I Perforce Say Farewell to My Old Home.
The slave sat upon one of the bowlders in the old Indian circle, holding
his jaw with his hand, and rocking himself like a child with the colic.
He could give me no account whatever of the marvellous escape he had had
from instant death, and I was forced to conclude that his fall had been
more than once broken by the interposition of branches or clumps of vines.
He seemed to have fortunately landed on his head. His jaw was broken, and
some of his teeth loosened, but none of his limbs were fractured, though
all were bruised. I bound up his chin with my handkerchief, and put my
neckcloth over one of his eyes, which was scratched and swollen shut, as
by some poisonous thing. Thus bandaged, he hobbled along behind me over
the short remaining distance. The rain and cold increased as nightfall
came on, and, no longer sustained by my anger, I found the walk a very wet
and miserable affair.
When I reached the Cedars, and had sent Tulp to his parents with a promise
to look in upon him later, I was still without any definite plan of what
to say or do upon entering. The immensity of the crisis which had
overtaken me had not shut my mind to the fact that the others, so far
from being similarly overwhelmed, did not even suspect any reason on my
part for revolt or sorrow. I had given neither of them any cause, by word
or sign, to regard me as a rival to Cross--at least, of late years. So far
as they were concerned, I had no ground to stand upon in making a protest.
Yet when did this consideration restrain an angry lover? I had a savage
feeling that they ought to have known, if they didn't. And reflection upon
the late scene on the gulf side--upon the altercation, upon the abortive
way in which I had allowed mastery of the situation to slip through my
fingers, and upon poor Tulp's sufferings--only served to swell my
mortification and rage.
When I entered--after a momentary temptation to make a stranger of myself
by knocking at the door--Daisy was sitting by the fire beside Mr. Stewart;
both were looking meditatively into the fire, which gave the only light in
the room, and she was holding his hand. My heart melted for a second as
this pretty, home-like picture met my eyes, and a sob came into my throat
at the thought that I was no longer a part of this dear home-circle. Then
sulkiness rose to the top again. I muttered something about the weather,
lighted a candle at the fire, and moved past them to the door of my room.
"Why, Douw," asked Daisy, half rising as she spoke, "what has happened?
There's blood on your ruffles! Where is your neckcloth?"
I made answer, standing with my hand upon the latch, and glowering at her:
"The blood comes from my Tulp's broken head: I used my neckcloth to tie
it up. He was thrown over the side of Kayaderosseros gulf, an hour ago, by
the gentleman whom it is announced you are going to marry!"
Without waiting to note the effect of these words, I went into my room,
closing the door behind me sharply. I spent a wretched hour or so, sorting
over my clothes and possessions, trinkets and the like, and packing them
for a journey. Nothing was very clear in my mind, between bitter repining
at the misery which had come upon me and the growing repulsion I felt for
making these two unhappy, but it was at least obvious that I must as soon
as possible leave the Cedars.
When at last I reentered the outer room, the table was spread for supper.
Only Mr. Stewart was in the room, and he stood in his favorite attitude,
with his back to the fire and his hands behind him. He preserved a
complete silence, not even looking at me, until my aunt had brought in the
simple evening meal. To her he said briefly that Mistress Daisy had gone
to her room, weary and with a headache, and would take no supper. I felt
the smart of reproof to me in every word he uttered, and even more in his
curt tone. I stood at the window with my back to him, looking through the
dripping little panes at the scattered lights across the river, and not
ceasing for an instant to think forebodingly of the scene which was
impendent.
Dame Kronk had been out of the room some moments when he said, testily:
"Well, sir! will you do me the honor to come to the table, or is it your
wish that I should fetch your supper to you?" The least trace of softness
in his voice would, I think, have broken down my temper. If he had been
only grieved at my behavior, and had shown to me sorrow instead of
truculent rebuke, I would have been ready, I believe, to fall at his feet.
But his scornful sternness hardened me.
"Thank you, sir," I replied, "I have no wish for supper."
More seconds of silence ensued. The streaming windows and blurred
fragments of light, against the blackness outside, seemed to mirror the
chaotic state of my mind. I ought to turn to him--a thousand times over, I
knew I ought--and yet for my life I could not. At last he spoke again:
"Perhaps, then, you will have the politeness to face me. My association
has chiefly been with gentlemen, and I should mayhap be embarrassed by
want of experience if I essayed to address you to your back."
I had wheeled around before half his first sentence was out, thoroughly
ashamed of myself. In my contrition I had put forth my hand as I moved
toward him. He did not deign to notice--or rather to respond to--the
apologetic overture, and I dropped the hand and halted. He looked me over
now, searchingly and with a glance of mingled curiosity and anger. He
seemed to be searching for words sufficiently formal and harsh, meanwhile,
and he was some time in finding them.
"In the days when I wore a sword for use, young man, and moved among my
equals," he began, deliberately, "it was not held to be a safe or small
matter to offer me affront. Other times, other manners. The treatment
which then I would not have brooked from Cardinal York himself, I find
myself forced to submit to, under my own roof, at the hands of a person
who, to state it most lightly, should for decency's sake put on the
appearance of respect for my gray hairs."
He paused here, and I would have spoken, but he held up his slender,
ruffled hand with a peremptory "Pray, allow me!" and presently went on:
"In speaking to you as I ought to speak, I am at the disadvantage of being
wholly unable to comprehend the strange and malevolent change which has
come over you. Through nearly twenty years of close and even daily
observation, rendered at once keen and kindly by an affection to which I
will not now refer, you had produced upon me the impression of a dutiful,
respectful, honorable, and polite young man. If, as was the case, you
developed some of the to me less attractive and less generous virtues of
your race, I still did not fail to see that they were, in their way,
virtues, and that they inured both to my material profit and to your
credit among your neighbors. I had said to myself, after much
consideration, that if you had not come up wholly the sort of gentleman I
had looked for, still you were a gentleman, and had qualities which, taken
altogether, would make you a creditable successor to me on the portions of
my estate which it was my purpose to entail upon you and yours."
"Believe me, Mr. Stewart," I interposed here, with a broken voice, as he
paused again, "I am deeply--very deeply grateful to you."
He went on as if I had not spoken:
"Judge, then, my amazement and grief to find you returning from your
voyage to the West intent upon leaving me, upon casting aside the position
and duties for which I had trained you, and upon going down to Albany to
dicker for pence and ha'pence with the other Dutchmen there. I did not
forbid your going. I contented myself by making known to you my
disappointment at your selection of a career so much inferior to your
education and position in life. Whereupon you have no better conception of
what is due to me and to yourself than to begin a season of sulky pouting
and sullenness, culminating in the incredible rudeness of open insults to
me, and, what is worse, to my daughter in my presence. She has gone to her
chamber sick in head and heart alike from your boorish behavior. I would
fain have retired also, in equal sorrow and disgust, had it not seemed my
duty to demand an explanation from you before the night passed."
The blow--the whole crushing series of blows--had fallen. How I suffered
under them, how each separate lash tore savagely through heart and soul
and flesh, it would be vain to attempt to tell.
Yet with the anguish there came no weakening. I had been wrong and
foolish, and clearly enough I saw it, but this was not the way to correct
or chastise me. A solitary sad word would have unmanned me; this long,
stately, satirical speech, this ironically elaborate travesty of my
actions and motives, had an opposite effect. I suffered, but I stubbornly
stood my ground.
"If I have disappointed you, sir, I am more grieved than you can possibly
be," I replied. "If what I said was in fact an affront to you, and
to--her--then I would tear out my tongue to recall the words. But how can
the simple truth affront?"
"What was this you called out so rudely about the gulf--about Tulp's being
thrown over by--by the gentleman my daughter is to marry? since you choose
to describe him thus."
"I spoke the literal truth, sir. It was fairly by a miracle that the poor
devil escaped with his life."
"How did it happen? What was the provocation? Even in Caligula's days
slaves were not thrown over cliffs without some reason."
"Tulp suffered for the folly of being faithful to me--for not
understanding that it was the fashion to desert me," I replied, with
rising temerity. "He threw himself between me and this Cross of yours, as
we faced each other on the ledge--where we spoke this morning of the need
for a chain--and the Englishman flung him off."
"Threw himself between you! Were you quarrelling, you two, then?"
"I dare say it would be described as a quarrel. I think I should have
killed him, or he killed me, if the calamity of poor Tulp's tumble had not
put other things in our heads."
"My faith!" was Mr. Stewart's only comment. He stared at me for a time,
then seated himself before the fire, and looked at the blaze and smoke in
apparent meditation. Finally he said, in a somewhat milder voice than
before: "Draw a chair up here and sit down. Doubtless there is more in
this than I thought. Explain it to me."
I felt less at my ease, seated now for a more or less moderate conference,
than I had been on my feet, bearing my part in a quarrel.
"What am I to explain?" I asked.
"Why were you quarrelling with Philip?"
"Because I felt like it--because I hate him!"
"Tut, tut! That is a child's answer. What is the trouble between you two?
I demand to know!"
"If you will have it"--and all my resentment and sense of loss burst forth
in the explanation--"because he has destroyed my home for me; because he
has ousted me from the place I used to have, and strove so hard to be
worthy of, in your affections; because, after a few months here, with his
fine clothes and his dashing, wasteful ways, he is more regarded by you
and your friends than I am, who have tried faithfully all my life to
deserve your regard; because he has taken--" But I broke down here. My
throat choked the sound in sobs, and I turned my face away that he might
not see the tears which I felt scalding my eyes.
My companion kept silent, but he poked the damp, smudging sticks about in
the fire-place vigorously, took his spectacles out of their case, rubbed
them, and put them back in his pocket, and in other ways long since
familiar to me betrayed his uneasy interest. These slight signs of growing
sympathy--or, at least, comprehension--encouraged me to proceed, and my
voice came back to me.
"If you could know," I went mournfully on, "the joy I felt when I first
looked on the Valley--_our_ Valley--again at Fort Stanwix; if you could
only realize how I counted the hours and minutes which separated me from
this home, from you and her, and how I cried out at their slowness; if you
could guess how my heart beat when I walked up the path out there that
evening, and opened that door, and looked to see you two welcome me--ah,
then you could feel the bitterness I have felt since! I came home burning
with eagerness, homesickness, to be in my old place again near you and
her--and the place was filled by another! If I have seemed rude and
sullen, _that_ is the reason. If I had set less store upon your love, and
upon her--her--liking for me, then doubtless I should have borne the
displacement with better grace. But it put me on the rack. Believe me, if
I have behaved to your displeasure, and hers, it has been from very excess
of tenderness trampled underfoot."
At least the misunderstanding had been cleared up, and for a time, at all
events, the heart of my life-long friend had warmed again to me as of old.
He put his hand paternally upon my knee, and patted it softly.
"My poor boy," he said, with a sympathetic half-smile, and in his old-time
gravely gentle voice: "even in your tribulation you must be Dutch! Why not
have said this to me--or what then occurred to you of it--at the outset,
the first day after you came? Why, then it could all have been put right
in a twinkling. But no! in your secretive Dutch fashion you must needs go
aloof, and worry your heart sore by all sorts of suspicions and jealousies
and fears that you have been supplanted--until, see for yourself what a
melancholy pass you have brought us all to! Suppose by chance, while these
sullen devils were driving you to despair, you had done injury to
Philip--perhaps even killed him! Think what your feelings, and ours, would
be now. And all might have been cleared up, set right, by a word at the
beginning."
I looked hard into the fire, and clinched my teeth.
"Would a word have given me Daisy?" I asked from between them.
He withdrew his hand from my knee, and pushed one of the logs petulantly
with his foot. "What do you mean?" he demanded.
"I mean that for five years I have desired--for the past six months have,
waking or sleeping, thought of nothing else but this desire of my
heart--to have Daisy for my wife."
As he did not speak, I went on with an impassioned volubility altogether
strange to my custom, recalling to him the tender intimacy in which she
and I had grown up from babyhood; the early tacit understanding that we
were to inherit the Cedars and all its belongings, and his own not
infrequent allusions in those days to the vision of our sharing it, and
all else in life, together. Then I pictured to him the brotherly fondness
of my later years, blossoming suddenly, luxuriantly, into the fervor of a
lover's devotion while I was far away in the wilds, with no gracious,
civilizing presence (save always Mr. Cross) near me except the dear image
of her which I carried in my heart of hearts. I told him, too, of the
delicious excitement with which, day by day, I drew nearer to the home
that held her, trembling now with nervousness at my slow progress, now
with timidity lest, grasping this vast happiness too swiftly, I should
crush it from very ecstasy of possession. I made clear to him, moreover,
that I had come without ever dreaming of the possibility of a rival--as
innocently, serenely confident of right, as would be a little child
approaching to kiss its mother.
"Fancy this child struck violently in the face by this mother, from whom
it had never before received so much as a frown," I concluded; "then you
will understand something of the blow which has sent me reeling."
His answering words, when finally he spoke, were sympathetic and friendly
enough, but not very much to the point. This was, doubtless, due to no
fault of his; consolation at such times is not within the power of the
very wisest to bestow.
He pointed out to me that these were a class of disappointments
exceedingly common to the lot of young men; it was the way of the world.
In the process of pairing off a generation, probably ninety-nine out of
every hundred couples would secretly have preferred some other
distribution; yet they made the best of it, and the world wagged on just
the same as before. With all these and many other jarring commonplaces he
essayed to soothe me--to the inevitable increase of my bitter discontent.
He added, I remember, a personal parallel:
"I have never spoken of it to you, or to any other, but I too had my
grievous disappointment. I was in love with the mother of this young
Philip Cross. I worshipped her reverently from afar; I had no other
thought or aim in life but to win her favor, to gain a position worthy of
her; I would have crossed the Channel, and marched into St. James's, and
hacked off the Hanoverian's heavy head with my father's broadsword, I
verily believe, to have had one smile from her lips. Yet I had to pocket
this all, and stand smilingly by and see her wedded to my tent-mate, Tony
Cross. I thought the world had come to an end--but it hadn't. Women are
kittle cattle, my boy. They must have their head, or their blood turns
sour. Come! where is the genuineness of your affection for our girl, if
you would deny her the gallant of her choice?"
"If I believed," I blurted out, "that it _was_ her own free choice!"
"Whose else, then, pray?"
"If I felt that she truly, deliberately preferred him--that she had not
been decoyed and misled by that Lady Ber--"
"Fie upon such talk!" said the old gentleman, with a shade of returning
testiness in his tone. "Do you comprehend our Daisy so slightly, after all
these years? Is she a girl not to know her own mind? Tut! she loves the
youngster; she has chosen him. If you had stopped at home, if you had
spoken earlier instead of mooning, Dutch fashion, in your own mind, it
might have been different. Who can say? But it may not be altered now. We
who are left must still plan to promote her happiness. A hundred
bridegrooms could not make her less our Daisy than she was. There must be
no more quarrels between you boys, remember! I forbid it, your own
judgment will forbid it. He will make a good husband to the girl, and I
mistake much if he does not make a great man of himself in the Colony.
Perhaps--who knows?--he may bring her a title, or even a coronet, some of
these days. The Crown will have need of all its loyal gentlemen here, soon
enough, too, as the current runs now, and rewards and honors will flow
freely. Philip will lose no chance to turn the stream Cairncross way."
My aunt came in to take away the untouched dishes--Mr. Stewart could never
abide negroes in their capacity as domestics--and soon thereafter we went
to bed; I, for one, to lie sleepless and disconsolate till twilight came.
The next morning we two again had the table to ourselves, for Daisy sent
down word that her head was still aching, and we must not wait the meal
for her. It was a silent and constrained affair, this breakfast, and we
hurried through it as one speeds a distasteful task.
It was afterward, as we walked forth together into the garden, where the
wet earth already steamed under the warm downpour of sunlight, that I told
Mr. Stewart of my resolution to go as soon as possible to Albany, and
take up the proffered agency.
He seemed to have prepared himself for this, and offered no strong
opposition. We had both, indeed, reached the conclusion that it was the
best way out of the embarrassment which hung over us. He still clung, or
made a show of clinging, to his regret that I had not been satisfied with
my position at the Cedars. But in his heart, I am sure, he was relieved by
my perseverance in the project.
Two or three days were consumed in preparations at home and in conferences
with Jonathan Cross, either at Johnson Hall or at our place, whither he
was twice able to drive. He furnished me with several letters, and with
voluminous suggestions and advice. Sir William, too, gave me letters, and
much valuable information as to Albany ways and prejudices. I had, among
others from him, I remember, a letter of presentation to Governor Tryon,
who with his lady had visited the baronet during my absence, but which I
never presented, and another to the uncle of the boy-Patroon, which was of
more utility.
In the hurry and occupation of making ready for so rapid and momentous a
departure, I had not many opportunities of seeing Daisy. During the few
times that we were alone together, no allusion was made to the scene of
that night, or to my words, or to her betrothal. How much she knew of the
incident on the gulf-side, or of my later explanation and confession to
Mr. Stewart, I could not guess. She was somewhat reserved in her manner, I
fancied, and she seemed to quietly avoid being alone in the room with me.
At the final parting, too, she proffered me only her cheek to touch with
my lips. Yet I could not honestly say that, deep in her heart, she was not
sorry for me and tender toward me, and grieved to have me go.
It was on the morning of the last day of September, 1772, that I began
life alone, for myself, by starting on the journey to Albany. If I carried
with me a sad heart, there yet were already visible the dawnings of
compensation. At least, I had not quarrelled with the dear twain of
the Cedars.
As for Philip Cross, I strove not to think of him at all.