Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Resolved at last to accomplish some verses as proof of a contrite and diligent spirit, I set to work; and this is what I made:

  “Proserpine did roam the hills,

  Intent on culling daffydills;

  Alas, in gleeful girlish sport,

  She wandered too far from the fort,

  Forgetting that no belt of peace,

  Bound the people of Pluto from war to cease;

  Alas, old Pluto lay in wait,

  To ambush all who stayed out late;

  And with a dreadful war-whoop he

  Ran after the doomed Proserpine—”

  Absorbed in my task, and, moreover, considerably affected by the piteous plight of the maid, I stepped back from the slate and for a moment conceived a generous idea of introducing 10 somebody to rescue Proserpine and leave Pluto damaged — perhaps scalped. Reflection, however, dissuaded me from such a liberty, not that I found the anachronism at all discordant, for, living all my life in a family where Indians were oftener seen than white men, my hazy notions concerning classic myths were inextricably mixed with the reality of my own life, and were also gayly coloured by the legends I learned from my red neighbours. So, lazy dunce that I was, with but a fraction of my attention fixed on my tasks, mythology to me was but a Græco-Mohawk medley of jumbled fables, interesting only when they concerned war or the chase.

  Still I did not feel at liberty to rescue Proserpine in my verses or plump a war-arrow into Pluto. Besides I knew it would enrage Sir William.

  As I stood there, breathing hard, resolved to finish the wretched maiden quickly and let the metre go a-limping, behind me I heard the door stealthily open, and I knew that long-legged wild-cat thing, Silver Heels, had crept in, her moccasins making no noise.

  I pretended not to notice her, knowing she had come to taunt me; and, for a space, she stood behind me, very still. Clearly, she was reading my verses, and I became angry. Not to show it, I made out to whistle and to draw a picture of a fish on the slate. Then she knew I had seen her and laughed hatefully.

  “Oh,” said I, “if there is somebody come a-prying, it must be Silver Heels!” And I turned around, pretending amazement at the justness of my hazard.

  “You saw me,” she answered, disdainfully.

  “It is your hour for the stocks,” I hinted.

  “I won’t go,” she retorted.

  To secure that grace of carriage and elegance of presence necessary for a young lady of quality, and to straighten her back, which truly was as straight as a pine, Sir William and Mistress Molly were accustomed to strap her to a pine plank and lock her in the stocks for an hour at noon, forbidding Peter, Esk, and me to tickle the soles of her feet.

  It was noon now; I could hear the guard changing at the north block-house, tramp! tramp! tramp! across the stony way.

  “If you don’t go to the stocks now,” I said, “you’ll be sorry when you do go.”

  “If you tickle my feet, you great booby, I’ll tell Sir William,” she retorted, balancing defiantly from one heel to the other.

  “Will you go, Silver Heels?” I insisted.

  “My name isn’t Silver Heels,” she observed, still coolly tilting back and forth on heels and toes. “Call me by my right name and perhaps I’ll go — and perhaps I won’t. So there, Mr. Micky Dunce!”

  “If I call you Felicity Warren, will you go?” I inquired cautiously.

  “There! you have called me Felicity Warren!” she cried in triumph.

  “I didn’t,” said I, in a temper; “I only said that there was such a person. But you are not that person! Anyway, you toe in like a Mohawk. Anyway, you’re half wild-cat, half Mohawk.”

  “It’s a lie!” she flashed; “I’m all white to the bones of my body!”

  It was true. Indeed, she was kin to Sir William and niece to Sir Peter Warren, but, to torment her, we feigned to believe her one of Mistress Molly’s brood, half Mohawk; and it madded her. Besides, had not the Mohawks dubbed her Silver Heels, a year ago, when, with naked flying feet, she had beaten us all in the foot-race before Sir William and half the people of the Six Nations?

  The prize had been a Barlow jack-knife, which, before the race, I had looked upon as mine. Besides, I had rashly given my old knife to Esk, and that left me without a blade to notch whistles.

  “You are a Mohawk,” I said, resentfully; “also you are a cat-child beneath notice. When you are hungry you cry, ‘Miau! Eso cautfore!’ — like Peter.”

  “I don’t!” she said, stamping her moccasin.

  “Anyway,” said I, disdaining to torment her further, “the guard is changed these ten minutes, and Sir William will come to find you here a-prying. Esogee cadagcariax,” I added, incautiously.

  “Who is Mohawk, now!” she cried, clapping her hands. 12 “Bah, Mister Micky, it is spoon-meat you require to make you run the faster after jack-knives!”

  This outrageous taunt ruffled me, the more for her laughter. I attempted to hold my head in the air and look down at the presumptuous child, but it appeared she had grown very fast in the past months since the race, and I was disturbed to find her eyes already on a straight line with mine, though she was but fifteen and I sixteen.

  “I’m as high as you,” she said.

  “I can jump and touch the ceiling,” said I; and did so.

  She strove in vain, then called me dunce, and vowed what brains I had were in my feet. For that, and because she pushed me, I seized the chalk and wrote high on the slate:

  “Silver Heels is Mohock she toes in like ducks.”

  She caught up the buckskin to wipe out the taunt, jostling me till the ferret in my pocket jumped out and ran round and round the room.

  I jostled her; then she gave me a blow and a quick shove, whereupon I stumbled, pulling her to the floor to rub her face with chalk. She twisted and turned, kicking and striking while I rubbed chalk into her skin, till of a sudden she coiled up and bit me clean through the hand.

  I was on my feet with a bound; she also, all white in the face and her eyes aflame.

  The blood began welling up, running into my palm and along the fingers to the floor. At that same instant I heard the door of the nursery open, and I knew that Sir William was coming through the hall to the school-room.

  From instinct I thrust my wounded hand into my breeches-pocket.

  “Don’t tell!” whispered Silver Heels, in a fright; “don’t tell — and here is the jack-knife.”

  She thrust it into my right hand, then sped across the floor to the open window, and over the sill, dropping light as a cat on the grass below.

  My first impulse was to follow her and give her such a spank as Mistress Molly administered the day she trounced her for pushing Peter into the creek. However, it was already too late; Sir William came quickly along the hall, and I had scarce time to step to the slate when he marched in.

  Sir William had changed his clothing for the buckskin hunting-shirt and breeches which he was accustomed to wear when angling. He carried, too, that light, seasoned rod, fashioned for him by Thayendanegea, and on his bosom he wore a bouquet of gayly coloured feather-flies, made by Mistress Molly during the winter.

  He approached the slate whereon my verses stared white and unfinished; and at first his brows knitted and he said, “Fudge, fudge, fudge!” Then of a sudden he sat down on the bench, clapping his hand to his brow.

  “Oh Lord!” said he, and fell a-laughing, while I, hot, ashamed, and a little dizzy, my breeches-pocket being full of blood, gnawed my lips and glowered askance.

  “The Lord’s will be done,” said he, taking breath. “Who am I to ordain, when He who fashioned yon tow-head designed it to hold neither Latin nor the classics?”

  “It pleases you to laugh, sir,” I muttered.

  “Pleases me! Pleases me, quotha! Lad, it stabs me like a French dirk, nor can I guard the thrust in tierce! I have been wrong. A friar is not made with a twisted rope nor a man hanged with words. If you are not born a scholar, ’twas the mint-mark I could no
t read aright; and no blame to you, lad, no blame to you. Micky boy! Shall we leave Cæsar to go marching with his impedimenta and his Tenth Legion? Shall we consign the hypothenuse of all triangles to those who mend pens from the quills of wild-geese which better men have brought down with a single ball?”

  I was regarding him wildly, uncertain of his meaning.

  “Shall we,” cried Sir William, heartily, “bid the nymphs and dryads farewell forever, lad, and save our learning for Roderick Random and a bowl of cider and the bitter nights of December?”

  His meaning was dawning upon me slowly, for what with the pain of my hand and the dizziness, I was perhaps more stupid than usual.

  “No,” said Sir William, with a thump of his fist on his knee, “the college which my Lord Dartmouth has endowed is a haven for those who seek it, not a prison for men to be driven to.”

  He paused.

  “I should have sought it,” he said, dropping his head. “No wilderness, no wintry terrors, neither French scalping parties nor the savages of all the Canadas could have kept me from instruction had I, in my youth, been favoured by the opportunity I offer you.”

  I gazed at him in silence while the blood, overrunning my leather pocket, ran down to my knee-buckles.

  “I was poor, without means, without counsel, save for the letters Sir Peter Warren wrote me. I traded for my daily bread; I read Ovid by lighted pine splinters; I worked — God knows I worked my flesh to the bone.”

  He sat, fingering the bunch of scarlet feather-flies in his breast.

  “Our Lord gives us according to our needs — when we take it,” he said, without irreverence. “I could have gone to England, to Oxford; I had saved enough. I did neither; I did not take the instruction I wished for, and God did not teach me Greek in my dreams,” he added, bitterly.

  The blood was now stealing down my stocking towards my shoe. I turned the leg so he could not observe it.

  “Come, lad,” he said, brightening up; “learning lies not always between thumbed leaves. I only wish that you bear yourself modestly and nobly through the world; that you keep faith with men, that your word once given shall never be withdrawn.

  “This is the foundation. It includes courage. Further than that, I desire you, once a purpose formed and a course set, to steer fearlessly to the goal.

  “I know you to be brave and honest; I know you to be a very Mohawk in the forest; I believe you to be merciful and tender underneath that boy’s thoughtless and cruel hide.

  “As for learning, I can do no more for you than I have done and have offered to do. If it pleases you, you may go to England, and learn the arts, bearing, and deportment you can never acquire here with us. No? Well, then, stay with us. I want you, Micky. We Irish are fond of each other — and I am an old man now — I am nigh sixty years, Michael — sixty years of battle. I would be glad of rest — with those I love.”

  My heart was very soft now. I looked at Sir William with an affection I had never before understood.

  “There is one last thing I wish to add,” he said, gravely, almost sadly. “Perhaps I may again refer to it — but I pray that it may not be necessary.”

  I sat up and rubbed my eyes to clear them from the sickly faintness which stole upward from my throbbing hand.

  “It is this,” he continued, in a low voice. “If it ever comes to you to choose between his Majesty our King and — and your native land — which God forbid! — go to your closet and kneel down, and stay there on your knees, hours, days! — until you have learned your own heart. Then — then — God go with you, Michael Cardigan.”

  He rose, and his face was years older. Slowly the colour came back into his cheeks; he fumbled with the brass-work on his fish-rod, then smiled.

  “That is all,” he said; “let Pluto chase Proserpine to hell, lad; and a devilish good place they say it is for those who like it! Where is that ferret? What! Running about unmuzzled! Hey! Vix! Vix! Come here, little reptile!”

  “I’ll catch her, sir,” said I, stumbling forward.

  But as I laid my hand on Vix the floor rose and struck me, and there I lay sprawling and senseless, with the blood running over the floor; and Sir William, believing me bitten by the ferret, pouched the poor beast and lifted me to a bench.

  He must have seen my hand, however, for, when a cup of cold water set me spluttering and blinking, I found my hand tied up in Sir William’s handkerchief and Sir William himself eying me strangely.

  “How came that wound?” he said, bluntly.

  I could not reply — or would not.

  He asked me again whether the ferret bit me, and I was tempted to say yes. Treachery was abhorrent to me; I hated Silver Heels, but could not betray her, and it was easy to clap the blame on Vix.

  “Sir?” I stammered.

  “I asked what bit you,” he said, icily.

  I tried to say Vix, but the lie, too, stuck in my throat.

  “I cannot tell you,” I muttered.

  “Then,” said Sir William, with a strange smile of relief, “I shall not force you, Michael. May I honourably ask you how you come by this jack-knife?”

  I shook my head. My face was on fire.

  “Very well,” he said. “Only remember that you are a man, now — a man of sixteen, and that I have to-day treated you as a man, and shall continue. And remember that a man’s first duty is to protect the weaker sex, and his second duty is to endure from them all taunts, caprice, and torments without revenge. It is a hard lesson to learn, Micky, and only the true and gallant gentleman can ever learn it.”

  He smiled, then said:

  “Pray find our little Silver Heels and return to her the jack-knife, which was her wampum-belt of faith in the honour of a gentleman.”

  And so he walked away, smoothing the fur of the red-eyed ferret against his breast.

  CHAPTER II

  When Sir William left me in the school-room, he left a lad of sixteen puffed up in a glow of pride. To be treated no longer as a fractious child — to be received at last as a man among men!

  And what would Esk say? And Silver Heels, poor little mouse harnessed in the stocks below?

  I had entered the school-room that morning a lazy, sullen, defiant lad, heavy-hearted, with chronic resentment against the discipline of those who had sent me into a hateful trap from the windows of which I could see the young, thirsty year quaffing spring sunshine. Now I was free to leave the accursed trap forever, a man of discretion, responsible before men, exacting from other men the same courtesies, attentions, and considerations which I might render them.

  What a change had come to me, all in one brief May morning! As I stood there, resting my bandaged hand in the palm of the other, looking about me to realize the fortune which set my veins tingling, a great tide of benevolent condescension for the others swept over me, a ripple of pity and good-will for the hapless children whose benches lay in a row before me.

  I no longer detested Silver Heels. I walked on tiptoe to her bench. There lay her slate and slate-pen; upon it I read a portion of the longer catechism. There, too, lay her quill and inky horn and a foolscap book sewed neatly and marked:

  Felicity Warren

  1

  HER BOOKE.

  Poor child, doomed for years still to steep her little fingers in ink-powder while, with the powder I should require hereafter, 18 I expected to write fiercer tales on living hides with plummets cast in bullet-moulds!

  Cramped with importance, I cast a contemptuous eye upon my poem which embellished the great slate, and scoured it partly out with the buckskin.

  “My books,” said I, to myself, “I will bestow upon Silver Heels and Esk;” and I carried out my philanthropic impulse, piling speller, reader, and arithmetic on Esk’s bench; my Cæsar, my pair of globes, my compass, and my algebra I laid with Silver Heels’s copy-book, first writing in the books, with some malice:

  SILVER HEELS HER GIFT BOOKE FROM

  MICHAEL CARDIGAN

  BE DILIGENT AND OF GOOD THRIFT
r />   KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.

  For fat Peter, because I allowed Vix to bite his tight breeches, I left a pile of jacks beside his horn-book, namely, a slate-pen, three mended quills, a birchen box of ink-powder, a screw to trade with, two tops and an alley, pumice, a rule, and some wax.

  Peter, though duck-limbed and half Mohawk, wrote very well in the Boston style, and could even copy in the Lettre Frisée — a poor art in some repute, but smelling to my nose of French flummery and deceit.

  Having bestowed these gifts with a light heart, I walked slowly around the room, and I fear my walk was somewhat a strut.

  I knew my small head was all swelled with vain imaginings; I saw myself in a flapped coat and lace, fingering the hilt of a sword at my hip, saluted by the sentries and the militia; I saw myself riding with Sir William as his deputy; I heard him say, “Mr. Cardigan, the enemy are upon us! We must fly!” — and I: “Sir William, fear nothing. The day is our own!” And I saw a lad of sixteen, with sword pointing upward and one hand twisted into Pontiac’s scalp-lock, smile benignly upon Sir William, who had cast himself 19 upon my breast, protesting that I had saved the army, and that the King should hear of it.

  Then, unbidden, the apparition of Mr. Butler rose into my vain dreaming, and, though I am no prophet, nor can I claim the gift of seeing behind the veil, yet I swear that Walter Butler appeared to me all aflame and bloody with scalps bunched at his girdle — and the scalps were not of the red men!

  Now my imagination smoking into fire, I saw myself dogging Mr. Butler with firelock a-trail and knife loosened, on! on! through fathomless depths of forest and by the still deeps of shadowy lakes, fording the roaring tumble of rivers, swimming silent pools as otters swim, but tracking him, ever tracking Captain Butler by the scent of his reeking scalps.

  There was a dew on my eyebrows as I waked into sense. Yet again I fell straightway to imagining the glories of my young future. Truly I painted life in cloying colours; and always, when I accomplished gallant deeds, there stood Silver Heels to observe me, and to marvel, and to stamp her little moccasins in vexation that I, the pride and envy of all men, applauded, courted, nay, worshipped — I, the playmate she had in her silly ignorance flouted, now stood so far beyond her that she dared not twitch the skirt of my coat nor whisper, “Sir Michael, pray condescend to notice one who passes her entire life in admiring your careless exploits.”