Читать книгу The Soldier from Virginia - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 8

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It was late in May.

Forty Virginians had been sent to build a fort at the juncture of the Ohio and the Alleghany; the French artillery had advanced on them and forced them to surrender, after which the French commander raised a fort on the spot that he named Fort Duquesne, after the Governor of Canada.

Setting his teeth at this affront, Mr. Washington—Captain Washington now—of the colonial forces, pushed on from Alexandria, where Joshua Fry was waiting for the gathering of his composite force that had been raised, not only in Virginia, but in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, both the Carolinas and Massachusetts, and which was maintained at the expense of the British Crown.

Captain Washington, with a hundred and fifty men and a party of friendly Indians, marched on the same route he had traversed a few months before, on his mission to Fort le Boeuf; and toward the end of May reached Great Meadows, on the Youghiougany, close to the frontier of Canada. There he encamped and waited.

He expected to be challenged, if not attacked, and he had very little hope of reinforcement, or indeed of any prompt action from Fry, whom he had left a sick man on the banks of the lower Potomac; but, small as was his number, and isolated as was his position, he resolved to accept any challenge that might be offered him, and, if possible, to provoke a war that should only end in the conquest of Canada.

The young land surveyor, who had had no military training, who had never been under fire nor seen a battle, yet who quietly conceived and steadfastly maintained those visions of a limitless ambition, fortified his encampment at Great Meadows after the Indian fashion, and sent a message to Christopher Gist, now settled in these regions, asking him what news he had of the movement of the French, who hitherto had given no sign of their existence.

The day after this messenger had departed Mr. Washington rode up and down his little encampment with a thoughtful air.

Though he was not a hundred miles from Richmond, and only half as far as Fort le Boeuf, he was in an untouched wilderness of virgin forest and untracked plains and valleys that probably only two white men, he and Christopher Gist, had looked upon. The white oak, the black walnut, pines, sycamores, catalpas and maple grew over the slopes and plains in huge forests through which only a redskin could find his way; now in the height of spring, the yellowish-green flowers of the tall sugar maple, the red blossoms of the white maple, the marvellous fiery young leaves of the oak, the deep colour of the pines combined in a glory of colour beneath the blue heavens; and the ground beneath the trees and the open spaces, the valleys and the meadows, was covered with wood lilies and coloured lilies, strange creepers, mosses and long-leaved plants, the exquisite dogwood with its heart-shaped leaf and white flower, and the frail blossoms of the red bud, while the gooseberry and whortleberry bushes, thrusting up through the bare brambles on which the whip-poor-will, the jay, and the mocking-bird perched, showed sharp green leaves among their thorns.

The pure air was full of a thousand scents, from the aromatic odour of the bruised leaves of the black walnut to the delicate perfume of stretches of wood lilies nodding together in the shade.

It was a country worth fighting for; at least George Washington, looking steadily over the prospect with his large, resolute, grey eyes, thought so. He was riding an Indian horse with a deer-skin saddle stuffed with grass and a hair-rope bridle.

His dress was something in the Indian style, too; a loose leather tunic, belted with scarlet, and high, close riding tops fringed at the knee; his hair was unpowdered, confined by a simple ribbon, and he wore a large sombrero hat without a feather.

Two very fine pistols were in his holster and a third in his belt, as well as the sword that hung from the gold and scarlet sword-belt worked by his mother's fingers at Mount Vernon.

At his second circling of the encampment he met an officer of the Virginia militia.

They saluted.

"Any news from Alexandria, Captain Washington?"

"None at all. Nor is there like to be. We must manage our affair here, I think, sir."

"Well, there is nothing to manage yet."

"No," smiled George Washington: "but there will be as soon as the French find out we are here."

"They may never discover us," returned the Virginian, with an air of disappointment.

"Then," returned Captain Washington, "we will go and discover them."

He glanced round at his minute army of a hundred and fifty, represented by the Indian wigwams scattered over the exquisite meadows and the horses picketed by the distant stream that ran out of the wood to join the Youghiougany.

"This is a fine game," smiled the other man.

"Yes," said the young commander, and he smiled, too, charmingly. "And it will be something more than a game before it is done."

Still with a thoughtful air he turned back to his tent and dismounted there, giving his horse to the waiting militiaman.

He seated himself on the fresh trunk of a tree that had recently been felled for firewood, and reflectively lit and smoked a long clay pipe filled with Virginian leaf.

He was thinking of Williamsburg, of a certain face that had held an expression of cold pride and aversion and an accountable fear, when last he had seen it: a face that was often before his sleeping and waking dreams...

Well, if he succeeded—if he came back as he hoped to come back, if he won the success that he hoped to win, the success that seemed, to his ardent young ambition, so easy to grasp and wear, he would force that fair gentle face to change that inscrutable look to one of open dismissal or—to that expression that he had mused and dreamed of as radiant, heavenly...illumining that one particular countenance, of all other exquisite countenances in the world.

Behind him a great wave of honeysuckle swept over some low, thorny bushes and filled the air with honey sweetness, a trail of the long-fingered flowers lay near his feet; he looked down at it and remembered the wood lilies in the black bowl and the blossom she had held in her hands and the snapped stem that had sent the flower head lying on her breast.

He rose up slowly, with a lazy air, and wandered away into the forest, on the edge of which the camp was placed. He stepped, still slowly, under the trees that were so high and tightly interlaced that the sunlight rested on the highest branches, and here below it was cool and mysterious and beautifully dark.

Down a little slope grew the wood lilies, making a white light in the green gloom: a cloud of trembling silver, a haze of glimmering radiance. Mr. Washington went toward them, treading carefully so as not to step on them.

He took his pipe from his mouth and his face grew very grave; in the subdued, cool light his expression seemed shadowed and mournful; presently he went on one knee and put out his slender right hand over the lilies.

But he did not pick any, and slowly turned back out of the forest toward the camp.

Before his tent a graceful Indian lad was springing from an unshod mustang flecked with foam.

Mr. Washington was alert instantly; he hastened to the messenger, who drew a letter from the leather and bead pouch at his side.

The young commander flushed and broke the seal.

He knew it was the answer from Christopher Gist. At the news it contained his eyes sparkled and he smiled.

A French force was advancing from the Ohio, and was now within close proximity to Great Meadows; they had, Gist declared, orders to demand the withdrawal of any English they might meet with.

Mr. Washington questioned the young Indian.

"Do you know where the French are?"

"They advance from the juncture of the Alleghany and the Monongahela," replied the youth. "They have many tribes with them: the Uncas, the Chingachgooks, the Chippewayos; they have many great guns, too; they have passed the settlement of Christopher Gist, and they are perhaps two days, perhaps one day, from here."

The young Virginian looked into the passive face of his ally.

"Have you seen them?"

"Yes."

"Could you guide me through the forest to them?"

"Yes. They are sending out parties of forty, fifty, or a hundred, to see what forts you are building and how far you are coming."

A dark, joyous flash sprang into Mr. Washington's great eyes.

"We will go and meet them," he said; he took off his hat and waved it toward the mysterious stretches of forests that concealed his enemy. "Gentlemen!" he cried, "I think that this means war!"