Master Philip Makes His Bow--And Behaves Badly.
My protector and chief friend was at this time, as near as may be, fifty
years of age; yet he bore these years so sturdily that, if one should see
him side by side with his gossip and neighbor, Sir William Johnson, there
would be great doubt which was the elder--and the Baronet was not above
forty-two. Mr. Stewart was not tall, and seemed of somewhat slight frame,
yet he had not only grace of movement, but prodigious strength of wrist
and shoulders. For walking he was not much, but he rode like a knight. He
was of strictest neatness and method concerning his clothes; not so much,
let me explain, as to their original texture, for they were always plain,
ordinary garments, but regarding their cleanliness and order. He had a
swift and ready temper, and could not brook to be disputed by his equals,
much less by his inferiors, yet had a most perfect and winning politeness
when agreed with.
All these, I had come to know, were traits of a soldier, yet he had many
other qualities which puzzled me, not being observable in other troopers.
He swore very rarely, he was abstemious with wines and spirits, and he
loved books better than food itself. Of not even Sir William, great
warrior and excellent scholar though he was, could all these things be
said. Mr. Stewart had often related to me, during the long winter days and
evenings spent of necessity by the fire, stories drawn from his campaigns
in the Netherlands and France and Scotland, speaking freely and most
instructively. But he had never helped me to unravel the mystery why he,
so unlike other soldiers in habits and tastes, should have chosen the
profession of arms.
A ray of light was thrown upon the question this very day by the forward
prattle of the boy Philip. In after years the full illumination came, and
I understood it all. It is as well, perhaps, to outline the story here,
although at the time I was in ignorance of it.
In Ireland, nearly eighty years before, that is to say in 1679, there had
been born a boy to whom was given the name of James Lynch. His mother was
the smooth-faced, light-hearted daughter of a broken Irish gentleman, who
loved her boy after a gusty fashion, and bore a fierce life of scorn and
sneers on his behalf. His father was--who? There were no proofs in court,
of course, but it seems never to have been doubted by any one that the
father was no other than the same worthless prince to wear whose titles
the two chief towns of my State were despoiled of their honest Dutch
names--I mean the Duke of York and Albany.
Little James Lynch, unlike so many of his luckier brothers and cousins,
got neither a peerage nor a gentle breeding. Instead he was reared
meagrely, if not harshly, under the maternal roof and name, until he grew
old enough to realize that he was on an island where bad birth is not
forgiven, even if the taint be royal. Then he ran away, reached the coast
of France, and made his way to the French court, where his father was now,
and properly enough, an exile. He was a fine youth, with a prompt tongue
and clever head, and some attention was finally shown him. They gave him a
sword and a company, and he went with the French through all the wars of
Marlborough, gaining distinction, and, what is more, a fat purse.
With his money he returned to Ireland, wedded a maid of whom he had
dreamed during all his exile, and settled down there to beggar himself in
a life of bibulous ease, gaming, fox-hunting, and wastefulness generally.
After some years the wife died, and James Lynch drifted naturally into the
conspiracy which led to the first rising for the Pretender, involving
himself as deeply as possible, and at its collapse flying once more to
France, never to return.
He bore with him this time a son of eight years--my Mr. Stewart. This
boy, called Thomas, was reared on the skirts of the vicious French court,
now in a Jesuit school, now a poor relation in a palace, always reflecting
in the vicissitudes of his condition the phases of his sire's vagrant
existence. Sometimes this father would be moneyed and prodigal, anon
destitute and mean, but always selfish to the core, and merrily regardless
alike of canons and of consequences. He died, did this adventurous
gentleman, in the very year which took off the first George in Hanover,
and left his son a very little money, a mountain of debts, and an
injunction of loyalty to the Stewarts.
Young Thomas, then nearly twenty, thought much for a time of becoming a
priest, and was always a favorite with the British Jesuits about
Versailles, but this in the end came to nothing. He abandoned the
religious vocation, though not the scholar's tastes, and became a soldier,
for the sake of a beautiful face which he saw once when on a secret visit
to England. He fell greatly in love, and ventured to believe that the
emotion was reciprocated. As Jacob served Laban for his daughter, so did
Tom Lynch serve the Pretender's cause for the hope of some day returning,
honored and powerful, to ask the hand of that sweet daughter of the
Jacobite gentleman.
One day there came to him at Paris, to offer his sword to the Stewarts, a
young Irish gentleman who had been Tom's playmate in childhood--Anthony
Cross. This gallant, fresh-faced, handsome youth was all ablaze with
ardor; he burned to achieve impossible deeds, to attain glory at a stroke.
He confessed to Tom over their dinner, or the wine afterward perhaps, that
his needs were great because Love drove. He was partly betrothed to the
daughter of an English Jacobite--yet she would marry none but one who had
gained his spurs under his rightful king. They drank to the health of this
exacting, loyal maiden, and Cross gave her name. Then Tom Lynch rose from
the table, sick at heart, and went away in silence.
Cross never knew of the hopes and joys he had unwittingly crushed. The
two young men became friends, intimates, brothers, serving in half the
lands of Europe side by side. The maiden, an orphan now, and of substance
and degree, came over at last to France, and Lynch stood by, calm-faced,
and saw her married to his friend. She only pleasantly remembered him; he
never forgot her till his death.
Finally, in 1745, when both men were nearing middle age, the time for
striking the great blow was thought to have arrived. The memory of Lynch's
lineage was much stronger with the romantic young Pretender of his
generation than had been the rightfully closer tie between their more
selfish fathers, and princely favor gave him a prominent position among
those who arranged that brilliant melodrama of Glenfinnan and Edinburgh
and Preston Pans, which was to be so swiftly succeeded by the tragedy of
Culloden. The two friends were together through it all--in its triumph,
its disaster, its rout--but they became separated afterward in the
Highlands, when they were hiding for their lives. Cross, it seems, was
able to lie secure until his wife's relatives, through some Whig
influence, I know not what, obtained for him amnesty first, then leave to
live in England, and finally a commission under the very sovereign he had
fought. His comrade, less fortunate, at least contrived to make way to
Ireland and then to France. There, angered and chagrined at unjust and
peevish rebukes offered him, he renounced the bad cause, took the name of
Stewart, and set sail to the New World.
This was my patron's story, as I gathered it in later years, and which
perhaps I have erred in bringing forward here among my childish
recollections. But, it seems to belong in truth much more to this day on
which, for the first and last time I beheld Major Cross, than to the
succeeding period when his son became an actor in the drama of my life.
* * * * *
The sun was now well up in the sky, and the snow was melting. While I
still moodily eyed my young enemy and wondered how I should go about to
acquit myself of the task laid upon me--to play with him--he solved the
question by kicking into the moist snow with his boots and calling out:
"Aha! we can build a fort with this, and have a fine attack. Bob, make me
a fort!"
Seeing that he bore no malice, my temper softened toward him a little, and
I set to helping the negro in his work. There was a great pile of logs in
the clearing close to the house, and on the sunny side near this the
little girl was placed, in a warm, dry spot; and here we two, with sticks
and balls of snow, soon reared a mock block-house. The English boy did no
work, but stood by and directed us with enthusiasm. When the structure was
to his mind, he said:
"Now we will make up some snowballs, and have an attack I will be the
Englishman and defend the fort; you must be the Frenchman and come to
drive me out. You can have Bob with you for a savage, if you like; only he
must throw no balls, but stop back in the woods and whoop. But first we
must have some hard balls made, so that I may hit you good when you come
up.--Bob, help this boy make some balls for me!"
Thus outlined, the game did not attract me. I did not so much mind doing
his work for him, since he was company, so to speak, but it did go against
my grain to have to manufacture the missiles for my own hurt.
"Why should I be the Frenchman?" I said, grumblingly. "I am no more a
Frenchman than you are yourself."
"You're a Dutchman, then, and it's quite the same," he replied. "All
foreigners are the same."
"It is you who are the foreigner," I retorted with heat. "How can I be a
foreigner in my own country, here where I was born?"
He did not take umbrage at this, but replied with argument: "Why, of
course you're a foreigner. You wear an apron, and you are not able to even
speak English properly."
This reflection upon my speech pained even more than it nettled me. Mr.
Stewart had been at great pains to teach me English, and I had begun to
hope that he felt rewarded by my proficiency. Years afterward he was wont
to laughingly tell me that I never would live long enough to use English
correctly, and that as a boy I spoke it abominably, which I dare say was
true enough. But just then my childish pride was grievously piqued by
Philip's criticism.
"Very well, I'll be on the outside, then," I said. "I won't be a
Frenchman, but I'll come all the same, and do you look out for yourself
when I _do_ come," or words to that purport.
We had a good, long contest over the snow wall. I seem to remember it all
better than I remember any other struggle of my life, although there were
some to come in which existence itself was at stake, but boys' mimic
fights are not subjects upon which a writer may profitably dwell. It is
enough to say that he defended himself very stoutly, hurling the balls
which Bob had made for him with great swiftness and accuracy, so that my
head was sore for a week. But my blood was up, and at last over the wall I
forced my way, pushing a good deal of it down as I went, and, grappling
him by the waist, wrestled with and finally threw him. We were both down,
with our faces in the snow, and I held him tight. I expected that he would
be angry, and hot to turn the play into a real fight; but he said instead,
mumbling with his mouth full of snow:
"Now you must pretend to scalp me, you know."
My aunt called us at this, and we all trooped into the house again. The
little girl had crowed and clapped her hands during our struggle, all
unconscious of the dreadful event of which it was a juvenile travesty. We
two boys admired her as she was borne in on the negro's shoulder, and
Philip said:
"I am going to take her to England, for a playmate. Papa has said I may.
My brother Digby has no sport in him, and he is much bigger than me,
besides. So I shall have her all for my own. Only I wish she
weren't Dutch."
When we entered the house the two gentlemen were seated at the table,
eating their dinner, and my aunt had spread for us, in the chimney-corner,
a like repast. She took the little girl off to her own room, the kitchen,
and we fell like famished wolves upon the smoking venison and onions.
The talk of our elders was mainly about a personage of whom I could not
know anything then, but whom I now see to have been the Young Pretender.
They spoke of him as "he," and as leading a painfully worthless and
disreputable life. This Mr. Stewart, who was twelve years the Chevalier's
senior, and, as I learned later, had been greatly attached to his person,
deplored with affectionate regret. But Major Cross, who related incidents
of debauchery and selfishness which, being in Europe, had come to his
knowledge about the prince, did not seem particularly cast down.
"It's but what might have been looked for," he said, lightly, in answer to
some sad words of my patron's. "Five generations of honest men have
trusted to their sorrow in the breed, and given their heads or their
estates or their peace for not so much as a single promise kept, or a
single smile without speculation in it. Let them rot out, I say, and be
damned to them!"
"But he was such a goodly lad, Tony. Think of him as we knew him--and
now!"
"No, I'll _not_ think, Tom," broke in the officer, "for, when I do, then I
too get soft-hearted. And I'll waste no more feeling or faith on any of
'em--on any of 'em, save the only true man of the lot, who's had the wit
to put the ocean 'twixt him and them. And you're content here, Tom?"
"Oh, ay! Why not?" said Mr. Stewart. "It is a rude life in some ways, no
doubt, but it's free and it's honest. I have my own roof, such as it is,
and no one to gainsay me under it. I hunt, I fish, I work, I study, I
dream--precisely what pleases me best."
"Ay, but the loneliness of it!"
"Why, no! I see much of Johnson, and there are others round about to talk
with, when I'm driven to it. And then there's my young Dutchman--Douw,
yonder--who bears me company, and fits me so well that he's like a
second self."
The Major looked over toward my corner with a benevolent glance, but
without comment. Presently he said, while he took more meat upon
his plate:
"You've no thought of marrying, I suppose?"
"None!" said my patron, gravely and with emphasis.
The Major nodded his handsome head meditatively. "Well, there's a deal to
be said on that side," he remarked. "Still, children about the hearth help
one to grow old pleasantly. And you always had a weakness for brats."
Mr. Stewart said again: "I have my young Dutchman."
Once more the soldier looked at me, and, I'll be bound, saw me blushing
furiously. He smiled and said:
"He seems an honest chap. He has something of your mouth, methinks."
My patron pushed his dish back with a gesture of vexation.
"No!" he said, sharply. "There's none of that. His father was a dominie
over the river; his mother, a good, hard-working lady, left a widow,
struggles to put bread in a dozen mouths by teaching a little home-school
for infants. I have the boy here because I like him--because I want him.
We shall live together--he and I. As he gets older this hut will doubtless
grow into a house fit for gentlemen. Indeed, already I have the logs cut
out in part for an addition, on the other side of the chimney."
The Major rose at this, smiling again, and frankly put out his hand.
"I meant no harm, you know, Tom, by my barracks jest. Faith! I envy the
lad the privilege of living here with you. The happiest days of my life,
dear friend, were those we spent together while I was waiting for
my bride."
Mr. Stewart returned his smile rather sadly, and took his hand.
The time for parting had come. The two men stood hand in hand, with
moistened eyes and slow-coming words, meeting for perhaps the last time in
this life; for the Major was to stop but an hour at Fort Johnson, and
thence hasten on to New York and to England, bearing with him weighty
despatches.
While they still stood, and the negro was tying Master Philip's hat over
his ears, my aunt entered the room, bearing in her arms the poor little
waif from the massacre. The child had been washed and warmed, and wore
over her dress and feet a sort of mantle, which the good woman had hastily
and somewhat rudely fashioned meantime.
"Oh, we came near forgetting her!" cried Philip. "Wrap her snug and warm,
Bob, for the journey."
The Major looked blank at sight of the child, who nestled in my aunt's
arms. "What am I to do with her?" he said to my patron.
"Why, papa, you know she is going to England with us," said the boy.
"Tut, lad!" spoke the Major, peremptorily; then, to Mr. Stewart: "Could
Sir William place her, think you, or does that half-breed swarm of his
fill the house? It seemed right enough to bring her out from the Palatine
country, but now that she's out, damme! I almost wish she was back again.
What a fool not to leave her at Herkimer's!"
I do not know if I had any clear idea of what was springing up in Mr.
Stewart's mind, but it seems to me that I must have looked at him
pleadingly and with great hope in my eyes, during the moment of silence
which followed. Mr. Stewart in turn regarded the child attentively.
"Would it please you to keep her here, Dame Kronk?" he asked at last.
As my aunt made glad assent, I could scarcely refrain from dancing. I
walked over to the little girl and took her hand in mine, filled with
deep joy.
"You render me very grateful, Tom," said Major Cross, heartily. "It's a
load off my mind.--Come, Philip, make your farewells. We must be off."
"And isn't the child to be mine--to go with us?" the boy asked,
vehemently.
"Why be childish, Philip?" demanded the Major. "Of course it's out of the
question."
The English lad, muffled up now for the ride, with his large flat hat
pressed down comically at the sides by the great knitted comforter which
Bob had tied under his chin, scowled in a savage fashion, bit his lips,
and started for the door, too angry to say good-by. When he passed me,
red-faced and wrathful, I could not keep from smiling, but truly rather at
his swaddled appearance than at his discomfiture. He had sneered at my
apron, besides.
With a cry of rage he whirled around and struck me full in the face,
knocking me head over heels into the ashes on the hearth. Then he burst
into a fit of violent weeping, or rather convulsions more befitting a
wild-cat than a human being, stamping furiously with his feet, and
screaming that he _would_ have the child.
I picked myself out of the ashes, where my hair had been singed a trifle
by the embers, in time to see the Major soundly cuff his offspring, and
then lead him by the arm, still screaming, out of the door. There Bob
enveloped him in his arms, struggling and kicking, and put him on
the horse.
Major Cross, returning for a final farewell word, gave me a shilling as a
salve for my hurts, physical and mental, and said:
"I am sorry to have so ill-tempered a son. He cannot brook denial, when
once he fixes his heart on a thing. However, he'll get that beaten out of
him before he's done with the world. And so, Tom, dear, dear old comrade,
a last good-by. God bless you, Tom! Farewell."
"God bless you--and yours, _mon frere_!"
We stood, Mr. Stewart and I, at the outer gate, and watched them down the
river road, until the jutting headland intervened. As we walked slowly
back toward the house, my guardian said, as if talking partly to himself:
"There is nothing clearer in natural law than that sons inherit from their
mothers. I know of only two cases in all history where an able man had a
father superior in brain and energy to the mother--Martin Luther and the
present King of Prussia. Perhaps it was all for the best."
To this I of course offered no answer, but trudged along through the
melting snow by his side.
Presently, as we reached the house, he stopped and looked the log
structure critically over.
"You heard what I said, Douw, upon your belonging henceforth to this
house--to me?"
"Yes, Mr. Stewart."
"And now, lo and behold, I have a daughter as well! To-morrow we must plan
out still another room for our abode."
Thus ended the day on which my story properly and prophetically
begins--the day when I first met Master Philip Cross.