“The — the like — again? And what was that, pray?”
“You know,” I said, sulkily.
“I think you — kissed me—”
“I think I did,” said I; “and left you all in tears.”
It was brutal, but I meant to make an end.
“Did you believe that those were real tears?” she asked, innocently.
“By Heaven, I know they were,” said I, with satisfaction, “and small vengeance to repay the ill you did me, too.”
“What ill?” she asked, opening her eyes in real surprise.
But I was silent and ashamed already. Truly, it had been no fault but my own that I had taken up the gage she flung at me that night so long ago.
“But I’ll not take it up this time,” thought I to myself, cracking filberts and looking at her askance across the table.
“I do not understand you, Michael,” she said, with a faint smile, ending in a sigh.
“Nor I you, bonnie Marie Hamilton,” said I. “Suppose we both cry quits?”
“Not yet,” she said; “I have a little score with you, unsettled.”
“What score?” I asked, smiling. “Cannot you appeal to the law to have it settled?”
“La loi permet souvent ce que défend l’honneur,” she said, with an innocent emphasis which left me sitting there, uncertain whether to laugh or blush. What the mischief did she mean, anyhow?
She picked up a filbert, tasted the kernel, dropped it, clasped her hands, elbows on the cloth, and gave me a malicious sidelong glance which still was full of that strange sweetness that ever set me on my guard, half angry, half bewitched.
“I wish you would let me alone!” I blurted out, like a country yokel at a quilting.
“I won’t,” she said.
“Remember what you suffered the first time!” I warned her.
“I do remember.”
“Do you — do you dare risk that?” I stammered.
“Et d’avantage — encore,” she murmured, setting her teeth on her plump white wrist and watching me uncertainly.
The game was running on too fast for me and my pulse was keeping pace.
“Safely they defy who challenge those in chains,” I said, commanding my voice with an effort. “If that is your revenge, I cry you mercy; you have won.”
After a long silence she raised her eyes, dancing with a mocking light in each starry pupil.
“I give you joy, Michael,” she said, “if, as I take it, these same chains and fetters that you lately wear are riveted by Cupid.”
But I answered nothing, attending her to the door, where she dropped me what I do believe was the slowest and lowest curtsey ever dropped by woman.
So I to my own chamber in no amiable frame of mind, and still tingling with the strange charm of my encounter. Head bent, hands clasped behind me, I walked the floor, striving to analyze this woman who had now twice crossed me on the trail of fate, this fair woman whose bright eyes were a menace and a challenge, and whose sweet, curved mouth was set there as eternal provocation to saint and sinner.
Thus for the first time in my life I had known what temptation might have been. Nay, I knew a little more than what it might have been, and, in the overwhelming flood of loyalty to Silver Heels, I cursed myself for a man without faith or shred of honour. For I was too unskilled in combats with the fair temptation to understand that it is no disgrace to falter, yet not fall.
There came a timid scratching at the door; I opened it and Mount sidled in, coy as a cat in a dairy with its chin still wet with cream. He regarded me doubtfully, but sat down when bidden and began to complain:
“Now, if you are minded to chide me for taking the road, I’m going out again. I can’t bear any more, lad, that I can’t! — what with Cade gone and me in rags, and stopping Councillor Bullock near Johnstown with pockets bare of aught but a cursed sixpence and that crooked as Lady Shelton’s legs — and now I must needs fright a lady into a faint like a bad boy with a jack-o’-lanthorn—”
“What on earth is the matter with you?” I broke in, peevishly. “I’m not finding fault, Jack. If you mean to spend your life in endeavours to impoverish every Tory magistrate in America, it’s your affair, and I can’t help it, though you must know as well as I that there’s a carpenter’s tree and a rope at the end of your frolic.”
“No, there isn’t,” he said, hastily. “I’m done with the highway save to pat it smooth with my feet. Lord, lad, it’s not for the money, but for sport. And soon there’ll be fighting enough to fill my stomach; mark me, the crocus that buds white this spring will wither red as blood ere its fouled petals fall!”
“War?” I asked, thrilling to hear him.
He rose and gazed at me most earnestly.
“Ay, surely, surely in the spring. Gad! Boston is that surfeited with redcoats now that when they cram down more next spring she can but throw them up to keep her health. Wait! Boston is sick in bone and body, but in the spring she takes her purge. Oh, I know,” he cried, with a strange, prophetic stare in his eyes; “I have word from Shemuel. Now he’s off to Boston with the news from Cresap. And I tell you, lad, that the first half-moon of April will start a devil loose in this broad land that state or clergy cannot exorcise!
“Not a devil,” he corrected himself, slowly, “no, not a thing from hell, but that same swift angel sent to chasten worlds with fire. Dunmore will burn, and Butler. As for the rest, the honest, the rascals, the witless, the soulless, thieves, poltroons, usurers, and the vast army of well-meaning loyal fools, they will be cleared out o’ this our world-wide temple whose roof is the sky and whose pillars are our high pines! — cleared out, scoured out, uprooted, driven forth like those same money-changers in the temple scourged by Christ, — and God is witness I, a sinner, mean no blasphemy, spite of all the sweating load o’ guilt I bear.”
“Where got you such phrases, Jack?” I asked. “It is not Jack Mount who speaks to me like a crazed preacher in the South who shouts the slaves around him to repent.”
Mount looked at me; the dazed, fanatic light in his eyes faded slowly.
“I have a book here,” he muttered, “a book I purchased in Johnstown of a man who sold many to patriots. Doubtless grief for Cade and my privations and my conning this same book while starving make me light-headed yet.”
“What book is that?” I asked.
“The Rights of Man.”
“I, also, would be glad to read it.”
“Read, lad. ’Tis fodder for King George’s cattle — such as we. And the little calves our wenches cast, they, too, shall feed on it, though they cannot utter moo! for their own mothers’ milk!”
“Jack, Jack,” I cried, “you are strangely changed! I do 365 not know you in this bitter mood, and your mouth full o’ words that burn your silly lips. Wake to life, man! Gay! Gay! Jack! A pest on books and those who write ‘em! I have ever despised your printed stuff, and damme if I’ll sit and hear it through your lips!”
But it was like rousing a man from a sleeping-draught, for the book had so bewitched his senses in these long weeks he had wandered alone that I had all I could do to drag him out of his strange, dreamy enthusiasms, back into his old, guileless, sunny, open-hearted self. And I feel sure that I could not have succeeded at all had not the shock of his encounter with Mrs. Hamilton on the highway first scared him back to partial common-sense. Added to this my entreaties, and he became docile, and then, little by little, dropped his preacher’s mad harangue to talk like a reasonable creature and wag his tongue unlarded with his garbled metaphors and his half-baked parables which no doubt no simple forest-runner could digest on the raw printed page. I pitied him sincerely. Truly, a little learning makes one wondrous kind.
I put the book in my shirt-front, meaning to be of those who ride and read, even as Jack was of those others who both read and run.
“Why did you desert me, Jack?” I asked, sitting chin on hand to watch him smoke the pipe which no kind fate had filled for him since he left Johnst
own.
“Faith, I hung about with Cade, doing no harm, sitting in the sun to wait for news from you. Mr. Duncan, a kind officer, gave us news and made us welcome on the benches in front of the guard-house. And Mistress Warren would have us to eat with her — only I was ashamed. But Cade went and supped with her.
“Lad, Sir John Johnson is not a gentleman I should grow too fond of. His courtesy is a shallow spring, I’m thinking, dry at the first taste, and over-sour to suit my teeth.”
“What did Sir John do?” I asked, growing red. “Surely he thanked you and Cade for saving his kinsman’s life; surely he made you welcome at the Hall, Jack?”
“Surely, he did nothing of the kind,” grunted Mount, puffing his pipe. “Sir John sent word to the guard that we 366 had best find quarters in Johnstown taverns and not set the hounds barking in his kennels.”
It was like a blow in the face to me. Jack saw it and laughed.
“It’s not your fault,” he said; “show me two eggs and I’ll name two birds, but I won’t swear they’ll fight alike. If he’s your kin, it’s to be borne, lad, and that’s all there is to it.”
I set my teeth and swallowed my shame.
“So we went to Rideup’s old camp,” he continued; “a fair inn where a man may drink to whom he pleases and no questions asked nor any yokel to bawl ‘God save the King!’ or turn your ale sour with Tory whining. And there I lay and — tippled, lad. I’ll not deny it, no! Like a fish in sweet water my gills did open and shut while the ale flowed into me, day and night perdu.
“Cade never drank. God! how that man changed — since he saw your sweet Mistress Warren there on the hillock at Roanoke Plain! Mad, lad, quite mad. But such a dear, good comrade — I — I can scarce speak o’ him but I wink with tears.”
The great fellow dug one fist into his eyes, and then the other, replacing his pipe in his mouth with an unmistakable snivel.
“Quite mad, Mr. Cardigan. He thought he saw his little daughter in Miss Warren, without offence to any one in all the world and least of all to you, and he waited all day to see her come out to the guard-house and give the news of your sick-bed to your Lieutenant Duncan. So one day, when you were surely out of danger and ready to fatten, comes Cade to the tavern and bids me good-bye, talking wildly of his lost daughter, and I, Heaven help me, lay abed with my head like a top all humming for the ale I’d had, and thinking nothing of what he said save that his madness grew apace.
“And that night he went away while I slept in my cups. When he came not I hunted the town for him as I had never hunted trail in all my life before. And I warrant you I left no stone unturned in that same town. I was half-crazy; I could not think he’d left me there of his own free will. Many a fight I had with the soldiers, many a bruise and broken head I left behind me ere I shook my moccasins free 367 o’ dust in Johnstown streets. They’ll tell you, and that fat, purple-pitted councillor — Bullock, I mean — why, he would have me jailed for a matter of damaging his Tory constable. So I gave him a fright on the highway and left your Tryon County for a quieter one. That’s all, lad.”
What he had told me of Cade Renard troubled me. If Felicity had been strangely lost to her own family, and had been restored, doubtless she was now happy and full of wonder for the dear, amazing chance that had brought to her those honoured parents she had so long deemed to be with God. Yet she must be shy and over-sensitive also, having been brought up to believe she had no nearer kin than Sir Peter Warren. And now that he, after all, was no kin to her, nor she to us, if a mad forest-runner like Cade Renard should come to vex her with his luny fancies, it might hurt her or seem like reproach and mockery for her new parents.
“Do you think Cade followed Miss Warren to Boston?” I asked.
“My journey is to find that out,” he said. “Ah, lad, a noble mind was wrecked in Renard’s head. I know — others know nothing. What fate sent him like a wild thing to the forests, I only know, as you know, nothing but what he has told us both. If his madness has waxed so fiercely since he saw Miss Warren, it may be a sign that the end is near. I do not know. I miss him, and I must look for him while I can move these clumsy feet of mine.”
My candle was burning very low now. Mount laid his pipe in the candle-pan, rose, shook himself, and said good-night.
“Good-night,” I said, and sat down to light another candle. This done, I did undress me, and so would have been in bed had I not chanced to open the book he left me, thinking to glance it over and forget it.
But sunrise found me poring over its pages, while the candle, a pool o’ wax, hardened in the candle-stick beside me.
CHAPTER XXII
By noon we were well on our way towards Boston, I riding beside Mrs. Hamilton’s carriage wheels, Jack Mount perched up on the box, and very gay in a new suit of buckskins which he bought from a squaw in the village, the woman being an Oneida half-breed and a tailoress by trade.
So gorgeous was this newly tailored suit that, though my own buckskins were also new and deeply fringed on sleeve and leg, even to the quill and wampum embroidery on the thigh, I did cut but a dingy figure beside Jack Mount. His shoulders were triple-caped with red-fox fur edges; he wore a belted hunting-shirt, with scarlet thrums; breeches cut to show his long legs’ contour to the clout, also gay with scarlet thrums; and Huron moccasins, baldric, holster, and sporran, all of mole-skin, painted and beaded with those mystic scenes of the False-Face’s secret rites, common to the Six Nations and to other Northern and Western clans.
Proud as a painted game-cock with silver steels was Jack. Poor gossip, how different his condition now, with a rasher o’ bacon and a cup of ale under his waist-band, a belt full of money outside of it, and his scarlet thrums blowing like ribbons in the wind! A new fox-skin cap, too, with the plumy white-tipped tail bobbing to his neck, added the finish to this forest dandy. Truly it did warm me to behold him ruffling it with the best o’ them; and it was a wink and a kiss for the pretty maid in the pantry, and a pinch o’ snuff with mine host, and “Your servant, ma’am,” to Mrs. Hamilton, with cap sweeping the dust in a salute that a Virginian might envy and mark for imitation.
The post-boys slunk past him with rueful, sidelong glances; the footman gave him wide berth, obeying the order to mount with an alacrity designed to curry favour as soon as possible, and let the painful past go bury itself.
“You had best,” muttered Mount, with pretence of a fierceness he loved to assume. “Gad! I’m minded to tan your buttocks to line my saddle — ho! — come back! I’m not going to do it, simpleton! I only said I was so minded. Into your saddles, in Heaven’s name. Salute! — you mannerless scullions! Do you not see your mistress coming?”
I handed Mrs. Hamilton to her chaise, and stood in attendance while she tied on her velvet sun-mask, watching me steadily through the eye-holes the while, but not speaking. Yet ever on her lips hovered that smile I knew so well; and from her hair came that fresh scent which is of itself like the perfume of Indian swale-herb, and which powder and pomatum can neither add to nor dissimulate.
Over her gown of shimmering stuff, garlanded with lilac-tints, she wore a foot-mantle, for the road was muddy from the all-night rain, and this I disposed around her ankles when she had seated herself in the chaise, and wrapped her restless little feet in a thick, well-tanned pelt.
“Merci,” she said, in a whisper, with her bright eyes sparkling under her velvet mask; and I closed the carriage and mounted Warlock nimbly, impatient to be gone.
“Michael,” she said from the chaise window, nose in the air to watch me ride up.
“Madam,” I replied, politely.
“Let Captain Mount ride your horse, and do you come into the carriage. I have so much to tell you—”
I made what excuse I could. She tossed her chin.
“I shall die of ennui,” she said.
“Count the thraves in the stubble,” said I, laughing.
“And talk to my five wits of the harvest? How amusing!” she retorted, indignantly.
/> “Repent the past, then,” I suggested, smiling.
“Ay — but ’tis one blank expanse of white innocence, with never a stain to mark for repentance. My past is spotless, Michael — spotless — like a fox-pelt, all of a colour.”
Now, though we call foxes red, their ear-tips are jet black and their brushes and bellies touched with white. But she was right; your spotless fox can have no dealings with a dappled fawn.
I signalled the footman and post-boys; the chaise creaked 370 off down the road, and I dropped behind, turning a sober face to the rain-washed brightness of the world.
So we journeyed, coming into dry roads towards noon, where no rain had fallen. And already it seemed to me my nostrils savoured that faint raw perfume of the mounting sea, which only those who have lived their whole lives inland can wind at great distances. It is not a perfume either; it is a taste that steals into the mouth and tingles far back, above the tongue. And it is strange to say so, but those who never before have tasted the scent know it for what it is by instinct, and fall into a restless reverie, searching to think where they have savoured that same enchanted ocean breath before.
At Grafton we baited at the “Weather-cock Tavern”; then on along the Charles River, with the scent o’ the distant sea in every breath we drew, through Dedham, past Needham, and north into a most lovely country of rolling golden stubble and orchards all red with apples, and bridges of stone, neatly fashioned to resist the freshets. Alas, that this fair province of Massachusetts Bay should lie a-gasping amid plenty, with the hand of Britain upon the country’s thrapple to choke out the life God gave it.
On the straight, well-laid high-road we passed scores of farmers’ wains, piled with corn and yellow pumpkins, cabbages, squashes, barrels of apples, sacks o’ flour, and thraves, all bound for Boston, where the poor were starving and the rich went hungering because the King of England had been angered to hear men prate of human rights.
Since the 1st day of June the Boston Port Bill was in full effect, and the city was sealed to commerce. Not a keel had stirred the waters of the bay save when the great bulging war-ships shifted their moorings to swing their broadsides towards the town; not a sail was bent to the shore breeze in this harbour where a thousand vessels had cleared in a single year from its busy port.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 120
