THE TEST
I was awakened by somebody shaking me. Bewildered, not recognizing my
landlord, but confusing him with the sinister visions that had haunted
my sleep, I grappled with him until, senses returning, I found myself
sitting bolt upright in a shaky trundle-bed, clutching Jimmy Burke by
the collar.
"Lave go me shirrt, sorr," he pleaded--"f'r the saints' sake, Misther
Renault! I've the wan shirrt to me back----"
"Confound you, Jimmy!" I yawned, dropping back on my pillow; "what do
you mean by choking me?"
"Chocken', is it, sorr!" exclaimed the indignant Irishman; "'tis me
shcalp ye're afther liftin' wid a whoop an' a yell, glory be! I'll
throuble ye, Captain Renault, f'r to projooce me wig, sorr!"
Clutched in my left hand I discovered the unfortunate landlord's wig,
and I lay there amused and astonished while he haughtily adjusted it
before the tiny triangle of glass nailed on the wall.
"Shame on you, Jimmy Burke, to wear a wig to cheat some honest Mohawk
out of his eight dollars!" I yawned, rubbing my eyes.
"Mohawks, is it? Now, God be good to the haythen whin James Burrke
takes the Currietown thrail----"
"You're exempt, you fat rascal!" I said, laughing; and the dumpy little
Irishman gave me a sly grin as he retied his stock and stood smoothing
down his rumpled wig before the glass.
"Och! divil a hair has he left on the wig o' me!" he grumbled. "Will ye
get up, sorr? 'Tis ten o'clock, lackin' some contrairy minutes, an' the
officers from the foort do be ragin' f'r lack o' soupaan----"
"Are they here?" I cried, leaping out of bed. "Why didn't you say so?
Where's my tub of water? Don't stand there grinning, I tell you. Say to
Colonel Willett I'll join him in a second."
The fat little landlord retreated crab-wise. I soused my clipped head
in the tub, took a spatter-bath like a wild duck in a hurry, clothed me
in my gay forest-dress, making no noise lest I wake Elsin, and ran down
the rough wooden stairs to the coffee-room, plump into a crowd of
strange officers, all blue and buff and gilt.
"Well, Carus!" came a cool, drawling voice from the company; and I saw
the tall, gaunt figure of Colonel Marinus Willett sauntering toward me,
his hawk's nose wrinkled into a whimsical smile.
"Colonel," I stammered, saluting, then sprang forward and grasped the
veteran's outstretched hand, asking his pardon for my tardiness.
"What a great big boy!" he commented, holding my hand in both of his,
and inspecting me from crown to heel. "Is this the lad I've heard
of--below--" His nose wrinkled again, and his grimly humorous mouth
twitched. "Carus, you've grown since I last saw you at the patroon's,
romping a reel with those rosy Dutch lassies from Vrooman's--eh? That's
well, my son; the best dancers were ever the best fighters! Look at Tim
Murphy! As for me, I never could learn to dance with you Valley
aristocrats. Carus, you should know my officers." And he mentioned
names with a kindly, informal precision characteristic of a gentleman
too great to follow conventions, too highly bred to ignore them. The
consequent compromise was, as I say, a delightfully formal informality
which reigned among his entourage, but never included himself, although
he apparently invited it. In this, I imagine, he resembled his
Excellency, and have heard others say so; but I do not know, for I
never saw his Excellency.
"Now, gentlemen," said Colonel Willett casually, as he seated himself
at the head of the table. And we sat down at the signal, I next to the
Colonel at his nod of invitation.
The fat little landlord, Burke, notorious for the speed with which he
fled from Sir John Johnson when that warrior-baronet raided Johnstown,
came bustling into the coffee-room like a fresh breeze from the Irish
coast, asking our pleasure in a brogue thick enough to season the
bubbling, steaming bowl of hasty-pudding he set before us a moment
later.
"Jimmy," said an officer, glancing up at him where he stood, thick legs
apart, hands clasped behind him, and jolly head laid on one side, "is
there any news of Sir John Johnson in these parts?"
"Faith," said Burke, with a toss of his head, "'tis little I bother
meself along wid the likes o' Sir John. Lave him poke his nose into the
Sacandagy an' dhrown there, bad cess to him! We've a thrick to match
his, an' wan f'r the pig!"
"I'm glad to know that, Jimmy," said another officer earnestly. "And if
that's the case. Captain Renault's Rangers might as well pack up and
move back to Albany."
"Sure, Captain dear," he said, turning to me, "'tis not f'r the likes
o' Jimmy Burke to say it, but there do be a fri'nd o' mine in the
Rangers, a blatherin', blarneyin', bog-runnin' lad they call Tim
Murphy. 'Tis f'r his sake I'd be glad to see the Rangers here--an'
ye'll not misjudge me, sorr, that Jimmy Burke is afeared o' Sir John
an' his red whippets!"
"Oh, no," I said gravely; "I'm quite ready to leave Johnstown to your
protection, Jimmy, and march my men back to-night--with Colonel
Willett's permission----"
"Sorra the day! Och, listen to him, Colonel dear!" exclaimed the
landlord, with an appealing glance at Willett. "Wud ye lave us now, wid
th' ould women an' childer huddled like catthle in the foort, an'
Walther Butler at Niagary an' Sir John on the Sacandagy! Sure, 'tis
foolin' ye arre, Captain dear--wid the foine ale I have below, an'
divil a customer--the town's that crazy wid fear o' Sir John! 'Tis not
f'r meself I shpake, sorr," he added airily, "but 'tis the jooty o' the
military f'r to projooce thraffic an' thrade an' the blessing of
prosperity at the p'int o' the bagnet, sorr."
"In that case," observed Willett, "you ought to stay, Carus. Burke
can't attend to his tavern and take time to chase Sir John back to the
lakes."
"Thrue f'r ye, sorr!" exclaimed Burke, with a twinkle in his gray eye.
"Where wud th' b'ys find a dhram, sorr, wid Jimmy Burke on a scout,
sorr, thrimmin' the Tories o' Mayfield, an' runnin' the Scotch loons
out o' Perth an' the Galways, glory be!"
He bustled out to fetch us a dish of pink clingstone peaches, grown in
the gardens planted by the great Sir William. Truly, Sir John had lost
much when he lost Johnson Hall; and now, like a restless ghost drawn
back to familiar places, he haunted the spot that his great father had
made to bloom like a rose in the wilderness. He was out there now, in
the sunshine and morning haze, somewhere, beyond the blue autumn mist
in the north--out there, disgraced, disinherited, shelterless, sullenly
brooding, and plotting murder with his motley mob of Cayugas and
painted renegades.
Colonel Willett rose and we all stood up, but he signaled those who had
not finished eating to resume their places, and laying a familiar hand
on my arm led me to the sunny bench outside the door where, at his nod,
I seated myself beside him. He drew a map from his breast-pocket and
studied in silence; I waited his pleasure.
The veteran seemed to have grown no older since I had last seen him
four years since--indeed, he had changed little as I remembered him
first, sipping his toddy at my father's house, and smiling his shrewd,
kindly, whimsical smile while I teased him to tell me of the French
war, and how he had captured Frontenac.
I was but seventeen years old when he headed that revolt in New York
City, and, single-handed, halted the British troops on Broad Street and
took away their baggage. I was nineteen when he led the sortie from
Stanwix. I had already taken my post in New York when he was serving
with his Excellency in the Jerseys and with Sullivan in the west.
Of all the officers who served on the frontier, Marinus Willett was the
only man who had ever held the enemy at check. Even Sullivan, returning
from his annihilation of Indian civilization, was followed by a cloud
of maddened savages and renegades that settled in his tracks,
enveloping the very frontier which, by his famous campaign, he had
properly expected to leave unharassed.
And now Marinus Willett was in command, with meager resources, indeed,
yet his personal presence on the Tryon frontier restored something of
confidence to those who still clung to the devastated region, sowing,
growing, garnering, and grinding the grain that the half-starved army
of the United States required to keep life within the gaunt rank and
file. West Point, Albany, Saratoga called for bread; and the men of
Tryon plowed and sowed and reaped, leaving their dead in every
furrow--swung their scythes under the Iroquois bullets, cut their
blood-wet hay in the face of ambush after ambush, stacked their
scorched corn and defended it from barn, shack, and window. With torch
and hatchet renegade and Iroquois decimated them; their houses kindled
into flame; their women and children, scalped and throats cut, were
hung over fences like dead game; twelve thousand farms lay tenantless;
by thousands the widows and orphans gathered at the blockhouses, naked,
bewildered, penniless. There remained in all Tryon County but eight
hundred militia capable of responding to a summons--eight hundred
desperate men to leave scythe and flail and grist-mill for their rifles
at the dread call to arms. Two dozen or more blockhouses, holding from
ten to half a hundred families each, were strung out between Stanwix
Fort and Schenectady; these, except for a few forts, formed the outer
line of the United States' bulwarks in the north; and this line Willett
was here to hold with the scattered handful of farmers and Rangers.
Yet, with these handfuls, before our arrival he had already cleaned out
Torlock; he had already charged through the flames of Currietown, and
routed the renegades at Sharon--leading the charge, cocked-hat in hand,
remarking to his Rangers that he could catch in his hat all the balls
that the renegades could fire. Bob McKean, the scout, fell that day;
nine men, bound to saplings, were found scalped; yet the handful under
Willett turned on Torlock and seized a hundred head of cattle for the
famishing garrison of Herkimer. Wawarsing, Cobleskill, and Little Falls
were ablaze; Willett's trail lay through their smoking cinders, his
hatchets hung in the renegades' rear, his bullets drove the raiders
headlong from Tekakwitha Spring to the Kennyetto, and his Oneidas clung
to the edges of invasion, watching, waiting, listening in the still
places for the first faint sound of that advance that meant the final
death-grapple. It was coming, surely coming: Sir John already harrying
the Sacandaga; Haldimand reported on the eastern lakes; Ross and the
Butlers expected from Niagara, and nothing now to prevent Clinton from
advancing up the Hudson from New York, skirting West Point, and giving
the entire north to the torch. This was what confronted Tryon County;
but the army needed grain, and we were there to glean what we might
between fitful storms, watching that solid, thunderous tempest
darkening the north from east to west, far as the eye could see.
Colonel Willett had lighted his clay pipe, and now, map spread across
his knees and mine, he leaned over, arms folded, smoking, and examining
the discolored and wrinkled paper.
"Where is Adriutha, Carus?" he drawled.
I pointed out the watercourse, traced in blue, showing him the ancient
site and the falls near by.
"And Carenay?"
Again I pointed.
"Oswaya?"
"Only tradition remains of that lost village," I said. "Even in the
Great Rite those who pronounce the name know nothing more than that it
once existed. It is so with Kayaderos and Danascara; nobody now knows
exactly where they were."
"And Thendara?"
"Thendara _was_, and _will be_, but is not. In the Great Rite of the
Iroquois that place where the first ceremony, which is called 'At the
wood's edge,' begins is called Thendara, to commemorate the ancient
place where first the Holder of Heaven talked face to face with the
League's founder, Hiawatha."
The hawk-faced veteran smoked and studied the map for a while; then he
removed the pipe from his mouth, and, in silence, traced with the
smoking stem a path. I watched him; he went back to the beginning and
traced the path again and yet again, never uttering a word; and
presently I began to comprehend him.
"Yes, sir," I said; "thus will the Long House strike the Oneidas--when
they strike."
"I have sent belts--as you suggested," observed Willett carelessly.
I was delighted, but made no comment; and presently he went on in his
drawling, easy manner: "I can account for Sir John, and I can hold him
on the Sacandaga; I can account for Haldimand only through the
cowardice or treachery of Vermont; but I can hold him, too, if he ever
dares to leave the lakes. For Sir Henry Clinton I do not care a damn;
like a headless chicken he tumbles about New York, seeing, hearing
nothing, and no mouth left to squawk with. His head is off; one of his
legs still kicks at Connecticut, t'other paddles aimlessly in the
Atlantic Ocean. But he's done for, Carus. Let his own blood cleanse him
for the plucking!"
The gaunt Colonel replaced his pipe between his teeth and gazed
meditatively into the north:
"But where's Walter Butler?" he mused.
"Is he not at Niagara, sir?" I asked.
Willett folded his map and shoved it into his breast-pocket. "That," he
said, "is what I want you to find out for me, Carus."
He wheeled around, facing me, his kindly face very serious:
"I have relieved you of your command, Carus, and have attached you to
my personal staff. There are officers a-plenty to take your Rangers
where I send them; but I know of only one man in Tryon County who can
do what is to be done at Thendara. Send on your belt to Sachems of the
Long House. Carus, you are a spy once more."
I had not expected it, now that the Oneidas had been warned. Chilled,
sickened at the thought of playing my loathsome role once more, bitter
disappointment left me speechless. I hung my head, feeling his keen
eyes upon me; I braced myself sullenly against the overwhelming rush of
repulsion surging up within me. My every nerve, every fiber quivered
for freedom to strike that blow denied me for four miserable years. Had
I not earned the right to face my enemies in the open? Had I not earned
the right to strike? Had I not waited--God! had I not waited?
Appalled, almost unmanned, I bowed my head still lower as the quick
tears of rage wet my lashes. They dried, unshed.
"Is there no chance for me?" I asked--"no chance for one honest blow?"
His kind eyes alone answered; and, like a school-boy, I sat there
rubbing my face, teeth clenched, to choke back the rebellious cry
swelling my hot throat.
"Give me an Oneida, then," I muttered. "I'll go."
"You are a good lad, Carus," he said gently. "I know how you feel."
I could not answer.
"You know," he said, "how many are called, how few chosen. You know
that in these times a man must sink self and stand ready for any
sacrifice, even the supreme and best."
He laid his hand on my shoulder: "Carus, I felt as you do now when his
Excellency asked me to leave the line and the five splendid New York
regiments just consolidated and given me to lead. But I obeyed; I gave
up legitimate ambition; I renounced hope of that advancement all
officers rightly desire; I left my New York regiments to come here to
take command of a few farmers and forest-runners. God and his
Excellency know best!"
I nodded, unable to speak.
"There is glory and preferment to be had in Virginia," he said; "there
are stars to be won at Yorktown, Carus. But those stars will never
glitter on this faded uniform of mine. So be it. Let us do our best,
lad. It's all one in the end."
I nodded.
"And so," he continued pleasantly, "I send you to Thendara. None knows
you for a partizan in this war. For four years you have been lost to
sight; and if any Iroquois has heard of your living in New York, he
must believe you to be a King's man. Your one danger is in answering
the Iroquois summons as an ensign of a nation marked for punishment.
How great that danger may be, you can judge better than I."
I thought for a while. The Canienga who had summoned me by belt could
not prove I was a partizan of the riflemen who escorted me. I might
have been absolutely non-partizan, traveling under escort of either
side that promised protection from those ghostly rovers who scalped
first and asked questions afterward.
The danger I ran as clan-ensign of a nation marked for punishment was
an unknown quantity to me. From the Canienga belt-bearer I had gathered
that there was no sanctuary for an Oneida envoy at Thendara; but what
protection an ensign of the Wolf Clan might expect, I could not be
certain of.
But there was one more danger. Suppose Walter Butler should appear to
sit in council as ensign of his mongrel clan?
"Colonel," I said, "there is one thing to be done, and, as there is
nobody else to accomplish this dog's work, I must perform it. I am
trying not to be selfish--not to envy those whose lines are fallen in
pleasant places--not to regret the happiness of battle which I have
never known--not to desire those chances for advancement and for glory
that--that all young men--crave----"
My voice broke, but I steadied it instantly.
"I had hoped one day to do a service which his Excellency could openly
acknowledge--a service which might, one day, permit him to receive me.
I have never seen him. I think, now, I never shall. But, as you say,
sir, ambitions like these are selfish, therefore they are petty and
unworthy. He does know best."
The Colonel nodded gravely, watching me, his unlighted pipe drooping in
his hand.
"There is one thing--before I go," I said. "My betrothed wife is with
me. May I leave her in your care, sir?"
"Yes, Carus."
"She is asleep in that room above--" I looked up at the closed
shutters, scarcely seeing them for the blinding rush of tears; yet
stared steadily till my eyes were dry and hot again, and my choked and
tense throat relaxed.
"I think," said the Colonel, "that she is safer in Johnstown Fort than
anywhere else just now. I promise you, Carus, to guard and cherish her
as though she were my own child. I may be called away--you understand
that!--but I mean to hold Johnstown Fort, and shall never be too far
from Johnstown to relieve it in event of siege. What can be done I will
do on my honor as a soldier. Are you content?"
"Yes."
He lowered his voice: "Is it best to see her before you start?"
I shook my head.
"Then pick your Oneida," he muttered. "Which one?"
"Little Otter. Send for him."
The Colonel leaned back on the bench and tapped at the outside of the
tavern window. An aide came clanking out, and presently hurried away
with a message to Little Otter to meet me at Butlersbury within the
hour, carrying parched corn and salt for three days' rations.
For a while we sat there, going over personal matters. Our sea-chests
were to be taken to the fort; my financial affairs I explained, telling
him where he might find my papers in case of accident to me. Then I
turned over to him my watch, what money I had of Elsin's, and my own.
"If I do not return," I said, "and if this frontier can not hold out,
send Miss Grey with a flag to New York. Sir Peter Coleville is kin to
her; and when he understands what danger menaces her he will defend her
to the last ditch o' the law. Do you understand, Colonel?"
"No, Carus, but I can obey."
"Then remember this: She must never be at the mercy of Walter Butler."
"Oh, I can remember that," he said drily.
For a few moments I sat brooding, head between my hands; then, of a
sudden impulse, I swung around and laid my heart bare to him--told him
everything in a breath--trembling, as a thousand new-born fears seized
me, chilling my blood.
"Good God!" I stammered, "it is not for myself I care now, Colonel! But
the thought of him--of her--together--I can not endure. I tell you, the
dread of this man has entered my very soul; there is terror at a hint
of him. Can I not stay, Colonel? Is there no way for me to stay? She is
so young, so alone----"
Hope died as I met his eye. I set my teeth and crushed speech into
silence.
"The welfare of a nation comes first," he said slowly.
"I know--I know--but----"
"All must sacrifice to that principle, Carus. Have not the men of New
York stood for it? Have not the men of Tryon given their all? I tell
you, the army shall eat, but the bread they munch is made from
blood-wet grain; and for every loaf they bake a life has been offered.
Where is the New Yorker who has not faced what you are facing? At the
crack of the ambushed rifle our people drop at the plow, and their
dying eyes look upon wife and children falling under knife and hatchet.
It must be so if the army is to eat and liberty live in this country we
dare call our own. And when the call sounds, we New Yorkers must go,
Carus. Our women know it, even our toddling children know it, God bless
them!--and they proudly take their chances--nay, they demand the
chances of a war that spares neither the aged nor the weak, neither
mother nor cradled babe, nor the hound at the door, nor the cattle, nor
any living thing in this red fury of destruction!"
He had risen, eyes glittering, face hardened into stone. "Go to your
betrothed and say good-by. You do not know her yet, I think."
"She is Canadienne," I said.
"She is what the man she loves is--if she honors him. His cause is
hers, his country hers, his God is her God!"
"Her heart is with neither side----"
"Her heart is with you! Shame to doubt her--if I read her eyes! Read
them, Carus!"
I wheeled, speechless; Elsin Grey stood before me, deadly pale.
After a moment she moved forward, laying her hand on my shoulder and
facing Colonel Willett with a smile. All color had fled from her face,
but neither lip nor voice quivered as she spoke:
"I think you do understand, sir. We Canadiennes yield nothing in
devotion to the women of New York. Where we love, we honor. What
matters it where the alarm sounds? We understand our lovers; we can
give them to the cause of freedom as well here in Tryon County as on
the plains of Abraham--can we not, my betrothed?" she said, looking
into my face; but her smile was heart-breaking.
"Child, child," said Willett, taking her free hand in both of his, "you
speak a silent language with your eyes that no man can fail to
understand."
"I failed," I said bitterly, as Willett kissed her hand, placed it in
mine, and, turning, entered the open door.
"And what blame, Carus?" she whispered. "What have I been to you but a
symbol of unbridled selfishness, asking all, giving nothing? How could
you know I loved you so dearly that I could stand aside to let you
pass? First I loved you selfishly, shamelessly; then I begged your
guilty love, offering mine in the passion of my ignorance and
bewilderment."
Her arm fell from my shoulder and nestled in mine, and we turned away
together under the brilliant autumn glory of the trees.
"That storm that tore me--ah, Carus--I had been wrecked without your
strong arm to bear me up!"
"It was you who bore me up, Elsin. How can I leave you now!"
"Why, Carus, our honor is involved."
"_Our_ honor!"
"Yes, dear, ours."
"You--you bid me go, Elsin?"
"If I bid you stay, what would avail except to prove me faithless to
you? How could I truly love you and counsel dishonor?"
White as a flower, the fixed smile never left her lips, nor did her
steady pace beside me falter, or knee tremble, or a finger quiver of
the little hand that lay within my own.
And then we fell silent, walking to and fro under the painted
maple-trees in Johnstown streets, seeing no one, heeding no one, until
the bell at the fort struck the hour. It meant the end.
We kissed each other once. I could not speak. My horse, led by Jack
Mount, appeared from the tavern stables; and we walked back to the inn
together.
Once more I took her in my arms; then she gently drew away and entered
the open door, hands outstretched as though blinded, feeling her
way--that was the last I saw of her, feeling her dark way alone into
the house.
Senses swimming, dumb, deafened by the raging, beating pulses hammering
in my brain, I reeled at a gallop into the sunny street, north, then
west, then north once more, tearing out into the Butlersbury road. A
gate halted me; I dismounted and dragged it open, then to horse again,
then another gate, then on again, hailed and halted by riflemen at the
cross-roads, which necessitated the summoning of my wits at last before
they would let me go.
Now riding through the grassy cart-road, my shoulders swept by the
fringing willows, I came at length to the Danascara, shining in the
sunlight, and followed its banks--the same banks from which so often in
happier days I had fished. At times I traveled the Tribes Hill road, at
times used shorter cuts, knowing every forest-trail as I did, and
presently entered the wood-road that leads from Caughnawaga church to
Johnstown. I was in Butlersbury; there was the slope, there the Tribes
Hill trail, there the stony road leading to that accursed house from
which the Butlers, father and son, some five years since, had gone
forth to eternal infamy.
And now, set in a circle of cleared land and ringed by the ancient
forests of the north, I saw the gray, weather-beaten walls of the
house. The lawns were overgrown; the great well-sweep shattered; the
locust-trees covered with grapevines--the cherry- and apple-trees to
the south broken and neglected. Weeds smothered the flower-gardens,
where here and there a dull-red poppy peered at me through withering
tangles; lilac and locust had already shed foliage too early blighted,
but the huge and forbidding maples were all aflame in their blood-red
autumn robes. Here the year had already begun to die; in the clear air
a faint whiff of decay came from the rotting heaps of leaves--decay,
ruin, and the taint of death; and, in the sad autumn stillness,
something ominous, something secret and sly--something of malice.
Seeing no sign of my Oneida, I walked my horse across the lawn and up
to the desolate row of windows. The shutters had been ripped off their
hinges; all within was bare and dark; dimly I made out the shadowy
walls of a hallway which divided the house into halves. By the light
which filtered through the soiled windows I examined room after room
from the outside, then, noiselessly, tried the door, but found it
bolted from within as well as locked from without. Either the Butlers
or the commissioners of sequestration must have crawled through a
window to do this. I prowled on, looking for the window they had used
as exit, examining the old house with a fascinated repugnance. The
clapboards were a foot wide, evidently fashioned with care and beaded
on the edges. The outside doors all opened outward; and I noted, with a
shudder of contempt, the "witch's half-moon," or lunette, in the bottom
of each door, which betrays the cowardly superstition of the man who
lived there. Such cat-holes are fashioned for haunted houses; the
specter is believed to crawl out through these openings, and then to be
kept out with a tarred rag stuffed into the hole--ghosts being unable
to endure tar. Faugh! If specters walk, the accursed house must be
alive with them--ghosts of the victims of old John Butler, wraiths
dripping red from Cherry Valley--children with throats cut; women with
bleeding heads and butchered bodies, stabbed through and through--and
perhaps the awful specter of Lieutenant Boyd, with eyes and nails
plucked out, and tongue cut off, bound to the stake and slowly roasting
to death, while Walter Butler watched the agony curiously, interested
and surprised to see a disemboweled man live so long!
Oh, yes, there might well be phantoms in this ghastly mansion; but they
had nothing to do with me; only the absent master of the house was any
concern of mine; and, finding at last the window I sought for, I shoved
it open and climbed to the sill, landing upon the floor inside, my
moccasined feet making no more sound than the padded toes of a
tree-cat.
Then to prowl and mouse, stepping cautiously, stooping warily to
examine dusty scraps lying on the bare boards--a dirty newspaper, an
old shoe with buckle missing, a broken pewter spoon--all the sordid
trifles that accent desolation. Once or twice I thought to make out
moccasin tracks in the dust, as though some furtive prowler had
anticipated me here, but the light filtering through the crusted panes
was meager and uncertain, and, after all, it mattered nothing to me.
The house was divided by a hallway; there were two rooms on either
side, all bare and empty save for scraps here and there, and in one
room the collapsed and dusty carcass of a rat. On the walls there was
nothing except a nail driven into the clay, which was crumbling between
the facing of whitewashed brick. From the heavy oaken timbers of the
wooden ceilings hung smutty banners of ancient cobwebs, stirring above
me as I moved. It was the very abomination of sinister desolation.
Some vague idea of finding something that might aid me--some scrap of
evidence I might chance on to kindle hope with--some neglected trifle
to damn him and proclaim this monstrous marriage void--it was this
instinct that led me into a house abhorred. Nothing I found, save, on
one foul window-pane, names, diamond-cut, scrawled again and again:
"Lyn," and "Cherry-Maid," repeated a score of times.
And long I lingered, pondering who had written it, and what it might
mean, and who was "Lyn." As for "Cherry-Maid," the name was used in the
False Faces rites; and at that terrific orgy held on the Kennyetto
before the battle of Oriskany, where the first split came in the walls
of the Long House, and where that hag-sorceress, Catrine Montour, had
failed to pledge the Oneidas to the war-post, the Cherry-Maid had taken
part. Indeed, some said that she was a daughter of the Huron witch; but
Jack Mount, who saw the rite, swore that the Cherry-Maid was but a
beautiful child, painted from brow to ankle----
Suddenly I thought of the hag's daughter as Carolyn. Carolyn? Lyn! By
heaven, the Cherry-Maid was Carolyn Montour, mistress of Walter Butler!
Here in bygone days she had scrawled her name--here her title. And
Walter Butler had been present at that frantic debauch where the False
Faces cringed to their prophetess, Magdalen Brant. Perhaps it was there
that this man had met his match in the lithe young animal whelped by
the Toad-Woman--this slim, lawless, depraved child, who had led the
False Faces in their gruesome rites and sacrifice!
I stared at the diamond scrawl; and before my eyes I seemed to see the
three fires burning, the clattering rows of wooden masks, the white
blankets of the sachems, the tawny, naked form of the Cherry-Maid,
seated between samphire and hazel, her pointed fingers on her hips, her
heavy hair veiling a laughing face, over which the infernal fire shadow
played.
Ah, it was well! Beast linked to beast--what need of priest in the
fierce mating of such creatures of the dusk? He was hers, and she his
by all laws of nature, and in the eternal fitness of things vast and
savage. They must live and breed in the half-light of forests; they
must perish as the sun follows the falling trees, creeping ever
inexorably westward.
Somberly brooding, I turned and descended into the cellar. There was
little light here, and I cared not to strike flint. Groping about I
touched with my foot remains of bottles of earthenware, then made my
way to the door again and began to ascend.
The stairway seemed steeper and more tortuous to me. As I climbed I
became uneasy at its length. Then, in a second, it flashed on me that I
had blundered upon a secret stairway[1] leading upward from the cellar.
At this same instant my head brushed the ceiling; I gave a gentle push,
and a trap-door lifted, admitting me to another flight of stairs, up
which I warily felt my way. This must end in another trap-door on the
second floor--I understood that--and began to reach upward, feeling
about blindly until my hands fell on a bolt. This I drew; it was not
rusty, and did not creak, and, as I slid it back, to my astonishment my
fingers grew wet and greasy. The bolt had been _recently oiled_!
[1] Evidences of this stairway still exist in the ancient house of
Walter Butler.
Now all alert as a gray wolf sniffing a strange trail that cuts his
own, I warily lifted the trap to a finger's breadth. The crack of light
dazzled me; gradually my blurred sight grew clearer; I saw a low,
oblong window under the eaves of the steep, pointed roof; and, through
it, the sunlight falling on the bare floor of a room all littered with
papers, torn letters, and tape-bound documents of every description.
Could these be the Butler papers? I had heard that all documents had
been seized by the commissioners after the father and son had fled. But
the honorable commissioners of sequestration had evidently never
suspected this stairway.
In spite of myself I started! _How_ had I, then, entered it? Somebody
must have mounted it before me, leaving the secret door open in the
cellar, and I, groping about, had chanced upon it. But whoever left it
open must have been acquainted with the house--an intimate here, if not
one of the family!
When had this unknown entered? Was any one here _now_? At the thought my
skin roughened as a dog bristles. Was I alone in this house?
Listening, motionless, nostrils dilated, every sense concentrated on
that narrow crack of light, I crouched there. Then, very gradually, I
raised the trap, higher, higher, laying it back against the upright of
white oak.
I was in a tiny room--a closet, lighted by a slit of a window.
Everywhere around me in the dust were small moccasin prints, pointing in
every direction. I could see no door in the wooden walls of the closet,
but I stepped out of the stair-well and leaned over, examining the
moccasin tracks, tracing them, until I found a spot where they led
straight up to the wall; and there were no returning tracks to be seen.
A chill crept over me; only a specter could pass through a solid wall.
The next moment I had bent, ear flattened to the wooden wainscot. _There
was something moving in the next room!_