Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  The house was still, but on the veranda roof overhead I could hear the moccasined tread of Nick pacing his post; and from below in the kitchen came the distant thump and splash of Penelope’s churn, where she was making new butter for to salt it against our needs.

  Now, as I rose my breath came quicker, but admiration for my resolve abated nothing — no! — rather increased as I tasted the sad pleasures of martyrdom and of noble renunciation. For I now meant to figure in this girl’s eyes in a manner which she never could forget and which, I trusted, might sadden her with a wistful melancholy after I was gone and she had awakened to the irreparable loss.

  When I came down into the kitchen where, bare of arms and throat, she stood a-churning, she looked at me out of partly-lowered eyes, as though doubting my mood — poor child. And I saw the sweat on her flushed cheeks, and her yellow hair, in disorder from the labour, all curled into damp little ringlets. But when I smiled I saw that lovely glimmer dawning, and she asked me shyly what I did there — for never before had I come into her kitchen.

  So, still smiling, I gave an account of how I had bought Summer House; and she listened, wide-eyed, wondering.

  “But,” continued I, “I have already my own glebe at Fonda’s Bush, and a house; but there be many with whom fortune has not been so complacent, and who possess neither glebe nor roof, yet deserve both.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, smiling, “there be many such folk and always will be in the world. Of such company am I, also, but it saddens me not at all.”

  I went to her and showed her my deed, and she looked down on it, her hands clasped on the churn handle.

  “So that,” said she, “is a lawful deed! I have never before been shown such an instrument.”

  “You shall have leisure enough to study this one,” said I, “for I convey it to you.”

  “Sir?”

  “I give Summer House to you,” said I. “Here is the deed. When I go to Johnstown again I will execute it so that this place shall be yours.”

  She gazed at me in dumb astonishment.

  “Meanwhile,” said I, “you shall keep the deed.... And now you are, in fact, if not yet in title, mistress of Summer House. And I think, this night, we should break a bottle of Sir William’s Madeira to drink health to our new châtelaine.”

  She came from her churn and caught my arm, where I had turned to ascend the steps.

  “You are jesting, are you not, my lord?”

  “No! And do not use that term, ‘lord,’ to me.”

  “You — you offer to give me — me — this estate!”

  “Yes. I do give it you.”

  There was a tense silence.

  “Why do you offer this?” she burst out breathlessly.

  “Why should I have two estates and you have none, Penelope?”

  “But that is no reason!” she retorted, almost violently. “For what reason, then, do you give me Summer House? It — it must be you are jesting, my lord! — —”

  At that, displeasure made me redden, and I damned the title under my breath.

  “If you please,” said I, “you will have done with all these ‘sirs’ and ‘my lords,’ for I am a plain yoeman of County Tryon and wear a buckskin shirt. Not that I would criticise Lord Stirling or any such who still care to wear by courtesy what I have long ago worn out,” I added, “but the gentry and nobility of Tryon travel one way and I the other; and my friends should remember it when naming me.”

  She stood looking at me out of her brown eyes, and slowly their troubled wonder changed to dumb perplexity. And, looking, took up her apron’s edge and stood twisting it between both hands.

  “I give you Summer House,” said I, “because you are orphaned and live alone and have nothing. I give it because a maid ought to possess a portion; and, thirdly, I give it because I have enough of my own, and never desired more of anything than I need. So take the Summer House, Penelope, with the cattle and fowl and land; for it gives you a station and a security among men and women of this odd world of ours, and lends to yourself a confidence and dignity which only sheerest folly can overthrow.”

  She came, after a silence, slowly, and took me by the hand.

  “John Drogue,” says she in a voice not clear, “I can not take of you this estate.”

  “You shall take it! And when again, where you sit a-knitting, the young men gather round you like flies around a sap-pan — then, by God, you shall know what countenance to give them, and they shall know what colour to give their courting! — suitors, gallants, Whig or Tory — the whole damned rabble — —”

  “Oh,” she cried softly, “John Drogue!” And fell a-laughing — or was it a quick sob that checked her throat?

  But I heeded it not, having caught fire; and presently blazed noisily.

  “Because you are servant to Douw Fonda!” I cried, “and because you are alone, and because you are young and soft with a child’s eyes and yellow hair, they make nothing of schooling you to their pot-house gallantries, and every damned man jack among them comes a-galloping to the chase. Yes, even that pallid beast, Sir John! — and the tears of Claire Putnam to haunt him if he were a man and not the dirty libertine he is!”

  I looked upon her whitened face in ever-rising passion:

  “I tell you,” said I, “that the backwoods aristocracy is the better and safer caste, for the other is rotten under red coat or blue; and a ring-tailed cap doffed by a gnarled hand is worth all your laced cocked hats bound around with gold and trailed in the dust with fine, smooth fingers!”

  Sure I was in a proper phrensy now, nor dreamed myself a target for the high gods’ laughter, where I vapoured and strode and shouted aloud my moral jeremiad.

  “So,” said I, “you shall have Summer House; and shall, as you sit a-knitting, make your choice of honest suitors at your ease and not be waylaid and hunted and used without ceremony by the first young hot-head who entraps you in the starlight! No! Nor be the quarry of older villains and subtler with persuasion. No!

  “For today Penelope Grant, spinster, is a burgesse of Johnstown, and is a person both respectable and taxed. And any man who would court her must conduct suitably and in a customary manner, nor, like a wild falcon, circle over head awaiting the opportunity to strike.

  “No! All that sport — all that gay laxity and folly is at an end. And here’s the damned deed that ends it!” I added, thrusting the parchment into her hands.

  She seemed white and frightened. And, “Oh, Lord!” she breathed, “have I, then, conducted so shamelessly? And did I so wholly lose your favour when you kissed me?”

  I had not meant that, and I winced and grew hot in the cheeks.

  “I am not a loose woman,” she said in her soft, bewildered way. “Unless it be a fault that I find men somewhat to my liking, and their gay manners pleasure me and divert me.”

  I said: “You have a way with men. None is insensible to your youth and beauty.”

  “Is it so?” she asked innocently.

  “Are you not aware of it?”

  “I had thought that I pleased.”

  “You do so. Best tread discreetly. Best consider carefully now. Then choose one and dismiss the rest.”

  “Choose?”

  “Aye.”

  “Whom should I choose, John Drogue?”

  “Why,” said I, losing countenance, “there is the same ardent rabble like that plague of suitors which importuned the Greek Penelope. There are the sap-pan flies all buzzing.”

  “Oh. Should I make a choice if entreated?”

  “A burgesse is free to choose.”

  “Oh. And to which suitor should I give my smile?”

  “Well,” said I, sullenly, “there is Nick. There also is your Cornet of Horse — young Jack-boots. And there is the young gentleman whose picture you wear in your bosom.”

  “Captain Watts?” she asked, so naïvely that jealousy stabbed me instantly, so that my smile became a grimace.

  “Sure,” said I, “you think tenderly on Step
hen Watts.”

  “Yes.”

  “In fact,” I almost groaned, “you entertain for him those virtuous sentiments not unbecoming to the maiden of his choice.... Do you not, Penelope?”

  “He has courted me a year. I find him agreeable. Also, I pity him — although his impatience causes me concern and his ardour inconveniences me.... The sentiments I entertain for him are virtuous, as you say, sir. And so are my sentiments for any man.”

  “But is not your heart engaged in this affair?”

  “With Captain Watts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, I thought you meant with you, sir.”

  I affected to smile, but my heart thumped my ribs.

  “I have not pretended to your heart, Penelope.”

  “No, sir. Nor I to yours. And, for the matter, know nothing concerning hearts and the deeper pretensions to secret passions of which one hears so much in gossip and romance. No, sir; I am ignorant. Yet, I have thought that kindness might please a woman more easily than sighs and vapours.... Or so it seems to me.... And that impatient ardour only perplexes.... And passion often chills the natural pity that a woman entertains for any man who vows he is unhappy and must presently perish of her indifference....

  “Yet I am not indifferent to men.... And have used men gently.... And forgiven them.... Being not hard but pitiful by disposition.”

  She made a movement of unconscious grace and drew from her bosom the little picture of Steve Watts.

  “You see,” said she, “I guard it tenderly. But he went off in a passion and rebuked me bitterly for my coquetry and because I refused to flee with him to Canada.... He, being an enemy to liberty, I would not consent.... I love my country.... And better than I love any man.”

  “He begged an elopement that night?”

  “Yes.”

  “With marriage promised, doubtless.”

  “Lord,” says she, “I had not thought so far.”

  “Did he not promise it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What? Nor mention it?”

  “I did not hear him.”

  “But in his courtship of a year surely he conducted honestly!” I insisted angrily.

  “Should a man ask marriage when he asks love, Mr. Drogue?”

  “If he means honestly he must speak of it.”

  “Oh.... I did not understand.... I thought that love, offered, meant marriage also.... I thought they all meant that — save only Sir John.”

  We both fell silent. After a little while: “I shall some day ask Captain Watts what he means,” said she, thoughtfully. “Surely he must know I am a maiden.”

  “Do you suppose such young men care!” I said sullenly.

  But she seemed so white and distressed at the thought that the sneer died on my lips and I made a great effort to do generously by my old school-mate, Stevie Watts.

  “Surely,” said I, “he meant no disrespect and no harm. Stephen Watts is not of the corrupt breed of Walter Butler nor debauched like Sir John.... However, if he is to be your lover — perhaps it were convenient to ask him something concerning his respectful designs upon you.”

  “Yes, sir, I shall do so — if he comes hither again.”

  So hope, which had fallen a-flickering, expired like a tiny flame. She loved Steve Watts!

  I turned and limped up the stairway.

  And, at the stair-head, met Nick.

  “Well,” said I savagely, “you may not have her. For she loves Steve Watts and dotes on his picture in her bosom. And as for you, you may go to the devil!”

  “Why, you sorry ass,” says he, “have you thought I desired her?”

  “Do you not?”

  “Good God!” cried he, “because this poor and moon-smitten gentleman hath rolled sheep’s eyes upon a yellow-haired maid, then, in his mind, all the world’s aflame to woo her too and take her from his honest arms! What the plague do I want of your sweetheart, Jack Drogue, when I’ve one at Pigeon Wood and my eye on another, too!”

  Then he fell a-laughing and smote his thighs with a loud slapping.

  “Aha!” he cried, “did I not warn you? Did I not foresee, foretell, and prophesy that you would one day sicken of a passion for this yellow-haired girl from Caughnawaga!”

  “Idiot,” said I in a rage, “I do not love her!”

  “Then you bear all the earmarks!” said he, and went off stamping his moccasins and roaring with laughter.

  And I went on watch to walk my post all a-tremble with fury, and fair sick of jealousy and my first boyish passion.

  Now, it is a strange thing how love undid me; but it is still stranger how, of a sudden, my malady passed. And it came about in this way, that toward sunset one day, when I came from walking my post on the veranda roof to find why Nick had not relieved me, I descended the stairs and looked into the kitchen, where was a pleasant smell of cinnamon crullers fresh made and of johnnycake and of meat a-stewing.

  And there I did see Nick push Penelope into a corner to kiss her, and saw her fetch him a clout with her open hand.

  Then again, and broad on his surprised and silly face, fell her little hand like the clear crack of a drover’s whip.

  And, “There!” she falters, out o’ breath, “there’s for you, friend Nicholas!”

  “My God!” says he, in foolish amaze, “why do you that, Penelope!”

  “I kiss whom I please and none other!” says she, fast breathing, and her dark eyes wide and bright.

  “Whom you please,” quoth Nick, abashed but putting a bold face on it— “well then, you please me, and therefore ought to kiss me — —”

  “No, I will not! John Drogue hath shown me what is my privilege in this idle game of bussing which men seem so ready to play with me, whether I will or no!... Have I hurt you, Nick?”

  She came up to him, still flushed and her childish bosom still rising and falling fast.

  “You love Jack Drogue,” said he, sulkily, “and therefore belabour me who dote on you.”

  “I love you both,” said she, “but I am enamoured of neither. Also, I desire no kisses of you or of Mr. Drogue, but only kindness and good will.”

  “You entertain a passion for Steve Watts!” he muttered sullenly, “and there’s the riddle read for you!”

  But she laughed in his face and took up her pan of crullers and set them on the shelf.

  “I am châtelaine of Summer House,” said she, “and need render no account of my inclinations to you or to any man. Who would learn for himself what is in my mind must court me civilly and in good order.... Do you desire leave to court me, Nick?”

  “Not I! — to be beaten by a besom and flouted and mocked to boot! Nenni, my pretty lass! I have had my mouthful of blows.”

  “Oh. And your comrade? Is he, do you think, inclined to court me?”

  “Jack Drogue?”

  “The same.”

  “You have bedeviled him,” said Nick sulkily, “as you have witched all men who encounter you. He hath a fever and is sick of it.”

  She was slicing hot johnnycake with a knife in the pan; and now looked up at him with eyes full of curiosity.

  “Bewitched him? I?”

  “Surely. Who else, then?”

  “You are jesting, Nick.”

  “No. Like others he has taken the Caughnawaga fever. The very air you breathe is full of it. But, with a man like my comrade, it is no more than a fever. And it passes, pretty maid! — it passes.”

  “Does it so?”

  “It does. It burns out folly and leaves him the healthier.”

  “Oh, then — with a gentleman like your comrade, Mr. Drogue — l’amour n’est qu’une maladie légère qui se guérira sans médecin, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Say that in Canada and doubtless the very dicky-birds will answer wee-wee-wee!” he retorted. “But if you mean, does John Drogue mate below his proper caste, then there’s no wee-wee-wee about it; for that the Laird of Northesk will never do!”

  “I know that,” said she cooll
y. And opened the pot to fork the steaming stew, then set on the cover and passed her hand over her brow where a slight dew glistened and where her hair curled paler gold and tighter, like a child’s.

  “Friend Nick?”

  “I hear thee, breeder of heart-troubles.”

  “Listen, then. No thought of me should trouble any man as yet. My heart is not awake — not troublesome, — not engaged, — no, not even to poor Stephen Watts. For the sentiment I entertain for him is only pity for a boy, Nick, who is impetuous and rash and has been too much flattered by the world.... Poor lad — in his play-hour regimentals! — and no beard on his smooth cheek.... Just a fretful, idle, and self-indulgent boy!... Who protests that he loves me.... Oh, no, Nick! Men sometimes bewilder me; but I think it is our own passion that destroys us women — not theirs.... And there is none in me, — only pity, and a great friendliness to men.... And these only have ever moved me.”

  He was sitting on a pine table and munching of a cruller. “Penelope,” says he, “your honesty and wholesome spirit should physic men of their meaner passions. If you are servant to Douw Fonda, nevertheless you think like a great lady. And I for one,” he added, munching away, “shall quarrel with any man who makes little of the mistress of Summer House Point!”

  And then — oh, Lord! — she turns from her oven, takes his silly head between both hands, and gives him a smack on the lips!

  “There,” says she, “you have had of your sister what you never should have had of the Scottish lass of Caughnawaga!”

  He got off the table at that, looking mighty pleased but sheepish, and muttered something concerning relieving me on post.

  And so, lest I should be disgraced by my eavesdropping, and feeling mean and degraded, yet oddly contented that Penelope loved no man with secret passion, I slunk away, my moccasins making no sound.

  So when Nick came to relieve me he discovered me still on post; and said he pettishly: “Penelope Grant hath clouted me, mind and body; and I am the better man by it, though somewhat sore; and I shall knock the head of any popinjay who fails in the respect all owe this girl. And I wish to God I had a hickory stick here, and Sir John Johnson across my knee!”