Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  But when I related the story of my great peril, she turned so sick and pallid that I ceased, and took her frail hands anxiously.

  “What is the matter, Silver Heels?” I said. “Never have I seen you like this. Have you been ill long? What is it, little comrade?”

  “Oh, I don’t know — I don’t know, truly,” she sobbed. “It has come within the few weeks, Michael. I am so old, so tired, so strangely ill of I know not what.”

  “You do know,” I said. “Tell me, Silver Heels.”

  She raised her eyes to me, then closed them. Neck and brow were reddening.

  “You are not in love!” I demanded, aghast.

  “Ay, sick with it,” she said, slowly, with closed lids.

  It was horrible, incredible! I attempted to picture Dunmore as an inspirer of love in any woman. The mere idea revolted me. What frightful spell had this shrunken nobleman cast over my little comrade that she should confess her love for him?

  And all I could say was: “Oh, Silver Heels! Silver Heels! That man! It is madness!”

  “What man?” she asked, opening her eyes.

  “What man?” I repeated. “Do you not mean that you love Dunmore?”

  She laughed a laugh that frightened me, so mirthless, so bitter, so wickedly bitter it rang in the summer air.

  “Oh yes — Dunmore, if you wish — or any man — any man. I care not; I am sick, sick, sick! They have flattered and followed and sought me and importuned me — great and humble, young and old — and never a true man among them all — only things of powder and silks and painted smiles — and all wicked save one.”

  “And he?”

  “Oh, he is a true man — the only one among them all — a true man, for he is stupid and vain and tyrannical and violent, eaten to the bone with self-assurance — and a fool to boot, Michael — a fool to boot. And as this man is, among them all, the only real man of bone and blood — why, I love him.”

  “Who is this man?” I asked, cautiously.

  “Not Dunmore, Michael.”

  “Not Dunmore? And yet you wed Dunmore?”

  “Because I love the other, Michael, who uses me like a pedigreed hound, scanning and planning his kennel-list to mate me with a blooded mate to his taste. Because I hate him as I love him, and shall place myself beyond his power to shame me. Because I am dying of the humiliation, Michael, and would wish to die so high in rank that even death cannot level me to him. Now, tell me who I love.”

  “God knows!” I said, in my amazement.

  “True,” she said, “God knows I love a fool.”

  “But who is this fellow?” I insisted. “What man dares attempt to mate you to his friends? The insolence, the presumption — why, I thought I was the only man who might do that!”

  How she laughed at me as I stood perplexed and scowling and fingering the fringe on my leggings, and how her laughter cut, with its undertone ringing with tears. What on earth had changed her to a woman like this, talking a language that dealt in phrases which one heard and marked and found meant nothing, with a sting in their very emptiness?

  “Very well,” said I, “you shall not have Dunmore for spite of a fool unworthy of you; and as for that, you shall not have the fool either!”

  “I am not likely to get him,” she said.

  “You could have him for the wish!” I cried, jealously. “I’d like to see the man who would not crawl from here to Johnstown to kiss your silken shoe!”

  “Would you?”

  “It pleases you to mock me,” I said; “but I’ll tell you this: If I loved you as a sweetheart I’d do it! I’ll have the world know it is honoured wherever you touch it with your foot!”

  “Do you mean it?” she asked, looking at me strangely.

  “Mean it! Have you ever doubted it?”

  The colour in her face surged to her hair.

  “You speak like a lover,” she said, with a catch in her breath.

  “I speak like a man, proud of his kin!” said I, suspiciously, alert to repel ridicule. Lover! What did she mean by that? Had I not asked pardon for my foolishness in Johnson Hall? And must she still taunt me?

  If she read my suspicions I do not know, but I think she did, for the colour died out in her face and she set her lips together as she always did when meaning mischief.

  “I pray you, dear friend,” she said, wearily, “concern yourself with your kin as little as I do. Bid me good-bye, now. I am tired, Michael — tired to the soul of me.”

  She held out her slim hand. I took it, then I bent to touch it with my lips.

  “You will not wed Dunmore?” I asked.

  She did not reply.

  “And you will come with me to Johnstown on the morrow, Silver Heels?”

  There was no answer.

  “Silver Heels?”

  “If you are strong enough to take me from Dunmore, take me,” she said, in a dull, tired voice.

  “And — and from the other — the one you love — the fool?”

  “He will leave me — when you leave me,” she answered.

  “You mean to say this pitiful ass will follow you and me to Johnstown!” I cried, excited.

  “Truly, he will!” she said, hysterically, and covered her face with her hands. But whether she was laughing or crying or doing both together I could not determine; and I stalked wrathfully away, determined to teach this same fool that his folly was neither to my taste nor fancy.

  And as I passed swiftly southward through the darkening town I heard the monotonous call of the town watchman stumping his beat:

  “Lanthorn, and a whole candle-light! Hang out your lights here! Light — ho! Maids, hang out your light, and see your lamp be clear and bright!”

  CHAPTER XIV

  I had learned from our host of the “Virginia Arms” that the so-called “Governor’s Hall,” which stood within the limits of the fortifications, had been built by the French in 1755. Poor Braddock’s brief début before Fort Duquesne in that same year interrupted the building of “Governor’s Hall,” which was called by the French “La Fortresse de la Reine,” and which, with the exception of our stone fort at Johnstown, was the only formidable and solidly fortified edifice of stone west of the Hudson.

  When in ‘58 our troops seized Fort Duquesne and razed it, they not only spared La Fortresse de la Reine, but completed it — in exceeding poor taste — set the arms of Virginia over the portal, ran up their red, powder-stained flag, and saluted “Governor’s Hall” with hurrahs of satisfaction, drums and fifes playing “The White Cockade.”

  Now the hall served sometimes as a court-house, sometimes as a temporary jail, often as a ballroom, occasionally as the Governor’s residence when he came to Fort Pitt from Williamsburg.

  In it he gave audiences to all plaintiffs, white or Indian; in it he received deputies from other colonies or from England.

  The Governor of Virginia lived on the second floor while sojourning at Pittsburg; under his white and gold apartments stretched a long, blank, stone hall, around the walls of which ran a wooden balcony half way between the stone flagging and the ceiling of massive buckeye beams.

  It was in this naked and gloomy hall, damp and rank with the penetrating odour of mortar and dropping, mouldy plaster, that my Lord Dunmore consented to receive the old Cayuga chief, Logan, of the clan of the Wolf, and by right of birth — which 237 counts not with chiefs unless they be sachems, too — the chief also of the Oquacho of the Oneida nation.

  Towards dusk a company of red-coated British infantry, with drummers leading, left the barracks opposite our inn, the “Virginia Arms,” and marched away towards “Governor’s Hall,” drummers beating “The Huron.” A crowd of men and boys trailed along on either flank of the column, drawn by curiosity to catch a glimpse of Logan, “The White Man’s Friend,” who was to ask justice this night of the most noble Governor of Virginia, the great Earl of Dunmore.

  When the distant batter of the drums, echo and beat, had died away down the dark vista of the King’s Roa
d, I left my window in the “Virginia Arms” and descended the stairway into the street below, where Jack Mount and the Weasel ruffled it bravely and swaggered to and fro, awaiting my coming.

  Mulled wine and sundry cups of cider, mixed rashly with long libations of James Rolfe’s humming ale, had set their heads and tongues a-buzzing. They were glorious in their dingy buckskins, coon-skin caps cocked over their left ears, thumbs hooked jauntily under their arm-pits. They now occupied the middle of the street and patrolled it gayly, singing and shouting and interrupting traffic, returning a jest for a gibe, a laugh for a smile, or a terrible threat for any wayfarer who dared complain of being hustled or trodden on.

  Men instinctively accorded them the room they seemed to desire; women understood them better, and took right of way, smiling the reproof which always brought the swaggerers up, cap-tails sweeping the street in extravagant salute. For there appeared, in those two graceless bibbers of wines, that gravity and politeness of intoxication which so grotesquely parodies the dignity of gallantry, and with which it is almost hopeless for sober people to contend.

  However, I spoke to them so cuttingly that they relapsed into injured silence and ambled along on either side of me without serious offence to passing citizens.

  We soon found ourselves in a crowd, the current of which swept down the King’s Road towards the fortress; and we followed in the wake, while past us rode companies of officers, 238 gentlemen, and sometimes squads of the Governor’s horse — those same gay, flame-coloured Virginians whom I had so admired at Johnstown a month ago.

  Coaches passed us, too, rolling towards the fortress, and through the glass windows we caught glimpses of ladies in cloaks of swan’s-down, with their plumes and jewels shining in the rays of the coach-lamps. Gilded sedan-chairs began to appear, gayer and more painted and polished than our chairs in Johnstown, and the bearers often in handsome liveries, with a major-domo leading the way and footmen to heel, and my lady peeping out at us shabby foot-farers plodding along in the street beside her.

  Cresap’s men were plentiful among the crowd, some of them sullen and muttering, others loud in their demands for Cresap’s release, threatening trouble for those who had jailed their leader, and careless who heard them. There were a few forest-runners dressed as we were, numbers of riflemen in green capes and gray wool shirts, and rangers in brown and yellow deer-skins, with thrums dyed scarlet or purple.

  A short, thick-set fellow, wearing a baldrick fringed with scalps, was pointed out by people as one of Boone’s and Harrod’s dare-devils; and truly he looked his part, though the scalp-belt pleased me not.

  I heard him boasting that the trophies were Wyandotte scalps, which news, if true, meant one more ally for the Cayuga and one more enemy for the colonies when the breach with England came. It sickened me to hear the great fool boast.

  The bulk of the throng, however, was made up of sober, peaceful citizens, men of the quiet classes, in homespun and snuffy hats, guiltless of the silver buckle on knee or shoe, silent, reserved, thoughtful men of moderate gesture and earnest eyes, whose rare voices disturbed no one and whose inoffensive conduct rebuked the rufflers as no words could do.

  Jack Mount, who at first appeared inclined to play the rôle of a marching orator and distribute morsels of his wit and learning to all who would pay him the fee of their attention, subsided of his own accord among the quiet company wherein we now found ourselves and contented himself and the 239 Weasel with a series of prodigious yawns, at which they both never seemed to tire of laughing.

  They also sang in a subdued chorus:

  “Quak’ress, Quak’ress, whither away?

  Pray thee stay thee, Quak’ress gray.

  I thy Quaker fain would be,

  Yet dare not swear I care for thee!”

  However, the few Quakers in the throng took no offence, and I presently nudged my mannerless comrades into a snickering silence.

  The people ahead of us had now stopped, and, looking over their heads, I saw the dark shape of the “Governor’s Hall,” partly illuminated by two great lanthorns set in iron sockets flanking the portal. Shining in the feeble light moved the bayonets of the guards above the darkly massed crowd, while coach after coach rolled up and chair after chair deposited its burden of bejewelled beauty at the gateway. And all these people, all these dainty dames and gallants, had come to see the famous Logan — to hear the great Cayuga orator, “The Friend of the White Man,” ask why his little children had been slain by the white men, whose faithful friend he had been so long. Truly, there might be here something newer than the stale play at the Theatre Royal. It was not every day that my lady might hear and see an old man asking why his children had been murdered.

  The crowd in front of us was compact, yet when Mount set his broad chest against it, the people hastily made a lane for him. The Weasel and I followed our big companion, elbowing our way to the portal, where Mr. Patrick Henry awaited us and passed us through the sentries and guards and pompous big-bellied tip-staves who turned up their vinous noses at the three shabby men from the forest.

  Candle-light softened the bare walls and benches; candle-light set silks and jewels in a blaze where the ladies, banked up like beds of rustling roses, choked the wooden balcony above our heads, murmuring, whispering, fluttering fans and scarfs till the perfumed breeze from their stirrings fanned my cheeks. And more of them were arriving every moment; the wooden stairway leading to the gallery was ablaze with 240 starred sashes and petticoats, and twinkling satin shoon, with now and then the sparkle of a hilt as some scented gallant ascended with his fluttering and gorgeous convoy.

  The scarlet coats of colonial and British officers spotted the galleries; here and there a silver gorget caught the light, blinding the eyes with brilliancy, only to turn and sink to a cinder as the wearer moved.

  I looked for Silver Heels, but, from the floor below, all faces were vague and delicate as massed blossoms in a garden, and eyes sparkled as faintly as dew on velvet petals all unfolded.

  At the end of the hall two carpeted steps led to a stone platform hung with a flag and the arms of Virginia. This was the Governor’s audience-seat; the gilded chair in the centre was for him; the tables that flanked it for his secretaries.

  For envoys, deputies, and for all plaintiffs, red benches faced the platform; behind these stretched rank on rank of plain, unpainted seats for the public, or as much of it as the soldiers and tip-staves thought proper to admit.

  This same public was now clamouring at the gate for right of entrance without favour or discrimination, and I could hear them protesting and shuffling at the portal behind us, while the soldiers disputed and the tip-staves tapped furiously on the stones with their long, tasselled wands.

  “Why should not the public enter freely a public place?” I asked of Patrick Henry.

  “They will, one day,” he said, with his grave smile.

  “Drums beating,” added Mount, loudly, but withered at once under the sharp stare of displeasure with which Mr. Henry favoured him.

  We now took seats on the last of the red benches, which stood near the centre of the hall, and in one corner of which I perceived Logan sitting bolt upright, eyes fixed on space, brooding, unconscious of the thronged beauty in the galleries above him or of the restless public now pouring into the hall behind his back.

  Mr. Henry took his seat beside the stricken chief; next followed Jack Mount, lumbering to his place; and I heard a stir pass around the gallery with whispers of wonder and 241 admiration for the giant, followed by a titter as the little Weasel trotted to his seat next to Mount. I sat down beside the Weasel, closing the row on our bench, and turned around to watch the people filling up the hall behind me. They were serious, sober-eyed people, and, unlike the gay world in the galleries, had apparently not come to seek amusement in the clothes of three shabby rangers or in the dumb grief of a savage.

  “They are mostly patriots,” whispered the Weasel, “peppered with Tories and sprinkled with Dunmore’s spie
s. But they don’t blab what they know — trust them for that, Mr. Cardigan.”

  “I can see Paul Cloud and Timothy Boyd sitting together, and our host of the ‘Virginia Arms,’ Rolfe,” I said, leaning to search the audience. Then I caught a glimpse of a face I knew better, the scarred, patched-up visage of the man whom I had made to taste his own hatchet. Startled, and realizing for the first time the proximity of Walter Butler, I hunted the hall for him with hopeful eyes, for I meant to seek him and kill him without ceremony when the first chance came. I could not find him, however, but in a corner near the door, whispering together and peeping about, I discovered his other two creatures, Wraxall, the Johnstown barber, and Toby Tice, the treacherous tenant of Sir William. Where the cubs were the old wolf was not far away, that was certain. But search as I might I could find nothing but the wolf’s stale trail.

  One circumstance impressed me: behind Wraxall and Tice sat Saul Shemuel, hands folded on his stomach, apparently dozing while waiting for the spectacle to begin. But he was not asleep, for now and again, between his lids, I caught a sparkle of open eyes, and I knew that his large, soft ears were listening hard.

  While I was still watching Shemuel, the Weasel nudged me, and I turned to see the platform before me alive with gentlemen, moving about and chatting, seating themselves in groups, while behind them half a dozen British officers in full uniform lounged or stared curiously up at the packed balconies.

  Some of the gentlemen on the platform exchanged salutes 242 with ladies in the balconies, some smiled or waved their hands to friends. But that soon ceased, and the commotion on the platform was stilled as a gorgeous tip-staff advanced, banging his great stave on the stones and announcing the coming of his Lordship the Earl of Dunmore, Royal Governor of his Majesty’s colony of Virginia. God save the King!

  Swish! swish! went the silken petticoats as the gallery rose; the people on the floor rose too, with clatter and shuffle and scrape of benches shoved over the stones.