Complete weird tales of.., p.167
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 167
Staring through the unwashed window-pane, moodily brooding on what I had learned, I followed impatiently the flight of those small, gray swallows of the North, colorless as shadows, whirling in spirals above the cold chimneys, to tumble in like flakes of gray soot only to drift out again, wind — blown, aimless, irrational, senseless things. And again that hatred seized me for all this pale Northern world, where the very birds gyrated like moon-smitten sprites, and the white spectre of virtue sat amid orgies where bloodless fools caroused.
“Are you homesick, cousin?” she asked.
“Ay — if you must know the truth!” I broke out, not meaning to say my fill and ease me. “This is not the world; it is a gray inferno, where shades rave without reason, where there is no color, no repose, nothing but blankness and unreason, and an air that stings all living life to spasms of unrest. Your sun is hot, yet has no balm; your winds plague the skin and bones of a man; the forests are unfriendly; the waters all hurry as though bewitched! Brooks are cold and tasteless as the fog; the unsalted, spiceless air clogs the throat and whips the nerves till the very soul in the body strains, fluttering to be free! How can decent folk abide here?”
I hesitated, then broke into a harsh laugh, for my cousin sat staring at me, lips parted, like a fair shape struck into marble by a breath of magic.
“Pardon,” I said. “Here am I, kindly invited to the council of a family whose interests lie scattered through estates from the West Indies to the Canadas, and I requite your hospitality by a rudeness I had not believed was in me.”
I asked her pardon again for the petty outburst of an untravelled youngster whose first bath in this Northern air-ocean had chilled his senses and his courtesy.
“There is a land,” I said, “where lately the gray bastions of St. Augustine reflected the gold and red of Spanish banners, and the blue sea mirrors a bluer sky. We Ormonds came there from the Western Indies, then drifted south, skirting the Matanzas to the sea islands on the Halifax, where I was born, an Englishman on Spanish soil, and have lived there, knowing no land but that of Florida, treading no city streets save those walled lanes of ancient Augustine. All this vast North is new to me, Dorothy; and, like our swamp-haunting Seminoles, my rustic’s instinct finds hostility in what is new and strange, and I forget my breeding in this gray maze which half confuses, half alarms me.”
“I am not offended,” she said, smiling, “only I wonder what you find distasteful here. Is it the solitude?”
“No, for we also have that.”
“Is it us?”
“Not you, Dorothy, nor yet Ruyven, nor the others. Forget what I said. As the Spaniards have it, ‘Only a fool goes travelling,’ and I’m not too notorious for my wisdom, even in Augustine. If it be the custom of the people here to go mad, I’ll not sit in a corner croaking, ‘Repent and be wise!’ If the Varicks and the Butlers set the pace, I promise you to keep the quarry, Mistress Folly, in view — perhaps outfoot you all to Bedlam!... But, cousin, if you, too, run this uncoupled race with the pack, I mean to pace you, neck and neck, like a keen whip, ready to turn and lash the first who interferes with you.”
“With me?” she repeated, smiling. “Am I a youngster to be coddled and protected? You have not seen our hunting. I lead, my friend; you follow.”
She unclasped her arms, which till now had held her bright head cradled, and sat up, hands on her knees, grave as an Egyptian goddess guarding tombs.
“I’ll wager I can outrun you, outshoot you, outride you, throw you at wrestle, cast the knife or hatchet truer than can you, catch more fish than you — and bigger ones at that!”
With an impatient gesture, peculiarly graceful, like the half-salute of a friendly swordsman ere you draw and stand on guard:
“Read the forest with me. I can outread you, sign for sign, track for track, trail in and trail out! The forest is to me Te-ka-on-do-duk [the place with a sign-post]. And when the confederacy speaks with five tongues, and every tongue split into five forked dialects, I make no answer in finger-signs, as needs must you, my cousin of the Se-a-wan-ha-ka [the land of shells]. We speak to the Iroquois with our lips, we People of the Morning. Our hands are for our rifles! Hiro [I have spoken]!”
She laughed, challenging me with eye and lip.
“And if you defy me to a bout with bowl or bottle I will not turn coward, neah-wen-ha [I thank you]! but I will drink with you and let my father judge whose legs best carry him to bed! Koue! Answer me, my cousin, Tahoontowhe [the night hawk].”
We were laughing now, yet I knew she had spoken seriously, and to plague her I said: “You boast like a Seminole chanting the war-song.”
“I dare you to cast the hatchet!” she cried, reddening.
“Dare me to a trial less rude,” I protested, laughing the louder.
“No, no! Come!” she said, impatient, unbolting the heavy door; and, willy-nilly, I followed, meeting the pack all sulking on the stairs, who rose to seize me as I came upon them.
“Let him alone!” cried Dorothy; “he says he can outcast me with the war-hatchet! Where is my hatchet? Sammy! Ruyven! find hatchets and come to the painted post.”
“Sport!” cried Harry, leaping down-stairs before us. “Cecile, get your hatchet — get mine, too! Come on, Cousin Ormond, I’ll guide you; it’s the painted post by the spring — and hark, Cousin George, if you beat her I’ll give you my silvered powder-horn!”
Cecile and Sammy hastened up, bearing in their arms the slim war-hatchets, cased in holsters of bright-beaded hide, and we took our weapons and started, piloted by Harry through the door, and across the shady, unkempt lawn to the stockade gate.
Dorothy and I walked side by side, like two champions in amiable confab before a friendly battle, intimately aloof from the gaping crowd which follows on the flanks of all true greatness.
Out across the deep-green meadow we marched, the others trailing on either side with eager advice to me, or chattering of contests past, when Walter Butler and Brant — he who is now war-chief of the loyal Mohawks — cast hatchets for a silver girdle, which Brant wears still; and the patroon, and Sir John, and all the great folk from Guy Park were here a-betting on the Mohawk, which, they say, so angered Walter Butler that he lost the contest. And that day dated the silent enmity between Brant and Butler, which never healed.
This I gathered amid all their chit-chat while we stood under the willows near the spring, watching Ruyven pace the distance from the post back across the greensward towards us.
Then, making his heel-mark in the grass, he took a green willow wand and set it, all feathered, in the turf.
“Is it fair for Dorothy to cast her own hatchet?” asked Harry.
“Give me Ruyven’s,” she said, half vexed. Aught that touched her sense of fairness sent a quick flame of anger to her cheeks which I admired.
“Keep your own hatchet, cousin,” I said; “you may have need of it.”
“Give me Ruyven’s hatchet,” she repeated, with a stamp of her foot which Ruyven hastened to respect. Then she turned to me, pink with defiance:
“It is always a stranger’s honor,” she said; so I advanced, drawing my light, keen weapon from its beaded sheath, which I had belted round me; and Ruyven took station by the post, ten paces to the right.
The post was painted scarlet, ringed with white above; below, in outline, the form of a man — an Indian — with folded arms, also drawn in white paint. The play was simple; the hatchet must imbed its blade close to the outlined shape, yet not “wound” or “draw blood.”
“Brant at first refused to cast against that figure,” said Harry, laughing. “He consented only because the figure, though Indian, was painted white.”
I scarce heard him as I stood measuring with my eyes the distance. Then, taking one step forward to the willow wand, I hurled the hatchet, and it landed quivering in the shoulder of the outlined figure on the post.
“A wound!” cried Cecile; and, mortified, I stepped back, biting my lip, while Harry notched one point against me on the willow wand and Dorothy, tightening her girdle, whipped out her bright war-axe and stepped forward. Nor did she even pause to scan the post; her arm shot up, the keen axe-blade glittered and flew, sparkling and whirling, biting into the post, chuck! handle a-quiver. And you could not have laid a June willow-leaf betwixt the Indian’s head and the hatchet’s blade.
She turned to me, lips parted in a tormenting smile, and I praised the cast and took my hatchet from Ruyven to try once more. Yet again I broke skin on the thigh of the pictured captive; and again the glistening axe left Dorothy’s hand, whirring to a safe score, a grass-stem’s width from the Indian’s head.
I understood that I had met my master, yet for the third time strove; and my axe whistled true, standing point-bedded a finger’s breadth from the cheek.
“Can you mend that, Dorothy?” I asked, politely.
She stood smiling, silent, hatchet poised, then nodded, launching the axe. Crack! came the handles of the two hatchets, and rattled together. But the blade of her hatchet divided the space betwixt my blade and the painted face, nor touched the outline by a fair hair’s breadth.
Astonishment was in my face, not chagrin, but she misread me, for the triumph died out in her eyes, and, “Oh!” she said; “I did not mean to win — truly I did not,” offering her hands in friendly amend.
But at my quick laugh she brightened, still holding my hands, regarding me with curious eyes, brilliant as amethysts.
“I was afraid I had hurt your pride — before these silly children—” she began.
“Children!” shouted Ruyven. “I bet you ten shillings he can outcast you yet!”
“Done!” she flashed, then, all in a breath, smiled adorably and shook her head. “No, I’ll not bet. He could win if he chose. We understand each other, my cousin Ormond and I,” and gave my hands a little friendly shake with both of hers, then dropped them to still Ruyven’s clamor for a wager.
“You little beast!” she said, fiercely; “is it courteous to pit your guests like game-cocks for your pleasure?”
“You did it yourself!” retorted Ruyven, indignantly— “and entered the pit yourself.”
“For a jest, silly! There were no bets. Now frown and vapor and wag your finger — do! What do you lack? I will wrestle you if you wait until I don my buckskins. No? A foot-race? — and I’ll bet you your ten shillings on myself! Ten to five — to three — to one! No? Then hush your silly head!”
“Because,” said Ruyven, sullenly, coming up to me, “she can outrun me with her long legs, she gives herself the devil’s own airs and graces. There’s no living with her, I tell you. I wish I could go to the war.”
“You’ll have to go when father declares himself,” observed Dorothy, quietly polishing her hatchet on its leather sheath.
“But he won’t declare for King or Congress,” retorted the boy.
“Wait till they start to plague us,” murmured Dorothy. “Some fine July day cows will be missed, or a barn burned, or a shepherd found scalped. Then you’ll see which way the coin spins!”
“Which way will it spin?” demanded Ruyven, incredulous yet eager.
“Ask that squirrel yonder,” she said, briefly.
“Thanks; I’ve asked enough of chatterers,” he snapped out, and came to the tree where we were sitting in the shadow on the cool, thick carpet of the grass — such grass as I had never seen in that fair Southland which I loved.
The younger children gathered shyly about me, their active tongues suddenly silent, as though, all at once, they had taken a sudden alarm to find me there.
The reaction of fatigue was settling over me — for my journey had been a long one that day — and I leaned my back against the tree and yawned, raising my hand to hide it.
“I wonder,” I said, “whether anybody here knows if my boxes and servant have arrived from Philadelphia.”
“Your boxes are in the hallway by your bed-chamber,” said Dorothy. “Your servant went to Johnstown for news of you — let me see — I think it was Saturday—”
“Friday,” said Ruyven, looking up from the willow wand which he was peeling.
“He never came back,” observed Dorothy. “Some believe he ran away to Albany, some think the Boston people caught him and impressed him to work on the fort at Stanwix.”
I felt my face growing hot.
“I should like to know,” said I, “who has dared to interfere with my servant.”
“So should I,” said Ruyven, stoutly. “I’d knock his head off.” The others stared. Dorothy, picking a meadow-flower to pieces, smiled quietly, but did not look up.
“What do you think has happened to my black?” I asked, watching her.
“I think Walter Butler’s men caught him and packed him off to Fort Niagara,” she said.
“Why do you believe that?” I asked, angrily.
“Because Mr. Butler came here looking for boat-men; and I know he tried to bribe Cato to go. Cato told me.” She turned sharply to the others. “But mind you say nothing to Sir Lupus of this until I choose to tell him!”
“Have you proof that Mr. Butler was concerned in the disappearance of my servant?” I asked, with an unpleasant softness in my voice.
“No proof,” replied Dorothy, also very softly.
“Then I may not even question him,” I said.
“No, you can do nothing — now.”
I thought a moment, frowning, then glanced up to find them all intently watching me.
“I should like,” said I, “to have a tub of clean water and fresh clothing, and to sleep for an hour ere I dress to dine with Sir Lupus. But, first, I should like to see my mare, that she is well bedded and—”
“I’ll see to her,” said Dorothy, springing to her feet. “Ruyven, do you tell Cato to wait on Captain Ormond.” And to Harry and Cecile: “Bowl on the lawn if you mean to bowl, and not in the hallway, while our cousin is sleeping.” And to Benny: “If you tumble or fall into any foolishness, see that you squall no louder than a kitten mewing. Our cousin means to sleep for a whole hour.”
As I rose, nodding to them gravely, all their shy deference seemed to return; they were no longer a careless, chattering band, crowding at my elbows to pluck my sleeves with, “Oh, Cousin Ormond” this, and “Listen, cousin,” that; but they stood in a covey, close together, a trifle awed at my height, I suppose; and Ruyven and Dorothy conducted me with a new ceremony, each to outvie the other in politeness of language and deportment, calling to my notice details of the scenery in stilted phrases which nigh convulsed me, so that I could scarce control the set gravity of my features.
At the house door they parted company with me, all save Ruyven and Dorothy. The one marched off to summon Cato; the other stood silent, her head a little on one side, contemplating a spot of sunlight on the dusty floor.
“About young Walter Butler,” she began, absently; “be not too short and sharp with him, cousin.”
“I hope I shall have no reason to be too blunt with my own kin,” I said.
“You may have reason—” She hesitated, then, with a pretty confidence in her eyes, “For my sake please to pass provocation unnoticed. None will doubt your courage if you overlook and refuse to be affronted.”
“I cannot pass an affront,” I said, bluntly. “What do you mean? Who is this quarrelsome Mr. Butler?”
“An Ormond-Butler,” she said, earnestly; “but — but he has had trouble — a terrible disappointment in love, they say. He is morose at times — a sullen, suspicious man, one of those who are ever seeking for offence where none is dreamed of; a man quick to give umbrage, quicker to resent a fancied slight — a remorseless eye that fixes you with the passionless menace of a hawk’s eye, dreamily marking you for a victim. He is cruel to his servants, cruel to his animals, terrible in his hatred of these Boston people. Nobody knows why they ridiculed him; but they did. That adds to the fuel which feeds the flame in him — that and the brooding on his own grievances—”
She moved nearer to me and laid her hand on my sleeve. “Cousin, the man is mad; I ask you to remember that in a moment of just provocation. It would grieve me if he were your enemy — I should not sleep for thinking.”
“Dorothy,” I said, smiling, “I use some weapons better than I do the war-axe. Are you afraid for me?”
She looked at me seriously. “In that little world which I know there is much that terrifies men, yet I can say, without boasting, there is not, in my world, one living creature or one witch or spirit that I dread — no, not even Catrine Montour!”
“And who is Catrine Montour?” I asked, amused at her earnestness.
Ere she could reply, Ruyven called from the stairs that Cato had my tub of water all prepared, and she walked away, nodding a brief adieu, pausing at the door to give me one sweet, swift smile of friendly interest.
* * *
IV
SIR LUPUS
I HAD BATHED and slept, and waked once more to the deep, resonant notes of a conch-shell blowing; and I still lay abed, blinking at the sunset through the soiled panes of my western window, when Cato scraped at the door to enter, bearing my sea-boxes one by one.
Reaching behind me, I drew the keys from under my pillow and tossed them to the solemn black, lying still once more to watch him unlock my boxes and lay out my clothes and linen to the air.
“Company to sup, suh; gemmen from de No’th an’ Guy Pahk, suh,” he hinted, rolling his eyes at me and holding up my best wristbands, made of my mother’s lace.
“I shall dress soberly, Cato,” said I, yawning. “Give me a narrow queue-ribbon, too.”
The old man mumbled and muttered, fussing about among the boxes until he found a full suit of silver-gray, silken stockings, and hound’s-tongue shoes to match.
“Dishyere clothes sho’ is sober,” he reflected aloud. “One li’l gole vine a-crawlin’ on de cuffs, nuvver li’l gole vine a-creepin’ up de wes’coat, gole buckles on de houn’-tongue — Whar de hat? Hat done loose hisse’f! Here de hat! Gole lace on de hat — Cap’in Ormond sho’ is quality gemm’n. Ef he ain’t, how come dishyere gole lace on de hat?”
