Part 8 (1/2)

”What cruelty, Carus? You mean the rigor Cunningham uses?”

”Rigor!” I said, laughing, and my laugh was unpleasant.

He looked at me narrowly. We rode past Warren Street and the Upper Barracks in silence, saluting an officer here and there with preoccupied punctiliousness. Already I was repenting of my hardiness in mixing openly with politics or war--matters I had ever avoided or let pa.s.s with gay indifference.

”Carus,” he said, patting his horse's mane, ”you will lay a bet for the honor of the family this time--will you not?”

”I have no money,” I replied, surprised; for never before had he offered to suggest an interference into my own affairs--never by word or look.

”No money!” he repeated, laughing. ”Gad, you rake, what do you do with it all?” And as I continued silent, he said more gravely, ”May I speak plainly to a kinsman and dear friend?”

”Always,” I said uneasily.

”Then, without offense, Carus, I think that, were I you, I should bet a little--now and again--fling the guineas for a change--now and then--if I were you, Carus.”

”If you were I you would not,” I said, reddening to the temples.

”I think I should, nevertheless,” he persisted, smiling. ”Carus, you know that if you need money to bet with----”

”I'll tell you what I need, Sir Peter,” said I, looking him in the eye.

”I need your faith in me that I am not by choice a n.i.g.g.ard.”

”G.o.d forbid!” he cried.

”Yet I pa.s.s among many for that,” I said hotly. ”I know it, I suffer.

Yet I can not burn a penny; it belongs to others, that's all.”

”A debt!” he murmured.

”Call it as you will. The money you overpay me for my poor services is not even my own to enjoy.”

Sir Peter dropped his bridle and slapped his gloved hands together with a noise that made his horse jump. ”I knew it,” he cried, ”I knew it, and so I told Elsin when she came to me, troubled, because in you this one flaw appeared; yet though she questioned me, in the same breath she vowed the marble perfect, and asked me if you had parents or kin dependent. She is a rare maid, my pretty kinswoman--” He hesitated, glancing cornerwise at me.

”Do you know Walter Butler well?” I asked carelessly.

”No, only a little. Why, Carus?”

”Is he married?”

”I never heard it. He is scarcely known to me save through Sir John Johnson, and that his zeal led him to what some call a private reprisal.”

”Yes, he burned our house, or his Indians did, making pretense that they did not know who lived there, but thought the whole Bush a rebel hotbed. It is true the house was new, built while Sir John lay brooding there in Canada over his broken parole. Perhaps Walter Butler did not know the house was ours.”

”You are very generous, Carus,” said Sir Peter gravely.

”No, not very. You see, my father and my mother were in France, and I here, and Butler's raiders only murdered one old man--a servant, all alone there, a man too old and deaf to understand their questions. I know who slew that ancient body-servant to my father, who often held me on his knees. No, Sir Peter, I am not generous, as you say. But there are matters which must await the precedence of great events ere their turn comes in the mills which grind so slow, so sure, and so exceeding fine.”

Sir Peter looked at me in silence, and in silence we rode on until we came to the tavern called the Coq d'Or.