Part 6 (2/2)
The schoolmaster, appealed to so directly, pursed his thin lips, lowered his lids to hide the faint twinkle in his eyes, and replied in measured tones:
”I cannot speak for you, Jacobus. I've known you a long time and your example is corrupting, but I trust that I shall prove firm against temptation.”
The oysters were finished. No man left a single one untouched on his plate, and then a thick chicken soup was served by two very black women in gay cotton prints with red bandanna handkerchiefs tied like turbans around their heads. Robert could see no diminution in the appet.i.te of the guests, nor did he feel any decrease in his own. Mr. Hervey turned to him.
”I hear you saw the Marquis de Montcalm himself,” he said.
”Yes, sir,” replied Robert. ”I saw him several times, at Ticonderoga, and before that in the Oswego campaign. I've been twice a prisoner of the French.”
”How does he look?”
”Of middle age, sir, short, dark and very polite in speech.”
”And evidently a good soldier. He has proved that and to our misfortune.
Yet, I cannot but think that we will produce his master. Now, I wonder who it is going to be. Under the English system the best general does not always come forward first, and perhaps we've not yet so much as heard the name of the man who is going to beat Montcalm. That he will be beaten I've no doubt. We'll conquer Canada and settle North American affairs for all time. Perhaps it will be the last great war.”
Robert was listening with the closest attention, and it seemed to him that the New Yorker was right. With Canada conquered and the French power expelled it would be the last great war so far as North America was concerned? How fallible men are! How p.r.o.ne they are to think when they have settled things for themselves they have settled them also for all future generations!
”And then,” continued Mr. Hervey, ”New York will become a yet greater port than it now is. It may even hope to rival Philadelphia in size and wealth. It will be London's greatest feeder.”
The soup, not neglected in the least, gave way to fish, and then to many kinds of meat, in which game, bear, deer and wild fowl were conspicuous.
Robert took a little of everything, but he was absorbed in the talk. He felt that these men were in touch with great affairs, and, however much they diverged from such subjects they had them most at heart. It was a thrilling thought that the future of North America, in some degree at least, might be determined around that very table at which he was sitting as a guest. He had knowledge and imagination enough to understand that it was not the armies that determined the fate of nations, but the men directing them who stood behind them farther back, in the dark perhaps, obscure, maybe never to become fully known, but clairvoyant and powerful just the same. He was resolved not to lose a word. So he leaned forward just a little in his seat, and his blue eyes sparkled.
”Dagaeoga is glad to be here,” said Tayoga in an undertone.
”So I am, Tayoga. They talk of things of which I wish to hear.”
”As I told you, these be sachems with whom we sit. They be not chiefs who lead in battle, but, like the sachems, they plan, and, like the medicine men, they make charms and incantations that influence the souls of the warriors and also the souls of those who lead them to battle.”
”The same thought was in my own mind.”
Wine smuggled from France or Spain was served to the men, though young Lennox and the Onondaga touched none. In truth, it was not offered to them, Master Jacobus saying, with a glance at Robert:
”I have never allowed you and Tayoga to have anything stronger than coffee in my house, and although you are no longer under my charge I intend to keep to the rule.”
”We wish nothing more, sir,” said Robert.
”As for me,” said the Onondaga, ”I shall never touch any kind of liquor.
I know that it goes ill with my race.”
”Yours, I understand, is the Onondaga nation,” said Mr. Hervey, looking at him attentively.
”The Onondaga, and I belong to the clan of the Bear,” replied Tayoga proudly. ”The Hodenosaunee have held the balance in this war.”
”That I know full well. I gladly give the great League ample credit. It has been a wise policy of the English to deal honestly and fairly with your people. In general the French surpa.s.s us in winning and holding the affections of the native races, but some good angel has directed us in our dealings with the Six Nations. Without their Indians the French could have done little against us. I hear of one of their leaders who has endeared himself to them in the most remarkable manner. There has been much talk in New York of the Chevalier de St. Luc, and being nearer the seat of action you've perhaps heard some of it here in Albany, Jacobus!”
Robert leaned a little farther forward and concentrated every faculty on the talk, but he said nothing.
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