Part 55 (1/2)
THE DEMON
I think that summer was the strangest ever I have lived,--the most unreal days of life,--so still, so golden, so strangely calm the solitude that ringed me where I was slowly healing of my hurt.
Each dawn was heralded by gold fire, each evening by a rosy conflagration in the west. It rained only at night; and all that crystal clear mid-summer scarcely a shred of fleece dappled the empyrean.
Those winds which blow so frequently in our Northland seemed to have become zephyrs, too; and there was but a reedy breeze along the Vlaie Water, and scarce a ripple to rock the lily pads in shallow reach and cove.
It was strange. And, only for the loveliness of night and day, there might have seemed in this hushed tranquillity around me a sort of hidden menace.
For all around about was war, where Tryon County lay so peacefully in the suns.h.i.+ne, ringed within the outer tumult, and walled on all sides by battle smoke.
Above us our fever-stricken Northern army, driven from Crown Point, now lay and sickened at Ticonderoga, where General Gates did now command our people, while poor Arnold, turned s.h.i.+p's carpenter, laboured to match Guy Carleton's flotilla which the British were dragging piecemeal over Chambly Rapids to blow us out o' the lake.
From south of us came news of the Long Island disaster where His Excellency, driven from Brooklyn and New York, now lay along the Harlem Heights.
And it was a sorry business; for Billy Alexander, who is Lord Stirling, was taken a prisoner; and Sullivan also was taken; and their two brigades were practically destroyed.
But worse happened at New York City, where the New York militia ran and two New England brigades, seized with panic, fled in a shameful manner.
And so out o' town our people pulled foot, riotous and disorderly in retreat, and losing all our heavy guns, nearly all our stores, and more than three hundred prisoners.
This was the news I had of the Long Island battle, where I lay in convalescence at Summer House that strange, still summer in the North.
And I thought very bitterly of what advantage was it that we had but just rung bells and fired off our cannon to salute our new Declaration of Independence, and had upset the prancing leaden King from his pedestal on the Bowling Green, if our militia ran like rabbits at sight of the red-coats, and general officers like Lord Stirling were mouse-trapped in their first battle.
Alas for poor New York, where fire and explosion had laid a third of the city in ruins; where the drums of the red-coats now rolled brazenly along the Broadway; where Delancy's hors.e.m.e.n scoured the island for friends to liberty; where that great wretch, Loring, lorded it like an unclean devil of the pit.
G.o.d! to think on it when all had gone so well; and Boston clean o'
red-coats, and Canada all but in our grasp; and old Charleston shaking with her dauntless cannonade, and our people's volleys pouring into Dunmore's hirelings through the levelled cinders of Norfolk town!
What was the matter with us that these Southern gentlemen stood the British fire while, if we faced it, we crumpled and gave ground; or, if we shunned it, we ran disgracefully? Save only at Boston had we driven the red-coats on land. The British flame had scorched us on Long Island, singed us in New York, blasted us at Falmouth and Quebec, and left our armies writhing in the ashes from Montreal to Norfolk.
And yet how tranquil, how fair, how ominously calm lay our Valley Land in the suns.h.i.+ne, ringed here by our blue mountains where no slightest cloud brooded in an unstained sky!
And more still, more strange even than the untroubled calm of Tryon, lay the Summer House in its sunlit, soundless, and green desolation.
Where, through the long days, nothing moved on the waste of waters save where a sun-burnished reed twinkled. Where, under star-powdered skies, no wind stirred; and only the vague far cry of some wandering wild thing ever disturbed that vast and velvet silence.
Long before she came near me to speak to me, and even before she had glanced at me from the west porch, whither she took her knitting in the afternoons, I had seen Penelope.
From where I lay on my trundle in Sir William's old gun-room I could see out across the hallway and through the door, where the west veranda ran.
In the mornings either my Indian, Yellow-Leaf, or Nick Stoner mounted guard there, watching the green and watery wastes to the northward, while his comrade freshened my sheets and pillows and cleansed my room.
In the afternoons one o' them went a-fis.h.i.+ng or prowling after meat for our larder, or, sometimes, Nick went a-horse to Mayfield on observation, or to Johnstown for news or a bag of flour. And t'other watched from the veranda roof, which was railed, and ran all around the house, so that a man might walk post there and face all points of the compa.s.s.
As for Penelope, I soon learned her routine; for in the morning she was in the kitchen and about the house--save only she came not to my room--but swept and dusted the rest, and cooked in the cellar-kitchen.