The Maid-At-Arms

As we approached the house I heard hollow noises within, like groans; and I stopped, listening intently.

"It is Sir Lupus snoring," observed Ruyven. "He will wake soon; I think I had best call Tulip," he added, exchanging a glance with his sister; and entered the house calling, "Cato! Cato! Tulip! Tulip! I say!"

"Who is Tulip?" I asked of Dorothy, who lingered at the threshold folding her embroidery into a bundle.

"Tulip? Oh, Tulip cooks for us–black as a June crow, cousin. She is voodoo."

"Evil-eye and all?" I asked, smiling.

Dorothy looked up shyly. "Don't you believe in the evil-eye?"

I was not perfectly sure whether I did or not, but I said "No."

"To believe is not necessarily to be afraid," she added, quickly.

Now, had I believed in the voodoo craft, or in the power of an evil-eye, I should also have feared. Those who have ever witnessed a sea-island witch-dance can bear me out, and I think a man may dread a hag and be no coward either. But distance and time allay the memories of such uncanny works. I had forgotten whether I was afraid or not. So I said, "There are no witches, Dorothy."

She looked at me, dreamily. "There are none … that I fear."

"Not even Catrine Montour?" I asked, to plague her.

"No; it turns me cold to think of her running in the forest, but I am not afraid."

She stood pensive in the doorway, rolling and unrolling her embroidery. Harry and Cecile came out, flourishing alder poles from which lines and hooks dangled. Samuel and Benny carried birchen baskets and shallow nets.

"If we're to have Mohawk chubbs," said Cecile, "you had best come with us, Dorothy. Ruyven has a book and has locked himself in the play-room."

But Dorothy shook her head, saying that she meant to ride the boundary with us; and the children, after vainly soliciting my company, trooped off towards that same grist-mill in the ravine below the bridge which I had observed on my first arrival at Varick Manor.

"I am wondering," said Dorothy, "how you mean to pass the morning. You had best steer wide of Sir Lupus until he has breakfasted."

"I've a mind to sleep," I said, guiltily.

"I think it would be pleasant to ride together. Will you?" she asked; then, laughing, she said, frankly, "Since you have come I do nothing but follow you.... It is long since I have had a young companion, … and, when I think that you are to leave us, it spurs me to lose no moment that I shall regret when you are gone."

No shyness marred the pretty declaration of her friendship, and it touched me the more keenly perhaps. The confidence in her eyes, lifted so sweetly, waked the best in me; and if my response was stumbling, it was eager and warm, and seemed to please her.

"Tulip! Tulip!" she cried, "I want my dinner! Now!" And to me, "We will eat what they give us; I shall dress in my buckskins and we will ride the boundary and register the signs, and Sir Lupus and the others can meet us at Sir George Covert's pleasure-house on the Vlaie. Does it please you, Cousin George?"

I looked into her bright eyes and said that it pleased me more than I dared say, and she laughed and ran up-stairs, calling back to me that I should order our horses and tell Cato to tell Tulip to fetch meat and claret to the gun-room.

I whistled a small, black stable lad and bade him bring our mounts to the porch, then wandered at random down the hallway, following my nose, which scented the kitchen, until I came to a closed door.

Behind that door meats were cooking–I could take my oath o' that–so I opened the door and poked my nose in.

"Tulip," I said, "come here!"

An ample black woman, aproned and turbaned, looked at me through the steam of many kettles, turned and cuffed the lad at the spit, dealt a few buffets among the scullions, and waddled up to me, bobbing and curtsying.

"Aunt Tulip," I said, gravely, "are you voodoo?"

"Folks says ah is, Mars' Ormon'," she said, in her soft Georgia accent.

"Oh, they do, do they? Look at me, Aunt Tulip. What do my eyes tell you of me?"

Her dark eyes, fixed on mine, seemed to change, and I thought little glimmers of pure gold tinted the iris, like those marvellous restless tints in a gorgeous bubble. Certainly her eyes were strange, almost compelling, for I felt a faint rigidity in my cheeks and my eyes returned directly to hers as at an unspoken command.

"Can you read me, aunty?" I asked, trying to speak easily, yet feeling the stiffness growing in my cheeks.

"Ah sho' can," she said, stepping nearer.

"What is my fate, then?"

"Ah 'spec' yo' gwine fine yo'se'f in love," she said, softly; and I strove to smile with ever-stiffening lips.

A little numbness that tingled spread over me; it was pleasant; I did not care to withdraw my eyes. Presently the tightness in my face relaxed, I moved my lips, smiling vaguely.

"In love," I repeated.

"Yaas, Mars' Ormon'."

"When?"

"'Fore yo' know h'it, honey."

"Tell me more."

"'Spec' ah done tole yo' too much, honey." She looked at me steadily. "Pore Mars' Gawge," she murmured, "'spec' ah done tole yo' too much. But it sho' am a-comin', honey, an' h'it gwine come pow'ful sudden, an' h'it gwine mek yo' pow'ful sick."

"Am I to win her?"

"No, honey."

"Is there no hope, Aunt Tulip?"

She hesitated as though at fault; I felt the tenseness in my face once more; then, for one instant, I lost track of time; for presently I found myself standing in the hallway watching Sir Lupus through the open door of the gun-room, and Sir Lupus was very angry.

"Dammy!" he roared, "am I to eat my plate? Cato! I want my porridge!"

Confused, I stood blinking at him, and he at table, bibbed like a babe, mad as a hornet, hammering on the cloth with a great silver spoon and bellowing that they meant to starve him.

"I don't remember how I came here," I began, then flushed furiously at my foolishness.

"Remember!" he shouted. "I don't remember anything! I don't want to remember anything! I want my porridge! I want it now! Damnation!"

Cato, hastening past me with the steaming dish, was received with a yelp. But at last Sir Lupus got his spoon into the mess and a portion of the mess into his mouth, and fell to gobbling and growling, paying me no further attention. So I closed the door of the gun-room on the great patroon and walked to the foot of the stairway.

A figure in soft buckskins was descending–a blue-eyed, graceful youth who hailed me with a gesture.

"Dorothy!" I said, fascinated.

Her fringed hunting-shirt fell to her knees, the short shoulder-cape from throat to breast; gay fringe fluttered from shoulder to wrist, and from thigh to ankle; and her little scarlet-quilled moccasins went pat-patter-pat as she danced down the stairway and stood before me, sweeping her cap from her golden head in exaggerated salute.

She seemed smaller in her boy's dress, fuller, too, and rounder of neck and limb; and the witchery of her beauty left me silent–a tribute she found delightful, for she blushed very prettily and bowed again in dumb acknowledgment of the homage all too evident in my eyes.

Cato came with a dish of meat and a bottle of claret; and we sat down on the stairs, punishing bottle and platter till neither drop nor scrap remained.

"Don't leave these dishes for Sir Lupus to fall over!" she cried to Cato, then sprang to her feet and was out of the door before I could move, whistling for our horses.

As I came out the horses arrived, and I hastened forward to put her into her saddle, but she was up and astride ere I reached the ground, coolly gathering bridle and feeling with her soft leather toes for the stirrups.

Astonished, for I had never seen a girl so mounted, I climbed to my saddle and wheeled my mare, following her out across the lawn, through the stockade and into the road, where I pushed my horse forward and ranged up beside her at a gallop, just as she reached the bridge.

"See!" she cried, with a sweep of her arm, "there are the children down there fishing under the mill." And she waved her small cap of silver fox, calling in a clear, sweet voice the Indian cry of triumph, "Kôue!"

VIII

RIDING THE BOUNDS

For the first half-mile our road lay over that same golden, hilly country, and through the same splendid forests which I had traversed on my way to the manor. Then we galloped past cultivated land, where clustered spears of Indian corn sprouted above the reddish golden soil, and sheep fed in stony pastures.

Around the cabins of the tenantry, fields of oats and barley glimmered, thin blades pricking the loam, brilliant as splintered emeralds.

A few dropping blossoms still starred the apple-trees, pears showed in tiny bunches, and once I saw a late peach-tree in full pink bloom and an old man hoeing the earth around it. He looked up as we galloped past, saluted sullenly, and leaned on his hoe, looking after us.

Dorothy said he was a Palatine refugee and a rebel, like the majority of Sir Lupus's tenants; and I gazed curiously at these fields and cabins where gaunt men and gaunter women, laboring among their sprouting vegetables, turned sun-dazzled eyes to watch us as we clattered by; where ragged children, climbing on the stockades, called out to us in little, shrill voices; where feeding cattle lifted sober heads to stare; where lank, yellow dogs rushed out barking and snapping till a cut of the whip sent them scurrying back.

Once a woman came to her gate and hailed us, asking if it was true that the troops had been withdrawn from Johnstown and Kingsborough.

"Which troops?" I asked.

"Ours," began the woman, then checked herself, and shot a suspicious glance at me.

"The Provincials are still at Johnstown and Kingsborough," said Dorothy, gently.

A gleam of relief softened the woman's haggard features. Then her face darkened again and she pointed at two barefooted children shrinking against the fence.

"If my man and I were alone we would not be afraid of the Mohawks; but these–"

She made a desperate gesture, and stood staring at the blue Mayfield hills where, perhaps at that moment, painted Mohawk scouts were watching the Sacandaga.

"If your men remain quiet, Mrs. Schell, you need fear neither rebel, savage, nor Tory," said Dorothy. "The patroon will see that you have ample protection."

Mrs. Schell gave her a helpless glance. "Did you not know that the district scout-call has gone out?" she asked.

"Yes; but if the tenants of Sir Lupus obey it they do so at their peril," replied Dorothy, gravely. "The militia scouts of this district must not act hastily. Your husband would be mad to answer a call and leave you here alone."

"What would you have him do?" muttered the woman.

"Do?" repeated Dorothy. "He can do one thing or the other–join his regiment and take his family to the district fort, or stay at home and care for you and the farm. These alarms are all wrong–your men are either soldiers or farmers; they cannot be both unless they live close enough to the forts. Tell Mr. Schell that Francy McCraw and his riders are in the forest, and that the Brandt-Meester of Balston saw a Mohawk smoke-signal on the mountain behind Mayfield."

The woman folded her bony arms in her apron, cast one tragic glance at her children, then faced us again, hollow-eyed but undaunted.

"My man is with Stoner's scout," she said, with dull pride.

"Then you must go to the block-house," began Dorothy, but the woman pointed to the fields, shaking her head.

"We shall build a block-house here," she said, stubbornly. "We cannot leave our corn. We must eat, Mistress Varick. My man is too poor to be a Provincial soldier, too brave to refuse a militia call–"

She choked, rubbed her eyes, and bent her stern gaze on the hills once more. Presently we rode on, and, turning in my saddle, I saw her standing as we had left her, gaunt, rigid, staring steadily at the dreaded heights in the northwest.

As we galloped, cultivated fields and orchards became rarer; here and there, it is true, some cabin stood on a half-cleared hill-side, and we even passed one or two substantial houses on the flat ridge to the east, but long, solid stretches of forest intervened, and presently we left the highway and wheeled into a cool wood-road bordered on either side by the forest.

"Here we find our first landmark," said Dorothy, drawing bridle.

A white triangle glimmered, cut in the bark of an enormous pine; and my cousin rode up to the tree and patted the bark with her little hand. On the triangle somebody had cut a V and painted it black.

"This is a boundary mark," said Dorothy. "The Mohawks claim the forest to the east; ride around and you will see their sign."

I guided my horse around the huge, straight trunk. An oval blaze scarred it and on the wood was painted a red wolf.

"It's the wolf-clan, Brant's own clan of the Mohawk nation," she called out to me. "Follow me, cousin." And she dashed off down the wood-road, I galloping behind, leaping windfalls, gullies, and the shallow forest brooks that crossed our way. The road narrowed to a trodden trail; the trail faded, marked at first by cut undergrowth, then only by the white scars on the tree-trunks.

These my cousin followed, her horse at a canter, and I followed her, halting now and again to verify the white triangle on the solid flank of some forest giant, passing a sugar-bush with the shack still standing and the black embers of the fire scattered, until we came to a logging-road and turned into it, side by side. A well-defined path crossed this road at right angles, and Dorothy pointed it out. "The Iroquois trail," she said. "See how deeply it is worn–nearly ten inches deep–where the Five Nations have trodden it for centuries. Over it their hunting-parties pass, their scouts, their war-parties. It runs from the Kennyetto to the Sacandaga and north over the hills to the Canadas."

We halted and looked down the empty, trodden trail, stretching away through the forest. Thousands and thousands of light, moccasined feet had worn it deep and patted it hard as a sheep-path. On what mission would the next Mohawk feet be speeding on that trail?

"Those people at Fonda's Bush had best move to Johnstown," said Dorothy. "If the Mohawks strike, they will strike through here at Balston or Saratoga, or at the half-dozen families left at Fonda's Bush, which some of them call Broadalbin."

"Have these poor wretches no one to warn them?" I asked.

"Oh, they have been warned and warned, but they cling to their cabins as cats cling to soft cushions. The Palatines seem paralyzed with fear, the Dutch are too lazy to move in around the forts, the Scotch and English too obstinate. Nobody can do anything for them–you heard what that Schell woman said when I urged her to prudence."

I bent my eyes on the ominous trail; its very emptiness fascinated me, and I dismounted and knelt to examine it where, near a dry, rotten log, some fresh marks showed.

Behind me I heard Dorothy dismount, dropping to the ground lightly as a tree-lynx; the next moment she laid her hand on my shoulder and bent over where I was kneeling.

"Can you read me that sign?" she asked, mischievously.

"Something has rolled and squatted in the dry wood-dust–some bird, I think."

"A good guess," she said; "a cock-partridge has dusted here; see those bits of down? I say a cock-bird because I know that log to be a drumming-log."

She raised herself and guided her horse along the trail, bright eyes restlessly scanning ground and fringing underbrush.

"Deer passed here–one–two–three–the third a buck–a three-year old," she said, sinking her voice by instinct. "Yonder a tree-cat dug for a wood-mouse; your lynx is ever hanging about a drumming-log."

I laid my hand on her arm and pointed to a fresh, green maple leaf lying beside the trail.

"Ay," she murmured, "but it fell naturally, cousin. See; here it parted from the stalk, clean as a poplar twig, leaving the shiny cup unbruised. And nothing has passed here–this spider's web tells that, with a dead moth dangling from it, dead these three days, from its brittle shell."

"I hear water," I said, and presently we came to it, where it hurried darkling across the trail.

There were no human signs there; here a woodcock had peppered the mud with little holes, probing for worms; there a raccoon had picked his way; yonder a lynx had left the great padded mark of its foot, doubtless watching for yonder mink nosing us from the bank of the still pool below.

Silently we mounted and rode out of the still Mohawk country; and I was not sorry to leave, for it seemed to me that there was something unfriendly in the intense stillness–something baleful in the silence; and I was glad presently to see an open road and a great tree marked with Sir Lupus's mark, the sun shining on the white triangle and the painted V.

Entering a slashing where the logging-road passed, we moved on, side by side, talking in low tones. And my cousin taught me how to know these Northern trees by bark and leaf; how to know the shrubs new to me, like that strange plant whose root is like a human body and which the Chinese value at its weight in gold; and the aromatic root used in beer, and the bark of the sweet-birch whose twigs are golden-black.

Now, though the birds and many of the beasts and trees were familiar to me in this Northern forest, yet I was constantly at fault, as I have said. Plumage and leaf and fur puzzled me; our gray rice-bird here wore a velvet livery of black and white and sang divinely, though with us he is mute as a mullet; many squirrels were striped with black and white; no rosy lichen glimmered on the tree-trunks; no pink-stemmed pines softened sombre forest depths; no great tiger-striped butterflies told me that the wild orange was growing near at hand; no whirring, olive-tinted moth signalled the hidden presence of the oleander. But I saw everywhere unfamiliar winged things, I heard unfamiliar bird-notes; new colors perplexed me, new shapes, nay, the very soil smelled foreign, and the water tasted savorless as the mist of pine barrens in February.

Still, my Maker had set eyes in my head and given me a nose to sniff with; and I was learning every moment, tasting, smelling, touching, listening, asking questions unashamed; and my cousin Dorothy seemed never to tire in aiding me, nor did her eager delight and sympathy abate one jot.

Dressed in full deer-skin as was I, she rode her horse astride with a grace as perfect as it was unstudied and unconscious, neither affecting the slothful carriage of our Southern saddle-masters nor the dragoons' rigid seat, but sat at ease, hollow-backed, loose-thighed, free-reined and free-stirruped.

Her hair, gathered into a golden club at the nape of the neck, glittered in the sun, her eyes deepened like the violet depths of mid-heaven. Already the sun had lent her a delicate, creamy mask, golden on her temples where the hair grew paler; and I thought I had never seen such wholesome sweetness and beauty in any living being.

We now rode through a vast flat land of willows, headed due north once more, and I saw a little river which twisted a hundred times upon itself like a stricken snake, winding its shimmering coils out and in through woodland, willow-flat, and reedy marsh.

"The Kennyetto," said Dorothy, "flowing out of the great Vlaie to empty its waters close to its source after a circle of half a hundred miles. Yonder lies the Vlaie–it is that immense flat country of lake and marsh and forest which is wedged in just south of the mountain-gap where the last of the Adirondacks split into the Mayfield hills and the long, low spurs rolling away to the southeast. Sir William Johnson had a lodge there at Summer-house Point. Since his death Sir George Covert has leased it from Sir John. That is our trysting-place."

To hear Sir George's name now vaguely disturbed me, yet I could not think why, for I admired and liked him. But at the bare mention of his name a dull uneasiness came over me and I turned impatiently to my cousin as though the irritation had come from her and she must explain it.

"What is it?" she inquired, faintly smiling.

"I asked no question," I muttered.

"I thought you meant to speak, cousin."

I had meant to say something. I did not know what.

"You seem to know when I am about to speak," I said; "that is twice you have responded to my unasked questions."

"I know it," she said, surprised and a trifle perplexed. "I seem to hear you when you are mute, and I turn to find you looking at me, as though you had asked me something."

We rode on, thoughtful, silent, aware of a new and wordless intimacy.

"It is pleasant to be with you," she said at last. "I have never before found untroubled contentment save when I am alone.... Everything that you see and think of on this ride I seem to see and think of, too, and know that you are observing with the same delight that I feel.... Nor does anything in the world disturb my happiness. Nor do you vex me with silence when I would have you speak; nor with speech when I ride dreaming–as I do, cousin, for hours and hours–not sadly, but in the sweetest peace–"

Her voice died out like a June breeze; our horses, ear to ear moved on slowly in the fragrant silence.

"To ride … forever … together," she mused, "looking with perfect content on all the world.... I teaching you, or you me; … it's all one for the delight it gives to be alive and young.... And no trouble to await us, … nothing malicious to do a harm to any living thing.... I could renounce Heaven for that.... Could you?"

"Yes.... For less."

"I know I ask too much; grief makes us purer, fitting us for the company of blessed souls. They say that even war may be a holy thing–though we are commanded otherwise.... Cousin, at moments a demon rises in me and I desire some forbidden thing so ardently, so passionately, that it seems as if I could fight a path through paradise itself to gain what I desire.... Do you feel so?"

"Yes."

"Is it not consuming–terrible to be so shaken?… Yet I never gain my desire, for there in my path my own self rises to confront me, blocking my way. And I can never pass–never.... Once, in winter, our agent, Mr. Fonda, came driving a trained caribou to a sledge. A sweet, gentle thing, with dark, mild eyes, and I was mad to drive it–mad, cousin! But Sir Lupus learned that it had trodden and gored a man, and put me on my honor not to drive it. And all day Sir Lupus was away at Kingsborough for his rents and I free to drive the sledge, … and I was mad to do it–and could not. And the pretty beast stabled with our horses, and every day I might have driven it.... I never did.... It hurts yet, cousin.... How strange is it that to us the single word, 'honor,' blocks the road and makes the King's own highway no thorough-fare forever!"

She gathered bridle nervously, and we launched our horses through a willow fringe and away over a soft, sandy intervale, riding knee to knee till the wind whistled in our ears and the sand rose fountain high at every stride of our bounding horses.

"Ah!" she sighed, drawing bridle. "That clears the heart of silly troubles. Was it not glorious? Like a plunge to the throat in an icy pool!"

Her face, radiant, transfigured, was turned to the north, where, glittering under the westward sun, the sunny waters of the Vlaie sparkled between green reeds and rushes. Beyond, smoky blue mountains tumbled into two uneven walls, spread southeast and southwest, flanking the flat valley of the Vlaie.

Thousands of blackbirds chattered and croaked and trilled and whistled in the reeds, flitting upward, with a flash of scarlet on their wings; hovering, dropping again amid a ceaseless chorus from the half-hidden flock. Over the marshes slow hawks sailed, rose, wheeled, and fell; the gray ducks, whose wings bear purple diamond-squares, quacked in the tussock ponds, guarded by their sentinels, the tall, blue herons. Everywhere the earth was sheeted with marsh-marigolds and violets.

Across the distant grassy flat two deer moved, grazing. We rode to the east, skirting the marshes, following a trail made by cattle, until beyond the flats we saw the green roof of the pleasure-house which Sir William Johnson had built for himself. Our ride together was nearly ended.

As at the same thought we tightened bridle and looked at each other gravely.

"All rides end," I said.