Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “I know it, Euan. I did not know it was in me to use you so cruelly. Let us be friends again. Will you?”

  “Will you, Lana?”

  “Willingly — oh, with all my heart! And — I am not very happy, Euan. Bear with me a little.... There is a letter come from Clarissa; perhaps it is that which edges my tongue and temper — the poor child is so sad and lonely, so wretchedly unhappy — and Sir John riding the West with all his hellish crew! And she has no news of him — and asks it of me — —”

  She descended a step and stood on the stair beside me, looking up at me very sweetly, and resting her hand lightly on my shoulder — a caress so frank and unconcealed that it meant no more then its innocent significance implied. But at that moment, by chance, I encountered Lois’s eyes fixed on me in cold surprise. And, being a fool, and already unnerved, I turned red as a pippin, as though I were guilty, and looked elsewhere till the heat cooled from my cheeks.

  “You dear boy,” said Lana gently. “If there were more men like you and fewer like — Sir John, there’d be no Clarissas in the world.” She hesitated, then smiled audaciously. “Perhaps no Lanas either.... There! Go and court your sweetheart. For she gave me a look but now which boded ill for me or for any other maid or matron who dares lay finger on a single thrum of your rifle-shirt.”

  “You are wrong,” said I. “She cares nothing for me in that manner.”

  “What? How do you know, you astounding boy?”

  “I know it well enough.”

  Lana shot a swift and curious look straight across the room at Lois, who now did not seem to be aware of her.

  “She is beautiful... and — not made of marble,” said Lana softly to herself. “Good God, no! Scarcely made of marble.... And some man will awaken her one day.... And when he does he will unchain Aphrodite herself — or I guess wrong.” She turned to me smiling. “That girl yonder has never loved.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “I know it; but I can not tell you why I know it. Women divine where men reason; and we are oftener right than you.... Are you truly in love with her?”

  “I can not speak of such things to you,” I muttered.

  “Lord! Is it as serious as that already? Is it arrived at the holy and sacred stage?”

  “Lana! For heaven’s sake — —”

  “I am not jeering; I am realising the solemn fact that you have progressed a certain distance in love and are arrived at a definite and well-known milestone.... And I am merely wondering how far she has progressed — or if she has as yet journeyed any particular distance at all — or any more than set out upon the road. For the look she shot at me convinces me that she has started — in fact, has reached that turn in the thorny path where she is less inclined to defend herself than her own possessions. You seem to be one of them.”

  Boyd, who had awaited the termination of our tete-a-tete with an impatience perfectly apparent to anybody who chanced to observe him, now seemed able to endure it no longer; and as he approached us I felt Lana’s hand on my arm tremble slightly; but the cool smile still curved her lips.

  She received him with a shaft of light raillery, and he laughed and retorted in kind, and then we three sauntered over to the table where was the floating island in a huge stone bowl of Indian ware.

  Around this, and the tea and punch, everybody was now gathering, and there was much talking and laughing and offering of refreshment to the ladies, and drinking of humourous or gallant toasts.

  I remember that Boyd, being called upon, instantly contrived some impromptu verses amid general approbation — for his intelligence was as lithe and graceful as his body was agile. And our foppish Ensign, who was no dolt by a long shot either, made a most deft rondeau in flattery of the ladies, turning it so neatly and unexpectedly that we all drew our side-arms and, thrusting them aloft, cheered both him and the fair subjects of his nimble verses.

  I would have been glad to shine in that lively and amusing competition, but possessed no such desirable talents, and so when called upon contrived merely a commonplace toast which all applauded as in duty bound.

  And I saw Lois looking at me with an odd, smiling expression, not one thing or another, yet scarcely cordial.

  “And now,” says Boyd, “each lady in turn should offer an impromptu toast in verse.”

  Whereupon they all protested that the thing was impossible. But he was already somewhat flushed with the punch and with his own success; and says he, with that occasional and over-flourishing bow of his:

  “To divinity nothing is impossible; therefore, the ladies, ever divine, may venture all things.”

  “Which is why I venture to decline,” remarked Lana. But he was set upon it, and would not be denied; and he began a most flowery little speech with the ladies as his inspiration:

  “Poetry and grace in mind and body is theirs by nature,” said he, “and they have but to open the rosy petals of their lips to enthrall us all with gems of — —”

  “Lord!” said Mrs. Bleecker, laughing, “I have never writ a verse in my life save on my sampler; and if I were to open the rosy petals of my lips, I should never have done a-giggling. But I’ll do it, Mr. Boyd, if you think it will enthrall you.”

  “As for me,” quoth Angelina Lansing, “I require a workshop to manufacture my gems. It follows that they are no true gems at all, but shop-made paste. Ask Lana Helmer; she is far more adept in sugaring refusals.”

  All turned smilingly toward Lana, who shrugged her shoulders, saying carelessly:

  “I must decline!

  The Muses nine

  No sisters are of mine.

  Must I repine

  Because I’m not divine,

  And may not versify some pretty story

  To prove to you my own immortal glory?

  Make no mistake. Accept; don’t offer verses.

  Kisses received are mercies — given, curses!”

  Said Boyd instantly:

  “A thousand poems for your couplets! Do you trade with me, Miss Helmer?”

  “Let me hear your thousand first,” retorted the coquette disdainfully, “ere I make up my mind to be damned.”

  Major Parr said grimly:

  “With what are we others to trade, who can make no verses? Is there not some more common form of wampum that you might consider?”

  “A kind and unselfish heart is sound currency,” said Lana smiling and turning her back on Boyd; which brought her to face Lois.

  “Do make a toast in verse for these importunate gentlemen,” she said, “and bring the last laggard to your feet.”

  “I?” exclaimed Lois in laughing surprise. Then her face altered subtly. “I may not dream to rival you in beauty. Why should I challenge you in wit?”

  “Why not? Your very name implies a nationality in which elegance, graceful wit, and taste are all inherent.” And she curtsied very low to Lois.

  For a moment the girl stood motionless, her slender forefinger crook’d in thought across her lips. Then she glanced at me; the pink spots on her cheeks deepened, and her lips parted in a breathless smile.

  “It will give me a pleasure to do honour to any wish expressed by anybody,” she said. “Am I to compose a toast, Euan?”

  I gazed at her in surprise; Major Parr said loudly: “That’s the proper spirit!”

  And, “Write for us a toast to love!” cried Boyd.

  But Lana coolly proposed a toast to please all, which, she explained, a toast to love would not by any means.

  “And surely that is easy for you,” she added sweetly, “who of your proper self please all who ever knew you.”

  “Write us a patriotic toast!” suggested Captain Simpson, “ —— A jolly toast that all true Americans can drink under the nose of the British King himself.”

  “That’s it!” cried Captain Franklin. “A toast so cunningly devised that our poor fellows in the Provost below, and on that floating hell, the ‘Jersey,’ may offer it boldly and unrebuked in the very teeth of their jailors!
Lord! But that would be a rare bit o’ verse — if it could be accomplished,” he added dubiously.

  Lois stood there smiling, thinking, the tint of excitement still brilliant in her cheeks.

  “No, I could not hope to contrive such a verse — —” she mused aloud. “Yet — I might try — —” She lifted her grey eyes to mine as though awaiting my decision.

  “Try,” said I — I don’t know why, because I never dreamed she had a talent for such trifles.

  For a second, as her eyes met mine, I had the sensation of standing there entirely alone with her. Then the clamour around us grew on my ears, and the figures of the others again took shape on every side.

  And “Try!” they cried. “Try! Try!”

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “I will try — —” She looked up at me. “ —— If you wish it.”

  “Try,” I said.

  Very quietly she turned and passed behind the punch bowl and into the next room, but did not close the door. And anybody could see her there, seated at the rough pine table, quill in hand, and sometimes motionless, absorbed in her own thoughts, sometimes scratching away at the sheet of paper under her nose with all the proper frenzy of a very poet.

  We had emptied the punch bowl before she reappeared, holding out to me the paper which was still wet with ink. And they welcomed her lustily, glasses aloft, but I was in a cold fright for fear she had writ nothing extraordinary, and they might think meanly of her mind, which, after all, I myself knew little of save that it was sweet and generous.

  But she seemed in no manner perturbed, waiting smilingly for the noise to quiet. Then she said:

  “This is a toast that our poor tyrant-ridden countrymen may dare to offer at any banquet under any flag, and under the very cannon of New York.”

  She stood still, absent-eyed, thinking for a moment; then, looking up at us:

  “It is really two poems in one. If you read it straight across the page as it is written, then does it seem to be a boastful, hateful Tory verse, vilifying all patriots, even His Excellency — God forgive the thought!

  “But in the middle of every line there is a comma, splitting the line into two parts. And if you draw a line down through every one of these commas, dividing the written verse into two halves, each separate half will be a poem of itself, and the secret and concealed meaning of the whole will then be apparent.”

  She laid the paper in my hands; instantly everybody, a-tiptoe with curiosity, clustered around to see. And this is what we all read — the prettiest and most cunningly devised and disguised verse that ever was writ — or so it seems to me:

  “Hark — hark the trumpet sounds, the din of war’s alarms

  O’er seas and solid grounds, doth call us all to arms,

  Who for King George doth stand, their honour soon shall shine,

  Their ruin is at hand, who with the Congress join.

  The acts of Parliament, in them I much delight,

  I hate their cursed intent, who for the Congress fight.

  The Tories of the day, they are my daily toast,

  They soon will sneak away, who independence boast,

  Who non-resistant hold, they have my hand and heart,

  May they for slaves be sold, who act the Whiggish part.

  On Mansfield, North and Bute, may daily blessings pour

  Confusions and dispute, on Congress evermore,

  To North and British lord, may honours still be done,

  I wish a block and cord, to General Washington.”

  Then Major Parr took the paper, and raising one hand, and with a strange solemnity on his war-scarred visage, he pronounced aloud the lines of the two halves, reading first a couplet from the left hand side of the dividing commas, then a couplet from the right, and so down the double column, revealing the hidden and patriotic poem:

  “Hark — hark the trumpet sounds

  O’er seas and solid grounds!

  The din of war’s alarms

  Doth call us all to arms!

  Who for King George doth stand

  Their ruin is at hand:

  Their honour soon shall shine

  Who with the Congress join:

  The acts of Parliament

  I hate their cursed intent!

  In them I much delight

  Who for the Congress fight.

  The Tories of the day

  They soon will sneak away:

  They are my daily toast

  Who independence boast.

  Who non-resistant hold

  May they for slaves be sold.

  They have my hand and heart

  Who act the Whiggish part.

  On Mansfield, North, and Bute,

  Confusion and dispute.

  May daily blessings pour

  On Congress evermore.

  To North and British lord,

  I wish a block and cord!

  May honours still be done

  To General Washington!”

  As his ringing voice subsided, there fell a perfect silence, then a very roar of cheering filled it, and the hemlock rafters rang. And I saw the colour fly to Lois’s face like a bright ensign breaking from its staff and opening in flower-like beauty.

  Then every one must needs drink her health and praise her skill and wit and address — save I alone, who seemed to have no words for her, or even to tell myself of my astonishment at her accomplishment, somehow so unexpected.

  Yet, why might I not have expected accomplishments from such a pliant intelligence — from a young and flexible mind that had not lacked schooling, irregular as it was? Far by her own confession to me, her education had been obtained, while it lasted, in schools as good as any in the land, if, indeed, all were as excellent as Mrs. Pardee’s Young Ladies’ Seminary in Albany, or the school kept by the Misses Primrose.

  And Major Parr, the senior officer present, must have a glass of wine with her all alone, and offer her his arm to the threshold, where Lana and Boyd were busily plaiting a wreath of green maple-leaves for her, which they presently placed around her chip-straw hat. And we all acclaimed her.

  As for Major Parr, that campaign-battered veteran had out his tablets and was painfully copying the verses — he being no scholar — while Boyd read them aloud to us all again in most excellent taste, and Lois laughed and blushed, protesting that her modest effort was not worthy such consideration.

  “Egad!” said Major Parr loudly. “I maintain that verses such as these are worth a veteran battalion to any army on earth! You are an aid, an honour, and an inspiration to your country, Miss de Contrecoeur, and I shall take care that His Excellency receives a copy of these same verses — —”

  “Oh, Major Parr!” she protested in dismay. “I should perish with shame if His Excellency were to be so beset by every sorry scribbler.”

  “A copy for His Excellency! Hurrah!” cried Captain Simpson. “Who volunteers?”

  “I will make it,” said I, with jealous authority.

  “And I will aid you with quill, sand, and paper,” said Lana. “Come with me, Euan.”

  Lois, who had at first smiled at me, now looked at us both, while the smile stiffened on her flushed face as Lana caught me by the hand and drew me toward the other room where the pine camp-table stood.

  While I was writing in my clear and painstaking chirography, which I try not to take a too great pride in because of its fine shading and skillful flourishes, the guests of the afternoon were making their adieux and taking their departure, some afoot, others on horseback.

  When I had finished my copy and had returned to the main room, nothing remained of the afternoon party save Boyd and Lana, whispering together by a window, and the black wench, Gusta, clearing away the debris of the afternoon.

  Outside in the late sunshine, I could see Mrs. Bleecker and Mrs. Lansing strolling to and fro, arm in arm, but I looked around in vain for Lois.

  “She is doubtless gone a-boating with her elegant senior Ensign,” said Lana sweetly, from the window. “If you run f
ast you may kill him yet, Euan.”

  “I was looking for nobody,” said I stiffly, and marched out, ridding them of my company — which I think was what they both desired.

  Now, among other and importunate young fops, the senior Ensign and his frippery and his marked attention to Lois, and his mincing but unfeigned devotion to her, had irritated me to the very verge of madness.

  Twice, to my proper knowledge, this fellow had had her in an Oneida canoe, and with a guitar at that; and, damn him, he sang with taste and discretion. Also, when not on duty, he was ever to be found lisping compliments into her ear, or, in cool possession of her arm, promenading her to flaunt her beauty — and his good fortune — before the entire fort. And I had had enough of it.

  So when I learned that she was off again with him, such a rage and wretchedness possessed me that I knew not what to do. Common sense yelled in my ear that no man of that stripe could seriously impress her; but where is the understanding in a very young man so violently sick with love as was I? All men who approached her I instantly suspected and mentally damned — even honest old Simpson — aye, even Major Parr himself. And I wonder now I had not done something to invite court-martial. For my common sense had been abruptly and completely upset, and I was at that period in a truly unhappy and contemptible plight.

  I could not seem to steer my footsteps clear of the river bank, nor deny myself the fierce and melancholy pleasure of gazing at their canoe from afar, so I finally walked in that direction, cursing my own weakness and meditating quarrels and fatal duels.

  But when I arrived on the river bank, I could not discover her in any of the canoes that danced in the rosy ripples of the declining sun. So, mooning and miserable, I lagged along the bank toward my bush-hut; and presently, to my sudden surprise, discovered the very lady of whom I had been thinking so intently — not dogged as usual by that insufferable Ensign, but in earnest conversation with the Sagamore.

  And, as I gazed at them outlined against the evening sky, I remembered what Betsy Hunt had said at Poundridge — how she had encountered them together on the hill which overlooked the Sound.

  Long before I reached them or they had discovered me, the Sagamore turned and took his departure, with a dignified gesture of refusal; and Lois looked after him for a moment, her hand to her cheek, then turned and gazed straight into the smouldering West, where, stretching away under its million giant pines, the vast empire of the Long House lay, slowly darkening against the crimson sunset.