Chapter 2
I looked into the fireplace. Ashes of dead embers choked it; the andirons, smoke-smeared and crusted, stood out stark against the sooty maw of the hearth.
Still, for all, the hall was made in good and even noble proportion; simple, as should be the abode of a gentleman; over-massive, perhaps, and even destitute of those gracious and symmetrical galleries which we of the South think no shame to take pride in; for the banisters were brutally heavy, and the rail above like a rampart, and for a newel-post some ass had set a bronze cannon, breech upward; and it was green and beautiful, but offensive to sane consistency.
Standing, the better to observe the hall on all sides, it came to me that some one had stripped a fine English mansion of fine but ancient furniture, to bring it across an ocean and through a forest for the embellishment of this coarse house. For there were pictures in frames showing generals and statesmen of the Ormond-Butlers, one even of the great duke who fled to France; and there were pictures of the Varicks before they mingled with us Irish--apple-cheeked Dutchmen, cadaverous youths bearing match-locks, and one, an admiral, with star and sash across his varnish-cracked corselet of blue steel, looking at me with pale, smoky eyes.
Rusted suits of mail, and groups of weapons made into star shapes and circles, points outward, were ranged between the heavy pictures, each centred with a moth-ravaged stag's head, smothered in dust.
As I slowly paced the panelled wall, nose in air to observe these neglected trophies, I came to another picture, hung all alone near the wall where it passes under the staircase, and at first, for the darkness, I could not see.
Imperceptibly the outlines of the shape grew in the gloom from a deep, rich background, and I made out a figure of a youth all cased in armor save for the helmet, which was borne in one smooth, blue-veined hand.
The face, too, began to assume form; rounded, delicate, crowned with a mass of golden hair; and suddenly I perceived the eyes, and they seemed to open sweetly, like violets in a dim wood.
"What Ormond is this?" I muttered, bewitched, yet sullen to see such feminine roundness in any youth; and, with my sleeve of buckskin, I rubbed the dust from the gilded plate set in the lower frame.
"The Maid-at-Arms," I read aloud.
Then there came to me, at first like the far ring of a voice scarcely heard through southern winds, the faint echo of a legend told me ere my mother died--perhaps told me by her in those drifting hours of a childhood nigh forgotten. Yet I seemed to see white, sun-drenched sands and the long, blue swell of a summer sea, and I heard winds in the palms, and a song--truly it was my mother's; I knew it now--and, of a sudden, the words came borne on a whisper of ancient melody:
"This for the deed she did at Ashby Farms, Helen of Ormond, Royal Maid-at-Arms!"
Memory was stirring at last, and the gray legend grew from the past, how a maid, Helen of Ormond, for love of her cousin, held prisoner in his own house at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, sheared off her hair, clothed her limbs in steel, and rode away to seek him; and how she came to the house at Ashby and rode straight into the gateway, forcing her horse to the great hall where her lover lay, and flung him, all in chains, across her saddle-bow, riding like a demon to freedom through the Desmonds, his enemies. Ah! now my throat was aching with the memory of the song, and of that strange line I never understood--"Wearing the ghost-ring!"--and, of themselves, the words grew and died, formed on my silent lips:
"This for the deed she did at Ashby Farms, Helen of Ormond, Royal Maid-at-Arms!
"Though for all time the lords of Ormond be Butlers to Majesty, Yet shall new honors fall upon her Who, armored, rode for love to Ashby Farms; Let this her title be: A Maid-at-Arms!
"Serene mid love's alarms, For all time shall the Maids-at-Arms, Wearing the ghost-ring, triumph with their constancy. And sweetly conquer with a sigh And vanquish with a tear Captains a trembling world might fear.
"This for the deed she did at Ashby Farms, Helen of Ormond, Royal Maid-at-Arms!"
Staring at the picture, lips quivering with the soundless words, such wretched loneliness came over me that a dryness in my throat set me gulping, and I groped my way back to the settle by the fireplace and sat down heavily in homesick solitude.
Then hate came, a quick hatred for these Northern skies, and these strangers of the North who dared claim kin with me, to lure me northward with false offer of council and mockery of hospitality.
I was on my feet again in a flash, hot with anger, ready with insult to meet insult, for I meant to go ere I had greeted my host--an insult, indeed, and a deadly one among us. Furious, I bent to snatch my rifle from the settle where it lay, and, as I flung it to my shoulder, wheeling to go, my eyes fell upon a figure stealing down the stairway from above, a woman in flowered silk, bare of throat and elbow, fingers scarcely touching the banisters as she moved.
She hesitated, one foot poised for the step below; then it fell noiselessly, and she stood before me.
Anger died out under the level beauty of her gaze. I bowed, just as I caught a trace of mockery in the mouth's scarlet curve, and bowed the lower for it, too, straightening slowly to the dignity her mischievous eyes seemed to flout; and her lips, too, defied me, all silently--nay, in every limb and from every finger-tip she seemed to flout me, and the slow, deep courtesy she made me was too slow and far too low, and her recovery a marvel of plastic malice.
"My cousin Ormond?" she lisped;--"I am Dorothy Varick."
We measured each other for a moment in silence.
There was a trace of powder on her bright hair, like a mist of snow on gold; her gown's yoke was torn, for all its richness, and a wisp of lace in rags fell, clouding the delicate half-sleeve of China silk.
Her face, colored like palest ivory with rose, was no doll's face, for all its symmetry and a forgotten patch to balance the dimple in her rounded chin; it was even noble in a sense, and, if too chaste for sensuous beauty, yet touched with a strange and pensive sweetness, like 'witched marble waking into flesh.
Suddenly a voice came from above: "Dorothy, come here!"
My cousin frowned, glanced at me, then laughed.
"Dorothy, I want my watch!" repeated the voice.
Still looking at me, my cousin slowly drew from her bosom a huge, jewelled watch, and displayed it for my inspection.
"We were matching mint-dates with shillings for father's watch; I won it," she observed.
"Dorothy!" insisted the voice.
"Oh, la!" she cried, impatiently, "will you hush?"
"No, I won't!"
"Then our cousin Ormond will come up-stairs and give you what Paddy gave the kettle-drum--won't you?" she added, raising her eyes to me.
"And what was that?" I asked, astonished.
Somebody on the landing above went off into fits of laughter; and, as I reddened, my cousin Dorothy, too, began to laugh, showing an edge of small, white teeth under the red lip's line.
"Are you vexed because we laugh?" she asked.
My tongue stung with a retort, but I stood silent. These Varicks might forget their manners, but I might not forget mine.
She honored me with a smile, sweeping me from head to foot with her bright eyes. My buckskins were dirty from travel, and the thrums in rags; and I knew that she noted all these matters.
"Cousin," she lisped, "I fear you are something of a macaroni."
Instantly a fresh volley of laughter rattled from the landing--such clear, hearty laughter that it infected me, spite my chagrin.
"He's a good fellow, our cousin Ormond!" came a fresh young voice from above.
"He shall be one of us!" cried another; and I thought to catch a glimpse of a flowered petticoat whisked from the gallery's edge.
I looked at my cousin Dorothy Varick; she stood at gaze, laughter in her eyes, but the mouth demure.
"Cousin Dorothy," said I, "I believe I am a good fellow, even though ragged and respectable. If these qualities be not bars to your society, give me your hand in fellowship, for upon my soul I am nigh sick for a welcome from somebody in this unfriendly land."
Still at gaze, she slowly raised her arm and held out to me a fresh, sun-tanned hand; and I had meant to press it, but a sudden shyness scotched me, and, as the soft fingers rested in my palm, I raised them and touched them with my lips in silent respect.
"You have pretty manners," she said, looking at her hand, but not withdrawing it from where it rested. Then, of an impulse, her fingers closed on mine firmly, and she looked me straight in the eye.
"You are a good comrade; welcome to Varicks', cousin Ormond!"
Our hands fell apart, and, glancing up, I perceived a group of youthful barbarians on the stairs, intently watching us. As my eyes fell on them they scattered, then closed in together defiantly. A red-haired lad of seventeen came down the steps, offering his hand awkwardly.
"I'm Ruyven Varick," he said. "These girls are fools to bait men of our age--" He broke off to seize Dorothy by the arm. "Give me that watch, you vixen!"
His sister scornfully freed her arm, and Ruyven stood sullenly clutching a handful of torn lace.
"Why don't you present us to our cousin Ormond?" spoke up a maid of sixteen.
"Who wants to make your acquaintance?" retorted Ruyven, edging again towards his sister.
I protested that I did; and Dorothy, with mock empressement, presented me to Cecile Butler, a slender, olive-skinned girl with pretty, dark eyes, who offered me her hand to kiss in such determined manner that I bowed very low to cover my smile, knowing that she had witnessed my salute to my cousin Dorothy and meant to take nothing less for herself.
"And those boys yonder are Harry Varick and Sam Butler, my cousins," observed Dorothy, nonchalantly relapsing into barbarism to point them out separately with her pink-tipped thumb; "and that lad on the stairs is Benny. Come on, we're to throw hunting-knives for pennies. Can you?--but of course you can."
I looked around at my barbarian kin, who had produced hunters' knives from recesses in their clothing, and now gathered impatiently around Dorothy, who appeared to be the leader in their collective deviltries.
"All the same, that watch is mine," broke out Ruyven, defiantly. "I'll leave it to our cousin Ormond--" but Dorothy cut in: "Cousin, it was done in this manner: father lost his timepiece, and the law is that whoever finds things about the house may keep them. So we all ran to the porch where father had fallen off his horse last night, and I think we all saw it at the same time; and I, being the older and stronger--"
"You're not the stronger!" cried Sam and Harry, in the same breath.
"I," repeated Dorothy, serenely, "being not only older than Ruyven by a year, but also stronger than you all together, kept the watch, spite of your silly clamor--and mean to keep it."
"Then we matched shillings for it!" cried Cecile.
"It was only fair; we all discovered it," explained Dorothy. "But Ruyven matched with a Spanish piece where the date was under the reverse, and he says he won. Did he, cousin?"
"Mint-dates always match!" said Ruyven; "gentlemen of our age understand that, Cousin George, don't we?"
"Have I not won fairly?" asked Dorothy, looking at me. "If I have not, tell me."
With that, Sam Butler and Harry set up a clamor that they and Cecile had been unfairly dealt with, and all appealed to me until, bewildered, I sat down on the stairs and looked wistfully at Dorothy.
"In Heaven's name, cousins, give me something to eat and drink before you bring your lawsuits to me for judgment," I said.
"Oh," cried Dorothy, biting her lip, "I forgot. Come with me, cousin!" She seized a bell-rope and rang it furiously, and a loud gong filled the hall with its brazen din; but nobody came.
"Where the devil are those blacks?" said Dorothy, biting off her words with a crisp snap that startled me more than her profanity. "Cato! Where are you, you lazy--"
"Ahm hyah, Miss Dorry," came a patient voice from the kitchen stairs.
"Then bring something to eat--bring it to the gun-room instantly--something for Captain Ormond--and a bottle of Sir Lupus's own claret--and two glasses--"
"Three glasses!" cried Ruyven.
"Four!" "Five!" shouted Harry and Cecile.
"Six!" added Samuel; and little Benny piped out, "Theven!"
"Then bring two bottles, Cato," called out Dorothy.
"I want some small-beer!" protested Benny.
"Oh, go suck your thumbs," retorted Ruyven, with an elder brother's brutality; but Dorothy ordered the small-beer, and bade the negro hasten.
"We all mean to bear you company, Cousin," said Ruyven, cheerfully, patting my arm for my reassurance; and truly I lacked something of assurance among these kinsmen of mine, who appeared to lack none.
"You spoke of me as Captain Ormond," I said, turning with a smile to Dorothy.
"Oh, it's all one," she said, gayly; "if you're not a captain now, you will be soon, I'll wager--but I'm not to talk of that before the children--"
"You may talk of it before me," said Ruyven. "Harry, take Benny and Sam and Cecile out of earshot--"
"Pooh!" cried Harry, "I know all about Sir John's new regiment--"
"Will you hush your head, you little fool!" cut in Dorothy. "Servants and asses have long ears, and I'll clip yours if you bray again!"
The jingling of glasses on a tray put an end to the matter; Cato, the black, followed by two more blacks, entered the hall bearing silver salvers, and at a nod from Dorothy we all trooped after them.
"Guests first!" hissed Dorothy, in a fierce whisper, as Ruyven crowded past me, and he slunk back, mortified, while Dorothy, in a languid voice and with the air of a duchess, drawled, "Your arm, cousin," and slipped her hand into my arm, tossing her head with a heavy-lidded, insolent glance at poor Ruyven.
And thus we entered the gun-room, I with Dorothy Varick on my arm, and behind me, though I was not at first aware of it, Harry, gravely conducting Cecile in a similar manner, followed by Samuel and Benny, arm-in-arm, while Ruyven trudged sulkily by himself.
III
COUSINS
There was a large, discolored table in the armory, or gun-room, as they called it; and on this, without a cloth, our repast was spread by Cato, while the other servants retired, panting and grinning like over-fat hounds after a pack-run.
And, by Heaven! they lacked nothing for solid silver, my cousins the Varicks, nor yet for fine glass, which I observed without appearance of vulgar curiosity while Cato carved a cold joint of butcher's roast and cracked the bottles of wine--a claret that perfumed the room like a garden in September.
"Cousin Dorothy, I have the honor to raise my glass to you," I said.
"I drink your health, Cousin George," she said, gravely--"Benny, let that wine alone! Is there no small-beer there, that you go coughing and staining your bib over wine forbidden? Take his glass away, Ruyven! Take it quick, I say!"
Benny, deprived of his claret, collapsed moodily into a heap, and sat swinging his legs and clipping the table, at every kick of his shoon, until my wine danced in my glass and soiled the table.
"Stop that, you!" cried Cecile.
Benny subsided, scowling.
Though Dorothy was at some pains to assure me that they had dined but an hour before, that did not appear to blunt their appetites. And the manner in which they drank astonished me, a glass of wine being considered sufficient for young ladies at home, and a half-glass for lads like Harry and Sam. Yet when I emptied my glass Dorothy emptied hers, and the servants refilled hers when they refilled mine, till I grew anxious and watched to see that her face flushed not, but had my anxiety for my pains, as she changed not a pulse-beat for all the red wine she swallowed.
And Lord! how busy were her little white teeth, while her pretty eyes roved about, watchful that order be kept at this gypsy repast. Cecile and Harry fell to struggling for a glass, which snapped and flew to flakes under their clutching fingers, drenching them with claret.
"Silence!" cried Dorothy, rising, eyes ablaze. "Do you wish our cousin Ormond to take us for manner-less savages?"
"Why not?" retorted Harry. "We are!"
"Oh, Lud!" drawled Cecile, languidly fanning her flushed face, "I would I had drunk small-beer--Harry, if you kick me again I'll pinch!"
"It's a shame," observed Ruyven, "that gentlemen of our age may not take a glass of wine together in comfort."
"Your age!" laughed Dorothy. "Cousin Ormond is twenty-three, silly, and I'm eighteen--or close to it."
"And I'm seventeen," retorted Ruyven.
"Yet I throw you at wrestling," observed Dorothy, with a shrug.
"Oh, your big feet! Who can move them?" he rejoined.
"Big feet? Mine?" She bent, tore a satin shoe from her foot, and slapped it down on the table in challenge to all to equal it--a small, silver-buckled thing of Paddington's make, with a smart red heel and a slender body, slim as the crystal slipper of romance.
There was no denying its shapeliness; presently she removed it, and, stooping, slowly drew it on her foot.
"Is that the shoe Sir John drank your health from?" sneered Ruyven.
A rich flush mounted to Dorothy's hair, and she caught at her wine-glass as though to throw it at her brother.
"A married man, too," he laughed--"Sir John Johnson, the fat baronet of the Mohawks--"
"Damn you, will you hold your silly tongue?" she cried, and rose to launch the glass, but I sprang to my feet, horrified and astounded, arm outstretched.
"Ruyven," I said, sharply, "is it you who fling such a taunt to shame your own kin? If there is aught of impropriety in what this man Sir John has done, is it not our affair with him in place of a silly gibe at Dorothy?"
"I ask pardon," stammered Ruyven; "had there been impropriety in what that fool, Sir John, did I should not have spoke, but have acted long since, Cousin Ormond."
"I'm sure of it," I said, warmly. "Forgive me, Ruyven."
"Oh, la!" said Dorothy, her lips twitching to a smile, "Ruyven only said it to plague me. I hate that baronet, and Ruyven knows it, and harps ever on a foolish drinking-bout where all fell to the table, even Walter Butler, and that slow adder Sir John among the first. And they do say," she added, with scorn, "that the baronet did find one of my old shoon and filled it to my health--damn him!--"
"Dorothy!" I broke in, "who in Heaven's name taught you such shameful oaths?"
"Oaths?" Her face burned scarlet. "Is it a shameful oath to say 'Damn him'?"
"It is a common oath men use--not gentlewomen," I said.
"Oh! I supposed it harmless. They all laugh when I say it--father and Guy Johnson and the rest; and they swear other oaths--words I would not say if I could--but I did not know there was harm in a good smart 'damn!'"
She leaned back, one slender hand playing with the stem of her glass; and the flush faded from her face like an afterglow from a serene horizon.
"I fear," she said, "you of the South wear a polish we lack."
"Best mirror your faults in it while you have the chance," said Harry, promptly.
"We lack polish--even Walter Butler and Guy Johnson sneer at us under father's nose," said Ruyven. "What the devil is it in us Varicks that set folk whispering and snickering and nudging one another? Am I parti-colored, like an Oneida at a scalp-dance? Does Harry wear bat's wings for ears? Are Dorothy's legs crooked, that they all stare?"
"It's your red head," observed Cecile. "The good folk think to see the noon-sun setting in the wood--"
"Oh, tally! you always say that," snapped Ruyven.
Dorothy, leaning forward, looked at me with dreamy blue eyes that saw beyond me.
"We are doubtless a little mad, ... as they say," she mused. "Otherwise we seem to be like other folk. We have clothing befitting, when we choose to wear it; we were schooled in Albany; we are people of quality, like the other patroons; we lack nothing for servants or tenants--what ails them all, to nudge and stare and grin when we pass?"
"Mr. Livingston says our deportment shocks all," murmured Cecile.
"The Schuylers will have none of us," added Harry, plaintively--"and I admire them, too."
"Oh, they all conduct shamefully when I go to school in Albany," burst out Sammy; "and I thrashed that puling young patroon, too, for he saw me and refused my salute. But I think he will render me my bow next time."
"Do the quality not visit you here?" I asked Dorothy.
"Visit us? No, cousin. Who is to receive them? Our mother is dead."
Cecile said: "Once they did come, but Uncle Varick had that mistress of Sir John's to sup with them and they took offence."
"Mrs. Van Cortlandt said she was a painted hussy--" began Harry.
"The Van Rensselaers left the house, vowing that Sir Lupus had used them shamefully," added Cecile; "and Sir Lupus said: 'Tush! tush! When the Van Rensselaers are too good for the Putnams of Tribes Hill I'll eat my spurs!' and then he laughed till he cried."
"They never came again; nobody of quality ever came; nobody ever comes," said Ruyven.
"Excepting the Johnsons and the Butlers," corrected Sammy.
"And then everybody geths tight; they were here lath night and Uncle Varick is sthill abed," said little Benny, innocently.
"Will you all hold your tongues?" cried Dorothy, fiercely. "Father said we were not to tell anybody that Sir John and the Ormond-Butlers visited us."
"Why not?" I asked.
Dorothy clasped both hands under her chin, rested her bare elbows on the table, and leaned close to me, whispering confidentially: "Because of the war with the Boston people. The country is overrun with rebels--rebel troops at Albany, rebel gunners at Stanwix, rebels at Edward and Hunter and Johnstown. A scout of ten men came here last week; they were harrying a war-party of Brant's Mohawks, and Stoner was with them, and that great ox in buckskin, Jack Mount. And do you know what he said to father? He said, 'For Heaven's sake, turn red or blue, Sir Lupus, for if you don't we'll hang you to a crab-apple and chance the color.' And father said, 'I'm no partisan King's man'; and Jack Mount said, 'You're the joker of the pack, are you?' And father said, 'I'm not in the shuffle, and you can bear me out, you rogue!' And then Jack Mount wagged his big forefinger at him and said, 'Sir Lupus, if you're but a joker, one or t'other side must discard you!' And they rode away, priming their rifles and laughing, and father swore and shook his cane at them."
In her eagerness her lips almost touched my ear, and her breath warmed my cheek.
"All that I saw and heard," she whispered, "and I know father told Walter Butler, for a scout came yesterday, saying that a scout from the Rangers and the Royal Greens had crossed the hills, and I saw some of Sir John's Scotch loons riding like warlocks on the new road, and that great fool, Francy McCraw, tearing along at their head and crowing like a cock."
"Cousin, cousin," I protested, "all this--all these names--even the causes and the manners of this war, are incomprehensible to me."
"Oh," she said, in surprise, "have you in Florida not heard of our war?"
"Yes, yes--all know that war is with you, but that is all. I know that these Boston men are fighting our King; but why do the Indians take part?"
She looked at me blankly, and made a little gesture of dismay.
"I see I must teach you history, cousin," she said. "Father tells us that history is being made all about us in these days--and, would you believe it? Benny took it that books were being made in the woods all around the house, and stole out to see, spite of the law that father made--"
"Who thaw me?" shouted Benny.
"Hush! Be quiet!" said Dorothy.