The Hidden Children Part 30

"Swift moccasins for little feet as swift against the day that the long trail is safe. Then, in the Vale Yndaia, little Lois, seek her who bore you, saved you, lost you, but who love you always.

"Pray every day for him who died in the Regiment de la Reine.

"Pray too for her who waits for you, in far Yndaia."

"What a strange message!" I exclaimed.

"I must heed it," she said under her breath. "The trail is open, and my hour is come."

"But, Lois, that trail means death!"

"Your army makes it safe at last. And now the time is come when I must follow it."

"Is that why you have followed us?"

"Yes, that is why. Until that night in the storm at Poundridge-town I had never learned where the Vale Yndaia lay. Month after month I haunted camps, asking for information concerning Yndaia and the Regiment de la Reine. But of Yndaia I learned nothing, until the Sagamore informed me that Yndaia lay near Catharines-town. And, learning you were of the army, and that the army was bound thither, I followed you."

"Why did you not tell me this at Poundridge? You should have camped with us," I said.

"Because of my fear of men--except red men. And I had already quite enough of your Lieutenant Boyd."

I looked at her seriously; and she comprehended the unasked questions that were troubling me.

"Shall I tell you more? Shall I tell you how I have learned my dread of men--how it has been with me since my foster parents found me lying at their door strapped to a painted cradle-board?"

"You!"

"Aye; that was my shameful beginning, so they told me afterward--long afterward. For I supposed they were my parents--till two years ago. Now shall I tell you all, Euan? And risk losing a friends.h.i.+p you might have given in your ignorance of me?"

Quick, hot, unconsidered words flew to my lips--so sweet and fearless were her eyes. But I only muttered:

"Tell me all."

"From the beginning, then--to scour my heart out for you! So, first and earliest my consciousness awoke to the sound of drums. I am sure of this because when I hear them it seems as though they were the first sounds that I ever heard.... And once, lately, they were like to be the last.... And next I can remember playing with a painted mask of wood, and how the paint tasted, and its odour.... Then, nothing more can I remember until I was a little child with--him I thought to be my father. I may not name him. You will understand presently why I do not."

She looked down, pulling idly at the thrums along her beaded leggins.

"I told you I was near your age--twenty. But I do not really know how old I am, I guess that I am twenty--thereabouts."

"You look sixteen; not more--except the haunting sorrow----"

"I can remember full that length of time.... I must be twenty, Euan.

When I was perhaps seven years old--or thereabout--I went to school--first in Schenectady to a Mistress Lydon; where were a dozen children near my age. And pretty Mistress Lydon taught us A--B--C and manners--and nothing else that I remember now. Then for a long while I was at home--which meant a hundred different lodgings--for we were ever moving on from place to place, where his employment led him, from one house to another, staying at one tavern only while his task remained unfinished, then to the road again, north, south, west, or east, wherever his fancy sped before to beckon him.... He was a strange man, Euan."

"Your foster father?"

"Aye. And my foster mother, too, was a strange woman."

"Were they not kind to you?"

"Y-es, after their own fas.h.i.+on. They both were vastly different to other folk. I was fed and clothed when anyone remembered to do it, And when they had been fortunate, they sent me to the nearest school to be rid of me, I think. I have attended many schools, Euan--in Germantown, in Philadelphia, in Boston, in New York. I stayed not long in school at New York because there our affairs went badly. And no one invited us in that city--as often we were asked to stay as guests while the work lasted--not very welcome guests, yet tolerated."

"What was your foster father's business?"

"He painted portraits.... I do not know how well he painted. But he cared for nothing else, except his wife. When he spoke at all it was to her of Raphael, and of t.i.tian, and particularly of our Benjamin West, who had his first three colours of the Indians, they say."

"I have heard so, too."

She nodded absently, fingering her leggin-fringe; then, with a sudden, indrawn breath:

"We were no more than roving gypsies, you see, living from hand to mouth, and moving on, always moving from town to town, remaining in one place while there were portraits to paint--or tavern-signs, or wagons--anything to keep us clothed and fed. Then there came a day in Albany when matters mended over night, and the Patroon most kindly commanded portraits of himself and family. It started our brief prosperity.

"Other and thrifty Dutchmen now began to bargain for their portraits.

We took an old house on Pearl Street, and I was sent to school at Mrs.

Pardee's Academy for young ladies as a day pupil, returning home at evening. About that time my foster mother became ill. I remember that she lay on a couch all day, watching her husband paint. He and his art were all she cared for. Me she seldom seemed to see--scarcely noticed when she saw me--almost never spake to me, and there were days and weeks, when I saw n.o.body in that silent house, and sat at meat alone--when, indeed, anyone remembered I was a hungry, growing child, and made provision for me.

"Schoolmates, at first, asked me to their homes. I would not go because I could not ask them to my home in turn. And so grew up to womanhood alone, and shy, and silent among my fellows; alone at home among the shadows of that old Dutch house; ever alone. Always a haunted twilight seemed to veil the living world from me, save when I walked abroad along the river, thinking, thinking.

"Yet, in one sense I was not alone, Euan, for I was fanciful; and roamed accompanied by those bright visions that unawakened souls conjure for company; companioned by all creatures of the mind, from saint to devil. Ai-me! For there were moments when I would have welcomed devils, so that they rid me of my solitude, at h.e.l.l's own price!"

She drew a long, light breath, smiled at me; then:

"My foster mother died. And when she died the end also began for him. I was taken from my school. So dreadfully was he broken that for months he lay abed never speaking, scarcely eating. And all day long during those dreary months I sat alone in that hushed house of death.

"Debt came first; then sheriffs; then suddenly came this war upon us.

But nothing aroused him from his lethargy; and all day long he brooded there in silence, day after day, until our creditors would endure no longer, and the bailiff menaced him. Confused and frightened, I implored him to leave the city--jails seeming to me far more terrible than death--and at last persuaded him to the old life once more.

"So, to avoid a debtor's prison, we took the open road again. But war was ravis.h.i.+ng the land; there was no work for him to do. We starved slowly southward, day by day, s.h.i.+vered and starved from town to town across the counter.

"Near to a camp of Continental troops there was a farm house. They took me there as maid-at-all-work, out of charity, I think. My father wandered over to the camp, and there, G.o.d alone knows why, enlisted--I shall not tell you in what regiment. But it was Continental Line--a gaunt, fierce, powder-blackened company, disciplined with iron. And presently a dreadful thing befell us. For one morning before sunrise, as I stood scouring the milk-pans by the flare of a tallow-dip, came to me a yawning sergeant of this same regiment to tell me that, as my foster father was to be shot at sunrise, therefore, he desired to see me. And I remember how he yawned and yawned, this lank and bony sergeant, showing within his mouth his yellow fangs!

"Oh, Euan! When I arrived, my foster father--who I then supposed was my own father--lay in a tent a condemned deserter, seeming not even to care, or to comprehend his dreadful plight. All the defence he ever made, they say was that he had tired of dirty camps and foolish drums, and wished to paint again. Euan, it was terrible. He did not understand. He was a visionary--a man of endless silences, dreamy of eye, gentle and vague of mind--no soldier, nor fitted to understand a military life at all.

"I remember the smoky lantern burning red within the tent, and the vast shadows it cast; and how he stood there, looking tranquilly at nothing while I, frightened, sobbed on his breast. 'Lois,' he said, smiling, 'there is a bright company aloft, and watching me. Raphael and t.i.tian are of them. And West will come some day.' And, 'G.o.d!' he murmured, wonderingly, 'What fellows.h.i.+p will be there! What knowledge to be acquired a half hour hence--and leave this petty sphere to its own vexed and petty wrangling, its kings and congresses, and its foolish noise of drums.'

"For a while he paid me no attention, save in an absent-minded way to pat my arm and say, 'There, there, child! There's nothing to it--no, not anything to weep for. In less than half an hour my wife and I will be together, listening while Raphael speaks--or Christ, perhaps, or Leonardo.'

"Twice the brigade chaplain came to the tent, but seeing me retired.

The third time he appeared my foster father said: 'He's come to talk to me of Christ and Raphael. It is pleasant to hear his kind a.s.surance that the journey to them is a swift one, done in the twinkling of an eye.... So--I will say good-bye. Now go, my child.'

"Locked in my desperate embrace, his wandering gaze came back and met my terror-stricken eyes. And after another moment a slow colour came into his wasted face. 'Lois,' he said, 'before I go to join that matchless company, I think you ought to know that which will cause you to grieve less for me.... And so I tell you that I am not your father.... We found you at our door in Caughnwagha, strapped to a Seneca cradle-board. Nor had you any name. We did not seek you, but, having you so, bowed to G.o.d's will and suffered you to remain with us.

We strove to do our duty by you----' His vague gaze wandered toward the tent door where the armed guard stood, terrible and grim and ragged.

Then he unloosened my suddenly limp arms about him, muttering to himself of something he'd forgotten; and, rummaging in his pockets found it presently--a packet laced in deerskin. 'This,' he said, 'is all we ever knew of you. It should be yours. Good-bye.'

"I strove to speak, but he no longer heard me, and asked the guard impatiently why the Chaplain tarried. And so I crept forth into the dark of dawn, more dead than living. And presently the rising sun blinded my tear-drowned eyes, where I was kneeling in a field under a tall tree.... I heard the dead-march rolling from the drums, and saw them pa.s.sing, black against the sunrise.... Then, filing slowly as the seconds dragged, a thousand years pa.s.sed in processional during the next half hour--ending in a far rattle of musketry and a light smoke blowing east across the fields----"

She pa.s.sed her fingers across her brow, clearing it of the clinging curls.

"They played a noisy march--afterward. I saw the ragged ranks wheel and manoeuvre, stepping out Briskly to the jolly drums and fifes.... I stood by the grave while the detail filled it cheerily.... Then I went back to the farm house, through the morning dew and suns.h.i.+ne.