Part 21 (1/2)
”Who is at the Hall?” asked Mr. Stewart.
”There were good men there to-day--and a woman, too, who topped them all in spirit and worth. We call the Indians an inferior race, but, by G.o.d!
they at least have not lost the trick of breeding women who do not whine--who would rather show us blood than tears!”
Thus young Mr. Cross spoke, with a sulky inference in his tone, as he held up his papers to the candle, and scanned the writings by its light.
”Ah,” Mr. Stewart made answer, dissembling what pique he might have felt, and putting real interest into his words. ”Is Molly Brant, then, come down from the Castle? What does she at the Hall? I thought Lady Johnson would have none of her.”
”Yes, she is at the Hall, or was when I left. She was sorely needed, too, to put something like resolution into the chicken-hearts there. Things will move now--nay, are moving! As for Lady Johnson, she is too dutiful and wise a woman to have any wishes that are not her husband's. I would to G.o.d there were others half so obedient and loyal as Polly Watts!”
Again there was the obvious double meaning in his sullen tone. A swift glance flashed back and forth between Mr. Stewart and the pale-faced young wife, and again Mr. Stewart avoided the subject at which Cross hinted.
Instead he turned his chair toward the young man, and said:
”Things are moving, you say. What is new?”
”Why, this is new,” answered Cross, lowering the papers for the moment, and looking down upon his questioner: ”blood runs now at last instead of milk in the veins of the king's men. We will know where we stand. We will master and punish disloyalty; we will brook not another syllable of rebellion!”
”Yes, it has been let to run overlong,” said Mr. Stewart. ”Often enough, since Sir William died, have I wished that I were a score of years younger. Perhaps I might have served in unravelling this unhappy tangle of misunderstandings. The new fingers that are picking at the knot are honest enough, but they have small cunning.”
”That as you will; but there is to be no more fumbling at the knot. We will cut it now at a blow--cut it clean and sharp with the tomahawk!”
An almost splendid animation glowed in the young man's eyes as he spoke, and for the nonce lit up the dogged hardness of his face. So might the stolid purple visage of some ancestral Cross have become illumined, over his heavy beef and tubs of ale, at the stray thought of spearing a boar at bay, or roasting ducats out of a Jew. The thick rank blood of centuries of gluttonous, hunting, marauding progenitors, men whose sum of delights lay in working the violent death of some creature--wild beast or human, it mattered little which--warmed in the veins of the young man now, at the prospect of slaughter. The varnish of civilization melted from his surface; one saw in him only the historic fierce, blood-letting islander, true son of the men who for thirty years murdered one another by tens of thousands all over England, nominally for a York or a Lancaster, but truly from the utter wantonness of the butcher's instinct, the while we Dutch were discovering oil-painting and perfecting the n.o.ble craft of printing with types.
”Yes!” he repeated, with a stormy smile. ”We will cut the knot with the tomahawk!”
The quicker wit of the young woman first scented his meaning.
”You are going to bring down the savages?” she asked, with dilated eyes, and in her emotion forgetting that it was not her recent habit to interrogate her husband.
He vouchsafed her no answer, but made a pretence of again being engrossed with his papers.
After a moment or two of silence the old gentleman rose to his feet, walked over to Philip, and put his hand on the young man's arm.
”I will take my leave now,” he said, in a low voice; ”Eli is here waiting for me, and the evenings grow cold.”
”Nay, do not hasten your going, Mr. Stewart,” said Philip, with a perfunctory return to the usages of politeness. ”You are ever welcome here.”
”Yes, I know,” replied Mr. Stewart, not in a tone of complete conviction.
”But old bones are best couched at home.”
There was another pause, the old gentleman still resting his hand affectionately, almost deprecatingly, on the other's sleeve.
”I would speak plainly to you before I go, Philip,” he said, at last. ”I pray you, listen to the honest advice of an old man, who speaks to you, G.o.d knows, from the very fulness of his heart. I mislike this adventure at which you hint. It has an evil source of inspiration. It is a gloomy day for us here, and for the Colony, and for the cause of order, when the counsels of common-sense and civilization are tossed aside, and the words of that red she-devil regarded instead. No good will come out of it--no good, believe me. Be warned in time! I doubt you were born when I first came into this Valley. I have known it for decades, almost, where you have known it for years. I have watched its settlements grow, its fields push steadily, season after season, upon the heels of the forest. I understand its people as you cannot possibly do. Much there is that I do not like.
Many things I would change, as you would change them. But those err cruelly, criminally, who would work this change by the use of the savages.”
”All other means have been tried, short of crawling on our bellies to these Dutch hinds!” muttered the young man.
”You do not know what the coming of the tribes in hostility means,”