The Little Red Foot Part 55

THE DEMON

I think that summer was the strangest ever I have lived,--the most unreal days of life,--so still, so golden, so strangely calm the solitude that ringed me where I was slowly healing of my hurt.

Each dawn was heralded by gold fire, each evening by a rosy conflagration in the west. It rained only at night; and all that crystal clear mid-summer scarcely a shred of fleece dappled the empyrean.

Those winds which blow so frequently in our Northland seemed to have become zephyrs, too; and there was but a reedy breeze along the Vlaie Water, and scarce a ripple to rock the lily pads in shallow reach and cove.

It was strange. And, only for the loveliness of night and day, there might have seemed in this hushed tranquillity around me a sort of hidden menace.

For all around about was war, where Tryon County lay so peacefully in the suns.h.i.+ne, ringed within the outer tumult, and walled on all sides by battle smoke.

Above us our fever-stricken Northern army, driven from Crown Point, now lay and sickened at Ticonderoga, where General Gates did now command our people, while poor Arnold, turned s.h.i.+p's carpenter, laboured to match Guy Carleton's flotilla which the British were dragging piecemeal over Chambly Rapids to blow us out o' the lake.

From south of us came news of the Long Island disaster where His Excellency, driven from Brooklyn and New York, now lay along the Harlem Heights.

And it was a sorry business; for Billy Alexander, who is Lord Stirling, was taken a prisoner; and Sullivan also was taken; and their two brigades were practically destroyed.

But worse happened at New York City, where the New York militia ran and two New England brigades, seized with panic, fled in a shameful manner.

And so out o' town our people pulled foot, riotous and disorderly in retreat, and losing all our heavy guns, nearly all our stores, and more than three hundred prisoners.

This was the news I had of the Long Island battle, where I lay in convalescence at Summer House that strange, still summer in the North.

And I thought very bitterly of what advantage was it that we had but just rung bells and fired off our cannon to salute our new Declaration of Independence, and had upset the prancing leaden King from his pedestal on the Bowling Green, if our militia ran like rabbits at sight of the red-coats, and general officers like Lord Stirling were mouse-trapped in their first battle.

Alas for poor New York, where fire and explosion had laid a third of the city in ruins; where the drums of the red-coats now rolled brazenly along the Broadway; where Delancy's hors.e.m.e.n scoured the island for friends to liberty; where that great wretch, Loring, lorded it like an unclean devil of the pit.

G.o.d! to think on it when all had gone so well; and Boston clean o'

red-coats, and Canada all but in our grasp; and old Charleston shaking with her dauntless cannonade, and our people's volleys pouring into Dunmore's hirelings through the levelled cinders of Norfolk town!

What was the matter with us that these Southern gentlemen stood the British fire while, if we faced it, we crumpled and gave ground; or, if we shunned it, we ran disgracefully? Save only at Boston had we driven the red-coats on land. The British flame had scorched us on Long Island, singed us in New York, blasted us at Falmouth and Quebec, and left our armies writhing in the ashes from Montreal to Norfolk.

And yet how tranquil, how fair, how ominously calm lay our Valley Land in the suns.h.i.+ne, ringed here by our blue mountains where no slightest cloud brooded in an unstained sky!

And more still, more strange even than the untroubled calm of Tryon, lay the Summer House in its sunlit, soundless, and green desolation.

Where, through the long days, nothing moved on the waste of waters save where a sun-burnished reed twinkled. Where, under star-powdered skies, no wind stirred; and only the vague far cry of some wandering wild thing ever disturbed that vast and velvet silence.

Long before she came near me to speak to me, and even before she had glanced at me from the west porch, whither she took her knitting in the afternoons, I had seen Penelope.

From where I lay on my trundle in Sir William's old gun-room I could see out across the hallway and through the door, where the west veranda ran.

In the mornings either my Indian, Yellow-Leaf, or Nick Stoner mounted guard there, watching the green and watery wastes to the northward, while his comrade freshened my sheets and pillows and cleansed my room.

In the afternoons one o' them went a-fis.h.i.+ng or prowling after meat for our larder, or, sometimes, Nick went a-horse to Mayfield on observation, or to Johnstown for news or a bag of flour. And t'other watched from the veranda roof, which was railed, and ran all around the house, so that a man might walk post there and face all points of the compa.s.s.

As for Penelope, I soon learned her routine; for in the morning she was in the kitchen and about the house--save only she came not to my room--but swept and dusted the rest, and cooked in the cellar-kitchen.

Sometimes I could see her in ap.r.o.n and pink print, drawing water from the orchard well, and her skirt tucked up against the dew.

Sometimes I saw her early in the garden, where greens grew and beans and peas; or sometimes she hoed weeds where potatoes and early corn stood in rows along a small strip planted between orchard and posy-bed.

And sometimes I could see her a-milking our three Jersey cows, or, with a sickle, cutting green fodder for my mare, Kaya, whose dainty hoofs I often heard stamping the barn floor.

But after the dinner hour, and when the long, still afternoons lay listlessly betwixt mid-summer sun and the pale, cool dusk, she came from her chamber all freshened like a faint, sweet breeze in her rustling petticoat of sheer, sprigged stuff, to seat herself on the west veranda with her knitting.

Day after day I lay on my trundle where I could see her. She never noticed me, though by turning her head she could have seen me where I lay.

I do not now remember clearly what was my state of mind except that a dull bitterness reigned there.

Which was, of course, against all common sense and decent reason.

I had no claim upon this girl. I had kissed her--through no fault of hers, and by no warrant and no encouragement from her to so conduct in her regard.

I had kissed her once. But other men had done that perhaps with no more warrant. And I, though convinced that the girl knew not how to parry such surprises, brooded sullenly upon mine own indiscretion with her; and pondered upon the possible behaviour of other men with her. And I silently d.a.m.ned their impudence, and her own imprudence which seemed to have taught her little in regard to men.

But in my mind the chiefest and most sullen trouble lay in what I had seen under the lilacs that night in June.

And when I closed my eyes I seemed to see her in Steve Watts' arms, and the lad's ardent embrace of her throat and hair, and the flushed pa.s.sion marring his youthful face----

I often lay there, my eyes on her where I could see her through the door, knitting, and strove to remember how I had first heard her name spoken, and how at that last supper at the Hall her name was spoken and her beauty praised by such dissolute young gallants as Steve Watts and Lieutenant Hare; and how even Sir John had blurted out, in his cups, enough to betray an idle dalliance with this yellow-haired girl, and sufficient to affront his wife and his brother-in-law, and to disgust me.

And Nick had said that men swarmed about her like forest-flies around a pan o' syrup!

And all this, too, before ever I had laid eyes upon this slim and silent girl who now sat out yonder within my sullen vision, knitting or winding her wool in silence.

What, then, could be the sentiments of any honest man concerning her?

What, when I considered these things, were my own sentiments in her regard?

And though report seemed clear, and what I had witnessed plainer still, I seemed to be unable to come to any conclusion as to my true sentiments in this business, or why, indeed, it was any business of mine, and why I concerned myself at all.

Men found her young and soft and inexperienced; and so stole from her the kiss that heaven sent them.

And Steve Watts, at least, was more wildly enamoured.... And, no doubt, that reckless flame had not left her entirely cold.... Else how could she have strolled away to meet him that same night when her lips must still have felt the touch of mine?... And how endured his pa.s.sion there in the starlight?... And if she truly were a loyal friend to liberty, how in G.o.d's name give secret tryst and countenance to a spy?

One morning, when Nick had bathed me, I made him dress me in forest leather. Lord, but I was weak o' the feet, and light in head as a blown egg-sh.e.l.l!

Thus, dressed, I lay all morning on my trundle, and there, seated on the edge, was given my noon dinner.

But I had no mind, now, to undress and rest. I desired to go to the veranda, and did fume and curse and bully poor Nick until he picked me up and carried me thither and did seat me within a large and cus.h.i.+oned Windsor chair.

Then, madded, he went away to fish for a silver pike in our canoe, saying with much viciousness that I might shout my throat raw and perish there ere he would stir a foot to put me to bed again.

So I watched him go down to the sh.o.r.e where the canoe lay, lift in rod and line and paddle, and take water in high dudgeon.