The Little Red Foot Part 59

"You should buy the cattle, too," whispered Nick. "There be folk in Johnstown would pay well for such a breed o' cow. And there's the pig, Jack, and the sheep and the hens, and all that grain and hay so snug in the barn."

So I asked very fiercely if any man desired to bid against me; and neither Huetson nor his sulky comrade, Davis, having any such stomach, I fetched ale and apples and nuts and made them eat and drink, and so drew aside the Commissioner and bargained with him like a Jew or a shoe-peg Yankee; and in the end bought all.[21]

[Footnote 21: The Commissioners for selling real estate in Tryon County sold the personal property of Sir John Johnson some time before the Hall and acreage were sold. The Commissioners appointed for selling confiscated personal property in Tryon County were appointed later, March 6, 1777.]

"Shall you move hither from Fonda's Bush and sell your house?" asked Nick, who now was going out on watch.

But I made him no answer, for I had been bitten by an idea, the mere thought of which fevered me with excitement. Oh, I was mad as a March fox running his first vixen, in that first tide of romantic love,--clean daft and lacking reason.

So when Commissioner Outthout and those who had come for the vendue had drank as much of my new ale as they cared to carry home a-horse, and were gone a-b.u.mping down the Johnstown road like a flock of Gilpins all, I took my parchment and went into my bed chamber; and there I sat upon my trundle bed and read what was writ upon my deed, making me the owner of Summer House and of all that appertained to the little hunting lodge.

But I had not purchased it selfishly; and the whole business began with an impulse born of love for Sir William, who had loved this place so well. But even as that impulse came, another notion took shape in my love-addled sconce.

I sat on my trundle bed a-thinking and--G.o.d forgive me--admiring my own lofty and romantic purpose.

The house was still, but on the veranda roof overhead I could hear the moccasined tread of Nick pacing his post; and from below in the kitchen came the distant thump and splash of Penelope's churn, where she was making new b.u.t.ter for to salt it against our needs.

Now, as I rose my breath came quicker, but admiration for my resolve abated nothing--no!--rather increased as I tasted the sad pleasures of martyrdom and of n.o.ble renunciation. For I now meant to figure in this girl's eyes in a manner which she never could forget and which, I trusted, might sadden her with a wistful melancholy after I was gone and she had awakened to the irreparable loss.

When I came down into the kitchen where, bare of arms and throat, she stood a-churning, she looked at me out of partly-lowered eyes, as though doubting my mood--poor child. And I saw the sweat on her flushed cheeks, and her yellow hair, in disorder from the labour, all curled into damp little ringlets. But when I smiled I saw that lovely glimmer dawning, and she asked me shyly what I did there--for never before had I come into her kitchen.

So, still smiling, I gave an account of how I had bought Summer House; and she listened, wide-eyed, wondering.

"But," continued I, "I have already my own glebe at Fonda's Bush, and a house; but there be many with whom fortune has not been so complacent, and who possess neither glebe nor roof, yet deserve both."

"Yes, sir," she said, smiling, "there be many such folk and always will be in the world. Of such company am I, also, but it saddens me not at all."

I went to her and showed her my deed, and she looked down on it, her hands clasped on the churn handle.

"So that," said she, "is a lawful deed! I have never before been shown such an instrument."

"You shall have leisure enough to study this one," said I, "for I convey it to you."

"Sir?"

"I give Summer House to you," said I. "Here is the deed. When I go to Johnstown again I will execute it so that this place shall be yours."

She gazed at me in dumb astonishment.

"Meanwhile," said I, "you shall keep the deed.... And now you are, in fact, if not yet in t.i.tle, mistress of Summer House. And I think, this night, we should break a bottle of Sir William's Madeira to drink health to our new chatelaine."

She came from her churn and caught my arm, where I had turned to ascend the steps.

"You are jesting, are you not, my lord?"

"No! And do not use that term, 'lord,' to me."

"You--you offer to give me--me--this estate!"

"Yes. I do give it you."

There was a tense silence.

"Why do you offer this?" she burst out breathlessly.

"Why should I have two estates and you have none, Penelope?"

"But that is no reason!" she retorted, almost violently. "For what reason, then, do you give me Summer House? It--it must be you are jesting, my lord!----"

At that, displeasure made me redden, and I d.a.m.ned the t.i.tle under my breath.

"If you please," said I, "you will have done with all these 'sirs' and 'my lords,' for I am a plain yoeman of County Tryon and wear a buckskin s.h.i.+rt. Not that I would criticise Lord Stirling or any such who still care to wear by courtesy what I have long ago worn out," I added, "but the gentry and n.o.bility of Tryon travel one way and I the other; and my friends should remember it when naming me."

She stood looking at me out of her brown eyes, and slowly their troubled wonder changed to dumb perplexity. And, looking, took up her ap.r.o.n's edge and stood twisting it between both hands.

"I give you Summer House," said I, "because you are orphaned and live alone and have nothing. I give it because a maid ought to possess a portion; and, thirdly, I give it because I have enough of my own, and never desired more of anything than I need. So take the Summer House, Penelope, with the cattle and fowl and land; for it gives you a station and a security among men and women of this odd world of ours, and lends to yourself a confidence and dignity which only sheerest folly can overthrow."

She came, after a silence, slowly, and took me by the hand.

"John Drogue," says she in a voice not clear, "I can not take of you this estate."

"You shall take it! And when again, where you sit a-knitting, the young men gather round you like flies around a sap-pan--then, by G.o.d, you shall know what countenance to give them, and they shall know what colour to give their courting!--suitors, gallants, Whig or Tory--the whole d.a.m.ned rabble----"

"Oh," she cried softly, "John Drogue!" And fell a-laughing--or was it a quick sob that checked her throat?

But I heeded it not, having caught fire; and presently blazed noisily.

"Because you are servant to Douw Fonda!" I cried, "and because you are alone, and because you are young and soft with a child's eyes and yellow hair, they make nothing of schooling you to their pot-house gallantries, and every d.a.m.ned man jack among them comes a-galloping to the chase. Yes, even that pallid beast, Sir John!--and the tears of Claire Putnam to haunt him if he were a man and not the dirty libertine he is!"

I looked upon her whitened face in ever-rising pa.s.sion:

"I tell you," said I, "that the backwoods aristocracy is the better and safer caste, for the other is rotten under red coat or blue; and a ring-tailed cap doffed by a gnarled hand is worth all your laced c.o.c.ked hats bound around with gold and trailed in the dust with fine, smooth fingers!"

Sure I was in a proper phrensy now, nor dreamed myself a target for the high G.o.ds' laughter, where I vapoured and strode and shouted aloud my moral jeremiad.

"So," said I, "you shall have Summer House; and shall, as you sit a-knitting, make your choice of honest suitors at your ease and not be waylaid and hunted and used without ceremony by the first young hot-head who entraps you in the starlight! No! Nor be the quarry of older villains and subtler with persuasion. No!

"For today Penelope Grant, spinster, is a burgesse of Johnstown, and is a person both respectable and taxed. And any man who would court her must conduct suitably and in a customary manner, nor, like a wild falcon, circle over head awaiting the opportunity to strike.

"No! All that sport--all that gay laxity and folly is at an end. And here's the d.a.m.ned deed that ends it!" I added, thrusting the parchment into her hands.

She seemed white and frightened. And, "Oh, Lord!" she breathed, "have I, then, conducted so shamelessly? And did I so wholly lose your favour when you kissed me?"

I had not meant that, and I winced and grew hot in the cheeks.

"I am not a loose woman," she said in her soft, bewildered way. "Unless it be a fault that I find men somewhat to my liking, and their gay manners pleasure me and divert me."