Читать книгу A Pageant of Victory - John Jeffery Farnol - Страница 4

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Blodwen stood where she might watch the road and the river, this river of her dreams, flowing down towards her from the wonders of the North to lose itself in the deep, leafy solitudes of the vast wilderness; this straight road, a great highway that through leagues of forest, led on and ever on across the wild, skirting mountains, fording rivers, piercing the awful silence of plain, desert and savannah, past struggling settlements and desolate outposts, to the unknown wonders of town and cities; Philadelphia, Boston, New York and the mighty ocean beyond which lay a far country, of which she had heard and read so much, called England.

Before her the road and the river, leading to this world of vivid life and action, behind her my lord George Charteris' great House of Wrybourne, throned upon its three terraces, builded sixty odd years ago by my lord's noble sire and like as possible to his ancestral home in England; a stately house beyond which clustered the thatched cottages and huts of his many retainers and negro slaves.

But it was towards the road and silent river that Blodwen's long-lashed, sombre eyes were turned in dreamy contemplation until, startled by a faint sound, she turned with the lithe quickness of some shy forest creature and thus beheld the earl's son and heir, my lord Charles, with his boon companion, the young Marquis de Vaucelles.

And both young gentlemen were gazing at her and in the eyes of both she read that which deepened the dusky bloom in her cheek and set her vivid full-lipped mouth to sudden bitterness: she glanced from the French nobleman to the English aristocrat, then veiled the fire of her eyes, as lord Charles addressed her.

"Aha, Blodwen!" cried he gaily but with no courtesy of bow or flourished hat. "Why so early? Will you go a-hunting with us? I've been boasting to the Marquis of your marvellous skill with the rifle ... but faith now I protest you grow handsomer every day, by the very hour and minute! How sayst thou, Gaspard?"

"Pardi!" answered the Marquis, "thou'rt right, my Charles, she is of a beauty so compelling--ah, ravishing! Here for me is better sport than in your so damp woods yonder. Go thou and hunt, my old one. I have flushed my lovely game!" So saying the Marquis set by the light fowling piece he carried and approached her with all the smiling, joyous assurance of the fine gentleman and accomplished gallant he was.

"My lord," said she in her soft, rich voice, "I am no man's sport ... take warning." The Marquis laughed gaily, and before she might prevent, had set arm about her slender waist; but with a supple ease she broke his hold and threw him off so strongly that he staggered and all but fell.

"Mordieu!" he exclaimed, straightening hat and wig, "but this is of the most appetizing! She is to tame and gentle, this one! Regard now and I--"

"No no," said Charles interposing, "let be, Gaspard, she's a sullen baggage shall scratch and bite; 'stead o' being grateful for a gentlemanly proffer she's apt to flash steel."

"Sayst thou, my old one, my dear Charles?"

"Ay faith, she's done it ere now. Cut young Wimperis in the arm with her knife scarce a month ago. Damme! You'd think her the proudest fine madam of 'em all, must be sued and wooed 'stead of a mere ..."

"What, sir?" she demanded, as he hesitated. "Oh, pray what ... what am I?" Here, seeing the look of pain in her eyes, the quiver of her sensitive mouth, Charles had the grace to flush and was dumb; wherefore the Marquis smiling as gaily, though eyeing her more warily, made a sly pace towards her, saying:

"I protest thou art a goddess, a thing of joy, a creature of delight--"

But once again Charles interposed, and slipping hand in his friend's arm drew him away.

"No no, Gaspard," said he scowling, but a little shame-faced, "'tis a bitter prude and a most peevish shrew. Come, I'll shew thee better sport, man, howso you will. Come let us go."

"Hélas!" sighed the Marquis, with exaggerated woe. "Adieu thou dark and tempting Venus! ... Another time we are alone and you shall be more kind ... au revoir!" And saluting her with profound obeisance, he caught up his fowling piece, laughed, kissed his white bejewelled hand, and so, the one laughing, the other frowning, off they went together, gallant figures in their hunting gear; while Blodwen watched them, arms crossed upon her resurgent bosom, nor stirred she or suffered herself to wipe the slow, painful tears that blinded her, until these gay gentlemen were out of sight. Then, striving to check the sobs that shook her, she turned and leaning against a tree, hid her face and wept awhile with strange passion.

And when the fit had spent itself, she dried her eyes heedfully lest they be reddened, and went slow-footed down to the river.

Reaching the margin where the water ran deep and still beneath the bank, she knelt and stooped down to look at herself in this pellucid mirror, viewing her image with a strange and fearful intensity, scanning her every feature with a close scrutiny, in which was an eager questioning, a deep and anxious care; this darkly oval face, glowing of cheek, ruddy of lip and framed in sweeping curtains of night black hair in such startling contrast with these black-lashed tawny eyes that were gazing up at her in such wistful, troubled speculation.

Now as she crouched thus, came old Gideon Ash, rod on shoulder and in his hand a string of gleaming fish, new-caught; and roused by his familiar step she glanced up and beckoned him near.

"Aha," quoth he, obeying her imperious gesture, "be tha' admiring at thy beauty, lass?"

"No!" cried she fiercely. "No! I look to find the evil of me. Oh, Gideon, I think there is a curse on me that turns men into beasts!"

"Eh? Beasts, lass--?"

"Brute beasts!" said she between white teeth "More especially my lord's fine friends. Oh, these gentlemen o' quality! Why must I forever wake the evil in them? I that do so hate men! How old am I, Gideon?"

"Why ... lemme see, now," he answered, rasping stubbly chin thoughtfully between finger and thumb, "'twere all o' twenty year ago as I found ee, and on just such another morning as this, afloat on the river here in a fine Injun canoe and yourself lapped in a buffler-robe, also very fine, and under that a silk petticut, like-wise mighty fine and round your li'l neck on a golden chain, a Injun charm o' wampum--"

"This!" said she, drawing from her bosom a small pouch of exquisite Indian work and frowning at it.

"Ah, that same," nodded Gideon, "and in it a ruby ring and a writing with the word 'Blodwen.' So Blodwen us called ee. And then my lord's lady having lost her own li'l darter, 'dopted of ee, had ee eddicated like a lady until she died, and then--"

"Then I was allowed to run wild," said Blodwen, bitterly, "the stables, the river, the forest, and to-day ... Oh, Gideon, who am I? What am I--?"

"A mighty handsome critter as few women can ekal for looks and fewer men match wi' musket or rifle! Ah, 'twas me as larned ee how! Lord love ee," said the old hunter, looking down into her troubled face with eyes of deep affection, "'twas me and old Chacomeeco, the Muskogee, as larned ee all manner o' woodcraft, and you so wonnerful quick, took to it you did like ... like ..."

"An Indian!" said she, and with the word was afoot, had grasped him in compelling hands, searching his face with that same wild look of fearful questioning. "An Indian!" she repeated. "Can this be the reason? Is this the answer? Oh, Gideon, is my blood ... am I an Indian?"

"No, no, lass ... not you, Blodwen!"

"But are you sure?" she pleaded, clutching him the tighter. "Oh, are you quite sure?"

"Sarten sure!" he answered, stoutly, though his honest old eyes quailed before her eager regard. "But Lord love us all!" he exclaimed cheerily, "here be me idling and to-day my lord's birthday and the great house full o' grand company and more a-coming ... nigh all the gentry o' Virginny and Maryland. 'Tis bustle, lass, bustle I tell ee! So leggo o' me, dear maid, and lemme to my work, do ee now!" Mutely she obeyed, and nodding cheerily, old Gideon went his way.

Then Blodwen turned and with head bowed in troubled thought went on beside this river that twenty odd years ago had borne her on its broad, gentle bosom out of the unknown. Reaching a favourite place where trees and dense-growing, flowery thickets made a green bower, she sank down and, clasping arms about her rounded limbs, crouched to watch the murmurous waters with her strange golden eyes.

Here, remote from the stir and bustle of the great house and busy village, she sat in a primeval stillness broken only by the soft rustle of leaves about her and the rippling murmur of these ever-flowing waters.

But after some while her quick ear caught the faint, rhythmic beat of paddles and, glancing through the leafage, she espied a long, birch-bark canoe approaching and in it two Indians, but as they drew nearer she saw one of these was a white man, though clad in the Indian fashion, who, throwing up his paddle, said something to his companion, whereupon the canoe, turning in its own length, came gliding smoothly to the bank nearby and Blodwen, hidden in her bower, saw the white man step lightly ashore.

And now a strange thing happened; for scarcely had his moccasined foot touched land than, as if she had called to him, he turned swiftly, looked, and saw her golden eyes peering at him through the leaves--these and no more. Catching up his long rifle, he came striding through the brushwood and parting the leaves, stood looking down at her, and off came his silver fox-skin cap.

A slender, shapely, quick-moving man of no great height though powerfully built and clad like an Indian from throat to ankle in close-fitting garments of native deerskin beautifully worked with coloured porcupine quills, belted with wampum and armed with knife and tomahawk; a youngish man, bronzed and hardened by travel in wild places and yet whose grey eyes smiled down on her from a lean and comely face; silent thus and motionless stood he, one sinewy hand grasping his long-barrelled rifle, his fur cap in the other.

"Why do you bare your head to me?" she demanded ungraciously, and making no effort to rise.

"Because you are a lady," he answered in tone gentle as his look.

"No!" she answered frowning, "I am Blodwen."

"Why then," said he, smiling and bowing with a courtly grace, "I salute you because you are a woman, which is better."

Now because in his frank, well-opened eyes she read a sincerity that matched his words, her frown vanished and when she spoke now, her tone was softly wistful:

"I think you must be my lord's nephew, Mr. Anthony."

"Yes," he answered, drawing a pace nearer, "I'm Anthony Falconbridge. But pray how should you know this?"

"Because I am Blodwen and because I saw you here twelve years ago. But in those days you went very splendid in velvets and laces and 'stead of Indian tomahawk, carried the sword of a gentleman."

"Twelve years ago?" he mused, rubbing smooth shaven chin. "This was when I had but newly come from England, the university of Oxford. You must have been a very small person in those days ... very young.... And Blodwen? A strange, pretty name! Early British I think.... Aha, I begin to remember! There was a lovely child my Aunt Anthea doated on, and very pampered and petted by that extremely stately, overwhelming personage, my uncle George ... Well?"

"Yes, Mr. Anthony, I was that spoiled child. But you now, being my lord's nephew, are a great gentleman despite your Indian trappings, why must you steal ashore thus and so far from the Great House?"

"Faith, Mistress Blodwen," he answered, smiling a little ruefully "this is because I'm in no little doubt how my lordly uncle shall receive me, for he is so preposterously stately and Tory and English, and a great power here in Virginia."

"Yes," she nodded, "everything hereabout is English, the house, the park, even the country for miles around he has altered and planted and made as much like his England as possible,--or so they say, for I have never seen England ... to my knowledge. But my lord would have everything and everybody English, even his black slaves bear English names and are called after towns and villages in England."

"Ay, I remember," smiled Anthony. "There was old Pevensey Sussex, his black butler, and Wilmington Alfriston, and Chailey Arundel. Yes, Uncle George was always himself and too proud to be anything but an Englishman."

"But you, Mr. Anthony, are just as much an Englishman as your uncle."

"Why yes, I am, or rather, I was. But to-day I am a Colonial. America is my home and shall be, so to-day I am an American and proud of it."

"And to-day you are here for your uncle's birthday, Mr. Anthony?"

"I came because I was especially summoned. There is to be a family reunion, it seems. And considering Great Britain's new repressive acts and General Gage's cursed folly in Massachusetts, I can guess why."

"You mean the late rioting in Boston? But my lord says this is no more than the foolish clamours of a drunken mob soon to be hushed."

"Ah," sighed Anthony, shaking his head, "would to God it were! Here is smoke shall grow to a quenchless fire, I guess!"

At this moment from beyond flowery thicket, a deep voice hailed softly in the Indian dialect, whereto Anthony answered in the same musical speech; then turning to Blodwen, "Lady," said he, flushing and somewhat abashed it seemed by her cold, dark scrutiny, "my good friend the Sagamore yonder has prepared breakfast, grilled trout, and now I'm wondering if ... perhaps you are hungry ... perhaps you will honour us? Would you eat with us, Mistress Blodwen?" He said this with such diffidence and in his look such boyish shyness that Blodwen's woeful heart swelled and, though her eyes were misted with sudden tears, her sullen features were transfigured by such smile that Anthony caught his breath at this revelation of her warm and radiant loveliness. Then with an effortless ease, she rose, saying with a check in her voice that was something between laugh and sob:

"Oh, Mr. Anthony, I ... shall be very happy to join you." Then she reached out a hand, shapely, though brown almost as his own. So Anthony grasped this hand in warm clasp, and, with the courtesy of the time, bowed his head and kissed it.

He brought her where, close beside the river and screened well from all chance observation, an Indian was busied over a small fire that gave forth much heat but little or no betraying smoke. Espying them, the Indian rose and stood with all the reposeful dignity of his race, watching their approach; a stately man and taller for the three eagles' feathers above his brow; about his neck a string of bears' claws, his deerskin tunic and leggings rich with embroidery, their broad seams fringed and adorned by the many scalp locks of his slain foes.

"Mistress Blodwen," said Anthony, "here is my comrade and blood brother, Mahtocheega, Sagamore of the Tuscaroras, a great warrior and chief." The Indian saluted her with grave courtesy to whom Anthony now spoke in his own dialect. Once again the Indian saluted her, then taking a buffalo robe from the canoe, spread it upon the ground to her comfort.

And thus, throned between the white man and the red, Blodwen talked and ate, questioned and listened in such communion as she had never known. But presently the Sagamore, having ended his frugal meal, rose and saluting them like the natural aristocrat he was, went down to busy himself with the travel-worn canoe, leaving them together.

"Has your Indian Sagamore any English?"

"Why yes indeed, when he chooses."

"And you, Mr. Anthony, you live alone in the great wilderness?"

"Near the Lake Country, but not alone," he answered, his grey eyes a-dream. "I've built a log house there ... in a very earthly paradise. And I live with my three men Tom Laurie, Nat Joyce, Nick Brewer and his wife. Also I have founded a little settlement not far away. Then Mahtocheega and his people have their village hardby, so I'm not lonely."

"Then you do not ... despise the Indians?"

"No, no, not I!" he answered warmly. "These are the natural lords of the forest and prairie, and in their native innocence is a nobility, a strict universal code of honour hard to find in our own great cities and vaunted civilization."

"And yet," she demurred, "we are forever hearing tales of their merciless ferocity, their terrible tortures, their treachery and massacres of helpless folk and lonely settlers."

"And alas, with some truth. For after all the redskin, like the white, is good and bad, but I'm bold to say, the worst of them is not so vilely evil as the worst of us. The red man is proud and vengeful and, God forgive us, has suffered many bitter harms and wrongs. Yet I have found that the Indian in his native state is clean, body and mind, and as truly honourable as any gentleman should be. But Lord!" he broke off with self-deprecating laugh, "I fear my tediousness wearies you?"

"No," she answered, with quick shake of the head, "I am interested. Pray go on, tell me of your Indians and your life in the wilderness."

So they talked together until the sun was high and a powerful contralto voice was heard calling:

"Missie Blodwen, oh Missie Blodwen, where is you, now?"

"There is Marileena, my old nurse," said Blodwen, then called in answer:

"Here I am, Leena."

Ensued a prodigious crackling of twigs, rustling of leaves and, forth of the underbrush stepped a gigantic negress being large every way, her black, good-natured face surmounted by a vivid turban.

"Well, foh de Lord's sake!" she exclaimed, setting hands on ample hips and shaking her head. "De lady Ann done say foh me to find you dis minute and I done go looking everywhar and heah yoh is long of a lot o' pooh Injun trash! I 'lows youse de bad chile! Come 'long now, come 'long and be dressed. De lady Ann she done say you is to make yo'self into lak what is a dairymaid and oversee dem lazy niggah-wenches in serving de great ladies wid de syllabubs, so come 'long now dis minute."

"Very well!" said Blodwen rising. "Go you before, Leena, I'll follow." But after the tall negress, grumbling good-naturedly, had departed, Blodwen stood some while motionless and silent, her sombre eyes upon the river again. Then turning where Anthony stood beside her, she spoke softly, though without looking at him:

"Twenty odd years ago, a baby in an Indian canoe came drifting down this river and round her neck ... this!" Here with swift gesture she did off the golden neckchain.

"Why, this is a Sachem's medicine bag!" said he. "And of very splendid workmanship ... Blackfoot work I think."

"Or Cree," she sighed. "In it you will find a scrap of paper with the one word 'Blodwen.' There is also a plain ruby ring with the graven words 'Semper Eadem.' Pray look at them." So Anthony took out these treasured relics with reverent fingers, viewing them with profound interest.

"Semper Eadem!" he murmured thoughtfully. "Ever the same ... a splendid motto, and one I remember having seen while at Oxford in England and ... yes, by heavens I believe in just such another ring as this, though whose and under what circumstances, I can't for the life of me recall."

"Not even if you ... think very hard?" she enquired breathlessly.

"No!" he answered, staring down at the ring beneath knit brows, "it is but the vaguest recollection."

"Why then," she sighed, "Mr. Anthony, pray look at me."

"Indeed I am!" he answered. And now at last she raised her strange, golden eyes to his, and drawing comb from her hair, shook down her blue-black glossy tresses.

"See now, Mr. Anthony," said she in the same breathless way, "my skin ... so dark! My hair so black and straight as ... any Indian! Well, Mr. Anthony, you that know so much about Indian peoples, think you that I ... am an Indian?"

"God love you, no!" he answered awed more by the pleading intensity of her gaze than by the dark and yet vital beauty of her. "No ... indeed!"

"Yet, sir ... my history ... this Indian medicine bag ... my looks and bearing! Remembering all this, can you ... dare you be certain there is no strain of the Indian in my blood? Ah ... you cannot!" she gasped, "you cannot! I see it in your eyes"--and snatching the Indian talisman from his lax fingers she set it about her creamy throat with a swift, wild gesture and turned to be gone, but he stayed her with outflung arm.

"Mistress Blodwen," he protested very earnestly, "who is there might answer such question, surely not I--"

"Oh, sir," cried she with mirthless laugh, "your eyes be truer than your tongue, I think."

"Howbeit," he answered, "my lips tell you that you are as God made you, and my eyes tell me you have a beauty might lift a man up to heaven--"

"Or lure him down to hell!" she retorted and, with another laugh evil to hear, she sped away.