The Shadow of the North Part 24

But the big brick house looked to Robert and Tayoga like a fortress, with its ma.s.sive door and iron-barred windows, although friendly smoke rose from a high chimney and made a warm line against the frosty blue air.

Willet walked briskly up the high stone steps and thundered on the door with a heavy bra.s.s knocker. The summons was quickly answered and the door swung back, revealing a tall, thin, elderly man, neatly dressed in the fas.h.i.+on of the time. He had the manner of one who served, although he did not seem to be a servant. Robert judged at once that he was an upper clerk who lived in the house, after the custom of the day.

"Is Master Benjamin within, Jonathan?" asked Willet.

The tall man blinked and then stared at the hunter in astonishment.

"Is it in very truth you, Master Willet?" he exclaimed.

"None other. Come, Jonathan, you know my voice and my face and my figure very well. You could not fail to recognize me anywhere. So cease your doubting. My young friends here are Robert Lennox, of whom you know, and Tayoga, a coming chief of the Clan of the Bear, of the nation Onondaga, of the great League of the Hodenosaunee, known to you as the Six Nations. He's impatient of disposition and unless you answer my question speedily I'll have him tomahawk you. Come now, is Master Benjamin within?"

"He is, Mr. Willet. I had no intent to delay my answer, but you must allow something to surprise."

"I grant you pardon," said the hunter whimsically. "Robert and Tayoga, this is Master Jonathan Pillsbury, chief clerk and man of affairs for Master Benjamin Hardy. They are two old bachelors who live in the same house, and who get along well together, because they're so unlike. As for Master Jonathan, his heart is not as sour as his face, and you could come to a worse place than the shop of Benjamin and Jonathan. Master Jonathan, you will take particular notice of Mr. Lennox. He is well grown and he appears intelligent, does he not?"

The old clerk blinked again, and then his appraising eyes swept over Robert.

"'Twould be hard to find a n.o.bler youth," he said.

"I thought you would say so, and now lead us, without further delay, to Master Hardy."

"Who is it who demands to be led to me?" thundered a voice from the rear of the house. "I seem to know that voice! Ah, it's Willet! Good old Willet! Honest Dave, who wields the sharpest sword in North America!"

A tall, heavy man lunged forward. "Lunged" was the word that described it to Robert, and his impetuous motion was due to the sight of Willet, whom he grasped by both hands, shaking them with a vigor that would have caused pain in one less powerful than the hunter, and as he shook them he uttered exclamations, many of them bordering upon oaths and all of them pertaining to the sea.

Robert's eyes had grown used to the half light of the hall, and he took particular notice of Master Benjamin Hardy who was destined to become an important figure in his life, although he did not then dream of it. He saw a tall man of middle age, built very powerfully, his face burnt almost the color of an Indian's by the winds and suns of many seas. But his hair was thick and long and the eyes s.h.i.+ning in the face, made dark by the weather, were an intensely bright blue. Robert, upon whom impressions were so swift and vivid, reckoned that here was one capable of great and fierce actions, and also with a heart that contained a large measure of kindness and generosity.

"Dave," said the tall man, who carried with him the atmosphere of the sea, "I feared that you might be dead in those forests you love so well, killed and perhaps scalped by the Hurons or some other savage tribe. You've abundant hair, Dave, and you'd furnish an uncommonly fine scalp."

"And I feared, Benjamin, that you'd been caught in some smuggling cruise near the Spanish Main, and had been put out of the way by the Dons. You love gain too much, Ben, old friend, and you court risks too great for its sake."

Master Benjamin Hardy threw back his head and laughed deeply and heartily. The laugh seemed to Robert to roll up spontaneously from his throat. He felt anew that here was a man whom he liked.

"Perchance 'tis the danger that draws me on," said Master Hardy. "You and I are much alike, Dave. In the woods, if all that I hear be true, you dwell continually in the very shadow of danger, while I incur it only at times. Moreover, I am come to the age of fifty years, the head is still on my shoulders, the breath is still in my body, and Master Jonathan, to whom figures are Biblical, says the balance on my books is excellent."

"You talk o'er much, Ben, old friend, but since it's the way of seafaring men and 'tis cheerful it does not vex my ears. You behold with me, Tayoga, a youth of the best blood of the Onondaga nation, one to whom you will be polite if you wish to please me, Benjamin, and Master Robert Lennox, grown perhaps beyond your expectations."

Master Benjamin turned to Robert, and, as Master Jonathan had done, measured him from head to foot with those intensely bright blue eyes of his that missed nothing.

"Grown greatly and grown well," he said, "but not beyond my expectations. In truth, one could predict a n.o.ble bough upon such a stem. But you and I, Dave, having many years, grow garrulous and forget the impatience of youth. Come, lads, we'll go into the drawing-room and, as supper was to have been served in half an hour, I'll have the portions doubled."

Robert smiled.

"In Albany and New York alike," he said, "they welcome us to the table."

"Which is the utmost test of hospitality," said Master Benjamin.

They went into a great drawing-room, the barred windows of which looked out upon a busy street, warehouses and counting houses and pa.s.sing sailors. Robert was conscious all the while that the brilliant blue eyes were examining him minutely. His old wonder about his parentage, lost for a while in the press of war and exciting events, returned. He felt intuitively that Master Hardy, like Willet, knew who and what he was, and he also felt with the same force that neither would reply to any question of his on the subject. So he kept his peace and by and by his curiosity, as it always did, disappeared before immediate affairs.

The drawing-room was a n.o.ble apartment, with dark oaken beams, a polished oaken floor, upon which eastern rugs were spread, and heavy tables of foreign woods. A small model of a sloop rested upon one table and a model of a schooner on another. Here and there were great curving sh.e.l.ls with interiors of pink and white, and upon the walls were curious long, crooked knives of the Malay Islands. Everything savored of the sea. Again Robert's imagination leaped up. The blazing hues of distant tropic lands were in his eyes, and the odors of strange fruits and flowers were in his nostrils.

"Sit down, Dave," said Master Benjamin, "and you, too, Robert and Tayoga. I suppose you did not come to New Amsterdam--how the name clings!--merely to see me."

"That was one purpose, Benjamin," replied Willet, "but we had others in mind too."

"To join the war, I surmise, and to get yourselves killed?"

"The first part of your reckoning is true, Benjamin, but not the second. We would go to the war, in which we have had some part already, but not in order that we may be killed."

"You suffer from the common weakness. One entering war always thinks that it's the other man and not he who will be killed. You're too old for that, David."

Willet laughed.

"No, Benjamin," he said, "I'm not too old for it, and I never will be. It's the belief that carries us all through danger."

"Which way did you think of going in these warlike operations?"

"We shall join the force that comes out from England."

"The one that will march against Fort Duquesne?"

"Undoubtedly."

"I hear that it's to be commanded by a general named Braddock, Edward Braddock. What do you know of him?"

"Nothing."

"But you do know, David, that regular army officers fare ill in the woods as a rule. You've told me often that the savages are a tricky lot, and, fighting in the forest in their own way, are hard to beat."

"You speak truth, Benjamin, and I'll not deny it, but there are many of our men in the woods who know the ways of the Indians and of the French foresters. They should be the eyes and ears of General Braddock's army."

"Well, maybe! maybe! David, but enough of war for the present. One cannot talk about it forever. There are other things under the sun. You will let these lads see New Amsterdam, will you not? Even Tayoga can find something worth his notice in the greatest port of the New World."

"Is any play being given here?" asked Robert.

"Aye, we're having plays almost nightly," replied Master Hardy, "and they're being presented by some very good actors, too. Lewis Hallam, who came several years ago from Goodman's Fields Theater in England, and his wife, known on the stage as Mrs. Douglas, are offering the best English plays in New York. Hallam is said to be extremely fine in Richard III, in which tragedy he first appeared here, and he gives it tomorrow night."

"Then we're going," said Robert eagerly. "I would not miss it for anything."

"I had some thought of going myself, and if Dave hasn't changed, he has a fine taste for the stage. I'll send for seats and we'll go together."

Willet's eyes sparkled.

"In truth I'll go, too, and right gladly," he said. "You and I, Benjamin, have seen the plays of Master Shakespeare together in London, and 'twill please me mightily to see one of them again with you in New York. Jonathan, here, will be of our company, too, will he not?"

Master Pillsbury pursed his lips and his expression became severe.

"'Tis a frivolous way of pa.s.sing the time," he said, "but it would be well for one of serious mind to be present in order that he might impose a proper dignity upon those who lack it."