The Reckoning
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Title: The Reckoning
Author: Robert W. Chambers
Release date: May 12, 2008 [eBook #25441]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25441
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RECKONING ***
Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: Elsin Grey.]
_The_
RECKONING
BY
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
AUTHOR OF "CARDIGAN," "THE MAID-AT-ARMS," "THE KING IN YELLOW," ETC.
NEW YORK
A. WESSELS COMPANY
1907
Copyright, 1905, by
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
_Published September, 1905_
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N.Y.
PREFACE
The author's intention is to treat, in a series of four or five
romances, that part of the war for independence which particularly
affected the great landed families of northern New York: the Johnsons,
represented by Sir William, Sir John, Guy Johnson, and Colonel Claus;
the notorious Butlers, father and son; the Schuylers, Van Rensselaers,
and others.
The first romance of the series, Cardigan, was followed by the second,
The Maid-at-Arms. The third in order is not completed. The fourth is the
present volume.
As Cardigan pretended to portray life on the baronial estate of Sir
William Johnson, the first uneasiness concerning the coming trouble, the
first discordant note struck in the harmonious councils of the Long
House, so, in The Maid-at-Arms, which followed in order, the author
attempted to paint a patroon family disturbed by the approaching rumble
of battle. That romance dealt with the first serious split in the
Iroquois Confederacy; it showed the Long House shattered though not
fallen; the demoralization and final flight of the great landed families
who remained loyal to the British Crown; and it struck the key-note to
the future attitude of the Iroquois toward the patriots of the
frontier--revenge for their losses at the battle of Oriskany--and ended
with the march of the militia and Continental troops on Saratoga.
The third romance, as yet incomplete and unpublished, deals with the
war-path and those who followed it, led by the landed gentry of Tryon
County, and ends with the first solid blow delivered at the Long House,
and the terrible punishment of the Great Confederacy.
The present romance, the fourth in chronological order, picks up the
thread at that point.
The author is not conscious of having taken any liberties with history
in preparing a framework of facts for a mantle of romance.
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.
NEW YORK, _May 26, 1904_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--THE SPY 1
II.--THE HOUSEHOLD 24
III.--THE COQ D'OR 44
IV.--SUNSET AND DARK 67
V.--THE ARTILLERY BALL 97
VI.--A NIGHT AND A MORNING 127
VII.--THE BLUE FOX 164
VIII.--DESTINY 188
IX.--INTO THE NORTH 212
X.--SERMONS IN STONES 239
XI.--THE TEST 266
XII.--THENDARA 289
XIII.--THENDARA NO MORE 313
XIV.--THE BATTLE OF JOHNSTOWN 336
XV.--BUTLER'S FORD 366
TO MY FRIEND
J. HAMBLEN SEARS
WHOSE UNSELFISH FRIENDSHIP AND SOUND ADVICE
I ACKNOWLEDGE IN THIS
DEDICATION
I
_His muscle to the ax and plow,
His calm eye to the rifle sight,
Or at his country's beck and bow,
Setting the fiery cross alight,
Or, in the city's pageantry,
Serving the Cause in secrecy,--
Behold him now, haranguing kings
While through the shallow court there rings
The light laugh of the courtezan;
This the New Yorker, this the Man!_
II
_Standing upon his blackened land,
He saw the flames mount up to God,
He saw the death tracks in the sand,
And the dead children on the sod,
He saw the half-charred door, unbarred,
The dying hound he left on guard,
And that still thing he once had wed
Sprawled on the threshold dripping red:
Dry-eyed he primed his rifle pan;
This the New Yorker, this the Man!_
III
He plowed the graveyard of his dead
And sowed the grain to feed a host;
In silent lands untenanted
Save by the Sachems' painted ghost
He set the ensign of the sun;
A thousand axes rang as one
In the black forest's falling roar,
And through the glade the plowshare tore
Like God's own blade in Freedom's van;
This the New Yorker, and the Man!
R. W. C.
PROLOGUE
ECHOES OF YESTERDAY
His Excellency's system of intelligence in the City of New York I never
pretended to comprehend. That I was one of many agents I could have no
doubt; yet as long as I remained there I never knew but three or four
established spies with residence in town. Although I had no illusions
concerning Mr. Gaine and his "Gazette," at intervals I violently
suspected Mr. Rivington of friendliness to us, and this in spite of his
Tory newspaper and the fierce broadsides he fired at rebels and
rebellion. But I must confess that in my long and amiable acquaintance
with the gentleman he never, by word or hint or inference, so much as
by the quiver of an eyelash, corroborated my suspicion, and to this day
I do not know whether or not Mr. Rivington furnished secret information
to his Excellency while publicly in print he raged and sneered.
Itinerant spies were always in the city in spite of the deadly watch
kept up by regular and partizan, and sometimes they bore messages for
me, the words "Pro Gloria" establishing their credentials as well as
mine. They entered the city in all guises and under all pretexts, some
as refugees, some as traitors, some wearing the uniform of Tory
partizan corps, others attired as tradesmen, farmers, fishermen, and
often bearing passes, too, though where they contrived to find passes I
never understood.
It was a time of sullenness and quick suspicion; few were free from
doubt, but of those few I made one--until that day when my enemy
arrived--but of that in its place, for now I mean to say a word about
this city that I love--that we all love, understanding how alone she
stood in seven years' chains, yet dauntless, dangerous, and defiant.
For upon New York fell the brunt of British wrath, and the judgment of
God fell, too, passing twice in fire that laid one-quarter of the town
in cinders. Nor was that enough, for His lightning smote the
powder-ship, the _Morning Star_, where she swung at her moorings off
from Burling Slip, and the very sky seemed falling in the thunder that
shook the shoreward houses into ruins.
I think that, take it all in all, New York met and withstood every
separate horror that war can bring, save actual assault and sack.
Greater hardships fell to the lot of no other city in America, for we
lost more than a half of our population, more than a fourth of the city
by the two great fires. Want, with the rich, meant famine for the poor
and sad privation for the well-to-do; smallpox and typhus swept us;
commerce by water died, and slowly our loneliness became a maddening
isolation, when his Excellency flung out his blue dragoons to the very
edges of the river there at Harlem Bridge.
I often think it strange that New York town remained so loyal to the
cause, for loyalty to the king was inherent among the better classes.
Many had vast estates, farms, acres on acres of game parks, and lived
like the landed gentry of old England. Yet, save for the DeLanceys, the
Crugers, their kinsmen, the Fannings, kin to the Tryons, Frederick
Rhinelander, the Waltons, and others too tedious to mention, the
gentlemen who had the most to lose through friendliness to the cause of
liberty, chose to espouse that cause.
As for the British residents there, they remained in blameless loyalty
to their King, and I, for one, have never said one word to cast a doubt
upon the purity of their sentiments.
But with all this, knowing what must come, no other city in America so
gaily set forth upon the road to ruin as did patriotic New York. And
from that dreadful hour when, through the cannon smoke on Brooklyn
Heights, she beheld the ghastly face of ruin leering at her across the
foggy water--from that heart-breaking hour when the British drums
rolled from the east, and the tall war-ships covered themselves with
smoke, and the last flag flying was hacked from the halyards, and the
tramp of the grenadiers awoke the silence of Broadway, she never
faltered in her allegiance, never doubted, never failed throughout
those seven years the while she lay beneath the British heel, a
rattlesnake, stunned only, but deadly still while the last spark of
life remained.
Were I to tell a tithe of all I know of what took place during the
great siege, the incidents might shame the wildest fancies of
romance--how intrigue swayed with intrigue there, struggling hilt to
hilt; how plot and plot were thwarted by the counterplot; how all trust
in man was destroyed in that dark year that Arnold died, and a fiend
took his fair shape to scandalize two hemispheres!
Yet I am living witness of those years. I heard and saw much that I
shall not now revive, as where the victims of a pest lie buried it is
not wise to dig, lest the unseen be loosened once again. Yet something
it may be well to record of that time--the curtain lifted for a
glimpse, then dropped in silence--to teach our children that the men
who stood against their King stood with hope of no reward save liberty,
but faced the tempest that they had unchained with souls self-shriven
and each heart washed free of selfishness.
So if I speak of prisons where our thousands died--hind and gentleman
piled thick as shad in the fly market--sick and well and wounded all
together--it shall not be at length, only a scene or two that sticks in
memory.
Once, in the suffocating heat of mid-July, I saw a prison where every
narrow window was filled with human heads, face above face, seeking a
portion of the external air. And from that day, for many, many weeks
the dead-carts took the corpses to the outer ditches, passing steadily
from dawn to midnight.
All day, all night, they died around us in ship and prison, some from
suffocation, some from starvation, others delivered by prison fevers
which rotted them so slowly that I think even death shrank back
reluctant to touch them with his icy finger.
So piteous their plight, these crowded thousands, crushed in putrid
masses, clinging to the filthy prison bars, that they aroused
compassion in that strange and ancient guild that once had claimed the
Magdalen in its sad sisterhood, and these aided them with food, year
after year, until deliverance.
They had no other food, no water except from polluted drains, no fire
in winter, no barriers to the blackest cold that ever seared the city
from the times that man remembers. I say they had no other food and no
fire to cook the offal flung to them. That is not all true, because we
did our best, being permitted to furnish what we had--we and the
strange sisterhood--yet they were thousands upon thousands, and we were
few.
It is best that I say no more, for that proud England's sake from whose
loins we sprang--it is best that I speak not of Captain Cunningham the
Provost, nor of his deputy, O'Keefe, nor of Sproat and Loring. There
was butchers' work in my own North, and I shall not shrink from the
telling; there was massacre, and scalps taken from children too small
to lisp their prayers for mercy; that was devils' work, and may be
told. But Cunningham and those who served him were alone in their awful
trade; cruelty unspeakable and frenzied vice are terms which fall
impotent to measure the ghastly depths of an infamy in which they
crawled and squirmed, battening like maggots on hell's own pollution.
Long since, I think, we have clasped hands with England over Cherry
Valley and Wyoming, forgiving her the loosened fury of her red allies
and her Butlers and McDonalds. The scar remains, but is remembered only
as a glory.
How shall we take old England's wrinkled hand, stretched out above the
spots that mark the prisons of New York?--above the twelve thousand
unnamed graves of those who died for lack of air and water aboard the
_Jersey_? God knows; and yet all things are possible with Him--even this
miracle which I shall never live to see.
Without malice, without prejudice, judging only as one whose judgment
errs, I leave this darkened path for a free road in the open, and so
shall strive to tell as simply and sincerely as I may what only befell
myself and those with whom I had been long associated. And if the
pleasures that I now recall seem tinged with bitter, and if the gaiety
was but a phase of that greater prison fever that burnt us all in the
beleaguered city, still there was much to live for in those times
through which I, among many, passed; and by God's mercy, not my own
endeavor, passed safely, soul and body.
THE RECKONING
CHAPTER I
THE SPY
Having finished my duties in connection with Sir Peter's private estate
and his voluminous correspondence--and the door of my chamber being
doubly locked and bolted--I made free to attend to certain secret
correspondence of my own, which for four years now had continued,
without discovery, between the Military Intelligence Department of the
Continental army and myself through the medium of one John Ennis, the
tobacconist at the Sign of the Silver Box in Hanover Square.
Made confident by long immunity from the slightest shadow of suspicion,
apprehension of danger seldom troubled my sense of security. It did
sometimes, as when the awful treason at West Point became known to me;
and for weeks as I lay abed I thought to hear in every footfall on
Broadway the measured tread of a patrol come to take me. Yet the
traitor continued in New York without sinister consequence to me; and,
though my nights were none the pleasanter during that sad week which
ended in the execution of the British adjutant-general, no harm came to
me. Habit is the great sedative; at times, penning my spy's journal, I
smiled to remember how it was with me when first I came to New York in
1777, four years since, a country lad of nineteen, fresh from the
frontier, where all my life had been spent among the Oneidas and the
few neighbors nearest Broadalbin Bush--a raw youth, frightened but
resolved; and how I lived through those first months of mental terror,
now appalled by the fate of our Captain Nathan Hale, now burning with a
high purpose and buoyed up by pride that his Excellency should have
found in me a fit instrument for his designs.
I have never known whether or not I am what men call brave, for I
understand fear and I turn cold at thought of death. Often I have sat
alone in the house watching the sober folk along Broadway and Wall
Street, knowing all the while that these same good people might
to-morrow all go flocking to Catiemuts Hill near the Fresh Water, or to
that open space in the "Fields" between the jail and the Almshouse, to
see me on the gallows. If such thoughts do not assail the brave--if
restless nights, wakeful dawns, dull days are not their portion--I must
own that all these were mine, not often, perhaps, but too frequent to
flatter self-esteem. And, fight them as I might, it was useless; for
such moments came without warning--often when I had been merry with
friends, at times when, lulled by long-continued security, I had nigh
forgotten through eventless months that there was a war and that I had
become a New Yorker only because of war.
It was harder now, in one sense; four years as secretary to my kinsman,
Sir Peter Coleville, had admitted me to those social intimacies so
necessary to my secret office; and, alas! friendships had been made and
ties formed not only in the line of duty, but from impulse and out of
pure affection.
I had never found it was required of me to pose as a rabid loyalist,
and so did not, being known as disinterested and indifferent, and
perhaps for that reason not suspected. My friends were from necessity
among the best among the loyalists--from choice, too, for I liked them
for their own sakes, and it was against their cause I worked, not
against them.
It went hard with me to use them as I did--I so loathing perfidy in
others; yet if it be perfidy to continue in duty as I understood duty,
then I practised it, and at times could scarce tolerate myself, which
was a weakness, because in my own heart I knew that his Excellency could
set no man a task unworthy of his manhood. Yet it were pleasanter had my
duties thrown me with the army, or with Colonel Willett in my native
north, whence, at his request, I had come to live a life of physical
sloth and mental intrigue under the British cannon of New York--here in
the household of Sir Peter Coleville, his secretary, his friend, his
welcomed guest, the intimate of his family, his friends!--_that_ was the
hardest of all; and though for months at a time I managed to forget it,
the recurring thought of what I _was_, and what they believed me to be,
stabbed me at intervals so I could scarce endure it.
Nothing, not even the belief that God was with us, I fear, could have
held me there when the stress of such emotion left me staring at the
darkness in my restless bed--only blind faith in his Excellency that he
would do no man this shame, if shame it was--that he knew as well as I
that the land's salvation was not to be secured through the barter of
men's honor and the death of souls.
* * * * *
The door being secured, as I say, and the heat of that July day abating
nothing, though the sun hung low over Staten Island, I opened my
windows, removed coat and waistcoat, and, drawing a table to the
window, prepared to write up that portion of my daily journal neglected
lately, and which, when convenient opportunity offered, was to find its
way into the hands of Colonel Marinus Willett in Albany. Before I wrote
I turned back a leaf or two so that I might correct my report in the
light of later events; and I read rapidly:
_July 12, 1781._--Nothing remarkable. Very warm weather, and a bad
odor from the markets. There is some talk in the city of rebuilding
the burned district. Two new cannon have been mounted in the
southwest bastion of the fort (George). I shall report caliber and
particulars later.
_July 13th._--This day Sir Peter left to look over the lands in
Westchester which he is, I believe, prepared to purchase from Mr.
Rutgers. The soldiers are very idle; a dozen of 'em caught drawing a
seine in the Collect, and sent to the guard-house--a dirty trick for
anybody but Hessians, who are accustomed to fish in that manner.
The cannon in the southwest bastion are twelve-pounders and
old--trunnions rusted, carriages rotten. It seems they are trophies
taken from the Carolina militia.
_July 14th._--A ship arrived in the lower bay. Details later. In
Nassau Street, about noon, a tall fellow, clothed like a drover,
muttered a word or two as I passed, and I had gone on ere it struck
me that he had meant his words for my ear. To find him I turned
leisurely, retracing my steps as though I had forgotten something,
and as I brushed him again, he muttered, "Thendara; tell me where it
is."
At that moment Captain Enderley of the Fifty-fourth Foot greeted me,
linking his arm in mine, and I had no excuse to avoid him. More of
this to-night, when, if the message was truly for me, I shall
doubtless be watched and followed when I leave the house for a
stroll.
_July 15th._--Last night there was no chance, Enderley and Captain
O'Neil coming to take me to the theater, where the Thirty-eighth
Regiment gave a frolic and a play--the latter most indifferent, save
for Mrs. Barry's acting. I saw my drover in John Street, too, but
could not speak to him.
This morning, however, I met the drover, and he was drunk, or made
most marvelous pretense--a great six-foot, blue-eyed lout in smock
and boots, reeking of Bull's Head gin, his drover's whip a-trail in
the dust, and he a-swaggering down Nassau Street, gawking at the
shop-windows and whistling Roslyn Castle with prodigious gusto.
I made it convenient to pause before Berry and Roger's show of
jewels, and he stopped, too, swaying there gravely, balanced now on
hobnail heel, now on toe. Presently he ceased his whistling of
Roslyn Castle, and in a low but perfectly distinct voice he said,
"Where is the town of Thendara, Mr. Renault?" Without looking at
him or even turning my head, I answered, "Why do you ask me?"
He stared stupidly at the show-window. "Pro patria et gloria," he
replied under his breath; "why do you serve the land?"
"Pro gloria," I muttered. "Give your message; hasten."
He scratched his curly head, staring at the gewgaws. "It is this,"
he said coolly; "find out if there be a lost town in the north
called Thendara, or if the name be used to mask the name of Fort
Niagara. When you have learned all that is possible, walk some
evening up Broadway and out along Great George Street. We will
follow."
"Who else besides yourself?"
"A brother drover--of men," he said slyly; "a little wrinkled
fellow, withered to the bone, wide-eared, mild-eyed. He is my
running mate, sir, and we run sometimes, now this way, now that,
but always at your service, Mr. Renault."
"Are you drunk, or is it a pretense?" I demanded.
"Not _too_ drunk," he replied, with elaborate emphasis. "But once
this matter of Thendara is settled I hope to be so drunk that no
friend of mine need be ashamed of me. Good day, sir. God save our
country!"
"Have a care," I motioned, turning away. And so I left him to enter
the shop and purchase a trinket, thinking it prudent in case any
passer-by had observed how long I lingered.
_July 16th._--Sir Peter not yet returned from Mr. Rutgers. The
name "Thendara" ringing in my ears like a dull bell all night, and
I awake, lying there a-thinking. Somewhere, in some long-forgotten
year, I had heard a whispering echo of that name--or so it seemed
to me--and, musing, I thought to savor a breeze from the pines, and
hear water flowing, unseen, far in the forest silence.
Thendara! Thendara!
The name is not Iroquois--yet it may be, too--a soft, gracious
trisyllable stolen from the Lenape. Lord! how the name intrigues
me, sweetly sonorous, throbbing in my ears--Thendara, Thendara--and
always I hear the pine breeze high blowing and the flowing
undertone of waters.
_July 17th._--Nothing extraordinary. The Hon. Elsin Grey arrived
from Halifax by the Swan packet to visit Sir Peter's family, she
being cousin twice removed to Lady Coleville. I have not seen her;
she keeps her chamber with the migraine. As she comes from her
kinsman, General Sir Frederick Haldimand, Governor of Canada, she
may be useful, being lately untethered from the convent and no more
than seventeen or eighteen, and vain, no doubt, of her beauty, and
so, I conclude, prone to babble if flattered.
Here my journal ended; I dipped my quill into the inkhorn and wrote
slowly:
_July 18th._--Nothing remarkable. The Hon. Elsin Grey still keeps
her chamber. The heat in New York is very great. I am, without
suspicion, sending money through Ennis to our prisoners aboard the
ships in the Wallabout, and next week shall have more for the
unfortunates in the Provost, the prisons, jails, and the
sugar-house--my salary being due on the 20th inst. I have ever in
mind a plan for a general jail delivery the instant his Excellency
assaults by land and sea, but at present it is utterly hopeless, Mr.
Cunningham executing the laws with terrible rigor, and double guards
patrolling the common. As for those wretched patriots aboard the
"_Hell_" and on those hulks--the _Falconer_, _Good Hope_, and
_Scorpion_--which lie southeast of the _Jersey_, there can be no
delivery save through compassion of that Dark Jailer who one day
shall free us all.
I dropped my pen, listening intently. Close to my door the garret
stairs creaked, ever so lightly; and I bent forward across the table,
gathering my papers, on which the ink lay still wet.
Listening, I heard nothing more. Perhaps the great heat was warping the
new stairway, which led past my door, up through the attic, and out to
the railed cupola upon the roof.
I glanced at my journal; there was nothing more to add, and so, sanding
the sheets, I laid them back behind the swinging panel which I myself
had fashioned so cunningly that none might suspect a cupboard in the
simple wainscot. Then to wash hands and face in fresh water, and put on
my coat without the waistcoat, prepared to take the air on the cupola,
where it should soon blow cool from the bay.
Slipping lock and bolt, I paused, hand on the knob, to glance back
around the room--a habit formed of caution. Then, satisfied, I opened
the door and left it standing wide so that the room might air. As I
ascended the attic stairs a little fresh puff of wind cooled me.
Doubtless a servant had opened the flaps to the cupola, for they were
laid back; and as I mounted, I could see a square of blue sky overhead.
I had taken my pipe, and paused on the stairs to light it; then,
pouching flint and tinder-box, I emerged upon the roof, to find myself
face to face with a young girl I had never before seen--the Hon. Miss
Grey, no doubt--and very dainty in her powder and one coquette patch
that emphasized the slow color tinting a skin of snow.
My bow, I think, covered my vexation--I being all unpowdered and
wearing no waistcoat over an unfrilled shirt, for I do love fine
clothes when circumstances require; but the lady was none the less
punctilious, and as I made to toss my pipe into the street below, she
forbade me with perfect courtesy and a smile that only accented her
youthful self-possession.
"Mr. Renault need neither retire nor sacrifice his pleasure," she said.
"I have missed Sir Frederick's pipe-smoke dreadfully--so much, indeed,
that I had even thought to try Sir Peter's snuff to soothe me."
"Shall I fetch it, madam?" I asked instantly; but she raised a small
hand in laughing horror.
"Snuff and picquet I am preparing for--a youth of folly--an old age of
snuff and cards, you know. At present folly suffices, thank you."
And as I stood smiling before her, she said: "Pray you be seated, sir,
if you so desire. There should be sufficient air for two in this
half-charred furnace which you call New York. Tell me, Mr. Renault, are
the winters here also extreme in cold?"
"Sometimes," I said. "Last winter the bay was frozen to Staten Island
so that the artillery crossed on the ice from the city."
She turned her head, looking out over the water, which was now all a
golden sparkle under the westering sun. Then her eyes dropped to the
burned district--that waste of blackened ruins stretching south along
Broadway to Beaver Street and west to Greenwich Street.
"Is that the work of rebels?" she asked, frowning.
"No, madam; it was an accident."
"Why do the New Yorkers not rebuild?"
"I think it is because General Washington interrupts local
improvements," I said, laughing.
She looked around at me, pretty brows raised in quaint displeasure.
"Does the insolence of a rebel really amuse you, Mr. Renault?"
I was taken aback. Even among the British officers here in the city it
had become the fashion to speak respectfully of the enemy, and above
all of his Excellency.
"Why should it not amuse me?" I asked lightly.
She had moved her head again, and appeared to be absorbed in the view.
Presently she said, still looking out over the city: "That was a noble
church once, that blackened arch across the way."
"That is Trinity--all that is left of it," I said. "St. Paul's is still
standing--you may see it there to the north, just west of Ann Street
and below Vesey."
She turned, leaning on the railing, following with curious eyes the
direction of my outstretched arm.
"Please tell me more about this furnace you call a city, Mr. Renault,"
she said, with a pretty inflection of voice that flattered; and so I
went over beside her, and, leaning there on the cupola rail together,
we explored the damaged city from our bird's perch above it--the city
that I had come to care for strangely, nay, to love almost as I loved
my Mohawk hills. For it is that way with New York, the one city that we
may love without disloyalty to our birthplace, a city which is home in
a larger sense, and, in a sense, almost as dear to men as the
birth-spot which all cherish. I know not why, but this is so; no
American is long strange here; for it is the great hearth of the
mother-land where the nation gathers as a family, each conscious of a
share in the heritage established for all by all.
And so, together, this fair young English girl and I traced out the
wards numbered from the cardinal points of the compass, and I bounded
for her the Out-Ward, too, and the Dock-Ward. There was no haze, only a
living golden light, clear as topaz, and we could see plainly the
sentinels pacing before the Bridewell--that long two-storied prison,
built of gloomy stone; and next to it the Almshouse of gray stone, and
next to that the massive rough stone prison, three stories high, where
in a cupola an iron bell hung, black against the sky.
"You will hear it, some day, tolling for an execution," I said.
"Do they hang rebels there?" she asked, looking up at me so
wonderingly, so innocently that I stood silent instead of answering,
surprised at such beauty in a young girl's eyes.
"Where is King's College?" she asked. I showed her the building bounded
by Murray, Chapel, Barckley and Church streets, and then I pointed out
the upper barracks behind the jail, and the little lake beyond divided
by a neck of land on which stood the powder-house.
Far across the West Ward I could see the windows of Mr. Lispenard's
mansion shining in the setting sun, and the road to Greenwich winding
along the river.
She tired of my instruction after a while, and her eyes wandered to the
bay. A few ships lay off Paulus Hook; the Jersey shore seemed very
near, although full two miles distant, and the islands, too, seemed
close in-shore where the white wings of gulls flashed distantly.
A jack flew from the Battery, another above the fort, standing out
straight in the freshening breeze from the bay. Far away across the East
River I saw the accursed _Jersey_ swinging, her black, filthy bulwarks
gilded by the sun; and below, her devil's brood of hulks at anchor, all
with the wash hung out on deck a-drying in the wind.
"What are they?" she asked, surprising something else than the fixed
smile of deference in my face.
"Prison ships, madam. Yonder the rebels die all night, all day, week
after week, year after year. That black hulk you see yonder--the one to
the east--stripped clean, with nothing save a derrick for bow-sprit and
a signal-pole for mast, is the _Jersey_, called by another name,
sometimes----"
"What name?"
"Some call her '_The Hell_,'" I answered. And, after a pause: "It must
be hot aboard, with every porthole nailed."
"What can rebels expect?" she asked calmly.
"Exactly! There are some thousand and more aboard the _Jersey_. When the
wind sets from the south, on still mornings, I have heard a strange
moaning--a low, steady, monotonous plaint, borne inland over the city.
But, as you say, what can rebels expect, madam?"
"What is that moaning sound you say that one may hear?" she demanded.
"Oh, the rebels, dying from suffocation--clamoring for food,
perhaps--perhaps for water! It is hard on the guards who have to go
down every morning into that reeking, stifling hold and drag out the
dead rebels festering there----"
"But that is horrible!" she broke out, blue eyes wide with
astonishment--then, suddenly silent, she gazed at me full in the face.
"It is incredible," she said quietly; "it is another rebel tale. Tell
me, am I not right?"
I did not answer; I was thinking how I might use her, and the thought
was not agreeable. She was so lovely in her fresh young womanhood, so
impulsive and yet so self-possessed, so utterly ignorant of what was
passing in this war-racked land of mine, that I hesitated to go
gleaning here for straws of information.
"In the north," she said, resting her cheek on one slender wrist, "we
hear much of rebel complaint, but make nothing of it, knowing well that
if cruelty exists its home is not among those sturdy men who are
fighting for their King."
"You speak warmly," I said, smiling.
"Yes--warmly. We have heard Sir John Johnson slandered because he uses
the Iroquois. But do not the rebels use them, too? My kinsman, General
Haldimand, says that not only do the rebels employ the Oneidas, but
that their motley congress enlists any Indian who will take their paper
dollars."
"That is true," I said.
"Then why should we not employ Brant and his Indians?" she asked
innocently. "And why do the rebels cry out every time Butler's Rangers
take the field? We in Canada know Captain Walter Butler and his father,
Colonel John Butler. Why, Mr. Renault, there is no more perfectly
accomplished officer and gentleman than Walter Butler. I know him; I
have danced with him at Quebec and at Niagara. How can even a rebel so
slander him with these monstrous tales of massacre and torture and
scalps taken from women and children at Cherry Valley?" She raised her
flushed face to mine and looked at me earnestly.
"Why even our own British officers have been disturbed by these
slanders," she said, "and I think Sir Henry Clinton half believes that
our Royal Greens and Rangers are merciless marauders, and that Walter
Butler is a demon incarnate."
"I admit," said I, "that we here in New York have doubted the mercy of
the Butlers and Sir John Johnson."
"Then let me paint these gentlemen for you," she said quickly.
"But they say these gentlemen are capable of painting themselves," I
observed, tempted to excite her by the hint that the Rangers smeared
their faces like painted Iroquois at their hellish work.
"Oh, how shameful!" she cried, with a little gesture of horror. "What
do you think us, there in Canada? Because our officers must needs hold
a wilderness for the King, do you of New York believe us savages?"
The generous animation, the quick color, charmed me. She was no longer
English, she was Canadienne--jealous of Canadian reputation, quick to
resent, sensitive, proud--heart and soul believing in the honor of her
own people of the north.
"Let me picture for you these gentlemen whom the rebels cry out upon,"
she said. "Sir John Johnson is a mild, slow man, somewhat sluggish and
overheavy, moderate in speech, almost cold, perhaps, yet a perfectly
gallant officer."
"His father was a wise and honest gentleman before him," I said
sincerely. "Is his son, Sir John, like him?"
She nodded, and went on to deal with old John Butler--nor did I stay
her to confess that these Johnsons and Butlers were no strangers to me,
whose blackened Broadalbin home lay a charred ruin to attest the love
that old John Butler bore my family name.
And so I stood, smiling and silent, while she spoke of Walter Butler,
describing him vividly, even to his amber black eyes and his pale face,
and the poetic melancholy with which he clothed the hidden blood-lust
that smoldered under his smooth pale skin. But there you have
it--young, proud, and melancholy--and he had danced with her at
Niagara, too, and--if I knew him--he had not spared her hints of that
impetuous flame that burned for all pure women deep in the blackened
pit of his own damned soul.
"Did you know his wife?" I asked, smiling.
"Walter Butler's--wife!" she gasped, turning on me, white as death.
There was a silence; she drew a long, deep breath; suddenly, the
gayest, sweetest little laugh followed, but it was slowly that the
color returned to lip and cheek.
"Is he not wedded?" I asked carelessly--the damned villain--at his
Mohawk Valley tricks again!--and again she laughed, which was, no
doubt, my wordless answer.
"Does he dance well, this melancholy Ranger?" I asked, smiling to see
her laugh.
"Divinely, sir. I think no gentleman in New York can move a minuet with
Walter Butler's grace. Oh, you New Yorkers! You think we are
nothing--fit, perhaps, for a May-pole frolic with the rustic gentry! Do
not deny it, Mr. Renault. Have we not heard you on the subject? Do not
your officers from Philadelphia and New York come mincing and tiptoeing
through Halifax and Quebec, all smiling and staring about, quizzing
glasses raised? And--'Very pretty! monstrous charming! spike me, but
the ladies powder here!' And, 'Is this green grass? Damme, where's the
snow--and the polar bears, you know?'"
I laughed as she paused, breathlessly scornful, flushed with charming
indignation.
"And is not Canada all snow?" I asked, to tease her.
"Snow! It is sweet and green and buried in flowers!" she cried.
"In winter, madam?"
"Oh! You mean to plague me, which is impertinent, because I do not know
you well enough--I have not known you above half an hour. I shall tell
Lady Coleville."
"So shall I--how you abuse us all here in New York----"
"I did not. You are teasing me again, Mr. Renault."
Defiant, smiling, her resentment was, after all, only partly real.
"We are becoming friends much too quickly to suit me," she said
deliberately.
"But not half quickly enough to suit me," I said.
"Do you fancy that I take that silly speech as compliment, Mr.
Renault?"
"Ah, no, madam! On such brief acquaintance I dare not presume to offer
you the compliments that burn for utterance!"
"But you _do_ presume to plague me--on such brief acquaintance!" she
observed.
"I am punished," I said contritely.
"No, you are not! You are not punished at all, because I don't know how
to, and--I am not sure I wish to punish you, Mr. Renault."
"Madam?"
"If you look at me so meekly I shall laugh. Besides, it is
hypocritical. There is nothing meek about you!" I bowed more meekly
than ever.
"Mr. Renault?"
"Madam?"
She picked up her plumed fan impatiently and snapped it open.
"If you don't stop being meek and answering 'Madam' I shall presently
go distracted. Call me something else--anything--just to see how we
like it. Tell me, do you know my first name?"
"Elsin," I said softly, and to my astonishment a faint, burning
sensation stung my cheeks, growing warmer and warmer. I think she was
astonished, too, for few men at twenty-three could color up in those
days; and there was I, a hardened New Yorker of four years' adoption,
turning pink like a great gaby at a country fair when his sweetheart
meets him at the ginger bower!
To cover my chagrin I nodded coolly, repeating her name with a critical
air--"Elsin," I mused, outwardly foppish, inwardly amazed and
mad--"Elsin--um! ah!--very pretty--very unusual," I added, with a
patronizing nod.
She did not resent it; when at last I made bold to meet her gaze it was
pensive and serene, yet I felt somehow that her innocent blue eyes had
taken my measure as a man--and not to my advantage.
"Your name is not a usual one," she said. "When I first heard it from
Sir Peter I laughed."
"Why?" I said coldly.
"Why? Oh, I don't know, Mr. Renault! It sounded so very young--Carus
Renault--it sounds so young and guileless----"
Speechless with indignation, I caught a glimmer under the lowered lids
that mocked me, and I saw her mouth quiver with the laugh fluttering
for freedom.
She looked up, all malice, and the pent laughter rippled.
"Very well," I said, giving in, "I shall take no pity on you in
future."
"My dear Mr. Renault, do you think I require your pity?"
"Not now," I said, chagrined. "But one day you may cry out for
mercy----"
"Which you will doubtless accord, being a gallant gentleman and no
Mohawk."
"Oh, I can be a barbarian, too, for I am, by adoption, an Oneida of the
Wolf Clan, and entitled to a seat in Council."
"I see," she said, "you wear your hair a l'Iroquois."
I reddened again; I could not help it, knowing my hair was guiltless of
powder and all awry.
"If I had supposed you were here, do you imagine I should have
presented myself unpowdered and without a waistcoat?" I said,
exasperated.
Her laughter made it no easier, though I strove to retrieve myself and
return to the light badinage she had routed me from. Lord, what a tease
was in this child, with her deep blue eyes and her Dresden porcelain
skin of snow and roses!
"Now," she said, recovering her gravity, "you may return to your
letter-writing, Mr. Renault. I have done with you for the moment."
At that I was sobered in a trice.
"What letter-writing?" I made out to answer calmly.
"Were you not hard at work penning a missive to some happy soul who
enjoys your confidence?"
"Why do you believe I was?" I asked.
She tossed her head airily. "Oh! for that matter, I could even tell you
what you wrote: 'Nothing remarkable; the Hon. Elsin Grey still keeps
her chamber'--did you not write that?"
She paused, the smile fading from her face. Perhaps she thought she had
gone too far, perhaps something in my expression startled her.
"I beg your pardon," she said quickly; "have I hurt you, Mr. Renault?"
"How did you know I wrote that?" I asked in a voice I hoped was steady.
"Why, it is there on your shirt, Mr. Renault, imprinted backward from
the wet ink. I have amused myself by studying it out letter by letter.
Please forgive me--it was dreadfully indiscreet--but I only meant to
torment you."
I looked down, taking my fine lawn shirt in both hands. There was the
impression--my own writing, backward, but distinct. I remembered when I
had done it, when I had gathered my ink-wet papers under my arms and
leaned forward to listen to the creaking of the attic stairway. Suppose
it had been Sir Peter! Suppose the imprint had been something that
could have admitted of but one interpretation? I turned cold at the
thought.
She was watching me all the while, a trifle uneasy at my silence, but
my smile and manner reassured her, and my gaiety she met instantly.
"I am overwhelmed," I said, "and can offer no excuse for this frowsy
dress. If you had any idea how mortified I am you would have mercy on
me."
"My hair not being dressed a l'Iroquois, I consent to show you mercy,"
she said. "But you came monstrous near frightening me, too. Do you know
you turned white, Mr. Renault? Lud! the vanity of men, to pale at a
jest touching their status in fopdom as proper macaroni!"
"I do love to appear well," I said resentfully.
"Now do you expect me to assure you that you _do_ appear well? that even
the dress of a ragged forest-runner would detract nothing from your
person? Ah, I shall say nothing of the sort, Mr. Renault! Doubtless
there are women a-plenty in New York to flatter you."
"No," I said; "they prefer scarlet coats and spurs, as you will, too."
"No doubt," she said, turning her head to the sunset.
There was enough wind to flutter the ribbons on her shoulders and bare
neck, and to stir the tendrils of her powdered hair, a light breeze
blowing steadily from the bay as the sun went down into the crimson
flood. Bang! A cloud of white smoke hung over Pearl Street where the
evening gun had spoken; the flag on the fort fluttered down, the flag on
the battery followed. Out on the darkening river a lanthorn glimmered
from the deck of the _Jersey_; a light sparkled on Paulus Hook.
"Hark! hear the drums!" she murmured. Far down Broadway the British
drums sounded, nearer, nearer, now loud along Dock Street, now lost in
Queen, then swinging west by north they came up Broad, into Wall; and I
could hear the fifes shrilling out, "The World turned Upside-down," and
the measured tread of the patrol, marching to the Upper Barracks and
the Prison.
The drummers wheeled into Broadway beneath our windows; leaning over I
saw them pass, and I was aware of something else, too--a great
strapping figure in a drover's smock, watching the British drums from
the side path across the way--my friend of Nassau Street--and clinging
to his arm, a little withered man, wrinkled, mild-eyed, clad also like
a drover, and snapping his bull-whip to accent the rhythm of the
rolling drums.
"I think I shall go down," said a soft voice beside me; "pray do not
move, Mr. Renault, you are so picturesque in silhouette against the
sunset--and I hear that silhouettes are so fashionable in New York
fopdom."
I bowed; she held out her hand--just a trifle, as she passed me, the
gesture of a coquette or of perfect innocence--and I touched it lightly
with finger-tip and lip.
"Until supper," she said--"and, Mr. Renault, do you suppose we shall
have bread for supper?"
"Why not?" I asked, all unsuspicious.
"Because I fancied flour might be scarce in New York"--she glanced at
my unpowdered head, then fled, her blue eyes full of laughter.
It is true that all hair powder is made of flour, but I did not use it
like a Hessian. And I looked after her with an uncertain smile and with
a respect born of experience and grave uncertainty.
CHAPTER II
THE HOUSEHOLD
About dusk Sir Peter arrived from lower Westchester while I was
dressing. Warned by the rattle of wheels from the coach-house at the
foot of the garden, and peering through the curtains, I saw the lamps
shining and heard the trample of our horses on the stable floor; and
presently, as I expected, Sir Peter came a-knocking at my door, and my
servant left the dressing of my hair to admit the master of the house.
He came in, his handsome face radiant--a tall, graceful man of forty,
clothed with that elegant carelessness which we call perfection, so
strikingly unobtrusive was his dress, so faultless and unstudied his
bearing.
There was no dust upon him, though he had driven miles; his clean skin
was cool and pleasantly tinted with the sun of summer, spotless his
lace at cuff and throat, and the buckles flashed at stock and knee and
shoe as he passed through the candle-light to lay a familiar hand upon
my shoulder.
"What's new, Carus?" he asked, and his voice had ever that pleasant
undertone of laughter which endears. "You villain, have you been making
love to Elsin Grey, that she should come babbling of Mr. Renault, Mr.
Renault, Mr. Renault ere I had set foot in my own hallway? It was
indecent, I tell you--not a word for me, civil or otherwise, not a
question how I had 'scaped the Skinners at Kingsbridge--only a flutter
of ribbons and a pair of pretty hands to kiss, and 'Oh, Cousin
Coleville! Is Mr. Renault kin to me, too?--for I so take it, having
freely bantered him to advantage at first acquaintance. Was I bold,
cousin?--but if you only knew how he tempted me--and he _is_ kin to you,
is he not?--and you are Cousin Betty's husband.' 'God-a-mercy!' said I,
'what's all this about Mr. Renault?--a rogue and a villain I shame to
claim as kin, a swaggering, diceing, cock-fighting ruffler, a-raking it
from the Out-Ward to Jew Street! Madam, do you dare admit to me that you
have found aught to attract you in the company of this monument of
foppery known as Carus Renault?'"
"Did you truly say that, Sir Peter?" I asked, wincing while my ears
grew hot.
"Say it? I did not say it, I bellowed it!" He shrugged his shoulders
and took snuff with an air. "The minx finds you agreeable," he
observed; "why?--God knows!"
"I had not thought so," I said, in modest deprecation, yet warming at
his words.
"Oh--had not thought so!" he mimicked, mincing over to the
dressing-table and surveying the array of perfumes and pomades and
curling irons. "Carus, you shameless rake, you've robbed all Queen
Street! Essence, pomade-de-grasse, almond paste, bergamot, orange,
French powder! By Heaven, man, do you mean to take the lady by storm or
set up a rival shop to Smith's 'Sign of the Rose'? Here, have your man
leave those two puffs above the ears; curl them loosely--that's it! Now
tie that queue-ribbon soberly; leave the flamboyant papillon style to
those damned Lafayettes and Rochambeaux! Now dust your master, Dennis,
and fetch a muslinet waistcoat--the silver tambour one. Gad, Carus, I'd
make a monstrous fine success at decorating fops for a guinea a
head--eh?"
He inspected me through his quizzing glass, nodded, backed away in
feigned rapture, and presently sat down by the window, stretching his
well-shaped legs.
"Damme," he said, "I meant to ask what's new, but you chatter on so
that I have no chance for a word edgeways. Now, what the devil is new
with you?"
"Nothing remarkable," I said, laughing. "Did you come to terms with Mr.
Rutgers for his meadows?"
"No," he replied irritably, "and I care nothing for his damned swamps
full of briers and mud and woodcock."
"It is just as well," I said. "You can not afford more land at
present."
"That's true," he admitted cheerfully; "I'm spending too much. Gad,
Carus, the Fifty-fourth took it out of us at that thousand-guinea main!
Which reminds me to say that our birds at Flatbush are in prime
condition and I've matched them."
I looked up at him doubtfully. Our birds had brought him nothing but
trouble so far.
"Let it pass," he said, noticing my silent disapproval; "we'll talk to
Horrock in the morning. Which reminds me that I have no money." He
laughed, drew a paper from his coat, and unfolding it, read aloud:
"1 pipe Madeira @ L90 per pipe--L90
1 pipe Port @ L46 per pipe--L46
20 gallons Fayal @ 5s. per gal.--
20 gallons Lisbon @ 5s. per gal.--
10 gallons Windward I. rum @ 4s. per gal."
He yawned and tossed the paper on my dresser, saying, "Pay it, Carus.
If our birds win the main we'll put the Forty-fifth under the table,
and I'll pay a few debts."
Standing there he stretched to his full graceful height, yawning once
or twice. "I'll go bathe, and dress for supper," he said; "that should
freshen me. Shall we rake it to-night?"
"I'm for cards," I said carelessly.
"_With_ Elsin Grey or _without_ Elsin Grey?" he inquired in affected
earnestness.
"If you had witnessed her treatment of me," I retorted, "you'd never
mistake it for friendly interest. We'll rake it, if you like. There's
another frolic at the John Street Theater. The Engineers play 'The
Conscious Lovers,' and Rosamund Barry sings 'Vain is Beauty's Gaudy
Flower.'"
But he said he had no mind for the Theater Royal that night, and
presently left me to Dennis and the mirror.
In the mirror I saw a boyish youth of twenty-three, dark-eyed, somewhat
lean of feature, and tinted with that olive smoothness of skin
inherited from the Renaults through my great-grandfather--a face which
in repose was a trifle worn, not handsome, but clearly cut, though not
otherwise remarkable. It was, I believed, neither an evil nor a sullen
brooding face, nor yet a face in which virtue molds each pleasing
feature so that its goodness is patent to the world.
Dennis having ended his ministrations, I pinned a brilliant at my
throat--a gift from Lady Coleville--and shook over it the cobweb lace
so it should sparkle like a star through a thin cloud. Then passing my
small sword through the embroidered slashing of my coat, and choosing a
handkerchief discreetly perfumed, I regarded myself at ease, thinking
of Elsin Grey.
In the light of later customs and fashions I fear that I was something
of a fop, though I carried neither spy-glass nor the two watches sacred
to all fops. But if I loved dress, so did his Excellency, and John
Hancock, not to name a thousand better men than I; and while I confess
that I did and do dearly love to cut a respectable figure, frippery for
its own sake was not among my vices; but I hold him a hind who, if he
can afford it, dresses not to please others and do justice to the
figure that a generous Creator has so patiently fashioned. "To please
others!" sang my French blood within me; "to please myself!" echoed my
English blood--and so, betwixt the sanguine tides, I was minded to
please in one way or another, nor thought it a desire unworthy. One
thing did distress me: what with sending all my salary to the prisons,
I had no money left to bet as gentlemen bet, nor to back a well-heeled
bird, nor to color my fancy for a horse. As for a mistress, or for
those fugitive affairs of the heart which English fashion
countenanced--nay, on which fashion insisted--I had no part in them,
and brooked much banter from the gay world in consequence. It was not
merely lack of money, nor yet a certain fastidiousness implanted, nor
yet the inherent shrinking of my English blood from pleasure forbidden,
for my Renault blood was hot enough, God wot! It was, I think, all of
these reasons that kept me untainted, and another, the vague idea of a
woman, somewhere in the world, who should be worth an unsullied
love--worth far more than the best I might bring to her one day. And so
my pride refused to place me in debt to a woman whom I had never known.
As for money, I had my salary when it was convenient for Sir Peter; I
had a small income of my own, long pledged to Colonel Willett's secret
uses. It was understood that Sir Peter should find me in apparel; I had
credit at Sir Peter's tailor, and at his hatter's and bootmaker's, too.
Twice a year my father sent me from Paris a sum which was engaged to
maintain a bed or two in the Albany hospital for our soldiers. I make no
merit of it, for others gave more. So, it is plain to see I had no money
for those fashionable vices in the midst of which I lived, and if I lost
five shillings at whist I felt that I had robbed some wretched creature
on the _Jersey_, or dashed the cup from some poor devil's lips who lay
a-gasping in the city prison.
My finery, then, was part and parcel of my salary--my salary in guineas
already allotted; so it came about that I moved in a loose and cynical
society, untainted only through force of circumstance and a pride that
accepts nothing which it may not return at interest.
* * * * *
When I descended to the dining-room I found all seated, and so asked
pardon of Lady Coleville, who was gay and amiable as usual, and, "for a
penance," as she said, made me sit beside her. That was no penance, for
she was a beauty and a wit, her dainty head swimming with harmless
mischief; and besides knowing me as she did, she was monstrous amusing
in a daring yet delicate fashion, which she might not use with any
other save her husband.
That, as I say, was therefore no penance, but my punishment was to see
Elsin Grey far across the table on Sir Peter's right, and to find in my
other neighbor a lady whose sole delight in me was to alternately shock
me with broad pleasantries and torment me with my innocence.
[Illustration: My punishment was to see Elsin Grey far across the
table.]
Rosamund Barry was her name, Captain Barry's widow--he who fell at
Breeds Hill in '76--the face of a Madonna, and the wicked wit of a lady
whose name she bore, _sans La du_.
"Carus," she said, leaning too near me and waving her satin painted
fan, "is it true you have deserted me for a fairer conquest?"
"The rumor nails itself to the pillory," I said; "who is fairer than
you, Rosamund?"
"You beg the question," she said severely, the while her dark eyes
danced a devil's shadow dance; "if you dare go tiptoeing around the
skirts of the Hon. Miss Grey, I'll tell her all--_all_, mind you!"
"Don't do that," I said, "unless you mean to leave New York."
"All about _you_, silly!" she said, flushing in spite of her placid
smile.
"Oh," I said, with an air of great relief, "I was sure you could not
contemplate confession!"
She laid her pretty head on one side. "I wonder," she mused, eying me
deliberately--"I wonder what this new insolence of yours might
indicate. Is it rebellion? Has the worm turned?"
"The worm has turned--into a frivolous butterfly," I said gaily.
"I don't believe it," she said. "Let me see if I can make you blush,
Carus!" And she leaned nearer, whispering behind her fan.
"Let me match that!" I said coolly. "Lend me your fan, Rosamund----"
"Carus!" exclaimed Lady Coleville, "stop it! Mercy on us, such
shameless billing and cooing! Captain O'Neil, call him out!"
"Faith," said O'Neil, "to call is wan thing, and the chune Mrs. Barry
sings is another. Take shame, Carus Renault, ye blatherin', bould
inthriguer! L'ave innocence to yer betthers!"
"To me, for example," observed Captain Harkness complacently. "Mrs.
Barry knows that raking fellow, Carus, and she knows you, too, you wild
Irishman----"
"If you only keep this up long enough, gentlemen," I said, striving to
smile, "you'll end by doing what I've so far avoided."
"Ruining his reputation in Miss Grey's eyes," explained Lady Coleville
pleasantly.
Elsin Grey looked calmly across at me, saying to Sir Peter, "He _is_ too
young to do such things, isn't he?"
That set them into fits of laughter, Sir Peter begging me to pause in
my mad career and consider the chief end of man, and Tully O'Neil
generously promising moral advice and the spiritual support of Rosamund
Barry, which immediately diverted attention from me to a lightning duel
of words between Rosamund and O'Neil--parry and thrust, innuendo and
eloquent silence, until Lady Coleville in pantomime knocked up the
crossed blades of wit, and Sir Peter vowed that this was no place for
an innocent married man.
When Lady Coleville rose we drew our swords and arched a way for her,
and she picked up her silken petticoat and ran under, laughing, one
hand pressed to her ears to shut out the cheers.
There were long black Spanish cigars, horribly strong, served with
spirits after the ladies had left. O'Neil and Harkness used them; Sir
Peter and I accepted the long cool pipes, and we settled for a
comfortable smoke.
Sir Peter spoke of the coming cock-fight with characteristic
optimism--not shared by Harkness, and but partially approved by O'Neil.
Details were solemnly discussed, questions of proper heeling, of silver
and steel gaffs, of comb and wattle cutting, of the texture of feather
and hackle, and of the "walks" at Flatbush and Horrock's method of
feeding in the dark.
Tiring of the subject, Harkness, spoke of the political outlook and
took a gloomy view, paying his Excellency a compliment by referring to
him as "no fox, but a full-grown wolf, with an appetite for a continent
and perhaps for a hemisphere."
"Pooh!" said Sir Peter, lazily sucking at his pipe, "Sir Henry has him
holed. We'll dig him out before snow flies."
"What folly, Sir Peter!" remonstrated Harkness, leaning forward so that
the candle-light blazed on his gold and scarlet coat. "Look back five
years, Sir Peter, then survey the damnable situation now! Do you
realize that to-day England governs but one city in America?"
"Wait," observed Sir Peter serenely, expelling a cloud of smoke so that
it wreathed his handsome head in a triple halo.
"Wait? Faith, if there's anything else to do but wait I'll take that
job!" exclaimed O'Neil ruefully.
"Why don't you take it, then?" retorted Sir Peter. "It's no secret, I
fancy--that plan of Walter Butler's--is it?" he added, seeing that we
knew nothing of any plan.
"Sir Henry makes no secret of it," he continued; "it's talked over and
disparaged openly at mess and at headquarters. I can see no
indiscretion in mentioning it here."
It was at such moments that I felt a loathing for myself, and such
strong self-disgust must surely have prevailed in the end to make me
false to duty if, as I have said, I had not an absolute faith that his
Excellency required no man to tarnish his honor for the motherland's
salvation.
"What's afoot?" inquired Harkness curiously.
"Why, you remember how the rebel General Sullivan went through the Six
Nations, devastating the Iroquois country, laying waste, burning,
destroying their orchards and crops--which, after all, accomplished the
complete destruction of our own granary in the North?"
"'Twas a dhirty thrick!" muttered O'Neil. "Sure, 'tis the poor naked
haythen will pay that score wan day, or I'm a Hessian!"
"They'll pay it soon if Walter Butler has his way," said Sir Peter.
"Sir John Johnson and the Butlers and Colonel Ross are gathering in the
North. Haldimand's plan is to strike at the rebels' food supply--the
cultivated region from Johnstown south and west--do what Sullivan did,
lay waste the rebel grain belt, burn fodder, destroy all orchards--God!
it will go hard with the frontier again." He swung around to Harkness:
"It's horrible to me, Captain--and Walter Butler not yet washed clean
of the blood of Cherry Valley. I tell you, loyal as I am, humble
subject of my King, whom I reverence, I affirm that this blackened,
blood-soaked frontier is a barrier to England which she can never,
never overcome, and though we win out to-day, and though we hang the
rebels thick as pears in Lispenard's orchards, that barrier will
remain, year by year fencing us in, crowding us back to the ocean, to
our ships, back to the land from whence we English came. And for all
time will the memory of these horrors set America's face against us--if
not for all time, yet our children's children and their children shall
not outlive the tradition burned into the heart of this quivering land
we hold to-day, half shackled, still struggling, already rising to its
bleeding knees."
"Gad!" breathed O'Neil, "'tis threason ye come singin' to the chune o'
Yankee Doodle-doo, Sir Peter."
"It's sense," said Sir Peter, already smiling at his own heat.
"So Ross and the Butlers are to strike at the rebel granaries?"
repeated Harkness, musing.
"Yes; they're gathering on the eastern lakes and at Niagara--Butler's
Rangers, Johnson's Greens, Brant's Iroquois, some Jaegers, a few
regulars, and the usual partizan band of painted whites who disgrace us
all, by Heaven! But there," added Sir Peter, smiling, "I've done with
the vapors. I bear no arms, and it is unfit that I should judge those
who do. Only," and his voice rang a little, "I understand battles, not
butchery. Gentlemen, to the British Army! the regulars, God bless 'em!
Bumpers, gentlemen!"
I heard O'Neil muttering, as he smacked his lips after the toast, "And
to hell with the Hessians! Bad cess to the Dootch scuts!"
"Did you say the rendezvous is at Niagara?" inquired Harkness.
"I've heard so. I've heard, too, of some other spot--an Indian
name--Thend--Thend--plague take it! Ah, I have it--Thendara. You know
it, Carus?" he asked, turning so suddenly on me that my guilty heart
ceased beating for a second.
"I have heard of it," I said, finding a voice scarce like my own.
"Where is it, Sir Peter?"
"Why, here in New York there has ever been a fable about a lost town in
the wilderness called Thendara. I never knew it to be true; but now
they say that Walter Butler has assigned Thendara as his gathering
place, or so it is reported in a letter to Sir Henry, which Sir Henry
read to me. Have _you_ no knowledge of it, Carus?"
"None at all. I remember hearing the name in childhood. Perhaps better
woodsmen than I know where this Thendara lies, but I do not."
"It must lie somewhere betwixt us and Canada," said Harkness vaguely.
"Does not Sir Henry know?"
"He said he did not," replied Sir Peter, "and he sent out a scout for
information. No information has arrived. Is it an Iroquois word,
Carus?"
"I think it is of Lenape origin," I said--"perhaps modified by the
Mohawk tongue. I know it is not pure Oneida."
Harkness glanced at me curiously. "You'd make a rare scout," he said,
"with your knowledge of the barbarians."
"The wonder is," observed Sir Peter, "that he is not a scout on the
other side. If my home had been burned by the McDonalds and the
Butlers, I'm damned if I should forget which side did it!"
"If I took service with the rebels," said I, "it would not be because
of personal loss. Nor would that same private misfortune deter me from
serving King George. The men who burned my home represent no great
cause. When I have leisure I can satisfy personal quarrels."
"Lord!" laughed Sir Peter, "to hear you bewail your lack of leisure one
might think you are now occupied with one cause or t'other. Pray, my
dear Carus, when do you expect to find time to call out these enemies
of yours?"
"You wouldn't have me deprive the King of Walter Butler's services,
would you?" I asked so gravely that everybody laughed, and we rose in
good humor to join the ladies in the drawing-rooms.
Sir Peter's house on Wall Street had been English built, yet bore
certain traces of the old Dutch influence, for it had a stoop leading
to the front door, and the roof was Dutch, save for the cupola; a fine
wide house, the facade a little scorched from the conflagration of '78
which had ruined Trinity Church and the Lutheran, and many fine
buildings and homes.
The house was divided by a wide hallway, on either side of which were
drawing-rooms, and in the rear of these was a dining-room giving on a
conservatory which overlooked the gardens. The ground floor served as a
servant's hall, with a door at the area and another in the rear leading
out through the garden-drive to the stables.
The floor above the drawing-rooms had been divided into two suites, one
in gold leather and blue for Sir Peter and his lady, the other in
crimson damask for guests. The third floor, mine, was similarly
divided, I occupying the Wall Street side, with windows on that
fashionable street and also on Broadway.
Thus it happened that, instead of entering the south drawing-room where
I saw the ladies at the card-table playing Pharaoh, I turned to the
right and crossed the north, or "state drawing-room," and parted the
curtains, looking across Broadway to see if I might spy my friend the
drover and his withered little mate. No doubt prudence and a dislike
for the patrol kept them off Broadway at that hour, for I could not see
them, although a few street lamps were lit and I could make out
wayfarers as far north as Crown Street.
Standing there in the dimly lighted room, my nose between the parted
curtains, I heard my name pronounced very gently behind me, and,
turning, beheld Miss Grey, half lying on a sofa in a distant corner. I
had not seen her when I entered, my back being turned to the east, and
I said so, asking pardon for an unintentional rudeness--which she
pardoned with a smile, slowly waving her scented fan.
"I am a little tired," she said; "the voyage from Halifax was rough,
and I have small love for the sea, so, Lady Coleville permitting, I
came in here to rest from the voices and the glare of too bright
candle-light. Pray you be seated, Mr. Renault--if it does not displease
you. What were you looking for from the window yonder?"
"Treason," I said gaily. "But the patrol should be able to see to that.
May I sit here a moment?"
"Willingly; I like men."
Innocence or coquetry, I was clean checked. Her white eyelids languidly
closing over the pure eyes of a child gave me no clue.
"All men?" I inquired.
"How silly! No, very few men. But that is because I only know a few."
"And may I dare to hope that--" I began in stilted gallantry, cut short
by her opening eyes and smile. "Of course I like you, Mr. Renault. Can
you not see that? It's a pity if you can not, as all the others tease
me so about you. Do you like me?"
"Very, _very_ much," I replied, conscious of that accursed color burning
my face again; conscious, too, that she noted it with calm curiosity.
"Very, _very_ much," she repeated, musing. "Is that why you blush so
often, Mr. Renault--because you like me very, _very_ much?"
Exasperated, I strove to smile. I couldn't; and dignity would not serve
me, either.
"If I loved you," said I, "I might change color when you spoke.
Therefore my malady must arise from other causes--say from Sir Peter's
wine, for instance."
"I knew a man who fell in love with me," she said. "You may do so yet."
"Do you think it likely?" I asked, scarcely knowing how to meet this
cool attack.
"I think it possible--don't you?" she asked.
I considered, or made pretense to. My heart had begun to beat too fast;
and as for her, I could no more fathom her than the sea, yet her babble
was shallow enough to strand wiser men than I upon its sparkling
shoals.
"I do like men," she said thoughtfully, "but not all men, as I said I
did. Now at supper I looked about me and I found only you attractive,
save Sir Peter, and he counts nothing in a game of hearts."
"When you come to mingle with New York society you will, no doubt, find
others far more attractive," I said stupidly.
"No doubt. Still, in the interim"--she looked straight at me from under
her delicate level brows--"in the meanwhile, will you not amuse me?"
"How, madam?"
"I shall not tell you if you call me 'madam.'"
"Will the Hon. Elsin Grey inform me how I may amuse her ladyship?"
"Nor that, either."
I hesitated, then leaned nearer: "How may I amuse you, Elsin?"
"Why, by courting me, silly!" she said, laughing, and spreading her
silken fan. "How else is a woman amused?"
Her smooth hand lay across the velvet arm of the sofa; I took it and
raised it to my lips, and she smiled approval, then drew a languid
little sigh, fanned, and vowed I was the boldest man she had ever
known.
I told her how exquisite her beauty was, I protested at her coldness, I
dedicated myself to her service, vowing eternal constancy; and
presently my elaborate expressions rang truer and grew more simple, and
she withdrew her hand with a laugh, looking at me out of those
beautiful eyes which now were touched with curiosity.
"For a jester, Carus, you are too earnest," she said.
"Does pretense frighten you?"
She regarded me, silent, smiling, her fan at her lips.
"You are playing with fire," she said.
"Tell me, heart of flint, am I the steel to strike a spark from?" I
asked, laughing.
"I do not know yet of what metal you are made, Carus," she said
thoughtfully, yet with that dim smile hovering ever upon her lips.
She dropped her fan and held up one finger. "Listen; let me read you.
Here is my measure of such a man as you: First of all, generous!--look
at your mouth, which God first fashions, then leaves for us to make or
mar. Second, your eyes--sincere! for though you blush like a maiden,
Carus, your eyes are steady to the eyes that punish. Third, dogged!
spite of the fierce impatience that sets your chiseled nose a-quiver at
the nostrils. There! Am I not a very gipsy for a fortune? Read me,
now."
After a long silence I said, "I can not."
"Truly?"
"Truly. I can not read you, Elsin."
She opened her palm and held her fingers, one by one, frowning in an
effort to be just: "First, I am a fool; second, I am a fool; third, I
am a fool; fourth----"
I caught her hand, and she looked at me with a charming laugh.
"I _am_," she insisted, her hand resting in mine.
"Why?"
"Why, because I--I am in love with Walter Butler--and--and I never
liked a man as well as I like you!"
I was astounded. She sighed, slowly shaking her head. "That is it, you
see. Love is very different from having a good time. He is so proud, so
sad, so buried in noble melancholy, so darkly handsome, and all afire
with passion--which advances him not a whit with me nor commends him to
my mercy--only when he stands before me, his dark golden eyes lost in
delicious melancholy; then, _then_, Carus, I know that it must be love I
feel; but it is not a very cheerful sentiment." She sighed again,
picking up her fan with one hand--I held the other.
"Now, with you--and I have scarce known you a dozen hours--it is so
charming, so pleasant and cheerful--and I like you so much, Carus!--oh,
the sentiment I entertain for you is far pleasanter than love. Have you
ever been in love?"
"I am, Elsin--almost."
"Almost? Mercy on us! What will the lady say to 'almost'?"
"God knows," I said, smiling.
"Good!" she said approvingly; "leave her in God's care, and practise on
me to perfect your courtship. I like it, really I do. It is strange,
too," she mused, with a tender smile of reminiscence, "for I have never
let Captain Butler so much as touch my hand. But discretion, you see,
is love; isn't it? So if I am so indiscreet with you, what harm is
there?"
"Are you unhappy away from him?" I asked.
"No, only when with him. He seems to wring my heart--I don't know why,
but, oh, I do so pity him!"
"Are you--plighted?"
"Oh, dear me, yes--but secretly. Ah, I should not have told you
that!--but there you are, Carus; and I do believe that I could tell you
everything I know if our acquaintance endures but twelve more hours. And
_that_," she added, considering me calmly, "is rather strange, I think.
Don't you?"
Ere I could reply came Sir Peter, talking loudly, protesting that it
was a monstrous shame for me to steal away their guest, that I was a
villain and all knew it, he himself best of all; and without more ado
he tucked her arm under his and marched triumphantly away, leaving me
there alone in the deserted room.
But as Elsin gained the door she turned, looking back, and, laying her
hand upon her lips, threw me a kiss behind Sir Peter's shoulders.
CHAPTER III
THE COQ D'OR
The days that followed were brilliant links in a fierce sequence of
gaiety; and this though the weather was so hot that the very candles in
their sconces drooped, dripping their melted wax on egrette and lace,
scarlet coat and scarf. A sort of midsummer madness attacked the city;
we danced in the hot moonlit nights, we drove at noontide, with the sun
flaring in a sky of sapphire, we boated on the Bronx, we galloped out
to the lines, escorted by a troop of horse, to see the Continental
outposts beyond Tarrytown--so bold they had become, and no "skinners,"
either, but scouts of Heath, blue dragons if our glasses lied not, well
horsed, newly saddled, holsters of bearskin, musket on thigh, and the
July sun a-flashing on crested helmet and crossed sling-buckles. And
how my heart drummed and the red blood leaped in me to beat in neck and
temple, at sight of my own comrades! And how I envied them, free to
ride erect and proud in the light of day, harnessed for battle, flying
no false colors for concealment--all fair and clean and aboveboard! And
I a spy!
We were gay, I say, and the town had gone mid-summer mad of its own
fancy--a fevered, convulsive reaction from a strain too long endured;
and while the outlook for the King was no whit better here, and much
worse in the South, yet, as it was not yet desperate, the garrison, the
commander, and the Governor made a virtue of necessity, and, rousing
from the pent inertia of the dreadful winter and shaking off the
lethargy of spring, paced their cage with a restlessness that quickened
to a mania for some relief in the mad distraction of folly and
frivolity.
And first, Sir Peter gave a ball at our house in honor of Elsin Grey,
and we danced in the state drawing-room, and in the hallway, and in the
south drawing-room, and Sir Henry walked a minuet with the Hon. Elsin
Grey, and I had her to wine and later in a Westchester reel. Too much
punch was drunk, iced, which is a deadly thing, and worse still when
the foundation is laid in oranged tea! Too many officers, too many
women, and all so hot, so suffocating, that the red ran from lip and
cheek, streaking the face-powder, and the bare enameled shoulders of
the women were frosted with perspiration like dew on wet roses.
That was the first frolic given in her honor, followed by that wild
dance at the Governor's, where the thickets of clustered candles
drooped like lilies afire, and great islands of ice melted in the
punch-bowls ere they had been emptied a third. And yet the summer
madness continued; by day we drove in couples, in Italian chaises, or
made cherry-parties to Long Island, or sailed the bay to the Narrows,
or played rustic and fished in the bay; at night we danced, danced,
danced, and I saw little of Elsin Grey save through a blaze of
candle-light to move a minuet with her, to press her hand in a reel, or
to conduct her to some garden pavilion where servants waited with ices
amid a thirsty, breathless, jostling throng.
The heat abated nothing; so terrible was it in the city that spite of
the shade afforded by elm, lime, and honey-locust, men and horses were
stricken on the streets, and the Tea Water ran low, and the Collect,
where it flows out into a stream, dried up, and Mr. Rutger's swamps
stank. Also, as was noted by men like me, who, country-bred, concern
themselves with trifles, the wild birds which haunted the trees in
street and lane sang no more, and I saw at times Lord Baltimore's
orioles and hedge-birds, beaks open, eyes partly closed, panting from
the sun, so fierce it beat upon us in New York that summertide.
As for the main Sir Peter had meant to fight with his Flatbush birds,
we tried a shake-bag, stags, which, though fairly matched and handled
by past masters, billed and pecked and panted without a blow from wing
or spur, till we understood that the heat had stunned them, and so gave
up to wait for cooler sport.
We waited, but not in idleness; the cage-fever drove us afield, and the
De Lanceys had us to the house for bowls and cricket, which the ladies
joined, spoiling it somewhat for my taste; and we played golf at Mr.
Lispenard's, which presently lost all charm for me, as Elsin Grey
remained at the pavilion and touched no club, neither wood nor iron,
save to beat the devil's tattoo upon the grass and smile into the bold
eyes of Captain O'Neil.
At Rivington's we found tennis, too, and good rackets, and I played one
whole morning with Elsin Grey, nor wearied of her delight that she beat
me easily; though why I permitted it and why her victory gave me
pleasure is more than I can comprehend, I always desiring to appear
well in trials of skill at which it is a shame for gentlemen not to
excel, and not ungallant to do one's best with ladies to oppose.
Every Tuesday, at Bayard's Hill near the pump, a bull was baited; but
that bloody sport, and the matching of dogs, was never to my taste,
although respectable gentlemen of fashion attended.
However, there was racing at many places--at Newmarket on Salisbury
plain, and at Jamaica; also Mr. Lispenard had a fine course at
Greenwich village, near the country house of Admiral Warren, and Mr. De
Lancey another between First and Second streets, near the Bowery Lane;
but mostly we drove to Mr. Rutger's to see the running horses; and I
was ashamed not to bet when Elsin Grey provoked me with her bantering
challenge to a wager, laying bets under my nose; but I could not risk
money and remember how every penny saved meant to some prisoner aboard
the _Jersey_ more than a drop of water to a soul in torment.
And how it hurt me--I who love to please, and who adore in others that
high disregard of expense that I dared now never disregard! And to
appear poor-spirited in her eyes, too! and to see the others stare at
times, and to be aware of quiet glances exchanged, and of meaning eyes!
It was late in July that the cooling change came--a delicious breath
from the Narrows blowing steady as a trade; and the change having been
predicted a week since by Venus, a negro wench of Lady Coleville's, Sir
Peter had wisely taken precaution to send word to Horrock in Flatbush;
and now the main was to be fought at the cockpit in Great George
Street, at the Frenchman's "Coq d'Or," a tavern maintained most
jealously by the garrison's officers, and most exclusive though scarce
decent in a moral sense, it being notorious for certain affairs in
which even the formality of Gretna Green was dispensed with.
Many a daintily cloaked figure stole, masked, to the rendezvous in the
garden under the cherry-trees, and many a duel was fought in the
pleasant meadows to the south which we called Vauxhall; and there I
have seen silent men waiting at dawn, playing with the coffee they
scarce could swallow, while their seconds paced the path beyond the
stile, whistling reflectively, switching the wild roses, with a
watchful eye for the coming party.
But now, concerning that cocking-main at the Coq d'Or, and how it came
about. The day was to be a merry one, Lady Coleville and Elsin Grey
sleeping until afternoon from the dissipation of the dance at the
Assembly, which lasted until the breakfast hour; Sir Peter, Captains
Harkness and O'Neil, and I to see the main in the morning, lunch at the
tavern, and return to rest until time to dress for the great ball and
supper given by the officers of the artillery at Fort George.
The day, the 28th of July, broke cloudless and sweetly cool. Dressing,
I saw the jack flying straight in the sea-wind and a schooner in the
North River heeled over and scudding south, with a white necklace of
foam trailing from her sprit back along half her water-line.
Sir Peter, in riding-boots and coat, came in high spirits to drink a
morning cup with me, saying his birds had arrived and Horrock had gone
forward with them, and that we must bolt breakfast and mount, for the
Fifty-fourth's officers were early risers, and we should not detain
them. And so he chattered on, joyously, pacing my chamber while Dennis
buckled my spurs.
At breakfast we bolted what was set before us, with many a glance
through the windows where, in the garden drive, our horses stood
saddled in the shade of an elm, a black at each bit, and the whole
stable-force out, all a-grinning to wish the master luck of his
Flatbush birds and the main to boot.
"Carus," said Sir Peter, fork poised, glass in hand, "it's a thousand
on the main, a hundred on each battle, and I must win. You know that!"
I knew it only too well and said so, speaking cheerfully yet seriously
of his affairs, which had become so complicated since the closer
blockade of the city. But he was ever gaily impatient of details and of
pounds and pence. Accounts he utterly refused to audit, leaving it to
me to pay his debts, patch up gaps left by depreciated securities, and
find a fortune to maintain him and his wife in the style which, God
knows, befitted him, but which he could no longer properly afford. And
when it came to providing money to fling from race-track to cockpit,
and from coffee-house to card-room, I told him plainly he had none,
which made him laugh and swear and vow I was treating him most
shabbily. And it was no use; he would have his pin-money, and I must
sell or pledge or borrow, at an interest most villainous, from the
thrifty folk in Duke Street.
So now, when I offered to discuss the danger of extravagance, he swore
he would not have a day's pleasure ruined by a sermon, and presently we
rose and went into the garden to mount, and I saw Sir Peter
distributing silver among the servants, so that all could share the
pleasure and lay wagers among their kind for the honor of the Flatbush
birds and the master who bred them.
"Come, Carus," he sang out from his saddle, and I followed him at a
gallop out into Broadway and up the street, keeping under the shade of
the trees to save our horses, though the air was cool and we had not
far to go.
Presently he drew bridle, and we walked our horses past Partition
Street, past Barckley, and the common, where I glanced askance at the
ominous row of the three dread buildings, the Bridewell, the Almshouse,
the Prison, with the Provost's gallows standing always ready between;
and it brought sullen thoughts to me which four years of patience could
not crush; nor had all these years of inaction dulled the fierce spark
that flashed to fire within me when I looked up at the barred windows
and at the sentinels, and thought of mine own people rotting there, and
of Mr. Cunningham, the Provost, whom hell should one day be the worse
for.
"Is aught amiss, Carus?" asked Sir Peter, catching my eye.
"Yes, the cruelty practised yonder!" I blurted out. Never before had I
said as much to any man.
"You mean the debtors--or those above in the chain-room?" he asked,
surprised.
"I was not speaking of the Bridewell, but of the Prison," I said.
"What cruelty, Carus? You mean the rigor Cunningham uses?"
"Rigor!" I said, laughing, and my laugh was unpleasant.
He looked at me narrowly. We rode past Warren Street and the Upper
Barracks in silence, saluting an officer here and there with
preoccupied punctiliousness. Already I was repenting of my hardiness in
mixing openly with politics or war--matters I had ever avoided or let
pass with gay indifference.
"Carus," he said, patting his horse's mane, "you will lay a bet for the
honor of the family this time--will you not?"
"I have no money," I replied, surprised; for never before had he
offered to suggest an interference into my own affairs--never by word
or look.
"No money!" he repeated, laughing. "Gad, you rake, what do you do with
it all?" And as I continued silent, he said more gravely, "May I speak
plainly to a kinsman and dear friend?"
"Always," I said uneasily.
"Then, without offense, Carus, I think that, were I you, I should bet a
little--now and again--fling the guineas for a change--now and then--if
I were you, Carus."
"If you were I you would not," I said, reddening to the temples.
"I think I should, nevertheless," he persisted, smiling. "Carus, you
know that if you need money to bet with----"
"I'll tell you what I need, Sir Peter," said I, looking him in the eye.
"I need your faith in me that I am not by choice a niggard."
"God forbid!" he cried.
"Yet I pass among many for that," I said hotly. "I know it, I suffer.
Yet I can not burn a penny; it belongs to others, that's all."
"A debt!" he murmured.
"Call it as you will. The money you overpay me for my poor services is
not even my own to enjoy."
Sir Peter dropped his bridle and slapped his gloved hands together with
a noise that made his horse jump. "I knew it," he cried, "I knew it,
and so I told Elsin when she came to me, troubled, because in you this
one flaw appeared; yet though she questioned me, in the same breath she
vowed the marble perfect, and asked me if you had parents or kin
dependent. She is a rare maid, my pretty kinswoman--" He hesitated,
glancing cornerwise at me.
"Do you know Walter Butler well?" I asked carelessly.
"No, only a little. Why, Carus?"
"Is he married?"
"I never heard it. He is scarcely known to me save through Sir John
Johnson, and that his zeal led him to what some call a private
reprisal."
"Yes, he burned our house, or his Indians did, making pretense that
they did not know who lived there, but thought the whole Bush a rebel
hotbed. It is true the house was new, built while Sir John lay brooding
there in Canada over his broken parole. Perhaps Walter Butler did not
know the house was ours."
"You are very generous, Carus," said Sir Peter gravely.
"No, not very. You see, my father and my mother were in France, and I
here, and Butler's raiders only murdered one old man--a servant, all
alone there, a man too old and deaf to understand their questions. I
know who slew that ancient body-servant to my father, who often held me
on his knees. No, Sir Peter, I am not generous, as you say. But there
are matters which must await the precedence of great events ere their
turn comes in the mills which grind so slow, so sure, and so exceeding
fine."
Sir Peter looked at me in silence, and in silence we rode on until we
came to the tavern called the Coq d'Or.
They were there, the early risers of the Fifty-fourth--a jolly, noisy
crowd, all scarlet and gold; and they set up a cheer, which was half
welcome, half defiance, when we rode into the tavern yard and
dismounted, bowing right and left; and the landlord came to receive us,
and servants followed with champagne-cup, iced; and there was old
Horrock, too, hat in hand, to attend Sir Peter, with a shake of his
wise old head and a smile on his furrowed face--Horrock, the prince of
handlers, with his chicken-men, and his scales, and his Flatbush birds
a-crowing defiance to the duck-wings, spangles, pyles, and Lord knows
what, that his Majesty's Fifty-fourth Regiment of Foot had backed to
win with every penny and farthing they could scrape to lay against us.
I heard old Horrock whisper to Sir Peter, who was reading over the
match-list, "They're the best we can do, sir; combs low-cut, wings
rounded, hackle and saddle trimmed to a T, and the vanes perfect." He
laughed: "What more can I do, sir? They had aniseed in their bread on
the third day, and on the weighing-day sheep-heart, and not two teacups
of water in the seven. They came from the walks in prime condition, and
tartar and jalap did the rest. They sparred free in the boots and took
to the warm ale and sweet-wort, and the rooms were dark except at
feeding. What more can I do, sir, except heel them to a
hair's-breadth?"
"You have no peer, Horrock, and you know it," said Sir Peter, kindly,
and the old man's furrowed face shone as he trotted off to the
covert-room.
Meanwhile I had been hailed by a dozen friends of a dozen different
regiments, good fellows all: Major Jamison of the Partisans; Ensign
Halvar, young Caryl of the Fortieth Foot; Helsing of the Artillery, and
apparently every available commissioned officer of the Fifty-fourth,
including Colonel Eyre, a gentleman with a scientific taste for the pit
that gained him the title of "The Game 'Un" from saucy subalterns,
needless to say without his knowledge.
"A good bird, well handled, freely backed--what more can a gentleman
ask?" said Major Neville, waddling beside Sir Peter as we filed into
the tavern. "My wife calls it a shameful sport, but the cockpit is a
fashionable passion, damme! and a man out o' fashion is worse than an
addled cluck-egg! Eh, Renault? Good gad, sir! Do not cocks fight
unurged, and are not their battles with nature's spurs more cruel than
when matched by man and heeled with steel or even silver, which
mercifully ends the combat in short order? And so I tell my wife, Sir
Peter, but she calls me brute," he panted plaintively.
"Pooh!" said Sir Peter, laughing, "I can always find a reason for any
transgression in the list from theft to murder, and justify each crime
by logic--if I put my mind to do so. But my mind is not partial to
logic. I fight game-fowl and like it, be the fashion and the ethics
what they may."
He was unjust to himself as usual; to him there was no difference
between the death of a pheasant afield and the taking off of a good
bird in the pit.
Seated around the pit, there was some delay in showing, and Dr. Carmody
of the brigade staff gave me, unsolicited, his mature opinions upon
game-fowl:
"Show me a bird of bold carriage, comb bright red and upright, eye full
and bright, beak strong and in good socket, breast full, body broad at
shoulder and tapering to tail, thigh short, round, and hard as a nail,
leg stout, flat-footed, and spur low--a bird with bright, hard
feathers, strong in a quill, warm and firm to the hand--and I care not
what breed he be, spangle or black-red, I'll lay my last farthing with
you, Mr. Renault, if it shall please you."
"And what am I to back?" said I, laughing--"a full plume, a long, soft
hackle, a squirrel-tail, a long-thighed, in-kneed, weak-beaked,
coarse-headed henning-fowl selected by you?"
The little doctor roared with laughter; the buzz and hum of
conversation increased around us--bits of banter, jests tossed from
friend to friend.
"Who dubs your birds for you. Sir Peter?" cried Helsing--"the Bridewell
barber?"
"Ten guineas to eight with you on the first battle," retorted Sir
Peter, courteously; and, "Done with you, sir!" said Helsing, noting the
bet, while Sir Peter booked his memorandum and turned to meet a perfect
shower of offers, all of which he accepted smilingly. And I--oh, I was
sick to sit there without a penny laid to show my loyalty to Sir Peter.
But it must be so, and I bit my lip and strove to smile and parry with
a jest the well-meant offers which now and then came flying my way. But
O'Neil and Harkness backed the Flatbush birds right loyally, cautioned
by Sir Peter, who begged that they wait; but they would not--and one
was Irish--so nothing would do but a bold front and an officer snapped
with, "Done, sir!"
The judges and the referee had been chosen, the color-writers selected,
and Sir Peter had won the draw, choosing, of course, to weigh first,
the main being governed by rules devised by the garrison regiments,
partly Virginian, partly New York custom. Matches had been made in
camera, the first within the half-ounce, and allowing a stag four
ounces; round heels were to be used; all cutters, twists, and slashers
barred; the metal was steel, not silver.
And now the pitters had taken station, Horrock and a wall-eyed Bat-man
of the Train, and the birds had billed three times and had been fairly
delivered on the score--a black brass-back of ours against a black-red
of the Fifty-fourth. Scarcely a second did they eye one another when
crack! slap! they were at it, wing and gaffle. Suddenly the black-red
closed and held, struck like lightning five or six times, and it was
all over with Sir Peter's Flatbush brass-back, done for in a single
heat.
"Fast work," observed Sir Peter calmly, taking snuff, with a pleasant
nod to the enemy.
Then odds on the main flew like lightning, all taken by Sir Peter and
O'Neil and a few others of ours, and I biting my lip and fixing my eyes
on the roof. Had I not dreaded to hurt Sir Peter I should never, never
have come.
We again showed a brass-back and let him run in the pit before cutting
a feather, whereupon Sir Peter rashly laid ten to five and few takers,
too, for the Fifty-fourth showed a pyle of five-pounds-three--a
shuffler which few fancied. But Lord! the shuffler drummed our
brass-back to the tune of Sir Daniel O'Day, and though two ounces
light, took just eight minutes to crow for victory.
Again we showed, this time a duck-wing, and the Fifty-fourth a blue
hackle, heavily backed, who proved a wheeler, but it took twenty
minutes for him to lay the duck-wing upon the carpet; and we stood
three to the bad, but game, though the odds on the main were heavily
against us. Our fourth, a blinker, blundered to victory; our fifth hung
himself twice to the canvas and finally to the heels of a bewildered
spangle; our sixth, a stag, and a wheeling lunatic at that, gave to the
Fifty-fourth a bad quarter of an hour, and then, when at the last
moment our victory seemed certain, was sent flying to eternity in one
last feathered whirlwind, leaving us four to split and four to go, with
hopeless odds against us, and Sir Peter calmly booking side-bets on
anything that anybody offered.
When the call came we all rose, leaving the pit by the side-entrance,
which gave on the cherry garden, where tables were spread for luncheon
and pipes fetched for all who cared not to scorch their lips with
Spanish cigars.
Sir Peter, hard hit, moved about in great good humor, a seed-cake in
one hand, a mug of beer in t'other; and who could suppose he stood to
lose the thousand guineas he had such need of--and more besides!--so
much more that it turned me cold to think of Duke Street, and how on
earth I was to find funds for the bare living, luxuries aside.
As for O'Neil, the crazy, warm-hearted Irishman went about blustering
for odds--pure, generous bravado!--and the Fifty-fourth, to their
credit, let him go unharmed, and Harkness, too. As for me, I was very
quiet, holding my peace and my opinions to myself, which was proper, as
I had laid not one penny on a feather that day.
Sir Peter, seeing me sitting alone under a cherry-tree, came strolling
over, followed by Horrock.
"Well, Carus," he said, smiling blandly, "more dealing with Duke
Street, eh? Pooh! There's balm in Gilead and a few shillings left still
in the Dock-Ward!" He laughed, but I said nothing. "Speak out, man!" he
said gaily; "what do you read by the pricking of your thumbs?"
"Ask Horrock," I said bluntly. He turned to the grim-visaged retainer,
laying his hand familiarly on the old man's shoulder.
"Horrock begs me to ride for an even break," he said; "don't you, O
paragon among pitters?"
"Yes, sir, I do. Ask Mr. Renault what Sir William Johnson's Huron Reds
did to the Patroon's Tartars in every main fought 'twixt Johnstown and
Albany in '72 and '73."
I looked up, astounded. "Have you four Hurons to show?" I asked Sir
Peter, incredulously.
"I have," he said.
A desperate hope glimmered in my mind--nay, not merely a hope but a
fair certainty that ruin could be held at arm's length for a while. So
possessed was I by absolute faith in Sir William Johnson's strain,
called Hurons, that I listened approvingly to Sir Peter's plans for a
dashing recoup. After all, it was now or never; the gamblers' fever
seized me, too, in a vise-like grip. Why should I not win a thousand
guineas for my prisoners, risking but a few hundred on such a hazard!
"You will be there, of course," he said. And after a long silence, I
answered:
"No, I shall walk in the garden until you finish. The main should be
ended at five."
"As you choose, Carus," he answered pleasantly, glancing at his watch.
Then turning, he cried: "Time, gentlemen--and four to ten we split the
main!"
"Done with you, Sir Peter!" came the answering shout as from a single
throat; and Sir Peter, smiling to himself, booked briefly and sauntered
toward the tavern door, old Horrock trotting faithfully at heel.
I had risen and was nervously pacing the grass under the cherry-trees,
miserable, full of bitterness, depressed, already bitterly regretting
the chance lost, arguing that it was a certainty and no hazard. Yet,
deep in my heart, I knew no gentleman can bet on certainty, and where
there is no certainty there is risk. That risk I had not taken; the
prisoners were to gain or suffer nothing. Thinking of these matters I
started to stroll through the cherry grove, and as I stepped from the
shade out upon the sunny lawn the shadow of an advancing figure warned
me, and I looked up to behold a young officer, in a black and green
uniform, crossing my path, his head turned in my direction, his dark,
luminous gaze fastened curiously upon me.
Dazzled somewhat by the sun in my eyes, I peered at him as he passed,
noting the strange cut of his regimentals, the silver buttons stamped
with a motto in relief, the curious sword-knot of twisted buck-thong
heavily embroidered in silver and scarlet wampum. Wampum? And what was
that devil's device flashing on button and shoulder-knot?
"Butler's Rangers!"
Slowly I turned to stare; he halted, looking back at me, a slim,
graceful figure in forest-green, his own black hair gathered in a club,
his dark amber eyes fixed on mine with that veiled yet detached glare I
had not forgotten.
"Captain Butler," I said mechanically.
Hats in hand, heels together, we bowed low in the sunshine--so low that
our hands on our hilts alone retained the blades in their scabbards,
while our hats swept the short grass on the lawn; then, leisurely
erect, once more we stood face to face, a yard of sod betwixt us, the
sunshine etching our blue shadows motionless.
"Mr. Renault," he said, in that colorless voice he used at times, "I
had thought to know you, but you are six years older. Time's
alchemy"--he hesitated, then with a perfect bow--"refines even the
noblest metal. I trust your health and fortune are all that you could
desire. Is madam, your mother, well, and your honorable father?"
"I thank you, Captain Butler."
He looked at me a moment, then with a melancholy smile and a gesture
wholly graceful: "It is poor reparation to say that I regret the error
of my Cayugas which committed your house to the flames."
"The fortune of war, Captain Butler. I trust your home at Butlersbury
still survives intact."
A dull color crept into his pallid cheeks.
"The house at Butlersbury stands," he said, "as do Johnson Hall, Guy
Park, and old Fort Johnson. We hope erelong to open them again to our
friends, Mr. Renault."
"I have understood so," I said politely. "When do you march from
Thendara?"
Again the dark color came into his face. "Sir Frederick Haldimand is a
babbler!" he said, between tightening lips. "Never a secret, never a
plan, but he must bawl it aloud to all who care to listen, or sound it
as he gads about from camp to city--aye, and chatters it to the forest
trees for lack of audience, I suppose. All New York is humming with it,
is it not, Mr. Renault?"
"And if it is, what harm?" I said pleasantly. "Who ever heard of
Thendara, save as a legend of a lost town somewhere in the wilderness?
Who in New York knows where Thendara lies?"
He looked at me with unwinking eyes--the empty stare of a bird of prey.
"_You_ know, for one," he said; and his eyes suddenly became piercing.
I smiled at him without comprehension, and he took the very vagueness
of my smile for acquiescence.
Like the luminous shadow of summer lightning the flame flickered in his
eyes, and went out, leaving them darkly drowned in melancholy. He
stepped nearer.
"Let us sit under the trees for a moment--if I am not detaining you,
Mr. Renault," he said in a low, pleasant voice. I bowed. We turned,
walking shoulder to shoulder toward the shade of the cherry-trees, now
in full foliage and heavily fruited. With perfect courtesy he halted,
inclining his head, a gesture for me to pass before him. We seated
ourselves at a rustic table beneath the trees; and I remember the ripe
cherries which had dropped upon it from the clusters overhead, and how,
as we talked, I picked them up, tasting them one by one.
"I am here," he began abruptly, "of my own idea. No one, not even Sir
Henry, is aware that I am in New York. I came from Halifax by the
_Gannet_, schooner, landing at Coenties Slip among the fishing-smack in
time for breakfast; then to Sir Peter Coleville's, learning he was
here--cock-fighting!" A trace of a sneer edged his finely cut nostrils.
"If you desire concealment, is it wise to wear that uniform?" I asked.
"I am known on the fighting-line, not in this peaceful garrison of New
York," he said haughtily. "We of the landed gentry of Tryon County make
as little of New York as New York makes of us!" A deeper sneer twitched
his upper lip. "Had I my way, this port should be burned from river to
river, fort, shipping, dock--all, even to the farms outlying on the
hills--and the enervated garrison marched out to take the field!" He
made a violent gesture toward the north. "I should fling every man and
gun pell-mell on that rebels' rat-nest called West Point, and uproot
and tear it from the mountain flank! I should sweep the Hudson with
fire; I should hurl these rotting regiments into Albany and leave it a
smoking ember, and I should tread the embers into the red-wet earth!
That is the way to make war! But this--" He stared south across the
meadows where in the distance the sunlit city lay, windows a-glitter,
spires swimming in the blue, and on the bay white sails glimmering off
shores of living green.
"Mr. Renault," he said, "I am here to submit this plan to Sir Henry
Clinton. Lord Cornwallis advocated the abandonment of New York last
May. I am here to urge it. If Sir Henry will approve, then the war ends
before the snow flies; if he will not, I still shall act my part, and
lay the north in ashes so that not one ear of corn may be garnered for
the rebel army, not one grain of wheat be milled, not a truss of hay
remain betwixt Johnstown and Saratoga! Nothing in the north but
blackened desolation and the silence of annihilation. That is how I
make war."
"That is your reputation," I said calmly.
His smile was ghastly--a laugh without sound, that touched neither eyes
nor mouth.
At that moment I heard cries and laughter and a great babel of voices
from the tavern. He rose instantly, I also; the stable-lads were
bringing up the horses; the tavern door was flung wide, and out of it
poured the cockers, a turbulent river of scarlet and gold, the noisy
voices and laughter increasing to tumult as the officers mounted with
jingle of spur and scabbard, draining the stirrup-cup and hastening to
their duties.
"By gad, sir!" cried Jamison, turning in his saddle as he passed me,
"those Hurons did the trick for Sir Peter. He's split the main, so help
me! and stands to win a fortune."
And Dr. Carmody, galloping past, waved his hand with a hopeless laugh.
"We're cleaned out! cleaned out!" he cried; "that main has beggared the
brigade staff. Damme, he's beggared the entire garrison!"
Others rode by, gaily uproarious in defeat, clean, gallant sportsmen
all, saluting misfortune as cheerily and as recklessly as they might
have greeted victory.
"Have at thee, buck!" shouted young Caryl, waving his hand as he passed
me. "We'll try it again, you villain, if there's life left in our
fasting mess!"
And Helsing, passing at a canter, grinned and beat his gold-laced
breast in mock despair, shouting back to me: "I'm for Duke Street and
Mendoza! Dine well, Carus, you who can afford to sup on chicken!"
Then came Sir Peter, cool, debonair, surrounded by a crowd afoot,
Horrock at heel, his old eyes dim with joy, his grim mouth set; and
after him two lads leading our horses, and O'Neil and Harkness mounted,
curbing the triumph that glittered in their eyes.
"Yonder comes Sir Peter," I said to Walter Butler. "Shall I have the
honor of making you known to one another?"
"He has forgotten me, I think," said Butler slowly, as Sir Peter raised
his hat in triumphant greeting to me and then included Butler in a
graver salute.
"You have heard the news, Carus?" he asked gaily.
"I give you joy," I said. Then, with colorless ceremony, I made them
known to one another, and with greater ceremony they exchanged salutes
and compliments--a pair matched in flawless breeding and the usages of
perfect courtesy.
"I bear a letter," said Walter Butler, "and have this morning done
myself the honor of waiting upon Lady Coleville and the 'Hon. Elsin
Grey.'"
And as Sir Peter acknowledged the courtesy, I looked suddenly at Walter
Butler, remembering what Elsin Grey had told me.
"The letter is from General Sir Frederick Haldimand," he said
pleasantly, "and I fear it bears you news not too agreeable. The Hon.
Miss Grey is summoned home, Sir Peter--pending a new campaign."
"Home!" exclaimed Sir Peter, surprised. "Why, I thought--I had hoped we
were to have her with us until winter. Gad! It is as you say, not too
agreeable news, Captain Butler. Why, she has been the life of the town,
sir; she has waked us and set us all a-dancing like yokels at a
May-pole or a ring-around-a-rosy! Split me! Captain Butler, but Lady
Coleville will be sorry to learn this news--and I, too, sir, and every
man in New York town."
He looked at me in genuine distress. My face was perfectly
expressionless.
"This should hit you hard, Carus," he said meaningly. Then, without
seeing, I felt Walter Butler's head slowly turning, and was aware of
his eyes on me.
"Come, gentlemen," said Sir Peter, "the horses are here. Is not that
fine chestnut your mount, Captain Butler? You will ride with us, will
you not? Where is your baggage? At Flocks? I shall send for it--no,
sir, I take no excuse. While you are in New York you shall be my guest,
Captain Butler."
And so, Sir Peter naming Butler to O'Neil and Harkness, and salutes
being decently exchanged, we mounted and cantered off along Great
George Street, Horrock on his hunter bringing up the rear.
And at every stride of my horse a new misgiving, a deeper distrust of
this man Butler stirred in my troubled heart.
CHAPTER IV
SUNSET AND DARK
It was six o'clock in the early evening, the sun still shining, and in
the air a sea-balm most delicious. Sir Peter and Captain Butler had
gone to see Sir Henry, Butler desiring to be presented by so grand a
personage as Sir Peter, I think, through mere vanity; for his own rank
and title and his pressing mission should have been sufficient
credentials. Sir Henry Clinton was not too difficult of approach.
Meanwhile I, finding neither Lady Coleville nor the Hon. Elsin Grey at
home, had retired to my chambers to write to Colonel Willett concerning
Butler's violent designs on the frontier. When I finished I made a
sealed packet of all papers accumulated, and, seizing hat, snuff-box,
and walking-stick, went out into Wall Street, through the dismal
arcades of the City Hall, and down to Hanover Square. Opposite Mr.
Goelet's Sign of the Golden Key, and next door to Mr. Minshall's
fashionable Looking-Glass Store, was the Silver Box, the shop of Ennis
the Tobacconist, a Boston man in our pay; and it was here that for four
years I was accustomed to bring the dangerous despatches that should go
north to his Excellency or to Colonel Willett, passed along from
partizan to partizan and from agent to agent, though who these secret
helpers along the route might be I never knew, only that Ennis charged
himself with what despatches I brought, and a week or more later they
were at Dobbs Ferry, West Point, or in Albany. John Ennis was there
when I entered; he bowed his dour and angular New England bow, served a
customer with snuff, bowed him to the door, then returned grinning to
me, rubbing his long, lean, dangerous hands upon his apron--hands to
throttle a Tryon County wolf!
"Butler's in town," he said harshly, through his beak of a nose. "I
guess there's blood to be smelled somewhere in the north when the
dog-wolf's abroad at sunup. He came by sloop this morning," he added,
taking the packet from my hands and laying it upon a table in plain
sight--the best way to conceal anything.
"How do you know?" I asked.
"A Bull's-Head drover whistled it an hour since," he said carelessly.
"That same drover and his mate desire to see you, Mr. Renault. Could
you, by chance, take the air at dusk--say on Great George Street--until
you hear a whippoorwill?"
I nodded.
"You will not fail, then, sir? This drover and his fellow go north
to-night, bearing the cross o' fire."
"I shall not fail them," I said, drawing a triple roll of guineas from
my pocket. "This money goes to the prison-ships; they are worse off
there than under Cunningham. See to it, Ennis. I shall bring more
to-morrow."
He winked; then with grimace and circumstance and many a stiff-backed
bow conducted me to the door, where I stood a moment, snuff-box in
hand, as though testing some new and most delicious brand just
purchased from the Silver Box.
There were many respectable folk abroad in Hanover Square, thronging
the foot-paths, crowding along the gay shop-windows, officers lagging
by the jeweler's show, sober gentlemen clustering about the
book-stalls, ladies returning from their shopping or the
hair-dresser's, young bucks, arm in arm, swaggering in and out of
coffee-house and tavern.
As I stood there, making pretense to take snuff, I noticed a
sedan-chair standing before Mrs. Ballin's millinery-shop, and seeing
that the bearers were Lady Coleville's men, I crossed the street.
As I came up they touched their hats, and at the same moment the
shop-door opened and out tripped, not Lady Coleville at all, but the
Hon. Elsin Grey in the freshest of flowered gowns, wearing a piquant
chip hat a la Gunning, with pink ribbons tied under her dainty chin.
"You!" she cried. "Of all men, to be caught a-raking in Hanover Square
like some mincing macaroni, peeping into strange sedan-chairs!"
"I knew it was Lady Coleville's chair," I said, laughing, yet a little
vexed, too.
"It isn't; it's Mrs. Barry's," she said. "Our chairs are all at the
varnishers. Now what excuse can you trump up?"
"The bearers are Lady Coleville's," I said. "Don't be disagreeable. I
came to walk with you."
"Expecting to meet Rosamund Barry! Thank you, Carus. And I may add that
I have seen little of you since Friday; not that I had noticed your
absence, but meeting you on your favorite promenade reminded me how
recreant are men. Heigho! and alas! You may hand me to my chair before
you leave me to go ogling Broad Street for your Sacharissa."
I conducted her to the curb in silence, tucking her perfumed skirts in
as she seated herself. The bearers resumed the bars, and I, hat under
one arm and stick at a fashionable angle, strolled along beside the
chair as it proceeded up Wall Street. It was but a step to Broadway. I
opened the chair door and aided her to descend, then dismissed the
bearers and walked slowly with her toward the stoop.
"This silence is truly soothing," she observed, nose in the air, "but
one can not expect everything, Mr. Renault."
"What is it that you lack?" I asked.
"A man to talk to," she said disdainfully. "For goodness sake, Carus,
change that sulky face for a brighter mask and find a civil word for
me. I do not aspire to a compliment, but, for mercy's sake, say
something!"
"Will you walk with me a little way?" I inquired stiffly.
"Walk with you? Oh, what pleasure! Where? On Broadway? On Crown Street?
On Queen Street? Or do you prefer Front Street and Old Slip? I wish to
be perfectly agreeable, Carus, and I'll do anything to please you, even
to running away with you in an Italian chaise!"
"I may ask you to do that, too," I said.
"Ask me, then! Mercy on the man! was there ever so willing a maid? Give
me a moment to fetch a sun-mask and I'm off with you to any revel you
please--short of the Coq d'Or," she added, with a daring laugh--"and I
might be persuaded to that--as far as the cherry-trees--with _you_,
Carus, and let my reputation go hang!"
We had walked on into Broadway and along the foot-path under the
lime-trees where the robins were singing that quaint evening melody I
love, and the pleasant scent of grass and salt breeze mingled in
exquisite freshness.
"I had a dish of tea with some very agreeable people in Queen Street,"
she remarked. "Lady Coleville is there still. I took Mrs. Barry's chair
to buy me a hat--and how does it become me?" she ended, tipping her
head on one side for my inspection.
"It is modish," I replied indifferently.
"Certainly it is modish," she said dryly--"a Gunning hat, and cost a
penny, too. Oh, Carus, when I think what that husband of mine must pay
to maintain me----"
"What husband?" I said, startled.
"Why, _any_ husband!" She made a vague gesture. "Did I say that I had
picked him out yet, silly? But there must be one some day, I suppose."
We had strolled as far as St. Paul's and had now returned as far as
Trinity. The graves along the north transept of the ruined church were
green and starred with wild flowers, and we turned into the churchyard,
walking very slowly side by side.
"Elsin," I began.
"Ah! the gentleman has found his tongue," she exclaimed softly. "Speak,
Sir Frippon; thy Sacharissa listens."
"I have only this to ask. Dance with me once to-night, will you?--nay,
twice, Elsin?"
She seated herself upon a green mound and looked up at me from under
her chip hat. "I have not at all made up my mind," she said. "Captain
Butler is to be there. He may claim every dance that Sir Henry does not
claim."
"Have you seen him?" I asked sullenly.
"Mercy, yes! He came at noon while you and Sir Peter were gambling away
your guineas at the Coq d'Or."
"He waited upon _you_?"
"He waited on Lady Coleville. I was there."
"Were you not surprised to see him in New York?"
"Not very"--she considered me with a far-away smile--"not very greatly
nor very--agreeably surprised. I have told you his sentiments regarding
me."
"I can not understand," I said, "what you see in him to fascinate you."
"Nor I," she replied so angrily that she startled me. "I thought to-day
when I met him, Oh, dear! Now I'm to be harrowed with melancholy and
passion, when I was having such an agreeable time! But, Carus, even
while I pouted I felt the subtle charm of that very sadness, the
strange, compelling influence of those melancholy eyes." She sighed and
plucked a late violet, drawing the stem slowly between her white teeth
and staring at the ruined church.
After a while I said: "Do you regret that you are so soon to leave us?"
"Regret it?" She looked at me thoughtfully. "Carus," she said, "you are
wonderfully attractive to me. I wish you had acquired that air of
gentle melancholy--that poet's pallor which becomes a noble
sadness--and I might love you, if you asked me."
"I'm sad enough at your going," I said lightly.
"Truly, are you sorry? And when I am gone will you forget la belle
Canadienne? Ah, monsieur, l'amitie est une chose si rare, que,
n'eut-elle dure qu'un jour, on doit en respecter jusqu'au souvenir."
"It is not I who shall forget to respect it, madam, jusqu'au souvenir."
"Nor I, mon ami. Had I not known that love is at best a painful
pleasure I might have mistaken my happiness with you for something very
like it."
"You babble of love," I blurted out, "and you know nothing of it! What
foolish whim possesses you to think that fascination Walter Butler has
for you is love?"
"What is it, then?" she asked, with a little shudder.
"How do I know? He has the devil's own tenacity, bold black eyes and a
well-cut head, and a certain grace of limb and bearing nowise
remarkable. But"--I waved my hand helplessly--"how can a sane man
understand a woman's preference?--nay, Elsin, I do not even pretend to
understand _you_. All I know is that our friendship began in an instant,
opened to full sweetness like a flower overnight, and, like a flower, is
nearly ended now--nearly ended."
"Not ended; I shall remember."
"Well, and if we both remember--to what purpose?"
"To what purpose is friendship, Carus, if not to remember when alone?"
I listened, head bent. Then, pursuing my own thoughts aloud: "It is not
wise for a maid to plight her troth in secret, I care not for what
reasons. I know something of men; it is a thing no honest man should
ask of any woman. Why do you fear to tell Sir Frederick Haldimand?"
"Captain Butler begged me not to."
"Why?" I asked sharply.
"He is poor. You must surely know what the rebels have done--how their
commissioners of sequestration seized land and house from the Tryon
County loyalists. Captain Butler desires me to say nothing until,
through his own efforts and by his sword, he has won back his own in
the north. And I consented. Meanwhile," she added airily, "he has a
glove of mine to kiss, I refusing him my hand to weep upon. And so we
wait for one another, and pin our faith upon his sword."
"To wait for him--to plight your troth and wait for him until he and
Sir John Johnson have come into their own again?"
"Yes, Carus."
"And then you mean to wed him?"
She was silent. The color ebbed in her cheeks.
I stood looking at her through the evening light. Behind her, gilded by
the level rays of the sinking sun, a new headstone stood, and on it I
read:
IN MEMORY OF
Michael Cresap, First Cap't
Of the Rifle Battalions,
And Son to Col. Thomas
Cresap, Who Departed this
Life, Oct. 18, A.D. 1775.
Cresap, the generous young captain, whose dusty column of Maryland
riflemen I myself had seen when but a lad, pouring through Broadalbin
Bush on the way to Boston siege! This was his grave; and a Tory maid in
flowered petticoat and chip hat was seated on the mound a-prattling of
rebels!
"When do you leave us?" I asked grimly.
"Captain Butler has gone to see Sir Henry to ask for a packet. We sail
as soon as may be."
"Does _he_ go with you?" I demanded, startled.
"Why, yes--I and my two maids, and Captain Butler. Sir Frederick
Haldimand knows."
"Yes, but he does not know that Captain Butler has presumed--has dared
to press a clandestine suit with you!" I retorted angrily. "It does not
please me that you go under such doubtful escort, Elsin."
"And pray, who are you to please, sir?" she asked in quick displeasure.
"You speak of presumption in others, Mr. Renault, and, unsolicited, you
offer an affront to me and to a gentleman who is not here to answer."
"I wish he were," I said between my teeth.
Her fair face hardened.
"Wishes are very safe, sir," she said in a low voice.
At that, suddenly, such a blind anger flooded me that the setting sun
swam in my eyes and the blood dinned in ears and brain as though to
burst them. At such moments, which are rare with me, I fall silent; and
so I stood, while the strange rage shook me, and passed, leaving me
cold and very quiet.
"I think we had best go," I said.
She held out her hand. I aided her to rise; and she kept my hand in
hers, laying the other over it, and looked up into my eyes.
"Forgive me, Carus," she whispered. "No man can be more gallant and
more sweet than you."
"Forgive me, Elsin. No maid so generous and just as you."
And that was all, for we crossed the street, and I mounted the stoop of
our house with her, and bowed her in when the great door opened.
"Are you not coming in?" she asked, lingering in the doorway.
"No. I shall take the air."
"But we sup in a few moments."
"I may sup at the Coq d'Or," I said. Still she stood there, the wind
blowing through the doorway fluttering the pink bows tied under her
chin--a sweet, wistful face turned up to mine, and the early
candle-light from the hall sconces painting one rounded cheek with
golden lusters.
"Have you freely forgiven me, Carus?"
"Yes, freely. You know it."
"And you will be at the Fort? I shall give you that dance you ask
to-night, shall I not?"
"If you will."
There was a silence; she stretched out one hand. Then the door was
closed and I descended the steps once more, setting my hat on my head
and tucking my walking-stick under one arm, prepared to meet my drover
friend, who, Ennis said, desired to speak with me.
But I had no need to walk out along Great George Street to find my
bird; for, as I left Wall Street and swung the corner into Broadway,
the husky, impatient whisper of a whippoorwill broke out from the dusk
among the ruins of Trinity, and I started and turned, crossing the
street. Wild birds there were a-plenty in the city, yet the
whippoorwill so seldom came into the streets that the note alone would
have attracted me had Ennis not warned me of the signal.
And so I strolled once more into the churchyard and among the felled
trees which the soldiers had cut down for fire-wood, as they were
scorched past hope of future growth; and presently, prowling through
the dusk among the graves by Lambert Street, I came upon my drover,
seated upon a mound, smoking his clay as innocent as any tavern slug in
the sun.
"Good even, friend," he said, looking up. "I thought I heard a
whippoorwill but now, and being country bred, stole in to listen. Did
you hear it, sir?"
"I thought I did," said I, amused. "I thought it sang, Pro Gloria in
Excelsis----"
"Hush!" whispered the drover, smiling; "sit here beside me and we'll
listen. Perhaps the bird may sing that anthem once again."
I seated myself on the green mound, and the next moment sprang to my
feet as a shape before me seemed to rise out of the very ground; then,
hearing my drover laugh, I resumed my place as the short figure came
toward us.
"Another drover," said my companion, "and a famous one, Mr. Renault,
for he drove certain wild cattle at a headlong gallop from the pastures
at Saratoga--he and I and another drover they call Dan'l Morgan. We
have been strolling here among these graves, a-prying for old
friends--brother drovers. We found one drover's grave--a lad called
Cresap--hard by the arch there to the north."
"Did you know him?" I asked.
"Yes, lad. I was a herder of his at Dunmore's slaughter-house. I saw
him jailed at Fortress Pitt; I saw him freed, too. And one fine day in
'76, a-lolling at my ease in the north, what should I hear but a jolly
conch-horn blowing in the forest, and out of it rolled a torrent of men
in buckskin, Cresap leading, bound for that famous cattle-drive at
Boston town. So I, being by chance in buckskin, and by merest chance
bearing a rifle, fell in and joined the merry ranks--I and my young
friend Cardigan, who is now with certain mounted drovers called, I
think, Colonel Washington's Dragoons, harrying those Carolina cattle
owned by Tarleton."
He glanced up at his comrade, who stood silently beside him in the
darkness.
"He, too, was there, Mr. Renault--my fellow drover here, at your
service. Weasel, remove thy hat and make a bow to Mr. Renault--our
brother drover."
The little withered man uncovered with a grace astonishing. So perfect
was his bearing and his bow that I rose instinctively to meet it, and
match his courtesy with the best I could.
"When like meets like 'tis a duel of good manners," said the big drover
quietly. "Mr. Renault, you salute a man as gently bred as any man who
wears a gilt edge to his hat in County Tryon. I call him the Weasel
with all the reverence with which I say 'your lordship.'"
The Weasel and I exchanged another bow, and I vow he outmatched me,
too, in composure, dignity, and grace, and I wondered who he might be.
"Tempus," observed the giant drover, "fugits like the devil in this
dawdling world o' sin, as the poet has it--eh, Weasel? So, not even
taking time to ask your pardon for my Latin, sir, I catch Time by the
scalplock and add a nick to my gun-stock. Lord, sir! That's no language
for a peaceful, cattle-driving yokel, is it now? Ah, Mr. Renault, I see
you suspect us, and we have only to thank God you're not a lobster-back
to bawl for the sergeant and his lanthorn."
"Who are you?" I asked, smiling.
"Did you ever hear of a vile highwayman called Jack Mount?" he asked,
pretending horror.
"Yes," I said.
"You wouldn't shake hands with him, would you?"
"Let's try it," I replied seriously, holding out my hand.
He took it with a chuckle, his boyish face wreathed in smiles. "A purse
from a magistrate here and there," he muttered--"a Tory magistrate,
overfat and proud--what harm, sir? And I never could abide fat
magistrates, Mr. Renault," he confided in a whisper. "It is strange;
you will scarce credit me, sir, when I tell you that when I'm near a
magistrate, and particularly when he's fat, and the moon's low over the
hills, why, my pistols leap from my belt of their own accord, and I
must snatch them with both hands lest they go flying off like rockets
and explode to do a harm to that same portly magistrate."
"He does not mean all that," said the Weasel, laying his wrinkled hand
affectionately on Mount's great arm. "He has served nobly, sir, with
Cresap and with Morgan."
"But when I'm alone," sighed Mount, "I'm in very bad company, and
mischief follows, sure as a headache follows a tavern revel. I do not
mean to stop these magistrates, Mr. Renault, only they _will_ wander on
the highway, under my very pistols, provoking 'em to fly out!" He looked
at me and furtively licked the stem of his clay pipe.
"So you leave for the north to-night?" I asked, amused.
"Yes, sir. There's a certain Walter Butler in this town, arrived like a
hen-hawk from the clouds, and peep! peep! we downy chicks must scurry
to the forest, lad, or there'll be a fine show on the gallows yonder
and two good rifles idle in the hills of Tryon."
"You know Walter Butler?"
"Know him? Yes, sir. I had him at my mercy once--over my rifle-sights!
Ah, well--he rode away--and had it not been young Cardigan who stayed
my trigger-finger--But let that pass, too. What is he here for?"
"To ask Sir Henry Clinton's sanction of a plan to burn New York and
fling the army on West Point, while he and Sir John Johnson and Colonel
Ross strike the grain country in the north and lay it and the frontier
in ashes."
There was a silence, then a quiet laugh from Mount.
"West Point is safe, I think," he murmured.
"But Tryon?" urged the Weasel; "how will it go with Tryon County,
Jack?"
Another silence.
"We'd best be getting back to Willett," said Mount quietly. "As for me,
my errand is done, and the strange, fishy smells of New York town
stifle me. I'm stale and timid, and I like not the shape of the gallows
yonder. My health requires the half-light of the woods, Mr. Renault,
and the friendly shadows which lie at hand like rat-holes in a granary.
I've drunk all the ale at the Bull's-Head--weak stuff it was--and
they've sent for more, but I can't wait. So we're off to the north
to-night, friend, and we'll presently rinse our throats of this salt
wind, which truly inspires a noble thirst, yet tells nothing to a nose
made to sniff the inland breezes."
He held out his hand, saying, "So you can learn no news of this place
called Thendara?"
"I may learn yet. Walter Butler said to-day that I knew it. Yet I can
not recall anything save the name. Is it Delaware? And yet I know it
must be Iroquois, too."
"It might be Cayuga, for all I know," he said. "I never learned their
cursed jargon and never mean to. My business is to stop their
forest-loping--and I do when I can." He spoke bitterly, like that
certain class of forest-runners who never spare an Indian, never
understand that anything but evil can come of any blood but white. With
them argument is lost, so I said nothing.
"Have you anything for Colonel Willett?" he asked, after a pause.
"Tell him that I sent despatches this very day. Tell him of Butler's
visit here, and of his present plans. If I can learn where this
Thendara lies I will write him at once. That is all, I think."
I shook their hands, one by one.
"Have a care, sir," warned the Weasel as we parted. "This Walter Butler
is a great villain, and, like all knaves, suspicious. If he once should
harbor misgivings concerning you, he would never leave your trail until
he had you at his mercy. We know him, Jack and I. And I say, God keep
you from that man's enmity or suspicion. Good-by, Mr. Renault."
I retained his hand, gazing earnestly into his faded, kindly eyes.
"Do you know aught reflecting on his honor?" I asked.
"I know of Cherry Valley," he replied simply.
"Yes; but I mean his dealings with men in time of peace. Is he
upright?"
"He is so considered, though they would have hanged him for a spy in
Albany in '78-'79, had not young Lafayette taken pity on him and had
him removed from jail to a private house, he pleading illness. Once
uncaged, he gnawed through, and was off to the Canadas in no time,
swearing to repay tenfold every moment's misery he spent in jail. He
did repay--at Cherry Valley. Think, sir, what bloody ghosts must haunt
his couch at night--unless he be all demon and not human at all, as
some aver. Yet he has a wife, they say----"
"What!"
"He has a wife," repeated Mount--"or a mistress. It's all one to him."
"Where?" I asked quietly.
"She was at Guy Park, the Oneidas told me; and when Sullivan moved on
Catharinestown she fled with all that Tory rabble, they say, to
Butlersbury, and from thence to the north--God knows where! I saw her
once; she is French, I think--and very young--a beauty, sir, with hair
like midnight, and two black stars for eyes. I have seen an Oneida girl
with such eyes." He shrugged his shoulders. "Walter Butler makes little
of women--like Sir John Johnson," he added in disgust.
I was silent.
"We go north by Valentine's and North Castle, the Albany road being
unhealthy traveling at night," said Mount, with a grin; "and I think,
Cade, we'd best pull foot. I trust, Mr. Renault, that you may not hear
of our being taken and hung to disgrace any friends of ours. Come,
Cade, old friend, our fair accomplice, the moon, is hid, so lift thy
little legs and trot! Au large!"
They pulled off their hats with a gay flourish, turned, and plunged
shoulder-deep into the weeds.
And so they left me, creeping away through the low foliage into
Greenwich Street, while I, rousing myself, turned my steps toward home.
I had no desire to sup; my appetite's edge had been turned by what I
heard concerning Walter Butler. Passing slowly through the graveyard
and skirting the burned church, I entered Broadway, where here and
there a street-lamp was burning. Few people strolled under the
lime-trees; cats prowled and courted and fought in the gutters,
scattering in silent, shadowy flight before me as I crossed the street
to the great house; and so buried in meditation was I that I presently
found myself in my own room, and could not remember how I passed the
door or mounted the long stairway to my chambers.
Dennis came to do my hair, but I drove him out with boots in a sudden,
petty fury new to my nature. Indeed, lying there in my stuffed
armchair, I scarcely knew myself, so strangely sad and sullen ran my
thoughts--not thoughts, either, for at first I followed no definite
train, but a certain irritable despondency clothed me, and trifles
enraged me, leaving me bitter and sick at heart, bearing a weight of
apprehension concerning nothing at all.
Oh, for a week of liberty from this pit of intrigue! Oh, for a day's
freedom to ride like those blue dragoons of Heath I had seen along the
Hudson! Oh, to be free to dog-trot back to the north with those two
gallant scamps of Morgan, and wear a hunting-shirt once more, and lay
the long brown rifle level in this new quarrel coming soon between
these Butlers and these Johnsons and our yeomanry of County Tryon!
"By God!" I muttered, "I care not if they take me, for I'm sick of
spying and lying, so let them hoist me out upon that leafless tree
where better men have swung, and have done with the wretched business
once for all!" Which I meant not, and was silly to fume, and thankless,
too, to anger the Almighty with ingratitude for His long and most
miraculous protection. But I was in a foul humor with the world and
myself, and I knew not what ailed me, either. True, the insolence of
that libertine, Walter Butler, affronted me, and it gave me a sour
pleasure to think how I should quiet his swagger with one plain word
aside.
Following this lead, I fell to thinking in earnest. What would it
mean--a quarrel? Dare he deny the charge? No; I should command, and he
obey, and I'd send him slinking north by the same accursed schooner
that brought him; and Elsin Grey should go when she pleased, escorted
by a proper retinue. But I'd make no noise about it--not a word to set
tongues wagging and eyes peeping--for Elsin's sake. Lord! the silly
maid, to steer so near the breakers and destruction!
And what then? Well, I should never see her again, once she was safe
among her kin in the Canadas. And she was doubtless the fairest woman I
had ever looked upon--but light--not in an evil sense, God wot! but
prone to impulse and caprice--a kitten, soft as silk, now staring at
the world out of two limpid eyes, now frisking after breeze-blown
rose-leaves. A man may admire such a child, nay, learn to love her
dearly, in a way most innocent. But love! She did not know its meaning,
and how could she inspire it in a man of the world. No, I did not love
her--could not love a maid, unripe and passionless, and overpert at
times, flouting a man like me with her airs and vapors and her insolent
lids and lashes. Lord! but she carried it high-handed with me at times,
plaguing me, teasing, pouting when my attention wandered midway in the
pretty babble with which she condescended to entertain me. And with all
that--and after all is said--there was something in me that warmed to
her--perhaps the shadow of kinship--perhaps because of her utter
ignorance of all she prated of so wisely. Her very crudity touched the
chord of chivalry which is in all men, strung tight or loose, answering
to a touch or a blow, but always answering in some faint degree, I
think. Yet, if this is so, how could Walter Butler find it in his heart
to trouble her?
That he meant her real evil I did not credit, she being what she was.
Doubtless he hoped to find some means of ridding him of a wife no
longer loved; there were laws complacent for that sort of work. Yet,
grant him free, how could he find it in his heart to cherish passion
for a child? He was no boy--this pallid rake of thirty-five--this
melancholy squire of dames who, ere he was twenty, had left a trail in
Albany and Tryon none too savory, if wide report be credited--he and
Sir John Johnson!--as pretty a brace of libertines as one might find
even in that rotten town of London.
Well, I would send him on his business without noise or scandal, and
I'd hold a seance, too, with Mistress Elsin, wherein a curtain-lecture
should be read, kindly, gravely, but with firmness fitting!
I lay back, stretching out my legs luxuriously, pleasantly
contemplating the stern yet kindly role I was to play: first send him
skulking, next enact the solemn father to this foolish maid. Then,
admonishing and smiling forgiveness in one breath, retire as gravely as
I entered--a highly interesting figure, magnanimous and moral----
A rapping at my chamber-door aroused me disagreeably from this
flattering rhapsody.
"Enter!" I said ungraciously, and lay back, frowning to see there in
the flesh the man whose punishment I had been complacently selecting.
"Mr. Renault," he said, "am I overbold in this intrusion on your
privacy? Pray, sir, command me, for my business must await your
pleasure."
I bowed, rising, and pointing to a chair. "It is business, then, not
pleasure, as I take it, Captain Butler, that permits me to receive
you?"
"The business and the pleasure both are mine, Mr. Renault," he said,
which was stilted enough to be civil. "The business, sir, is this: Sir
Henry Clinton received me like a gentleman, but as soon as Sir Peter
had retired he listened to me as though I were demented when I exposed
my plan to burn New York and take the field. I say he used me with
scant civility, and bowed me out, like the gross boor he is!"
"He is commander-in-chief, Mr. Butler."
"What do I care!" burst out Butler, his dark eyes a golden blaze. "Am I
not an Ormond-Butler? Why should a Clinton affront an Ormond-Butler? By
Heaven! I must swallow his airs and his stares and his shrugs because
he is my superior; but I may one day rise in military rank as high as
he--and I shall do so, mark me well, Mr. Renault!--and when I am near
enough in the tinseled hierarchy to reach him at thirty paces I shall
use the privilege, by God!"
"There are," said I blandly, "many subalterns on his staff who might
serve your present purpose, Captain Butler."
"No, no," he said impatiently, his dark eyes wandering about the
chamber, "I have too much at stake to call out fledglings for a sop to
injured pride. No, Mr. Renault, I shall first take vengeance for a
deeper wrong--and the north lies like an unreaped harvest for the
sickle that Death and I shall set a-swinging there."
I bent my head, meditating; then looking up:
"You say I know where this Thendara lies?"
"Yes," he answered sullenly. "You know as well as I do _what is written_
in the Book of Rites."
At first his words rang meaningless, then far in my memory a voice
called faintly, and a pale ray of light grew through the darkened
chambers of my brain. And now I knew, now I remembered, now I
understood where that lost town must lie--the town of Thendara, lost
ever and forever, only to be forever found again as long as the dark
Confederacy should endure.
Awed, I sat in silence; and he turned his gloomy eyes now on me, now on
the darkened window, gnawing his lip in savage retrospection.
Instantly I was aware that he doubted me, and why. I looked up at him,
astounded; he lifted his brooding head and I made a rapid sign, saying
in the Mohawk tongue: "Karon-ta-Ke?--at the Tree?"
"Karon-ta-Kowa-Kon--at the great tree. Sat-Kah-tos--thou seest. There
lies the lost town of Thendara. And, save for the council, where you
and I have a Wolf's clan-right, no living soul could know what that
word Thendara means. God help the Oneida who betrays!"
"Since when and by what nation have _you_ been raised up to sit in the
council of condolence?" I asked haughtily; for, strange as it may appear
to those who know not what it means to wear the Oneida clan-mark of
nobility, I, clean-blooded and white-skinned, was as fiercely proud of
this Iroquois honor as any peer of England newly invested with the
garter. And it was strange, too, for I was but a lad when chosen for the
mystic rite; but never except once--the day before I left the north to
serve his Excellency's purpose in New York--had I been present when that
most solemn rite was held, and the long roll of dead heroes called in
honor of the Great League's founder, Hiawatha.
And so, though I am pure white in blood and bone and every instinct,
and having nigh forgotten that I wore the Wolf--and, too, the Long
House being divided and I siding with the Oneidas, and so at civil war
with the shattered league that served King George--yet I turned on
Walter Butler as a Mohawk might turn upon a Delaware, scornfully
questioning his credentials, demanding his right to speak as one who
had heard the roll-call of those Immortals who founded the "Great
Peace" three hundred years ago.
"The Delawares named me, and the council took me," he said with perfect
calmness. "The Delaware nation mourned their dead; and now I sit for
the Wolf Clan--my elder brother, Renault."
"A Delaware clan is not named in the Rite," I said coldly--"nor is
there kinship between us because you are adopted by the Delawares. I am
aware that clanship knows no nations; and I, an Oneida Wolf, am brother
to a Cayuga Wolf; but I am not brother to you."
"And why not to the twin clan of my adopted nation?" he asked angrily.
"Yours is a cleft ensign and a double clan," I sneered; "which are you,
Gray Wolf or Yellow Wolf?"
"Yellow," he said, struggling to keep his temper; "and if we Delawares
of the Wolf-Clan are not named in the Book of Rites, nevertheless we
sit as ensigns among the noble, and on the same side of the
council-lodge as your proud Oneidas. We have three in the council as
well as you, Mr. Renault. If you were a Mohawk I should hold my peace,
but a Delaware may answer an Oneida. And so I answer you, sir."
How strange it seems now--we two white men, gentlemen of quality,
completely oblivious to blood, birth, tradition, breeding--our primal
allegiance, our very individualities sunk in the mystical freemasonry
of a savage tie which bound us to the two nations we assumed to speak
for, Oneida and Delaware--two nations of the great Confederacy of the
Iroquois that had adopted us, investing us with that clan nobility of
which we bore the ensign.
And we were in deadly earnest, too, standing proudly, fiercely, for our
prerogatives; he already doubly suspicious of me because the Oneida
nation which had adopted me stood for the rebel cause, yet, in his
mealy-mouthed way, assuming that by virtue of Wolf clanship, as well as
by that sentiment he supposed was loyalty to the King, I would do
nothing to disrupt the council which I now knew must decide upon the
annihilation of the Oneida nation, as well as upon the raid he
contemplated.
"Do you imagine that I shall sit with head averted while four nations
and your Delawares combine to plan the murder of my Oneidas?" I
demanded passionately. "When the council sits at Thendara I shall send
a belt to every clan in the Oneida nation, and I care not who knows
it!"
He rose, pale and menacing. "Mr. Renault," he said, "do you understand
that a word from you would be a treason to the King? You can be a
clansman of the Wolf and at the same time be loyal to the King and to
the Iroquois Confederacy; but you can not send a single string of
wampum to the Oneidas and be either loyal to the Six Nations or to your
King. The Oneidas are marked for punishment; the frontier is
doomed--doomed, even though this frittering commander in New York will
neither aid me nor his King. A word of warning to the Oneidas is a
warning to the rebels. And that, sir, I can not contemplate, and you
must shrink from."
"Do you deceive yourself that I shall stand silent and see the Oneida
nation ruined?" I asked between my teeth.
"Are you Oneida, or are you a British subject of King George? Are you
an Iroquois renegade of the renegade Oneida nation, or are you first of
all an Iroquois of the Wolf-Clan? As a white man, you are the King's
subject; as an Iroquois, you are still his subject. As an Oneida only,
you must be as black a rebel as George Washington himself. That is the
limpid logic of the matter, Mr. Renault. A belt to the Oneidas, and you
become traitor to the Confederacy and a traitor to your King. And that,
I say, you can not contemplate!"
I fairly ground my teeth, subduing the rage and contempt that shook me.
"Since when, Captain Butler," I sneered, "have the Oneidas learned to
swallow Delaware threats? By God, sir, the oldest man among the council
can not remember when a Delaware dared speak without permission of an
Iroquois! As an Iroquois and an Oneida, I bid the Delawares to speak
only when addressed. But as a white man, I answer you that I require no
instruction concerning my conduct, and shall merely thank you for your
good intentions and your kind advice, which is the more generous
because unsolicited and wholly undesired!"
Again that menacing glare came into his eyes as he stood staring at me.
But I cared not; he was not my guest, and he had outraged no roof of
mine that the law of hospitality must close my mouth lest I betray the
salt he had eaten within my walls.
"I am thinking," he said slowly, "that we did well to burn a certain
house in Tryon Bush."
"Think as you please, Captain Butler," I said, bowing. "The door swings
open yonder for your convenience."
He surveyed me scornfully. "I trust," he said pleasantly, "to resume
this discussion at a time more opportune."
"That also shall be at your convenience," I said. Suddenly such a
loathing for the man came over me that I could scarce return his salute
and maintain that courteous calm which challenged men must wear at such
a moment.
He went away; and I, pacing my chamber lightly, whistled for Dennis,
and when he came bade him curl and frizz and powder and perfume me as
he had never done before. So to my bath, and then to court the razor,
lathered cheek and chin, nose in the air, counting the posies on the
wall, as I always did while Dennis shaved me of the beard I fondly
feared might one day suddenly appear.
And all the while, singing in my ears, I heard the meaning phrase he
used at parting. Challenged? Not quite, but threatened with a
challenge. The cards were mine to play--a pretty hand, with here and
there a trump. Could I meet him and serve my country best? Aye, if I
killed him. And, strangely, I never thought that he might kill me; I
only weighed the chances. If I killed him he could not blab and danger
me with hints of meddling or of rank disloyalty; but if I only maimed
him he would never rest until suspicious eyes must make my mission
useless. Suddenly I was aware that I had been a fool to anger him, if I
wished to stay here in New York; nay, it was patent that unless I
killed him he must one day work a mischief to our cause through me. A
sneaking and unworthy happiness crept slowly over me, knowing that once
my mission terminated here I was free to hoist true colors, free to
bear arms, free to maintain openly the cause I had labored for so long
in secret. No more mole's work a-burrowing into darkness for a scrap to
stay my starving country's maw; no more slinking, listening, playing
the stupid indifferent!
And all the while my conscience was at work, urging me to repair the
damage my forgetful passion had wrought, urging me to heal the breach
with Butler, using what skill I might command, so that I could stay
here where his Excellency had set me, plying my abhorred trade in
useful, unendurable obscurity.
It was a battle now 'twixt pride and conscience, 'twixt fierce desire
and a loathed duty--doubly detested since I had spied a way to freedom
and had half tasted a whiff of good free air, untainted by deception.
"O Lord!" I groaned within myself, "will no one set me free of this pit
of intrigue and corruption in which I'm doomed to lurk? Must I, in
loyalty to his Excellency, repair this fault--go patch up all with
Butler, and deceive him so that his hawk's eyes and forked tongue may
not set folk a-watching this house sidewise?"
But while Dennis's irons were in my hair I thought: "Nevertheless, I
must send a belt to our allies, the Oneidas; and then I dare not stay!
Oh, joy!"
But the joy was soon dashed. My belt must go first to Colonel Willett,
and then to his Excellency, and it might be that he would judge it best
to let the Oneidas fight their own battles and so decline to send my
belt.
By the time I had arrived so far in my mental argument Dennis had
curled, powdered, and tied my hair in the most fashionable manner,
using a black flamboyant ribbon for the clubbed queue, a pearl-gray
powder a la Rochambeau; but I was not foolish enough to permit him to
pass a diamond pin into my hair, for I had once seen that fashion
affected by Murray, Earl of Dunmore, that Royal Governor of Virginia
who had laid Norfolk in ashes out of pure vindictiveness.
My costume I shall describe, not, I hope, from any unworthy vanity, but
because I love beautiful things. Therefore, for the pleasure of others
who also admire, and prompted alone by a desire to gratify, I neither
seek nor require excuses for recalling what I wore that night at the
Artillery ball. The lace at the stock was tied full and fastened with
brilliants; the coat of ivory silk, heavily embroidered with golden
filigree, fell over a waistcoat of clouded ivory and gold mesh,
fashionably short, and made by Thorne. My breeches were like the coat,
ivory silk, buckled with gold; the stockings were white silk, a bunch
of ribbon caught by the jeweled buckles at either knee; and upon my
double-channeled pumps, stitched by Bass, buckles of plain dull gold.
There was blond lace at throat and cuff. I confess that, although I did
not wear two watches, a great bunch of seals dangled from the fob; and
the small three-cornered French hat I tucked beneath my arm was laced
like a Nivernois, and dressed and cocked by the most fashionable hatter
in Hanover Square.
The mirror before which I stood was but half long enough, so I bade
Dennis place it upon the floor, whence it should reflect my legs and
gilded court-sword. Pleased, I obtained several agreeable views of my
costume, Dennis holding two mirrors for me while I pondered, hesitating
where to place the single patch of black.
"Am I fine, Dennis?" I asked.
"Now God be good to the ladies, sir!" he said, so seriously that I
laughed like a boy, whisked out my sword, and made a pass at my
mirrored throat.
"At all events," I thought, "I'll be handsomely clothed if there's a
scratch-quarrel with Walter Butler--which God avert!" Then for the
first time it occurred to me that it might not be Walter Butler, but I
myself, lying stretched on the lawn behind the Coq d'Or, and I was
comforted to know that, however low misfortune might lay me, I should
be clothed suitably and as befitted a Renault.
CHAPTER V
THE ARTILLERY BALL
When I descended from my chamber to the south drawing-room I found
there a respectable company of gentlemen assembled, awaiting the ladies
who had not yet appeared. First I greeted Sir Henry Clinton, who had at
that moment entered, followed by his staff and by two glittering
officers of his Seventh Light Dragoons. He appeared pale and worn, his
eyes somewhat inflamed from overstudy by candle-light, but he spoke to
me pleasantly, as did Oliver De Lancey, the Adjutant-General, who had
succeeded poor young Andre--an agreeable and accomplished gentleman,
and very smart in his brilliant uniform of scarlet loaded with stiff
gold.
O'Neil, in his gay dress of the Seventeenth Dragoons, and Harkness,
wearing similar regimentals, were overflushed and frolicksome, no doubt
having already begun their celebration for the victory of the Flatbush
birds, which they had backed so fortunately at the Coq d'Or. Sir Peter,
too, was in mischievous good spirits, examining my very splendid
costume as though he had not chosen it for me at his own tailor's.
"Gad, Carus!" he exclaimed, "has his Majesty appointed a viceroy in
North America--or is it the return of that Solomon whose subjects rule
the Dock Ward still?"
O'Neil and Harkness, too, were merry, making pretense that my glitter
set them blinking; but the grave, gray visage of Sir Henry, and his
restless pacing of the polished floor, gave us all pause; and
presently, as by common accord, voices around him dropped to lower
tones, and we spoke together under breath, watching askance the
commander-in-chief, who now stood, head on his jeweled breast, hands
clasped loosely behind his back.
"Sir Peter," he said, looking up with a forced laugh, "I have
irritating news. The rebel dragoons are foraging within six miles of
our lines at Kingsbridge."
For a month we here in New York had become habituated to alarms. We had
been warned to expect the French fleet; we had known that his
Excellency was at Dobbs Ferry, with quarters at Valentine's; we had
seen, day by day, the northern lines strengthened, new guns mounted on
the forts and batteries, new regiments arrive, constant alarms for the
militia, and the city companies under arms, marching up Murray Hill,
only, like that celebrated army of a certain King of France, to march
down again with great racket of drums and overfierce officers noisily
shouting commands. But even I had not understood how near to us the
siege had drawn, closing in steadily, inch by inch, from the green
Westchester hills.
A little thrill shot through me as I noted the newer, deeper lines
etched in Sir Henry's pallid face, and the grave silence of De Lancey,
as he stood by the window, arms folded, eying his superior under
knitted brows.
"Why not march out, bands playing?" suggested Sir Peter gaily.
"By God, we may do that yet to the tune they choose for us!" blurted
out Sir Henry.
"I meant an assault," said Sir Peter, the smile fading from his
handsome face.
"I know what you meant," returned Sir Henry wearily. "But that is what
they wish. I haven't the men, gentlemen."
There was a silence. He stood there, swaying slowly to and fro on his
polished heels, buried in reflection; but I, who stood a little to one
side, could see his fingers clasped loosely behind his back, nervously
working and picking at one another.
"What do they expect?" he said suddenly, lifting his head but looking
at no one--"what do they expect of me in England? I have not twelve
thousand effectives, and of these not nine thousand fit for duty. _They_
have eleven thousand, counting the French, not a dozen miles north of
us. Suppose I attack? Suppose I beat them? They have but a mile to fall
back, and they are stronger posted than before. I can not pass the
Harlem with any chance of remaining, unless I leave here in New York a
garrison of at least six thousand regulars. This gives me but three
thousand regulars for a sortie." He moved his head slowly, his eyes
traveled from one to another with that heavy, dazed expression which saw
nothing.
"Thirty thousand men could not now force Fordham Heights--and but a
single bridge left across the Harlem. To boat it means to be beaten in
detail. I tell you, gentlemen, that the only chance I might have in an
attempt upon any part of Washington's army must be if he advances. In
formal council, Generals Kniphausen, Birch, and Robertson sustain me;
and, believing I am right, I am prepared to suffer injustice and
calumny in silence from my detractors here in New York and at home."
His heavy eyes hardened; a flash lighted them, and he turned to Sir
Peter, adding:
"I have listened to a very strange proposition from the gentleman you
presented to me, Sir Peter. His ideas of civilized warfare and mine do
not run in like channels."
"So I should imagine," replied Sir Peter dryly. "But he is my guest,
and at his pressing solicitation I went with him to wait upon you."
Sir Henry smiled, for Sir Peter had spoken very distinctly, though
without heat.
"My dear friend," said the general gently, "are you to blame for the
violent views of this gentleman who so--ah--_distinguished_ himself at
Cherry Valley?"
A sour grimace stamped the visage of every officer present; the name of
Cherry Valley was not pleasant to New York ears.
At that moment Walter Butler entered, halted on the threshold, glancing
haughtily around him, advanced amid absolute silence, made his bow to
Sir Peter, turned and rendered a perfect salute to Sir Henry, then, as
Sir Peter quietly named him to every man present, greeted each with
ceremony and a graceful reserve that could not but stamp him as a
gentleman of quality and breeding.
To me, above all, was his attitude faultless; and I, relinquishing to a
tyrant conscience all hopes of profiting by my blunder in angering him,
and giving up all hopes of a duel and consequently of freedom from my
hateful business in New York, swallowed pride and repulsion at a single
gulp, and crossed the room to where he stood alone, quite at his ease
amid the conversation which excluded him.
"Mr. Butler," I said, "I spoke hastily and thoughtlessly an hour since.
I come to say so."
He bowed instantly, regarding me with curious eyes.
"I know not how to make further amends," I began, but he waved his hand
with peculiar grace, a melancholy smile on his pale visage.
"I only trust, Mr. Renault, that you may one day understand me better.
No amends are necessary. I assure you that I shall endeavor to so
conduct that in future neither you nor any man may misapprehend my
motives." He glanced coolly across at Sir Henry, then very pleasantly
spoke of the coming rout at the Fort, expressing pleasure in gaiety and
dancing.
"I love music, too," he said thoughtfully, "but have heard little for a
year save the bellow of conch-horns from the rebel riflemen of Morgan's
corps."
Mr. De Lancey had come up, moved by the inbred courtesy which
distinguished not Sir Henry, who ostentatiously held Sir Peter in
forced consultation, his shoulder turned to Walter Butler. And, of the
twain, Mr. Butler cut the better figure, and spite of his true
character, I was secretly gratified to see how our Tryon County gentry
suffered nothing in comparison of savoir faire with the best that
England sent us. Courtesy to an enemy--that is a creed no gentleman can
renounce save with his title. I speak not of disputes in hot blood, but
of a chance meeting upon neutral ground; and Sir Henry was no credit to
his title and his country in his treatment there of Walter Butler.
One by one all spoke to Mr. Butler; laughter among us broke out as wine
was served and compliments exchanged.
"The hardest lesson man is born to is that lesson which teaches him to
await the dressing of his lady," said De Lancey.
"Aye, and await it, too, without impatience!" said Captain Harkness.
"And in perfect good-humor," echoed De Lancey gravely. O'Neil sat down
at the piano and played "The World Turned Upside-Down," all drifting
into the singing, voice after voice; and the beauty of Walter Butler's
voice struck all, so that presently, one by one, we fell silent, and he
alone carried the quaint old melody to its end.
"I have a guitar hereabouts," blurted out Sir Peter, motioning a
servant.
The instrument was brought, and Walter Butler received it without false
modesty or wearying protestation, and, touching it dreamily, he sang:
"Ninon! Ninon! Que fais-tu de la vie?
L'heure s'enfuit, le jour succede au jour,
Rose, ce soir--demain fletrie
Comment vis-tu, toi qui n'as pas d'amour?
* * *
Ouvrez-vous, jeunes fleurs
Si la mort vous enleve,
La vie est un sommeil, l'amour en est le reve!"
Sad and sweet the song faded, lingering like perfume, as the deep
concord of the strings died out. All were moved. We pressed him to sing
more, and he sang what we desired in perfect taste and with a
simplicity that fascinated all.
I, too, stood motionless under the spell, yet struggling to think of
what I had heard of the nearness of his Excellency to New York, and how
I might get word to him at once concerning the Oneidas' danger and the
proposed attempt upon the frontier granaries. The ladies had as yet
given no sign of readiness; all present, even Sir Henry, stood within a
circle around Walter Butler. So I stepped quietly into the hallway and
hastened up the stairs to my chamber, which I locked first, then seized
paper and quill and fell to scribbling:
"TO HIS EXCELLENCY, GEN'L WASHINGTON:
"_Sir_--I regret to report that, through thoughtlessness and
inadvertence, I have made a personal enemy of Captain Walter Butler
of the Rangers, who is now here on a mission to enlist the aid of
Sir Henry Clinton in a new attempt on the frontier. His purpose in
this enterprise is to ruin our granaries, punish the Oneidas
friendly to us, and, if aided from below, seize Albany, or at least
Johnstown, Caughnawaga, and Schenectady. Sir John Johnson, Major
Ross, and Captain Butler are preparing to gather at Niagara Fort.
They expect to place a strong, swift force in the field--Rangers,
Greens, Hessians, Regulars, and partizans, not counting Brant's
Iroquois of the Seneca, Cayuga, and Mohawk nations.
"The trysting-place is named as Thendara. Only an Iroquois, adopted
or native, can understand how Thendara is to be found. It is a town
that has no existence--a fabled town that has existed and will
exist again, but does not now exist. It is a mystic term used in
council, and understood only by those clan ensigns present at the
Rite of Condolence. At a federal council of the Five Nations, at a
certain instant in the ceremonies, that spot which for a week shall
be chosen to represent the legendary and lost town of Thendara, is
designated to the clan attestants.
"Now, sir, as our allies the Oneidas dare not answer to a belt
summons for federal council, there is no one who can discover for
you the location of the trysting-spot, Thendara. I, however, am an
Oneida councilor, having conformed to the law of descent by
adoption; and having been raised up to ensign by the Wolf-Clan of
the Oneida Nation, beg leave to place my poor services at your
Excellency's disposal. There may be a chance that I return alive;
and you, sir, are to judge whether any attempt of mine to answer
the Iroquois belt, which surely I shall receive, is worth your
honorable consideration. In the meanwhile I am sending copies of
this letter to Colonel Willett and to Gen'l Schuyler."
I hastily signed, seized more writing-paper, and fell to copying
furiously. And at length it was accomplished, and I wrapped up the
letters in a box of snuff, tied and sealed the packet, and called
Dennis.
"Take this snuff back to Ennis, in Hanover Square," I said peevishly,
"and inform him that Mr. Renault desires a better quality."
My servant took the box and hastened away. I stood an instant,
listening. Walter Butler was still singing. I cast my eyes about,
picked up a half-written sheet I had discarded for fault of blots,
crumpled it, and reached for a candle to burn it. But at that instant I
heard the voices of the ladies on the landing below, so quickly opening
my wainscot niche I thrust the dangerous paper within, closed the
panel, and hastened away down-stairs to avoid comment for my absence.
In the merry company now assembled below I could scarcely have been
missed, I think, for the Italian chaises had but just that moment
appeared to bear us away to the Fort, and the gentlemen were clustered
about Lady Coleville, who, encircled by a laughing bevy of pretty
women, was designating chaise-partners, reading from a list she held in
her jeweled hands. Those already allotted to one another had moved
apart, standing two and two, and as I entered the room I saw Walter
Butler give his arm to Rosamund Barry at Lady Coleville's command, a
fixed smile hiding his disappointment, which turned to a white grimace
as Lady Coleville ended with: "Carus, I entrust to your escort the Hon.
Elsin Grey, and if you dare to run off with her there are some twenty
court-swords ready here to ask the reason why. Sir Henry, will you take
me as your penance?"
"Now, gentlemen," cried Sir Peter gaily, "the chaises are here; and
please to remember that there is no Kissing-Bridge between Wall Street
and the Battery."
Elsin Grey turned to me, laying her soft white hand on mine.
"Did you hear Mr. Butler sing?" she whispered. "Is it not divine enough
to steal one's heart away?"
"He sings well," I said, gazing in wonder at her ball-gown--pale
turquoise silk, with a stomacher of solid brilliants and petticoat of
blue and silver. "Elsin, I think I never saw so beautiful a maid in all
my life, nor a beautiful gown so nobly borne."
"Do you really think so?" she asked, delighted at my bluntness. "And
you, too, Carus--why, you are like a radiant one from the sky! I have
ever thought you handsome, but not as flawless as you now reveal
yourself. Lord! we should cut a swathe to-night, you and I, sir,
blinding all eyes in our proper glitter. I could dance all night, and
all day too! I never felt so light, so gay, so eager, so reckless. I'm
quivering with delight, Carus, from throat to knee; and, for the rest,
my head is humming with the devil's tattoo and my feet keeping time."
She raised the hem of her petticoat a hand's breadth, and tapped the
floor with one little foot--a trifle only. "That ballet figure that we
did at Sir Henry's--do you remember?--and the heat of the ballroom, and
the French red running from the women's cheeks? To-night is perfect,
cool and fragrant. I shall dance until I die, and go up to heaven in
one high, maddened whirl--zip!--like a burning soul!"
We were descending the stoop now. Our chaise stood ready. I placed her
and followed, and away we rolled down Broadway.
"Am I to have two dances?" I asked.
"Two? Why, you blessed man, you may have twenty!"
She turned to me, eyes sparkling, fan half spread, a picture of
exquisite youth and beauty. Her jewels flashed in the chaise-lamps, her
neck and shoulders glowed clear and softly fair.
"Is that French red on lip and cheek?" I asked, to tease her.
"If there were a certain sort of bridge betwixt Wall Street and the
Fort you might find out without asking," she said, looking me daringly
in the eyes. "Lacking that same bridge, you have another bridge and
another problem, Mr. Renault."
"For lack of a Kissing-Bridge I must solve the _pons asinorum_, I see,"
said I, imprisoning her hands. There was a delicate hint of a struggle,
a little cry, and I had kissed her. Breathless she looked at me; the
smile grew fixed on her red lips.
"Your experience in such trifles is a blessing to the untaught," she
said. "You have not crumpled a ribbon. Truly, Carus, only long and
intense devotion to the art could turn you out a perfect master."
"My compliments to you, Elsin; I take no credit that your gown is
smooth and the lace unruffled."
"Thank you; but if you mean that I, too, am practised in the art, you
are wrong."
The fixed smile trembled a little, but her eyes were wide and bright.
"Would you laugh, Carus, if I said it: what you did to me--is the
first--the very first in all my life?"
"Oh, no," I said gravely, "I should not laugh if you commanded
otherwise."
She looked at me in silence, the light from the chaise-lamps playing
over her flushed face. Presently she turned and surveyed the darkness
where, row on row, ruins of burned houses stood, the stars shining down
through roofless walls.
Into my head came ringing the song that Walter Butler sang:
"Ninon! Ninon! thy sweet life flies!
Wasted in hours day follows day.
The rose to-night to-morrow dies:
Wilt thou disdain to love alway?
How canst thou live unconscious of Love's fire,
Immune to passion, guiltless of desire?"
Now all around us lamplight glimmered as we entered Bowling Green,
where coach and chaise and sedan-chair were jumbled in a confusion
increased by the crack of whips, the trample of impatient horses, and
the cries of grooms and chairmen. In the lamp's increasing glare I made
out a double line of soldiers, through which those invited to the Fort
were passing; and as our chaise stopped and I aided Elsin to descend,
the fresh sea-wind from the Battery struck us full, blowing her lace
scarf across my face.
Through lines of servants and soldiers we passed, her hand nestling
closely to my arm, past the new series of outworks and barricades,
where bronze field-pieces stood shining in the moonlight, then over a
dry moat by a flimsy bridge, and entered the sally-port, thronged with
officers, all laughing and chatting, alert to watch the guests
arriving, and a little bold, too, with their stares and their
quizzing-glasses. There is, at times, something almost German in the
British lack of delicacy, which is, so far, rare with us here, though I
doubt not the French will taint a few among us. But insolence in stare
and smirk is not among our listed sins, though, doubtless, otherwise
the list is full as long as that of any nation, and longer, too, for
all I know.
Conducting Elsin Grey, I grew impatient at the staring, and made way
for her without ceremony, which caused a mutter here and there.
In the great loft-room of the Barracks, held by the naval companies,
the ball was to be given. I relinquished my pretty charge to Lady
Coleville at the door of the retiring-room, and strolled off to join
Sir Peter and the others, gathering in knots throughout the cloak-room,
where two sailors, cutlasses bared, stood guard.
"Well, Carus," he said, smilingly approaching me, "did you heed those
chaste instructions I gave concerning the phantom Kissing-Bridge?"
"I did not run away with her," I said, looking about me. "Where is
Walter Butler?"
"He returned to the house in a chaise for something forgotten--or so he
said. I did not understand him clearly, and he was in great haste."
"He went back to _our_ house?" I asked uneasily.
"Yes--a matter of a moment, so he said. He returns to move the opening
dance with Rosamund."
Curiously apprehensive, I stood there listening to the chatter around
me. Sir Peter drummed with his fingers on his sword-hilt, and nodded
joyously to every passer-by.
"You have found Walter Butler more agreeable, I trust, than our friend
Sir Henry found him," he said, turning his amused eyes on me.
"Perhaps," I said.
"Perhaps? Damme, Carus, that is none too cordial! What is it in the man
that keeps men aloof? Eh? He's a gentleman, a graceful, dark, romantic
fellow, in his forest-green regimentals and his black hair worn
unpowdered. And did you ever hear such a voice?"
"No, I never did," I replied sulkily.
"Delicious," said Sir Peter--"a voice prettily cultivated, and sweet
enough to lull suspicion in a saint." He laughed: "Rosamund made great
eyes at him, the vixen, but I fancy he's too cold to catch fire from a
coquette. Did you learn if he is married?"
"Not from him, sir."
"From whom?"
I was silent.
"From whom?" he asked curiously.
"Why, I had it from one or two acquaintances, who say they knew his
wife when she fled with other refugees from Guy Park," I answered.
Sir Peter shrugged his handsome shoulders, dusted his nose with a whisk
of his lace handkerchief, and looked impatiently for a sign of his wife
and the party of ladies attending her.
"Carus," he said under his breath, "you should enter the lists, you
rogue."
"What lists?" I answered carelessly.
"Lord! he asks me what lists!" mimicked Sir Peter. "Why don't you court
her? The match is suitable and desirable. You ninny, do you suppose it
was by accident that Elsin Grey became our guest? Why, lad, we're set
on it--and, damme! but I'm as crafty a matchmaker as my wife, planning
the pretty game together in the secret of our chambers after you and
Elsin are long abed, and--Lord! I came close to saying 'snoring'--for
which you should have called me out, sir, if you are champion of Elsin
Grey."
"But, Sir Peter," I said smiling, "I do not love the lady."
"A boorish speech!" he snapped. "Take shame, Carus, you Tryon County
bumpkin!"
"I mean," said I, reddening, "and should have said, that the lady does
not love me."
"That's better." He laughed, and added, "Pay your court, sir. You are
fashioned for it."
"But I do not care to," I said.
"O Lord!" muttered Sir Peter, looking at the great beams above us, "my
match-making is come to naught, after all, and my wife will be furious
with you--furious, I say. And here she comes, too," he said,
brightening, as he ever did, at sight of his lovely wife, who had
remained his sweetheart, too; and this I am free to say, that, spite of
the looseness of the times and of society, never, as long as I knew
him, did Sir Peter forget in thought or deed those vows he took when
wedded. Sportsman he was, and rake and gambler, as were we all; and I
have seen him often overflushed with wine, but never heard from his
lips a blasphemy or foul jest, never a word unworthy of clean lips and
the clean heart he carried with him to his grave.
As Lady Coleville emerged from the ladies' cloakroom, attended by her
pretty bevy, Sir Peter, followed by his guests, awaited her in the
great corridor, where she took his arm, looking up into his handsome
face with that indefinable smile I knew so well--a smile of delicate
pride, partly tender, partly humorous, tinctured with faintest
coquetry.
"Sweetheart," he said, "that villain, Carus, will have none of our
match-making, and I hope Rosamund twists him into a triple
lover's-knot, to teach him lessons he might learn more innocently."
Lady Coleville flushed up and looked around at me. "Why, Carus," she
said softly, "I thought you a man of sense and discretion."
"But I--but she does not favor me, madam," I protested in a low voice.
"It is your fault, then, and your misfortune," she said. "Do you not
know that she leaves us to-morrow? Sir Henry has placed a packet at our
service. Can you not be persuaded--for my sake? It is our fond wish,
Carus. How can a man be insensible to such wholesome loveliness as
hers?"
"But--but she is a child--she has no heart! She is but a child yet--all
caprice, innocence, and artless babble--and she loves not me,
madam----"
"_You_ love not _her_! Shame, sir! Open those brown blind eyes of yours,
that look so wise and are so shallow if such sweetness as hers troubles
not their depths! Oh, Carus, Carus, you make me too unhappy!"
"Idiot!" added Sir Peter, pinching my arm. "Bring her to us, now, for
we enter. She is yonder, you slow-wit! nose to nose with O'Neil.
Hasten!"
But Elsin's patch-box had been mislaid, and while we searched for it I
saw the marines march up, form in double rank, and heard the clear
voice of their sergeant announcing:
"Sir Peter and Lady Coleville!
"Captain Tully O'Neil and the Misses O'Neil!
"Adjutant-General De Lancey and Miss Beekman!
"Sir Henry Clinton!
"Captains Harkness, Rutherford, Hallowell, and McIvor!
"Major-General----"
"Elsin," I said, "you should have been announced with Sir Peter and
Lady Coleville!"
She had found her patch-box and her fan at length, and we marched in,
the sergeant's loud announcement ringing through the quickly filling
room:
"Mr. Carus Renault and the Honorable Elsin Grey!"
"What _will_ folk say to hear our banns shouted aloud in the teeth of
all New York?" she whispered mischievously. "Mercy on me! if you turn as
red as a Bushwick pippin they will declare we are affianced!"
"I shall confirm it if you consent!" I said, furious to burn at a jest
from her under a thousand eyes.
"Ask me again," she murmured; "we make our reverences here."
She took her silk and silver petticoat between thumb and forefinger of
each hand and slowly sank, making the lowest, stateliest curtsy that I
ever bowed beside; and I heard a low, running murmur sweep the bright,
jeweled ranks around us as we recovered and passed on, ceding our place
to others next behind.
The artillerymen had made the great loft gay with bunting. Jacks and
signal-flags hung from the high beams overhead, clothing the bare
timbers with thickets of gayest foliage; banners and bright scarfs,
caught up with trophies, hung festooned along the unpainted walls. They
had made a balcony with stairs where the band was perched, the music of
the artillery augmented by strings--a harp, half a dozen fiddles,
cellos, bassoons, and hautboys, and there were flutes, too, and
trumpets lent by the cavalry, and sufficient drums to make that fine,
deep, thunderous undertone, which I love to hear, and which heats my
cheeks with pleasure.
Beyond the spar-loft the sail-loft had been set aside and fashioned
most elegantly for refreshment. An immense table crossed it, behind
which servants stood, and behind the servants the wall had been lined
with shelves covered with cakes, oranges, apples, early peaches, melons
and nectarines, and late strawberries, also wines of every sort,
pastry, jellies, whip-syllabub, rocky and floating island, blanc-mange,
brandied preserves--and Heaven knows what! But Elsin Grey whispered me
that Pryor the confectioner had orders for coriander and cinnamon
comfits by the bushel, and orange, lemon, chocolate, and burned almonds
by the peck.
"Do look at Lady Coleville," whispered Elsin, gently touching my
sleeve; "is she not sweet as a bride with Sir Peter? And oh, that gown!
with the lilac ribbons and flounce of five rows of lace. Carus, she has
forty diamond buttons upon her petticoat, and her stomacher is all
amethysts!"
"I wonder where Walter Butler is?" I said restlessly.
"Do you wish to be rid of me?" she asked.
"God forbid! I only marvel that he is not here--he seemed so eager for
the frolic----"
My voice was drowned in the roll of martial music; we took the places
assigned us, and the slow march began, ending in the Governor's set,
which was danced by eight couples--a curious dance, newly fashionable,
and called "En Ballet." This we danced in a very interesting fashion,
sometimes two and two, sometimes three and two, or four couple and four
couple, and then all together, which vastly entertained the spectators.
In the final melee I had lost my lady to Mr. De Lancey, who now carried
her off, leaving me with a willowy maid, whose partner came to claim
her soon.
The ball now being opened, I moved a minuet with Lady Coleville, she
adjuring me at every step and turn to let no precious moment slip to
court Elsin; and I, bland but troubled, and astonished to learn how
deep an interest she took in my undoing--I with worry enough before me,
not inclusive of a courtship that I found superfluous and unimportant.
When she was rid of me, making no concealment of her disappointment and
impatience, I looked for Elsin, but found Rosamund Barry, and led her
out in one of those animated figures we had learned at home from the
Frenchman, Grasset--dances that suited her, the rose coquette!--gay
dances, where the petticoat reveals a pretty limb discreetly; where
fans play, opening and closing like the painted wings of butterflies
alarmed; where fingers touch, fall away, interlace and unlace; where a
light waist-clasp and a vis-a-vis leaves a moment for a whisper and its
answer, promise, assent, or low refusal as partners part, dropping away
in low, slow reverence, which ends the frivolous figure with regretful
decorum.
Askance I had seen Elsin and O'Neil, a graceful pair of figures in the
frolic, and now I sought her, leaving Rosamund to Sir Henry, but that
villain O'Neil had her to wine, and amid all that thirsty throng and
noise of laughter I missed her in the tumult, and then lost her for two
hours. I must admit those two hours sped with the gay partners that
fortune sent me--and one there was whose fingers were shyly eloquent, a
black-eyed beauty from Westchester, with a fresh savor of free winds
and grassy hillsides clinging to her, and a certain lovely awkwardness
which claims an arm to steady very often. Lord! I had her twice to ices
and to wine, and we laughed and laughed at nothing, and might have been
merrier, but her mother seized her with scant ceremony, and a strange
young gentleman breathed hard and glared at me as I recovered dignity,
which made me mad enough to follow him half across the hall ere I
reflected that my business here permitted me no quarrel of my own
seeking.
Robbed of my Westchester shepherdess, swallowing my disgust, I
sauntered forward, finding Elsin Grey with Lady Coleville, seated
together by the wall. What they had been whispering there together I
knew not, but I pushed through the attendant circle of beaus and
gallants who were waiting there their turns, and presented myself
before them.
"I am danced to rags and ribbons, Carus," said Elsin Grey--"and no
thanks to you for the pleasure, you who begged me for a dance or two;
and I offered twenty, silly that I was to so invite affront!"
She was smiling when she spoke, but Lady Coleville's white teeth were
in her fan's edge, and she looked at me with eyes made bright through
disappointment.
"You are conducting like a silly boy," she said, "with those hoydens
from Westchester, and every little baggage that dimples at your stare.
Lord! Carus, I thought you grown to manhood!"
"Is there a harm in dancing at a ball, madam?" I asked, laughing.
"Fie! You are deceitful, too. Elsin, be chary of your favors. Dance
with any man but him. He'll be wearing two watches to-morrow, and his
hair piled up like a floating island!"
She smiled, but her eyes were not overgay. And presently she turned on
Elsin with a grave shake of her head:
"You disappoint me, both of you," she said. "Elsin, I never dreamed
that _you_----"
Their fans flew up, their heads dipped, then Elsin rose and asked
indulgence, taking my arm, one hand lying in Lady Coleville's hand.
"Do you and Sir Peter talk over it together," she said, with a
lingering wistfulness in her voice. "I shall dance with Carus, whether
he will or no, and then we'll walk and talk. You may tell Sir Peter, if
you so desire."
"_All?_" asked Lady Coleville, retaining Elsin's hand.
"All, madam, for it concerns all."
Sir Henry Clinton came to wait on Lady Coleville, and so we left them,
slowly moving out through the brilliant sea of silks and laces, her arm
resting close in mine, her fair head bent in silent meditation.
Around us swelled the incessant tumult of the ball, music and the
blended harmony of many voices, rustle and whisper of skirt and silk,
and the swish! swish! of feet across the vast waxed floor.
"Shall we dance?" I asked pleasantly.
She looked up, then out across the ocean of glitter and restless color.
"Now I am in two minds," she said--"to dance until there's no breath
left and but a wisp of rags to cover me, or to sip a syllabub with you
and rest, or go gaze at the heavens the while you court me----"
"That's three minds already," I said, laughing.
"Well, sir, which are you for?"
"And you, Elsin?"
"No, sir, you shall choose."
"Then, if it lies with me, I choose the stars and courtship," I said
politely.
"I wonder," she said, "why you choose it--with a maid so pliable. Is
not half the sport in the odds against you--the pretty combat for
supremacy, the resisting fingers, and the defense, face covered? Is not
the sport to overcome all these, nor halt short of the reluctant lips,
still fluttering in voiceless protest?"
"Where did you hear all that?" I asked, piqued yet laughing.
"Rosamund Barry read me my first lesson--and, after all, though warned,
I let you have your way with me there in the chaise. Oh, I am an apt
pupil, Carus, with Captain Butler in full control of my mind and you of
my body."
"Have you seen him yet?" I asked.
"No; he has not appeared to claim his dance. A gallant pair of
courtiers I have found in you and him----"
"Couple our names no more!" I said so hotly that she stopped, looking
at me in astonishment.
"Have you quarreled?" she asked.
I did not answer. We had descended the barrack-stairs and were entering
the parade. Dark figures in pairs moved vaguely in the light of the
battle-lanthorns set. We met O'Neil and Rosamund, who stood star-gazing
on the grass, and later Sir Henry, pacing the sod alone, who, when he
saw me, motioned me to stop, and drew a paper from his breast.
"Sir Peter and Lady Coleville's pass for Westchester, which he desired
and I forgot. Will you be good enough to hand it to him, Mr. Renault?
There is a council called to-night--it is close to two o'clock, and I
must go."
He took a courtly leave of us, then wandered away, head bent, pacing
the parade as though he kept account of each slow step.
"Yonder comes Knyphausen, too, and Birch," I said, as the German
General emerged from the casemates, followed by Birch and a raft of
officers, spurs clanking.
We stood watching the Hessians as they passed in the lamp's rays,
officers smooth-shaven and powdered, wearing blue and yellow, and their
long boots; soldiers with black queues in eelskin, tiny mustaches
turned up at the waxed ends, and long black, buttoned spatter-dashes
strapped at instep and thigh.
"Let us ascend to the parapets," she said, looking up at the huge, dark
silhouette above where the southeast bastion jutted seaward.
A sentry brought his piece to support as we went by him, ascending the
inclined artillery road, whence we presently came out upon the
ramparts, with the vast sweep of star-set firmament above, and below us
the city's twinkling lights on one side, and upon the other two great
rivers at their trysting with the midnight ocean.
There were no lights at sea, none on the Hudson, and on the East River
only the sad signal-spark smoldering above the _Jersey_.
Elsin had found a seat low on a gun-carriage, and, moving a little,
made place for me.
"Look at that darkness," she said--"that infinite void under which an
ocean wallows. It is like hell, I think. Do you understand how I fear
the ocean?"
"Do you fear it, child?"
"Aye," she said, musing; "it took father and mother and brother. You
knew that?"
"Lady Coleville says there is always hope that they may be alive--cast
on that far continent----"
"So the attorneys say--because there is a legal limit--and I am the
Honorable Elsin Grey. Ah, Carus, _I_ know that the sea has them fast.
No port shall that tall ship enter save the last of all--the Port of
Missing Ships. Heigho! Sir Frederick is kind--in his own fashion.... I
would I had a mother.... There is a loneliness that I feel ... at
times...."
A vague gesture, and she lifted her head, with a tremor of her
shoulders, as though shaking off care as a young girl drops a scarf of
lace to her waist.
Presently she turned quietly to me:
"I have told Lady Coleville," she said.
"Told her what, child?"
"Of my promise to Captain Butler. I have not yet told everything--even
to you."
Roused from my calm sympathy I swung around, alert, tingling with
interest and curiosity.
"I gave her leave to inform Sir Peter," she added. "They were too
unhappy about you and me, Carus. Now they will understand there is no
chance."
And when Sir Peter had asked me if Walter Butler was married, I had
admitted it. Here was the matter already at a head, or close to it.
Sudden uneasiness came upon me, as I began to understand how closely
the affront touched Sir Peter. What would he do?
"What is it called, and by what name, Carus, when a man whose touch one
can not suffer so dominates one's thoughts--as he does mine?"
"It is not love," I said gloomily.
"He swears it is. Do you believe there may lie something compelling in
his eyes that charm and sadden--almost terrify, holding one pitiful
yet reluctant?"
"I do not know. I do not understand the logic of women's minds, nor how
they reason, nor why they love. I have seen delicacy mate with
coarseness, wit with stupidity, humanity with brutality, religion with
the skeptic, aye, goodness with evil. I, too, ask why? The answer ever
is the same--because of love!"
"Because of it, is reason; is it not?"
"So women say."
"And men?"
"Aye, they say the same; but with men it is another sentiment, I think,
though love is what we call it."
"Why do men love, Carus?"
"Why?" I laughed. "Men love--men love because they find it pleasant, I
suppose--for variety, for family reasons."
"For nothing else?"
"For a balm to that mad passion driving them."
"And--nothing nobler?"
"There is a noble love, part chivalry, part desire, inspired by mind
and body in sweetest unison."
"A mind that seeks its fellow?" she asked softly.
"No, a mind that seeks its complement, as the body seeks. This union, I
think, is really love. But I speak with no experience, Elsin. This only
I know, that you are too young, too innocent to comprehend, and that
the sentiment awakened in you by what you think is love, is not love.
Child, forgive me what I say, but it rings false as the vows of that
young man who importunes you."
"Is it worthy of you, Carus, to stab him so behind his back?"
I leaned forward, my head in my hands.
"Elsin, I have endured these four years, now, a thousand little stings
which I could not resent. Forgetting this, at moments I blurt out a
truth which, were matters otherwise with me, I might back with--what is
looked for when a man repeats what may affront his listener. It is, in
a way, unworthy, as you say, that I speak lightly to you of a man I can
not meet with honor to myself. Yet, Elsin, were my duty first to
you--first even to myself--this had been settled now--this matter
touching you and Walter Butler--and also my ancient score with him,
which is as yet unreckoned."
"What keeps you, then?" she said, and her voice rang a little.
I looked at her; she sat there, proud head erect, searching me with
scornful eyes.
"A small vow I made," said I carelessly.
"And when are you released, sir?"
"Soon, I hope."
"Then, Mr. Renault," she said disdainfully, "I pray you swallow your
dislike of Captain Butler until such time as you may explain your
enmity to him."
The lash stung. I sat dazed, then wearied, while the tingling passed.
Even the silence tired me, and when I could command my voice I said:
"Shall we descend, madam? There is a chill in the sea-air."
"I do not feel it," she answered, her voice not like her own.
"Do you desire to stay here?"
"No," she said, springing up. "This silence of the stars wearies me."
She passed before me across the parapet and down the inclined way, I at
her heels; and so into the dark parade, where I caught up with her.
"Have I angered you without hope of pardon?" I asked.
"You have spoiled it all for me----"
She bit her lip, suddenly silent. Sir Peter Coleville stood before us.
"Lady Coleville awaits you," he said very quietly, too quietly by far.
"Carus, take her to my wife. Our coach is waiting."
We stared at him in apprehension. His face was serene, but colorless
and hard as steel, as he turned and strode away; and we followed
without a word, drawing closer together as we moved through a covered
passage-way and out along Pearl Street, where Sir Peter's coach stood,
lamps shining, footman at the door.
Lady Coleville was inside. I placed Elsin Grey, and, at a motion from
Sir Peter, closed the door.
"Home," he said quietly. The footman leaped to the box, the whip
snapped, and away rolled the coach, leaving Sir Peter and myself
standing there in Pearl Street.
"Your servant Dennis sought me out," he said, "with word that Walter
Butler had been busy sounding the panels in your room."
Speech froze on my lips.
"Further," continued Sir Peter calmly, "Lady Coleville has shared with
me the confidence of Elsin Grey concerning her troth, clandestinely
plighted to this gentleman whom you have told me is a married man."
I could not utter a sound. Moment after moment passed in silence. The
half-hour struck, then three-quarters. At last from the watch-tower on
the Fort the hour sounded.
There was a rattle of wheels behind us; a coach clattered out of Beaver
Street, swung around the railing of the Bowling Green, and drew up
along the foot-path beside us; and Dr. Carmody leaped out, shaking
hands with us both.
"I found him at Fraunce's Tavern, Sir Peter, bag and baggage. He
appeared to be greatly taken aback when I delivered your cartel,
protesting that something was wrong, that there could be no quarrel
between you and him; but when I hinted at his villainy, he went white
as ashes and stood there swaying like a stunned man. Gad! that hint
about his wife took every ounce of blood from his face, Sir Peter."
"Has he a friend to care for him?" asked Sir Peter coldly.
"Jessop of the Sappers volunteered. I found him in the tap-room. They
should be on their way by this time, Sir Peter."
"That will do. Carus will act for me," said Sir Peter in a dull voice.
He entered the coach; I followed, and Dr. Carmody followed me and
closed the door. A heavy leather case lay beside me on the seat. I
rested my throbbing head on both hands, sitting swaying there in
silence as the coach dashed through Bowling Green again and sped
clattering on its way up-town.
CHAPTER VI
A NIGHT AND A MORNING
As our coach passed Crown Street I could no longer doubt whither we
were bound. The shock of certainty aroused me from the stunned lethargy
which had chained me to silence. At the same moment Sir Peter thrust
his head from the window and called to his coachman:
"Drive home first!" And to me, resuming his seat: "We had nigh
forgotten the case of pistols, Carus."
The horses swung west into Maiden Lane, then south through Nassau
Street, across Crown, Little Queen, and King Streets, swerving to the
right around the City Hall, then sharp west again, stopping at our own
gate with a clatter and clash of harness.
Sir Peter leaped out lightly, and I followed, leaving Dr. Carmody, with
his surgical case, to await our return.
Under the door-lanthorn Sir Peter turned, and in a low voice asked me
if I could remember where the pistol-case was laid.
My mind was now clear and alert, my wits already busily at work. To
prevent Sir Peter's facing Walter Butler; to avoid Cunningham's
gallows; could the first be accomplished without failure in the second?
Arrest might await me at any instant now, here in our own house, there
at the Coq d'Or, or even on the very field of honor itself.
"Where did you leave the pistol-case that day you practised in the
garden?" I asked coolly.
"'Twas you took it, Carus," he said. "Were you not showing the pistols
to Elsin Grey?"
I dropped my head, pretending to think. He waited a moment, then drew
out his latch-key and opened the door very softly. A single
sconce-candle flared in the hall; he lifted it from the gilded socket
and passed into the state drawing-room, holding the light above his
head, and searching over table and cabinet for the inlaid case.
Standing there in the hall I looked up the dark and shadowy stairway.
There was no light, no sound. In the drawing-room I heard Sir Peter
moving about, opening locked cupboards, lacquered drawers, and crystal
doors, the shifting light of his candle playing over wall and ceiling.
Why he had not already found the case where I had placed it on the
gilded French table I could not understand, and I stole to the door and
looked in. The French table stood empty save for a vase of shadowy
flowers; Sir Peter was on his knees, candle in hand, searching the
endless lines of book-shelves in the library. A strange suspicion stole
into my heart which set it drumming on my ribs. Had Elsin Grey removed
the pistols? Had she wit enough to understand the matters threatening?
I looked up at the stairs again, then mounted them noiselessly, and
traversed the carpeted passage to her door. There was a faint light
glimmering under the sill. I laid my face against the panels and
whispered, "Elsin!"
"Who is there?" A movement from within, a creak from the bed, a rustle
of a garment, then silence. Listening there, ear to her door, I heard
distinctly the steady breathing of some one also listening on the other
side.
"Elsin!"
"Is it you, Carus?"
She opened the door wide and stood there, candle in one hand, rubbing
her eyes with the other, lace night-cap and flowing, beribboned robe
stirring in the draft of air from the dark hallway. But under the
loosened neck-cloth I caught a gleam of a metal button, and instantly I
was aware of a pretense somewhere, for beneath the flowing polonaise of
chintz, or Levete, which is a kind of gown and petticoat tied on the
left hip with a sash of lace, she was fully dressed, aye, and shod for
the street.
Instinctively I glanced at the bed, made a quick step past her, and
drew the damask curtain. The bed had not been slept in.
"What are you thinking of, Carus?" she said hotly, springing to the
curtain. There was a sharp sound of cloth tearing; she stumbled, caught
my arm, and straightened up, red as fire, for the hem of her Levete was
laid open to the knee, and displayed a foot-mantle, under which a tiny
golden spur flashed on a lacquered boot-heel.
"What does this mean?" I said sternly. "Whither do you ride at such an
hour?"
She was speechless.
"Elsin! Elsin! If you had wit enough to hide Sir Peter's pistols,
render them to me now. Delay may mean my ruin."
She stood at bay, eying me, uncertain but defiant.
"Where are they?" I urged impatiently.
"He shall not fight that man!" she muttered. "If I am the cause of this
quarrel I shall end it, too. What if he were killed by Walter Butler?"
"The pistols are beneath your mattress!" I said suddenly. "I must have
them."
Quick as thought she placed herself between me and the bed, blue eyes
sparkling, arms wide.
"Will you go?" she whispered fiercely. "How dare you intrude here!"
Taken aback by the sudden fury that flashed out in my very face, I gave
ground.
"You little wildcat," I said, amazed, "give me the pistols! I know how
to act. Give them, I say! Do you think me a poltroon to allow Sir Peter
to face this rascal's fire?"
She straightened with a sudden quiver.
"You! The pistols were for _you!_"
"For me and Walter Butler," I said coolly. "Give them, Elsin. What has
been done this night has set me free of my vow. Can you not understand?
I tell you he stands in my light, throwing the shadow of the gallows
over me! May a man not win back to life but a chit of a maid must
snatch his chance away? Give them, or I swing at dawn upon the common!"
A flush of horror swept her cheeks, leaving her staring. Her wide-flung
arms dropped nervelessly and hung beside her.
"Is it _true_," she faltered--"what he came here to tell us on his way
to that vile tavern? I gave him the lie, Carus. I gave him the lie there
in the hall below." She choked, laying her white hand on her throat.
"Speak!" she said harshly; "do you fear to face this dreadful charge he
flung in my teeth? I"--she almost sobbed--"I told him that he lied."
"He did not lie. I am a spy these four years here," I said wearily.
"Will you give me those pistols now?--or I take them by force!"
"Carus," called Sir Peter from the hall,
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