long?” he inquired bluntly.

  “To sup, I think. I must remain if Lady Johnson requests it of me.”

  “And afterward. Will you ride home by way of Pigeon-Wood?”

  “Will you still be lingering there?” I asked with a smile.

  “Whether the pigeon-cote be empty or full, I shall await you there.”

  I nodded. We smiled at each other and wheeled our horses in opposite directions.

  CHAPTER V

  A SUPPER

  Now, what seemed strange to me at the Hall was the cheerfulness of all under circumstances which must have mortified any Royalist, and, in particular, the principal family in North America of that political complexion.

  Even Sir John, habitually cold and reserved, appeared to be in most excellent spirits for such a man, and his wintry smile shed its faint pale gleam more than once upon the company assembled at supper.

  On my arrival there seemed to be nobody there except the groom, who took my mare, Kaya, and Frank, Sir William’s butler, who ushered me and seemed friendly.

  Into the drawing room came black Flora, all smiles, to say that the gentlemen were dressing but that Lady Johnson would receive me.

  She was seated before her glass in her chamber, and the red-cheeked Irish maid she had brought from New York was exceedingly busy curling her hair.

  “Oh, Jack!” said Lady Johnson softly, and holding out to me one hand to be saluted, “they told me you were in the village. Has it become necessary that I must send for an old friend who should have come of his own free will?”

  “I thought perhaps you and Sir John might not take pleasure in a visit from me,” I replied, honestly enough.

  “Why? Because last winter you answered the district summons and were on guard at the church with the Rebel Mohawk company?”

  So she knew that, too. But I had scarcely expected otherwise. And it came into my thought that the dwarfish Bartholomews had given her news of my doings and my whereabouts.

  “Come,” said she in her lively manner, “a good soldier obeys his colonel, whoever that officer may chance to be — for the moment. And, were you even otherwise inclined, Jack, of what use would it have been to disobey after Philip Schuyler disarmed our poor Scots?”

  “If Sir John feels as you do, it makes my visit easier for all,” said I.

  “Sir John,” she replied, “is not a whit concerned. We here at the Hall have laid down our arms; we are peaceably disposed; farm duties begin; a multitude of affairs preoccupy us; so let who will fight out this quarrel in Massachusetts Bay, so only that we have tranquillity and peace in County Tryon.”

  I listened, amazed, to this school-girl chatter, marvelling that she herself believed such pitiable nonsense.

  Yet, that she did believe it I was assured, because in my Lady Johnson there was nothing false, no treachery or lies or cunning.

  Somebody sure had filled her immature mind with this jargon, which now she repeated to me. And in it I vaguely perceived the duplicity and ingenious manœuvring of wills and minds more experienced than her own.

  But I said only that I hoped this county might escape the conflagration now roaring through all New England and burning very fiercely in Virginia and the Carolinas. Then, smiling, I made her a compliment on her hair, which her Irish maid was dressing very prettily, and laughed at her man’s banyan which she so saucily wore in place of a levete. Only a young and pretty woman could presume to wear a flowered silk banyan at her toilet; but it mightily became Polly Johnson.

  “Claudia is here,” she remarked with a kindly malice perfectly transparent.

  I took the news in excellent part, and played the hopeless swain for a while, to amuse her, and so cunningly, too, that presently the charming child felt bound to comfort me.

  “Claudia is a witch,” says she, “and does vast damage to no purpose but that it feeds her vanity. And this I have said frequently to her very face, and shall continue until she chooses to refrain from such harmful coquetry, and seems inclined to a more serious consideration of life and duty.”

  “Claudia serious!” I exclaimed. “When Claudia becomes pensive, beware of her!”

  “Claudia should marry early — as I did,” said she. But her features grew graver as she said it, and I saw not in them that inner light which makes delicately radiant the face of happy wifehood.

  I thought, “God pity her,” but I said gaily enough that retribution must one day seize Claudia’s dimpled hand and place it in the grasp of some gentleman fitly fashioned to school her.

  We both laughed; then she being ready for her stays and gown, I retired to the library below, where, to my chagrin, who should be lounging but Hiakatoo, war chief of the Senecas, in all his ceremonial finery. Despite what dear Mary Jamison has written of him, nor doubting that pure soul’s testimony, I knew Hiakatoo to be a savage beast and a very devil, the more to be suspected because of his terrible intelligence.

  With him was a Mr. Hare, sometime Lieutenant in the Mohawk Regiment, with whom I had a slight acquaintance. I knew him to be Tory to the bone, a deputy of Guy Johnson for Indian affairs, and a very shifty character though an able officer of county militia and a scout of no mean ability.

  Hare gave me good evening with much courtesy and self-possession. Hiakatoo, also, extended a muscular hand, which I was obliged to take or be outdone in civilized usage by a savage.

  “Well, sir,” says Hare in his frank, misleading manner, “the last o’ the sugar is a-boiling, I hear, and spring plowing should begin this week.”

  Neither he nor Hiakatoo had as much interest in husbandry as two hoot-owls, nor had they any knowledge of it, either; but I replied politely, and, at their request, gave an account of my glebe at Fonda’s Bush.

  “There is game in that country,” remarked Hiakatoo in the Seneca dialect.

  Instantly it entered my head that his remark had two interpretations, and one very sinister; but his painted features remained calmly inscrutable and perhaps I had merely imagined the dull, hot gleam that I thought had animated his sombre eyes.

  “There is game in the Bush,” said I, pleasantly,— “deer, bear, turkeys, and partridges a-drumming the long roll all day long. And I have seen a moose near Lake Desolation.”

  Now I had replied to the Seneca in the Canienga dialect; and he might interpret in two ways my reference to bears, and also what I said concerning the drumming of the partridges.

  But his countenance did not change a muscle, nor did his eyes. And as for Hare, he might not have understood my play upon words, for he seemed interested merely in a literal interpretation, and appeared eager to hear about the moose I had seen near Lake Desolation.

  So I told him I had watched two bulls fighting in the swamp until the older beast had been driven off.

  “Civilization, too, will soon drive away the last of the moose from Tryon,” quoth Hare.

  “How many families at Fonda’s Bush?” asked Hiakatoo abruptly.

  I was about to reply, telling him the truth, and checked myself with lips already pa
rted to speak.

  There ensued a polite silence, but in that brief moment I was convinced that they realized I suddenly suspected them.

  What I might have answered the Seneca I do not exactly know, for the next instant Sir John entered the room with Ensign Moucher, of the old Mohawk Regiment, and young Captain Watts from New York, brother to Polly, Lady Johnson, a handsome, dissipated, careless lad, inclined to peevishness when thwarted, and marred, perhaps, by too much adulation.

  Scarce had compliments been exchanged with snuff when Lady Johnson entered the room with Claudia Swift, and I thought I had seldom beheld two lovelier ladies in their silks and powder, who curtsied low on the threshold to our profound bows.

  As I saluted Lady Johnson’s hand again, she said: “This is most kind of you, Jack, because I know that all farmers now have little time to waste.”

  “Like Cincinnatus,” said I, smilingly, “I leave my plow in the furrow at the call of danger, and hasten to brave the deadly battery of your bright eyes.”

  Whereupon she laughed that sad little laugh which I knew so well, and which seemed her manner of forcing mirth when Sir John was present.

  I took her out at her request. Sir John led Claudia; the others paired gravely, Hare walking with the Seneca and whispering in his ear.

  Candles seemed fewer than usual in the dining hall, but were sufficient to display the late Sir William’s plate and glass.

  The scented wind from Claudia’s fan stirred my hair, and I remembered it was still the hair of a forest runner, neither short nor sufficiently long for the queue, and powdered not a trace.

  I looked around at Claudia’s bright face, more brilliant for the saucy patches and newly powdered hair.

  “La,” said she, “you vie with Hiakatoo yonder in Mohawk finery, Jack, — all beads and thrums and wampum. And yet you have a pretty leg for a silken stocking, too.”

  “In the Bush,” said I, “the backwoods aristocracy make little of your silk hosen, Claudia. Our stockings are leather and our powder black, and our patches are of buckskin and are sewed on elbow and knee with pack-thread or sinew. Or we use them, too, for wadding.”

  “It is a fashion like another,” she remarked with a shrug, but watching me intently over her fan’s painted edge.

  “The mode is a tyrant,” said I, “and knows neither pity nor good taste.”

  “How so?”

  “Why, Hiakatoo also wears paint, Claudia.”

  “Meaning that I wear lip-rouge and lily-balm? Well, I do, my impertinent friend.”

  “Who could suspect it?” I protested, mockingly.

  “You might have suspected it long since had you been sufficiently adventurous.”

  “How so?” I inquired in my turn.

  “By kissing me, pardieu! But you always were a timid youth, Jack Drogue, and a woman’s ‘No,’ with the proper stare of indignation, always was sufficient to route you utterly.”

  In spite of myself I reddened under the smiling torment.

  “And if any man has had that much of you,” said I, “then I for one will believe it only when I see your lip-rouge on his lips!”

  “Court me again and then look into your mirror,” she retorted calmly.

  “What in the world are you saying to each other?” exclaimed Lady Johnson, tapping me with her fan. “Why, you are red as a squaw-berry, Jack, and your wine scarce tasted.”

  Claudia said: “I but ask him to try his fortune, and he blushes like a silly.”

  “Shame,” returned Lady Johnson, laughing; “and you have Mr. Hare’s scalp fresh at your belt!”

  Hare heard it, and laughed in his frank way, which instantly disarmed most people who had not too often heard it.

  “I admit,” said he, “that I shall presently perish unless this cruel lady proves kinder, or restores to me my hair.”

  “It were more merciful,” quoth Ensign Moucher, “to slay outright with a single glance. I myself am long since doubly dead,” he added with his mealy-mouthed laugh, and his mean reddish eyes a-flickering at Lady Johnson.

  Sir John, who was carving a roast of butcher’s meat, carved on, though his young wife ventured a glance at him — a sad, timid look as though hopeful that her husband might betray some interest when other men said gallant things to her.

  I asked Sir John’s permission to offer a toast, and he gave it with cold politeness.

  “To the two cruellest and loveliest creatures alive in a love-stricken world,” said I. “Gentlemen, I offer you our charming tyrants. And may our heads remain ever in the dust and their silken shoon upon our necks!”

  All drank standing. The Seneca gulped his Madeira like a slobbering dog, noticing nobody, and then fell fiercely to cutting up his meat, until, his knife being in the way, he took the flesh in his two fists and gnawed it.

  But nobody appeared to notice the Seneca’s beastly manners; and such general complaisance preoccupied me, because Hiakatoo knew better, and it seemed as though he considered himself in a position where he might disdain to conduct suitably amid a company which, possibly, stood in need of his good will.

  Nobody spoke of politics, nor did I care to introduce such a subject. Conversation was general; matters concerning the town, the Hall, were mentioned, together with such topics as are usually discussed among land owners in time of peace.

  And it seemed to me that Sir John, who had, as usual, remained coldly reticent among his guests, became of a sudden conversational with a sort of forced animation, like a man who recollects that he has a part to play and who unwillingly attempts it.

  He spoke of the Hall farm, and of how he meant to do this with this part and that with that part; and how the herd bulls were now become useless and he must send to the Patroon for new blood, — all a mere toneless and mechanical babble, it seemed to me, and without interest or sincerity.

  Once, sipping my claret, I thought I heard a faint clash of arms outside and in the direction of the guard-house.

  And another time it seemed to me that many horses were stirring somewhere outside in the darkness.

  I could not conceive of anything being afoot, because of Sir John’s parole, and so presently dismissed the incidents from my mind.

  The wine had somewhat heated the men; laughter was louder, speech less guarded. Young Watts spoke boldly of Haldimand and Guy Carleton, naming them as the two most efficient servants that his Majesty had in Canada.

  Nobody, however, had the effrontery to mention Guy Johnson in my presence, but Ensign Moucher pretended to discuss a probable return of old John Butler and of his son Walter to our neighborhood, — to hoodwink me, I think, — but his mealy manner and the false face he pulled made me the more wary.

  The wine burned in Hiakatoo, but he never looked toward me nor directly at anybody out of his blank red eyes of a panther.

  Sir John had become a little drunk and slopped his wine-glass, but the wintry smile glimmered on his thin lips as though some secret thought contented him, and he was ever whispering with Captain Watts.

  But he spoke always of the coming summer and of his cattle and fields and the pursuits of peace, saying that he had no interest in Haldimand nor in any kinsmen who had fled Tryon; and that all he desired was to be let alone at the Hall, and not bothered by Phil Schuyler.

  “For,” says he, emptying his glass with unsteady hand, “I’ve enough to do to feed my family and my servants and collect my rents; and I’m damned if I can do it unless those excitable gentlemen in Albany mind their own business as diligently as I wish to mind mine.”

  “Surely, Sir John,” said I, “nobody wishes to annoy you, because it is the universal desire that you remain. And, as you have pledged your honour to do so, only a fool would attempt to make more difficult your position among us.”

  “Oh, there are fools, too,” said he in his slow voice. “There were fools who supposed that the Six Nations would not resent ill treatment meted out to Guy Johnson.” His cold gaze rested for a second upon Hiakatoo, then swept elsewhere.
r />   Preoccupied, I heard Claudia’s voice in my ear:

  “Do you take no pleasure any longer in looking at me, Jack! You have paid me very scant notice tonight.”

  I turned, smilingly made her a compliment, and she was now gazing into the little looking-glass set in the handle of her French fan, and her dimpled hand busy with her hair.

  “Polly’s Irish maid dressed my hair,” she remarked. “I would to God I had as clever a wench. Could you discover one to wait on me?”

  Hare, who had no warrant for familiarity, as far as I was concerned, nevertheless called out with a laugh that I knew every wench in the countryside and should find a pretty one very easily to serve Claudia.

  Which pleasantry did not please me; but Ensign Moucher and young Watts bore him out, and they all fell a-laughing, discussing with little decency such wenches as the two Wormwood girls near Fish House, and Betsy and Jessica Browse — maids who were pretty and full of gaiety at dance or frolic, and perhaps a trifle free in manners, but of whom I knew no evil and believed none whatever the malicious gossip concerning them.

  The gallantries of such men as Sir John and Walter Butler were known to everybody in the country; and so were the carryings on of all the younger gentry and the officers from Johnstown to Albany. Young girls’ names — the daughters of tenants, settlers, farmers, were bandied about carelessly enough; and the names of those famed for beauty, or a lively disposition, had become more or less familiar to me.

  Yet, for myself, my escapades had been harmless enough — a pretty maid kissed at a quilting, perhaps; another courted lightly at a barn-romp; a laughing tavern wench caressed en passant, but no evil thought of it and nothing to regret — no need to remember aught that could start a tear in any woman’s eyes.

  Watts said to Claudia: “There is a maid at Caughnawaga who serves old Douw Fonda — a Scotch girl, who might serve you as well as Flora cares for my sister.”

  “Penelope Grant!” exclaims Hare with an oath. Whereat these three young men fell a-laughing, and even Sir John leered.

  I had heard her name and that the careless young gallants of the country were all after this young Scotch girl, servant to Douw Fonda — but I had never seen her.