Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  I pretended not to hear, yet it was true. And in sooth, to this day I never draw trigger on beast or bird that I do not thrill with pity.

  I know not what fierce, resistless passion it may be that sets my nostrils quivering like a pointer’s when I chase wild things — what savage craving drives me on, on, on! till the flash of the gun and the innocent death leave me standing sad and staring.

  Could I but keep from the woods — but I cannot. And it were vainer to argue with a hound on a runway, or with the west wind in October, than with me.

  I went to my rod, which I saw nodding its tip in the water, and found an eel fast to the bait, yet not hooked, so summoned Bareshanks to rid me of the snaky thing and strolled sulkily over to Sir William.

  The Baronet had enticed and prettily netted a plump lake salmon, by far the choicest fish taken; so, the match being ended, and luncheon served under the pines, Silver Heels plaited a wreath of red-oak, and crowned Sir William for his third prize.

  Peter with his motley string of fish, some two dozen brace in all, and mostly trout at that, clamoured for the first prize, which was a Barlow-knife like the one Silver Heels had gained in the foot-race a year ago; and he clutched his prize and straightway fell a-hacking the wagon till Sir William collared him.

  Silver Heels received the other reward, a gold guinea; and she placed it in her bosom, and kissed Sir William heartily.

  “Faith,” said the Baronet, “you had best kiss your cousin yonder, who saved you from a bath in the brook with your pike!”

  Silver Heels came up to me, laying both hands on my shoulders, and held up her lips. I kissed her maliciously and praised her skill, vowing that she was a very Huron for slaughter, which boorish jest set her face a sorrowful red.

  Meanwhile young Bareshanks had laid a clean cloth upon the moss, and there was pot-pie and roast capon, and a dish of apples and gingerbread. Ale, too, and punch chilled in the brook, and small-beer for the children, with a few drops of wine to drink Sir William’s health.

  With a cup of ale in one hand and a slice of cold capon on a trencher of bread, I munched and drank and rallied Silver Heels because of her pity for the pike; but she did not like it, yet ventured no retort, such as was formerly her custom.

  Presently, Sir William having done scant justice to pot-pie and ale, called for his rod and flies, and he and Mr. Duncan lighted their pipes and strolled off along the stream to lure those small plump salmon which abound in the Kennyetto’s swiftest reaches.

  Peter lay on the moss, a-stuffing himself Indian fashion until it hurt him to eat more, and he howled and licked his gingercake, lamenting because he could not contain it. So I grasped his heels and dragged him to the wagon, tossing him up in the straw to lie like a sucking pig and squeal his fill.

  Bareshanks and the soldiers now fell upon the feast, and Silver Heels and I withdrew to play at stick-knife and watch Esk that he tumbled not into the water while turning flat rocks for cray-fish.

  Seated there on the deep moss at stick-knife with the cold song of the stream in our ears, we conducted politely as became our quality, I asking pardon for plaguing her concerning the pike, she granting pardon and praising my skill in taking such a monster fish. That glow of amiability which suffuses man when he has fed, warmed me into a most friendly state of mind, and I permitted Silver Heels to win at stick-knife, and I drew the peg without protest.

  Fat Peter had fallen asleep; Esk, nipped by a cray-fish, waddled to the wagon, and rolling himself into a ball like a raccoon, joined Peter in dreams of surfeit.

  In a distant glade the soldiers and young Bareshanks played at cards; the horses, tethered near, snorted in their feed-bags, and whisked their tails at the gnats and forest flies.

  A hush fell upon the woods, stiller for the gossip of the stream. Ringed pigeons in the trees overhead made low, melodious love; far in the forest dusk the hermit-bird sang, but so faint, so distant, that the whisper of leaves stirring effaced the hymn of the gray recluse.

  “I had not thought that you were so nearly a man to be appointed cornet of horse,” said Silver Heels, digging into the moss with her knife.

  “And you,” said I, magnanimously, “are almost a woman.” But I said it from courtesy, not because I believed it.

  “Yes,” she replied, indifferently, “maids may wed at sixteen years.”

  “Wed!” I repeated, laughing outright.

  “Ay. Mother was a bride at sixteen.”

  I was silent in my effort to digest such an absurd idea. Silver Heels marry in another year! I looked at the frail yet full arm, half bared, the slender neck, the round, clear hazel eyes, the faintly smiling mouth, which was the mouth of a child. Silver Heels wed? The idea was grotesque. It was also displeasing.

  Not to rebuff her with scorn, I said: “Indeed, you are quite a woman. Perhaps in a year you will be one! Who knows? — for a year is such a long, long time, Silver Heels.”

  “It is a very long time,” she admitted.

  “And to love, one must be quite old,” said I.

  “Yes, that is true,” she conceded, reluctantly; “but not always.”

  After a silence she said, “Michael, I have a secret.”

  The mere idea that Silver Heels possessed a secret which she had not at once revealed to me produced a complicated sensation in my breast. I was conscious of a sudden and wholly involuntary respect for Silver Heels, a hearty resentment, and a gnawing curiosity to learn the secret.

  “Will you promise never, never to tell?” she asked, raising her eager eyes to me.

  Again resentment and hurt pride stung me, but curiosity prevailed, and I promised, with pretended indifference, to soothe my weak loss of self-respect.

  “Well, then,” she said, lowering her voice, “I am sure that Mr. Butler is in love with me.”

  “Mr. Butler!” I cried out, in angry derision. “Why, he’s an old man! Why, he’s nearly thirty!”

  Angry incredulity choked me, and I sat scowling at Silver Heels and striving to reconcile her serious mien with such a tomfool speech.

  “If you shout my secret aloud,” she said, “I shall tell you no more, Micky.”

  Again, troubled and astonished at her sincerity, I expressed my disbelief in a growl.

  “He keeps me after school hours,” she said; “once he would caress my hand, but I will have none of it. He sometimes speaks of the future, and certainly does conduct in most romantic manners, vowing he will wait for me, declaring that I must love him one day, that I am no longer a child, that he has adored me since I was but twelve.”

  “How long has this gone on?” I said, my face cold and twitching with rage.

  “These three months,” said Silver Heels, without embarrassment.

  “And — and you never told me!”

  She shook her head frankly.

  “No, you were but a lad, and you could not understand such things.”

  For a moment I felt so small that I could have yelled aloud my vexation. What! I too young to be told the secrets of this chit of a child with her ridiculous airs and pretensions!

  “But now that you are become a man,” she continued, serenely, “I thought to tell you of this, because it tries my patience, yet pleases me, too, sometimes.”

  Boiling with fury and humiliation, I gave her a piece of my mind. I said that Mr. Butler was a sneak, a bully, and an old fool in his dotage to make love to a baby. I told her it did sicken me to hear of it; that there was no truth in it 70 but vain imaginings, and that she had best confess to Sir William how this gentleman school-teacher did teach her his knowledge withal!

  She listened, frowning and digging up moss with her knife.

  “He is not old,” she said, firmly; “thirty years is but a youth’s prime, which you will one day comprehend.”

  Such condescension wellnigh finished me. I could find neither tongue nor words to speak my passion.

  “He is a gentleman of rank and station,” she said, primly. “If he chooses to protest his solicitous r
egard for me, I can but courteously discourage him.”

  “You little prig!” I exclaimed, grinding my teeth. “I will teach this fellow Butler to abuse Sir William’s confidence!”

  “I have your promise not to reveal this,” said Silver Heels, coolly.

  I groaned, then remembering that Mr. Butler had partly promised me a meeting, I caught Silver Heels by both hands and looked at her earnestly.

  “I also have a secret,” said I. “Promise me silence, and you shall share it.”

  “Truly?” she asked, a little pale.

  “Truly, a secret. Promise. Silver Heels.”

  “I promise,” she whispered.

  Then I told her of my defiance, of the meeting which Mr. Butler had half pledged me, and I swore to her that I would kill him, eye to eye and hilt to hilt; not alone for his contempt and insults to me, but for Sir William’s honour and for the honour of my kinswoman. Felicity Warren.

  “The beast!” I snarled. “That he should come a-suing you without a word to Sir William! Do gentlemen conduct in such a manner towards gentlewomen? Now hear me! Do you swear to me upon your oath and honour never to stay again after school, never to listen to another word from this sneaking fellow until you are sixteen, never to receive his addresses until Sir William speaks to you of him? Swear it! Or I will go straight to Mr. Butler and strike him in the face!”

  “Micky, what are you saying? Sir William knows all this.”

  Taken aback, I dropped her hands, but in a moment seized them again.

  “Swear!” I repeated, crushing her hands. “I don’t care what Sir William says! Swear it!”

  “I swear,” she said, faintly. “You are hurting my fingers!”

  She drew her hands from mine. Where the fishing-line had cut a single drop of blood had been squeezed out again.

  “First you bind my hand, then you tear it,” she said, without resentment. “It is like all men — to hurt, to heal, then wound again.”

  I scarcely heard her, being occupied with my anger and my designs against Mr. Butler. Such hatred as I now felt for him I never had conceived could be cherished towards any living thing. My right hand itched for a sword-hilt; I longed to see him facing me as I never had craved for anything in this world or the next. And to think that Sir William approved it!

  Unconsciously we had both risen, and now, side by side, we were moving slowly along the stream, saying nothing, yet in closer communion than we had ever been.

  Little by little the hot anger cooled in my veins, leaving a refreshing confidence that all would come right. Such passions are too powerful for young hearts. Anger and grief heal their own wounds quickly when life is yet new.

  With my sudden, astonished respect for Silver Heels came another sentiment, a recognition of her rights as an equal, and a strangely solicitous desire to control and direct her enjoyment of these rights. It is the instinct of chivalry, latent in the roughest of us, and which, in extreme youth, first manifests as patronage. Thus, walking with Silver Heels I unburdened my heart, telling her that I too had been in love, that the object of my respectful passion was one Marie Livingston, who would undoubtedly be mine at some distant date. I revealed my desire to see Silver Heels suitably plighted, drawing a pleasing portrait of an imaginary suitor who should fill all requirements.

  To this she replied that she, too, had desired a suitor resembling the highly attractive portrait I had painted for her; that she found a likeness between that portrait and her 72 secret ideal, and that she should be very glad to encounter the portrait in the flesh.

  It hurt me a little that she had not recognized in me many of the traits I had painted for her so carefully, and presently I disclosed myself as the mysterious original of the portrait.

  “You!” she exclaimed, in amazement. Then, not to hurt me, she said it was quite true that I did resemble her ideal, and only lacked years and titles and wealth and reputation to make me desirable for her.

  “I believe, also,” she said, “that Aunt Molly means that we marry. Betty says so, and she is wiser than a black cat.”

  “Well,” said I, “we can’t marry, can we, Silver Heels?”

  “Why, no,” she said, simply; “there’s all those things you lack.”

  “And all those things which you lack,” said I, sharply. “Now, Marie Livingston—”

  “She is older than I!” cried Silver Heels.

  “And those things I lack come with years!” I retorted.

  “That is true,” she answered; “you are suitable for me excepting your years, which includes all you ought to be.”

  “Suppose you wait for me?” I proposed. “If I wed not Marie Livingston, I will wed you, Silver Heels.”

  I meant to be generous, but she grew very angry and vowed she would rather wed young Bareshanks than me.

  “I don’t care a fig,” said I; “I only meant you to be suitably wed one day, and was even willing to do so myself to save you from Captain Butler. Anyway I’ll kill him next year, so I don’t care whether you marry me or not.”

  “A sorry match, pardieu!” she snapped, and fell a-laughing. “Michael, I will warn you now that I mean to wed a gentleman of rank and wealth, and wear jewels which will blind you! And I shall wed a gallant gentleman of years, Michael, and scarred with battles — not so to disfigure a pleasing countenance, but under his clothes where none can see — and I shall be ‘my lady!’ — mark me! Michael, and shall be well patched and powdered as befits my rank! I shall strive to be very kind to you, Michael.”

  Her cheeks were aflame, her eyes daring and bright. She picked up her skirt and mocked me in a curtsey, then marched off, nose in the wind, to join Sir William and Mr. 73 Duncan, who were returning along the bank with a few brace of fish.

  The sun had dropped low behind the trees ere we were prepared to depart. Bareshanks brought around my horse, and I mounted without difficulty this time.

  As the wagon moved off Mr. Duncan started a hymn of Watts, which all joined, the soldiers and young Bareshanks also singing lustily, it being permitted for servants to aid in holy song.

  So among the woods and out into the still country, with the sun a red ball sinking through saffron mist and the new moon aslant and dim overhead.

  As I rode, the whippoorwill called after me from the darkening woods; the crickets began from every tuft, and far away I heard the solitary hermit at vespers in the still pines.

  It was night ere the lights of Johnstown glimmered out against the hill-side where, on the hillock called Mount Johnson, the candles in our windows spun little rings of fire in the evening haze.

  As we passed through the village, the good people turned to smile and to doff their hats to Sir William, thinking not less of him for riding with his flock in the straw-lined wagon, and on they went; I pulling rein at the blacksmith’s, as Warlock had cast a shoe on the stony way below.

  While the smith was at his forge I dismounted and stood in the fire-glow, stroking Warlock’s velvet nose, and watching the fiery flakes falling from the beaten metal.

  And as I stood, musing now on Silver Heels, now on Mr. Butler, came one a-swaggering by the shop, and bawling loudly a most foolish lilt:

  “Diddle diddle dumpling,

  My son John

  Went to bed with one shoe on;

  One shoe off and one shoe on;

  Diddle diddle dumpling,

  My son John!”

  Perceiving me in full uniform the songster halted and saluted so cheerfully that I rendered his salute with a smile. He was drunk but polite; a great fellow, six feet two at 74 least, all buckskin and swagger and raccoon cap, with tail bobbing to his neck, a true coureur-de-bois, which is the term for those roaming free-rifles whose business and conduct will not always bear investigation, and who live by their wits as well as by their rifles.

  “A fine horse, captain,” quoth he, with good-natured, drunken freedom, which is not possible for gentlemen to either ignore or resent. “A fine horse, sir, and, by your leave, worthy of his maste
r!” And he stood swaying there heel and toe, with such a jolly laugh that I laughed too, and asked the news from Canada.

  “Canada!” he roared, in his voice of a giant. “I’ve not sniffed priest or Jesuit these six months! Do you take me for a Frenchy, captain?”

  At that moment another man who had been pushing his nose against the window of a bake-shop crossed the street and joined the giant in buckskin, saluting me carelessly as he came up.

  He was short and meagre and weasel-eyed, sharp-muzzled, and dingy as a summer fox. He was also drunk, yet his mouth was honest, and I judge not from such things, nor yet by the eye, but by men’s lips and how they rest one upon the other, and how they laugh.

  Waiting there for my horse, I paced up and down the doorway, sometimes glancing at the motley pair in their fringed buckskins, who were fondly embracing one another, sometimes watching the towns-people, passing before the lighted windows. There were soldiers strolling, two by two, lingering at bake-shops to sniff the ovens; there were traders, come to town to solicit permits from Sir William for the Canadas. At times the tall, blanketed form of a Mohawk passed like a spectre with the red forge light running along his rifle barrel, followed by his squaw, loaded with bags of flour, or a haunch of salted beef, or a bale of pelts crackling on her back.

  My pair of buckskin birds, loitering before the tavern, had been observed and mistaken for French trappers by half a dozen soldiers of the Royal Americans, who were squatting in a row on the tavern porch, and a volley of chaff was fired at short range.

  “Mossoo! Oh, Mossoo! I say, Mossoo! How’s Mrs. Parleyvoo and the little Parleyvoos? What’s the price of cat-stew in Canada? Take that cat-tail off your cap, Mossoo!”

  The big ranger gave them a drunken stare, then burst into a laugh.

  “Why, it’s some of those lobster-backs. Hello! Old red-bellies! They’re going to give another tea-party in Boston, I hear. Didn’t they invite you?”

  “Come across the street and we’ll give you a tea-party, you damned Yankee!” cried the soldiers, unbuckling their leather belts and swinging them.