The Maid-At-Arms: A Novel

by Robert W. Chambers

  XVI

  ON SCOUT

  Like a pursued man hunted through a dream, I labored on, leaden-limbed,trembling; and it seemed hours and hours ere the blue starlight brokeoverhead and Beacraft's dark house loomed stark and empty on thestony hill.

  Suddenly the ghostly call of a whippoorwill broke out from the willows.Mount answered; Elerson appeared in the path, making a sign for silence.

  "Magdalen Brant entered the house an hour since," he whispered. "Shesits yonder on the door-step. I think she has fallen asleep."

  We stole forward through the dusk towards the silent figure on thedoor-step. She sat there, her head fallen back against the closed door,her small hands lying half open in her lap. Under her closed eyes thedark circles of fatigue lay; a faint trace of rose paint still clung toher lips; and from the ragged skirt of her thorn-rent gown one smallfoot was thrust, showing a silken shoe and ankle stained with mud.

  There she lay, sleeping, this maid who, with her frail strength, hadsplit forever the most powerful and ancient confederacy the world hadever known.

  Her superb sacrifice of self, her proud indifference to delicacy andshame, her splendid acceptance of the degradation, her instant andfearless execution of the only plan which could save the land from warwith a united confederacy, had left us stunned with admiration andhelpless gratitude.

  Had she gone to them as a white woman, using the arts of civilizedpersuasion, she could have roused them to war, but she could not havesoothed them to peace. She knew it--even I knew that among the Iroquoisthe Ruler of the Heavens can never speak to an Indian through the mouthof a white woman.

  As an Oneida, and a seeress of the False-Faces, she had answered theirappeal. Using every symbol, every ceremony, every art taught her as achild, she had swayed them, vanquishing with mystery, conquering,triumphing, as an Oneida, where a single false step, a single slip, amoment's faltering in her sweet and serene authority might have broughtout the appalling cry of accusation:

  "Her heart is white!"

  And not one hand would have been raised to prevent the sacrificial testwhich must follow and end inevitably in a dreadful death.

  * * * * *

  Mount and Elerson, moved by a rare delicacy, turned and walkednoiselessly away towards the hill-top.

  "Wake her," I said to Sir George.

  He knelt beside her, looking long into her face; then touched herlightly on the hand. She opened her eyes, looked up at him gravely, thenrose to her feet, steadying herself on his bent arm.

  "Where have you been?" she asked, glancing anxiously from him to me.There was the faintest ring of alarm in her voice, a tint of color oncheek and temple. And Sir George, lying like a gentleman, answered: "Wehave searched the trails in vain for you. Where have you lainhidden, child?"

  Her lips parted in an imperceptible sigh of relief; the pallor ofweariness returned.

  "I have been upon your business, Sir George," she said, looking down ather mud-stained garments. Her arms fell to her side; she made a littlegesture with one limp hand. "You see," she said, "I promised you." Thenshe turned, mounting the steps, pensively; and, in the doorway, pausedan instant, looking back at him over her shoulder.

  * * * * *

  And all that night, lying close to the verge of slumber, I heard SirGeorge pacing the stony yard under the great stars; while the riflemen,stretched beside the hearth, snored heavily, and the death-watch tickedin the wall.

  At dawn we three were afield, nosing the Sacandaga trail to count thetracks leading to the north--the dread footprints of light, swift feetwhich must return one day bringing to the Mohawk Valley an awfulreckoning.

  At noon we returned. I wrote out my report and gave it to Sir George. Wespoke little together. I did not see Magdalen Brant again until theybade me adieu.

  And now it was two o'clock in the afternoon; Sir George had already setout with Magdalen Brant to Varicks' by way of Stoner's; Elerson andMount stood by the door, waiting to pilot me towards Gansevoort'sdistant outposts; the noon sunshine filled the deserted house and fellacross the table where I sat, reading over my instructions from Schuylerere I committed the paper to the flames.

  So far, no thanks to myself, I had carried out my orders in all save theapprehension of Walter Butler. And now I was uncertain whether to remainand hang around the council-fire waiting for an opportunity to seizeButler, or whether to push on at once, warn Gansevoort at Stanwix thatSt. Leger's motley army had set out from Oswego, and then return totrap Butler at my leisure.

  I crumpled the despatch into a ball and tossed it onto the live coals inthe fireplace; the paper smoked, caught fire, and in a moment more theblack flakes sank into the ashes.

  "Shall we burn the house, sir?" asked Mount, as I came to the doorwayand looked out.

  I shook my head, picked up rifle, pouch, and sack, and descended thesteps. At the same instant a man appeared at the foot of the hill, andElerson waved his hand, saying: "Here's that mad Irishman, Tim Murphy,back already."

  Murphy came jauntily up the hill, saluted me with easy respect, and drewfrom his pouch a small packet of papers which he handed me, noddingcarelessly at Elerson and staring hard at Mount as though he did notrecognize him.

  "Phwat's this?" he inquired of Elerson--"a Frinch cooroor, or maybe aSac shquaw in a buck's shirrt?"

  "Don't introduce him to me," said Mount to Elerson; "he'll try to kissmy hand, and I hate ceremony."

  "Quit foolin'," said Elerson, as the two big, over-grown boys seizedeach other and began a rough-and-tumble frolic. "You're just cuttin'capers, Tim, becuz you've heard that we're takin' the war-path--quitpullin' me, you big Irish elephant! Is it true we're takin' thewar-path?"

  "How do I know?" cried Murphy; but the twinkle in his blue eyes betrayedhim; "bedad, 'tis home to the purty lasses we go this blessed day, f'rthe crool war is over, an' the King's got the pip, an--"

  "Murphy!" I said.

  "Sorr," he replied, letting go of Mount and standing at a respectfulslouch.

  "Did you get Beacraft there in safety?"

  "I did, sorr."

  "Any trouble?"

  "None, sorr--f'r me."

  I opened the first despatch, looking at him keenly.

  "Do we take the war-path?" I asked.

  "We do, sorr," he said, blandly. "McDonald's in the hills wid the McCrawan'ten score renegades. Wan o' their scouts struck old man Schell's farman' he put buckshot into sivinteen o' them, or I'm a liar whereI shtand!"

  "I knew it," muttered Elerson to Mount. "Where you see smoke, there'sfire; where you see Murphy, there's trouble. Look at the grin onhim--and his hatchet shined up like a Cayuga's war-axe!"

  I opened the despatch; it was from Schuyler, countermanding hisinstructions for me to go to Stanwix, and directing me to warn everysettlement in the Kingsland district that McDonald and some threehundred Indians and renegades were loose on the Schoharie, and thattheir outlying scouts had struck Broadalbin.

  I broke the wax of the second despatch; it was from Harrow, brieflythanking me for the capture of Beacraft, adding that the man had beensent to Albany to await court-martial.

  That meant that Beacraft must hang; a most disagreeable feeling cameover me, and I tore open the third and last paper, a bulky document,and read it:

  "VARICK MANOR, "June the 2d. "An hour to dawn.

  "In my bedroom I am writing to you the adieu I should have said the night you left. Murphy, a rifleman, goes to you with despatches in an hour: he will take this to you, ... wherever you are.

  "I saw the man you sent in. Father says he must surely hang. He was so pale and silent, he looked so dreadfully tired--and I have been crying a little--I don't know why, because all say he is a great villain.

  "I wonder whether you are well and whether you remember me." ("me" was crossed out and "us" written very carefully.) "The house is so strange without you. I go into your room sometimes. Cato ha
s pressed all your fine clothes. I go into your room to read. The light is very good there. I am reading the Poems of Pansard. You left a fern between the pages to mark the poem called 'Our Deaths'; did you know it? Do you admire that verse? It seems sad to me. And it is not true, either. Lovers seldom die together." (This was crossed out, and the letter went on.) "Two people who love--" ("love" was crossed out heavily and the line continued)--"two friends seldom die at the same instant. Otherwise there would be no terror in death.

  "I forgot to say that Isene, your mare, is very well. Papa and the children are well, and Ruyven a-pestering General Schuyler to make him a cornet in the legion of horse, and Cecile, all airs, goes about with six officers to carry her shawl and fan.

  "For me--I sit with Lady Schuyler when I have the opportunity. I love her; she is so quiet and gentle and lets me sit by her for hours, perfectly silent. Yesterday she came into your room, where I was sitting, and she looked at me for a long time--so strangely--and I asked her why, and she shook her head. And after she had gone I arranged your linen and sprinkled lavender among it.

  "You see there is so little to tell you, except that in the afternoon some Senecas and Tories shot at one of our distant tenants, a poor man, one Christian Schell; and he beat them off and killed eleven, which was very brave, and one of the soldiers made a rude song about it, and they have been singing it all night in their quarters. I heard them from your room--where I sometimes sleep--the air being good there; and this is what they sang:

  "'A story, a story Unto you I will tell, Concerning a brave hero, One Christian Schell.

  "'Who was attacked by the savages. And Tories, it is said; But for this attack Most freely they bled.

  "'He fled unto his house For to save his life. Where he had left his arms In care of his wife.

  "'They advanced upon him And began to fire, But Christian with his blunderbuss Soon made them retire.

  "'He wounded Donald McDonald And drew him in the door, Who gave an account Their strength was sixty-four.

  "'Six there was wounded And eleven there was killed Of this said party, Before they quit the field.'

  "And I think there are a hundred other verses, which I will spare you; not that I forget them, for the soldiers sang them over and over, and I had nothing better to do than to lie awake and listen.

  "So that is all. I hear my messenger moving about below; I am to drop this letter down to him, as all are asleep, and to open the big door might wake them.

  "Good-bye.

  * * * * *

  "It was not my rifleman, only the sentry. They keep double watch since the news came about Schell. "Good-bye. I am thinking of you.

  "DOROTHY.

  "Postscript.--Please make my compliments and adieux to Sir George Covert.

  "Postscript.--The rifleman is here; he is whistling like a whippoorwill. I must say good-bye. I am mad to go with him. Do not forget me!

  "My memories are so keen, so pitilessly real, I can scarce endure them, yet cling to them the more desperately.

  "I did not mean to write this--truly I did not! But here, in the dusk, I can see your face just as it looked when you said good-bye!--so close that I could take it in my arms despite my vows and yours!

  "Help me to reason; for even God cannot, or will not, help me; knowing, perhaps, the dreadful after-life He has doomed me to for all eternity. If it is true that marriages are made in heaven, where was mine made? Can you answer? I cannot. (The whimper of the whippoorwill again!) Dearest, good-bye. Where my body lies matters nothing so that you hold my soul a little while. Yet, even of that they must rob you one day. Oh, if even in dying there is no happiness, where, where does it abide? Three places only have I heard of: the world, heaven, and hell. God forgive me, but I think the last could cover all.

  "Say that you love me! Say it to the forest, to the wind. Perhaps my soul, which follows you, may hear if you only say it. (Once more the ghost-call of the whippoorwill!) Dear lad, good-bye!"