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A Soldier of Virginia: A Tale of Colonel Washington and Braddock's Defeat

by Burton Egbert Stevenson · English · Gutenberg #10094 · 458,863 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Soldier of Virginia: A Tale of Colonel Washington and Braddock's Defeat

Author: Burton Egbert Stevenson


        
Release date: November 1, 2003 [eBook #10094]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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Credits: E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SOLDIER OF VIRGINIA: A TALE OF COLONEL WASHINGTON AND BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT ***

A SOLDIER OF VIRGINIA

A TALE OF COLONEL WASHINGTON AND BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT

BY BURTON EGBERT STEVENSON

1901






TO THE MEMORY OF THE GALLANT MEN WHO FELL WITH DUST OF FAILURE BITTER ON
THEIR LIPS THAT OTHERS MIGHT BE TAUGHT THE LESSON OF THE WILDERNESS




CONTENTS


      I. LIEUTENANT ALLEN GROWS INSULTING

     II. THE STORY OF FONTENOY

    III. IN WHICH I INTRODUCE MYSELF

     IV. THE ENDING OF THE HONEYMOON

      V. THE SECRET OF A HEART

     VI. I AM TREATED TO A SURPRISE

    VII. I DECIDE TO BE A SOLDIER

   VIII. A RIDE TO WILLIAMSBURG

     IX. MY FIRST TASTE OF WARFARE

      X. THE FRENCH SCORE FIRST

     XI. DREAM DAYS AT RIVERVIEW

    XII. DOROTHY MAKES HER CHOICE

   XIII. LIEUTENANT ALLEN SHOWS HIS SKILL

    XIV. I CHANCE UPON A TRAGEDY

     XV. WE START ON A WEARY JOURNEY

    XVI. THE END IN SIGHT

   XVII. THE LESSON OF THE WILDERNESS

  XVIII. DEFEAT BECOMES DISHONOR

    XIX. ALLEN AND I SHAKE HANDS

     XX. BRADDOCK PAYS THE PRICE

    XXI. VIRGINIA BIDS US WELCOME

   XXII. A NEW DANGER AT RIVERVIEW

  XXIII. THE GOVERNOR SHOWS HIS GRATITUDE

   XXIV. A WARNING FROM THE FOREST

    XXV. I FIND MYSELF IN A DELICATE SITUATION

   XXVI. A DESPERATE DEFENSE

  XXVII. I COME INTO MY OWN

 XXVIII. AND SO, GOOD-BY




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"I DO NOT LOVE HIM, TOM"

"FOR SHAME, GENTLEMEN!"

"STEWART, LISTEN!"

THE SAVAGES POURED OVEB THE THRESHOLD




A SOLDIER OF VIRGINIA




CHAPTER I

LIEUTENANT ALLEN GROWS INSULTING


It was not until he sneered at me openly across the board that I felt my
self-control slipping from me. "Lieutenant Allen seems to have a poor
opinion of the Virginia troops," I said, as calmly as I could.

"Egad, you are right, Lieutenant Stewart," he retorted, his eyes full
on mine. "These two weeks past have I been trying to beat some sense
into the fools, and 'pon my word, 't is enough to drive a man crazy to
see them."

He paused to gulp down a glass of wine, of which I thought he had already
drunk too much.

"I saw them this forenoon," cried Preston, who was sitting at Allen's
right, "and was like to die of laughing. Poor Allen, there, was doing his
best to teach them the manual, and curse me if they didn't hold their
guns as though they burnt their fingers. And when they were ordered to
'bout face, they looked like nothing so much as the crowd I saw six
months since at Newmarket, trying to get their money on Jason."

The others around the table laughed in concert, and I could not but
admit there was a grain of truth in the comparison.

"'Tis granted," I said, after a moment, "that we Virginians have not the
training of you gentlemen of the line; but we can learn, and at least no
one can doubt our courage."

"Think you so?" and Allen laughed an insulting laugh. "There was that
little brush at Fort Necessity last year, from which they brought away
nothing but their skins, and damned glad they were to do that."

"They brought away their arms," I cried hotly, "and would have brought
away all their stores and munitions, had the French kept faith and held
their Indians off. That, too, in face of an enemy three times their
number. The Virginians have no cause to blush for their conduct at Fort
Necessity. The Coldstreams could have done no better."

Allen laughed again. "Ah, pardon me, Stewart," he said contemptuously, "I
forgot that you were present on that glorious day."

I felt my cheeks crimson, and I looked up and down the board, but saw
only sneering faces. Yes, there was one, away down at the farther end,
which did not sneer, but looked at me I thought pityingly, which was
infinitely worse. And then, of course, there was Pennington, who sat next
to me, and who looked immeasurably shamed at the turn the dispute had
taken. He placed a restraining hand upon my sleeve, but I shook it off
impatiently.

"Yes, I was present," I answered, my heart aflame within me, "and our
provincial troops learned a lesson there which even the gentlemen of the
Forty-Fourth may one day be glad to have us teach them."

"Teach us?" cried Allen. "Curse me, sir, but you grow insulting! As for
your learning, permit me to doubt your ability to learn anything. I have
been trying to teach you provincials the rudiments of drill for the past
fortnight, without success. In faith, you seem to know less now than you
did before I began."

"Yes?" I asked, my anger quite mastering me. "But may not that be the
fault of the teacher, Lieutenant Allen?"

He was out of his chair with an oath, and would have come across the
table at me, but that those on either side held him back.

"I suppose you considered your words before you spoke them, Lieutenant
Stewart?" asked Preston, looking at me coldly, and still keeping tight
hold on the swearing man at his side.

"Fully," I answered, as I arose from my chair.

"You know, of course, that there remains only one thing to be done?" he
continued, with a glance I thought compassionate, and so resented.

"Certainly," I answered again. "I may be able to teach the gentleman a
very pretty thrust in tierce."

Upon this Allen fell to cursing again, but Preston silenced him with a
gesture of his hand.

"I am very willing," I added, "to give him the lesson at once, if he so
desires. There is a charming place just without. I marked it as I passed
to enter here, though with no thought I should so soon have need of it."

Now all this was merely the empty braggartry of youth, which I blush to
remember. Nor was Allen the blustering bully I then deemed him, as I was
afterwards to find out for myself. But I know of nothing which will so
gloss over and disguise a man's real nature as a glass of wine too much.

"I shall be happy to give the lesson at once," I repeated.

"Yes, at once!" cried Allen savagely. "I'll teach you, sir, to keep a
civil tongue in your head when you address an officer of the line."

"It seems that we are both to learn a lesson, then," I said lightly. "It
remains only to be seen which is the better teacher. Will one of the
other gentlemen present act as my second?"

"I shall be happy to do so, Lieutenant Stewart," cried my neighbor,
stepping forward.

"Ah, Lieutenant Pennington, thank you," and I looked into his face with
pleasure, for it was the one, of all those present, which I liked the
best. "Will you arrange the details for me?"

"May I speak to you a moment first?" he asked, looking at me anxiously.

"Certainly," I answered, and together we walked over to one corner
of the room.

"Believe me, Lieutenant Stewart," he said, in a low voice, "I deem you a
brave man, and I honor you for defending the credit of your countrymen.
I little thought, when I invited you to dine with us to-night, that there
would be an issue such as this, for it can end in but one way. Allen is
the best swordsman in the regiment, and a very devil when he is flushed
with wine, as he is now."

"You would have me decline to meet him, then?" I asked, looking at
him steadily.

"A word of apology," he stammered, but he did not meet my eyes. His heart
was not in his words.

"Impossible," I said. "You forget that it was he who insulted me, and
that an apology, if there be one, must come from him. He has insulted not
only myself, but the whole body of Virginia volunteers. Though I were
certain he would kill me, I could not draw back in honor. But I am not so
certain," and I smiled down into his face. "There be some good swordsmen
even in Virginia, sir."

"In faith, I am wondrous glad to hear it!" he cried, his face
brightening. "I could not do less than warn you."

"And I thank you for your interest."

He held out his hand, and I clasped it warmly. Then we turned again to
the group about the table.

"Well," cried Allen harshly, "does our Virginia friend desire to
withdraw?"

"On the contrary," answered Pennington quietly, "he has positively
refused to withdraw," and as he spoke, I saw that the others looked at me
with attentive eyes. "There is a little green just back of the barracks.
Let us proceed to it," and he led the way toward the door.

Allen and I followed him, and the whole rabble of officers crowded after.
In a moment we were at the place, and I walked to one side while the
seconds conferred together. The full moon had risen above the treetops
and flooded the clearing with still radiance. The tall, coarse grass
waved slowly to and fro in the faint breeze, and away off in the forest I
heard a wolf howling. The note, long and clear, rose and quivered in the
air, faint and far away. And as it died to silence, for the first time
the thought came to me that perchance my skill in fence might not avail.
Well, thank heaven, there was none to whom my death would cause much
sorrow, except--yes, Dorothy might care. At thought of her, the forest
faded from before me, and I saw her again as I had seen her last, looking
down upon me from the stair-head, and her kiss was warm upon my lips.

"We are ready, Lieutenant Stewart," called Pennington, and I shook my
forebodings from me as I strode back toward him.

"Lieutenant Allen instructs me to say," began Preston, who was acting as
his second, "that an apology on the part of Lieutenant Stewart will avert
consequences which may, perhaps, be unpleasant."

"Lieutenant Stewart has no apologies to offer," I said shortly. "We are
wasting time, gentlemen."

"As you will," and Preston turned back to Allen.

My coat was off in an instant, and I rolled the sleeve of my shirt above
my elbow, the better to have it out of the way.

"May I have your sword, lieutenant?" asked Pennington, and he walked with
it over to where Preston stood. He was back in a moment. "Allen's sword
is fully an inch the longer," he said. "I have insisted that he secure a
shorter weapon."

"Nonsense!" I cried. "Let him keep his sword. I am two or three inches
the taller, and the advantage will still be on my side."

Pennington looked at me a moment in something like astonishment.

"Very well," he said at last, and stepped over and spoke another word to
Preston. Then he came back and handed me my sword. "You are a gallant
man, Lieutenant Stewart," he said as he did so.

"No more than many others in Virginia. 'T is that I mean to prove
to-night," I answered lightly, and I saluted my adversary and felt his
blade against my own. The first pass showed me that he was master of the
weapon, but I was far from dismayed. I saw his eyes widen with surprise
as I parried his thrust and pressed him so closely that he gave back a
step. I smiled dryly, for I knew my advantage. The earliest lesson I had
learned at the foils was that victory comes only to the man who keeps his
coolness. I had drunk little wine, while Allen had drunk much, and his
bloodshot eyes told of previous nights spent over the cups and dice. No,
decidedly, I had little to fear. Allen must have read something of my
thought in my eyes, for his face flushed to a yet darker crimson, he
pulled himself together with an effort, and by a trick which I had never
seen, got inside my guard. His point was at my breast, but I leaped back
and avoided it.

"Ah, you break!" he cried. "'Tis not so easy as you fancied!"

I did not answer, contenting myself with playing more cautiously than I
had done in my self-satisfaction of a moment before. Out of the corners
of my eyes, I could see a portion of the circle of white faces about us,
but they made no sound, and what their expression was I could not tell.
The night air and the fast work were doing much to sober my opponent, and
I felt his wrist grow stronger as he held down my point for an instant.
It was his turn to smile, and I felt my cheeks redden at the expression
of his face. Again he got inside my guard, but again I was out of reach
ere he could touch me. I saw that I was making but a sorry showing, and I
tried the thrust of which I had had the bad taste to boast, but he turned
it aside quite easily. And then, of a sudden, I heard the beat of a
horse's hoofs behind me.

"For shame, gentlemen!" cried a clear voice, which rang familiar in my
ears. "Can the king's soldiers find no enemies to his empire that they
must fight among themselves?"

Our seconds struck up our swords, and Allen looked over my shoulder
with a curse.

"Another damned provincial, upon my life!" he cried. "Was there ever such
impudence!"

[Illustration: "FOR SHAME GENTLEMEN!"]

As he spoke, the horseman swung himself from the saddle with an easy
grace which declared long training in it, and walked coolly toward us.

"Lieutenant Stewart," he said to me sternly, "I did not think to find
you thus engaged, else had I thought twice before placing a sword in
your hand."

"The insult was one which could not be passed over, Colonel Washington,"
I answered, as I saluted him. "It was not to myself only, but to all the
Virginia troops who serve his Majesty."

"So," sneered Allen, "'t is the hero of Fort Necessity! I can well
believe him averse to fighting."

My cheeks were hot with anger and I saw Washington flush darkly, but he
gazed at Allen coldly, and his voice was calm as ever when he spoke.

"It shall be my privilege at some future time," he said, "to call the
gentleman to account for his words. At present, my sword is pledged to
the king and may be drawn in no other service, more especially not in my
own. I trust, Lieutenant Stewart, you will have the courage to sheathe
your blade."

I hesitated. It was a hard thing to ask a man to do.

"Yes, put up your sword!" cried Allen scornfully. "Allow yourself to be
reproved like a naughty boy by this hero who knows only how to retreat.
On my soul, 't was well he arrived when he did. I should have finished
with you long ere this."

Washington looked at me steadily, without showing by the movement of a
muscle that he had heard.

"And I promise you, Lieutenant Stewart," he continued, as though there
had been no interruption, "that I shall be happy to act as your second,
once this campaign is closed."

My cheeks flushed again, this time with pleasure, and I picked up my
scabbard and sent my blade home.

"I must beg you to excuse me, Lieutenant Allen," I said. "Colonel
Washington says right. My sword is not my own until we have met the
French. Then I shall be only too pleased to conclude the argument."

Allen's lips curved in a disdainful smile.

"I thought you would be somewhat less eager to vindicate the courage of
Virginia once you had pause for reflection," he sneered. "Provincials are
all of a kind, and the breed is not a choice one."

I bit my lips to keep back the angry retort which leaped to them, and I
saw Washington's hand trembling on his sword. It did me good to see that
even he maintained his calmness only by an effort.

"Oh, come, Allen," cried Pennington, "you go too far. There can be no
question of Lieutenant Stewart's courage. He was ready enough to meet
you, God knows! Colonel Washington is right, our swords belong to the
king while he has work for them," and the young fellow, with flushed
face, held out his hand to Washington, who grasped it warmly.

"I thank you," he said simply. "I should be sorry to believe that all the
king's officers could so far forget their duty. Come, lieutenant," he
added to me, and taking me by the arm, he walked me out of the group,
which opened before us, and I ventured to think that not all of the faces
were unfriendly. "I have a message for Sir Peter Halket," he said, when
we were out of earshot. "Show me his quarters, Tom, and so soon as I have
finished my business, we will talk over this unhappy affair."

I led the way toward the building where the commander of the Forty-Fourth
was quartered, too angry with myself and with the world to trust myself
to speak. Why should I, who came of as good family as any in Virginia, be
compelled to swallow insults as I had to-night? I almost regretted for
the moment that I was in the service.

"But the time will come," I said, speaking aloud before I thought.

"Yes, the time will come, Tom," and Washington looked at me with a grim
smile. "The time will come sooner than you think, perhaps, when these
braggarts will be taught a lesson which they greatly need. Pray heaven
the lesson be not so severe that it shake the king's empire on this
continent."

"Shake the king's empire?" I repeated, looking at him in amazement. "I
do not understand."

"No matter," he said shortly. "Here we are at headquarters. Do you wait
for me. I will be but a moment;" and he ran up the steps, spoke a word to
the sentry, and disappeared within.




CHAPTER II

THE STORY OF FONTENOY


My heart was thick with wrath as I walked up and down before Sir Peter
Halket's quarters and waited for Colonel Washington to reappear. I asked
myself again why I should be compelled to take the insults of any man. I
clenched my hands together behind me, and swore that Allen should yet pay
dearly. I recalled with bitterness the joy I had felt a week before, when
I had received from Colonel Washington a letter in which he stated that
he had procured my appointment as lieutenant in Captain Waggoner's
Virginia company. I had been ahungered to make the campaign, and had
donned my uniform with a light heart,--the same I had worn the year
before, now much faded but inexpressibly dear to me,--mounted my horse,
and ridden hotfoot to join the force here at Winchester. I had been
received kindly enough by my companion officers of the provincial
companies, many of whom were old friends. The contempt which the officers
of the Forty-Fourth felt for the Virginia troops, and which they were at
no pains to conceal, had vexed me somewhat from the first, yet it was not
until to-night at the officers' mess, to which I had foolishly accepted
Pennington's invitation, that this contempt had grown unbearable. I had
chanced to pull Pennington's horse out of a hole the day before, and so
saved it a broken leg, but I saw now that I should have done better to
refuse that invitation, courteously as it was given, and sincere as his
gratitude had undoubtedly been.

So I walked up and down with a sore heart, as a child will when it has
been punished for no fault, and prayed that we provincials might yet
teach the regulars a lesson. Yet they were brave men, most of them, whom
I could not but admire. A kindlier, gallanter roan than Sir Peter Halket
I had never seen, no, nor ever shall see. I noted the sentries pacing
their beats before the colonel's quarters, erect, automatons, their guns
a-glitter in the moonlight, their uniforms immaculate. I had seen them
drill the day before, whole companies moving like one man, their ranks
straight as a ramrod,--tramp, tramp,--turning as on a pivot moved by a
single will. It was a wonderful sight to me who had never seen the like
before, they were so strong, so confident, so seemingly invincible.

I turned and glanced again at the sentries, almost envying them their
perfect carriage. Had they been men of iron, worked by a spring, they
could not have moved with more clock-like regularity. And yet, no doubt,
they had one time been country louts like any others. Truly there was
much virtue in discipline. Yet still, and here I shook my head, the
Virginia troops were brave as any in the world, and would prove it. From
the officers' quarters came the sound of singing and much laughter, and I
flushed as I thought perchance it was at me they laughed. I have learned
long since that no man's laughter need disturb rue, so my heart be clear,
but this was wisdom far beyond my years and yet undreamed of, and I shook
my fist at the row of lighted windows.

"What, still fuming, Tom?" cried a voice at my elbow, and I turned to
find Colonel Washington there; "and staring over toward the barracks as
though you would like to gobble up every one within! Well, I admit you
have cause," he added, and I saw that his face grew stern. "You may have
to bear many such insults before the campaign is ended, but I hope and
believe that the conduct of the Virginia troops will yet win them the
respect of the regulars. You seem to have lost no time in getting to
camp," he added, in a lighter tone.

"There was nothing to keep me at Riverview," I answered bitterly. "My
absence is much preferred to my presence there. Had I not come to
Winchester, I must have gone somewhere else. Your letter came most
opportunely."

"You are out of humor to-night, Tom," said Washington, but his tone was
kindly, and he placed one hand upon my arm as we turned back toward the
cabin where my quarters were. He was scarce three years my senior, yet to
me he seemed immeasurably the elder. I had always thought of him as of a
man, and I verily believe he was a man in mind and temper while yet a boy
in body. I had ridden beside him many times over his mother's estate, and
I had noticed--and chafed somewhat at the knowledge--that women much
older than he always called him Mr. Washington, while even that little
chit of a Polly Johnston called me Tom to my face, and laughed at me when
I assumed an air of injured dignity. I think it was the fact that my
temper was so the opposite of his own which drew him to me, and as for
myself, I was proud to have such a friend, and of the chance to march
with him again over the mountains against the French.

He knew well how to humor me, and walked beside me, saying nothing. I
glanced at his face, half shamed of my petulance, and I saw that he was
no longer smiling. His lips were closed in that firm straight line which
I had already seen once or twice, and which during years of trial became
habitual to him. My own petty anger vanished at the sight.

"I have not yet thanked you, Colonel Washington," I said at last, "for
securing me my appointment. I was eating my heart out to make the
campaign, but saw no way of doing so until your message reached me."

"Why, Tom," he laughed, "you were the first of whom I thought when
General Braddock gave me leave to fill some of the vacancies. Did you
think I had so soon forgot the one who saved my life at Fort Necessity?"

I opened my mouth to protest, but he silenced me with a gesture.

"I can see it as though it were here before us," he continued. "The
French and Indians on the knoll yonder, my own men kneeling in the
trenches, almost waist-deep in water, trying in vain to keep their powder
dry; here and there a wounded man lying in the mud and cursing, the rain
and mist over it all, and the night coming on. And then, suddenly, the
rush of Indians at our back, and over the breastwork. I had my pistol in
my hand, you remember, Tom, but the powder flashed in the pan, and the
foremost of the savages was upon me. I saw his tomahawk in the air, and I
remember wondering who would best command when I was dead. But your aim
was true and your powder dry, and when the tomahawk fell, it fell
harmless, with its owner upon it."

For a moment neither of us spoke. My eyes were wet at thought of the
scene which I so well remembered, and when I turned to him, I saw that he
was still brooding over this defeat, which had rankled as a poisoned
arrow in his breast ever since that melancholy morning we had marched
away from the Great Meadows with the French on either side and the
Indians looting the baggage in the rear. As we reached my quarters, we
turned by a common impulse and continued onward through the darkness.

"This expedition must be more fortunate," he said at last, as though in
answer to his own thought. "A thousand regulars, as many more
provincials, guns, and every equipage,--yes, it is large enough and
strong enough, unless"--

"Unless?" I questioned, as he paused.

"Unless we walk headlong to our own destruction," he said. "But no, I
won't believe it. The general has been bred in the Coldstreams and
knows nothing of frontier fighting. But he is a brave man, an honest
man, and he will learn. Small wonder he believes in discipline after
serving half a century in such a regiment. Have you ever heard the
story of their fight at Fontenoy, ten years since, when they lost two
hundred and forty men? I heard it three nights ago at the general's
table, and 't was enough to make a man weep for very pity that such
valor should count for naught."

"Tell it me," I cried, for if there is one thing I love above all
others,--yea, even yet, when I must sit useless by,--it is the tale of
brave deeds nobly done.

"'T was on the eleventh day of May, seventeen forty-five," he said, "that
the English and the Dutch met the French, who were under Marshal Saxe.
Louis the Fifteenth himself was on the field, with the Grand Dauphin by
his side and a throng of courtiers about him, for he knew how much
depended on the issue of this battle. A redoubt, held by the famous
Guards, bristling with cannon, covered the French position. The Dutch,
appalled at the task before them, refused to advance, but his Grace of
Cumberland, who commanded the English, rose equal to the moment. He
formed his troops in column, the Coldstreams at its head, and gave the
word for the assault. The batteries thundered, the redoubt was crowned
with flame, but the Coldstreams turned neither to the right nor left.
Straight on they marched,--to annihilation, as it seemed,--reforming as
they went, over hill and gully, as steadily as on parade. At last they
reached their goal, and an instant's silence fell upon the field as they
faced the French. The English officers raised their hats to their
adversaries, who returned the salute as though they were at Versailles,
not looking in the eyes of death.

"'Gentlemen of the French Guard,' cried Lord Charles Hay, 'fire, if
you please.'

"'Impossible, monsieur,' cried the Count of Hauteroche; 'the French
Guards never fire first. Pray, fire yourselves.'

"The order was given, and the French ranks fell as grain before the
sickle. They gave way, the Coldstreams advancing in perfect order, firing
volley after volley. The officers, with their rattans, turned the men's
muskets to the right or left, as need demanded. Nothing could stop that
terrible approach, resistless as a whirlwind, and French and Swiss broke
themselves against it, only to be dashed back as spray from a rocky
coast. Regiment after regiment was repulsed, and the Coldstreams still
advanced. Saxe thought the battle lost, and begged the king and the
dauphin to flee while time permitted. At the last desperate moment, he
rallied the artillery and all the forces of his army for a final effort.
The artillery was massed before the English, and they had none to answer
it. The king himself led the charge against their flanks, which the Dutch
should have protected. But the Dutch preferred to remain safely in the
rear. The Coldstreams stood their ground, reforming their ranks with
perfect coolness, until Cumberland saw it were madness to remain, and
ordered the retreat. And it was more glorious than the advance. With only
half their number on their feet, they faced about, without disorder,
their ranks steady and unwavering, and moved off sullenly and slowly, as
though ready at any moment to turn again and rend the ranks of the
victors. It was a deed to match Thermopylae."

I lifted my hat from my head, and my lips were trembling.

"I salute them," I said. "'T was well done. And was General Braddock
present on that day?"

"He commanded one battalion of the regiment. It was for his gallantry
there that he was promoted to the senior majorship."

"I shall not forget it." And then I added, "Perhaps the story you have
told me will give me greater patience with our drill-master."

"I trust so, at least," said Washington, with a smile; "else I fear there
will be little peace for you in the army. I was affected by the story,
Tom, no less than you have been, but after I had left the hall, with its
glamour of lights and gold lace and brilliant uniforms, I wondered if
this discipline would count amid the forests of the Ohio as it did on the
plains of Europe. I fancy, in the battle that is to come, there will be
no question of who shall fire first, and a regiment which keeps its
formation will be a fair mark for the enemy. Do you know, Tom, my great
hope is that the French will send a scouting party of their Indian allies
to ambush us, and that in defeating them, our commander may learn
something of the tactics which he must follow to defeat the French."

As for myself, I confess I shared none of these forebodings, and welcomed
the chance to turn our talk to a more cheerful subject.

"But about yourself?" I questioned. "There is much I wish to know. Until
your note reached me, I had not heard a word from you since you rode away
from Mount Vernon with Dinwiddie's messenger."

His face cleared, and he looked at me with a little smile.

"We went direct to Williamsburg," he said, "where I first met the
general, and told him what I know about the country which he has to
cross. He treated me most civilly, despite some whisperings which went on
behind my back, and shortly after sent me a courteous invitation to serve
on his staff. Of course I accepted,--you know how it irked me to remain
at home,--but I gave him at the same time a statement of my reason for
quitting the Virginia service,--that I could not consent to be outranked
by every subaltern who held a commission from the king."

I nodded, for the question was not new to me, and had already caused me
much heart-burning. It was not until long afterwards that I saw the
general's letter among Mrs. Washington's treasures at Mount Vernon, but
it seems to me worthy of reproduction here. Thus it ran:--


WILLIAMSBURG, 2 March, 1755.

Sir,--The General having been informed that you expressed some desire to
make the campaign, but that you declined it upon some disagreeableness
that you thought might arise from the regulations of command, has ordered
me to acquaint you that he will be very glad of your company in his
family, by which all inconveniences of that kind will be obviated.

I shall think myself very happy to form an acquaintance with a person so
universally esteemed, and shall use every opportunity of assuring you how
much I am, Sir, your most obedient servant,

ROBERT ORME, Aide-de-Camp.

Had Braddock heeded the advice of the man whom he asked to join his
family, the event might have been different. But I must not anticipate,
and I find my hardest task in writing what is before me is to escape the
shadow of the disaster which was to come. At that time, and, indeed,
until the storm burst, few of us had penetration to discern the cloud on
the horizon,--Colonel Washington, Mr. Franklin, and a few others,
perhaps, but certainly not I. It is easy to detect mistakes after the
event, and to conduct a campaign on paper, yet few who saw that martial
array of troops, with its flying banners and bright uniforms, would have
ordered the advance differently.

But to return.

"It was not until three days ago," continued Washington, "that I was able
to rejoin the general, and he intrusted me with a message to Colonel
Halket, which I delivered this evening. I must start back to Mount Vernon
to-morrow and place my affairs in order, and will then join the army at
Cumberland, whence the start is to be made."

"And what make of man is the general?" I asked.

A cloud settled on Washington's face.

"Why, Tom," he said at last, "I have seen so little of him that I may
misjudge him. He is at least brave and honest, two great things in a
commander. As for the rest, it is yet too soon to judge. But you have
told me nothing about your affairs. How did you leave them all at
Riverview?"

"I left them well enough," I answered shortly.

Washington glanced keenly at my downcast face, for indeed the memory of
what had occurred at Riverview was not pleasant to me.

"Did you quarrel with your aunt before you came away?" he asked quietly.

"Yes," I said, and stopped. How could I say more?

"I feared it might come to that," he said gravely. "Your position there
has been a false one from the start. And yet I see no way to amend it."

We walked on in silence for some time, each busy with his own thoughts,
and mine at least were not pleasant ones.

"Tom," said Washington suddenly, "what was the quarrel about? Was it
about the estate?"

"Oh, no," I answered. "We shall never quarrel about the estate. We have
already settled all that. It was something quite different."

I could not tell him what it was; the secret was not my own.

He looked at me again for a moment, and then, stopping suddenly, wheeled
me around to face him, and caught my hand.

"I think I can guess," he said warmly, "and I wish you every
happiness, Tom."

My lips were trembling so I could not thank him, but I think he knew what
was in my heart.




CHAPTER III

IN WHICH I INTRODUCE MYSELF


I doubt not that by this time the reader is beginning to wonder who this
fellow is that has claimed his attention, and so, since there is no one
else to introduce me, I must needs present myself.

It so happened that when that stern old lion, Oliver Cromwell, crushed
the butterfly named Charles Stuart at Worcester in the dim dawn of the
third day of September, 1651, and utterly routed the army of that unhappy
prince, one Thomas Stewart fell into the hands of the Roundheads, as,
indeed, did near seven thousand others of the Royalist army. Now this
Thomas Stewart had very foolishly left a pretty estate in Kincardine,
together with a wife and two sturdy boys, to march under the banner of
the Princeling, as he conceived to be his duty, and after giving and
taking many hard knocks, here he was in the enemy's hands, and Charles
Stuart a fugitive. They had one and all been declared by Parliament
rebels and traitors to the Commonwealth, so the most distinguished of the
captives were chosen for examples to the rest, and three of them, the
Earl of Derby among the number, were sent forthwith to the block, where
they comported themselves as brave men should, and laid down their heads
right cheerfully.

The others were sent to prison, since it was manifestly impossible to
execute them all,--nor was Cromwell so bloodthirsty, now the rebellion
was broken utterly,--and some sixteen hundred of them were sentenced to
be transported to the colony of Virginia, which had long been a dumping
ground for convicts and felons and political scapegoats. Hither, then,
they came, in ships crowded to suffocation, and many dead upon the way
and thrown to the sharks for burial, but for some reason only one of the
ships stopped here, while the others went on to Barbados to discharge
their living freight. I more than suspect that Cromwell's agents soon
discovered the Commonwealth had few friends in Virginia, and feared the
effect of letting loose here so many of the Royalist soldiers. At any
rate, this one ship dropped anchor at Hampton, and its passengers, to the
number of about three hundred, were sold very cheaply to the neighboring
planters. I may as well say here that all of them were well treated by
their Cavalier masters, and many of them afterwards became the founders
of what are now the most prominent families in the colony.

Now one of those who had been sold in Virginia was the Thomas Stewart
whom I have already mentioned, and whom neither stinking jail nor crowded
transport had much affected. Doubtless, no matter what the surroundings,
he had only to close his eyes to see again before him the green hills
and plashing brooks of Kincardine, with his own home in the midst, and
the bonny wife waiting at the door, a boy on either side. Alas, it was
only thus he was ever to see them this side heaven. He was bought by a
man named Nicholas Spenser, who owned a plantation on the Potomac in
Westmoreland County, and there he worked, first as laborer and then as
overseer, for nigh upon ten years. His master treated him with great
kindness, and at the Restoration, having made tenfold his purchase money
by him, gave him back his freedom.

Despite the years and the hard work in the tobacco-fields, Stewart's
thoughts had often been with the wife and children he had left behind in
Scotland, and he prevailed upon Spenser to secure him passage in one of
his ships for London, where he arrived early in 1662. He made his way
back to Kincardine, where he found his estate sequestered, his wife and
one child dead in poverty, the other disappeared. From a neighbor he
learned that the boy had run away to sea after his mother's death, but
what his fate had been he never knew. Weary and disheartened, Stewart
retraced his steps to London, and after overcoming obstacles innumerable,
occasioned mostly by his want of money, laid his case before the king.
Charles listened to him kindly enough, for his office had not yet grown a
burden to him, and finally granted him a patent for two thousand acres of
land along the upper Potomac. It was a gift which cost the king nothing,
and one of a hundred such he bestowed upon his favorites as another man
would give a crust of bread for which he had no use. Stewart returned to
Virginia with his patent in his pocket, and built himself a home in what
was then a wilderness.

In five or six years he had cleared near three hundred acres of land, had
it planted in sweet-scented tobacco, for which the Northern Neck was
always famous, bought two-score negroes to tend it, and began to see
light ahead. It was at this time that he met Marjorie Usner, while on a
visit to Williamsburg, and he married her in 1670, having in the mean
time erected a more spacious residence than the rude log-hut which had
previously been his home. He was at that time a man nigh fifty years of
age, but handsome enough, I dare say, and well preserved by his life of
outdoor toil. Certainly Mistress Marjorie, who must have been much
younger, made him a good wife, and when he died, in 1685, he left a son
and a daughter, besides an estate valued at several thousands of pounds,
accumulated with true Scottish thrift. It was this daughter who named the
estate Riverview, and though the house was afterwards remodeled, the name
was never changed. The Stewarts continued to live there, marrying and
giving in marriage, and growing ever wealthier, for the next half
century, at the end of which time occurred the events that brought me
into being.

In 1733, Thomas Stewart, great-grandson of the Scotsman, was master of
Riverview. His portrait, which hangs to-day to the left of the fireplace
in the great hall, shows him a white-haired, red-faced, choleric
gentleman, with gray eyes and proudly smiling mouth. He had been chosen a
member of the House of Burgesses, as had his father before him, and was
one of the most considerable men in the county. His son, Tom, was just
twenty-one, and had inherited from his father the hasty temper and
invincible stubbornness which belong to all the Stewarts.

It was in the fall of 1733 that they made the trip to Williamsburg which
was to have such momentous consequences. The House of Burgesses was in
session, and Mr. Stewart, as the custom was, took his whole family with
him to the capital. I fancy I can see them as they looked that day. The
great coach, brought from London at a cost of so many thousand pounds of
tobacco, is polished until it shines again. The four horses are harnessed
to it, and Sambo, mouth stretched from ear to ear, drives it around to
the front of the mansion, where a broad flight of stone steps leads
downward from the wide veranda. The footmen and outriders spring to their
places, their liveries agleam with buckles, the planter and his lady and
their younger son enter the coach, while young Tom mounts his horse and
prepares to ride by the window. The odorous cedar chests containing my
lady's wardrobe are strapped behind or piled on top, the negroes form a
grinning avenue, the whip cracks, and they are off, half a dozen servants
following in an open cart. It is a four days' journey to Williamsburg,
over roads whose roughness tests the coach's strength to the uttermost
but it is the one event of all the year to this isolated family, and
small wonder that they look forward to it with eager anticipation.

Once arrived at Williamsburg, what craning of necks and waving of
handkerchiefs and kissing of hands to acquaintances, as the coach rolls
along the wide, white, sandy street, scorching in the sun, with the
governor's house, called by courtesy a palace, at one end, and the
College of William and Mary at the other, and perhaps two hundred
straggling wooden houses in between. The coaches and chariots which line
the street give earnest of the families already assembled from Princess
Ann to Fairfax and the Northern Neck. My lady notes that the Burkes have
at last got them a new chariot from London, and her husband looks with
appreciative eyes at the handsome team of matched grays which draw it. As
for young Tom, his eyes, I warrant, are on none of these, but on the bevy
of blooming girls who promenade the side-path, arrayed in silks and
satins and brocades, their eyes alight, their cheeks aglow with the joy
of youth and health. Small blame to him, say I, for that is just where my
own eyes would have been.

That very night Governor Gooch gave a ball at his palace, and be sure the
Stewart family was there, my lady in her new London gown of flowered
damask in the very latest mode, and Tom in his best suit of peach-blossom
velvet, and in great hopes of attracting to himself some of the bright
eyes he had seen that afternoon. Nor was he wholly unsuccessful, for one
pair of black eyes rested on his for a moment,--they were those of
Mistress Patricia Wyeth,--and he straightway fell a victim to their
charms, as what young man with warm heart and proper spirit would not?
Young Tom must himself have possessed unusual attractions, or a boldness
in wooing which his son does not inherit, for at the end of a week he
disturbed his father at his morning dram to inform him that he and
Mistress Patricia had decided to get married.

"Married!" cried the elder Stewart. "Why, damme, sir, do you know who the
Wyeths are?"

"I know who Patricia is," answered young Tom very proudly, his head
well up at this first sign of opposition. "I care naught about the
rest of them."

"But I care, sir!" shouted his father. "Why, the girl won't have a
shilling to bless herself with. Old Wyeth has gambled away every penny he
possesses, and a good many more than he possesses, too, so they tell me,
at his infernal horse-racing and cock-fighting, and God knows what else.
A gentleman may play, sir,--I throw the dice occasionally, myself, and
love to see a well-matched, race as well as any man,--but he ceases to be
a gentleman the moment he plays beyond his means,--a fact which you will
do well to remember. A pretty match for a Stewart 'pon my word!"

During this harangue young Tom would have interrupted more than once,
but his father silenced him with a passionate waving of his arm. At
last he was compelled to pause for want of breath to say more, and the
boy got in a word.

"All this is beside the point, father," he said hotly. "My word is given,
and I intend to keep it. Even if it were not given, I should still do my
best to win Patricia, because I love her."

"Love her, and welcome!" cried his father. "Marry her, if you want
to. But you'll never bring a pauper like that inside my house while I
am alive."

"Nor after you are dead, if you do not wish it," answered Tom, with his
head higher in the air than ever.

"No, nor after I am dead!" thundered the old man, his anger no doubt
carrying him farther than he intended going. "You are acting like a
scoundrel, sir. You know well enough I can't cut you out of the estate,
since you are the eldest, so you think to take advantage of me."

"Never fear, sir," cried Tom, his lips white with anger and his eyes
ablaze. "You shall ask me back to Riverview yourself ere I return there;
yes, and beg my wife's pardon for insulting her."

"Then, by God, you'll never return!" snorted his father, and without
waiting to hear more, Tom stalked from the room and from the house. I
think even then his father would have called him back, had the boy given
him the chance, and his face was less red than usual when he heard the
street door slam.

Of course there was a great to-do immediately. Tom's mother interceded
for him, and I doubt not a single word on his part would have won full
pardon from his father, but one was no less stubborn than the other, and
the word was never spoken. When Mistress Patricia heard of the quarrel,
she straightway informed her lover that she would never marry him and
ruin his inheritance, and returned to her home above Charles City, taking
her old reprobate of a father with her, where he died not long
afterwards, perhaps finding life not worth living when there remained no
one who would take his wagers.

At the close of the session, the Stewart coach rolled back to Riverview,
but young Tom did not ride beside it. He remained at Williamsburg, and
managed to pick up a scanty practice as an attorney, for he had read a
little law in want of something better to do, and to fit himself for his
coming honors as a member of the House of Burgesses. And at Riverview his
father moped in his office and about his fields, growing ever more
crabbed and more obstinate, and falling into a rage whenever any one
dared mention Tom's name before him.

It was in the spring of 1734 that Tom Stewart mounted his horse and rode
out of Williamsburg across the Chickahominy, to try his fortune once more
with Patricia Wyeth. The winter had been a hard one for a man brought up
as Tom had been, and that suit of peach-bloom velvet had long since been
converted into bread. Yet still he made a gallant figure when, on the
evening of an April day, he cantered up the road to Patricia's home, and
I dare say the heart of the owner of those bright eyes which peeped out
upon him from an upper window beat faster when they saw him coming. But
it was a very demure little maiden who met him at the great door as he
entered, and gave him her hand to kiss. She was all in white, with a
sprig of blossoms in her hair, and she must have made a pretty picture
standing there, and one to warm the heart of any man.

Of the week that followed, neither my father nor my mother ever told me
much,--its memories were too sweet to trust to words, perhaps,--but the
event was, that on the first day of May, 1734, Thomas Stewart, attorney,
and Patricia Wyeth, spinster, were made man and wife in Westover church
by the Reverend Peter Fontaine, of sainted memory. How well I recall his
benign face, and what tears of affectionate remembrance brimmed my eyes
when I heard, not long ago, that he was dead! The closing sentences of
his will show how he ever thought of others and not of himself, for he
wrote: "My will and desire is, that I may have no public funeral, but
that my corpse may be accompanied by a few of my nearest neighbors; that
no liquors be given to make any of the company drunk,--many instances of
which I have seen, to the great scandal of the Christian religion and
abuse of so solemn an ordinance. I desire none of my family to go in
mourning for me." His sister sent me a copy of the will, and a very
pretty letter, in which she told me how her brother often spoke of me,
and wished me to have his Bible. It is there on the shelf at my bedside,
and while God gives me life I will read in no other.

It was in the modest Wyeth homestead, on the bank of the James, that my
father and mother entered upon their honeymoon. Of the depth of their
love for each other I know best of all, and the summer slipped away on
golden wings. My father thought no more of returning to Williamsburg, nor
did he greatly regret Riverview. He wrote a formal letter to his mother
announcing his marriage, but no answer came to it, and I doubt not that
worthy woman sobbed herself to sleep more than once in grieving over the
obstinacy of her husband and her son. Dear lady, it was this trouble
which did much to shorten her days, and the end came soon afterwards. 'T
is said that on her deathbed she tried to soften her husband's heart
against their boy, but with such ill success that she fell sobbing into
the sleep from which she was never to awaken. To such a degree can a
fault persisted in change the natural humor of a man.

My father, perhaps, hoped for a reply to his letter, but he showed no
sign of disappointment when none came, and never spoke upon the subject
to my mother. He soon found enough in his affairs at home to occupy his
mind, for old Samuel Wyeth had left the estate sadly incumbered with his
debts, and more than half of it was sacrificed to save the rest. With
care and frugality, there yet remained enough to live on, and for the
first year, at least, there came no cloud to dim their happiness. Their
cup of joy was full to overflowing, so my mother often told me, when, on
the night of April 15,1735, a child was born to them. It was a boy, and a
week later, before the altar of the little Westover church, its worthy
rector christened the child "Thomas Stewart," the fifth of his line in
the New World.




CHAPTER IV

THE ENDING OF THE HONEYMOON


Besides my father and my mother, the figure which stands out most clearly
in my memory of my childhood is that of the man who christened me. I
cannot remember the time when I did not know and love him. He was a tall,
well-built man, with kindly face and clear blue eyes which darkened when
any emotion stirred him, and rode--how well I remember it!--a big, bony,
gray horse. It was on this horse's back that I took my first ride, when I
was scarce out of petticoats, and often after that, held carefully before
him on the saddle, or, as I grew older, bumping joyously behind, my arms
about his waist. My place was always on his knee when he was within our
doors, and he held me there with unfailing good humor during his long
talks with my mother, of which I, for the most part, comprehended
nothing, except that oftentimes they spoke of me, and then he would
smooth my hair with great tenderness. But I sat there quite content, and
sometimes dozed off with my head against his flowered waistcoat,--it was
his one vanity,--and wakened only when he set me gently down.

It was not until I grew older that I learned something of his history.
One day, he had seized time from his parish work to take me for a ramble
along the river, and as we reached the limit of our walk and sat down for
a moment's rest before starting homeward, and looked across the wide
water, I asked him, with a childish disregard for his feelings, if it
were true that his father was a Frenchman, adding that I hoped it were
not true, because I did not like the French.

"Yes, it is true," he answered, and looked down at me, smiling sadly.
"Shall I tell you the story, Thomas?"

I nodded eagerly, for I loved to listen to stories, especially true ones.

"When Louis Fourteenth was King of France," he began, and I think he took
a melancholy pleasure in telling it, "he issued a decree commanding all
the Protestants, who in France are called Huguenots, to abjure their
faith and become Catholics, or leave the kingdom. He had oftentimes
before promised them protection, but he was growing old and weak, and
thought that this might help to save his soul, which was in great need of
saving, for he had been a wicked king. My father and my mother were
Huguenots, and they chose to leave their home rather than give up their
faith, as did many thousand others, and after suffering many hardships,
escaped to England, with no worldly possession save the clothes upon
their backs, but with a great treasure in heaven and an abiding trust in
the Lord. They had six children, and after giving us a good education,
especially as to our religion, committed us to the providence of a
covenant God to seek our fortunes in the wide world. All of us came to
America, although Moses and John have since returned to England. James is
a farmer in King William County, Francis is minister of York-Hampton
parish, and sister Ruth lives with me, as you know."

A great deal more he told me, which slipped from my memory, for I was
thinking over what he had already said.

"And your mother and father," I asked, as we started back together, "fled
from France rather than give up their faith?"

"Yes," he answered, and smiled down into my eyes, raised anxiously to
his.

"And were persecuted just as the early martyrs were?"

"Yes, very much the same. All of their goods were taken from them, and
they were long in prison."

"But they were never sorry?"

"No, they were never sorry. No one is ever sorry for doing a thing
like that."

I trotted on in silence for a moment, holding tight to his kindly hand,
and revolving this new idea in my mind. At last I looked up at him, big
with purpose.

"I am going to do something like that some day," I said.

He gazed down at me, his eyes shining queerly.

"God grant that you may have the strength, my boy," he said. He bent
and kissed me, and we returned to the house together without saying
another word.

It was the custom of the Fontaine family to hold a meeting every year to
give thanks for the deliverance from persecution of their parents in
France, and I remember being present with my father and mother at one of
these meetings when I was seven or eight years old. One passage of the
sermon he preached on that occasion remained fixed indelibly in my mind.
He took his text from Romans, "That ye may with one mind and one mouth
glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." He applied the
duty thus enjoined to the Fontaine family, saying,--

"For many weary months was our father forced to shift among forests and
deserts for his safety, because he had dared to preach the word of God to
the innocent and sincere people among whom he lived, and who desired to
be instructed in their duty and to be confirmed in their faith. The
forest afforded him a shelter and the rocks a resting-place, but his
enemies gave him no quiet, and pursued him even to these fastnesses,
until finally, of his own accord, he delivered himself to them. They
loaded his hands with chains, a dungeon was his abode, and his feet stuck
fast in the mire. Murderers and thieves were his companions, yet even
among them did he pursue his labors, until God, by means of a pious
gentlewoman, who had seen and pitied his sufferings, relieved him."

To my childish imagination, the picture thus painted was a real and
living one, and filled me with a singular exaltation. I think each of us
at some time of his life has felt, as I did then, a desire to suffer for
conscience' sake.

The preachers of Virginia were, as a whole, anything but admirable, a
condition due no doubt to the worldly spirit which pervaded the church on
both sides of the ocean. The average parson was then--and many of them
still are--coarse and rough, as contact with the forests and waste places
of the world will often make men, even godly ones. But many of them were
worse than that, gamblers and drunkards. They hunted the fox across
country with great halloo, mounted on fast horses of their own. They
attended horse-races and cock-fights, almost always with some money on
the outcome, and frequently with a horse or cock entered in the races or
the pittings. And when the sport was over, they would accompany the
planters home to dinner, which ended in a drinking-bout, and it was
seldom the parson who went under the table first. One fought a duel in
the graveyard behind his church,--our own little Westover church, it
was,--and succeeded in pinking his opponent through the breast, for which
he had incontinently to return to England; another stopped the communion
which he was celebrating, and bawled out to his warden, "Here, George,
this bread's not fit for a dog," nor would he go on with the service
until bread more to his liking had been brought; another married a
wealthy widow, though he had already a wife living in England. His bishop
was compelled to recall him, but I never heard that he was discharged
from holy orders. Another on a certain Saturday called a meeting of his
vestry, and when they refused to take some action which he desired,
thrashed them all soundly, and on the next day added insult to injury by
preaching to them from the text, "And I contended with them, and cursed
them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair." I should
like to have seen the faces of the vestrymen while the sermon was in
progress! It was not an unusual sight to see the parson riding home from
some great dinner tied fast in his chaise to keep him from falling out,
as the result of over-indulgence in the planter's red wine. But our
worthy pastor, during his forty years' ministry in Charles City parish,
was concerned in no such escapades, and I count it one of the great
happinesses of my life that I had the good fortune to fall under the
influence of such a man. A passage of a letter written by him to one of
his brothers in England on the subject of preserving health gives an
outline of the rules of his life. After commending active exercise in the
open air on foot and on horseback, he says, "I drink no spirituous
liquors at all; but when I am obliged to take more than ordinary fatigue,
either in serving my churches or other branches of duty, I take one glass
of good old Madeira wine, which revives me, and contributes to my going
through without much fatigue."

One other figure do I recall distinctly. We had driven to church as usual
one Sunday morning in early fall, and when we came in sight of the little
brick building, peeping through its veil of ivy, I was surprised to see
the parishioners in line on either side the path which led to the broad,
low doorway. Mr. Fontaine stood there as though awaiting some one, and
when he saw us, came down the steps and spoke a word to father. In a
moment, from down the road came the rumble of heavy wheels, and then a
great, gorgeous, yellow chariot, with four outriders, swung into view and
drew up with a flourish before the church. The footmen sprang to the
door, opened it, and let down the steps. I, who was staring with all my
eyes, as you may well believe, saw descend a little old man, very weak
and very tremulous, yet holding his head proudly, and after him a
younger. They came slowly up the walk, the old man leaning heavily upon
the other's shoulder and nodding recognition to right and left. As they
drew near, I caught the gleam of a great jewel on his sword-hilt, and
then of others on finger, knee, and instep. The younger bore himself very
erect and haughty, yet I saw the two were fashioned in one mould. On up
the steps and into the church they went, Mr. Fontaine before and we after
them. They took their seats in the great pew with the curious carving on
the back, which I had never before seen occupied.

"Who are the gentlemen, mother?" I whispered, so soon as I could
get her ear.

"It is Colonel Byrd and his son come back from London," she answered.
"Now take your eyes off them and attend the service."

Take my eyes off them I did, by a great effort of will, but I fear I
heard little of the service, for my mind was full of the great house on
the river-bank, which it had once been my fortune to visit. Mr. Fontaine
had taken me with him in his chaise for a pastoral call at quite the
other end of his parish, and as we returned, we were caught in a sudden
storm of rain. My companion had hesitated for a moment, and then turned
his horse's head through a gateway with a curious monogram in iron at the
top, along an avenue of stately tulip-trees, and so to the door of a
massive square mansion of red brick, which stood on a little knoll
overlooking the James. The door was closed and the windows shuttered, but
half a dozen negroes came running from the back at the sound of our
wheels and took us in out of the storm. A mighty fire was started in the
deep fireplace, and as I stood steaming before it, I looked with dazzled
eyes at the great carved staircase, at the paintings and at the books, of
which there were many hundreds.

Presently the old overseer, whom Mr. Fontaine addressed as Murray, and
who had grown from youth to trembling age in the Byrd service, came in to
offer us refreshment, and over the table they fell to gossiping.

"Westover's not the place it was," said Murray, sipping his flip
disconsolately,--"not the place it was while Miss Evelyn was alive. There
was no other like it in Virginia then. Why, it was always full of gay
company, and the colonel kept a nigger down there at the gate to invite
in every traveler who passed. But all that's changed, and has been these
six year."

Mr. Fontaine nodded over his tea.

"Yes," he said, "Evelyn's death was a great blow to her father."

"You may well say that, sir," assented Murray, with a sigh. "He was never
the same man after. He used to sit there at that window and watch her in
the garden, after they came back from London, and every day he saw her
whiter and thinner. At night, after she was safe abed, I have seen him
walking up and down over there along the river, sobbing like a baby. And
when she died, he was like a man dazed, thinking, perhaps, it was he who
had killed her."

"I know," nodded Mr. Fontaine. "I was here." There was a moment's
silence. I was bursting with questions, but I did not dare to speak.

"The young master took him back to London after that," went on Murray,
"hoping that a change would do him good and take his mind off Miss
Evelyn, but I doubt he'll ever get over it. While they were in London,
Sir Godfrey Kneller painted him and Miss Evelyn. Would you like to see
the pictures, sir?"

"Yes, I should like to see them," said Mr. Fontaine softly. "Evelyn was
very dear to me."

They were hanging side by side in the great hall, and even my childish
eyes saw their strength and beauty. His was a narrow, patrician face,
beautiful as a woman's, looking from a wealth of brown curls, soft and
flowing. The little pucker at the corners of his mouth bespoke his
relish of a jest, and the high nose and well-placed eyes his courage and
spirit. But it was at the other I looked the longest. She was seated upon
a grassy bank, with the shadows of the evening gathering about her. In
the branches above her head gleamed a red-bird's brilliant plumage. On
her lap lay a heap of roses, and in her hand she held a shepherd's crook.
Her gown, of pale blue satin, was open at the throat, and showed its fair
sweet fullness and the bosom's promise. Her face was pensive,--sad,
almost,--the lips just touching, a soft light in the great dark eyes. I
had never seen such a picture,--nor have I ever looked upon another such.
I can close my eyes and see it even now. But the storm had passed, and it
was time to go.

"Why did Miss Evelyn die?" I questioned, as soon as we were out of the
avenue of tulips and in the highway.

He looked down at me a moment, and seemed hesitating for an answer.

"She loved a man in London," he said. "Her father would not let her marry
him, and brought her home. She was not strong, and gossips say her heart
was broken."

"But why would he not let her marry him?" I asked.

"He was not of her religion. Her father thought he was acting for
her good."

I pondered on this for a time in silence, and found here a question too
great for my small brain.

"But was he right?" I asked at last, falling back upon my companion's
greater knowledge.

"It is hard to say," he answered softly. "Perhaps he was, and yet I have
come to think there is little to choose between one sect and another, so
Christ be in them and the man honest."

He looked out across the fields with tender eyes and I slipped my hand
in his. A vision of her sad face danced before me and I fell asleep, my
head within his arm, to waken only when he lifted me down at our
journey's end.

All this came back to me with the vividness which childish recollections
sometimes have, as I sat there in the pew at my mother's side. Only I
could not quite believe that this little wrinkled old man was the same
who looked so proudly from Kneller's canvas. But when the service ended
and he stopped to exchange a word with father, I saw the face was indeed
the same, though now writ over sadly by the hand of time weighted down
with sorrow. It was the only time I ever saw him in the flesh, for he was
near the end and died soon after. He was buried beside his daughter in
the little graveyard near his home. It was Mr. Fontaine who closed his
eyes in hope of resurrection and spoke the last words above his grave,--
beloved in this great mansion as in the lowliest cabin at Charles City.

My pen would fain linger over the portrait of this sainted man, which is
the fairest and most benign in the whole gallery of my youth, but I must
turn to another subject,--to the cloud which began to shadow my life at
my tenth year, and which still shadows it to-day. For the first six or
seven years of their married life my father and mother were, I believe,
wholly and unaffectedly happy. When I think of them now, I think of them
only as they were during that time, and wonder how many of the married
people about me could say as much. Their means were small, and they lived
a quiet life, which had few luxuries. But as time went on, my father
began to chafe at the petty economies which the smallness of their income
rendered necessary. He had been bred amid the luxuries of a great estate,
where the house was open to every passer-by, and it vexed him that he
could not now show the same wide hospitality. I think he yet had hopes of
succeeding to his father's estate, out of which, indeed, there was no law
in Virginia to keep him should he choose to claim it. Whatever his
thoughts may have been, he grew gradually to live beyond his means, and
as the years passed, he had recourse to the cards and dice in the hope,
no doubt, of recouping his vanishing fortune. It was true then, as it is
true now and always will be true, that the man who gambles because he
needs the money is sure to lose, and affairs went from bad to worse until
the final disaster came.

It was just after my tenth birthday. My mother and I were sitting
together on the broad porch which overlooked the river. She had been
reading to me from the Bible,--the parable of the talents,--in which and
in the kind advice of Parson Fontaine she found her only comfort in the
anxious days which had gone before, and which I knew nothing of. But the
lengthening shadows finally fell across the page, and she closed the book
and held it on her knee, while she talked to me about my lessons and a
ramble we had planned for the morrow. The red of the sunset still
lingered in the west, and a single crimson cloud hung poised high up
against the sky. I remember watching it as it turned to purple and then
to gray. A burst of singing came from the negro quarters behind the
house, and in the strip of woodland by the river the noises of the night
began to sound.

As the twilight deepened to darkness, my mother's voice faltered and
ceased, and when I glanced at her, I saw she had fallen into a reverie,
and that there was a shadow on her face. I have only to shut my eyes, and
the years roll back and she is sitting there again beside me, in her
white gown, simply made, and gathered at the waist with a broad blue
ribbon, her slim white hands playing with the book upon her knee, her
eyes gazing afar off across the water, her mouth drooping in the curve
which it had never known till recently, her wealth of blue-black hair
forming a halo round her head. Ah, that she were there when I open my
eyes again, that I might speak to her! For the bitterest thought that
ever came to me is one which troubles my rest from time to time even now:
Did I love her as she deserved; was I a staff for her to lean upon in her
trouble; was I not, rather, a careless, unseeing boy, who recked nothing
of the impending storm until it burst about him? I trust the tears which
have wet my pillow since have gladdened her heart in heaven.

I was awakened from the doze into which I had fallen by the sound of
rapid hoof-beats down the road. We listened to them in silence, as they
drew near and nearer. I did not doubt it was my father, for few others
ever rode our way. He had been from home all day, as he frequently was of
late, only he did not usually return so early in the evening. Something
in my mother's face as she strained her eyes into the shadows to catch a
glimpse of the advancing horseman drew me from my chair and to her side.

"It is your father," she said, in a voice almost inaudible, and as she
spoke, the rider leaped from the shadow of the trees. He drew his horse
up before the porch with a jerk and threw himself from the saddle. As he
came up the steps, I saw that his face was strangely flushed and his eyes
gleaming in a way that made me shiver. I felt my mother's arm about me
trembling as she drew me closer to her.

"Well, it's over," he said, flinging himself down upon the upper step,
"and damme if I'm sorry. Anything's better than living here in the woods
like a lump on a log."

"What do you mean is over, Tom?" asked my mother very quietly.

"I mean our possession of this place is over. Since an hour ago, it has
belonged to Squire Blakesley, across the river."

"You mean you have gambled it away?"

"If you choose to call it that," said my father ungraciously, and he
turned his back to us and gazed gloomily out over the water.

For a moment there was silence.

"Since we no longer possess this place," said my mother at last, "I
suppose you intend to forget your foolish anger against your father, and
claim your patrimony?"

"Foolish or not," he cried, "I have sworn never to take it until it is
offered to me, and I mean to keep my word!"

"You would make your boy a beggar to gratify a foolish whim!" retorted my
mother, her voice trembling with passion. I had never seen her so, and
even my father glanced at her furtively in some astonishment. "Very well.
In that it is for you to do as you may choose, but his estate here, or
what is left of it, shall be kept intact for him."

"What do you mean?" cried my father, and he sprang to his feet and
slashed his boot savagely with his riding-whip.

"I mean," said my mother very quietly, "that since a gambling debt is not
recoverable by law, we have only to live on quietly here and no one will
dare disturb us."

"And my honor?" cried my father with an oath, the first I had ever heard
him use. "It seems to me that you forget my honor, madam."

"You have been the first to forget your honor, sir," said my mother,
rising to face him, but still keeping me within her arm, "in staking your
son's inheritance upon a throw of the dice."

My father started as though he had been struck across the face, but he
was too far gone in anger to listen to the voice of reason. Indeed, I
have always found that the more a man deserves rebuke, the less likely is
he to take it quietly.

"Come here, Tom," he said to me, and when I hesitated, added in a sterner
tone, "come here, sir, I say."

I had no choice but to go to him, nor did my mother seek to hold me back.
He caught me by the arms and bent until his face was close to mine.

"You are to promise me two things, Tom," he said, and I perceived that
his breath was heavy with the fumes of wine. "One is that you are never
to claim your inheritance of Riverview until it is offered to you freely
by them that now possess it. Do you promise me that?"

"Yes," I faltered. "I promise you, sir."

"Good!" he said. "And the other is that you will pay my debts of honor
after I am dead, if they be not paid before. Promise me that also, Tom."

His eyes were on mine, and I could do nothing but obey, even had I
thought of resisting.

"I promise that also, sir," I said.

"Very well," and he retained his grasp on my arms yet a moment.
"Remember, Tom, that a gentleman never breaks his word. It is his most
priceless possession, the thing which above all others makes him a
gentleman."

He dropped his hands and turned away into the house. A moment later,
from the refuge of my mother's arms, I heard him heavily mounting the
stairs to his room on the floor above. My mother said never a word, but
she covered my face with kisses, and I felt that she was crying. She held
me for a time upon her lap, gazing out across the river as before, and
when I raised my hand and caressed her cheek, smiled down upon me sadly.
She kissed me again as she put me to bed, and the last thing I saw before
drifting away into the land of dreams was her sweet face bending over me.
Had I known that it was the last time I was to see it so,--the last time
those tender hands were to draw the covers close about me,--I should not
have closed my eyes in such content.




CHAPTER V

THE SECRET OF A HEART


Late that night I was awakened by the slamming of doors and hurried
footsteps in the hall and up and down the stairs. I sat up in bed, and as
I listened intently, heard frightened whispering without my door. It rose
and died away and rose again, broken by stifled sobbing, and I knew that
some great disaster had befallen. It seemed, somehow, natural that this
should happen, after my father's recent conduct. With a cold fear at my
heart, I threw the covers back, slid from the bed, and groped my way
across the room. As I fumbled at the latch, the whispering and sobbing
came suddenly to an end, as though those without had stopped with bated
breath. At last I got the door open, and looking out, saw half a dozen
negro servants grouped upon the landing. One of them held a lantern,
which threw slender rays of light across the floor and queer shadows up
against their faces. They stared at me an instant, and then, finding
their breath again, burst forth in lamentation.

"What is it?" I cried. "What has happened?"

My old mammy had her arms around me and caught me up to her face, down
which the tears were streaming.

"Oh, Lawd, keep dis chile!" she sobbed, looking down at me with infinite
tenderness. "Oh, Lawd, bless an' keep dis chile!"

"But, mammy," I repeated impatiently, "what has happened?"

Her trembling lips would not permit her answering, but she pointed to the
door of my father's room and her tears broke forth afresh.

"Is my mother there?" I asked.

She nodded.

"Then I will go to her," I said, and I had squirmed out of her arms and
was running along the passage before she could detain me. In a moment I
had reached the door, but all my courage seemed to fail me in face of the
mystery within, and the knock I gave was a very feeble and timid one. I
heard a quick step on the floor, and the door opened ever so little.

"Is it you, doctor?" asked my mother's voice.

"No, mother, it is only I," I said.

"You!" she cried, in a terrible voice, and I caught a glimpse of her face
rigid with horror before she slammed the door. The sight seemed to freeze
me there on the threshold, powerless to move. I have tried--ah, how
often!--to put behind me the memory of her face as I saw it then, but it
is before me now and again, even yet. And I began to cry, for it was the
first time my mother had ever shut me from her presence.

"Are you there, Tom?" I heard her voice ask in a moment. Her voice, did
I say? Nay, not hers, but a voice I had never heard before,--the voice of
a woman suffocating with anguish.

"Yes, mother," I answered, "I am here."

"And you love me, do you not, Tom?"

"Oh, yes, mother!" I cried; and I thank God to this day that there was so
much of genuine feeling in my voice.

"Then if you love me, Tom," she said, "you will go back to your room
and not come near this door again. Promise me, Tom, that you will do as
I ask you."

"I promise, mother," I answered. "But what has happened? Is father dead?"

"Mr. Fontaine will be here soon," she said, "and will explain it all to
you. Now run back to your room, dearest, and go to bed."

"Yes, mother," I said again, but as I turned to go, I heard a sound which
struck me motionless. No, my father was not dead, for that was his voice
I heard, pitched far above its usual key.

"I shall never go back," he cried. "I shall never go back till he asks
me."

I felt the perspiration start from my forehead.

"Have you gone, Tom?" asked my mother's voice.

"I am just going, mother," I sobbed, and tore myself away from the door.
My mammy's arms were about me again as I turned, and carried me back to
my room. This time I did not resist, but as she sat down, still holding
me, I laid my head upon her breast and sobbed myself to sleep. When I
awoke, I found that I was in bed with the covers tucked close around me,
and through my window I could see the gray dawn breaking. I lay and
watched the light grow along the horizon and up into the heavens. And
while I lay thus, with heart aching dully, the door of my room opened
softly, and with joy inexpressible I saw that it was my beloved friend
who entered.

"Oh, Mr. Fontaine!" I cried, and stretched out my arms to him. He took me
up as a mother might, and held me close against his heart.

"Do you remember, dear," he said, and his voice was trembling, "what you
told me one day by the river--that you meant to be brave under trial?"

I sobbed assent.

"Well, the trial has come, Tom, and I want you to be brave and strong.
You are not going to disappoint me, are you?"

Oh, it was hard, and I was only a child, but I sat upright on his knee
and tried to dry my tears.

"I will try," I said, but the sobs would come in spite of me.

"That is right," and he was stroking my hair in that old familiar, tender
way. "Your father is very ill, Tom."

Well, if that was all, I could bear it, certainly.

"But he will get well," I said.

He was looking far out at the purple sky, and his face seemed old and
gray.

"I hope and pray so," he said at last. "He has the smallpox, Tom.
There are some cases along the river near Charles City, and he must
have caught it there. Doctor Brayle has done everything for him that
can be done."

But I was not listening. There was room for only one thought in my brain.

"And my mother is with him!" I cried, and my heart seemed bursting.

He held me tight against him, and I felt a tear fall upon my head. This
was the trial, then--for him no less than me.

"Yes, she is with him, Tom. She believes it her duty, and will allow no
one else to enter. Ah, she has not been found wanting. Dear heart, I knew
she would never be."

Of what came after, I have no distinct remembrance. Mr. Fontaine told me
that my mother wished me to go home with him, so that I might be quite
beyond reach of the infection. He had agreed that this would be the
wisest course, and so, too stricken at heart to resist, I was bundled
into his chaise with a chest of my clothes, and driven away through the
crowd of sobbing negroes to the little house at Charles City where he and
his sister lived.

The week that followed dwells in my memory as some tremendous nightmare,
lightened here and there by the unvarying kindness of my friend and of
his sister. I wandered along the river and gazed out across the changing
water for hours at a time, with eyes that saw nothing of what was before
them. Often I remained thus until some one came for me and led me gently
back into the house. My brain seemed numbed, and no longer capable of
thought. Mr. Fontaine took charge of our affairs, doing everything that
could be done, keeping the frightened negroes to their work, and praying
with my mother through the tight-closed door. He had no fear, and would
have entered and prayed with her beside the bed, had she permitted.

I was sitting by the river-bank one evening, watching the shadows
lengthen across the water, when I heard a step behind me, and turned to
see my friend approaching. A glance at his face brought me to my feet.

"What is it?" I cried, and ran to him.

He took my hands in his.

"Your father died an hour ago, Tom," he said, and smoothed my hair in the
familiar way which seemed to comfort him as well as me.

"And my mother?" I asked, for it was of her I was thinking.

"Your mother is ill, too," he said, and placed his arms about me and held
me close, "but with God's grace we will save her life."

But I had started from him.

"If she is ill," I cried, "I must go to her. She will want me."

He shook his head, still holding to my hands.

"No, she does not want you, Tom," he said. "The one thing that will make
her happy is the thought that you are quite removed from danger. I
believed my place was at her bedside, but she would not permit it."

And then he told me, with glistening eyes, that my old mammy, who had
been my mother's thirty years before, was nursing her and would not be
sent away. She had burst in the door of the plague chamber the moment
she had heard that her mistress was ill, and dared any one disturb her.
Old Doctor Brayle had commanded that she be given her will, and declared
that in this old negro woman's careful nursing lay my mother's great
chance of life.

The scalding tears poured down my cheeks as Mr. Fontaine told me
this,--the first, I think, that I had shed that week, for after that
dreadful night, my sorrow had been of a dry and bitter kind,--and a
stinging remorse seized me as I thought of the times I had been cross and
disobedient to mammy. Ah, how I loved her now! It was the accustomed
irony of my life that I was never to tell her so.

Ere daylight the next morning I was seated beside my friend as he drove
me home. The river was cloaked in mist, and the dawn seemed inexpressibly
dreary. As we approached the house, I wondered to see how forlorn and
neglected it appeared. A crowd of wailing negroes surrounded the chaise
when we stopped, and I would have got out, but Mr. Fontaine held me
firmly in my seat.

"We must remain here," he said, and I dropped back beside him, and waited
in a kind of stupor.

Presently they brought the coffin down, the negroes who carried it
wreathing themselves in tobacco smoke, and placed it in a cart. We
followed at a distance as it rolled slowly toward the Wyeth
burying-ground in the grove of willows near the road. The thought came to
me that my father should lie with the Stewarts, not with the Wyeths, and
then suddenly a great sickness and faintness came upon me, and I remember
nothing of what followed until I found Miss Fontaine lifting me from the
chaise at the door. I was put to bed, and not until the next day was I
able to crawl forth again.

Then came days of anguish and suspense, days spent by me roaming the
woods, or lying face downward beneath the trees, and praying that God
would spare my mother's life. Bulletins were brought me from her
bedside,--she was better, she was worse, she was better,--how shall I
tell the rest?--until at last one day came my dear friend, his lips
quivering, the tears streaming down his face unrestrained, and told me
that she was dead. I think the sight of his great sorrow frightened me,
and I bore the blow with greater composure than I had thought possible.
Had she sent me no message? Yes, she had sent me a message,--her last
thought had been of me. She asked me to be a good boy and an honest man,
to follow the counsel of Mr. Fontaine in all things, and to keep my
promise to my father. So, even in death her love for him and for the
honor of his memory triumphed, as I would have had it do.

Again there was a dismal procession through the gray morning to the
willow grove, where we stood beneath the dripping branches, while afar
off the rude coffin was lowered to its last resting-place. The negroes
grouped themselves about, and my friend stood at my side, his head bare,
his face raised to heaven, as though he saw her there.

"'I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and
believeth in me, shall never die.'"

I felt the threads of my life slipping from me one by one, even as the
trees faded from before my eyes. Only that strong, exultant voice at my
side went on and on.

"'Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them
that slept.'" On and on went the voice; there was nothing else in the
whole wide world but that voice crying out over my mother's grave. "'I
heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me. Write. From henceforth blessed
are the dead who die in the Lord.'" And then the voice faltered and
broke. "She was the light of my life and the joy of my heart," it was no
longer the ritual of the church; "and yet had I to walk beside her and
tell her naught. And now is she taken from me, for the Lord hath received
her to His bosom to live in the light of His love forevermore."

I looked up into his face and saw the secret of his heart revealed,--the
secret he had kept so well, but which his anguish had wrung from him. It
was only for an instant, yet I think he knew I had read his heart--I,
alone of all the world, understood. Had my mother known, I wonder? Yes,
I think she had, and in the greatness of his love found help and comfort.
Good man and lovely woman, God rest and keep you both.

I went home with him, remembering with a pang that the place I had called
home was mine no longer. Those among my friends who know the history of
my boyhood understand to some extent my loathing for the cards and dice.
It is perhaps unreasonable,--I might be the first to deem it so in any
other man,--but when I count up the woe they brought my mother,--father
and husband slaves to the same frenzy,--how they wrecked her life and
embittered it, my passion rises in my throat to choke me. Never did I
hate them more than in the days which followed; for they had made me
outcast, and what the future held for me, I could not guess. The question
was answered of a sudden a week later, when there came from my
grandfather a curt note bidding me be sent to Riverview. It was decided
at once that I must go. I myself looked forward to the change with a
boy's blind longing for adventure, and said farewell to the man who had
been so much to me with a willingness I wince to think upon.




CHAPTER VI

I AM TREATED TO A SURPRISE


The rain was falling dismally as the coach in which I had made the
journey rolled up the drive to Riverview, and I caught but a glimpse of
the house as I was rushed up the steps and into the wide hall. A lady
dressed in a loose green gown was seated in an easy-chair before the open
fire, and she did not rise as I entered, doubtless because her lap was
full of knitting.

"Gracious, how wet the child is!" she cried, looking me over critically.
"Take him to his room, Sally, and see that he has a bath and change of
clothing. I'm sure he needs both."

I turned away without a word and followed the negro maid. Of course the
lady thought me a surly boor, but my heart was burning, for I had hoped
for a different welcome. As I passed along the hall and up the broad
staircase, the thought came to me that all of this would one day be mine,
should I choose to claim it, and then, with crimson cheeks, I put the
thought from me, as unworthy of my mother's son.

But my room looked very warm and cheerful even on this chilly day, and
from the window I could see broad fields of new-planted tobacco, and
beyond them the yellow road and then the river. I stood long looking out
at it and wondering what my life here had in store. Half an hour later,
word came from my grandfather that he wished to see me, and the same maid
led me down the stairs and to his study, I stumbling along beside her
with a madly beating heart. As I crossed the lower hall, I heard a burst
of childish laughter, and saw a boy and girl, both younger than myself,
playing near the chair where the lady sat. I looked at them with
interest, but the sight of me seemed to freeze the laughter on their
faces, and they gazed with staring eyes until I turned the corner and was
out of sight. But I had little time to wonder at this astonishing
behavior, for in a moment I was in my grandfather's office.

He was seated at a great table, and had apparently been going over some
accounts, for the board in front of him was littered with books and
papers. I saw, even beneath the disguise of his red face and white hair,
his strong resemblance to my father, and my heart went out to him on the
instant. For I had loved my father, despite the wild behavior which
marred his later clays. Indeed, I always think of him during that time as
suffering with a grievous malady, of which he could not rid himself, and
which ate his heart out all the faster because he saw how great was the
anguish it caused the woman he loved. That it was some such disease I am
quite certain, so different was his naturally strong and sunny
disposition.

My grandfather gazed at me some moments without speaking, as I stood
there, longing to throw myself into his arms, and all the misery of the
years that followed might never have been, had I buried my pride and
followed the dictates of my heart. But I waited for him to speak, and the
moment passed.

"So this is Tom's boy," he said at last. "My God, how like he is!"

He fell silent for a moment,--silenced, no doubt, by bitter memories.

"You wonder, perhaps," he said in a sterner tone, "why I have sent for
you; but I could do no less. The letter from your pastor which announced
the deaths of your father and your mother brought me the tidings also
that your mother's fortune had been diced away down to the last penny,
and that even the negroes must be sold to satisfy the claims against it.
However undutiful your father may have been, I could not permit his son
to become a charge upon the poor funds."

I felt my cheeks flushing, but I judged it best to choke back the words
which trembled on my lips.

"I can read your thought," said my grandfather quickly. "You are
thinking that the heir of Riverview could hardly be called a pauper. Do
not forget that your father forfeited his claim to the estate by his
ungentlemanly conduct."

"I shall not forget it," I burst out. "My father made sure that I should
never forget it. I shall never claim the estate. And my father's conduct
was never ungentlemanly."

"As you will," said my grandfather scornfully. "I am not apt at
mincing words. I told him one thing many years ago which I should have
thought he would remember, and which I now repeat to you. I told him
that a gentleman ceased to be a gentleman when once he gambled beyond
his means."

I waited to hear no more, but with crimson cheeks and head in air, I
turned on my heel and started for the door.

"Damn my stars, sir!" he roared. "Wait to hear me out."

But I would not wait. After a moment's struggle with the latch, I had the
door open and marched straight to my room. Once inside, I bolted the
door, and throwing myself on the floor, sobbed myself to sleep.

What need to detail further? There were a hundred such scenes between us
in the four years that followed, and as I look back upon them now, I
realize that through it all I, too, showed my full share of Stewart
obstinacy and temper. I more than suspect that my grandfather in his most
violent outbursts was inwardly trembling with tenderness for me, as was I
for him, and that a single gentle word, spoken at the right time, would
have brought us into each other's arms. And I realize too late that it
was for me, and not for him, to speak that word. It was only when I saw
him lying in his bed, stricken with paralysis, bereft of the power of
speech or movement, that I knew how great my love for him had been. His
eyes, as they met mine on that last day, had in them infinite tenderness
and pleading, and my heart melted as I bent and kissed his lips. He
struggled to speak, and the sweat broke from his forehead at the effort,
but what he would have said I can only guess, for he died that night,
without the iron bands which held him fast loosening for an instant. Yet
I love to fancy that his last words, could he have spoken them, would
have been words of love and forgiveness, for my father as well as for
myself, and such, I am sure, they would have been. With him there passed
away the only one at Riverview whom I had grown to love.

And now a word about the others among whom I passed the second period of
my boyhood. My father's younger brother, James, had married seven or
eight years before a lady whose estate adjoined Riverview,--Mrs.
Constance Randolph, a widow some years older than himself. She had one
child living, a daughter, Dorothy, who, at the time I came to Riverview,
was a girl of nine, and a year after her second marriage she bore a son,
who was named James, much against the wishes of his mother. She would
have called him Thomas, a name which had for five generations been that
of the head of the house. But this my grandfather would by no means
allow, and so the child was christened after his father. I think that
ever since the day she had entered the Stewart family, my aunt had
thought me a spectre across her path, for she was an ambitious woman and
wished the whole estate for her son,--in which I do not greatly blame
her. But she had brooded over her fear until it had become a phantom
which haunted her unceasingly, and she had come to deem me a kind of
monster, who stood between her boy and his inheritance. Her second
husband died three years after their marriage,--he was drowned one day in
January while crossing the river on the ice, which gave way under
him,--and after that she became the mistress of Riverview in earnest,
ruling my grandfather with a rod of iron, for though bold enough with
men, and especially with the men of his own family, he would succumb in a
moment to a woman's shrewish temper.

Only twice had he revolted against her rule. The first time was when she
had announced her intention of naming her boy Thomas, as I have already
mentioned. The second was when he decided to summon me to Riverview. This
she had opposed with all her might, but he had persisted, and finally
ended the argument by putting her from the room,--doubtless with great
inward trepidation. So I came to be a phantom in the flesh, and do not
wonder that she hated me, so sour will the human heart become which
broods forever on its selfishness. Her children she kept from me as from
the plague, and during the years preceding my grandfather's death, I had
almost no communication with them. He required, however, that every
respect be shown me, placed me on his right at table,--how often have I
looked up from my plate to find his eyes upon me,--selected half a dozen
negroes to be my especial servants, engaged the Rev. James Scott, pastor
of the Quantico church, as my tutor, and even ordered for me an elaborate
wardrobe from his factor in London.

Mr. Scott was a man of parts, and under him I gained some knowledge of
Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Certainly I made more progress than I
should have done under different circumstances, for finding myself
without companions or other occupation, I applied myself to my books for
want of something better. My grandfather possessed above a hundred
volumes, and when he saw how my bent lay, he ordered others for me, so
that his library came to be one of the largest on the Northern Neck,
though but indifferently selected. Absorbed in these books, I managed to
forget the disorder of my circumstances.

The remainder of my time I spent in riding along the river road on the
mare my grandfather had given me, or wandering over the estate and in and
out among the negro cabins. To the negroes I was always "Mas' Tom," and I
am proud to remember that I made many friends among them, treating them
always with justice and sometimes with mercy, as, indeed, I try yet to
do. Once I came suddenly upon old Gump, the major-domo of the house
servants, preparing to give a little pickaninny a thrashing, and I
stopped to ask what he had done.

"He's done been stealing Mas' Tom," answered Gump. "Ain' goin' t' hab no
t'iefs roun' dis yere house, not if I knows it."

"What did he steal, uncle?" I asked.

"Dis yere whip," said Gump, and he held up an old riding-whip of mine.

I looked at it and hesitated for a moment. Was it worth beating a child
for? The little beady eyes were gazing at me in an agony of supplication.

"Gump," I said, "don't beat him. That's all right. I want him to have
the whip."

Gump stared at me in astonishment.

"What, Mas' Tom," he exclaimed, "you mean dat you gib him de whip?"

"Yes," I said, "I give him the whip, Gump," and luckily the old man could
not distinguish between the past and present tenses of the verb, so that
I was spared a lie. The little thief ran away with the whip in his hand,
and it was long before the incident was recalled to me.

So I returned again to my books, and to the silent but no less active
antagonism toward my aunt. Yet, I would not paint her treatment of me in
too gloomy colors. Doubtless I gave her much just cause for offense, for
I had grown into a surly and quick-tempered boy, with raw places ever
open to her touch. That she loved her children I know well, and her love
for them was at the bottom of her dislike for me. I have learned long
since that there is no heart wholly bad and selfish.

While my grandfather yet lived, I think she had some hope that something
would happen to make me an outcast utterly, but after his death this hope
vanished, and she sent for me one morning to come to her. I found her
seated in the selfsame chair in which I had first seen him, and the
table was still littered with papers and accounts.

"Good-morning, Thomas," she said politely enough, as I entered, and, as I
returned her greeting, motioned me to a chair. She seemed to hesitate at
a beginning, and in the moment of silence that followed, I saw that her
face was growing thinner, and that her hair was streaked with gray.

"I have sent for you, Thomas," she said at last, "to find out what your
intention is with regard to this estate. You know, of course, that your
father forfeited it voluntarily, and that you have no moral claim to it.
Still, the law might sustain your claim, should you choose to assert it."

"I shall not choose to assert it," I answered coldly, and as I spoke, her
face was suffused with sudden joy. "I promised my father never to claim
it,--never to take it unless it were offered to me openly and
freely,--and I intend to keep my promise."

For a moment her emotion prevented her replying, and she pressed one hand
against her breast as though to still the beating of her heart.

"Very well," she said at last. "Your resolution does credit to your
honor, and I will see that you do not regret it. I will undertake the
management of both estates until my son becomes of age. You shall have an
ample allowance. Let me see; how old are you?"

"I am fifteen years old," I answered.

"And have about sounded the depths of Master Scott's learning, I
suppose?" she asked, smiling, the first smile, I think, she had
ever given me.

"He was saying only yesterday that I should soon have to seek
another tutor."

"'T is as I thought. Well, what say you to a course at William and Mary?"

She smiled again as she saw how my cheeks flushed.

"I should like it above all things," I answered earnestly, and, indeed, I
had often thought of it with longing, so lonely was my life at Riverview.

"It shall be done," she said. "The year opens in a fortnight's time, and
you must be there at the beginning."

I thanked her and left the room, and ran to my tutor, who had arrived
some time before, to acquaint him with my good fortune. He was no less
pleased than I, and forthwith wrote me a letter to Dr. Thomas Dawson,
president of the college, commending me to his good offices. So, in due
course, I rode away from Riverview, not regretting it, nor, I dare say,
regretted. In truth, I had no reason to love the place, nor had any
within it reason to love me.

Of my life at college, little need be said. Indeed, I have small reason
to be proud of it, for, reacting against earlier years, perhaps, I
cultivated the Apollo room at the Raleigh rather than my books, and
toasted the leaden bust of Sir Walter more times than I care to remember.
Yet I never forgot that I was a gentleman, thank God! And previous years
of study brought me through with some little honor despite my present
carelessness. I had a liberal allowance, and elected to spend my
vacations at Williamsburg or at Norfolk, or coasting up the Chesapeake as
far as Baltimore, and did not once return to Riverview, where I knew I
should get cold welcome. In fact, I was left to do pretty much as I
pleased, my aunt being greatly occupied with the care of the estate, and
doubtless happy to be rid of me so easily. So I entered my eighteenth
year, and the time of my graduation was at hand. And it was then that the
great event happened which changed my whole life by giving me something
to live for.

It was the custom for the first class, the year of its graduation, to
attend the second of the grand assemblies given by the governor while the
House of Burgesses was in session, and we had been looking forward to the
event with no small anticipation. Many of us, myself among the number,
had ordered suits from London for the occasion, and I thought that I
looked uncommon well as I arrayed myself that night before the glass.
Such is the vanity of youth, for I have since been assured many times by
one who saw me that I was a very ordinary looking fellow. Half a dozen of
us, the better to gather courage, went down Duke of Gloucester Street arm
in arm toward the governor's palace with its great lantern alight to
honor the occasion, and mounted the steps together,--our trifling over
our toilets had made us late,--and as we entered the high doorway, did
our best to look as though a great assembly was an every-day event to us.
A moment later, I saw a sight which took my breath away.

It was only a girl of seventeen--but such a girl! Can I describe her as I
close my eyes and see her again before me? No, I cannot trust my pen, nor
would any such description do her justice; for her charm lay not in
beauty only, but in a certain rare, sweet girlishness, which seemed to
form a nimbus round her. Yet was her beauty worth remarking, too; and I
have loved to think that, while others saw that only, I, looking with
more perceptive eyes, saw more truly to her heart. I did not reason all
this out at the first; I only stood and stared at her amazed, until some
one knocking against me brought me to my senses. There were a dozen men
about her, and one of these I saw with delight was Dr. Price, our
registrar at the college, a benign old man, who could deny me nothing. I
waited with scarce concealed impatience until he turned away from the
group, and then I was at his side in an instant.

"Dr. Price," I whispered eagerly, "will you do me the favor of presenting
me to that young lady?"

"Why, bless my soul!" he exclaimed, looking at me over his glasses in
astonishment, "you seem quite excited. Which young lady?"

"The one you have just left," I answered breathlessly.

He looked at me quizzically for a moment, and laughed to himself as
though I had uttered a joke.

"Why, certainly," he said. "Come with me."

I could have kissed his hand in my gratitude, as he turned back toward
the group. I followed a pace behind, and felt that my hands were
trembling. The group opened a little as we approached, and in a moment we
were before her.

"Miss Randolph," said Dr. Price, "here is a young gentleman who has just
begged of me the favor of an introduction. Permit me to present Mr.
Thomas Stewart."

"Why, 'pon my word," cried that young lady, "'t is cousin Tom!" and as I
stood gaping at her like a fool, in helpless bewilderment, she came to me
and gave me her hand with the prettiest grace in the world.




CHAPTER VII

I DECIDE TO BE A SOLDIER


Now who would have thought that in three short years the red-cheeked girl
whom I had left at Riverview, and of whom I had never thought twice,
could have grown into this brown-eyed fairy? Certainly not I, and my
hopeless astonishment must have been quite apparent, for Mistress Dorothy
laughed merrily as she looked at me.

"Come, cousin," she cried, "you look as though you saw a ghost. I assure
you I am not a ghost, but very substantial flesh and blood."

"'Twas not of a ghost I was thinking," I said, recovering my wits a
little under the magic of her voice, which I thought the sweetest I had
ever heard, "but of the three Graces, and methought I saw a fourth."

She gazed at me a moment with bright, intent eyes, the faintest touch of
color in her cheek. Then she smiled--a smile that brought two tiny
dimples into being--oh, such a smile! But there--why weary you with
telling what I felt? You have all felt very like it when you gazed into a
certain pair of eyes,--or if you have not, you will some day,--and if you
never do, why, God pity you!

She laid her hand on my arm and turned to the group about us.
"Gentlemen," she said, with a little curtsy, "I know you will excuse us.
My cousin Tom and I have not seen each other these three years, and have
a hundred things to say;" and so I walked off with her, my head in the
air, and my heart beating madly, the proudest man in the colony, I dare
say, and with as good cause, too, as any.

Dorothy led the way, for I was too blinded with joy to see where I was
going, and with a directness which showed acquaintance with the great
house, proceeded to a corner under the stair which had a bit of tapestry
before it that quite shut us out from interruption. She sat down opposite
me, and I pinched my arm to make sure I was not dreaming.

"Why, Tom," she cried, with a little laugh, as she saw me wince at the
pain, "you surely do not think yourself asleep?"

"I know not whether 't is dreaming or enchantment," said I; "but sleep or
sorcery, 't is very pleasant and I trust will never end."

"What is it that you think enchantment, Tom?" she asked.

"What could it be but you?" I retorted, and she smiled the slyest little
smile in the world. "I swear that when I entered that door ten minutes
since, I was wide awake as any man, but the moment I clapt eyes on you, I
lost all sense of my surroundings, and have since trod on air."

"Oh, what do you think it can be?" she questioned, pretending to look
mightily concerned, "Do you think it is the fever, Tom?"

But I was far past teasing.

"To think that you should be Dorothy!" I said. "I may call you Dorothy,
may I not?"

"Why, of course you may!" she cried. "Are we not cousins, Tom?"

What a thrill it gave me to hear her call me Tom! Of course we were not
cousins, but I fancy all the tortures of the Inquisition could not at
that moment have made me deny the relationship. Well, we talked and
talked. Of what I said, I have not the slightest remembrance,--it was all
foolish enough, no doubt,--but Dorothy told me how her mother had been
managing the estate, greatly assisted by the advice of a Major
Washington, living ten miles up the river at Mount Vernon; how her
brother James had been tutored by my old preceptor, but showed far
greater liking for his horse and cocks than for his books; and how Mr.
Washington had come to Riverview a month before to propose that Mistress
Dorothy accompany him and his mother and sister to Williamsburg, and how
her mother had consented, and the flurry there was to get her ready, and
how she finally was got ready, and started, and reached Williamsburg, and
had been with the Washingtons for a week, and had attended the first
assembly, which accounted for her knowing the house so well, and had had
a splendid time.

"And who was it you sat with here last time, Dorothy?" I asked, for I
could not bear that she should connect this place with any one but me.

"Let me see," and the sly minx seemed to hesitate in the effort at
recollection. "Was it Mr. Burke? No, I was with him on the veranda. Was
it Mr. Forsythe? No. Ah, I have it!" and she paused a moment to prolong
my agony. "It was with Betty Washington; she had something to tell me
which must be told at once, and which was very private. But what a
great goose you are, to be sure. Do you know, Tom, I had no idea that
melancholy boy I saw sometimes at Riverview would grow into such
a--such a"--

"Such a what, Dorothy?" I asked, as she hesitated.

"Such a big, overgrown fellow, with all his heart in his face. What a
monstrous fine suit that is you have on, Tom!"

The jade was laughing at me, and here was I, who was a year her senior
and twice her size, sitting like an idiot, red to the ears. In faith, the
larger a man is, the more the women seem tempted to torment him; but on
me she presently took pity, and as the fiddles tuned up in the great
ballroom, she led the way thither and permitted me to tread a minuet with
her. Of course there were a score of others eager to share her dances,
but she was more kind to me than I deserved, and in particular, when the
fiddles struck up "High Betty Martin," threw herself upon my arm and
laughed up into my face in the sheer joy of living. But between the
dances I had great opportunity of being jealous, and spent the time
moping in a corner, where, as I reviewed her talk, the frequency of her
mention of Mr. Washington occurred to me, and at the end of five minutes
I had conceived a desperate jealousy of him.

"How old is this Mr. Washington?" I asked, when I had managed to get by
her side again.

"Not yet twenty-two," she answered, and then as she saw my gloomy face,
she burst into a peal of laughter. "He is adorable," she continued, when
she had regained her breath. "Not handsome, perhaps, but so courtly, so
dignified, so distinguished. I can't imagine why he is not here to-night,
for he is very fond of dancing. Do you know, I fancy Governor Dinwiddie
has selected him for some signal service, for it was at his invitation
that Mr. Washington came to Williamsburg. He is just the kind of man one
would fix upon instinctively to do anything that was very dangerous or
very difficult."

"I dare say," I muttered, biting my lips with vexation, and avoiding
Dorothy's laughing eyes. I was a mere puppy, or I should have known that
a woman never praises openly the man she loves.

"I am sure you will admire him when you meet him," she continued, "as I
am determined you shall do this very night. He is a neighbor, you know,
and I'll wager that when you come to live at Riverview, you will be
forever riding over to Mount Vernon."

"Oh, doubtless!" I said, between my teeth, and I longed to have Mr.
Washington by the throat. "How comes it I heard nothing of him when I was
at Riverview?"

"'Tis only since last year he has been there," she answered. "The estate
belonged to his elder brother, Lawrence, who died July a year ago, and
Major Washington has since then been with his mother, helping her in its
management. Before that time, he had been over the mountains surveying
all that western country, and then to the West Indies, where he had the
smallpox, because he would not break a promise to dine with a family
where it was. But what is the matter? You seem quite ill."

"It is nothing," I said, after a moment. "It was the smallpox which
killed my father and my mother."

"Pardon me," and her hand was on mine for an instant. Indeed, the shudder
which always shook me whenever I heard that dread infection mentioned had
already passed. "He has the rank of major," she continued, hoping
doubtless to distract my thoughts, "because he has been appointed
adjutant-general of one of the districts, but somehow we rarely call him
major, for he says he does not want the title until he has done something
to deserve it."

"He seems a very extraordinary man," I said gloomily, "to have done so
much and to be yet scarce twenty-two."

"He is an extraordinary man," cried Dorothy, "as you will say when you
meet him. A word of caution, Tom," she added, seeing my desperate plight,
and relenting a little. "Say nothing to him of the tender passion, for he
has lately been crossed in love, and is very sore about it. A certain
Mistress Cary, to whom he was paying court, hath rejected him, and
wounded him as much in his self-esteem as in his love, which, I fancy,
was not great, but which, on that account, he is anxious to have appear
even greater, as is the way with men."

"Trust me," said I, with a great lightening of the heart; "I shall be
very careful not to wound him, Dorothy."

"Pray, why dost thou smile so, Tom?" she asked, her eyes agleam. "Is it
that there is a pair of bright eyes here in Williamsburg which you are
dying to talk about? Well, I will be your confidante."

"Oh, Dorothy!" I stammered, but my tongue refused to utter the thought
which was in my heart,--that there was only one pair of eyes in the whole
world I cared for, and that I was looking into them at this very moment.

"Ah, you blush, you stammer!" cried my tormentor. "Come, I'll wager
there's a pretty maid. Tell me her name, Tom."

I looked at her and gripped my hands at my side. If only this crowd
was not about us--if only we were alone together somewhere--I would be
bold enough.

"And why do you look so savage, Tom?" she asked, and I could have sworn
she had read my thought. "You are not angry with me already! Why, you
have known me scarce an hour!"

I could endure no more, and I reached out after her, heedless of the time
and of the place. Doubtless there would have been great scandal among
the stately dames who surrounded us, but that she sprang away from me
with a little laugh and ran plump into a man who had been hastening
toward her. The sight of her in the arms of a stranger brought me to my
senses, and I stopped dead where I was.

"'Tis Mr. Washington!" she cried, looking up into his face, and as he set
her gently on her feet, she held out her hand to him. He raised it to his
lips with a courtly grace I greatly envied. "Mr. Washington, this is my
cousin, Thomas Stewart."

"I am very happy to meet Mr. Stewart," he said, and he grasped my
hand with a heartiness which warmed my heart. I had to look up to
meet his eyes, for he must have been an inch or two better than six
feet in height, and of a most commanding presence. His eyes were
blue-gray, penetrating, and overhung by a heavy brow, his face long
rather than broad, with high, round cheekbones and a large mouth,
which could smile most agreeably, or--as I was afterward to
learn--close in a firm, straight line with dogged resolution. At this
moment his face was luminous with joy, and he was plainly laboring
under some intense emotion.

"Where is my mother, Dolly?" he asked. "I have news for her."

"She is in the reception hall with the governor's wife," she answered.
"But may we not have your news, Mr. Washington?"

He paused and looked back at her a moment.

"'T is all settled," he said, "and I am to start at once."

"I was right, then!" she cried, her eyes sparkling in sympathy with
his. "I was just telling cousin Tom I believed the governor had a
mission for you."

"Well, so he has, and I got my papers not ten minutes since. You could
never guess my destination."

"Boston? New York? London?" she questioned, but he shook his head at
each, smiling evermore broadly.

"No, 't is none of those. 'T is Venango."

"Venango?" cried Dorothy. "Where, in heaven's name, may that be?" Nor was
I any the less at a loss.

"'T is a French outpost in the Ohio country," answered Washington, "and
my mission, in brief, is to warn the French off English territory."

Dorothy gazed at him, eyes wide with amazement. There was something in
the speaker's words and look which fired my blood.

"You will need companions, will you not, Major Washington?" I asked.

He smiled in comprehension, as he met my eyes.

"Only two or three, Mr. Stewart. Two or three guides and a few Indians
will be all."

My disappointment must have shown in my face, for he gave me his
hand again.

"I thank you for your offer, Mr. Stewart," he said earnestly. "Believe
me, if it were possible, I should ask no better companion. But do not
despair. I have little hope the French will heed the warning, and 't
will then be a question of arms. In such event, there will be great need
of brave and loyal men, and you will have good opportunity to see the
country beyond the mountains. But I must find my mother, and tell her of
my great good fortune."

I watched him as he strode away, and I fancy there was a new light in my
eyes,--certainly there was a new purpose in my heart. For I had been
often sadly puzzled as to what I should do when once I was out of
college. I had no mind to become an idler at Riverview, but was
determined to win myself a place in the world. Yet when I came to look
about me, I saw small prospect of success. The professions--the law,
medicine, and even the church--were overrun with vagabonds who had
brought them so low that no gentleman could think of earning a
livelihood--much less a place in the world--by them. Trade was equally
out of the question, for there was little trade in the colony, and that
in the hands of sharpers. But Mr. Washington's words had opened a new
vista. What possibilities lay in the profession of arms! And my
resolution was taken in an instant,--I would be a soldier. I said nothing
of my resolve to Dorothy, fearing that she would laugh at me, as she
doubtless would have done, and the remainder of the evening passed very
quickly. Dorothy presented me to Mrs. Washington, a stately and beautiful
lady, who spoke of her son with evident love and pride. He had been
called away, she said, for he had much to do, and thus reminded, I
remembered that it was time for me also to depart. Before I went, I
obtained permission from Mrs. Washington to call and see her next
day,--Dorothy standing by with eyes demurely downcast, as though she did
not know it was she and she only whom I hoped to see.

"I am very sorry I teased you, cousin Tom," she said very softly, as I
turned to her to say goodnight. "Your eagerness to go with Mr. Washington
pleased me mightily. It is just what I should have done if I were a man.
Good-night," and before I could find my tongue, she was again at Mrs.
Washington's side.

I made my way back to my room at the college, and went to bed, but it
seemed to me that the night, albeit already far spent, would never pass.
Sleep was out of the question, and I tossed from side to side, thinking
now of Dorothy, now of my new friend and his perilous expedition over the
Alleghenies, now of my late resolve. It was in no wise weakened in the
morning, as so many resolves of youth are like to be, and so soon as I
had dressed and breakfasted, I sought out the best master of fence in the
place,--a man whose skill had won him much renown, and who for three or
four years past, finding life on the continent grown very unhealthy, had
been imparting such of it as he could to the Virginia gentry,--and
insisted that he give me a lesson straightway.

He gave me a half hour's practice, for the most part in quatre and
tierce,--my A B C's, as it were,--and the ease with which he held me off
and bent his foil against my breast at pleasure chafed me greatly, and
showed me how much I had yet to learn, besides making me somewhat less
vain of my size and strength. For my antagonist was but a small man, and
yet held me at a distance with consummate ease, and twisted my foil from
my hand with a mere turn of his wrist. Still, he had the grace to commend
me when the bout was ended, and I at once arranged to take two lessons
daily while I remained in Williamsburg.

It was ten o'clock when I turned my steps toward the house where the
Washingtons were stopping, and, with much inward trepidation, walked up
to the door and knocked. In a moment I was in the presence of the ladies,
Mrs. Washington receiving me very kindly, and Dorothy looking doubly
adorable in her simple morning frock. But I was ill at ease, and the
sound of voices in an adjoining room increased my restlessness.

"Do you not see what it is, madam?" cried Dorothy, at last. "He has no
wish for the society of women this morning. He has gone mad like the
rest of them. He is dying to talk of war and the French and expeditions
over the mountains, as Mr. Washington and his friends are doing. Is it
not so, sir?"

"Indeed, I cannot deny it," I said, with a very red face. "I am immensely
interested in Major Washington's expedition."

Mrs. Washington smiled kindly and bade Dorothy take me to the gentlemen,
which she did with a wicked twinkle in her eye that warned me I should
yet pay dear for my effrontery. Mr. Washington and half a dozen friends
were seated about the room, talking through clouds of tobacco smoke of
the coming expedition. There were George Fairfax, and Colonel Nelson, and
Judge Pegram, and three or four other gentlemen, to all of whom I was
introduced. The host waved me to a pile of pipes and case of
sweet-scented on the table, and I was soon adding my quota to the clouds
which enveloped us, and listening with all my ears to what was said.

It had been agreed that the start should be made at once, the party
meeting at Will's Creek, where the Ohio company had a station, and
proceeding thence to Logstown, and so on to Venango, or, if necessary, to
the fort on French Creek. How my cheeks burned as I thought of that
journey through the wilderness and over the mountains, and how I longed
to be of the party! But I soon saw how impossible this was, for Mr.
Washington's companions must needs be hardened men, accustomed to the
perils of the forest and acquainted with the country. A bowl of punch was
brought, and after discussing this, the company separated, though not
till all of them had wrung Mr. Washington's hand and wished him a quick
journey. I was going with the others, when he detained me.

"I wish a word with you, Mr. Stewart," he said. "I shall have to leave
for Mount Vernon at once, and make the trip as rapidly as possible, in
order to prepare for this expedition. May I ask if it would be possible
for you to accompany my mother and Miss Dolly home when their visit here
is ended, which will be in about a week's time?"

"Certainly," I answered warmly, "I shall be only too glad to be of
service to you and to them, Mr. Washington," and I thought with tingling
nerves that Dorothy and I could not fail to be thrown much together.

So it was arranged, and that afternoon he set out for Mount Vernon,
whence he would go direct to Will's Creek. His mother cried a little
after he was gone, so Dorothy told me, but she was proud of her boy, as
she had good cause to be, and appeared before the world with smiling
face. The week which followed flew by like a dream. I took my lesson
with the foils morning and evening, and soon began to make some progress
in the art. As much time as Dorothy would permit, I spent with her, and
in one of our talks she told me that she had drawn from her mother by
much questioning the story of my father's marriage and of the quarrel
which followed.

"When I heard," she concluded, "how Riverview might have been yours but
for that unhappy dispute,"--so Mrs. Stewart had not told the whole truth,
and I smiled grimly to myself,--"I saw how unjustly and harshly we had
always used you, and I made up my mind to be very good to you when next
we met, as some slight recompense."

"And is it for that only you are kind to me, Dorothy?" I asked. "Is it
not a little for my own sake?"

"Hoity-toity," she cried, "an you try me too far, I shall withdraw my
favor altogether, sir. My cheeks burn still when I think what might have
happened at the ball the other night, when you so far forgot yourself as
to grab at me like a wild Indian. 'Twas well I had my wits about me."

"But, indeed, Dorothy," I protested, "'twas all your fault. You had
plagued me beyond endurance."

"I fear you are a very bold young man," she answered pensively, and when
I would have proved the truth of her assertion, sent me packing.

So the week passed, the day came when we were to leave Williamsburg, and
at six o'clock one cool October morning, the great coach of the
Washingtons rolled westward down the sandy street, the maples casting
long shadows across the road. And on the side where Mistress Dorothy sat,
I was riding at the window.




CHAPTER VIII

A RIDE TO WILLIAMSBURG


I was received civilly enough at Riverview, and soon determined to remain
there until Major Washington returned from the west. My aunt treated me
with great consideration, doubtless because she feared to anger me, and I
soon fell into the routine of the estate. My cousin James, a roystering
boy of fourteen, was not yet old enough to be covetous, and he and I were
soon friends. Dorothy treated me as she had always done, with a hearty
sisterly affection, which gave me much uneasiness, 't was so unlike my
own, and I was at some pains to point out to her that we were not
cousins, nor, indeed, any relation whatsoever. In return for which she
merely laughed at me.

By great good fortune, I found among the overseers on my aunt's estate a
man who had been a soldier of fortune in the Old World until some
escapade had driven him to seek safety in the colonies, and with my
aunt's permission, I secured him to teach me what he knew of the practice
of arms, a tutelage which he entered upon with fine enthusiasm. He was
called Captain Paul on the plantation,--a little, wiry man, with fierce
mustaches and flashing eyes, greatly feared by the negroes, though he
always treated them kindly enough, so far as I could see. He claimed to
be an Englishman,--certainly he spoke the language as well as any I ever
heard,--but his dark eyes and swarthy skin bespoke the Spaniard or
Italian, and his quickness with the foils the French. A strain of all
these bloods I think he must have had, but of his family he would tell me
nothing, nor of the trouble which had brought him over-sea. But of his
feats of arms he loved to speak,--and they were worth the telling. He had
been with Plelo's heroic little band of Frenchmen before Dantzic, where a
hundred deeds of valor were performed every day, and with Broglie before
Parma, where he had witnessed the rout of the Austrians. For hours
together I made him recount to me the story of his campaigns, and when he
grew weary of talking and I of listening, we had a round with the rapier,
or a bout with the sword on horseback, and as the weeks passed, I found I
was gaining some small proficiency. He drilled me, too, in another
exercise which he thought most important, that of shooting from horseback
with the pistol.

"'T is an accomplishment which has saved my life a score of times," he
would say, "and of more value in a charge than any swordsmanship. A man
must be a swordsman to defend his honor, and a good shot with the pistol
to defend his life. Accomplished in both, he is armed cap-a-pie against
the world. The pistol has its rules as well as the sword. For instance,--

"'When you charge an adversary, always compel him to fire first, for the
one who fires first rarely hits his mark.

"'At the instant you see him about to fire, make your horse rear. This
will throw your horse before you as a shield, and if the aim is true, 't
will be your horse that is hit and not yourself. The life of a horse is
valuable, but that of a man is more so.

"If your horse has not been hit, or is not badly hurt, you have your
adversary at your mercy, and can either kill him or take him prisoner, as
you may choose. If he be well mounted, and well accoutred, it is usually
wisest to take him prisoner.

"'If your horse has been hit mortally, take care that in falling you get
clear of him by holding your leg well out and so alighting on your feet.
You can easily recover in time to pistol your adversary as he passes.

"'Above everything, learn to aim quickly, with both eyes open, the arm
slightly bent, the pistol no higher than the breast. When the arm is
fully extended, the tension causes it to tremble and so destroys the aim,
and the man who cannot hit the mark without sighting along the barrel is
usually dead before he can pull the trigger.'"

These and many other things he told me, and that I threw myself with
eagerness into the lessons I need hardly say, though I never acquired his
proficiency with either pistol or rapier. For I have seen him bring down
a hawk upon the wing, or throwing his finger-ring high into the air, pass
his rapier neatly through it as it shot down past him. Another trick of
his do I remember,--une, deux, trois, and a turn of the wrist in
flanconade,--which seldom failed to tear my sword from my hand, so
quickly and irresistibly did he perform it. What his lot has been I do
not know, for when the king's troops came to Virginia, he was seized with
a strange restlessness and resigned from my aunt's service, going I know
not whither; but if he be alive, there is a place at my board and a
corner of my chimney for him, where he would be more than welcome.

In the mean time, not a word had been received from Major Washington--we
called him major now, deeming that he had well earned the title--since
he had plunged into the wilderness at Will's Creek in mid-November,
accompanied only by Christopher Gist as guide, John Davidson and Jacob
Van Braam as interpreters, and four woodsmen, Barnaby Currin, John
M'Quire, Henry Steward, and William Jenkins, as servants. November and
December passed, and Christmas was at hand. There had been great
preparation for it at Riverview, for we of Virginia loved the holiday the
more because the Puritans detested it, and all the smaller gentry of the
county was gathered at the house, where there were feasting and dancing
and much merry-making. One incident of it do I remember most
distinctly,--that having, with consummate generalship, cornered Mistress
Dorothy under a sprig of mistletoe, I suddenly found myself utterly
bereft of the courage to carry the matter to a conclusion, and allowed
her to escape unkissed, for which she laughed at me most unmercifully
once the danger was passed, though she had feigned the utmost indignation
while the assault threatened. So the holidays went and New Year's came.

It was the thirteenth of January, and in the dusk of the evening I was
riding back to the house as usual after my bout with Captain Paul, when I
heard far up the road behind me the beat of horse's hoofs. Instinctively
I knew it was Major Washington, and I drew rein and watched the rider
swinging toward me. In a moment he was at my side, and we exchanged a
warm handclasp from saddle to saddle.

"I am on my way to Riverview," he said, as we again urged our horses
forward. "I hope to stay there the night and start at daybreak for
Williamsburg to make my report to the governor. Do you care to accompany
me, Mr. Stewart?"

"Do you need to ask?" I cried. "And what was the outcome of your
mission, sir?"

"There will be war," he said, and his face darkened. "It is as I
foresaw. The French are impudent, and claim the land belongs to them and
not to us."

Neither of us spoke again, but I confess I was far from sharing the gloom
of my companion. Had I not determined to be a soldier, and how was a
soldier to find employment, but in war? I looked at him narrowly as we
rode, and saw that he was thinner than when he had left us, and that his
face was browned by much exposure.

Right heartily was he welcomed to Riverview, and when dinner had been
served and ended, nothing would do but that he should sit down among us
and tell us the story of his mission. He could scarce have failed to draw
inspiration from such an audience, for Dorothy's eyes were sparkling, and
I was fairly trembling with excitement. Would that I could tell the story
as he told it, but that were impossible.

He and his little party had gone from Will's Creek to the forks of the
Ohio, through the untrodden wilderness and across swollen streams,
struggling on over the threatening mountains and fighting their way
through the gloomy and unbroken forest, and thence down the river to the
Indian village of Logstown. There he had parleyed with the Indians for
near a week before he could persuade the Half King and three of his
tribesmen to accompany him as guides. Buffeted by unceasing storms, they
toiled on to Venango, where there was an English trading-house, which the
French had seized and converted into a military post. Chabert de Joncaire
commanded, and received the party most civilly. Major Washington was
banqueted that evening by the officers of the post, and as the wine
flowed freely, the French forgot their prudence, and declared
unreservedly that they intended keeping possession of the Ohio, whether
the English liked it or not. Joncaire, however, asserted that he could
not receive Dinwiddie's letter, and referred Major Washington to his
superior officer at Fort le Boeuf. So, leaving Venango, for four days
more the party struggled northward. The narrow traders' path had been
quite blotted out, and the forest was piled waist-deep with snow. At
last, when it seemed that human endurance could win no further, they
sighted the squared chestnut walls of Fort le Boeuf.

The commander here, Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, also received them well,
and to him Major Washington delivered his letter from Governor Dinwiddie,
asking by what right the French had crossed the Lakes and invaded British
territory, and demanding their immediate withdrawal. Saint-Pierre was
three days preparing his answer, which he intrusted to Major Washington,
and at the end of that time the latter, with great difficulty persuading
his Indians to accompany him, started back to Virginia. They reached
Venango on Christmas Day. Here their horses gave out, and he and Gist
pushed forward alone on foot, leaving the others to follow as best they
might. A French Indian fired at them from ambush, but missed his mark,
and to escape pursuit by his tribesmen, they walked steadily forward for
a day and a night, until they reached the Allegheny. They tried to make
the crossing on a raft, but were caught in the drifting ice and nearly
drowned before they gained an island in the middle of the river. Here
they remained all night, foodless and well-nigh frozen, and in the
morning, finding the ice set, crossed in safety to the shore. Once
across, they reached the house of a man named Fraser, on the
Monongahela,--a house they were to see again, but under far different
circumstances,--and leaving there on the first day of January, they made
their way back to the settlements without adventure. Major Washington had
reached Mount Vernon that afternoon, and after stopping to see his
mother, had ridden on to Riverview.

Long before the recital ended, I was out of my chair and pacing up and
down the room, and Dorothy clapped her hands with joy when that perilous
passage of the Allegheny had been accomplished.

"So you think there will be war?" I asked. "But you do not know what M.
de Saint-Pierre has written to the governor."

"I can guess," he answered, with a smile. "Yes, there will be war."

"And if there is?" I cried, all my eagerness in my face.

"And if there is, Mr. Stewart," he said calmly, but with a deep light in
his eyes, "depend upon it, you shall go with me."

I wrung his hand madly. I could have embraced him. Dorothy laughed at my
enthusiasm, but with a trace of tears in her eyes, or so I fancied.

Well, we were finally abed, and up betimes in the morning. Our horses
were brought round from the stable, and our bags swung up behind the
saddles. I had tried in vain, all the morning, to corner Dorothy so
that I might say good-by with no one looking on, but the minx had
eluded me, and I had to be content with a mere handclasp on the steps
before the others. But as we rode away and I looked back for a last
sight of her, she waved her hands to me and blew me a kiss from her
fingers. So my heart was warm within me as we pushed on through the
dark aisles of the forest.

The roads were heavy with mud and melting snow, for the weather had
turned warm, and it was not until mid-afternoon that we reached
Fredericksburg. We stopped there an hour to feed and wind our horses, and
then pressed on to the country seat of Mr. Philip Clayton, below Port
Royal, on the Rappahannock. Major Washington had met Mr. Clayton at
Williamsburg, and he welcomed us most kindly. By the evening of the
second day we had reached King William Court House, where we found a very
good inn, and the next day, just as evening came, we clattered into
Williamsburg, very tired and very dirty. But without drawing rein, Major
Washington rode straight to the governor's house, threw his bridle to a
negro, and ordered a footman to announce him at once to his master.

"You are to come with me, Mr. Stewart," he said, seeing that I hesitated.
"'T will be a good time to present you to his Excellency," and we walked
together up the wide steps which led to the veranda.

Even as we reached the top, the door at the end of the hall was thrown
violently open, and Governor Dinwiddie stumbled toward us, his face red
with excitement. He had evidently just risen from table, for he carried a
napkin in his hand, and there were traces of food on his expansive
waistcoat, for he was anything but a dainty feeder. His uncertain gait
showed that he still suffered from the effects of a recent attack of
paralysis.

"By God, Major Washington," he cried, "but I'm glad to see you! I'd begun
to think the French or the Indians had gobbled you up. So you've got
back, sir? And did you see the French?"

"I saw the French, your Excellency," answered Washington, taking his
outstretched hand. "I delivered your message, and brought one in reply.
But first let me present my friend, Mr. Thomas Stewart, who is a neighbor
of mine at Mount Vernon and a man of spirit."

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Stewart," said Dinwiddie, and he gave me his hand
for an instant. "We may have need erelong of men of spirit."

"I trust so, certainly, your Excellency," I cried, and bowed before him.

Dinwiddie looked at me for an instant with a smile.

"Come, gentlemen," he said, "you have been riding all day, I dare say,
and must have some refreshment," but Washington placed a hand on his arm
as he turned to give an order to one of the waiting negroes.

"Not until I have made my report, Governor Dinwiddie," he said.

Dinwiddie turned back to him.

"You're a man after my own heart, Major Washington!" he cried. "Come into
my office, both of you, for, in truth, I am dying of impatience to hear
of the journey," and he led the way into a spacious room, where there was
a great table littered with papers, a dozen chairs, but little other
furniture. The candles were brought, and Dinwiddie dropped into a deep
chair, motioning Washington and myself to sit down opposite him. "Now,
major," he cried, "let us have your story."

So Washington told again of the trip over the mountains and through the
forests, Dinwiddie interrupting from time to time with an exclamation of
wonder or approbation.

"Here is the message from M. de Saint-Pierre," concluded Washington,
drawing a sealed packet from an inner pocket. "'T is somewhat stained by
water, but I trust still legible."

Dinwiddie took it with nervous fingers, glanced at the superscription,
tore it open, and ran his eyes rapidly over the contents. My hands were
trembling, for I realized that on this note hung the issue of war or
peace for America. He read it through a second time more slowly, then
folded it very calmly and laid it down before him on the table. My heart
sank within me,--it was peace, then, and there would be no employment for
my sword. I had been wasting my time with Captain Paul. But when
Dinwiddie raised his eyes, I saw they were agleam.

"M. de Saint-Pierre writes," he said, "that he cannot discuss the
question of territory, since that is quite without his province, but will
send my message to the Marquis Duquesne, in command of the French armies
in America, at Quebec, and will await his orders. He adds that, in the
mean time, he will remain at his post, as his general has commanded."

We were all upon our feet. I drew a deep breath, and saw that
Washington's hand was trembling on his sword-hilt.

"Since he will not leave of his own accord," cried Dinwiddie, his
calmness slipping from him in an instant, "there remains only one thing
to be done,--he must be made to leave, and not a French uniform must be
left in the Ohio valley! Major Washington, I offer you the senior
majorship of the regiment which will march against him."

"And I accept, sir!" cried Washington, moved as I had seldom seen him.
"May I ask your Excellency's permission to appoint Mr. Stewart here one
of my ensigns?"

"Certainly," said the governor heartily. "From what I have seen of Mr.
Stewart, I should conclude that nothing could be better;" and when I
tried to stammer my thanks, he waved his hand to me kindly and rang for
wine. "Let us drink," he said, as he filled the glasses, "to the success
of our arms and the establishment of his Majesty's dominion on the Ohio."




CHAPTER IX

MY FIRST TASTE OF WARFARE


Whatever defects Dinwiddie may have had, indecision was certainly not one
of them, and the very next day the machinery was set in motion for the
advance against the French. Colonel Joshua Fry was selected to head the
expedition, and Colonel Washington made second in command. Colonel Fry at
one time taught mathematics at William and Mary, but found the routine of
the class-room too humdrum, and so sought a more exciting life. He had
found it along the borders of the frontier, and in 1750 was made colonel
of militia and member of the governor's council. Two years later, he was
sent to Logstown to treat with the Indians, and made a map of the colony.
He knew the frontier as well as any white man, and because of this was
chosen our commander.

Not a moment was to be lost, for Colonel Washington, while at Fort le
Boeuf, had observed the great preparations made by the French to
descend the Allegheny in the spring and take possession of the Ohio
valley, but we hoped to forestall them. The triangle between the forks
of the Ohio was admirably adapted for fortification, and it was
proposed to throw up a fort there so that the French would get a warm
reception when their canoes came floating down the river, and be forced
to retreat to the Lakes. Dinwiddie's energy was wide-felt, and the
whole colony was soon astir.

He convened the House of Burgesses, laid Colonel Washington's report
before it, and secured a grant of £10,000 for purposes of defense; he
urged the governors of the other colonies, from the Carolinas north to
Jersey, to send reinforcements at once to Will's Creek, whence the start
was to be made; he sent messengers with presents to the Ohio Indians,
pressing them to take up the hatchet against the French, and authorized
the enlistment of three hundred men. William Trent, an Indian trader, and
brother-in-law of Colonel George Croghan, was commissioned to raise a
company of a hundred men from among the backwoodsmen along the frontier,
and started at once for the Ohio country to get his men together and
begin work on the fort, the main body to follow so soon as it could be
properly equipped.

Long before this I had secured my uniform and accoutrements,--which my
three shillings a day were far from paying for,--and was kept busy
superintending the storage of wagons or drilling under Captain Adam
Stephen, in whose company I was, at Alexandria. The men were for the most
part poor whites, who had enlisted because they could earn their bread no
other way, and promised to make but indifferent soldiers. We were
provided with ten cannon, all four-pounders, which had been presented by
the king to Virginia, and eighty barrels of powder, together with
small-arms, thirty tents, and six months' provision of flour, pork, and
beef. These were forwarded to Will's Creek as rapidly as possible, but at
the best it was slow work, and April was in sight before the expedition
was ready to move. During near all of this time, Colonel Washington was
virtually in command, for Colonel Fry was taken with a fever, which kept
him for the most part to his bed. There seemed no prospect of his
improvement, so he ordered the expedition to advance without him, he to
follow so soon as he could sit a horse. That time was never to come, for
he died at Will's Creek on the last day of May.

So at last the advance commenced, and from daylight to sunset we fought
our way through the forest. It rained almost incessantly, and I admit the
work was more severe than I had ever done, for the bridle-paths were too
narrow to permit the passage of the guns and wagons, and a way had to be
cut for them; yet all the men were in good spirits, animated by the
example of Colonel Washington and the other officers. Those I came to
know best were of Captain Stephen's company, and a braver, merrier set of
men it has never been my privilege to meet. We were drawn from all the
quarters of the globe. There was Lieutenant William Poison, a Scot, who
had been concerned in the rebellion of '45, and so found it imperative to
come to Virginia to spend the remainder of his days, though at the first
scent of battle he was in arms again. There was Ensign William,
Chevalier de Peyronie, a French Protestant, driven from his home much as
the Fontaine family, and who had settled in Virginia. There was
Lieutenant Thomas Waggoner, whom I was to know so well a year later. And
above all, there was Ensign Carolus Gustavus de Spiltdorph, a quiet,
unassuming fellow, but brave as a lion, who lies to-day in an unmarked
grave on the bank of the Monongahela. I can see him yet, with his blue
eyes and blond beard, sitting behind a cloud of smoke in one corner of
the tent, listening to our wild talk with a queer gleam in his eyes, and
putting in a word of dry sarcasm now and then. For when the day's march
was done, those of us who were not on duty gathered in our tent and
talked of the time when we should meet the French. And Peyronie, because,
though a Frenchman, he had suffered most at their hands, was the most
bloodthirsty of us all.

Then the first blow fell. It was the night of the twentieth of April, and
our force had halted near Colonel Cresap's house, sixteen miles from
Will's Creek. I was in charge of the sentries to the west of the camp.
The weather had been cold and threatening, with a dash of rain now and
then, and we had made only five miles that day, the guns and wagons
miring in the muddy road, which for the most part was through a marsh. As
evening came, the rain had set in steadily, and the sentries protected
themselves as best they could behind the trees or under hastily
constructed shelters. I had just made my first round and found all well,
when I heard a sentry near by challenge sharply.

"What is it?" I cried, hastening to him, and then I saw that he had
stopped a horseman. The horse was breathing in short, uncertain gasps, as
though near winded.

"A courier from the Ohio, so he says, sir," answered the sentry.

"With an urgent message for Colonel Washington," added the man on
horseback.

"Very well," I said, "come with me," and catching the horse by the
bridle, I started toward the commander's tent, in which a light was still
burning. A word to the sentry before it brought Colonel Washington
himself to the door, and he signed for us to enter. The courier slipped
from his horse, and would have fallen, had I not caught him and placed
him on his feet.

"'T is the first time I have left the saddle for two days," he gasped,
and I helped him into the tent, where he dropped upon a stool. Washington
poured out a glass of brandy and handed it to him. He swallowed it at a
gulp, and it gave him back a little of his strength.

"I bring bad news, Colonel Washington," he said. "Lieutenant Ward and his
whole command were captured by the French on the seventeenth, and the
fort at the forks of the Ohio is in their hands."

I turned cold under the blow, but Washington did not move a muscle, only
his mouth seemed to tighten at the corners.

"How did it happen?" he asked.

"Captain Trent and his men arrived at the Ohio on the tenth of April,"
said the courier, "and we set to work at once to throw up the fort. We
made good progress, but on the morning of the seventeenth, while Captain
Trent and thirty of the men were absent, leaving Lieutenant Ward in
command, the river was suddenly covered with canoes crowded with French
and Indians. There were at least eight hundred of them, and they had a
dozen pieces of artillery. We had no choice but to surrender."

"On what terms?" questioned Washington quickly.

"That we march out with the honors of war and return to Virginia."

"And this was done?"

"Yes, this was done. Lieutenant Ward and his men will join you in a
day or two."

"You have done well," said Washington warmly. "I am sure Lieutenant Ward
could have done naught else under the circumstances. Forty men are not
expected to resist eight hundred, and I shall see that the occurrence is
properly represented to the governor. Lieutenant Stewart, will you see
that a meal and a good bed be provided? Good night, gentlemen."

We saluted and left the tent, and I led him over to our company quarters,
where the best we had was placed before him. Other officers, who had got
wind of his arrival, dropped in, and he told again the story of the
meeting with the enemy. It was certain that there were from six to eight
hundred French and a great number of Indians before us, while we were
barely three hundred, and as I returned to my post, I wondered if
Colonel Washington would dare press on to face such odds. The answer came
in the morning, when the order was given to march as usual. Two days
later, we had reached Will's Creek, where we found Lieutenant Ward and
his men awaiting us. He stated that there were not less than a thousand
French at the forks of the Ohio. It was sheer folly to advance with our
petty force in face of odds so overwhelming, and a council of the
officers was called by Colonel Washington to determine what course to
follow. It was decided that we advance as far as Red Stone Creek, on the
Monongahela, thirty-seven miles this side the Forks, and there erect a
fortification and await fresh orders. Stores had already been built at
Red Stone for our munitions, and from there our great guns could be sent
by water so soon as we were ready to attack the French. In conclusion, it
was judged that it were better to occupy our men in cutting a road
through the wilderness than that they should be allowed to waste their
time in idleness and dissipation.

Captain Trent and the thirty men who were with him, hearing from the
Indians of the disaster which had overtaken their companions, marched
back to meet us, and joined us the next day. Trent himself met cold
welcome, for his absence from the fort at the time of the attack was held
to be most culpable. Dinwiddie was so enraged, when he learned of it,
that he ordered Trent court-martialed forthwith, but this was never done.
His backwoodsmen were wild and reckless fellows, incapable of
discipline, and soon took themselves off to the settlements, while we
toiled on westward through the now unbroken forest. Our advance to Will's
Creek had been difficult enough, but it was nothing to the task which now
confronted us, for the country grew more rough and broken, and there was
not the semblance of a road. We were a week in making twenty miles, and
accomplished that only by labor well-nigh superhuman.

The story of one day was the story of all the others. Obstacles
confronted us at every step, but we struggled forward, dragging the
wagons ourselves when the horses gave out, as they soon did, and finally,
toward the end of May, we won through to a pleasant valley named Great
Meadows, dominated by a mountain called Laurel Hill. Here there was
abundant forage, and as the horses could go no further, Colonel
Washington ordered a halt, and determined to await the promised
reinforcements. A few days later, a company of regulars under Captain
Mackay joined us, together with near a hundred men of the regiment who
had remained behind with Colonel Fry, raising our numbers to four hundred
men, though many were wasted with fever and dysentery.

Those of us who were able set to work throwing up a breastwork of logs,
under the direction of Captain Robert Stobo, and at the end of three days
had completed an inclosure a hundred feet square, with a rude cabin in
the centre to hold our munitions and supplies.

There had been many alarms that the French were marching against us, but
all of them had proved untrue, so when, some days after, the report
spread through the camp again that the enemy were near, I paid little
heed to it, and went to sleep as usual. How long I slept, I do not know,
but I was awakened by some one shaking me by the shoulder.

"Get up at once, lieutenant, and report at headquarters," said a voice I
recognized as Waggoner's, and as I sat upright with a jerk, he passed on
to awake another sleeper. I was out of bed in an instant, and threw on my
clothing with nervous haste. I could hear a storm raging, and when I
stepped outside the tent, I was almost blinded by the rain, driven in
great sheets before the wind. I fought my way against it to Washington's
tent, where I found Captain Stephen and some thirty men, and others
coming up every moment.

"What is it?" I asked of Waggoner, who had got back to headquarters
before me, but he shook his head to show that he knew no more than I.

A moment later, the flap of the tent was raised, and Colonel Washington
appeared, wrapped in his cloak as though for a journey, and followed by
an Indian, who, I learned afterwards, was none other than the Half King.
He spoke a few words to Captain Stephen, and the order was given to form
in double rank and march, Colonel Washington himself leading the
expedition, which numbered all told some forty men.

I shall never forget that midnight march through the forest, with the
rain falling in a deluge through the dripping trees, the lightning
flashing and the thunder rolling. We stumbled along upon each other's
heels, falling over logs or underbrush, the wet branches switching our
faces raw and soaking us through and through. It seemed to me that we
must have covered fifteen or twenty miles, at least, when the first gray
of the morning brightened the horizon and a halt was called, but really
we had come little more than five. Here it was found that seven men had
been lost upon the way, and that our powder was so wet that most of it
was useless, to many of us the charge in our firelocks being all that
remained serviceable. After an hour's halt, the order came again to
march, with caution to move warily. Scouts were thrown out ahead, and
soon came back with tidings that the enemy was hard by.

My hands were trembling with excitement as we crept forward to the edge
of a rocky hollow, and as we looked down the slope, we could see the
French below. There were thirty of them or more, and they were getting
breakfast, their arms stacked beside them. Almost at the same instant
their sentries saw us and gave the alarm.

"Follow me, men!" cried Washington, and he started down the slope, we
after him. As we went, the French sprang to arms and gave us a volley,
but it was badly aimed in their excitement and so did little damage. As
we closed in on them we returned their fire, and some eight or nine fell,
while the others, thinking doubtless that they had been surprised by a
large force, threw down their guns and held up their hands in token of
surrender. Captain Stephen had been slightly wounded, but charged on
down the slope ahead of us, and took prisoner a young officer, who
refused to surrender, but kept on fighting until his sword was knocked
from his hand. Then he began to tear his hair and curse in French,
pointing now and again to another officer who lay among the dead. He grew
so violent that he attracted Colonel Washington's attention.

"Come here a moment, Lieutenant Peyronie," he called. "You understand
French. What is this fellow saying?"

Peyronie exchanged a few words with the prisoner, who stooped, drew a
paper from the inner pocket of the dead officer's coat, and held it
toward us. Peyronie took it, glanced over it with grave countenance, and
turned to Colonel Washington.

"This man is Ensign Marie Drouillon, sir," he said. "The party was in
command of Ensign Coulon de Jumonville, whom you see lying dead there. M.
Drouillon claims that the party did not come against us as spies, or for
the purpose of fighting, but simply to bring a message to you from M. de
Contrecoeur, who is in command of the fort at the forks of the Ohio,
which, it seems, has been named Fort Duquesne. This is the message," and
he held out the paper to Washington.

"'Tis in French," said the latter, glancing over it. "What does it say?"

"It warns you to return to the settlements," answered Peyronie, "on the
pretext that all the land this side the mountains belongs to France."

Here the prisoner, who was evidently laboring under great excitement,
broke in, and said something rapidly in a loud voice, which made Peyronie
flush, and drew nods and cries of approbation from the other prisoners.

"What does he say?" asked Washington, seeing that Peyronie hesitated.

"He says, sir," answered Peyronie, with evident reluctance, "that M. de
Jumonville came in the character of an ambassador and has been
assassinated."

Washington flushed hotly and his eyes grew dark.

"Ask M. Drouillon," he said, "why an ambassador thought it necessary to
bring with him a guard of thirty men?"

Peyronie put the question, but Drouillon did not reply.

"Ask him also," continued Washington, "why he remained concealed near my
troops for three days, instead of coming directly to me as an ambassador
should have done?"

Again Peyronie put the question, and again there was no answer.

"Tell him," said Washington sternly, "that I see through his trick,--that
I comprehend it thoroughly. M. Jumonville counted on using his pretext of
ambassador to spy upon my camp, and to avert an attack in case he was
discovered. Well, he produced his message too late. He has behaved as an
enemy, and has been treated as such. That he is dead is wholly his own
fault. Had he chosen the part of an ambassador instead of that of a spy,
this would not have happened."

He turned away, and apparently dismissed the matter from his mind, but
that it troubled him long afterward I am quite certain, though in the
whole affair no particle of blame attached to him. The French made a
great outcry about it, but I have never heard that any of them ever
answered the questions which were put to M. Drouillon. The truth of the
matter is, that they were only too eager for some pretext upon which to
base the assertion that it was the English who began hostilities, and
this flimsy excuse was the best they could invent. But that little brush
under the trees on that windy May morning was to have momentous
consequences, for it was the beginning of the struggle which drenched the
continent in blood.




CHAPTER X

THE FRENCH SCORE FIRST


We marched back to the camp at Great Meadows with our prisoners,--some
twenty in all,--much elated at our success, but near dead with fatigue.
Lieutenant Spiltdorph was selected to escort them to Virginia, and set
off with them toward noon, together with twenty men, cursing the ill-luck
which deprived him of the opportunity to make the remainder of the
campaign with us.

For that the French would march against us in force was well-nigh
certain, once they learned of Jumonville's defeat, of which the Indians
would soon inform them, and that we should be outnumbered three or four
to one seemed inevitable. But no one thought of retreat, our commander, I
am sure, least of all. He seemed everywhere at once, heartening the men,
inspecting equipment, overseeing the preparations for defense. The only
hostile element in the camp was the company of regulars under Captain
Mackay, who refused to assist in any of the work, asserting that they
were employed only to fight. Captain Mackay, too, holding his commission
from the king, claimed to outrank Colonel Washington, and yielded him but
a reluctant and sullen obedience.

Christopher Gist, who had just come from Will's Creek with tidings of
Colonel Fry's death, was of the opinion that a much more effective
resistance might be made at his plantation, twelve miles further on,
where there were some strong log buildings and a ground, so he claimed,
admirably suited for intrenchment. Accordingly, we set out for there,
arriving after a fatiguing journey. The horses were in worse case than
ever, and only two miserable teams and a few tottering pack-horses
remained capable of working. Finally, on the twenty-ninth of June, the
Half King, who had been our faithful friend throughout, brought us word
that seven hundred French and three or four hundred Indians had marched
from Fort Duquesne against us. As the news spread through the camp, the
officers left the intrenchments upon which they had been at work, and
gathered to discuss the news. There a message from Colonel Washington
summoned us to a conference at Gist's cabin.

"Gentlemen," he said, when we had all assembled, "I need not tell you
that the situation is most critical. We can scarce hope to successfully
oppose an enemy who outnumbers us three to one, and yet 't is impossible
to retreat without abandoning all our baggage and munitions, since we
have no means of transport."

He fell silent for a moment, and no one spoke. I saw that the worry of
the last few weeks had left its mark upon him, for there was a line
between his eyes which I had never seen before, but which never left him
afterward.

"What I propose," he said at last, "is to fall back to Great Meadows. I
believe it to be better fitted for defense than this place, which is
commanded by half a dozen hills, and where we could not hope to hold out
against artillery fire. At Great Meadows we can strengthen our
intrenchment in the middle of the plain, and the French will hardly dare
attempt to carry it by assault, since they must advance without cover for
two hundred yards or more. It is a charming field for an encounter. Has
any one a better plan?"

Mackay was the first to speak.

"'Tis better to lose our baggage than to lose both it and our lives," he
said. "The French may not care to risk an assault, but they have only to
sit down about the work for a day or two to starve us out."

"That is true," answered Washington, and his face was very grave; "yet
reinforcements cannot be far distant. Two independent companies from New
York reached Annapolis a fortnight since, and are doubtless being hurried
forward. Other companies have arrived in the colony, and must be near at
hand. Besides," he added, in a firmer tone, "I cannot consent to return
to Virginia without striking at least one blow at the French, else this
expedition might just as well have never been begun."

"That is the point!" cried Stephen. "Let us not run away until we see
something to run from. Your plan is the best possible under the
circumstances, Colonel Washington."

We all of us echoed this opinion, and after thanking us warmly, our
commander bade us make ready at once for the return to Great Meadows. The
baggage was done into packs as large as a man could carry; a force was
told off to drag the swivels; the officers added their horses to the
train, and prepared to carry packs just as the men did. Colonel
Washington left half of his personal baggage behind, paying some soldiers
four pistoles to carry the remainder. So at daybreak we set out, the
sufferings of our men being greatly aggravated by the conduct of the
regulars, who refused to carry a pound of baggage or place a hand upon
the ropes by which we dragged our guns after us.

The miseries of that day I hope never to see repeated. Men dropped
senseless on the road, or fell beneath the trees, unable to go further.
The main body of the troops struggled on, leaving these stragglers to
follow when they could, and on the morning of the next day we reached
Great Meadows, weak, trembling, and exhausted. But even here there was no
rest for us, for it was necessary to strengthen our defenses against the
attack which could not be long deferred. The breastwork seemed all too
weak now we knew the force which would be brought against it, and we
started to dig a trench around it, but so feeble were the men that it was
only half completed. Even at the best, our condition was little short of
desperate. Much of our ammunition had been ruined, and our supply of
provisions was near gone. We had been without bread for above a week,
and while we had plenty of cattle for beef, we had no salt with which to
cure the meat, and the hot summer sun soon made it unfit to eat.

Yet, with all this, there was little murmuring, the example of our
commander encouraging us all. At our council in our tent that evening,
Peyronie, with invincible good humor, declared that no man could complain
so long as the tobacco lasted, and in a cloud of blue-gray smoke, we gave
our hastily constructed fort the suggestive name of "Fort Necessity."

The morning of the third of July was spent by us in overhauling the
firelocks and making the last dispositions of our men. Colonel Washington
inspected personally the whole line, and saw that no detail was
overlooked. He had not slept for two nights, but seemed indefatigable,
and even the regulars cheered him as he passed along the breastwork. But
at last the inspection was finished and we settled down to wait.

Peyronie and myself had been stationed at the northwest corner of the
fort with thirty men, and just before noon, from far away in the forest,
came the sound of a single musket shot. We waited in suspense for what
might follow, and in a moment a sentry came running from the wood with
one arm swinging useless by his side.

"They have come!" he cried, as he tumbled over the breastwork. "They will
be here in a moment," and even as he spoke, the edge of the forest was
filled with French and Indians, and a lively fire was opened against us,
but the range was so great that the bullets did no damage. The drums beat
the alarm, and expecting a general attack, we were formed in column
before the intrenchment. But the enemy had no stomach for that kind of
work, and veered off to the south, where they occupied two little hills,
whence they could enfilade a portion of our position. We answered their
fire as best we could, but it was cruel, disheartening work.

"Do you call this war?" asked Peyronie impatiently, after an hour of this
gunnery. "In faith, had I thought 'twould be like this, I had been less
eager to enlist. Why don't the cowards try an assault?"

"Yes, why don't they?" and I looked gloomily at the wall of trees from
which jets of smoke and flame puffed incessantly.

"'Tis not the kind of fighting I've been used to," cried Peyronie. "In
Europe we fight on open ground, where the best man wins; we do not skulk
behind the trees and through the underbrush. I've a good notion to try a
sally. What say you, Stewart?"

"Here comes Colonel Washington," I answered. "Let us ask him." But he
shook his head when we proposed it to him.

"'Twould be madness," he said. "They are three times our number, and
would pick us all off before we could reach the trees. No, the best we
can do is to remain behind our breastwork. It seems a mean kind of
warfare, I admit, but 'tis a kind we must get accustomed to, if we are
to fight the French and Indians;" and he walked on along his rounds,
speaking a word of encouragement here and there, and seemingly quite
unconscious of the bullets which whistled about him.

Yet the breastwork did not protect us wholly, for now and then a man
would throw up his arms and fall with a single shrill cry, or roll over
in the mud of the trench, cursing horribly, with a bullet in him
somewhere. Doctor Craik, who had enlisted as lieutenant, was soon
compelled to lay aside his gun and do what he could to relieve their
suffering. Not for a moment during the afternoon did the enemy's fire
slacken, and the strain began to tell upon our men. The pieces grew foul,
there were only two screw-rods in the camp with which to clean them, and
as the hours passed, our fire grew less and less. The swivels had long
since been abandoned, for the gunners were picked off so soon as they
showed themselves above the breastwork.

There had been mutterings of thunder and dashes of rain all the
afternoon, and now the storm broke in earnest, the rain falling in such
fury as I had never seen. The trenches filled with water, and we tried in
vain to keep dry the powder in our cartouch boxes. Not only was this wet,
but the rain leaked through the magazine we had built in the middle of
the camp, and ruined the ammunition we had stored there. So soon as the
rain slackened, the enemy resumed their fire, but Major Washington
forbade us to reply, since there was scarce a dozen rounds in the fort.
I confess that this species of fighting took the heart out of me, and I
could see no chance of a successful issue.

I was sitting thus, looking gloomily out at the forest in front of me,
and wondering why the fire from there had ceased, when I noticed that
there seemed to be many more rocks and bushes scattered about the plain
than I had ever before observed. The gloom of the evening had fallen, and
I rubbed my eyes and looked again to make sure I was not mistaken. No,
there was no mistake, and I suddenly understood what was about to happen.

"Peyronie," I whispered to my neighbor, who was sitting in the mud,
swearing softly under his mustache, "we are going to have some excitement
presently. The Indians are creeping up to carry us by assault."

"What?" he exclaimed, sitting suddenly upright. "Oh, no such luck!"

"Yes, but they are," I insisted. "Watch those bushes out there. See, they
're moving up toward us."

He rose to his knees and peered keenly out through the gloom.

"Pardieu," he muttered after a moment, "so they are! Well, we shall be
ready for them."

We passed the word around to our men, and startled them into new life.
The muskets were primed sparingly with dry powder, and we waited with
tense nerves for the assault. The fusillade from the hills had been
redoubled, but a terrible and threatening silence hung over the
intrenchment, and doubtless encouraged our assailants to believe that our
ammunition was quite gone. Near and nearer crept the Indians, fifty or
sixty of them at least, and perhaps many more, and we lay still with
bursting pulses and waited. Now the foremost of them was scarce forty
yards away, and suddenly, with a yell, they were all upon their feet and
charging us.

"Tirez, tirez!" shouted Peyronie, forgetting his English in his
excitement, and we sent a volley full into them. It was a warmer
reception than they had counted on, and they wavered for a moment, but
there must have been a Frenchman leading them, for they rallied, and came
on again with a rush. We met them with fixed bayonets, but they
outnumbered us so greatly that we must have given way before them had not
Colonel Washington, hearing the uproar and guessing its meaning, dashed
over at the head of reinforcements and given them another volley. As I
was reloading with feverish haste, I saw an Indian rush at Colonel
Washington with raised tomahawk. Washington raised his pistol, coolly
took aim, and pulled the trigger, but the powder flashed and did not
explode. With the sweat starting from my forehead, I dashed some powder
into the pan of my pistol, jerked it up, and fired. Ah, Captain Paul, how
I blessed your lessons in that moment! for the ball went true, and the
Indian rolled in the mud almost at Washington's feet. They had had
enough, and those who were still alive leaped the trench and disappeared
into the outer darkness.

"They won't try that again," I remarked to Peyronie, who was sitting
against the breastwork. "But what is it, man? Are you wounded?" I cried,
seeing that he was very pale and held both hands to his breast.

"Yes, I am hit here," he answered, and added, as I fell on my knees
beside him and began to tear the clothing from the wound, "but do not
distress yourself, Stewart. I can be attended after the battle is won."

"Nonsense," I said. "You shall be attended at once." He smiled up at me,
and then went suddenly white and fell against my shoulder. I tore away
his shirt, and saw that blood was welling from a wound in the breast. I
propped him against the wall, and ordering one of the men to go for
Doctor Craik, stanched the blood as well as I could. The doctor hastened
to us so soon as he could leave his other wounded, but he shook his head
gravely when he saw Peyronie's injury.

"A bad case," he said. "Clear into the lungs, I think. But I have seen
men recover of worse hurts," he added, seeing how pale I was.

I watched him as he bound up the wound with deft fingers, and then
between us we carried him to the little cabin, which had been converted
from magazine to hospital, and was already crowded from wall to wall. It
was with a sore heart that I left him and returned to the breastwork, for
I had come to love Peyronie dearly. The event was not so serious as I
then feared, for, after a gallant fight for life, he won the battle,
recovered of his wound, and lived to do service in another war.

The repulse of the Indians seemed to have disheartened the enemy, for
their fire slackened until only a shot now and then broke the stillness
of the night. Our condition was desperate as it could well be, yet I
heard no word of surrender. I was sitting listlessly, thinking of
Peyronie's wound, when a whisper ran along the lines that the French were
sending a flag of truce. Sure enough, we could see a man in white uniform
approaching the breastwork, waving a white flag above his head. He was
halted by the sentries while yet some distance off, and Colonel
Washington sent for. He appeared in a moment.

"Where is Lieutenant Peyronie?" he asked. "We will have need of him."

"He is wounded, sir," I answered. "He was shot through the breast during
the assault."

Washington glanced about at the circle of faces.

"Is there any other here who speaks French?" he asked.

There was a moment's silence.

"Why, sir," said Vanbraam at last, "I have managed to pick up the fag
ends of a good many languages during my life, and I can jabber French
a little."

"Very well," and Washington motioned him forward. "Mount the breastwork
and ask this fellow what he wants."

Vanbraam did as he was bid, and there was a moment's high-toned
conversation between him and the Frenchman.

"He says, sir," said Vanbraam, "that he has been sent by his commander,
M. Coulon-Villiers, to propose a parley."

Washington looked at him keenly.

"And he wishes to enter the fort?"

"He says he wishes to see you, sir."

Washington glanced about at the mud-filled trenches, the ragged, weary
men, the haggard faces of the officers, the dead scattered here and there
along the breastwork, and his face grew stern.

"'Tis a trick!" he cried. "He wishes to see how we are situated. Tell him
that we do not care to parley, but are well prepared to defend ourselves
against any force the French can muster."

I gasped at the audacity of the man, and the Frenchman was doubtless no
less astonished. He disappeared into the forest, but half an hour later
again approached the fort. Vanbraam's services as interpreter were called
for a second time, and there was a longer parley between him and the
messenger.

"He proposes," said Vanbraam, when the talk was finished, "that we send
two officers to meet two French officers, for the purpose of agreeing
upon articles of capitulation. M. Coulon-Villiers states that he is
prepared to make many concessions, and he believes this course will be
for the advantage of both parties."

Washington looked around at the officers grouped about him.

"It is clear that we must endeavor to make terms, gentlemen," he said.
"The morning will disclose our plight to the enemy, and it will then be
no longer a question of terms, but of surrender. At present they believe
us capable of defense, hence they talk of concessions. What say you,
gentlemen?"

There was nothing to be said except to agree, and Vanbraam and Captain
Stephen were sent out to confer with the French. They returned in the
course of an hour, bringing with them the articles already signed by
Coulon-Villiers, and awaiting only Colonel Washington's ratification.
Vanbraam read them aloud by the light of a flickering candle, and we
listened in silence until he had finished. They were better than we could
have hoped, providing that we should march out at daybreak with all the
honors of war, drums beating, flags flying, and match lighted for our
cannon; that we should take with us our baggage, be protected from the
Indians, and be permitted to retire unmolested to Virginia, in return for
which we were to release all the prisoners we had taken a few days
before, and as they were already on their way to the colony, should leave
two officers with the French as hostages until the prisoners had been
delivered to them.

There was a moment's silence when Vanbraam had finished reading, and
then, without raising his head, Colonel Washington signed, and threw the
pen far from him. Then he arose and walked slowly to his quarters, and I
saw him no more that night. Captain Mackay insisted also that he must
sign the paper, and, to my intense disgust, wrote his name in above that
of our commander.

There was little sleep for any of us that night, and I almost envied
Peyronie tossing on his blanket, oblivious to what was passing about him.
Vanbraam and Robert Stobo were appointed to accompany the French back to
the Ohio, to remain there as hostages, and we all shook hands with them
before they went away through the darkness toward the French camp.

But the night passed, and at daybreak we abandoned the fort and began the
retreat, carrying our sick and wounded on our backs, since the Indians
had killed all our horses. Most of our baggage was perforce left behind,
and the Indians lost no time in looting it. That done, they pressed
threateningly upon our rear, so that an attack seemed imminent, nor did
the French make any effort to restrain them; but we held firm, and the
Indians finally drew off and returned to the fort, leaving us to cover as
best we might those weary miles over the mountains. By the promise of ten
pistoles, I had secured two men to bear Peyronie between them on a
blanket, but 'twas impossible to treat all the wounded so, and the
fainting men staggered along under their screaming burdens, falling
sometimes, and lying where they fell from sheer exhaustion.

What Colonel Washington's feelings were I could only guess. He strode at
the head of the column, his head bowed on his breast, his heart doubtless
torn by the suffering about him, and saying not a word for hours
together, nor did any venture to approach him. I doubt if ever in his
life he will be called upon to pass through a darker hour than he did on
that morning of the fourth of July, 1754. Through no fault of his, the
power of England on the Ohio had been dealt a staggering blow, and his
pride and ambition crushed into the dust.

What need to tell of that weary march back to the settlements, the
suffering by the way, the sorry reception accorded us, the consternation
caused by the news of French success? At Winchester we met two companies
from North Carolina which had been marching to join us, and these were
ordered to Will's Creek, to establish a post to protect the frontier from
the expected Indian aggression. Captain Mackay and his men remained at
Winchester, while our regiment returned to Alexandria to rest and
recruit. As for me, I was glad enough to put off the harness of war and
make the best of my way back to Riverview, saddened and humbled by this
first experience, which was so different from the warfare of which I had
read and dreamed, with its bright pageantry, its charges and shock of
arms, its feats of single combat. Fate willed that I was yet to see
another, trained on the battlefields of Europe, humbled in the dust by
these foes whom I found so despicable, and the soldiers of the king
taught a lesson they were never to forget.

One word more. Perhaps I have been unjust to Captain Mackay and his men.
Time has done much to soften the bitterness with which their conduct
filled me, and as I look back now across the score of years that lie
between, I can appreciate to some degree their attitude toward our
commander. Certainly it might seem a dangerous thing to intrust an
enterprise of such moment to a youth of twenty-two, with no knowledge of
warfare but that he had gained from books. It is perhaps not wonderful
that veterans should have looked at him askance, and I would not think of
them too harshly. He doubtless made mistakes,--as what man would not
have done?--yet I believe that not even the first captain of the empire
could have snatched victory from odds so desperate.




CHAPTER XI

DREAM DAYS AT RIVERVIEW


In the many summer evenings which followed, I played the part of that
broken soldier, who, as Mr. Goldsmith tells us so delightfully,

"talked the night away,
Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done,
Shouldered his crutch and showed how fields were won."

Alas, I could show not how they were won, but only how they were lost,
and how was one to clothe in romance a battle which had been fought in
the midst of mud and rain, from behind a breastwork, and with scarce a
glimpse of the enemy? But I had a rapt audience of two in James and
Dorothy. They were not critical, and I told the story of Great Meadows
over and over again, a score of times.

A hundred yards from the house, overlooking on one side the willow-draped
waters of Occoquan Inlet, and on the other the broad and placid river, a
seat had been fashioned between two massive oaks, and here, of an
evening, it was our wont to go. Sometimes, by great good fortune, James
did not accompany us, and Dorothy and I would sit there alone together
and watch the shadows deepen across the water. Our talk would falter and
die away before the beauty of the scene, and there would be long
silences, broken only now and then by a half whispered sentence. I had
never known a sweeter time, and even yet, when night is coming on, I love
to steal forth to sit there again and gaze across the water and dream
upon the past.

During the day, I saw but little of the other members of the family, and
was left greatly to my own resources. My aunt was ever busy with the
management of the estate, to every detail of which she gave personal
attention, and which she administered with a thrift and thoroughness I
could not but admire. The worry of incessant business left its mark upon
her. The lines in her face deepened, and the silver in her hair grew more
pronounced, but though she doubtless felt her strength failing, she clung
grimly to the work. I would have offered to assist her but that I knew
she would resent the suggestion, and would believe I made it to gain some
knowledge of the income from the estate, of which I had always been kept
in densest ignorance, and with which, indeed, I troubled myself but
little. I think her old fear of my claiming the place came on her again,
and though she always tried to treat me civilly, the effort in the end
proved too great for her overwrought nerves, as you shall presently hear.

Upon Dorothy fell the duty of looking after the household, and she went
about it cheerfully and willingly. Her mornings were passed in
instructing the servants in their duties and seeing that their work was
properly done. There were visits to the pantry and kitchen, and a long
conference with the cook, so that noon was soon at hand. The afternoon
was spent in the great workroom on the upper floor, into which I ventured
to peep once or twice, only to be bidden to go about my business. But it
was a pleasant sight, and I sometimes gathered courage to steal down the
corridor for a glimpse of it. There sat Dorothy in a dainty gown of
Covent Garden calico, directing half a dozen old negro women, who were
cutting out and sewing together the winter clothing of fearnaught for the
slaves. Two or three girls had been brought in to be taught the mysteries
of needle-craft, and Dorothy turned to them from time to time to watch
their work and direct their rebellious fingers. I would fain have taken a
lesson, too, but when I proposed this one day, representing how great my
need might be when I was over the mountains far away from any woman,
Dorothy informed me sternly, amid the titters of the others, that my
fingers were too big and clumsy to be taught to manage so delicate an
instrument as a needle, and sent me from the room.

Young James had also much to occupy his time. His mother was as yet in
doubt whether he should complete his education at William and Mary, as I
had done, or should be sent to London to acquire the true polish. The boy
greatly favored the latter course, as any boy of spirit would have done,
and his mother would have yielded to him readily, but for the stories she
had heard of the riotous living which prevailed among the young blades in
London, and of which she had had ample confirmation from Parson Scott,
who, I suspect, before coming to his estate at Westwood, had ruffled it
with the best of them. Whether it should be Williamsburg or London, the
boy was required to be kept at his books every morning, and was off every
afternoon to the Dumfries tavern, where there was always a crowd of
ne'er-do-wells, promoting a cock-fight, or a horse race, or eye-gouging
contest. Sometimes, he elected to spend the evening in this company, and
it was then that Dorothy and I were left alone together on the seat
beside the river.

But when Sunday came, there was another story. The great coach was
brought from the stable and polished till it shone again,--indeed, it had
been polished so often and so vigorously that its gilding and paint began
to show the marks of it. The four horses were led out, rubbed down from
nose to heel, and harnessed in their brightest trappings. The driver,
footman, and two outriders donned their liveries, in which they were the
envy of all the other servants, and the coach was driven around to the
front of the house, from which presently emerged Madame Stewart, in a
stately gown of flowered calamanco, her fan and gold pomander in her
hand. Then came Dorothy, her sweet face looking most coquettish under her
Ranelagh mob of gauze, the ribbons crossed beneath her chin and
fluttering half a yard behind. As she tripped down the stops and lifted
her tiffany petticoat ever so little, I could catch a glimpse of the
prettiest pair of ankles in the world in silk-clocked hose, for the
reader can guess without my telling that I was close behind, holding her
kerchief or her fan or her silver étui until she should be safely seated
in the coach. And that once done, the whip cracked, the wheels started,
and I swung myself on horseback and trotted along beside the window, on
Dorothy's side, you may be sure.

So, in great state, we proceeded to the new Quantico church near
Dumfries, a prodigious fine structure of brick, built the year before at
a cost of a hundred thousand weight of tobacco, of which my aunt had
contributed a tenth. The other members of the congregation awaited our
arrival, grouped before the door, and, entering after us, remained
decently standing till we had mounted to the loft and taken our seats, a
show of deference which greatly pleased my aunt. The church was built in
a little recess from the road, in the midst of a grove of ancient trees,
cruciform, as so many others were throughout the colony, and stands today
just as it stood then,--as I have good cause to know, for 't was in that
church, before that altar--But there, you shall learn it all in time.

Doctor Scott was a goodly preacher, but the one portion of the service
for me was the singing, when I might stand beside Dorothy and listen to
her voice. She sang with whole heart and undivided mind, recking nothing
of me standing spellbound there. Indeed, I think the pastor shrewdly saw
that her singing was a means of grace no less than his expounding, and he
never failed to journey to Riverview on a Friday to talk over with her
what should be her part in the service on the coming Sunday. Nor did I
ever know her to refuse this labor,--not because she was vain of her
power, but because she saw the good it did.

The service once over, there were greetings to exchange, the news of the
neighborhood to talk over, crops to discuss, and what not. My heart would
burn within me as I saw the men buzzing about Dorothy like flies about a
dish of honey, though my jealousy was lightened when I saw that while she
had a gay word for each of them, she smiled on all alike. The minx could
read my mind like an open book, whether I was moping in one corner of the
churchyard or on the bench beside her, and she loved to tease me by
pretending great admiration for this man or that, and consulting me about
him as she would have done a brother. Which, I need hardly say, annoyed
me vastly.

The gossip over, we drove home again to lunch, after which, on the wide
veranda or the bench by the river's edge, I would read Dorothy some bits
of Mr. Addison or Mr. Pope, which latter she could not abide, though his
pungent verses fell in exceeding well with my melancholy humor. Evening
past and bedtime come, I lighted Dorothy's candle for her at the table in
the lower hall, where the silver sticks were set out in their nightly
array like French soldiers, gleaming all in white, and when I gave it to
her and bade her good-night at the stair-foot, I got her hand to hold for
an instant. Then to my room, where over innumerable pipes of
sweet-scented, I struggled with some halting verses of my own until my
candle guttered in its stick.

Hours and hours did I pass thinking how I might tell her of my love, but
at the last I concluded it were better to say nothing, until I had
something more to offer her. What right had I, I questioned bitterly, to
offer marriage to any maid, when I had no home to which to take a wife,
and I had never felt the irksomeness of my circumstances as I did at that
moment. Something of my thought she must have understood, for she was
very kind to me, and never by any word or act showed that she thought of
the poverty of my condition.

So August and September passed, and great events were stirring. The House
of Burgesses had met, and had been much impressed by the showing we had
made against the French, so that they passed a vote of thanks to Colonel
Washington for his distinguished services, and to the officers and men
who had been with him. Dinwiddie was most eager that another advance
should be made at once against Duquesne, but Colonel Washington pointed
out how hopeless any such attempt must be against the overwhelming odds
the enemy would bring against us.

The news of French aggression on the Ohio and of our defeat at Fort
Necessity had opened the eyes of the court to the danger which threatened
the colonies, and great preparations were set on foot for an expedition
to be sent to Virginia in the early spring. Parliament voted £50,000
toward its expenses, and it was proposed to equip it on such a scale
that the French could not hope to stand before it. So it was decided that
nothing more should be attempted by the colony until the forces from
England had arrived. And then, one day, came the astounding news that
Colonel Washington had resigned from the service and returned to Mount
Vernon. A negro whom Dorothy had sent on some errand to Betty Washington
had brought the news back with him. I could scarcely credit it, and was
soon galloping toward Mount Vernon to confirm it for myself. I dare say
the ten miles of river road were never more quickly covered. As I turned
into the broad graveled way which led past the garden up to the house, I
saw a tall and well-known figure standing before the door, and he came
toward me with a smile as I threw myself from the saddle.

"Ah, Tom," he cried, "I thought I should see you soon," and he took my
hand warmly.

"Is it true," I asked, too anxious to delay an instant the solution of
the mystery, "that you have left the service?"

"Yes, it is true."

"And you will not make the campaign?"

"I see no prospect now of doing so."

"But why?" I asked. "Pardon me, if I am indiscreet."

"'Tis a reason which all may know," and he smiled grimly, "which, indeed,
I wish all to know, that my action may not be misjudged."

We were walking up and down before the door, and he paused a moment as
though to choose his words, lest he say more than he desired.

"You know there has been great unpleasantness," he said at last, "between
officers holding royal commissions and those holding provincial ones,
concerning the matter of precedence. You may remember that Captain Mackay
held himself my superior at Fort Necessity, because he had his commission
from the crown."

Of course I remembered it, as well as the many disagreements which the
contention had occasioned.

"It was evident that the question must be settled one way or another,"
continued Washington, "and to do this, an order has just been issued by
the governor. The order provides that no officer who does not derive his
commission immediately from the king can command one who does."

It was some minutes before I understood the full effect which such an
order would have.

"Do you mean," I asked at last, "that you would be outranked by every
subaltern in the service who holds a royal commission?"

"Unquestionably," and Washington looked away across the fields with a
stern face.

"But that is an outrage!" I cried. "What, every whippersnapper in the
line be your superior? Why, it's rank folly!"

"So I thought," said Washington, "and therefore I resigned, and refused
to serve under such conditions."

"And you did right," I said warmly. "You could have taken no other
course."

But much pressure was brought to bear upon him to get him back into the
service. General Sharpe was most anxious to secure the services of the
best fighter and most experienced soldier in Virginia, and urged him to
accept a company of the Virginia troops; but he replied shortly that,
though strongly bent to arms, he had no inclination to hold a commission
to which neither rank nor emolument attached. And that remained his
answer to all like importunities. Whereat the authorities were greatly
wroth at him, from Governor Dinwiddie down, and seeking how they might
wound him further, cut from the rolls the names of half a dozen officers
whom they knew to be his friends. I was one of those who got a discharge,
the reason alleged in my case being that the companies had been so
reduced in number that there was not need of so many officers. It was a
heavy blow to me, I admit, and I think for a time Washington wavered in
his purpose; but his friends, of whom many now came to Mount Vernon,
persuaded him to remain firm in his resolution, confident that when the
commander-in-chief arrived and learned how matters stood, he would make
every reparation in his power. At the bottom of the entire trouble was, I
think, Dinwiddie's jealousy of Washington's growing popularity and
influence, a jealousy which had been roused by every man who had come
into great favor with the people since Dinwiddie had been
lieutenant-governor of Virginia.

During the months that followed I was much at Mount Vernon. Indeed, it
was during that winter that we formed the warm attachment which still
continues. The family life there attracted me greatly, and I cannot
sufficiently express my admiration for Mrs. Washington. She was slight
and delicate of figure, but not even her eldest son, who towered above
her, possessed a greater dignity or grace. I loved to sit at one corner
of the great fireplace and see her eyes kindle with pride and affection
as she gazed at him, nor did her other children love him less than she.

With the new year came renewed reports of activity in England. Two
regiments under command of Major-General Braddock were to be sent to
Virginia, whence, after being enforced by provincial levies, they were to
march against the French. I need not say how both Colonel Washington and
myself chafed at the thought that we were not to make the campaign; but
when he suggested accepting a commission as captain of the provincial
troops, his friends protested so against it that he finally abandoned the
idea for good and all, and we settled down to bear the inactivity as best
we could. But at last the summons came.

It was Colonel Washington's twenty-third birthday, and there was quite a
celebration at Mount Vernon. The members of the family were all there, as
were Dorothy, her brother, and myself, as well as many other friends from
farther down the neck. Dinner was served in the long, low-ceilinged
dining-room, with the wide fireplace in one corner. What a meal it was,
with Mrs. Washington at the table-head and her son at the foot, yes, and
Dorothy there beside me with the brightest of bright eyes! I was ever a
good trencherman, and never did venison, wild turkey, and great yellow
sweet potatoes taste more savorsome than they did that day, with a jar of
Mrs. Washington's marmalade for relish. At the end came Pompey with a
great steaming bowl of flip, and as the mugs were filled and passed from
hand to hand, Dorothy and Betty Washington plunged in the red-hot irons
with great hissing and sizzle and an aroma most delicious. We pledged our
host, the ladies sipping from our cups--need I say who from mine?--with
little startled cries of agitation when the liquor stung them. Then they
left us to our pipes; but before the smoke was fairly started, there came
the gallop of a horse up the roadway past the kitchen garden, and a
moment later the great brass knocker was plied by a vigorous hand. We sat
in mute expectancy, and presently old Pompey thrust in his head.

"Gen'leman t' see you, sah," he said to Colonel Washington.

"Show him in here, Pomp," said the colonel; and a moment later one of
the governor's messengers entered, booted and spurred, his clothing
splashed with mud.

"I have a message for you from the governor, Colonel Washington," he
said, saluting, and holding out a letter bearing the governor's
great seal.

Washington took it without a trace of emotion, though I doubt not his
heart was beating as madly as my own.

"Sit down, sir," he said heartily to the messenger, "and taste our
punch. I am sure you will find it excellent;" and when he had seen him
seated and served, he turned away to the window and opened the letter.
I watched him eagerly as he read it, and saw a slow flush steal into
his cheeks.

"There is nothing here I may not tell, gentlemen," he said after a
moment, turning back to the group about the table. "Governor Dinwiddie
writes me that General Braddock and the first of the transports have
arrived safely off Hampton, and that he desires me to meet him in
Williamsburg as soon as possible, as he thinks my knowledge of the
country may be of some value. I shall

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