Sir John's inscrutable gaze remained fixed on me.
"In such times as these," said he, "it is better that men like ourselves continue to live together To await events And master them And afterward, each to his vocation and his own tastes It is my desire that you remain at the Hall," he added, looking steadily at me.
"I must decline, Sir John."
"Why?"
"I have already told you why."
"If your present position is irksome to you," he said, "you have merely to name a deputy and feel entirely at liberty to pursue your pleasure. Or you are at least the Laird of Northesk if you are nothing greater. There is a commission in my Highlanders if you desire it And your salary, of course, continues also."
He looked hard at me: "Augmented by half," he added in his slow, cold voice. "And this, with your income, should properly maintain a young man of your age and quality."
I had been Brent-Meester to Sir William, for lack of other employment; and had been glad to take the important office, loving as I do the open air. Also the addition of a salary to my slender means had been acceptable. But it was one matter to serve Sir William as Brent-Meester, and another to serve Sir John in any capacity whatsoever. And as for the remainder of the family, Guy Johnson and Colonel Claus and their intimates the Butlers, I had now had more than enough of them, having endured these uncongenial people only because I had loved Sir William. Yet, for his father's sake, I now spoke to Sir John politely, using him most kindly because I both liked and pitied his lady, too.
Said I: "My desire is to become a Tryon County farmer, Sir John; and to that end I happily became possessed of the parcel at Fonda's Bush. For that reason I am clearing it. And so I must beg of you to accept my resignation as Brent-Meester at the Hall, for I mean to start as soon as convenient to occupy my glebe."
There was a silence; Sacharissa gazed at me in pity, astonishment, and unfeigned horror; Lady Johnson gave me an odd, unhappy look; and Billy Alexander a meaning one, half grin.
Then Sir John's slow and heavy voice invaded the momentary silence: "As my father's Brent-Meester, only an Indian or a Forest Runner knows the wilderness as do you. And we shall have great need of such forest knowledge as you possess, Mr. Drogue."
I think we all understood the Baronet's meaning.
I considered a moment, then replied very quietly that in time of stress no just cause would find me skulking to avoid duty.
I think my manner and tone, as well as what I said, combined to stop Sir John's mouth. For nobody could question such respectable sentiments unless, indeed, a quarrel was meant.
But Sir John Johnson, in his way, was as slow to mortal quarrel as was I in mine. And whatever suspicion of me he might nurse in his secret mind he now made no outward sign of it.
Also, other people were coming across the grass to join us; and presently grave greetings were exchanged in sober voices suitable to the occasion when a considerable company of ladies and gentlemen are gathered at a house of mourning.
Turning away, I noticed Mr. Duncan and the Highland officers at the magazine, all wearing their black badges of respect and a knot of crape on the basket-hilts of their claymores; and young Walter Butler, still stiff in his bandages, gazing up at the June sky out of melancholy eyes, like a damned man striving to see God.
Sir John had now given his arm to his lady. His left hand rested on his sword-hilt the same left hand he had offered to poor Claire Putnam and to which the child still clung, they said.
Claudia turned from Billy Alexander and came toward me. Her face was serious, but I saw the devil looking out of her blue eyes.
Nature had given this maid most lovely proportions that charming slenderness which is plumply moulded and she stood straight, and tall enough, too, to meet on a level the love-sick gaze of any stout young man she had bedevilled; and she wore a most bewitching countenance short-nosed, red-lipped, a skin as white as a water-lily, and thick soft hair as black as night, which she wore unpowdered the dangerous jade!
"Jack," says she in honeyed tones, "are you truly designing to become a hermit?"
"Oh, no," said I, smilingly, "only a farmer, Claudia."
"Why?"
"Because I am a poor man and must feed and clothe myself."
"There is a commission from Sir John in the Scotch regiment "
"I'm Scotch enough without that," said I.
"Jack?"
"Yes, Madam?"
"Are you a little angry with me?"
"No," said I, feeling uncomfortable and concluding to beware of her, for she stood now close to me, and the scent of her warm breath troubled me.
"Why are you angry with me, Jack?" she asked sorrowfully. And took one step nearer.
"I am not," said I.
"Am am I driving you into the wilderness?" she inquired.
"That, also, is absurd," I replied impatiently. "No woman could ever boast of driving me, though some may once have led me."
"Oh, I feared that I had sapped, perhaps, your faith in women, John."
I forced a laugh: "Why, Claudia? Because I lately and vainly was enamoured of you?"
"Lately?"
"Yes. I did love you, once."
"Did love?" she breathed. "Do you not love me any more, Jack?"
"I think not," said I, very cheerfully.
"And why? Sure I used you kindly, Jack. Did I not so?"
"You conducted as is the privilege of maid with man, Sacharissa," said I uneasily. "And that is all I have to say."
"How so did I conduct, Jack?"
"Sweetly to my undoing."
"Try me again," she said, looking up at me, and the devil in her eyes.
But already I was becoming sensible of the ever-living enchantment of this young thing, so wise in stratagems and spoils of Love, and I chose to leave my scalp hang drying at her lodge door beside the scanter pol of Billy Alexander.
For God knows this vixen-virgin spared neither young nor old, but shot them through and through at sight with those heavenly darts from her twin eyes.
And no man, so far, could boast of obtaining from Mistress Swift the least token or any serious guerdon that his quest might lead him by a single step toward Hymen's altar, but only to that cruel arena where all her victims agonized under the mocking sweetness of her smile, and her pretty, down-turned and merciless thumbs the little Vestal villain!
"No, Claudia," quoth I, "you have taken my bow and spear, and shorn me of my thatch like any Mohawk. No; I go to Fonda's Bush " I smiled, " to heal, perhaps, my heart, as you say; but, anyhow, to consult my soul, and armour it in a wilderness."
"A hermit!" she exclaimed scornfully, " and afeard of a maid armed only with two matched eyes, a nose, a mouth and thirty teeth!"
"Afeard of a monster more frightful than that," said I, laughing.
"Of what monster, John Drogue?"
"Of that red monster that is surely, surely creeping northward to surprise and rend us all," said I in a low voice. "And so I shall retire to question my secret soul, and arm it cap-à-pie as God directs."
She was looking at me intently. After a silence she said:
"I do love you; and Billy Alexander; and all gay and brave young men whose unstained swords hedge the women of County Tryon from this same red monster that you mention." And watched me to see how I swallowed this.
I said warily: "Surely, Claudia, all women command our swords no matter which cause we espouse."
"Jack!"
"I hear you, Claudia."
But, "Oh, my God!" she breathed; and put her hands to her face. A moment she stood so, then, eyes still covered by one hand, extended the other to me. I kissed it lightly; then kissed it again.
"Jack!"
"I hear you, Claudia."
But, "Oh, my God!" she breathed; and put her hands to her face. A moment she stood so, then, eyes still covered by one hand, extended the other to me. I kissed it lightly; then kissed it again.
"Do you leave us, Jack?"
I understood.
"It is you who leave me, Claudia."
She, too, understood. It was my first confession that all was not right betwixt my conscience and my King. For that was the only thing I was certain about concerning her: she never betrayed a confidence, whatever else she did. And so I made plain to her where my heart and honour lay not with the King's men in this coming struggle but with my own people.
I think she knew, too, that I had never before confessed as much to any living soul, for she took her other hand from her eyes and looked at me as though something had happened in which she took a sorrowful pride.
Then I kissed her hand for the third time, and let it free. And, going:
"God be with you," she said with a slight smile; "you are my dear friend, John Drogue."
At the Hall porch she turned, the mischief glimmering in her eyes: " And so is Billy Alexander," quoth she.
So she went into the darkened Hall.
It was many months before I saw our Sacharissa again not until Major André had made many another verse for many another inamorata, and his soldier-actors had played more than one of his farces in besieged Boston to the loud orchestra of His Excellency's rebel cannon.
CHAPTER III
THE POT BOILS
Sir William died on the 24th of June in the year 1774; which was the twentieth year of my life.
On the day after he was buried in Saint John's Church in Johnstown, which he had built, I left the Hall for Fonda's Bush, which was a wilderness and which lay some nine miles distant in the Mohawk country, along the little river called Kennyetto.
I speak of Fonda's Bush as a wilderness; but it was not entirely so, because already old Henry Stoner, the trapper who wore two gold rings in his ears, had built him a house near the Kennyetto and had taken up his abode there with his stalwart and handsome sons, Nicholas and John, and a little daughter, Barbara.
Besides this family, who were the pioneers in that vast forest where the three patents2 met, others now began settling upon the pretty little river in the wilderness, which made a thousand and most amazing windings through the Bush of Major Fonda.
There came, now, to the Kennyetto, the family of one De Silver; also the numerous families of John Homan, and Elias Cady; then the Salisburys, Putnams, Bowmans, and Helmers arrived. And Benjamin De Luysnes followed with Joseph Scott where the Frenchman, De Golyer, had built a house and a mill on the trout brook north of us. There was also a dour Scotchman come thither a grim and decent man with long, thin shanks under his kilts, who roved the Bush like a weird and presently went away again.
But before he took himself elsewhere he marked some gigantic trees with his axe and tied a rag of tartan to a branch.
And, "Fonda's Bush is no name," quoth he. "Where a McIntyre sets his mark he returns to set his foot. And where he sets foot shall be called Broadalbin, or I am a great liar!"
And he went away, God knows where. But what he said has become true; for when again he set his foot among the dead ashes of Fonda's Bush, it became Broadalbin. And the clans came with him, too; and they peppered the wilderness with their Scottish names, Perth, Galway, Scotch Bush, Scotch Church, Broadalbin, but my memory runs too fast, like a young hound giving tongue where the scent grows hotter! for the quarry is not yet in sight, nor like to be for many a bloody day, alas!
There was a forest road to the Bush, passable for waggons, and used sometimes by Sir William when he went a-fishing in the Kennyetto.
It was by this road I travelled thither, well-horsed, and had borrowed the farm oxen to carry all my worldly goods.
I had clothing, a clock, some books, bedding of my own, and sufficient pewter.
I had my own rifle, a fowling piece, two pistols, and sufficient ammunition.
And with these, and, as I say, well horsed, I rode out of Johnstown on a June morning, all alone, my heart still heavy with grief for Sir William, and deeply troubled for my country.
For the provinces, now, were slowly kindling, warmed with those pure flames that purge the human soul; and already the fire had caught and was burning fiercely in Massachusetts Bay, where John Hancock fed the flames, daintily, cleverly, with all the circumstance, impudence, and grace of your veritable macaroni who will not let an inferior outdo him in a bow, but who is sometimes insolent to kings.
Well, I was for the forest, now, to wrest from a sunless land a mouthful o' corn to stop the stomach's mutiny.
And if the Northland caught fire some day well, I was as inflammable as the next man, who will not suffer violation of house or land or honour.
As Brent-Meester to Sir William, my duties took me everywhere. I knew old man Stoner, and Nick had become already my warm friend, though I was now a grown man of more than twenty and he still of boy's age. Yet, in many ways, he seemed more mature than I.
I think Nick Stoner was the most mischievous lad I ever knew and admired. He sometimes said the same of me, though I was not, I think, by nature, designed for a scapegrace. However, two years in the wilderness will undermine the grace of saint or sinner in some degree. And if, when during those two hard years I went to Johnstown for a breath of civilization or to Schenectady, or, rarely, to Albany I frequented a few good taverns, there was little harm done, and nothing malicious.
True, disputes with Tories sometimes led to blows, and mayhap some Albany watchman's Dutch noddle needed vinegar to soothe the flamms drummed upon it by a stout stick or ramrod resembling mine.
True, the humming ale at the Admiral Warren Tavern may sometimes have made my own young noddle hum, and Nick Stoner's, too; but there came no harm of it, unless there be harm in bussing a fresh and rosy wench or two; or singing loudly in the tap-room and timing each catch to the hammering of our empty leather jacks on long hickory tables wet with malt.
But why so sad, brother Broadbrim? Youth is not to be denied. No! And youth that sets its sinews against an iron wilderness to conquer it, youth that wields its puny axe against giant trees, youth that pulls with the oxen to uproot enormous stumps so that when the sun is let in there will be a soil to grow corn enough to defy starvation, youth that toils from sun-up to dark, hewing, burning, sawing, delving, plowing, harrowing day after day, month after month, pausing only to kill the wild meat craved or snatch a fish from some forest fount, such youth cannot be decently denied, brother Broadbrim!
But if Nick and I were truly as graceless as some stiff-necked folk pretended, always there was laughter in our scrapes, even when hot blood boiled at the Admiral Warren, and Tory and Rebel drummed one another's hides to the outrage of law and order and the mortification of His Majesty's magistrates in County Tryon.
Even in Fonda's Bush the universal fire had begun to smoulder; the names Rebel and Tory were whispered; the families of Philip Helmer and Elias Cady talked very loudly of the King and of Sir John, and how a hempen rope was the fittest cravat for such Boston men as bragged too freely.
But what most of all was in my thoughts, as I swung my axe there in the immemorial twilight of the woods, concerned the Indians of the great Iroquois Confederacy.
What would these savages do when the storm broke? What would happen to this frontier? What would happen to the solitary settlers, to such hamlets as Fonda's Bush, to Johnstown, to Schenectady nay, to Albany itself?