Ah! There he was! — painted cheeks, pale eyes, smirk, laces, bird-claws and all — with a splendid order blazing on his flame-coloured sash and his fleshless legs mincing towards the gilded chair under the canopy which bore the arms of Virginia and the British flag.
Before he was pleased to seat himself, he peered up into the balcony and kissed his finger-tips; and I, following his eyes by instinct, saw Silver Heels sitting in the candle-flare, scarlet and silent, with her sad eyes fixed, not on my Lord Dunmore, but on me.
Before I met her eyes I had been sullenly frightened, dreading to speak aloud in such a company, scarcely hoping to find my tongue when the time came to voice my demands so that the whole town could hear. Now, with her deep, steady eyes meeting mine, fear fell from me like a cloak, and the blood began to race through every limb and my heart beat “To arms!” so fearlessly and so gayly that I smiled up at her; and she smiled at me in turn.
Again the Weasel began twitching at my sleeve, and I bent beside him, listening and watching the gentlemen on the platform.
“That’s John Gibson, Dunmore’s secretary — the man in black on the Governor’s left! That loud, bustling fellow on his right is Doctor Connolly, Dunmore’s deputy for Indian affairs. He arrested Cresap to clear his own skirts of blame for the war. Behind him sits Connolly’s agent, Captain Murdy. Murdy’s agent was Greathouse. You see the links in the chain?”
“Perfectly,” I replied, calmly; “and I mean to shatter them if my voice is not scared out of my body.”
“Scourge me that ramshackle Dunmore!” whispered 243 Mount, thickly, leaning across the Weasel. “Give him hell-fire and a — hic! — black eye—”
Mr. Henry jerked the giant’s arm and he relapsed into a wise silence, nodding his thanks as though Mr. Henry had imparted to him an acceptable secret instead of a reproof.
We were near enough to the platform to hear the Governor chattering with Gibson and Doctor Connolly, and sniffing his snuff as he peeped about with his lack-lustre eyes.
“Que dieu me damne!” he said, spitefully. “But you have a mauvais quart d’heure ahead, Connolly! — curse me if you have not! Faith, I wash my hands of you, and you had best make your sulky savage yonder some good excuse for the war.”
Connolly’s deep voice replied evasively, but Dunmore clipped him short:
“Oh no! Oh no! The people won’t have that, Connolly! — skewer me if they will! Body o’ Judas, Connolly, you can’t make them believe Cresap started this war!”
Connolly whispered something.
“Eh? What? I say I wash my hands o’ ye! Didn’t you hear me say I washed my hands? And mind you clear me when you answer your filthy savage. I’ll none of it, d’ye hear?”
Connolly flushed darkly and leaned back. Gibson appeared nervous and dispirited, but Captain Murdy smiled cheerfully on everybody and took snuff with a zest.
“And, Connolly,” observed Dunmore, settling himself in his gilded chair, “you had best announce the restoration to rank and command of Cresap. Ged! — that ought to put the clodhoppers yonder in good humour, to keep them from snivelling while your dirty savage speaks.”
Presently Connolly arose, and, making a motion for silence, briefly announced the restoration of Cresap to command. There was no sound, no demonstration. Those in the balconies cared nothing for Cresap, those on the floor cared too much to compromise him with applause.
I heard Dunmore complaining to Gibson that the first part of Connolly’s programme had fallen flat and that he, Dunmore, wanted to know what Gibson thought of refusing Logan the right of speech.
Gibson nervously shook his head and signalled to the interpreter, a grizzled sergeant of the Virginia militia, to take his station; and when the interpreter advanced, announcing in English and in the Cayuga language that the Governor of Virginia welcomed his brother, Logan, chief of the Cayugas, warrior of the clan of the Wolf, and “The White Man’s Friend,” I saw Patrick Henry touch Logan on the shoulder.
Slowly the Indian looked up, then rose like a spectre from his sombre blanket and fixed his sad eyes on Dunmore.
There was a faint movement, a rustle from the throng on floor and gallery, then dead silence, as from the old warrior’s throat burst the first hollow, heart-sick word:
“Brother!”
Oh, the grim sadness of that word! — the mockery of its bitterness! — the desolate irony of despair ringing through it! Brother! That single word cursed the silence with an accusation so merciless that I saw Connolly’s heavy visage grow purple, and Gibson turn his eyes away. Only my Lord Dunmore sat immovable, with the shadow of a sneer freezing on his painted face.
Logan slowly raised his arm: —
“Through that thick night which darkens the history of our subjugation, through all the degradation and reproach which has been heaped upon us, there runs one thread of light revealing our former greatness, pleading the causes of our decay, illuminating the pit of our downfall, promising that our dead shall live again! Not in the endless darkness whither priests and men consign us is that thread of light to be lost; but from the shadowy past it shall break out in brilliancy, redeeming a people’s downfall, and wringing from you, our subjugators, the greeting — Brothers!
“Fathers: For Logan, that light comes too late. Death darkens my lodge; my door is closed to sun and moon and stars. Death darkens my lodge. All within lie dead. Logan is alone. He, too, is blind and sightless; like the quiet dead his ears are stopped, he hears not; nor can he see darkness or light.
“For Logan, light or darkness comes too late.”
The old man paused; the silence was dreadful.
Suddenly he turned and looked straight at Dunmore.
“I appeal to any white man if he ever entered Logan’s lodge hungry and he gave him not meat; if he ever came cold and naked and he clothed him not!”
The visage of the Earl of Dunmore seemed to be growing smaller and more corpse-like. Not a feature on his ghastly mask moved, yet the face was dwindling.
Logan’s voice grew gentler.
“Such was my love,” he said, slowly. “Such was my great love for the white men! My brothers pointed at me as they passed, and said, ‘He is the friend of white men.’ And I had even thought to live with you, but for the injuries of my brothers, the white men.
“Unprovoked, in cold blood, they have slain my kin — all! — all! — not sparing woman or child. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature!
“Hearken, Brothers! I have withstood the storms of many winters. Leaves and branches have been stripped from me. My eyes are dim, my limbs totter, I must soon fall. I, who could make the dry leaf turn green again; I, who could take the rattlesnake in my palm; I, who had communion with the dead, dreaming and waking; I am powerless. The wind blows hard! The old tree trembles! Its branches are gone! Its sap is frozen! It bends! It falls! Peace! Peace!
“Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one!”
The old man bent his withered head and covered his face with his blanket. Through the frightful stillness the painful breathing of the people swept like a smothered cry; women in the balcony were sobbing; somewhere a child wept uncomforted.
Patrick Henry leaned across to me; his eyes were dim, his voice choked in his throat.
“The great orator!” he whispered. “Oh, the great man! — greatest of all! The last word has been said for Logan! I shall not speak, Mr. Cardigan — it were sacrilege — now.”
He rose and laid one arm about the motionless chief, then very gently he drew him out into the aisle. There was not a sound in the hall as they passed slowly out together, those great men who had both struck to the hilt for the honour of their kindred and of their native land.
Now, when at last he had disappeared, a living spectre of reproach, which the guilt of men had raised to confound the lords of the New World, those gathered there to listen breathed again, and hastened to forget that glimpse which they had caught of the raw heart of all tragedy — man’s inhumani
ty to man.
Dunmore came slowly from his trance, mechanically preening his silken plumage and ruffling like a meagre bird; Connolly rose from his seat and shook himself, and, finding nothing better to do, went about the platform, snuffing the candles, a duty pertaining to servants, but which he was doubtless thankful to perform as it brought his back to the spectators and gave his heavy, burning face a respite from the pillory of eyes. Gibson leaned heavily on his writing-table, wan, loose-jawed, and vacant-eyed. As for Captain Murdy, he sat serenely in his chair, shapely legs crossed, examining the lid of his snuff-box with ever-freshening interest.
Above us in the galleries some people had risen and were about to leave. The rustle of silks and satins seemed to break the heavy quiet; people breathed deeply, shifted in their seats, and turned around. Some stood up to go; chairs and benches grated on the stones; shoes shuffled and tapped sharply.
I had already determined to defer my interview with Lord Dunmore, because, after the great chief’s speech, my poor words must fall stale on ears attuned to the majestic music of a mighty soul. So, in the stir and noise around us, I rose and touched Jack Mount, motioning him to follow. But before he could find his feet and summon his wits to set them in motion, and ere I myself had edged half-way to the aisle, I heard Doctor Connolly speaking in that loud, hectoring tone, and I caught the name of Sir William Johnson shouted from the platform.
“If the messenger from Johnstown be present,” continued Doctor Connolly, “let him be assured of a warm welcome from his Lordship, the Earl of Dunmore, Governor of Virginia.”
So the infatuated Dunmore, grasping at a straw to dam the current of public sentiment, thought to fill empty minds with the news of his betrothal, trusting that as all the world 247 loves a lover, this same planet might find an opportunity to take him to its sentimental bosom.
His purpose was plain to me and perfectly loathsome; and as I stood there, watching him, I could see the rouge crack when he simpered. But I would not speak now.
Presently, looking around, I found that all those who had risen had again seated themselves, and that I, fascinated by the repulsive visage of Dunmore, stood there all alone.
My first impulse was to sit down hastily; my next to keep my feet, for it was too late to seek cover now, and Connolly was smiling at me, and Gibson nodded like a dazed mandarin. Dunmore, too, was peering at me and tapping his snuff-box complacently, and the sight of him brought the blood to my head and opened my mouth. But no sound issued. A woman in the gallery laughed outright.
“Are you not a messenger from Sir William Johnson?” prompted Connolly, with his domineering smile of patronage.
“Yes, Doctor Connolly,” I replied, slowly. As I spoke, fright vanished.
There was a pause. Dunmore tapped on his box and moistened his slitted mouth with a tongue which looked perfectly blue to me, and he fell a-smirking and bridling, with sly, rheumy glances at the gallery.
“Lord Dunmore,” I said, steadily, “ere I inform you why I am here, you shall know me better than you think you do.
“I am not here to tell you of that chain which links the Governor of Virginia with the corpse of Logan’s youngest child! — nor to count the links of that chain backward, from Greathouse to Murdy, to Gibson, to Connolly, to—”
“Stop!” burst out Connolly, springing to his feet. “Who are you? What are you? How dare you address such language to the Earl of Dunmore?”
Astonished, furious, eyes injected with blood, he stood shaking his mottled red fists at me; Dunmore sat in a heap, horrified, with the simper on his face stamped into a grin of terror. The interruption stirred up my blood to the boiling; I clutched the back of the bench in front of me, and fixed my eyes on Connolly.
“I do not reply to servants,” I said; “my business here is not with Lord Dunmore’s lackeys. If the Earl of Dunmore 248 knows not my name and title, he shall know it now! I am Michael Cardigan, cornet in the Border Horse, and deputy of Sir William Johnson, Baronet, his Majesty’s Superintendent of Indian Affairs for North America!
“Who dares deny me right of speech?”
Dunmore lay in his chair, a shrunken mess of lace and ribbon; Connolly appeared paralyzed; Gibson stared at me over his table.
“I am not here,” I said, coolly, “to ask your Lordship why this war, falsely called Cresap’s war, should be known to honest men as ‘Dunmore’s war.’ Nor do I come to ask you why England should seek the savage allies of the Six Nations, which this war, so cunningly devised, has given her—”
“Treason! Treason!” bawled a voice behind me. It was Wraxall; I recognized his whine.
“But,” I resumed, pointing my finger straight at the staring Governor, “I am here to demand an account of your stewardship! Where are those Cayugas whom you have sworn to protect from the greed of white men? Where are they? Answer, sir! Where are Sir William Johnson’s wards of the Long House? Where are the Shawanese, the Wyandottes, the Lenape, the Senecas, who keep the western portals of the Long House? Answer, sir! for this is my mission from Sir William Johnson. Answer! lest the King say to him, ‘O thou unfaithful steward!”
Hubbub and outcry and tumult rose around me. Dunmore was getting on his feet; Connolly flew to his aid, but the Governor snarled at him and pushed him, and went shambling out of the door behind the platform, while, in the hall, the uproar swelled into an angry shout: “Shame on Dunmore! God save Virginia!”
An officer in the gallery leaned over the edge, waving his gold-laced hat.
“God save the King!” he roared, and many answered, “God save the King!” but that shout was drowned by a thundering outburst of cheers: “God save our country! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!”
“Three cheers for Boston!” bawled Jack Mount, jumping up on his bench; and the rolling cheers echoed from balcony to pavement till the throng went wild and even the sober 249 Quakers flung up their broad-brimmed hats. In the gallery ladies were cheering, waving scarfs and mantles; the British soldiers at the door looked in at the astounding scene, some with sheepish grins, some gaping, some scowling under their mitred head-gear.
Mount had caught me up in his arms and was shouldering his way towards the door, yelping like a Mohawk at a corn feast; and presently others crowded around, patting my legs and cheering, bearing me onward and out past the sentinels, where, for a moment, I thought soldiers and people would come to blows.
But Mount waved his cap and shouted an ear-splitting watchword: “The ladies! Honour the ladies!” and the crowd fell back as the excited dames and maidens from the balcony issued in silken procession from the hall, filing between the soldiers and the crowd, to enter coaches and chairs and disappear into the depths of the starlight.
I could not find Silver Heels, and presently I gave up that hope, for the throng, hustled by the soldiers, began shoving and scuffling and pressing, now forward, now backward, until the breath was near squeezed from my body and I made out to slip back with Mount and Renard to the open air.
Mount was enthusiastic. “Look sharp!” he said eagerly. “There will be heads to break anon. Ha! See them running yonder! Hark! Do you not hear that, Cade? Clink — whack! Bayonet against cudgel! They’re at it, lad! Come on! Come on! Give it to the damned Tories!”
The next instant we were enveloped in the crowd, buffeted, pushed, trodden, hurled about like shuttle-cocks, yet ever retreating before the line of gun-stocks which rose and fell along the outer edge of the mob.
The fight was desperate and silent, save for the whipping swish of ramrods whistling, the dull shocks of blows, or the ringing crack of a cudgel on some luckless pate. Under foot our moccasins moved and trampled among fallen hats and wigs, and sometimes we stumbled over an insensible form, victim of gun-stock or club or a buffet from some swinging fist.
Once, forced to the front where the soldiers were jabbing and lashing the mob with gun-butt, ramrod, and leather belt, 250 a drummer boy ran at me and fell to thumping me with his drum, while a soldier cuffed my ears till I reeled. Astonish
ed and enraged by such scurvy treatment I made out to wrest the drum from the boy and jam it violently upon the head of the soldier, so that his head and mitre-cap stuck out through the bursted parchment.
A roar of laughter greeted the unfortunate man, who backed away, distracted, clawing at the drum like a cat with its head in a bag. Then the battle was renewed with fury afresh; a citizen wrested a firelock from a soldier, drove the butt into the pit of his stomach, and struck out sturdily in all directions, shouting, “Long live our country!” Another knocked a soldier senseless and tore off his white leggings for trophies — an operation that savoured of barbarism.
“Scalp their legs! Skin ‘em!” bawled the man, waving the leggings in triumph; and I saw he was that same ranger of Boone and Harrod who wore a baldrick of Wyandotte scalps.
It began to go hard with the King’s soldiers, but they stuck to the mob like bulldogs, giving blow for blow so stanchly and so heartily that my blood tingled with pleasure and pride, and I called out to Jack Mount: “Look at them, Jack! What very gluttons for punishment! Nobody but British could stand up to us like that!”
A crack on the sconce from a belt transformed my admiration into fury, and I drove my right fist into the eye of one of these same British soldiers, and followed it with a swinging blow which sent him spinning, receiving at the same moment such a jolt in the body that I, too, went sprawling and gasping about until Mount pulled me out of the crush.
When I had found my breath again, and had mastered that sick faintness which comes from a blow in the stomach, I prepared to return to the fray, which had now taken on a more sinister aspect. Bayonets had already been used, not as clubs but as daggers; a man was leaning against a tree near me, bleeding from a wound in the neck, and another reeled past, tugging at a bayonet which had transfixed his shoulder. But the end came suddenly now; horsemen were galloping up behind the jaded soldiers; I saw Shemuel dart out of the swaying throng and take to his heels, not even 251 stopping to gather up hats, handkerchiefs, and wigs, of which the sack on his back was full to the top.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 107
