MACLEAN TO THE RESCUE
Saunderson, the overseer, having laboriously written and signed a pass,
laid down the quill, wiped his inky forefinger upon his sleeve, and
gave the paper to the storekeeper, who sat idly by.
“Ye’ll remember that the store chiefly lacks in broadcloth of Witney,
frieze and camlet, and in women’s shoes, both silk and callimanco. And
dinna forget to trade with Alick Ker for three small swords, a chafing
dish, and a dozen mourning and hand-and-heart rings. See that you have
the skins’ worth. Alick’s an awfu’ man to get the upper hand of.”
“I’m thinking a MacLean should have small difficulty with a Ker,” said
the storekeeper dryly. “What I’m wanting to know is why I am saddled
with the company of Monsieur Jean Hugon.” He jerked his thumb toward
the figure of the trader standing within the doorway. “I do not like
the gentleman, and I’d rather trudge it to Williamsburgh alone.”
“Ye ken not the value of the skins, nor how to show them off,” answered
the other. “Wherefore, for the consideration of a measure of rum, he’s
engaged to help you in the trading. As for his being half Indian,
Gude guide us! It’s been told me that no so many centuries ago the
Highlandmen painted their bodies and went into battle without taking
advantage even of feathers and silk grass. One half of him is of the
French nobeelity; he told me as much himself. And the best of ye--sic
as the Campbells--are no better than that.”
He looked at MacLean with a caustic smile. The latter shrugged his
shoulders. “So long as you tie him neck and heels with a Campbell I
am content,” he answered. “Are you going? I’ll just bar the windows
and lock the door, and then I’ll be off with yonder copper cadet of a
French house. Good-day to you. I’ll be back to-night.”
“Ye’d better,” said the overseer, with another widening of his thin
lips. “For myself, I bear ye no ill-will; for my grandmither--rest her
soul!--came frae the north, and I aye thought a Stewart better became
the throne than a foreign-speaking body frae Hanover. But if the store
is not open the morn I’ll raise hue and cry, and that without wasting
time. I’ve been told ye’re great huntsmen in the Highlands; if ye
choose to turn red deer yourself, I’ll give ye a chase, _and trade ye
down, man, and track ye down_.”
MacLean half turned from the window. “I have hunted the red deer,” he
said, “in the land where I was born, and which I shall see no more, and
I have been myself hunted in the land where I shall die. I have run
until I have fallen, and I have felt the teeth of the dogs. Were God
to send a miracle--which he will not do--and I were to go back to the
glen and the crag and the deep birch woods, I suppose that I would hunt
again, would drive the stag to bay, holloing to my hounds, and thinking
the sound of the horns sweet music in my ears. It is the way of the
earth. Hunter and hunted, we make the world and the pity of it.”
Setting to work again, he pushed to the heavy shutters. “You’ll find
them open in the morning,” he said, “and find me selling,--selling
clothing that I may not wear, wine that I may not drink, powder
and shot that I may not spend, swords that I may not use; and
giving,--giving pride, manhood, honor, heart’s blood”--
He broke off, shot to the bar across the shutters, and betook himself
in silence to the other window, where presently he burst into a fit
of laughter. The sound was harsh even to savagery. “Go your ways,
Saunderson,” he said. “I’ve tried the bars of the cage; they’re too
strong. Stop on your morning round, and I’ll give account of my
trading.”
The overseer gone, the windows barred, and the heavy door shut and
locked behind him, MacLean paused upon the doorstep to look down upon
his appointed companion. The trader, half sitting, half reclining upon
a log, was striking at something with the point of his hunting-knife,
lightly, delicately, and often. The something was a lizard, about
which, as it lay in the sunshine upon the log, he had wrought a pen of
leafy twigs. The creature, darting for liberty this way and that, was
met at every turn by the steel, and at every turn suffered a new wound.
MacLean looked; then bent over and with a heavy stick struck the thing
out of its pain.
“There’s a time to work and a time to play, Hugon,” he said coolly.
“Playtime’s over now. The sun is high, and Isaac and the oxen must have
the skins well-nigh to Williamsburgh. Up with you!”
Hugon rose to his feet, slid his knife into its sheath, and announced
in good enough English that he was ready. He had youth, the slender,
hardy, perfectly moulded figure of the Indian, a coloring and a
countenance that were not of the white and not of the brown. When
he went a-trading up the river, past the thickly settled country,
past the falls, past the French town which his Huguenot father had
helped to build, into the deep woods and to the Indian village
whence had strayed his mother, he wore the clothing that became the
woods,--beaded moccasins, fringed leggings, hunting-shirt of deerskin,
cap of fur,--looked his part and played it well. When he came back to
an English country, to wharves and stores, to halls and porches of
great houses and parlors of lesser ones, to the streets and ordinaries
of Williamsburgh, he pulled on jack boots, shrugged himself into a
coat with silver buttons, stuck lace of a so-so quality at neck and
wrists, wore a cocked hat and a Blenheim wig, and became a figure alike
grotesque and terrible. Two thirds of the time his business caused
him to be in the forests that were far away; but when he returned to
civilization, to stare it in the face and brag within himself, “I am
lot and part of what I see!” he dwelt at the crossroads ordinary, drank
and gamed with Paris the schoolmaster and Darden the minister, and
dreamed (at times) of Darden’s Audrey.
The miles to Williamsburgh were long and sunny, with the dust thick
beneath the feet. Warm and heavy, the scented spring possessed the
land. It was a day for drowsing in the shade: for them who must needs
walk in the sunshine, languor of thought overtook them, and sparsity of
speech. They walked rapidly, step with step, their two lean and sinewy
bodies casting the same length of shadow; but they kept their eyes upon
the long glare of white dust, and told not their dreams. At a point in
the road where the storekeeper saw only confused marks and a powdering
of dust upon the roadside bushes, the half-breed announced that there
had been that morning a scuffle in a gang of negroes; that a small man
had been thrown heavily to the earth, and a large man had made off
across a low ditch into the woods; that the overseer had parted the
combatants, and that some one’s back had bled. No sooner was this piece
of clairvoyance aired than he was vexed that he had shown a hall-mark
of the savage, and hastily explained that life in the woods, such as a
trader must live, would teach any man--an Englishman, now, as well as a
Frenchman--how to read what was written on the earth. Farther on, when
they came to a miniature glen between the semblance of two hills, down
which, in mockery of a torrent, brabbled a slim brown stream, MacLean
stood still, gazed for a minute, then, whistling, caught up with his
companion, and spoke at length upon the subject of the skins awaiting
them at Williamsburgh.
The road had other travelers than themselves. At intervals a cloud of
dust would meet or overtake them, and out of the windows of coach or
chariot or lighter chaise faces would glance at them. In the thick dust
wheels and horses’ hoofs made no noise, the black coachmen sat still
upon the boxes, the faces were languid with the springtime. A moment
and all were gone. Oftener there passed a horseman. If he were riding
the planter’s pace, he went by like a whirlwind, troubling only to
curse them out of his path; if he had more leisure, he threw them a
good-morning, or perhaps drew rein to ask this or that of Hugon. The
trader was well known, and was an authority upon all matters pertaining
to hunting or trapping. The foot passengers were few, for in Virginia
no man walked that could ride, and on a morn of early May they that
walked were like to be busy in the fields. An ancient seaman, lame and
vagabond, lurched beside them for a while, then lagged behind; a witch,
old and bowed and bleared of eye, crossed their path; and a Sapony
hunter, with three wolves’ heads slung across his shoulder, slipped
by them on his way to claim the reward decreed by the Assembly. At a
turn of the road they came upon a small ordinary, with horses fastened
before it, and with laughter, oaths, and the rattling of dice issuing
from the open windows. The trader had money; the storekeeper had none.
The latter, though he was thirsty, would have passed on; but Hugon
twitched him by the sleeve, and producing from the depths of his great
flapped pocket a handful of crusadoes, écues, and pieces of eight,
indicated with a flourish that he was prepared to share with his less
fortunate companion.
They drank standing, kissed the girl who served them, and took to the
road again. There were no more thick woods, the road running in a blaze
of sunshine past clumps of cedars and wayside tangles of blackberry,
sumac, and elder. Presently, beyond a group of elms, came into sight
the goodly college of William and Mary, and, dazzling white against the
blue, the spire of Bruton church.
Within a wide pasture pertaining to the college, close to the roadside
and under the boughs of a vast poplar, half a score of students were
at play. Their lithe young bodies were dark of hue and were not
overburdened with clothing; their countenances remained unmoved,
without laughter or grimacing; and no excitement breathed in the voices
with which they called one to another. In deep gravity they tossed a
ball, or pitched a quoit, or engaged in wrestling. A white man, with a
singularly pure and gentle face, sat upon the grass at the foot of the
tree, and watched the studious efforts of his pupils with an approving
smile.
“Wildcats to purr upon the hearth, and Indians to go to school!” quoth
MacLean. “Were you taught here, Hugon, and did you play so sadly?”
The trader, his head held very high, drew out a large and bedizened
snuffbox, and took snuff with ostentation. “My father was of a great
tribe--I would say a great house--in the country called France,” he
explained, with dignity. “Oh, he was of a very great name indeed! His
blood was--what do you call it?--_blue_. I am the son of my father:
I am a Frenchman. _Bien_! My father dies, having always kept me with
him at Monacan-Town; and when they have laid him full length in the
ground, Monsieur le Marquis calls me to him. ‘Jean,’ says he, and his
voice is like the ice in the stream, ‘Jean, you have ten years, and
your father--may _le bon Dieu_ pardon his sins!--has left his wishes
regarding you and money for your maintenance. To-morrow Messieurs de
Sailly and de Breuil go down the river to talk of affairs with the
English Governor. You will go with them, and they will leave you at the
Indian school which the English have built near to the great college
in their town of Williamsburgh. There you will stay, learning all that
Englishmen can teach you, until you have eighteen years. Come back to
me then, and with the money left by your father you shall be fitted out
as a trader. Go!’ ... Yes, I went to school here; but I learned fast,
and did not forget the things I learned, and I played with the English
boys--there being no scholars from France--on the other side of the
pasture.”
He waved his hand toward an irruption of laughing, shouting figures
from the north wing of the college. The white man under the tree had
been quietly observant of the two wayfarers, and he now rose to his
feet, and came over to the rail fence against which they leaned.
“Ha, Jean Hugon!” he said pleasantly, touching with his thin white hand
the brown one of the trader. “I thought it had been my old scholar!
Canst say the belief and the Commandments yet, Jean? Yonder great
fellow with the ball is Meshawa,--Meshawa that was a little, little
fellow when you went away. All your other playmates are gone,--though
you did not play much, Jean, but gloomed and gloomed because you must
stay this side of the meadow with your own color. Will you not cross
the fence and sit awhile with your old master?”
As he spoke he regarded with a humorous smile the dusty glories of his
sometime pupil, and when he had come to an end he turned and made as if
to beckon to the Indian with the ball. But Hugon drew his hand away,
straightened himself, and set his face like a flint toward the town.
“I am sorry, I have no time to-day,” he said stiffly. “My friend and I
have business in town with men of my own color. My color is white. I do
not want to see Meshawa or the others. I have forgotten them.”
He turned away, but a thought striking him his face brightened, and
plunging his hand into his pocket he again brought forth his glittering
store. “Nowadays I have money,” he said grandly. “It used to be that
Indian braves brought Meshawa and the others presents, because they
were the sons of their great men. I was the son of a great man, too;
but he was not Indian and he was lying in his grave, and no one brought
me gifts. Now I wish to give presents. Here are ten coins, master. Give
one to each Indian boy, the largest to Meshawa.”
The Indian teacher, Charles Griffin by name, looked with a whimsical
face at the silver pieces laid arow upon the top rail. “Very well,
Jean,” he said. “It is good to give of thy substance. Meshawa and the
others will have a feast. Yes, I will remember to tell them to whom
they owe it. Good-day to you both.”
The meadow, the solemnly playing Indians, and their gentle teacher
were left behind, and the two men, passing the long college all astare
with windows, the Indian school, and an expanse of grass starred with
buttercups, came into Duke of Gloucester Street. Broad, unpaved, deep
in dust, shaded upon its ragged edges by mulberries and poplars, it
ran without shadow of turning from the gates of William and Mary to
the wide sweep before the Capitol. Houses bordered it, flush with the
street or set back in fragrant gardens; other and narrower ways opened
from it; half way down its length wide greens, where the buttercups
were thick in the grass, stretched north and south. Beyond these greens
were more houses, more mulberries and poplars, and finally, closing the
vista, the brick façade of the Capitol.
The two from Fair View plantation kept their forest gait; for the
trader was in a hurry to fulfill his part of the bargain, which was
merely to exhibit and value the skins. There was an ordinary in
Nicholson Street that was to his liking. Sailors gamed there, and other
traders, and half a dozen younger sons of broken gentlemen. It was as
cleanly dining in its chief room as in the woods, and the aqua vitæ, if
bad, was cheap. In good humor with himself, and by nature lavish with
his earnings, he offered to make the storekeeper his guest for the day.
The latter curtly declined the invitation. He had bread and meat in his
wallet, and wanted no drink but water. He would dine beneath the trees
on the market green, would finish his business in town, and be half way
back to the plantation while the trader--being his own man, with no
fear of hue and cry if he were missed--was still at hazard.
This question settled, the two kept each other company for several
hours longer, at the end of which time they issued from the store at
which the greater part of their business had been transacted, and
went their several ways,--Hugon to the ordinary in Nicholson Street,
and MacLean to his dinner beneath the sycamores on the green. When
the frugal meal had been eaten, the latter recrossed the sward to the
street, and took up again the round of his commissions.
It was after three by the great clock in the cupola of the Capitol when
he stood before the door of Alexander Ker, the silversmith, and found
entrance made difficult by the serried shoulders of half a dozen young
men standing within the store, laughing, and making bantering speeches
to some one hidden from the Highlander’s vision. Presently an appealing
voice, followed by a low cry, proclaimed that the some one was a woman.
MacLean had a lean and wiry strength which had stood him in good stead
upon more than one occasion in his checkered career. He now drove an
arm like a bar of iron between two broadcloth coats, sent the wearers
thereof to right and left, and found himself one of an inner ring
and facing Mistress Truelove Taberer, who stood at bay against the
silversmith’s long table. One arm was around the boy who had rowed her
to the Fair View store a week agone; with the other she was defending
her face from the attack of a beribboned gallant desirous of a kiss.
The boy, a slender, delicate lad of fourteen, struggled to free himself
from his sister’s restraining arm, his face white with passion and his
breath coming in gasps. “Let me go, Truelove!” he commanded. “If I am a
Friend, I am a man as well! Thou fellow with the shoulder knots, thee
shall pay dearly for thy insolence!”
Truelove tightened her hold. “Ephraim, Ephraim! If a man compel thee to
go with him a mile, thee is to go with him twain; if he take thy cloak,
thee is to give him thy coat also; if he--Ah!” She buried her profaned
cheek in her arm and began to cry, but very softly.
Her tormentors, flushed with wine and sworn to obtain each one a kiss,
laughed more loudly, and one young rake, with wig and ruffles awry,
lurched forward to take the place of the coxcomb who had scored.
Ephraim wrenched himself free, and making for this gentleman might have
given or received bodily injury, had not a heavy hand falling upon his
shoulder stopped him in mid-career.
“Stand aside, boy,” said MacLean, “This quarrel’s mine by virtue of my
making it so. Mistress Truelove, you shall have no further annoyance.
Now, you Lowland cowards that cannot see a flower bloom but you wish to
trample it in the mire, come taste the ground yourself, and be taught
that the flower is out of reach!”
As he spoke he stepped before the Quakeress, weaponless, but with his
eyes like steel. The half dozen spendthrifts and ne’er-do-weels whom he
faced paused but long enough to see that this newly arrived champion
had only his bare hands, and was, by token of his dress, undoubtedly
their inferior, before setting upon him with drunken laughter and the
loudly avowed purpose of administering a drubbing. The one that came
first he sent rolling to the floor. “Another for Hector!” he said
coolly.
The silversmith, ensconced in safety behind the table, wrung his hands.
“Sirs, sirs! Take your quarrel into the street! I’ll no have fighting
in my store. What did ye rin in here for, ye Quaker baggage? Losh! did
ye ever see the like of that! Here, boy, ye can get through the window.
Rin for the constable! Rin, I tell ye, or there’ll be murder done!”
A gentleman who had entered the store unobserved drew his rapier, and
with it struck up a heavy cane which was in the act of descending for
the second time upon the head of the unlucky Scot. “What is all this?”
he asked quietly. “Five men against one,--that is hardly fair play. Ah,
I see there were six; I had overlooked the gentleman on the floor, who,
I hope, is only stunned. Five to one,--the odds are heavy. Perhaps I
can make them less so.” With a smile upon his lips, he stepped backward
a foot or two until he stood with the weaker side.
Now, had it been the constable who so suddenly appeared upon the scene,
the probabilities are that the fight, both sides having warmed to it,
would, despite the terrors of the law, have been carried to a finish.
But it was not the constable; it was a gentleman recently returned from
England, and become in the eyes of the youth of Williamsburgh the glass
of fashion and the mould of form. The youngster with the shoulder knots
had copied color and width of ribbon from a suit which this gentleman
had worn at the Palace; the rake with the wig awry, who passed for a
wit, had done him the honor to learn by heart portions of his play, and
to repeat (without quotation marks) a number of his epigrams; while
the pretty fellow whose cane he had struck up practiced night and
morning before a mirror his bow and manner of presenting his snuffbox.
A fourth ruffler desired office, and cared not to offend a prospective
Councilor. There was rumor, too, of a grand entertainment to be given
at Fair View; it was good to stand well with the law, but it was
imperative to do so with Mr. Marmaduke Haward. Their hands fell; they
drew back a pace, and the wit made himself spokesman. Roses were rare
so early in the year; for him and his companions, they had but wished
to compliment those that bloomed in the cheeks of the pretty Quakeress.
This servant fellow, breathing fire like a dragon, had taken it upon
himself to defend the roses,--which likely enough were grown for
him,--and so had been about to bring upon himself merited chastisement.
However, since it was Mr. Marmaduke Haward who pleaded for him--A full
stop, a low bow, and a flourish. “Will Mr. Haward honor me? ’Tis right
Macouba, and the box--if the author of ‘The Puppet Show’ would deign to
accept it”--
“Rather to change with you, sir,” said the other urbanely, and drew out
his own chased and medallioned box.
The gentleman upon the floor had now gotten unsteadily to his feet. Mr.
Haward took snuff with each of the six; asked after the father of one,
the brother of another; delicately intimated his pleasure in finding
the noble order of Mohocks, that had lately died in London, resurrected
in Virginia; and fairly bowed the flattered youths out of the store. He
stood for a moment upon the threshold watching them go triumphantly,
if unsteadily, up the street; then turned to the interior of the store
to find MacLean seated upon a stool, with his head against the table,
submitting with a smile of pure content to the ministrations of the
dove-like mover of the late turmoil, who with trembling fingers was
striving to bind her kerchief about a great cut in his forehead.