Complete weird tales of.., p.1143
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1143
And for all this silly grievance I had no warrant nor any atom of lucid reason. For until I had seen her no woman had ever disturbed me. Until that spring day in the flowering orchard I had never desired love; and if I even desired it now I knew not. I had certainly no desire for marriage or a wife, because I had no thought in my callow head of either.
Only jealousy of others and a desire to be first in her mind possessed me, — a fierce wish to clear out this rabble of suitors which seemed to gather in a very swarm wherever she passed, — so that she should turn to me alone, lean upon me, trust only me in the world to lend her countenance, shelter her, and defend her. And, though God knows I meant her no wrong, nor had passion, so far, played any rôle in this my ridiculous behaviour, I had not so far any clear intention in her regard. A fierce and selfish longing obsessed me to drive others off and keep her for my own where in some calm security we could learn to know each other.
And this — though I did not understand it — was merely the romantic desire of a very young man to study, unhurried and untroubled, the first female who ever had disturbed his peace of mind.
But all was vain and troubled and misty in my mind, and love — or its fretful changeling — weighed on my heart heavily. But I carried double weight: jealousy is a heavy hag, and I was hag-ridden morn and eve and all the livelong day to boot.
All asses are made to be ridden.
* * *
The first snow came, as I have said, like shot-scattered down from a wild-duck’s breast. Then days of golden stillness, with mornings growing ever colder and the frost whitening shady spots long after sun-up.
I remember a bear swam Vlaie Water, but galloped so swiftly into the bush that no rifle was ready to stop him.
We mangered our cattle o’ nights; and, as frosty grazing checks milk flow, Nick and I brought in hay from the stacks which the Continental soldiers had cut against a long occupation of Summer House Point.
Nights had become very cold and we burned logs all day long in the chimney place. My Indian was snug enough in the kitchen by the oven, where he ate and slept when not on post; and we, above, did very well by the blaze where we roasted nuts and apples and drank new cider from Johnstown and had a cask of ale from the Johnson Arms by waggon.
Also, in the cellar, was some store of Sir William’s — dusty bottles of French and Spanish wines; but of these I took no toll, because they belonged not to me.
But a strange circumstance presently placed these wines in my possession; for, upon a day before the first deep snow fell, comes galloping from Johnstown a man in caped riding coat, one Jerry Van Rensselaer, to nail a printed placard upon our Summer House — notice of sale by the Committee for Sequestration.
But who was to read this notice and attend the vendue save only the birds and beasts of the wilderness I do not know; for on the day of the sale, which was conducted by Commissioner Harry Outthout, only some half dozen farmer folk rode hither from Johnstown, and only one man among ’em bid in money — a sullen fellow named Jim Huetson, who had Tory friends, I knew, if he himself were not of that complexion.
His bid was £5; which was but a beggarly offer, and angered me to see Sir William’s beloved Lodge come to so mean an end. So, having some little money, I showed the Schoharie fellow a stern countenance, doubled his bid, and took snuff which I do not love.
And Lord! Ere I realized it, Summer House Point, Lodge and contents, and riparian rights as far as Howell’s house were mine; and a clear deed promised.
Bewildered, I signed and paid the Sequestration Commissioner out o’ my buckskin pouch in hard coin.
“You should buy the cattle, too,” whispered Nick. “There be folk in Johnstown would pay well for such a breed o’ cow. And there’s the pig, Jack, and the sheep and the hens, and all that grain and hay so snug in the barn.”
So I asked very fiercely if any man desired to bid against me; and neither Huetson nor his sulky comrade, Davis, having any such stomach, I fetched ale and apples and nuts and made them eat and drink, and so drew aside the Commissioner and bargained with him like a Jew or a shoe-peg Yankee; and in the end bought all.
“Shall you move hither from Fonda’s Bush and sell your house?” asked Nick, who now was going out on watch.
But I made him no answer, for I had been bitten by an idea, the mere thought of which fevered me with excitement. Oh, I was mad as a March fox running his first vixen, in that first tide of romantic love, — clean daft and lacking reason.
So when Commissioner Outthout and those who had come for the vendue had drank as much of my new ale as they cared to carry home a-horse, and were gone a-bumping down the Johnstown road like a flock of Gilpins all, I took my parchment and went into my bed chamber; and there I sat upon my trundle bed and read what was writ upon my deed, making me the owner of Summer House and of all that appertained to the little hunting lodge.
But I had not purchased it selfishly; and the whole business began with an impulse born of love for Sir William, who had loved this place so well. But even as that impulse came, another notion took shape in my love-addled sconce.
I sat on my trundle bed a-thinking and — God forgive me — admiring my own lofty and romantic purpose.
The house was still, but on the veranda roof overhead I could hear the moccasined tread of Nick pacing his post; and from below in the kitchen came the distant thump and splash of Penelope’s churn, where she was making new butter for to salt it against our needs.
Now, as I rose my breath came quicker, but admiration for my resolve abated nothing — no! — rather increased as I tasted the sad pleasures of martyrdom and of noble renunciation. For I now meant to figure in this girl’s eyes in a manner which she never could forget and which, I trusted, might sadden her with a wistful melancholy after I was gone and she had awakened to the irreparable loss.
* * *
When I came down into the kitchen where, bare of arms and throat, she stood a-churning, she looked at me out of partly-lowered eyes, as though doubting my mood — poor child. And I saw the sweat on her flushed cheeks, and her yellow hair, in disorder from the labour, all curled into damp little ringlets. But when I smiled I saw that lovely glimmer dawning, and she asked me shyly what I did there — for never before had I come into her kitchen.
So, still smiling, I gave an account of how I had bought Summer House; and she listened, wide-eyed, wondering.
“But,” continued I, “I have already my own glebe at Fonda’s Bush, and a house; but there be many with whom fortune has not been so complacent, and who possess neither glebe nor roof, yet deserve both.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, smiling, “there be many such folk and always will be in the world. Of such company am I, also, but it saddens me not at all.”
I went to her and showed her my deed, and she looked down on it, her hands clasped on the churn handle.
“So that,” said she, “is a lawful deed! I have never before been shown such an instrument.”
“You shall have leisure enough to study this one,” said I, “for I convey it to you.”
“Sir?”
“I give Summer House to you,” said I. “Here is the deed. When I go to Johnstown again I will execute it so that this place shall be yours.”
She gazed at me in dumb astonishment.
“Meanwhile,” said I, “you shall keep the deed.... And now you are, in fact, if not yet in title, mistress of Summer House. And I think, this night, we should break a bottle of Sir William’s Madeira to drink health to our new châtelaine.”
She came from her churn and caught my arm, where I had turned to ascend the steps.
“You are jesting, are you not, my lord?”
“No! And do not use that term, ‘lord,’ to me.”
“You — you offer to give me — me — this estate!”
“Yes. I do give it you.”
There was a tense silence.
“Why do you offer this?” she burst out breathlessly.
“Why should I have two estates and you have none, Penelope?”
“But that is no reason!” she retorted, almost violently. “For what reason, then, do you give me Summer House? It — it must be you are jesting, my lord! — —”
At that, displeasure made me redden, and I damned the title under my breath.
“If you please,” said I, “you will have done with all these ‘sirs’ and ‘my lords,’ for I am a plain yoeman of County Tryon and wear a buckskin shirt. Not that I would criticise Lord Stirling or any such who still care to wear by courtesy what I have long ago worn out,” I added, “but the gentry and nobility of Tryon travel one way and I the other; and my friends should remember it when naming me.”
She stood looking at me out of her brown eyes, and slowly their troubled wonder changed to dumb perplexity. And, looking, took up her apron’s edge and stood twisting it between both hands.
“I give you Summer House,” said I, “because you are orphaned and live alone and have nothing. I give it because a maid ought to possess a portion; and, thirdly, I give it because I have enough of my own, and never desired more of anything than I need. So take the Summer House, Penelope, with the cattle and fowl and land; for it gives you a station and a security among men and women of this odd world of ours, and lends to yourself a confidence and dignity which only sheerest folly can overthrow.”
She came, after a silence, slowly, and took me by the hand.
“John Drogue,” says she in a voice not clear, “I can not take of you this estate.”
“You shall take it! And when again, where you sit a-knitting, the young men gather round you like flies around a sap-pan — then, by God, you shall know what countenance to give them, and they shall know what colour to give their courting! — suitors, gallants, Whig or Tory — the whole damned rabble — —”
“Oh,” she cried softly, “John Drogue!” And fell a-laughing — or was it a quick sob that checked her throat?
But I heeded it not, having caught fire; and presently blazed noisily.
“Because you are servant to Douw Fonda!” I cried, “and because you are alone, and because you are young and soft with a child’s eyes and yellow hair, they make nothing of schooling you to their pot-house gallantries, and every damned man jack among them comes a-galloping to the chase. Yes, even that pallid beast, Sir John! — and the tears of Claire Putnam to haunt him if he were a man and not the dirty libertine he is!”
I looked upon her whitened face in ever-rising passion:
“I tell you,” said I, “that the backwoods aristocracy is the better and safer caste, for the other is rotten under red coat or blue; and a ring-tailed cap doffed by a gnarled hand is worth all your laced cocked hats bound around with gold and trailed in the dust with fine, smooth fingers!”
Sure I was in a proper phrensy now, nor dreamed myself a target for the high gods’ laughter, where I vapoured and strode and shouted aloud my moral jeremiad.
“So,” said I, “you shall have Summer House; and shall, as you sit a-knitting, make your choice of honest suitors at your ease and not be waylaid and hunted and used without ceremony by the first young hot-head who entraps you in the starlight! No! Nor be the quarry of older villains and subtler with persuasion. No!
“For today Penelope Grant, spinster, is a burgesse of Johnstown, and is a person both respectable and taxed. And any man who would court her must conduct suitably and in a customary manner, nor, like a wild falcon, circle over head awaiting the opportunity to strike.
“No! All that sport — all that gay laxity and folly is at an end. And here’s the damned deed that ends it!” I added, thrusting the parchment into her hands.
She seemed white and frightened. And, “Oh, Lord!” she breathed, “have I, then, conducted so shamelessly? And did I so wholly lose your favour when you kissed me?”
I had not meant that, and I winced and grew hot in the cheeks.
“I am not a loose woman,” she said in her soft, bewildered way. “Unless it be a fault that I find men somewhat to my liking, and their gay manners pleasure me and divert me.”
I said: “You have a way with men. None is insensible to your youth and beauty.”
“Is it so?” she asked innocently.
“Are you not aware of it?”
“I had thought that I pleased.”
“You do so. Best tread discreetly. Best consider carefully now. Then choose one and dismiss the rest.”
“Choose?”
“Aye.”
“Whom should I choose, John Drogue?”
“Why,” said I, losing countenance, “there is the same ardent rabble like that plague of suitors which importuned the Greek Penelope. There are the sap-pan flies all buzzing.”
“Oh. Should I make a choice if entreated?”
“A burgesse is free to choose.”
“Oh. And to which suitor should I give my smile?”
“Well,” said I, sullenly, “there is Nick. There also is your Cornet of Horse — young Jack-boots. And there is the young gentleman whose picture you wear in your bosom.”
“Captain Watts?” she asked, so naïvely that jealousy stabbed me instantly, so that my smile became a grimace.
“Sure,” said I, “you think tenderly on Stephen Watts.”
“Yes.”
“In fact,” I almost groaned, “you entertain for him those virtuous sentiments not unbecoming to the maiden of his choice.... Do you not, Penelope?”
“He has courted me a year. I find him agreeable. Also, I pity him — although his impatience causes me concern and his ardour inconveniences me.... The sentiments I entertain for him are virtuous, as you say, sir. And so are my sentiments for any man.”
“But is not your heart engaged in this affair?”
“With Captain Watts?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I thought you meant with you, sir.”
I affected to smile, but my heart thumped my ribs.
“I have not pretended to your heart, Penelope.”
“No, sir. Nor I to yours. And, for the matter, know nothing concerning hearts and the deeper pretensions to secret passions of which one hears so much in gossip and romance. No, sir; I am ignorant. Yet, I have thought that kindness might please a woman more easily than sighs and vapours.... Or so it seems to me.... And that impatient ardour only perplexes.... And passion often chills the natural pity that a woman entertains for any man who vows he is unhappy and must presently perish of her indifference....
“Yet I am not indifferent to men.... And have used men gently.... And forgiven them.... Being not hard but pitiful by disposition.”
She made a movement of unconscious grace and drew from her bosom the little picture of Steve Watts.
“You see,” said she, “I guard it tenderly. But he went off in a passion and rebuked me bitterly for my coquetry and because I refused to flee with him to Canada.... He, being an enemy to liberty, I would not consent.... I love my country.... And better than I love any man.”
“He begged an elopement that night?”
“Yes.”
“With marriage promised, doubtless.”
“Lord,” says she, “I had not thought so far.”
“Did he not promise it?”
“No, sir.”
“What? Nor mention it?”
“I did not hear him.”
“But in his courtship of a year surely he conducted honestly!” I insisted angrily.
“Should a man ask marriage when he asks love, Mr. Drogue?”
“If he means honestly he must speak of it.”
“Oh.... I did not understand.... I thought that love, offered, meant marriage also.... I thought they all meant that — save only Sir John.”
We both fell silent. After a little while: “I shall some day ask Captain Watts what he means,” said she, thoughtfully. “Surely he must know I am a maiden.”
“Do you suppose such young men care!” I said sullenly.
But she seemed so white and distressed at the thought that the sneer died on my lips and I made a great effort to do generously by my old school-mate, Stevie Watts.
“Surely,” said I, “he meant no disrespect and no harm. Stephen Watts is not of the corrupt breed of Walter Butler nor debauched like Sir John.... However, if he is to be your lover — perhaps it were convenient to ask him something concerning his respectful designs upon you.”
“Yes, sir, I shall do so — if he comes hither again.”
So hope, which had fallen a-flickering, expired like a tiny flame. She loved Steve Watts!
I turned and limped up the stairway.
And, at the stair-head, met Nick.
“Well,” said I savagely, “you may not have her. For she loves Steve Watts and dotes on his picture in her bosom. And as for you, you may go to the devil!”
“Why, you sorry ass,” says he, “have you thought I desired her?”
“Do you not?”
“Good God!” cried he, “because this poor and moon-smitten gentleman hath rolled sheep’s eyes upon a yellow-haired maid, then, in his mind, all the world’s aflame to woo her too and take her from his honest arms! What the plague do I want of your sweetheart, Jack Drogue, when I’ve one at Pigeon Wood and my eye on another, too!”
Then he fell a-laughing and smote his thighs with a loud slapping.
“Aha!” he cried, “did I not warn you? Did I not foresee, foretell, and prophesy that you would one day sicken of a passion for this yellow-haired girl from Caughnawaga!”
“Idiot,” said I in a rage, “I do not love her!”
“Then you bear all the earmarks!” said he, and went off stamping his moccasins and roaring with laughter.
And I went on watch to walk my post all a-tremble with fury, and fair sick of jealousy and my first boyish passion.
* * *
Now, it is a strange thing how love undid me; but it is still stranger how, of a sudden, my malady passed. And it came about in this way, that toward sunset one day, when I came from walking my post on the veranda roof to find why Nick had not relieved me, I descended the stairs and looked into the kitchen, where was a pleasant smell of cinnamon crullers fresh made and of johnnycake and of meat a-stewing.
