Complete weird tales of.., p.109
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 109
Now to be hectored and questioned by Sir William like a sniffling lad with one eye on the birch and the other on Mr. Butler, did not please me. Moreover, the others were looking on — Esk with ink on his nose, Peter in tears, a-licking his lump of spruce, and that wild-cat thing, Silver Heels —
With every question of Sir William I felt I was losing caste among them. Besides, there was Mr. Butler with his silent, deathly laugh — a laugh that never reached his eyes — yellow, changeless eyes, round as a bird’s.
Slap came the whip on the polished boot-tops, and Sir William was at it again with his gods and goddesses:
“Who carried off Proserpine? Eh?”
I looked sullenly at Esk, then at Peter, who put out his tongue at me. I had little knowledge of mythology beyond what concerned that long-legged goddess who loved hunting — as I did.
“Who carried off Proserpine?” repeated Sir William. “Come now, you should know that; come now — a likely lass, Proserpine, out in the bush pulling cowslips, bless her little fingers — when — ho! — up pops — eh? — who, lad, who in Heaven’s name?”
“Plato!” I muttered at hazard.
“What!” bawled Sir William.
I felt for my underlip and got it between my teeth, and for a space not another word would I speak, although that hollow roar began to sound in Sir William’s voice which always meant a scene. His whip, too, went slap-slap! on his boots, like the tail of a big dog rapping its ribs.
He was perhaps a violent man, Sir William, yet none outside of his own family ever suspected it or do now believe it, he having so perfect a control over himself when he chose. And I often think that his outbursts towards us were all pretence, and to test his own capacity for temper lest he had lost it in a long lifetime of self-control. At all events, none of us ever were the worse for his roaring, although it frightened us when very young; but we soon came to understand that it was as harmless as summer thunder.
“Come, sir! Come, Mr. Cardigan!” said Sir William, grimly. “Out with the gentleman’s name — d’ye hear?”
It was the first time in my life that Sir William had spoken to me as Mr. Cardigan. It might have pleased me had I not seen Mr. Butler sneer.
I glared at Mr. Butler, whose face became shadowy and loose, without expression, without life, save for the fixed stare of those round eyes.
Slap! went Sir William’s whip on his boots.
“Damme!” he shouted, in a passion, “who carried off that slut Proserpine?”
“The Six Nations, for aught I know!” I muttered, disrespectfully.
Sir William’s face went redder than his coat; but, as it was ever his habit when affronted, he stood up very straight and still; and that tribute of involuntary silence which was always paid to him at such moments, we paid, sitting awed and quiet as mice.
“Turn the children free, Captain Butler,” said Sir William, in a low voice.
Mr. Butler flung back the door. The children followed him, Esk bestowing a wink upon me, Peter grinning and toeing in like a Devon duck, and that wild-cat thing, Silver Heels —
“You need not wait, Captain Butler,” said Sir William, politely.
Mr. Butler retired, leaving the door swinging. Out in the dark hallway I fancied I could still see his shallow eyes shining. I may have been mistaken. But all men know now that Walter Butler hath eyes that see as well by dark as by the light of the sun; and none know it so well as the people of New York Province and of Tryon County.
“Michael,” said Sir William, “go to the slate.”
I walked across the dusty school-room.
“Chalk!” shouted Sir William, irritated by my lagging steps.
I picked up a lump of chalk, balancing it in my palm as boys do a pebble in a sling.
Something in my eyes may have infuriated Sir William.
The next moment he had me by the arm, then by the collar, 7 whip whistling like the chimney wind — and whistling quite as idly, for the blow never fell.
I freed myself; he made no effort to hold me.
“Keep your lash for your hounds!” I stammered.
He did not seem to hear me, but I planted myself in a corner and cried out that he dare not lay his whip on me, which was a shameful thing to taunt him with, for he had promised me never to lay rod to me; and I knew, as all the world knows, that Sir William Johnson had never broken his word to man or savage.
But still I faced him, now hurling safe defiance, now muttering revenge, until the scornful rebuke in his eyes began to shame me into silence. Tingling already with self-contempt, I dropped my head a little, not so low but what I could see Sir William’s bulk motionless before me.
Presently he said, as though to himself: “If the boy’s a coward, no man can lay the sin to me.”
“I am not a coward!” I burst out, all a-quiver again, “and I ask your pardon, sir, for daring you to lay whip on me, — knowing your promise!”
Sir William scowled at me.
“To prove it,” I went on, desperately, still trembling at the word “coward,” “I will give you leave to drive a fish-hook through my hand and cut it out with your knife; and I’ll laugh at the pain — as did that Mohawk lad when you cut the pike-hook out of his hand!”
“What the devil have I to do with your fish-hook and your Mohawks!” shouted Sir William, with a hearty oath.
Mortified, I shrank back while he fumed and cracked his whip and swore I was doomed to folly and a most vicious future.
“You assume the airs of a man,” he roared— “you with your sixteen unbirched years — you with your gross ignorance and grosser impudence! A vicious lad, a bad, undutiful, sullen lad, ever at odds with the others, never diligent save with the fishing-rod — a lazy, quarrelsome rustic, a swaggering, forest-running fellow, without the polish or the presence of a gentleman’s son! Shame on you!”
I set my teeth and shut both eyes, opening one, however, when I heard him move.
“I’ll polish you yet!” he said, with an oath; “I’ll polish you, and I’ll temper you like the edge on a Mohawk hatchet.”
“One red belt,” I added, impudently, meaning that I defied him.
“Which you will cover with a white belt before the fires in this hearth are dead,” he answered, gulping down the disrespect.
He laid his heavy hand on the door, then, turning, he bade me write with the chalk on the slate the history of Proserpine in verse, and await his further pleasure.
Sir William had shut the school-room door upon me. I listened. Had he locked it I should have kicked the panelling out into the hallway.
Standing there alone in the school-room beside the great slate, I read in dull anger the names of those who, tasks ended, were now free of the hateful place; here Esk had left his name above his sum, all smears; here fat Peter had written seven times, “David did die and so must I.”
With a bit of buckskin I dusted these scrawls from the slate, slowly, for I was not yet of a mind to begin my task.
I opened the window behind me. A sweet spring wind was blowing. Putting up my nose to scent it, I saw the sky bluer than a heron’s egg, and a little white cloud a-sailing up there all alone.
That year the snow had gone out in April, and the same day the blue-birds flew into the sheep-fold. Now, on this second day of May, robins were already running over the ground below the school-room window, a-tilting for worms like jack-snipes along the creek.
Folding my arms to lean on the sill, I could see a corner of the northern block-house, with a soldier standing guard below in the sunshine, and I peppered him well with spit-balls, he being a friend of mine.
His mystified anger brought but temporary pleasure to me. Behind me lay that villanous slate, and my task to deal with the ravishment of that silly creature, Proserpine — and that, too, in verse! Had it been my long-legged Diana with her view-halloo and her hounds and shooting her arrows like a Huron squaw from the lakes! But no! — my business lay with a puny, cowslip-pulling maid who had strayed from the stockade and got her deserts, too, for aught I know.
Leaning there in the breezy casement I tried to forget the jade, attentively observing the birds and the young fruit-trees, Sir William’s pride. Now that the snow had melted I could see where mice, working under the crust in midwinter, had fatally girdled two young apple-trees; and I was sorry, loving apples as I do.
For a while my mind was occupied in devising a remedy against girdling; then the distant sparkle of the river caught my eye, and straightway my thoughts slipped into their natural channel, smoothly as the river flowed there in the sunshine; and I laid my plans for the taking of that bull-trout who had so grossly deceived and flouted me the past year — ay, not only me, but also that master of the craft, Sir William himself.
Thinking of Sir William, my lagging thoughts drifted back again to my desk. It madded me to pine here, making rhymes, while outside the sweet wind whispered: “Come out, Michael — come out into the green delight!”
Now Sir William had bidden me, not only to write my verses, but also to bide here awaiting his good pleasure. That meant he would return by-and-by. I had no stomach for further quarrels. Besides, I was ashamed of my disrespect and temper, and indeed, selfish, idle beast that I was, I did truly love Sir William because I knew he was the greatest man of our times — and because he loved me.
Resolved at last to accomplish some verses as proof of a contrite and diligent spirit, I set to work; and this is what I made:
“Proserpine did roam the hills,
Intent on culling daffydills;
Alas, in gleeful girlish sport,
She wandered too far from the fort,
Forgetting that no belt of peace,
Bound the people of Pluto from war to cease;
Alas, old Pluto lay in wait,
To ambush all who stayed out late;
And with a dreadful war-whoop he
Ran after the doomed Proserpine—”
Absorbed in my task, and, moreover, considerably affected by the piteous plight of the maid, I stepped back from the slate and for a moment conceived a generous idea of introducing 10 somebody to rescue Proserpine and leave Pluto damaged — perhaps scalped. Reflection, however, dissuaded me from such a liberty, not that I found the anachronism at all discordant, for, living all my life in a family where Indians were oftener seen than white men, my hazy notions concerning classic myths were inextricably mixed with the reality of my own life, and were also gayly coloured by the legends I learned from my red neighbours. So, lazy dunce that I was, with but a fraction of my attention fixed on my tasks, mythology to me was but a Græco-Mohawk medley of jumbled fables, interesting only when they concerned war or the chase.
Still I did not feel at liberty to rescue Proserpine in my verses or plump a war-arrow into Pluto. Besides I knew it would enrage Sir William.
As I stood there, breathing hard, resolved to finish the wretched maiden quickly and let the metre go a-limping, behind me I heard the door stealthily open, and I knew that long-legged wild-cat thing, Silver Heels, had crept in, her moccasins making no noise.
I pretended not to notice her, knowing she had come to taunt me; and, for a space, she stood behind me, very still. Clearly, she was reading my verses, and I became angry. Not to show it, I made out to whistle and to draw a picture of a fish on the slate. Then she knew I had seen her and laughed hatefully.
“Oh,” said I, “if there is somebody come a-prying, it must be Silver Heels!” And I turned around, pretending amazement at the justness of my hazard.
“You saw me,” she answered, disdainfully.
“It is your hour for the stocks,” I hinted.
“I won’t go,” she retorted.
To secure that grace of carriage and elegance of presence necessary for a young lady of quality, and to straighten her back, which truly was as straight as a pine, Sir William and Mistress Molly were accustomed to strap her to a pine plank and lock her in the stocks for an hour at noon, forbidding Peter, Esk, and me to tickle the soles of her feet.
It was noon now; I could hear the guard changing at the north block-house, tramp! tramp! tramp! across the stony way.
“If you don’t go to the stocks now,” I said, “you’ll be sorry when you do go.”
“If you tickle my feet, you great booby, I’ll tell Sir William,” she retorted, balancing defiantly from one heel to the other.
“Will you go, Silver Heels?” I insisted.
“My name isn’t Silver Heels,” she observed, still coolly tilting back and forth on heels and toes. “Call me by my right name and perhaps I’ll go — and perhaps I won’t. So there, Mr. Micky Dunce!”
“If I call you Felicity Warren, will you go?” I inquired cautiously.
“There! you have called me Felicity Warren!” she cried in triumph.
“I didn’t,” said I, in a temper; “I only said that there was such a person. But you are not that person! Anyway, you toe in like a Mohawk. Anyway, you’re half wild-cat, half Mohawk.”
“It’s a lie!” she flashed; “I’m all white to the bones of my body!”
It was true. Indeed, she was kin to Sir William and niece to Sir Peter Warren, but, to torment her, we feigned to believe her one of Mistress Molly’s brood, half Mohawk; and it madded her. Besides, had not the Mohawks dubbed her Silver Heels, a year ago, when, with naked flying feet, she had beaten us all in the foot-race before Sir William and half the people of the Six Nations?
The prize had been a Barlow jack-knife, which, before the race, I had looked upon as mine. Besides, I had rashly given my old knife to Esk, and that left me without a blade to notch whistles.
“You are a Mohawk,” I said, resentfully; “also you are a cat-child beneath notice. When you are hungry you cry, ‘Miau! Eso cautfore!’ — like Peter.”
“I don’t!” she said, stamping her moccasin.
“Anyway,” said I, disdaining to torment her further, “the guard is changed these ten minutes, and Sir William will come to find you here a-prying. Esogee cadagcariax,” I added, incautiously.
“Who is Mohawk, now!” she cried, clapping her hands. 12 “Bah, Mister Micky, it is spoon-meat you require to make you run the faster after jack-knives!”
This outrageous taunt ruffled me, the more for her laughter. I attempted to hold my head in the air and look down at the presumptuous child, but it appeared she had grown very fast in the past months since the race, and I was disturbed to find her eyes already on a straight line with mine, though she was but fifteen and I sixteen.
“I’m as high as you,” she said.
“I can jump and touch the ceiling,” said I; and did so.
She strove in vain, then called me dunce, and vowed what brains I had were in my feet. For that, and because she pushed me, I seized the chalk and wrote high on the slate:
“Silver Heels is Mohock she toes in like ducks.”
She caught up the buckskin to wipe out the taunt, jostling me till the ferret in my pocket jumped out and ran round and round the room.
I jostled her; then she gave me a blow and a quick shove, whereupon I stumbled, pulling her to the floor to rub her face with chalk. She twisted and turned, kicking and striking while I rubbed chalk into her skin, till of a sudden she coiled up and bit me clean through the hand.
I was on my feet with a bound; she also, all white in the face and her eyes aflame.
The blood began welling up, running into my palm and along the fingers to the floor. At that same instant I heard the door of the nursery open, and I knew that Sir William was coming through the hall to the school-room.
From instinct I thrust my wounded hand into my breeches-pocket.
“Don’t tell!” whispered Silver Heels, in a fright; “don’t tell — and here is the jack-knife.”
She thrust it into my right hand, then sped across the floor to the open window, and over the sill, dropping light as a cat on the grass below.
My first impulse was to follow her and give her such a spank as Mistress Molly administered the day she trounced her for pushing Peter into the creek. However, it was already too late; Sir William came quickly along the hall, and I had scarce time to step to the slate when he marched in.
Sir William had changed his clothing for the buckskin hunting-shirt and breeches which he was accustomed to wear when angling. He carried, too, that light, seasoned rod, fashioned for him by Thayendanegea, and on his bosom he wore a bouquet of gayly coloured feather-flies, made by Mistress Molly during the winter.
He approached the slate whereon my verses stared white and unfinished; and at first his brows knitted and he said, “Fudge, fudge, fudge!” Then of a sudden he sat down on the bench, clapping his hand to his brow.
“Oh Lord!” said he, and fell a-laughing, while I, hot, ashamed, and a little dizzy, my breeches-pocket being full of blood, gnawed my lips and glowered askance.
“The Lord’s will be done,” said he, taking breath. “Who am I to ordain, when He who fashioned yon tow-head designed it to hold neither Latin nor the classics?”
“It pleases you to laugh, sir,” I muttered.
“Pleases me! Pleases me, quotha! Lad, it stabs me like a French dirk, nor can I guard the thrust in tierce! I have been wrong. A friar is not made with a twisted rope nor a man hanged with words. If you are not born a scholar, ’twas the mint-mark I could not read aright; and no blame to you, lad, no blame to you. Micky boy! Shall we leave Cæsar to go marching with his impedimenta and his Tenth Legion? Shall we consign the hypothenuse of all triangles to those who mend pens from the quills of wild-geese which better men have brought down with a single ball?”
I was regarding him wildly, uncertain of his meaning.
“Shall we,” cried Sir William, heartily, “bid the nymphs and dryads farewell forever, lad, and save our learning for Roderick Random and a bowl of cider and the bitter nights of December?”
His meaning was dawning upon me slowly, for what with the pain of my hand and the dizziness, I was perhaps more stupid than usual.
“No,” said Sir William, with a thump of his fist on his knee, “the college which my Lord Dartmouth has endowed is a haven for those who seek it, not a prison for men to be driven to.”
