Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  In the light of later customs and fashions I fear that I was something of a fop, though I carried neither spy-glass nor the two watches sacred to all fops. But if I loved dress, so did his Excellency, and John Hancock, not to name a thousand better men than I; and while I confess that I did and do dearly love to cut a respectable figure, frippery for its own sake was not among my vices; but I hold him a hind who, if he can afford it, dresses not to please others and do justice to the figure that a generous Creator has so patiently fashioned. “To please others!” sang my French blood within me; “to please myself!” echoed my English blood — and so, betwixt the sanguine tides, I was minded to please in one way or another, nor thought it a desire unworthy. One thing did distress me: what with sending all my salary to the prisons, I had no money left to bet as gentlemen bet, nor to back a well-heeled bird, nor to color my fancy for a horse. As for a mistress, or for those fugitive affairs of the heart which English fashion countenanced — nay, on which fashion insisted — I had no part in them, and brooked much banter from the gay world in consequence. It was not merely lack of money, nor yet a certain fastidiousness implanted, nor yet the inherent shrinking of my English blood from pleasure forbidden, for my Renault blood was hot enough, God wot! It was, I think, all of these reasons that kept me untainted, and another, the vague idea of a woman, somewhere in the world, who should be worth an unsullied love — worth far more than the best I might bring to her one day. And so my pride refused to place me in debt to a woman whom I had never known.

  As for money, I had my salary when it was convenient for Sir Peter; I had a small income of my own, long pledged to Colonel Willett’s secret uses. It was understood that Sir Peter should find me in apparel; I had credit at Sir Peter’s tailor, and at his hatter’s and bootmaker’s, too. Twice a year my father sent me from Paris a sum which was engaged to maintain a bed or two in the Albany hospital for our soldiers. I make no merit of it, for others gave more. So, it is plain to see I had no money for those fashionable vices in the midst of which I lived, and if I lost five shillings at whist I felt that I had robbed some wretched creature on the Jersey, or dashed the cup from some poor devil’s lips who lay a-gasping in the city prison.

  My finery, then, was part and parcel of my salary — my salary in guineas already allotted; so it came about that I moved in a loose and cynical society, untainted only through force of circumstance and a pride that accepts nothing which it may not return at interest.

  When I descended to the dining-room I found all seated, and so asked pardon of Lady Coleville, who was gay and amiable as usual, and, “for a penance,” as she said, made me sit beside her. That was no penance, for she was a beauty and a wit, her dainty head swimming with harmless mischief; and besides knowing me as she did, she was monstrous amusing in a daring yet delicate fashion, which she might not use with any other save her husband.

  That, as I say, was therefore no penance, but my punishment was to see Elsin Grey far across the table on Sir Peter’s right, and to find in my other neighbor a lady whose sole delight in me was to alternately shock me with broad pleasantries and torment me with my innocence.

  My punishment was to see Elsin Grey far across the table.

  Rosamund Barry was her name, Captain Barry’s widow — he who fell at Breeds Hill in ‘76 — the face of a Madonna, and the wicked wit of a lady whose name she bore, sans La du.

  “Carus,” she said, leaning too near me and waving her satin painted fan, “is it true you have deserted me for a fairer conquest?”

  “The rumor nails itself to the pillory,” I said; “who is fairer than you, Rosamund?”

  “You beg the question,” she said severely, the while her dark eyes danced a devil’s shadow dance; “if you dare go tiptoeing around the skirts of the Hon. Miss Grey, I’ll tell her all — all, mind you!”

  “Don’t do that,” I said, “unless you mean to leave New York.”

  “All about you, silly!” she said, flushing in spite of her placid smile.

  “Oh,” I said, with an air of great relief, “I was sure you could not contemplate confession!”

  She laid her pretty head on one side. “I wonder,” she mused, eying me deliberately— “I wonder what this new insolence of yours might indicate. Is it rebellion? Has the worm turned?”

  “The worm has turned — into a frivolous butterfly,” I said gaily.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said. “Let me see if I can make you blush, Carus!” And she leaned nearer, whispering behind her fan.

  “Let me match that!” I said coolly. “Lend me your fan, Rosamund — —”

  “Carus!” exclaimed Lady Coleville, “stop it! Mercy on us, such shameless billing and cooing! Captain O’Neil, call him out!”

  “Faith,” said O’Neil, “to call is wan thing, and the chune Mrs. Barry sings is another. Take shame, Carus Renault, ye blatherin’, bould inthriguer! L’ave innocence to yer betthers!”

  “To me, for example,” observed Captain Harkness complacently. “Mrs. Barry knows that raking fellow, Carus, and she knows you, too, you wild Irishman — —”

  “If you only keep this up long enough, gentlemen,” I said, striving to smile, “you’ll end by doing what I’ve so far avoided.”

  “Ruining his reputation in Miss Grey’s eyes,” explained Lady Coleville pleasantly.

  Elsin Grey looked calmly across at me, saying to Sir Peter, “He is too young to do such things, isn’t he?”

  That set them into fits of laughter, Sir Peter begging me to pause in my mad career and consider the chief end of man, and Tully O’Neil generously promising moral advice and the spiritual support of Rosamund Barry, which immediately diverted attention from me to a lightning duel of words between Rosamund and O’Neil — parry and thrust, innuendo and eloquent silence, until Lady Coleville in pantomime knocked up the crossed blades of wit, and Sir Peter vowed that this was no place for an innocent married man.

  When Lady Coleville rose we drew our swords and arched a way for her, and she picked up her silken petticoat and ran under, laughing, one hand pressed to her ears to shut out the cheers.

  There were long black Spanish cigars, horribly strong, served with spirits after the ladies had left. O’Neil and Harkness used them; Sir Peter and I accepted the long cool pipes, and we settled for a comfortable smoke.

  Sir Peter spoke of the coming cock-fight with characteristic optimism — not shared by Harkness, and but partially approved by O’Neil. Details were solemnly discussed, questions of proper heeling, of silver and steel gaffs, of comb and wattle cutting, of the texture of feather and hackle, and of the “walks” at Flatbush and Horrock’s method of feeding in the dark.

  Tiring of the subject, Harkness, spoke of the political outlook and took a gloomy view, paying his Excellency a compliment by referring to him as “no fox, but a full-grown wolf, with an appetite for a continent and perhaps for a hemisphere.”

  “Pooh!” said Sir Peter, lazily sucking at his pipe, “Sir Henry has him holed. We’ll dig him out before snow flies.”

  “What folly, Sir Peter!” remonstrated Harkness, leaning forward so that the candle-light blazed on his gold and scarlet coat. “Look back five years, Sir Peter, then survey the damnable situation now! Do you realize that to-day England governs but one city in America?”

  “Wait,” observed Sir Peter serenely, expelling a cloud of smoke so that it wreathed his handsome head in a triple halo.

  “Wait? Faith, if there’s anything else to do but wait I’ll take that job!” exclaimed O’Neil ruefully.

  “Why don’t you take it, then?” retorted Sir Peter. “It’s no secret, I fancy — that plan of Walter Butler’s — is it?” he added, seeing that we knew nothing of any plan.

  “Sir Henry makes no secret of it,” he continued; “it’s talked over and disparaged openly at mess and at headquarters. I can see no indiscretion in mentioning it here.”

  It was at such moments that I felt a loathing for myself, and such strong self-disgust must surely
have prevailed in the end to make me false to duty if, as I have said, I had not an absolute faith that his Excellency required no man to tarnish his honor for the motherland’s salvation.

  “What’s afoot?” inquired Harkness curiously.

  “Why, you remember how the rebel General Sullivan went through the Six Nations, devastating the Iroquois country, laying waste, burning, destroying their orchards and crops — which, after all, accomplished the complete destruction of our own granary in the North?”

  “’Twas a dhirty thrick!” muttered O’Neil. “Sure, ’tis the poor naked haythen will pay that score wan day, or I’m a Hessian!”

  “They’ll pay it soon if Walter Butler has his way,” said Sir Peter. “Sir John Johnson and the Butlers and Colonel Ross are gathering in the North. Haldimand’s plan is to strike at the rebels’ food supply — the cultivated region from Johnstown south and west — do what Sullivan did, lay waste the rebel grain belt, burn fodder, destroy all orchards — God! it will go hard with the frontier again.” He swung around to Harkness: “It’s horrible to me, Captain — and Walter Butler not yet washed clean of the blood of Cherry Valley. I tell you, loyal as I am, humble subject of my King, whom I reverence, I affirm that this blackened, blood-soaked frontier is a barrier to England which she can never, never overcome, and though we win out to-day, and though we hang the rebels thick as pears in Lispenard’s orchards, that barrier will remain, year by year fencing us in, crowding us back to the ocean, to our ships, back to the land from whence we English came. And for all time will the memory of these horrors set America’s face against us — if not for all time, yet our children’s children and their children shall not outlive the tradition burned into the heart of this quivering land we hold to-day, half shackled, still struggling, already rising to its bleeding knees.”

  “Gad!” breathed O’Neil, “’tis threason ye come singin’ to the chune o’ Yankee Doodle-doo, Sir Peter.”

  “It’s sense,” said Sir Peter, already smiling at his own heat.

  “So Ross and the Butlers are to strike at the rebel granaries?” repeated Harkness, musing.

  “Yes; they’re gathering on the eastern lakes and at Niagara — Butler’s Rangers, Johnson’s Greens, Brant’s Iroquois, some Jägers, a few regulars, and the usual partizan band of painted whites who disgrace us all, by Heaven! But there,” added Sir Peter, smiling, “I’ve done with the vapors. I bear no arms, and it is unfit that I should judge those who do. Only,” and his voice rang a little, “I understand battles, not butchery. Gentlemen, to the British Army! the regulars, God bless ‘em! Bumpers, gentlemen!”

  I heard O’Neil muttering, as he smacked his lips after the toast, “And to hell with the Hessians! Bad cess to the Dootch scuts!”

  “Did you say the rendezvous is at Niagara?” inquired Harkness.

  “I’ve heard so. I’ve heard, too, of some other spot — an Indian name — Thend — Thend — plague take it! Ah, I have it — Thendara. You know it, Carus?” he asked, turning so suddenly on me that my guilty heart ceased beating for a second.

  “I have heard of it,” I said, finding a voice scarce like my own. “Where is it, Sir Peter?”

  “Why, here in New York there has ever been a fable about a lost town in the wilderness called Thendara. I never knew it to be true; but now they say that Walter Butler has assigned Thendara as his gathering place, or so it is reported in a letter to Sir Henry, which Sir Henry read to me. Have you no knowledge of it, Carus?”

  “None at all. I remember hearing the name in childhood. Perhaps better woodsmen than I know where this Thendara lies, but I do not.”

  “It must lie somewhere betwixt us and Canada,” said Harkness vaguely. “Does not Sir Henry know?”

  “He said he did not,” replied Sir Peter, “and he sent out a scout for information. No information has arrived. Is it an Iroquois word, Carus?”

  “I think it is of Lenape origin,” I said— “perhaps modified by the Mohawk tongue. I know it is not pure Oneida.”

  Harkness glanced at me curiously. “You’d make a rare scout,” he said, “with your knowledge of the barbarians.”

  “The wonder is,” observed Sir Peter, “that he is not a scout on the other side. If my home had been burned by the McDonalds and the Butlers, I’m damned if I should forget which side did it!”

  “If I took service with the rebels,” said I, “it would not be because of personal loss. Nor would that same private misfortune deter me from serving King George. The men who burned my home represent no great cause. When I have leisure I can satisfy personal quarrels.”

  “Lord!” laughed Sir Peter, “to hear you bewail your lack of leisure one might think you are now occupied with one cause or t’other. Pray, my dear Carus, when do you expect to find time to call out these enemies of yours?”

  “You wouldn’t have me deprive the King of Walter Butler’s services, would you?” I asked so gravely that everybody laughed, and we rose in good humor to join the ladies in the drawing-rooms.

  Sir Peter’s house on Wall Street had been English built, yet bore certain traces of the old Dutch influence, for it had a stoop leading to the front door, and the roof was Dutch, save for the cupola; a fine wide house, the façade a little scorched from the conflagration of ‘78 which had ruined Trinity Church and the Lutheran, and many fine buildings and homes.

  The house was divided by a wide hallway, on either side of which were drawing-rooms, and in the rear of these was a dining-room giving on a conservatory which overlooked the gardens. The ground floor served as a servant’s hall, with a door at the area and another in the rear leading out through the garden-drive to the stables.

  The floor above the drawing-rooms had been divided into two suites, one in gold leather and blue for Sir Peter and his lady, the other in crimson damask for guests. The third floor, mine, was similarly divided, I occupying the Wall Street side, with windows on that fashionable street and also on Broadway.

  Thus it happened that, instead of entering the south drawing-room where I saw the ladies at the card-table playing Pharaoh, I turned to the right and crossed the north, or “state drawing-room,” and parted the curtains, looking across Broadway to see if I might spy my friend the drover and his withered little mate. No doubt prudence and a dislike for the patrol kept them off Broadway at that hour, for I could not see them, although a few street lamps were lit and I could make out wayfarers as far north as Crown Street.

  Standing there in the dimly lighted room, my nose between the parted curtains, I heard my name pronounced very gently behind me, and, turning, beheld Miss Grey, half lying on a sofa in a distant corner. I had not seen her when I entered, my back being turned to the east, and I said so, asking pardon for an unintentional rudeness — which she pardoned with a smile, slowly waving her scented fan.

  “I am a little tired,” she said; “the voyage from Halifax was rough, and I have small love for the sea, so, Lady Coleville permitting, I came in here to rest from the voices and the glare of too bright candle-light. Pray you be seated, Mr. Renault — if it does not displease you. What were you looking for from the window yonder?”

  “Treason,” I said gaily. “But the patrol should be able to see to that. May I sit here a moment?”

  “Willingly; I like men.”

  Innocence or coquetry, I was clean checked. Her white eyelids languidly closing over the pure eyes of a child gave me no clue.

  “All men?” I inquired.

  “How silly! No, very few men. But that is because I only know a few.”

  “And may I dare to hope that—” I began in stilted gallantry, cut short by her opening eyes and smile. “Of course I like you, Mr. Renault. Can you not see that? It’s a pity if you can not, as all the others tease me so about you. Do you like me?”

  “Very, very much,” I replied, conscious of that accursed color burning my face again; conscious, too, that she noted it with calm curiosity.

  “Very, very much,” she repeated, musing. “Is that why you
blush so often, Mr. Renault — because you like me very, very much?”

  Exasperated, I strove to smile. I couldn’t; and dignity would not serve me, either.

  “If I loved you,” said I, “I might change color when you spoke. Therefore my malady must arise from other causes — say from Sir Peter’s wine, for instance.”

  “I knew a man who fell in love with me,” she said. “You may do so yet.”

  “Do you think it likely?” I asked, scarcely knowing how to meet this cool attack.

  “I think it possible — don’t you?” she asked.

  I considered, or made pretense to. My heart had begun to beat too fast; and as for her, I could no more fathom her than the sea, yet her babble was shallow enough to strand wiser men than I upon its sparkling shoals.

  “I do like men,” she said thoughtfully, “but not all men, as I said I did. Now at supper I looked about me and I found only you attractive, save Sir Peter, and he counts nothing in a game of hearts.”

  “When you come to mingle with New York society you will, no doubt, find others far more attractive,” I said stupidly.

  “No doubt. Still, in the interim” — she looked straight at me from under her delicate level brows— “in the meanwhile, will you not amuse me?”

  “How, madam?”

  “I shall not tell you if you call me ‘madam.’”

  “Will the Hon. Elsin Grey inform me how I may amuse her ladyship?”

  “Nor that, either.”

  I hesitated, then leaned nearer: “How may I amuse you, Elsin?”

  “Why, by courting me, silly!” she said, laughing, and spreading her silken fan. “How else is a woman amused?”

  Her smooth hand lay across the velvet arm of the sofa; I took it and raised it to my lips, and she smiled approval, then drew a languid little sigh, fanned, and vowed I was the boldest man she had ever known.