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[Illustration: Elsin Grey.]
_The_
RECKONING
BY
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
AUTHOR OF "CARDIGAN," "THE MAID-AT-ARMS," "THE KING IN YELLOW," ETC.
NEW YORK
A. WESSELS COMPANY
1907
Copyright, 1905, by
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
_Published September, 1905_
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N.Y.
PREFACE
The author's intention is to treat, in a series of four or five
romances, that part of the war for independence which particularly
affected the great landed families of northern New York: the Johnsons,
represented by Sir William, Sir John, Guy Johnson, and Colonel Claus;
the notorious Butlers, father and son; the Schuylers, Van Rensselaers,
and others.
The first romance of the series, Cardigan, was followed by the second,
The Maid-at-Arms. The third in order is not completed. The fourth is the
present volume.
As Cardigan pretended to portray life on the baronial estate of Sir
William Johnson, the first uneasiness concerning the coming trouble, the
first discordant note struck in the harmonious councils of the Long
House, so, in The Maid-at-Arms, which followed in order, the author
attempted to paint a patroon family disturbed by the approaching rumble
of battle. That romance dealt with the first serious split in the
Iroquois Confederacy; it showed the Long House shattered though not
fallen; the demoralization and final flight of the great landed families
who remained loyal to the British Crown; and it struck the key-note to
the future attitude of the Iroquois toward the patriots of the
frontier--revenge for their losses at the battle of Oriskany--and ended
with the march of the militia and Continental troops on Saratoga.
The third romance, as yet incomplete and unpublished, deals with the
war-path and those who followed it, led by the landed gentry of Tryon
County, and ends with the first solid blow delivered at the Long House,
and the terrible punishment of the Great Confederacy.
The present romance, the fourth in chronological order, picks up the
thread at that point.
The author is not conscious of having taken any liberties with history
in preparing a framework of facts for a mantle of romance.
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.
NEW YORK, _May 26, 1904_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--THE SPY 1
II.--THE HOUSEHOLD 24
III.--THE COQ D'OR 44
IV.--SUNSET AND DARK 67
V.--THE ARTILLERY BALL 97
VI.--A NIGHT AND A MORNING 127
VII.--THE BLUE FOX 164
VIII.--DESTINY 188
IX.--INTO THE NORTH 212
X.--SERMONS IN STONES 239
XI.--THE TEST 266
XII.--THENDARA 289
XIII.--THENDARA NO MORE 313
XIV.--THE BATTLE OF JOHNSTOWN 336
XV.--BUTLER'S FORD 366
TO MY FRIEND
J. HAMBLEN SEARS
WHOSE UNSELFISH FRIENDSHIP AND SOUND ADVICE
I ACKNOWLEDGE IN THIS
DEDICATION
I
_His muscle to the ax and plow,
His calm eye to the rifle sight,
Or at his country's beck and bow,
Setting the fiery cross alight,
Or, in the city's pageantry,
Serving the Cause in secrecy,--
Behold him now, haranguing kings
While through the shallow court there rings
The light laugh of the courtezan;
This the New Yorker, this the Man!_
II
_Standing upon his blackened land,
He saw the flames mount up to God,
He saw the death tracks in the sand,
And the dead children on the sod,
He saw the half-charred door, unbarred,
The dying hound he left on guard,
And that still thing he once had wed
Sprawled on the threshold dripping red:
Dry-eyed he primed his rifle pan;
This the New Yorker, this the Man!_
III
He plowed the graveyard of his dead
And sowed the grain to feed a host;
In silent lands untenanted
Save by the Sachems' painted ghost
He set the ensign of the sun;
A thousand axes rang as one
In the black forest's falling roar,
And through the glade the plowshare tore
Like God's own blade in Freedom's van;
This the New Yorker, and the Man!
R. W. C.
PROLOGUE
ECHOES OF YESTERDAY
His Excellency's system of intelligence in the City of New York I never
pretended to comprehend. That I was one of many agents I could have no
doubt; yet as long as I remained there I never knew but three or four
established spies with residence in town. Although I had no illusions
concerning Mr. Gaine and his "Gazette," at intervals I violently
suspected Mr. Rivington of friendliness to us, and this in spite of his
Tory newspaper and the fierce broadsides he fired at rebels and
rebellion. But I must confess that in my long and amiable acquaintance
with the gentleman he never, by word or hint or inference, so much as
by the quiver of an eyelash, corroborated my suspicion, and to this day
I do not know whether or not Mr. Rivington furnished secret information
to his Excellency while publicly in print he raged and sneered.
Itinerant spies were always in the city in spite of the deadly watch
kept up by regular and partizan, and sometimes they bore messages for
me, the words "Pro Gloria" establishing their credentials as well as
mine. They entered the city in all guises and under all pretexts, some
as refugees, some as traitors, some wearing the uniform of Tory
partizan corps, others attired as tradesmen, farmers, fishermen, and
often bearing passes, too, though where they contrived to find passes I
never understood.
It was a time of sullenness and quick suspicion; few were free from
doubt, but of those few I made one--until that day when my enemy
arrived--but of that in its place, for now I mean to say a word about
this city that I love--that we all love, understanding how alone she
stood in seven years' chains, yet dauntless, dangerous, and defiant.
For upon New York fell the brunt of British wrath, and the judgment of
God fell, too, passing twice in fire that laid one-quarter of the town
in cinders. Nor was that enough, for His lightning smote the
powder-ship, the _Morning Star_, where she swung at her moorings off
from Burling Slip, and the very sky seemed falling in the thunder that
shook the shoreward houses into ruins.
I think that, take it all in all, New York met and withstood every
separate horror that war can bring, save actual assault and sack.
Greater hardships fell to the lot of no other city in America, for we
lost more than a half of our population, more than a fourth of the city
by the two great fires. Want, with the rich, meant famine for the poor
and sad privation for the well-to-do; smallpox and typhus swept us;
commerce by water died, and slowly our loneliness became a maddening
isolation, when his Excellency flung out his blue dragoons to the very
edges of the river there at Harlem Bridge.
I often think it strange that New York town remained so loyal to the
cause, for loyalty to the king was inherent among the better classes.
Many had vast estates, farms, acres on acres of game parks, and lived
like the landed gentry of old England. Yet, save for the DeLanceys, the
Crugers, their kinsmen, the Fannings, kin to the Tryons, Frederick
Rhinelander, the Waltons, and others too tedious to mention, the
gentlemen who had the most to lose through friendliness to the cause of
liberty, chose to espouse that cause.
As for the British residents there, they remained in blameless loyalty
to their King, and I, for one, have never said one word to cast a doubt
upon the purity of their sentiments.
But with all this, knowing what must come, no other city in America so
gaily set forth upon the road to ruin as did patriotic New York. And
from that dreadful hour when, through the cannon smoke on Brooklyn
Heights, she beheld the ghastly face of ruin leering at her across the
foggy water--from that heart-breaking hour when the British drums
rolled from the east, and the tall war-ships covered themselves with
smoke, and the last flag flying was hacked from the halyards, and the
tramp of the grenadiers awoke the silence of Broadway, she never
faltered in her allegiance, never doubted, never failed throughout
those seven years the while she lay beneath the British heel, a
rattlesnake, stunned only, but deadly still while the last spark of
life remained.
Were I to tell a tithe of all I know of what took place during the
great siege, the incidents might shame the wildest fancies of
romance--how intrigue swayed with intrigue there, struggling hilt to
hilt; how plot and plot were thwarted by the counterplot; how all trust
in man was destroyed in that dark year that Arnold died, and a fiend
took his fair shape to scandalize two hemispheres!
Yet I am living witness of those years. I heard and saw much that I
shall not now revive, as where the victims of a pest lie buried it is
not wise to dig, lest the unseen be loosened once again. Yet something
it may be well to record of that time--the curtain lifted for a
glimpse, then dropped in silence--to teach our children that the men
who stood against their King stood with hope of no reward save liberty,
but faced the tempest that they had unchained with souls self-shriven
and each heart washed free of selfishness.
So if I speak of prisons where our thousands died--hind and gentleman
piled thick as shad in the fly market--sick and well and wounded all
together--it shall not be at length, only a scene or two that sticks in
memory.
Once, in the suffocating heat of mid-July, I saw a prison where every
narrow window was filled with human heads, face above face, seeking a
portion of the external air. And from that day, for many, many weeks
the dead-carts took the corpses to the outer ditches, passing steadily
from dawn to midnight.
All day, all night, they died around us in ship and prison, some from
suffocation, some from starvation, others delivered by prison fevers
which rotted them so slowly that I think even death shrank back
reluctant to touch them with his icy finger.
So piteous their plight, these crowded thousands, crushed in putrid
masses, clinging to the filthy prison bars, that they aroused
compassion in that strange and ancient guild that once had claimed the
Magdalen in its sad sisterhood, and these aided them with food, year
after year, until deliverance.
They had no other food, no water except from polluted drains, no fire
in winter, no barriers to the blackest cold that ever seared the city
from the times that man remembers. I say they had no other food and no
fire to cook the offal flung to them. That is not all true, because we
did our best, being permitted to furnish what we had--we and the
strange sisterhood--yet they were thousands upon thousands, and we were
few.
It is best that I say no more, for that proud England's sake from whose
loins we sprang--it is best that I speak not of Captain Cunningham the
Provost, nor of his deputy, O'Keefe, nor of Sproat and Loring. There
was butchers' work in my own North, and I shall not shrink from the
telling; there was massacre, and scalps taken from children too small
to lisp their prayers for mercy; that was devils' work, and may be
told. But Cunningham and those who served him were alone in their awful
trade; cruelty unspeakable and frenzied vice are terms which fall
impotent to measure the ghastly depths of an infamy in which they
crawled and squirmed, battening like maggots on hell's own pollution.
Long since, I think, we have clasped hands with England over Cherry
Valley and Wyoming, forgiving her the loosened fury of her red allies
and her Butlers and McDonalds. The scar remains, but is remembered only
as a glory.
How shall we take old England's wrinkled hand, stretched out above the
spots that mark the prisons of New York?--above the twelve thousand
unnamed graves of those who died for lack of air and water aboard the
_Jersey_? God knows; and yet all things are possible with Him--even this
miracle which I shall never live to see.
Without malice, without prejudice, judging only as one whose judgment
errs, I leave this darkened path for a free road in the open, and so
shall strive to tell as simply and sincerely as I may what only befell
myself and those with whom I had been long associated. And if the
pleasures that I now recall seem tinged with bitter, and if the gaiety
was but a phase of that greater prison fever that burnt us all in the
beleaguered city, still there was much to live for in those times
through which I, among many, passed; and by God's mercy, not my own
endeavor, passed safely, soul and body.
THE RECKONING
CHAPTER I
THE SPY
Having finished my duties in connection with Sir Peter's private estate
and his voluminous correspondence--and the door of my chamber being
doubly locked and bolted--I made free to attend to certain secret
correspondence of my own, which for four years now had continued,
without discovery, between the Military Intelligence Department of the
Continental army and myself through the medium of one John Ennis, the
tobacconist at the Sign of the Silver Box in Hanover Square.
Made confident by long immunity from the slightest shadow of suspicion,
apprehension of danger seldom troubled my sense of security. It did
sometimes, as when the awful treason at West Point became known to me;
and for weeks as I lay abed I thought to hear in every footfall on
Broadway the measured tread of a patrol come to take me. Yet the
traitor continued in New York without sinister consequence to me; and,
though my nights were none the pleasanter during that sad week which
ended in the execution of the British adjutant-general, no harm came to
me. Habit is the great sedative; at times, penning my spy's journal, I
smiled to remember how it was with me when first I came to New York in
1777, four years since, a country lad of nineteen, fresh from the
frontier, where all my life had been spent among the Oneidas and the
few neighbors nearest Broadalbin Bush--a raw youth, frightened but
resolved; and how I lived through those first months of mental terror,
now appalled by the fate of our Captain Nathan Hale, now burning with a
high purpose and buoyed up by pride that his Excellency should have
found in me a fit instrument for his designs.
I have never known whether or not I am what men call brave, for I
understand fear and I turn cold at thought of death. Often I have sat
alone in the house watching the sober folk along Broadway and Wall
Street, knowing all the while that these same good people might
to-morrow all go flocking to Catiemuts Hill near the Fresh Water, or to
that open space in the "Fields" between the jail and the Almshouse, to
see me on the gallows. If such thoughts do not assail the brave--if
restless nights, wakeful dawns, dull days are not their portion--I must
own that all these were mine, not often, perhaps, but too frequent to
flatter self-esteem. And, fight them as I might, it was useless; for
such moments came without warning--often when I had been merry with
friends, at times when, lulled by long-continued security, I had nigh
forgotten through eventless months that there was a war and that I had
become a New Yorker only because of war.
It was harder now, in one sense; four years as secretary to my kinsman,
Sir Peter Coleville, had admitted me to those social intimacies so
necessary to my secret office; and, alas! friendships had been made and
ties formed not only in the line of duty, but from impulse and out of
pure affection.
I had never found it was required of me to pose as a rabid loyalist,
and so did not, being known as disinterested and indifferent, and
perhaps for that reason not suspected. My friends were from necessity
among the best among the loyalists--from choice, too, for I liked them
for their own sakes, and it was against their cause I worked, not
against them.
It went hard with me to use them as I did--I so loathing perfidy in
others; yet if it be perfidy to continue in duty as I understood duty,
then I practised it, and at times could scarce tolerate myself, which
was a weakness, because in my own heart I knew that his Excellency could
set no man a task unworthy of his manhood. Yet it were pleasanter had my
duties thrown me with the army, or with Colonel Willett in my native
north, whence, at his request, I had come to live a life of physical
sloth and mental intrigue under the British cannon of New York--here in
the household of Sir Peter Coleville, his secretary, his friend, his
welcomed guest, the intimate of his family, his friends!--_that_ was the
hardest of all; and though for months at a time I managed to forget it,
the recurring thought of what I _was_, and what they believed me to be,
stabbed me at intervals so I could scarce endure it.
Nothing, not even the belief that God was with us, I fear, could have
held me there when the stress of such emotion left me staring at the
darkness in my restless bed--only blind faith in his Excellency that he
would do no man this shame, if shame it was--that he knew as well as I
that the land's salvation was not to be secured through the barter of
men's honor and the death of souls.
* * * * *
The door being secured, as I say, and the heat of that July day abating
nothing, though the sun hung low over Staten Island, I opened my
windows, removed coat and waistcoat, and, drawing a table to the
window, prepared to write up that portion of my daily journal neglected
lately, and which, when convenient opportunity offered, was to find its
way into the hands of Colonel Marinus Willett in Albany. Before I wrote
I turned back a leaf or two so that I might correct my report in the
light of later events; and I read rapidly:
_July 12, 1781._--Nothing remarkable. Very warm weather, and a bad
odor from the markets. There is some talk in the city of rebuilding
the burned district. Two new cannon have been mounted in the
southwest bastion of the fort (George). I shall report caliber and
particulars later.
_July 13th._--This day Sir Peter left to look over the lands in
Westchester which he is, I believe, prepared to purchase from Mr.
Rutgers. The soldiers are very idle; a dozen of 'em caught drawing a
seine in the Collect, and sent to the guard-house--a dirty trick for
anybody but Hessians, who are accustomed to fish in that manner.
The cannon in the southwest bastion are twelve-pounders and
old--trunnions rusted, carriages rotten. It seems they are trophies
taken from the Carolina militia.
_July 14th._--A ship arrived in the lower bay. Details later. In
Nassau Street, about noon, a tall fellow, clothed like a drover,
muttered a word or two as I passed, and I had gone on ere it struck
me that he had meant his words for my ear. To find him I turned
leisurely, retracing my steps as though I had forgotten something,
and as I brushed him again, he muttered, "Thendara; tell me where it
is."
At that moment Captain Enderley of the Fifty-fourth Foot greeted me,
linking his arm in mine, and I had no excuse to avoid him. More of
this to-night, when, if the message was truly for me, I shall
doubtless be watched and followed when I leave the house for a
stroll.
_July 15th._--Last night there was no chance, Enderley and Captain
O'Neil coming to take me to the theater, where the Thirty-eighth
Regiment gave a frolic and a play--the latter most indifferent, save
for Mrs. Barry's acting. I saw my drover in John Street, too, but
could not speak to him.
This morning, however, I met the drover, and he was drunk, or made
most marvelous pretense--a great six-foot, blue-eyed lout in smock
and boots, reeking of Bull's Head gin, his drover's whip a-trail in
the dust, and he a-swaggering down Nassau Street, gawking at the
shop-windows and whistling Roslyn Castle with prodigious gusto.
I made it convenient to pause before Berry and Roger's show of
jewels, and he stopped, too, swaying there gravely, balanced now on
hobnail heel, now on toe. Presently he ceased his whistling of
Roslyn Castle, and in a low but perfectly distinct voice he said,
"Where is the town of Thendara, Mr. Renault?" Without looking at
him or even turning my head, I answered, "Why do you ask me?"
He stared stupidly at the show-window. "Pro patria et gloria," he
replied under his breath; "why do you serve the land?"
"Pro gloria," I muttered. "Give your message; hasten."
He scratched his curly head, staring at the gewgaws. "It is this,"
he said coolly; "find out if there be a lost town in the north
called Thendara, or if the name be used to mask the name of Fort
Niagara. When you have learned all that is possible, walk some
evening up Broadway and out along Great George Street. We will
follow."
"Who else besides yourself?"
"A brother drover--of men," he said slyly; "a little wrinkled
fellow, withered to the bone, wide-eared, mild-eyed. He is my
running mate, sir, and we run sometimes, now this way, now that,
but always at your service, Mr. Renault."
"Are you drunk, or is it a pretense?" I demanded.
"Not _too_ drunk," he replied, with elaborate emphasis. "But once
this matter of Thendara is settled I hope to be so drunk that no
friend of mine need be ashamed of me. Good day, sir. God save our
country!"
"Have a care," I motioned, turning away. And so I left him to enter
the shop and purchase a trinket, thinking it prudent in case any
passer-by had observed how long I lingered.
_July 16th._--Sir Peter not yet returned from Mr. Rutgers. The
name "Thendara" ringing in my ears like a dull bell all night, and
I awake, lying there a-thinking. Somewhere, in some long-forgotten
year, I had heard a whispering echo of that name--or so it seemed
to me--and, musing, I thought to savor a breeze from the pines, and
hear water flowing, unseen, far in the forest silence.
Thendara! Thendara!
The name is not Iroquois--yet it may be, too--a soft, gracious
trisyllable stolen from the Lenape. Lord! how the name intrigues
me, sweetly sonorous, throbbing in my ears--Thendara, Thendara--and
always I hear the pine breeze high blowing and the flowing
undertone of waters.
_July 17th._--Nothing extraordinary. The Hon. Elsin Grey arrived
from Halifax by the Swan packet to visit Sir Peter's family, she
being cousin twice removed to Lady Coleville. I have not seen her;
she keeps her chamber with the migraine. As she comes from her
kinsman, General Sir Frederick Haldimand, Governor of Canada, she
may be useful, being lately untethered from the convent and no more
than seventeen or eighteen, and vain, no doubt, of her beauty, and
so, I conclude, prone to babble if flattered.
Here my journal ended; I dipped my quill into the inkhorn and wrote
slowly:
_July 18th._--Nothing remarkable. The Hon. Elsin Grey still keeps
her chamber. The heat in New York is very great. I am, without
suspicion, sending money through Ennis to our prisoners aboard the
ships in the Wallabout, and next week shall have more for the
unfortunates in the Provost, the prisons, jails, and the
sugar-house--my salary being due on the 20th inst. I have ever in
mind a plan for a general jail delivery the instant his Excellency
assaults by land and sea, but at present it is utterly hopeless, Mr.
Cunningham executing the laws with terrible rigor, and double guards
patrolling the common. As for those wretched patriots aboard the
"_Hell_" and on those hulks--the _Falconer_, _Good Hope_, and
_Scorpion_--which lie southeast of the _Jersey_, there can be no
delivery save through compassion of that Dark Jailer who one day
shall free us all.
I dropped my pen, listening intently. Close to my door the garret
stairs creaked, ever so lightly; and I bent forward across the table,
gathering my papers, on which the ink lay still wet.
Listening, I heard nothing more. Perhaps the great heat was warping the
new stairway, which led past my door, up through the attic, and out to
the railed cupola upon the roof.
I glanced at my journal; there was nothing more to add, and so, sanding
the sheets, I laid them back behind the swinging panel which I myself
had fashioned so cunningly that none might suspect a cupboard in the
simple wainscot. Then to wash hands and face in fresh water, and put on
my coat without the waistcoat, prepared to take the air on the cupola,
where it should soon blow cool from the bay.
Slipping lock and bolt, I paused, hand on the knob, to glance back
around the room--a habit formed of caution. Then, satisfied, I opened
the door and left it standing wide so that the room might air. As I
ascended the attic stairs a little fresh puff of wind cooled me.
Doubtless a servant had opened the flaps to the cupola, for they were
laid back; and as I mounted, I could see a square of blue sky overhead.
I had taken my pipe, and paused on the stairs to light it; then,
pouching flint and tinder-box, I emerged upon the roof, to find myself
face to face with a young girl I had never before seen--the Hon. Miss
Grey, no doubt--and very dainty in her powder and one coquette patch
that emphasized the slow color tinting a skin of snow.
My bow, I think, covered my vexation--I being all unpowdered and
wearing no waistcoat over an unfrilled shirt, for I do love fine
clothes when circumstances require; but the lady was none the less
punctilious, and as I made to toss my pipe into the street below, she
forbade me with perfect courtesy and a smile that only accented her
youthful self-possession.
"Mr. Renault need neither retire nor sacrifice his pleasure," she said.
"I have missed Sir Frederick's pipe-smoke dreadfully--so much, indeed,
that I had even thought to try Sir Peter's snuff to soothe me."
"Shall I fetch it, madam?" I asked instantly; but she raised a small
hand in laughing horror.
"Snuff and picquet I am preparing for--a youth of folly--an old age of
snuff and cards, you know. At present folly suffices, thank you."
And as I stood smiling before her, she said: "Pray you be seated, sir,
if you so desire. There should be sufficient air for two in this
half-charred furnace which you call New York. Tell me, Mr. Renault, are
the winters here also extreme in cold?"
"Sometimes," I said. "Last winter the bay was frozen to Staten Island
so that the artillery crossed on the ice from the city."
She turned her head, looking out over the water, which was now all a
golden sparkle under the westering sun. Then her eyes dropped to the
burned district--that waste of blackened ruins stretching south along
Broadway to Beaver Street and west to Greenwich Street.
"Is that the work of rebels?" she asked, frowning.
"No, madam; it was an accident."
"Why do the New Yorkers not rebuild?"
"I think it is because General Washington interrupts local
improvements," I said, laughing.
She looked around at me, pretty brows raised in quaint displeasure.
"Does the insolence of a rebel really amuse you, Mr. Renault?"
I was taken aback. Even among the British officers here in the city it
had become the fashion to speak respectfully of the enemy, and above
all of his Excellency.
"Why should it not amuse me?" I asked lightly.
She had moved her head again, and appeared to be absorbed in the view.
Presently she said, still looking out over the city: "That was a noble
church once, that blackened arch across the way."
"That is Trinity--all that is left of it," I said. "St. Paul's is still
standing--you may see it there to the north, just west of Ann Street
and below Vesey."
She turned, leaning on the railing, following with curious eyes the
direction of my outstretched arm.
"Please tell me more about this furnace you call a city, Mr. Renault,"
she said, with a pretty inflection of voice that flattered; and so I
went over beside her, and, leaning there on the cupola rail together,
we explored the damaged city from our bird's perch above it--the city
that I had come to care for strangely, nay, to love almost as I loved
my Mohawk hills. For it is that way with New York, the one city that we
may love without disloyalty to our birthplace, a city which is home in
a larger sense, and, in a sense, almost as dear to men as the
birth-spot which all cherish. I know not why, but this is so; no
American is long strange here; for it is the great hearth of the
mother-land where the nation gathers as a family, each conscious of a
share in the heritage established for all by all.
And so, together, this fair young English girl and I traced out the
wards numbered from the cardinal points of the compass, and I bounded
for her the Out-Ward, too, and the Dock-Ward. There was no haze, only a
living golden light, clear as topaz, and we could see plainly the
sentinels pacing before the Bridewell--that long two-storied prison,
built of gloomy stone; and next to it the Almshouse of gray stone, and
next to that the massive rough stone prison, three stories high, where
in a cupola an iron bell hung, black against the sky.
"You will hear it, some day, tolling for an execution," I said.
"Do they hang rebels there?" she asked, looking up at me so
wonderingly, so innocently that I stood silent instead of answering,
surprised at such beauty in a young girl's eyes.
"Where is King's College?" she asked. I showed her the building bounded
by Murray, Chapel, Barckley and Church streets, and then I pointed out
the upper barracks behind the jail, and the little lake beyond divided
by a neck of land on which stood the powder-house.
Far across the West Ward I could see the windows of Mr. Lispenard's
mansion shining in the setting sun, and the road to Greenwich winding
along the river.
She tired of my instruction after a while, and her eyes wandered to the
bay. A few ships lay off Paulus Hook; the Jersey shore seemed very
near, although full two miles distant, and the islands, too, seemed
close in-shore where the white wings of gulls flashed distantly.
A jack flew from the Battery, another above the fort, standing out
straight in the freshening breeze from the bay. Far away across the East
River I saw the accursed _Jersey_ swinging, her black, filthy bulwarks
gilded by the sun; and below, her devil's brood of hulks at anchor, all
with the wash hung out on deck a-drying in the wind.
"What are they?" she asked, surprising something else than the fixed
smile of deference in my face.
"Prison ships, madam. Yonder the rebels die all night, all day, week
after week, year after year. That black hulk you see yonder--the one to
the east--stripped clean, with nothing save a derrick for bow-sprit and
a signal-pole for mast, is the _Jersey_, called by another name,
sometimes----"
"What name?"
"Some call her '_The Hell_,'" I answered. And, after a pause: "It must
be hot aboard, with every porthole nailed."
"What can rebels expect?" she asked calmly.
"Exactly! There are some thousand and more aboard the _Jersey_. When the
wind sets from the south, on still mornings, I have heard a strange
moaning--a low, steady, monotonous plaint, borne inland over the city.
But, as you say, what can rebels expect, madam?"
"What is that moaning sound you say that one may hear?" she demanded.
"Oh, the rebels, dying from suffocation--clamoring for food,
perhaps--perhaps for water! It is hard on the guards who have to go
down every morning into that reeking, stifling hold and drag out the
dead rebels festering there----"
"But that is horrible!" she broke out, blue eyes wide with
astonishment--then, suddenly silent, she gazed at me full in the face.
"It is incredible," she said quietly; "it is another rebel tale. Tell
me, am I not right?"
I did not answer; I was thinking how I might use her, and the thought
was not agreeable. She was so lovely in her fresh young womanhood, so
impulsive and yet so self-possessed, so utterly ignorant of what was
passing in this war-racked land of mine, that I hesitated to go
gleaning here for straws of information.
"In the north," she said, resting her cheek on one slender wrist, "we
hear much of rebel complaint, but make nothing of it, knowing well that
if cruelty exists its home is not among those sturdy men who are
fighting for their King."
"You speak warmly," I said, smiling.
"Yes--warmly. We have heard Sir John Johnson slandered because he uses
the Iroquois. But do not the rebels use them, too? My kinsman, General
Haldimand, says that not only do the rebels employ the Oneidas, but
that their motley congress enlists any Indian who will take their paper
dollars."
"That is true," I said.
"Then why should we not employ Brant and his Indians?" she asked
innocently. "And why do the rebels cry out every time Butler's Rangers
take the field? We in Canada know Captain Walter Butler and his father,
Colonel John Butler. Why, Mr. Renault, there is no more perfectly
accomplished officer and gentleman than Walter Butler. I know him; I
have danced with him at Quebec and at Niagara. How can even a rebel so
slander him with these monstrous tales of massacre and torture and
scalps taken from women and children at Cherry Valley?" She raised her
flushed face to mine and looked at me earnestly.
"Why even our own British officers have been disturbed by these
slanders," she said, "and I think Sir Henry Clinton half believes that
our Royal Greens and Rangers are merciless marauders, and that Walter
Butler is a demon incarnate."
"I admit," said I, "that we here in New York have doubted the mercy of
the Butlers and Sir John Johnson."
"Then let me paint these gentlemen for you," she said quickly.
"But they say these gentlemen are capable of painting themselves," I
observed, tempted to excite her by the hint that the Rangers smeared
their faces like painted Iroquois at their hellish work.
"Oh, how shameful!" she cried, with a little gesture of horror. "What
do you think us, there in Canada? Because our officers must needs hold
a wilderness for the King, do you of New York believe us savages?"
The generous animation, the quick color, charmed me. She was no longer
English, she was Canadienne--jealous of Canadian reputation, quick to
resent, sensitive, proud--heart and soul believing in the honor of her
own people of the north.
"Let me picture for you these gentlemen whom the rebels cry out upon,"
she said. "Sir John Johnson is a mild, slow man, somewhat sluggish and
overheavy, moderate in speech, almost cold, perhaps, yet a perfectly
gallant officer."
"His father was a wise and honest gentleman before him," I said
sincerely. "Is his son, Sir John, like him?"
She nodded, and went on to deal with old John Butler--nor did I stay
her to confess that these Johnsons and Butlers were no strangers to me,
whose blackened Broadalbin home lay a charred ruin to attest the love
that old John Butler bore my family name.
And so I stood, smiling and silent, while she spoke of Walter Butler,
describing him vividly, even to his amber black eyes and his pale face,
and the poetic melancholy with which he clothed the hidden blood-lust
that smoldered under his smooth pale skin. But there you have
it--young, proud, and melancholy--and he had danced with her at
Niagara, too, and--if I knew him--he had not spared her hints of that
impetuous flame that burned for all pure women deep in the blackened
pit of his own damned soul.
"Did you know his wife?" I asked, smiling.
"Walter Butler's--wife!" she gasped, turning on me, white as death.
There was a silence; she drew a long, deep breath; suddenly, the
gayest, sweetest little laugh followed, but it was slowly that the
color returned to lip and cheek.
"Is he not wedded?" I asked carelessly--the damned villain--at his
Mohawk Valley tricks again!--and again she laughed, which was, no
doubt, my wordless answer.
"Does he dance well, this melancholy Ranger?" I asked, smiling to see
her laugh.
"Divinely, sir. I think no gentleman in New York can move a minuet with
Walter Butler's grace. Oh, you New Yorkers! You think we are
nothing--fit, perhaps, for a May-pole frolic with the rustic gentry! Do
not deny it, Mr. Renault. Have we not heard you on the subject? Do not
your officers from Philadelphia and New York come mincing and tiptoeing
through Halifax and Quebec, all smiling and staring about, quizzing
glasses raised? And--'Very pretty! monstrous charming! spike me, but
the ladies powder here!' And, 'Is this green grass? Damme, where's the
snow--and the polar bears, you know?'"
I laughed as she paused, breathlessly scornful, flushed with charming
indignation.
"And is not Canada all snow?" I asked, to tease her.
"Snow! It is sweet and green and buried in flowers!" she cried.
"In winter, madam?"
"Oh! You mean to plague me, which is impertinent, because I do not know
you well enough--I have not known you above half an hour. I shall tell
Lady Coleville."
"So shall I--how you abuse us all here in New York----"
"I did not. You are teasing me again, Mr. Renault."
Defiant, smiling, her resentment was, after all, only partly real.
"We are becoming friends much too quickly to suit me," she said
deliberately.
"But not half quickly enough to suit me," I said.
"Do you fancy that I take that silly speech as compliment, Mr.
Renault?"
"Ah, no, madam! On such brief acquaintance I dare not presume to offer
you the compliments that burn for utterance!"
"But you _do_ presume to plague me--on such brief acquaintance!" she
observed.
"I am punished," I said contritely.
"No, you are not! You are not punished at all, because I don't know how
to, and--I am not sure I wish to punish you, Mr. Renault."
"Madam?"
"If you look at me so meekly I shall laugh. Besides, it is
hypocritical. There is nothing meek about you!" I bowed more meekly
than ever.
"Mr. Renault?"
"Madam?"
She picked up her plumed fan impatiently and snapped it open.
"If you don't stop being meek and answering 'Madam' I shall presently
go distracted. Call me something else--anything--just to see how we
like it. Tell me, do you know my first name?"
"Elsin," I said softly, and to my astonishment a faint, burning
sensation stung my cheeks, growing warmer and warmer. I think she was
astonished, too, for few men at twenty-three could color up in those
days; and there was I, a hardened New Yorker of four years' adoption,
turning pink like a great gaby at a country fair when his sweetheart
meets him at the ginger bower!
To cover my chagrin I nodded coolly, repeating her name with a critical
air--"Elsin," I mused, outwardly foppish, inwardly amazed and
mad--"Elsin--um! ah!--very pretty--very unusual," I added, with a
patronizing nod.
She did not resent it; when at last I made bold to meet her gaze it was
pensive and serene, yet I felt somehow that her innocent blue eyes had
taken my measure as a man--and not to my advantage.
"Your name is not a usual one," she said. "When I first heard it from
Sir Peter I laughed."
"Why?" I said coldly.
"Why? Oh, I don't know, Mr. Renault! It sounded so very young--Carus
Renault--it sounds so young and guileless----"
Speechless with indignation, I caught a glimmer under the lowered lids
that mocked me, and I saw her mouth quiver with the laugh fluttering
for freedom.
She looked up, all malice, and the pent laughter rippled.
"Very well," I said, giving in, "I shall take no pity on you in
future."
"My dear Mr. Renault, do you think I require your pity?"
"Not now," I said, chagrined. "But one day you may cry out for
mercy----"
"Which you will doubtless accord, being a gallant gentleman and no
Mohawk."
"Oh, I can be a barbarian, too, for I am, by adoption, an Oneida of the
Wolf Clan, and entitled to a seat in Council."
"I see," she said, "you wear your hair a l'Iroquois."
I reddened again; I could not help it, knowing my hair was guiltless of
powder and all awry.
"If I had supposed you were here, do you imagine I should have
presented myself unpowdered and without a waistcoat?" I said,
exasperated.
Her laughter made it no easier, though I strove to retrieve myself and
return to the light badinage she had routed me from. Lord, what a tease
was in this child, with her deep blue eyes and her Dresden porcelain
skin of snow and roses!
"Now," she said, recovering her gravity, "you may return to your
letter-writing, Mr. Renault. I have done with you for the moment."
At that I was sobered in a trice.
"What letter-writing?" I made out to answer calmly.
"Were you not hard at work penning a missive to some happy soul who
enjoys your confidence?"
"Why do you believe I was?" I asked.
She tossed her head airily. "Oh! for that matter, I could even tell you
what you wrote: 'Nothing remarkable; the Hon. Elsin Grey still keeps
her chamber'--did you not write that?"
She paused, the smile fading from her face. Perhaps she thought she had
gone too far, perhaps something in my expression startled her.
"I beg your pardon," she said quickly; "have I hurt you, Mr. Renault?"
"How did you know I wrote that?" I asked in a voice I hoped was steady.
"Why, it is there on your shirt, Mr. Renault, imprinted backward from
the wet ink. I have amused myself by studying it out letter by letter.
Please forgive me--it was dreadfully indiscreet--but I only meant to
torment you."
I looked down, taking my fine lawn shirt in both hands. There was the
impression--my own writing, backward, but distinct. I remembered when I
had done it, when I had gathered my ink-wet papers under my arms and
leaned forward to listen to the creaking of the attic stairway. Suppose
it had been Sir Peter! Suppose the imprint had been something that
could have admitted of but one interpretation? I turned cold at the
thought.
She was watching me all the while, a trifle uneasy at my silence, but
my smile and manner reassured her, and my gaiety she met instantly.
"I am overwhelmed," I said, "and can offer no excuse for this frowsy
dress. If you had any idea how mortified I am you would have mercy on
me."
"My hair not being dressed a l'Iroquois, I consent to show you mercy,"
she said. "But you came monstrous near frightening me, too. Do you know
you turned white, Mr. Renault? Lud! the vanity of men, to pale at a
jest touching their status in fopdom as proper macaroni!"
"I do love to appear well," I said resentfully.
"Now do you expect me to assure you that you _do_ appear well? that even
the dress of a ragged forest-runner would detract nothing from your
person? Ah, I shall say nothing of the sort, Mr. Renault! Doubtless
there are women a-plenty in New York to flatter you."
"No," I said; "they prefer scarlet coats and spurs, as you will, too."
"No doubt," she said, turning her head to the sunset.
There was enough wind to flutter the ribbons on her shoulders and bare
neck, and to stir the tendrils of her powdered hair, a light breeze
blowing steadily from the bay as the sun went down into the crimson
flood. Bang! A cloud of white smoke hung over Pearl Street where the
evening gun had spoken; the flag on the fort fluttered down, the flag on
the battery followed. Out on the darkening river a lanthorn glimmered
from the deck of the _Jersey_; a light sparkled on Paulus Hook.
"Hark! hear the drums!" she murmured. Far down Broadway the British
drums sounded, nearer, nearer, now loud along Dock Street, now lost in
Queen, then swinging west by north they came up Broad, into Wall; and I
could hear the fifes shrilling out, "The World turned Upside-down," and
the measured tread of the patrol, marching to the Upper Barracks and
the Prison.
The drummers wheeled into Broadway beneath our windows; leaning over I
saw them pass, and I was aware of something else, too--a great
strapping figure in a drover's smock, watching the British drums from
the side path across the way--my friend of Nassau Street--and clinging
to his arm, a little withered man, wrinkled, mild-eyed, clad also like
a drover, and snapping his bull-whip to accent the rhythm of the
rolling drums.
"I think I shall go down," said a soft voice beside me; "pray do not
move, Mr. Renault, you are so picturesque in silhouette against the
sunset--and I hear that silhouettes are so fashionable in New York
fopdom."
I bowed; she held out her hand--just a trifle, as she passed me, the
gesture of a coquette or of perfect innocence--and I touched it lightly
with finger-tip and lip.
"Until supper," she said--"and, Mr. Renault, do you suppose we shall
have bread for supper?"
"Why not?" I asked, all unsuspicious.
"Because I fancied flour might be scarce in New York"--she glanced at
my unpowdered head, then fled, her blue eyes full of laughter.
It is true that all hair powder is made of flour, but I did not use it
like a Hessian. And I looked after her with an uncertain smile and with
a respect born of experience and grave uncertainty.