Читать книгу Essential Novelists - Harold Frederic - Frederic Harold, August Nemo, John Dos Passos - Страница 21

Tulp Gets a Broken Head to Match My Heart.

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Without heed as to the direction, I started at a furious pace up the road which I found myself upon—Tulp at my heels. If he had not, from utter weariness, cried out after a time, I should have followed the track straight, unceasing, over the four leagues and more to the Sacondaga. As it was, I had presently to stop and retrace my steps to where he sat on a wayside stump, dead beat.

"Don't you wait for me, Mass' Douw, if you're bound to get there quick," he said, gasping for breath. "Don't mind me. I'll follow along the best I can."

The phrase "get there"—it was almost the only English which poor Tulp had put into the polyglot sentence he really uttered—arrested my attention. "Get where?" I had been headed for the mountains—for the black water which dashed foaming down their defiles, and eddied in sinister depths at their bases. I could see the faint blue peaks on the horizon from where I stood, by the side of the tired slave. The sight sobered me. To this day I cannot truly say whether I had known where I was going, and if there had not been in my burning brain the latent impulse to throw myself into the Sacondaga. But I could still find the spot—altered beyond recollection as the face of the country is—where Tulp's fatigue compelled me to stop, and where I stood gazing out of new eyes, as it were, upon the pale Adirondack outlines.

As I looked, the aspect of the day had changed The soft, somnolent haze had vanished from the air. Dark clouds were lifting themselves in the east and north beyond the mountains, and a chill breeze was blowing from them upon my brow. I took off my hat, and held up my face to get all its cooling touch. Tulp, between heavy breaths, still begged that his infirmity might not be allowed to delay me.

"Why, boy," I laughed bitterly at him, "I have no place to go to. Nobody is waiting for me—nobody wants me."

The black looked hopeless bewilderment at me, and offered no comment. Long afterward I learned that he at the moment reached the reluctant conclusion that I had taken too much drink in the Hall.

"Or no!" I went on, a thought coming to the surface in the hurly-burly of my mind. "We are going to Albany. That's where we're going."

Tulp's sooty face took on a more dubious look, if that were possible. He humbly suggested that I had chosen a roundabout route; perhaps I was going by the way of the Healing Springs. But it must be a long, lonesome road, and the rain was coming on.

Sure enough the sky was darkening: a storm was in the air, and already the distant mountain-tops were hidden from view by the rain-mist.

Without more words I put on my hat, and we turned back toward the settlements. The disposition to walk swiftly, which before had been a controlling thing, was gone. My pace was slow enough now, descending the hill, for even Tulp, who followed close upon my heels. But my head was not much clearer. It was not from inability to think: to the contrary, the vividness and swift succession of my thoughts, as they raced through my brain, almost frightened me.

I had fancied myself miserable that very morning, because Mr. Stewart had spoken carelessly to me, and she had been only ordinarily pleasant. Ah, fool! My estate that morning had been that of a king, of a god, in contrast to this present wretchedness. Then I still had a home—still nourished in my heart a hope—and these were happiness! I laughed aloud at my folly in having deemed them less.

She had put her hand in his—given herself to him! She had with her eyes open promised to marry this Englishman—fop! dullard! roisterer! insolent cub!—so the rough words tumbled to my tongue. In a hundred ways I pictured her—called up her beauty, her delicacy, her innocence, her grace, the refined softness of her bearing, the sweet purity of her smile, the high dignity of her thoughts—and then ground my teeth as I placed against them the solitary image my mind consented to limn of him—brawling dandy with fashionable smirk and false blue eyes, flushed with wine, and proud of no better achievement than throwing a smith in a drunken wrestling-bout. It was a sin—a desecration! Where were their eyes, that they did not read this fellow's worthlessness, and bid him stand back when he sought to lay his coarse hands upon her?

Yet who were these that should have saved her? Ah! were they not all of his class, or of his pretence to class?

Some of them had been my life-long friends. To Mr. Stewart—and I could not feel bitterly toward him even now—I owed home, education, rearing, everything; Sir William had been the earliest and kindest of my other friends, eager and glad always to assist, instruct, encourage me; John Butler had given me my first gun, and had petted me in his rough way from boyhood. Yet now, at a touch of that hateful, impalpable thing "class," these all vanished away from my support, and were to me as if they had never been. I saw them over on the other side, across the abyss from me, grouped smiling about this new-comer, praising his brute ability to drink and race and wrestle, complimenting him upon his position among the gentry—save the mark!—of Tryon County, and proud that they had by never so little aided him to secure for a wife this poor trembling, timid, fascinated girl. Doubtless they felt that a great honor had been done her; it might be that even she dreamed this, too, as she heard their congratulations.

And these men, honest, fair-minded gentlemen as they were in other affairs, would toss me aside like a broken pipe if I ventured to challenge their sympathy as against this empty-headed, satined, and powdered stranger. They had known and watched me all my life. My smallest action, my most trivial habit, was familiar to them. They had seen me grow before their eyes—dutiful, obedient, diligent, honest, sober, truthful. In their hearts they knew that I deserved all these epithets. They themselves time out of mind had applied them to me. I stood now, at my early age, and on my own account, on the threshold of a career of honorable trade, surely as worthy now as it was when Sir William began at it far more humbly. Yet with all these creditable things known to them, I could not stand for a moment in their estimation against this characterless new-comer!

Why? He was a "gentleman," and I was not.

Not that he was better born—a thousand times no! But I had drawn from the self-sacrificing, modest, devoted man of God, my father, and the resolute, tireless, hard working, sternly honest housewife, my mother, the fatal notion that it was not beneath the dignity of a Mauverensen or a Van Hoorn to be of use in the world. My ancestors had fought for their little country, nobly and through whole generations, to free it from the accursed rule of that nest of aristocrats, Spain; but they had not been ashamed also to work, in either the Old World or the New. This other, this Englishman—I found myself calling him that as the most comprehensive expletive I could use—the son of a professional butcher and of an intriguing woman, was my superior here, in truth, where I had lived all my life and he had but shown his nose, because he preferred idleness to employment!

It was a mistake, then, was it, to be temperate and industrious? It was more honorable to ride at races, to play high stakes, and drain three bottles at dinner, than to study and to do one's duty? To be a gentleman was a matter of silk breeches and perukes and late hours? Out upon the blundering playwright who made Bassanio win with the leaden casket! Portia was a woman, and would have wrapped her picture—nay, herself—in tinsel gilt, the gaudier the better!

But why strive to trace further my wrathful meditations? There is nothing pleasant or profitable in the contemplation of anger, even when reason runs abreast of it. And I especially have no pride in this three hours' wild fury. There were moments in it, I fear, when my rage was well-nigh murderous in its fierceness.

The storm came—a cold, thin, driving rain, with faint mutterings of thunder far behind. I did not care to quicken my pace or fasten my coat. The inclemency fitted and echoed my mood.

On the road we came suddenly upon the Hall party, returning in haste from the interrupted picnic. The baronet's carriage, with the hood drawn, rumbled past without a sign of recognition from driver or inmates. A half-dozen horsemen cantered behind, their chins buried in their collars, and their hats pulled down over their eyes. One of the last of these—it was Bryan Lefferty—reined up long enough to inform me that Mr. Stewart and Daisy had long before started by the forest path for their home, and that young Cross had made short work of his other guests in order to accompany them.

"We're not after complaining, though," said the jovial Irishman; "it's human nature to desert ordinary mortals like us when youth and beauty beckon the other way."

I made some indifferent answer, and he rode away after his companions. We resumed our tramp over the muddy track, with the rain and wind gloomily pelting upon our backs.

When we turned off into the woods, to descend the steep side-hill to the waterfall, it was no easy matter to keep our footing. The narrow trail was slippery with wet leaves and moss. Looking over the dizzy edge, you could see the tops of tall trees far below. The depths were an indistinct mass of dripping foliage, dark green and russet. We made our way gingerly and with extreme care, with the distant clamor of the falls in our ears, and the peril of tumbling headlong keeping all our senses painfully alert.

At a turn in the path, I came sharply upon Philip Cross.

He was returning from the Cedars: he carried a broken bough to use as a walking-stick in the difficult ascent, and was panting with the exertion; yet the lightness of his heart impelled him to hum broken snatches of a song as he climbed. The wet verdure under foot had so deadened sound that neither suspected the presence of the other till we suddenly stood, on this slightly widened, overhanging platform, face to face!

He seemed to observe an unusual something on my face, but it did not interest him enough to affect his customary cool, off-hand civility toward me.

"Oh, Morrison, is that you?" he said, nonchalantly. "You're drenched, I see, like the rest of us. Odd that so fine a day should end like this "—and made as if to pass me on the inner side.

I blocked his way and said, with an involuntary shake in my voice which I could only hope he failed to note:

"You have miscalled me twice to-day. I will teach you my true name, if you like—here! now!"

He looked at me curiously for an instant—then with a frown. "You are drunk," he cried, angrily. "Out of my way!"

"No, you are again wrong," I said, keeping my voice down, and looking him square in the eye. "I'm not of the drunken set in the Valley. No man was ever soberer. But I am going to spell my name out for you, in such manner that you will be in no danger of forgetting it to your dying day."

The young Englishman threw a swift glance about him, to measure his surroundings. Then he laid down his cudgel, and proceeded to unbutton his great-coat, which by some strange freak of irony happened to be one of mine that they had lent him at the Cedars for his homeward journey.

If the words may be coupled, I watched him with an enraged admiration. There was no sign of fear manifest in his face or bearing. With all his knowledge of wrestling, he could not but have felt that, against my superior size and weight, and long familiarity with woodland footing, there were not many chances of his escaping with his life: if I went over, he certainly would go too—and he might go alone. Yet he unfastened his coats with a fine air of unconcern, and turned back his ruffles carefully. I could not maintain the same calm in throwing off my hat and coat, and was vexed with myself for it.

We faced each other thus in our waistcoats in the drizzling rain for a final moment, exchanging a crossfire sweep of glances which took in not only antagonist, but every varying foot of the treacherous ground we stood upon, and God knows what else beside—when I was conscious of a swift movement past me from behind.

I had so completely forgotten Tulp's presence that for the second that followed I scarcely realized what was happening. Probably the faithful slave had no other thought, as he glided in front of me, than to thus place himself between me and what he believed to be certain death.

To the Englishman the sudden movement may easily have seemed an attack.

There was an instant's waving to and fro of a light and a dark body close before my startled eyes. Then, with a scream which froze the very marrow in my bones, the negro boy, arms whirling wide in air, shot over the side of the cliff!

Friends of mine in later years, when they heard this story from my lips over a pipe and bowl, used to express surprise that I did not that very moment throw myself upon Cross, and fiercely bring the quarrel to an end, one way or the other. I remember that when General Arnold came up the Valley, five years after, and I recounted to him this incident, which recent events had recalled, he did not conceal his opinion that I had chosen the timid part. "By God!" he cried, striking the camp-table till the candlesticks rattled, "I would have killed him or he would have killed me, before the nigger struck bottom!" Very likely he would have done as he said. I have never seen a man with a swifter temper and resolution than poor, brave, choleric, handsome Arnold had; and into a hideously hopeless morass of infamy they landed him, too! No doubt it will seem to my readers, as well, that in nature I ought upon the instant to have grappled the Englishman.

The fact was, however, that this unforeseen event took every atom of fight out of both of us as completely as if we had been struck by lightning.

With a cry of horror I knelt and hung over the shelving edge as far as possible, striving to discover some trace of my boy through the misty masses of foliage below. I could see nothing—could hear nothing but the far-off dashing of the waters, which had now in my ears an unspeakably sinister sound. It was only when I rose to my feet again that I caught sight of Tulp, slowly making his way up the other side of the ravine, limping and holding one hand to his head. He had evidently been hurt, but it was a great deal to know that he was alive. I turned to my antagonist—it seemed that a long time had passed since I last looked at him.

The same idea that the struggle was postponed had come to him, evidently, for he had put on his coats again, and had folded his arms. He too had been alarmed for the fate of the boy, but he affected now not to see him.

I drew back to the rock now, and Cross passed me in silence, with his chin defiantly in the air. He turned when he had gained the path above, and stood for a moment frowning down at me.

"I am going to marry Miss Stewart," he called out. "The sooner you find a new master, and take yourself off, the better. I don't want to see you again."

"When you do see me again," I made answer, "be sure that I will break every bone in your body."

With this not very heroic interchange of compliments we parted. I continued the descent, and crossed the creek to where the unfortunate Tulp was waiting for me.