The Master and Mistress of Cairncross.
There is the less need to apologize for now essaying to portray sundry
scenes of which I was not an actual witness, in that the reader must by
this time be heartily disposed to welcome an escape from my wearisome
_ego_, at any expense whatsoever of historical accuracy. Nor is it
essential to set forth in this place the means by which I later came to be
familiar with the events now to be described--means which will be apparent
enough as the tale unfolds.
Dusk is gathering in the great room to the right and rear of the wide hall
at Cairncross, and a black servant has just brought in candles, to be
placed on the broad marble mantel, and on the oaken table in the centre of
the room. The soft light mellows the shadows creeping over the white and
gold panelling of the walls, and twinkles faintly in reflection back from
the gilt threads in the heavy curtains; but it cannot dispel the gloom
which, like an atmosphere, pervades the chamber. Although it is June, and
warm of mid-days, a fire burns on the hearth, slowly and spiritlessly, as
if the task of imparting cheerfulness to the room were beyond
its strength.
Close by the fireplace, holding over it, in fact, his thin, wrinkled
hands, sits an old man. At first glance, one would need to be told that it
was Mr. Stewart, so heavily has Time laid his weight upon him in these
last four years. There are few enough external suggestions now of the
erect, soldierly gentleman, swift of perception, authoritative of tone,
the prince of courtiers in bearing, whom we used to know. The white hair
is still politely queued, and the close-shaven cheeks glisten with the
neat polish of the razor's edge; but, alas! it is scarcely the same face.
The luminous glow of the clear blue eyes has faded; the corners of the
mouth, eloquently resolute no longer, depend in weakness. As he turns now
to speak to his companion, there is a moment's relief: the voice is still
calm and full, with perhaps just a thought of change toward the
querulous in tone.
"I heard something like the sound of hoofs," he says; "doubtless it is
Philip."
"Perhaps, father; but he is wont to be late, nowadays."
Here the change _is_ in the voice, if little else be altered. It is Daisy
who speaks, standing by his chair, with one hand upon his shoulder, the
other hanging listlessly at her side. Like him she looks at the
smouldering fire, preferring the silence of her own thoughts to empty
efforts at talk. The formal, unsympathetic walls and hangings seem to take
up the sad sound of her murmured words and return it to her, as if to
emphasize her loneliness.
"The rooms are so large--so cold," she says again, after a long pause, in
comment upon a little shiver which shakes the old man's bent shoulders.
"If we heaped the fireplace to the top, it could not make them seem
home-like."
The last words sink with a sigh into the silence of the great room, and no
more are spoken. Both feel, perhaps, that if more were spoken there must
be tears as well. Only the poor girl presses her hand upon his arm with a
mute caress, and draws closer to his side. There is nothing of novelty to
them in this tacitly shared sense of gloom. This Thursday is as Monday
was, as any day last year was, as seemingly all days to come will be.
The misery of this marriage has never been discussed between these two.
The girl is too fond to impute blame, the old gentleman too proud to
accept it; in both minds there is the silent consciousness that into this
calamity they walked with eyes open, and must needs bear the results
without repining. And more, though there is true sympathy between the two
up to a certain point, even Daisy and Mr. Stewart have drifted apart
beyond it. Both view Philip within the house with the same eyes; the
Philip of the outer world--the little Valley-world of hot passions, strong
ambitions, fierce intolerances, growing strife and rancor--they see
differently. And this was the saddest thing of all.
Philip Cross entered abruptly, his spurs clanking with a sharp ring at his
boot-heels, and nodded with little enough graciousness of manner to the
two before the fire.
"I have not ordered supper to be laid," said Daisy; "your coming was so
uncertain. Shall I ring for it now?"
"I have eaten at the Hall," said the young man, unlocking an escritoire at
the farther end of the room as he spoke, and taking from it some papers.
He presently advanced toward the fire, holding these in his hand. He
walked steadily enough, but there was the evil flush upon his temples and
neck--a deep suffusion of color, against which his flaxen, powdered hair
showed almost white--which both knew too well.
"Who is at the Hall?" asked Mr. Stewart.
"There were good men there to-day--and a woman, too, who topped them all
in spirit and worth. We call the Indians an inferior race, but, by God!
they at least have not lost the trick of breeding women who do not
whine--who would rather show us blood than tears!"
Thus young Mr. Cross spoke, with a sulky inference in his tone, as he held
up his papers to the candle, and scanned the writings by its light.
"Ah," Mr. Stewart made answer, dissembling what pique he might have felt,
and putting real interest into his words. "Is Molly Brant, then, come down
from the Castle? What does she at the Hall? I thought Lady Johnson would
have none of her."
"Yes, she is at the Hall, or was when I left. She was sorely needed, too,
to put something like resolution into the chicken-hearts there. Things
will move now--nay, are moving! As for Lady Johnson, she is too dutiful
and wise a woman to have any wishes that are not her husband's. I would to
God there were others half so obedient and loyal as Polly Watts!"
Again there was the obvious double meaning in his sullen tone. A swift
glance flashed back and forth between Mr. Stewart and the pale-faced young
wife, and again Mr. Stewart avoided the subject at which Cross hinted.
Instead he turned his chair toward the young man, and said:
"Things are moving, you say. What is new?"
"Why, this is new," answered Cross, lowering the papers for the moment,
and looking down upon his questioner: "blood runs now at last instead of
milk in the veins of the king's men. We will know where we stand. We will
master and punish disloyalty; we will brook not another syllable of
rebellion!"
"Yes, it has been let to run overlong," said Mr. Stewart. "Often enough,
since Sir William died, have I wished that I were a score of years
younger. Perhaps I might have served in unravelling this unhappy tangle of
misunderstandings. The new fingers that are picking at the knot are honest
enough, but they have small cunning."
"That as you will; but there is to be no more fumbling at the knot. We
will cut it now at a blow--cut it clean and sharp with the tomahawk!"
An almost splendid animation glowed in the young man's eyes as he spoke,
and for the nonce lit up the dogged hardness of his face. So might the
stolid purple visage of some ancestral Cross have become illumined, over
his heavy beef and tubs of ale, at the stray thought of spearing a boar at
bay, or roasting ducats out of a Jew. The thick rank blood of centuries
of gluttonous, hunting, marauding progenitors, men whose sum of delights
lay in working the violent death of some creature--wild beast or human, it
mattered little which--warmed in the veins of the young man now, at the
prospect of slaughter. The varnish of civilization melted from his
surface; one saw in him only the historic fierce, blood-letting islander,
true son of the men who for thirty years murdered one another by tens of
thousands all over England, nominally for a York or a Lancaster, but truly
from the utter wantonness of the butcher's instinct, the while we Dutch
were discovering oil-painting and perfecting the noble craft of printing
with types.
"Yes!" he repeated, with a stormy smile. "We will cut the knot with the
tomahawk!"
The quicker wit of the young woman first scented his meaning.
"You are going to bring down the savages?" she asked, with dilated eyes,
and in her emotion forgetting that it was not her recent habit to
interrogate her husband.
He vouchsafed her no answer, but made a pretence of again being engrossed
with his papers.
After a moment or two of silence the old gentleman rose to his feet,
walked over to Philip, and put his hand on the young man's arm.
"I will take my leave now," he said, in a low voice; "Eli is here waiting
for me, and the evenings grow cold."
"Nay, do not hasten your going, Mr. Stewart," said Philip, with a
perfunctory return to the usages of politeness. "You are ever
welcome here."
"Yes, I know," replied Mr. Stewart, not in a tone of complete conviction.
"But old bones are best couched at home."
There was another pause, the old gentleman still resting his hand
affectionately, almost deprecatingly, on the other's sleeve.
"I would speak plainly to you before I go, Philip," he said, at last. "I
pray you, listen to the honest advice of an old man, who speaks to you,
God knows, from the very fulness of his heart. I mislike this adventure at
which you hint. It has an evil source of inspiration. It is a gloomy day
for us here, and for the Colony, and for the cause of order, when the
counsels of common-sense and civilization are tossed aside, and the words
of that red she-devil regarded instead. No good will come out of it--no
good, believe me. Be warned in time! I doubt you were born when I first
came into this Valley. I have known it for decades, almost, where you have
known it for years. I have watched its settlements grow, its fields push
steadily, season after season, upon the heels of the forest. I understand
its people as you cannot possibly do. Much there is that I do not like.
Many things I would change, as you would change them. But those err
cruelly, criminally, who would work this change by the use of
the savages."
"All other means have been tried, short of crawling on our bellies to
these Dutch hinds!" muttered the young man.
"You do not know what the coming of the tribes in hostility means,"
continued Mr. Stewart, with increasing solemnity of earnestness. "You were
too young to realize what little you saw, as a child here in the Valley,
of Belletre's raid. Sir John and Guy know scarcely more of it than you.
Twenty years, almost, have passed since the Valley last heard the Mohawk
yell rise through the night-air above the rifle's crack, and woke in
terror to see the sky red with the blaze of roof-trees. All over the world
men shudder still at hearing of the things done then. Will you be a
willing party to bringing these horrors again upon us? Think what it is
that you would do!"
"It is not I alone," Philip replied, in sullen defence. "I but cast my lot
on the king's side, as you yourself do. Only you are not called upon to
fit your action to your words; I am! Besides," he went on, sulkily, "I
have already chosen not to go with Guy and the Butlers. Doubtless they
deem me a coward for my resolution. That ought to please you."
"Go with them? Where are they going?"
"Up the river; perhaps only to the Upper Castle; perhaps to Oswego;
perhaps to Montreal--at all events, to get the tribes well in hand, and
hold them ready to strike. That is," he added, as an afterthought, "if it
really becomes necessary to strike at all. It may not come to that,
you know."
"And this flight is actually resolved upon?"
"If you call it a flight, yes! The Indian superintendent goes to see the
Indians; some friends go with him--that is all. What more natural? They
have in truth started by this time, well on their way. I was sorely
pressed to accompany them; for hours Walter Butler urged all the pleas at
his command to shake my will."
"Of course you could not go; that would have been madness!" said Mr.
Stewart, testily. Both men looked toward the young wife, with instinctive
concert of thought.
She sat by the fire, with her fair head bent forward in meditation; if she
had heard the conversation, or knew now that they were thinking of her,
she signified it not by glance or gesture.
"No, of course," said Philip, with a faltering disclaimer. "Yet they urged
me strenuously. Even now they are to wait two days at Thompson's on
Cosby's Manor, for my final word--they choosing still to regard my coming
as possible."
"Fools!" broke in the old gentleman. "It is not enough to force war upon
their neighbors, but they must strive to destroy what little happiness I
have remaining to me!" His tone softened to one of sadness, and again he
glanced toward Daisy. "Alas, Philip," he said, mournfully, "that it
_should_ be so little!"
The young man shifted his attitude impatiently, and began scanning his
papers once more. A moment later he remarked, from behind the manuscripts:
"It is not we who begin this trouble. These committees of the rebel
scoundrels have been active for months, all about us. Lying accounts to
our prejudice are ceaselessly sent down to the committees at Schenectady
and Albany, and from these towns comes back constant encouragement to
disorder and bad blood. If they will have it so, are we to blame? You
yourself spoke often to me, formerly, of the dangerous opinions held by
the Dutch here, and the Palatines up the river, and, worst of all, by
those canting Scotch-Irish Presbyterians over Cherry Valley way. Yet now
that we must meet this thing, you draw back, and would tie my hands as
well. But doubtless you are unaware of the lengths to which the Albany
conspirators are pushing their schemes."
"I am not without information," replied Mr. Stewart, perhaps in his desire
to repudiate the imputation of ignorance revealing things which upon
reflection he would have reserved. "I have letters from my boy Douw
regularly, and of late he has told me much of the doings of the Albany
committee."
Young Cross put his papers down from before his face with a swift gesture.
Whether he had laid a trap for Mr. Stewart or not, is doubtful; we who
knew him best have ever differed on that point. But it is certain that his
manner and tone had changed utterly in the instant before he spoke.
"Yes!" he said, with a hard, sharp inflection; "it is known that you hold
regular correspondence with this peculiarly offensive young sneak and spy.
Let me tell you frankly, Mr. Stewart, that this thing is not liked
overmuch. These are times when men, even old men, must choose their side
and stand to it. People who talk in one camp and write to the other
subject themselves to uncomfortable suspicions. Men are beginning to
recall that you were in arms against His Majesty King George the Second,
and to hint that perhaps you are not precisely overflowing with loyalty to
his grandson, though you give him lip-service readily enough. As you were
pleased to say to me a few minutes ago, 'Be warned in time,' Mr. Stewart!"
The old gentleman had started back as if struck by a whip at the first
haughty word's inflection. Gradually, as the impertinent sentences
followed, he had drawn up his bent, slender frame until he stood now
erect, his hooked nose in the air, and his blue eyes flashing. Only the
shrunken lips quivered with the weakness of years, as he looked tall young
Mr. Cross full in the face.
"Death of my life!" he stammered. "_You_ are saying these things to _me_!
It is Tony Cross's son whom I listen to--and _her_ son--the young man to
whom I gave my soul's treasure!"
Then he stopped, and while his eyes still glowed fiery wrath the trembling
lips became piteous in their inability to form words. For a full minute
the fine old soldier stood, squared and quivering with indignation. What
he would have said, had he spoken, we can only guess. But no utterance
came. He half-raised his hand to his head with a startled movement; then,
seeming to recover himself, walked over to where Daisy sat, ceremoniously
stooped to kiss her forehead, and, with a painfully obvious effort to keep
his gait from tottering, moved proudly out of the room.
When Philip, who had dumbly watched the effect of his words, turned
about, he found himself confronted with a woman whom he scarcely knew to
be his wife, so deadly pale and drawn was her face, so novel and startling
were the glance and gesture with which she reared herself before him.