Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  At the name, Van Horn swore steadily.

  “If that be the witch Montour, she runs like a clansman with the fiery cross,” I said, shuddering.

  “And that is like to be her business,” muttered Van Horn. “The painted forest-men are in the hills, and if Senecas, Cayugas, and Onondagas do not know it this night, it will be no fault of Catrine Montour.”

  “Ride on, Peter,” said Dorothy, and checked her horse till my mare came abreast.

  “Are you afraid?” I whispered.

  “Afraid? No!” she said, astonished. “What should arouse fear in me?”

  “Your common-sense!” I said, impatiently, irritated to rudeness by the shocking and unearthly spectacle which had nigh unnerved me. But she answered very sweetly:

  “If I fear nothing, it is because there is nothing that I know of in the world to fright me. I remember,” she added, gravely, “‘A thousand shall fall at my side and ten thousand at my right hand. And it shall not come nigh me.’ How can I fear, believing that?”

  She leaned from her saddle and I saw her eyes searching my face in the darkness.

  “Silly,” she said, tenderly, “I have no fear save that you should prove unkind.”

  “Then give yourself to me, Dorothy,” I said, holding her imprisoned.

  “How can I? You have me.”

  “I mean forever.”

  “But I have.”

  “I mean in wedlock!” I whispered, fiercely.

  “How can I, silly — I am promised!”

  “Can I not stir you to love me?” I said.

  “To love you?... Better than I do?... You may try.”

  “Then wed me!”

  “If I were wed to you would I love you better than I do?” she asked.

  “Dorothy, Dorothy,” I begged, holding her fast, “wed me; I love you.”

  She swayed back into her saddle, breaking my clasp.

  “You know I cannot,” she said.... Then, almost tenderly: “Do you truly desire it? It is so dear to hear you say it — and I have heard the words often enough, too, but never as you say them.... Had you asked me in December, ere I was in honor bound.... But I am promised; ... only a word, but it holds me like a chain.... Dear lad, forget it.... Use me kindly.... Teach me to love, ... an unresisting pupil, ... for all life is too short for me to learn in, ... alas!... God guard us both from love’s unhappiness and grant us only its sweetness — which you have taught me; to which I am — I am awaking, ... after all these years, ... after all these years without you.

  Perhaps it were kinder to let me sleep.... I am but half awake to love.

  Is it best to wake me, after all? Is it too late?... Draw bridle in the starlight. Look at me.... It is too late, for I shall never sleep again.”

  X

  TWO LESSONS

  For two whole days I did not see my cousin Dorothy, she lying abed with hot and aching head, and the blinds drawn to keep out all light. So I had time to consider what we had said and done, and to what we stood committed.

  Yet, with time heavy on my hands and full leisure to think, I could make nothing of those swift, fevered hours together, nor what had happened to us that the last moments should have found us in each other’s arms, her tear-stained eyes closed, her lips crushed to mine. For, within that same hour, at table, she told Sir Lupus to my very face that she desired to wed Sir George as soon as might be, and would be content with nothing save that Sir Lupus despatch a messenger to the pleasure house, bidding Sir George dispose of his affairs so that the marriage fall within the first three days of June.

  I could not doubt my own ears, yet could scarce credit my shocked senses to hear her; and I had sat there, now hot with anger, now in cold amazement; not touching food save with an effort that cost me all my self-command.

  As for Sir Lupus, his astonishment and delight disgusted me, for he fell a-blubbering in his joy, loading his daughter with caresses, breaking out into praises of her, lauding above all her filial gratitude and her constancy to Sir George, whom he also larded and smeared with compliments till his eulogium, buttered all too thick for my weakened stomach, drove me from the table to pace the dark porch and strive to reconcile all these warring memories a-battle in my swimming brain.

  What demon possessed her to throw away time, when time was our most precious ally, our only hope! With time — if she truly loved me — what might not be done? And here, too, was another ally swiftly coming to our aid on Time’s own wings — the war! — whose far breath already fanned the Mohawk smoke on the northern hills! And still another friendly ally stood to aid us — absence! For, with Sir George away, plunged into new scenes, new hopes, new ambitions, he might well change in his affections. An officer, and a successful one, rising higher every day in the esteem of his countrymen, should find all paths open, all doors unlocked, and a gracious welcome among those great folk of New York city, whose princely mode of living might not only be justified, but even titled under a new régime and a new monarchy.

  These were the half-formed, maddened thoughts that went a-racing through my mind as I paced the porch that night; and I think they were, perhaps, the most unworthy thoughts that ever tempted me. For I hated Sir George and wished him a quick flight to immortality unless he changed in his desire for wedlock with my cousin.

  Gnawing my lips in growing rage I saw the messenger for the pleasure house mount and gallop out of the stockade, and I wished him evil chance and a fall to dash his senses out ere he rode up with his cursed message to Sir George’s door.

  Passion blinded and deafened me to all whispers of decency; conscience lay stunned within me, and I think I know now what black obsession drives men’s bodies into murder and their souls to punishments eternal.

  Quivering from head to heel, now hot, now cold, and strangling with the fierce desire for her whom I was losing more hopelessly every moment, I started aimlessly through the starlight, pacing the stockade like a caged beast, and I thought my swelling heart would choke me if it broke not to ease my breath.

  So this was love! A ghastly thing, God wot, to transform an honest man, changing and twisting right and wrong until the threads of decency and duty hung too hopelessly entangled for him to follow or untwine. Only one thing could I see or understand: I desired her whom I loved and was now fast losing forever.

  Chance and circumstance had enmeshed me; in vain I struggled in the net of fate, bruised, stunned, confused with grief and this new fire of passion which had flashed up around me until I had inhaled the flames and must forever bear their scars within as long as my seared heart could pulse.

  As I stood there under the dim trees, dumb, miserable, straining my ears for the messenger’s return, came my cousin Dorothy in the pale, flowered gown she wore at supper, and ere she perceived me I saw her searching for me, treading the new grass without a sound, one hand pressed to her parted lips.

  When she saw me she stood still, and her hands fell loosely to her side.

  “Cousin,” she said, in a faint voice.

  And, as I did not answer, she stepped nearer till I could see her blue eyes searching mine.

  “What have you done!” I cried, harshly.

  “I do not know,” she said.

  “I know,” I retorted, fiercely. “Time was all we had — a few poor hours — a day or two together. And with time there was chance, and with chance, hope. You have killed all three!”

  “No; ... there was no chance; there is no longer any time; there never was any hope.”

  “There was hope!” I said, bitterly.

  “No, there was none,” she murmured.

  “Then why did you tell me that you were free till the yoke locked you to him? Why did you desire to love? Why did you bid me teach you? Why did you consent to my lips, my arms? Why did you awake me?”

  “God knows,” she said, faintly.

  “Is that your defence?” I asked. “Have you no defence?”

  “None.... I had never loved.... I found you kind and I had known no man like you
.... Every moment with you entranced me till, ... I don’t know why, ... that sweet madness came upon ... us ... which can never come again — which must never come.... Forgive me. I did not understand. Love was a word to me.”

  “Dorothy, Dorothy, what have I done!” I stammered.

  “Not you, but I, ... and now it is plain to me why, unwedded, I stand yoked together with my honor, and you stand apart, fettered to yours.... We have shaken our chains in play, the links still hold firm and bright; but if we break them, then, as they snap, our honor dies forever. For what I have done in idle ignorance forgive me, and leave me to my penance, ... which must last for all my life, cousin.... And you will forget.... Hush! dearest lad, and let me speak. Well, then I will say that I pray you may forget! Well, then I will not say that to grieve you.... I wish you to remember — yet not know the pain that I—”

  “Dorothy, Dorothy, do you still love me?”

  “Oh, I do love you!... No, no! I ask you to spare me even the touch of your hand! I ask it, I beg you to spare me! I implore — Be a shield to me! Aid me, cousin. I ask it for the Ormond honor and for the honor of the roof that shelters us both!... Now do you understand?... Oh, I knew you to be all that I adore and worship!

  Our fault was in our ignorance. How could we know of that hidden fire within us, stirring its chilled embers in all innocence until the flames flashed out and clothed us both in glory, cousin? Heed me, lest it turn to flames of hell!

  And now, dear lad, lest you should deem me mad to cut short the happy time we had to hope for, I must tell you what I have never told before. All that we have in all the world is by charity of Sir George. He stood in the breach when the Cosby heirs made ready to foreclose on father; he held off the Van Rensselaers; he threw the sop to Billy Livingston and to that great villain, Klock. To-day, unsecured, his loans to my father, still unpaid, have nigh beggared him. And the little he has he is about to risk in this war whose tides are creeping on us through this very night.

  And when he honored me by asking me in marriage, I, knowing all this, knowing all his goodness and his generosity — though he was not aware I knew it — I was thankful to say yes — deeming it little enough to please him — and I not knowing what love meant—”

  Her soft voice broke; she laid her hands on her eyes, and stood so, speaking blindly. “What can I do, cousin? What can I do? Tell me! I love you. Tell me, use me kindly; teach me to do right and keep my honor bright as you could desire it were I to be your wife!”

  It was that appeal, I think, that brought me back through the distorted shadows of my passion; through the dark pit of envy, past snares of jealousy and malice, and the traps and pitfalls dug by Satan, safe to the trembling rock of honor once again.

  Like a blind man healed by miracle, yet still groping in the precious light that mazed him, so I peering with aching eyes for those threads to guide me in my stunned perplexity. But when at last I felt their touch, I found I held one already — the thread of hope — and whether for good or evil I did not drop it, but gathered all together and wove them to a rope to hold by.

  “What is it I must swear,” I asked, cold to the knees.

  “Never again to kiss me.”

  “Never again.”

  “Nor to caress me.”

  “Nor to caress you.”

  “Nor speak of love.”

  “Nor speak of love.”

  “And ... that is all,” she faltered.

  “No, not all. I swear to love you always, never to forget you, never to prove unworthy in your eyes, never to wed; living, to honor you; dying, with your name upon my lips.”

  She had stretched out her arms towards me as though warning me to stop; but, as I spoke slowly, weighing each word and its cost, her hands trembled and sought each other so that she stood looking at me, fingers interlocked and her sweet face as white as death.

  And after a long time she came to me, and, raising my hands, kissed them; and I touched her hair with dumb lips; and she stole away through the starlight like a white ghost returning to its tomb.

  And long after, long, long after, as I stood there, broke on my wrapt ears the far stroke of horse’s hoofs, nearer, nearer, until the black bulk of the rider rose up in the night and Sir Lupus came to the porch.

  “Eh! What?” he cried. “Sir George away with the Palatine rebels? Where? Gone to Stanwix? Now Heaven have mercy on him for a madman who mixes in this devil’s brew! And he’ll drown me with him, too! Dammy, they’ll say that I’m in with him. But I’m not! Curse me if I am. I’m neutral — neither rebel nor Tory — and I’ll let ’em know it, too; only desiring quiet and peace and a fair word for all. Damnation!”

  And so had ended that memorable day and night; and now for two whole wretched days I had not seen Dorothy, nor heard of her save through Ruyven, who brought us news that she lay on her bed in the dark with no desire for company.

  “There is a doctor at Johnstown,” he said; “but Dorothy refuses, saying that she is only tired and requires peace and rest. I don’t like it, Cousin George. Never have I seen her ill, nor has any one. Suppose you look at her, will you?”

  “If she will permit me,” I said, slowly. “Ask her, Ruyven.”

  But he returned, shaking his head, and I sat down once more upon the porch to think of her and of all I loved in her; and how I must strive to fashion my life so that I do naught that might shame me should she know.

  Now that it was believed that factional bickering between the inhabitants of Tryon County might lead, in the immediate future, to something more serious than town brawls and tavern squabbles; and, more-over, as the Iroquois agitation had already resulted in the withdrawal to Fort Niagara of the main body of the Mohawk nation — for what ominous purpose it might be easy to guess — Sir Lupus forbade the children to go a-roaming outside his own boundaries.

  Further, he had cautioned his servants and tenants not to rove out of bounds, to avoid public houses like the “Turtle-dove and Olive,” and to refrain from busying themselves about matters in which they had no concern.

  Yet that very day, spite of the patroon’s orders, when General Schuyler’s militia-call went out, one-half of his tenantry disappeared overnight, abandoning everything save their live-stock and a rough cart heaped with household furniture; journeying with women and children, goods and chattels, towards the nearest block-house or fort, there to deposit all except powder-horn, flint, and rifle, and join the district regiment now laboring with pick and shovel on the works at Fort Stanwix.

  As I sat there on the porch, wretched, restless, debating what course I should take in the presence of this growing disorder which, as I have said, had already invaded our own tenantry, came Sir Lupus a-waddling, pipe in hand, and Cato bearing his huge chair so he might sit in the sun, which was warm on the porch.

  “You’ve heard what my tenant rascals have done?” he grunted, settling in his chair and stretching his fat legs.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “What d’ ye think of it? Eh? What d’ ye think?”

  “I think it is very pitiful and sad to see these poor creatures leaving their little farms to face the British regulars — and starvation.”

  “Face the devil!” he snorted. “Nobody forces ‘em!”

  “The greater honor due them,” I retorted.

  “Honor! Fol-de-rol! Had it been any other patroon but me, he’d turn his manor-house into a court-house, arrest ‘em, try ‘em, and hang a few for luck! In the old days, I’ll warrant you, the Cosbys would have stood no such nonsense — no, nor the Livingstons, nor the Van Cortlandts. A hundred lashes here and there, a debtor’s jail, a hanging or two, would have made things more cheerful. But I, curse me if I could ever bring myself to use my simplest prerogatives; I can’t whip a man, no! I can’t hang a man for anything — even a sheep-thief has his chance with me — like that great villain, Billy Bones, who turned renegade and joined Danny Redstock and the McCraw.”

  He snorted in self-contempt and puffed savagely at his clay p
ipe.

  “La patroon? Dammy, I’m an old woman! Get me my knitting! I want my knitting and a sunny spot to mumble my gums and wait for noon and a dish o’ porridge!... George, my rents are cut in half, and half my farms left to the briers and wolves in one day, because his Majesty, General Schuyler, orders his Highness, Colonel Dayton, to call out half the militia to make a fort for his Eminence, Colonel Gansevoort!”

  “At Stanwix?”

  “They call it Fort Schuyler now — after his Highness in Albany.

  “Sir Lupus,” I said, “if it is true that the British mean to invade us here with Brant’s Mohawks, there is but one bulwark between Tryon County and the enemy, and that is Fort Stanwix. Why, in Heaven’s name, should it not be defended? If this British officer and his renegades, regulars, and Indians take Stanwix and fortify Johnstown, the whole country will swarm with savages, outlaws, and a brutal soldiery already hardened and made callous by a year of frontier warfare!

  “Can you not understand this, sir? Do you think it possible for these blood-drunk ruffians to roam the Mohawk and Sacandaga valleys and respect you and yours just because you say you are neutral? Turn loose a pack of famished panthers in a common pasture and mark your sheep with your device and see how many are alive at daybreak!”

  “Dammy, sir!” cried Sir Lupus, “the enemy are led by British gentlemen.”

  “Who doubtless will keep their own cuffs clean; it were shame to doubt it! But if the Mohawks march with them there’ll be a bloody page in Tryon County annals.”

  “The Mohawks will not join!” he said, violently. “Has not Schuyler held a council-fire and talked with belts to the entire confederacy?”

  “The confederacy returned no belts,” I said, “and the Mohawks were not present.”

  “Kirkland saw Brant,” he persisted, obstinately.

  “Yes, and sent a secret report to Albany. If there had been good news in that report, you Tryon County men had heard it long since, Sir Lupus.”