Читать книгу Lazarre - Mary Hartwell Catherwood - Страница 9

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Dawn found me lying wide awake with my head on a saddle. I slipped out into the dewy half light.

That was the first time I ever thought about the mountains. They seemed to be newly created, standing up with streamers of mist torn and floating across their breasts. The winding cliff-bound lake was like a gorge of smoke. I felt as if I had reared upon my hind feet, lifting my face from the ground to discover there was a God. Some of the prayers our priest had industriously beaten into my head, began to repeat themselves. In a twinkling I was a child, lonely in the universe, separated from my dim old life, instinct with growth, yet ignorant of my own needs.

What Madame de Ferrier and Madame Tank had said influenced me less than the intense life of my roused activities.

It was mid forenoon by the sun when I reached our lodges, and sat down fagged outside my father's door, to think longer before I entered. Hunger was the principal sensation, though we had eaten in the cabin the night before, and the Indian life inures a man to fasting when he cannot come by food. I heard Skenedonk talking to my father and mother in our cabin. The village was empty; children and women, hunters and fishermen having scattered to woods and waters.

"He ought to learn books," said Skenedonk. "Money is sent you every year to be spent upon him: yet you spend nothing upon him."

"What has he needed?" said my father.

"He needs much now. He needs American clothes. He wept at the sight of a book. God has removed the touch since he plunged in the water."

"You would make a fool of him," said my father. "He was gone from the lodge this morning. You taught him an evil path when you carried him off."

"It is a natural path for him: he will go to his own. I stayed and talked with De Chaumont, and I bring you an offer. De Chaumont will take Lazarre into his house, and have him taught all that a white boy should know. You will pay the cost. If you don't, De Chaumont will look into this annuity of which you give no account."

"I have never been asked to give account. Could Lazarre learn anything? The priest has sat over him. He had food and clothing like my own."

"That is true. But he is changed. Marianne will let him go."

"The strange boy may go," said my mother. "But none of my own children shall leave us to be educated."

I got up and went into the cabin. All three knew I had heard, and they waited in silence while I approached my mother and put my hands on her shoulders. There was no tenderness between us, but she had fostered me. The small dark eyes in her copper face, and her shapeless body, were associated with winters and summers stretching to a vanishing point.

"Mother," I said, "is it true that I am not your son?"

She made no answer.

"Is it true that the chief is not my father?"

She made no answer.

"Who sends money to be spent on me every year?"

Still she made no answer.

"If I am not your son, whose son am I?"

In the silence I turned to Skenedonk.

"Isn't my name Lazarre Williams, Skenedonk?"

"You are called Lazarre Williams."

"A woman told me last night that it was not my name. Everyone denies me. No one owns me and tells whose child I am. Wasn't I born at St. Regis?"

"If you were, there is no record of your birth on the register. The chief's other children have their births recorded."

I turned to my father. The desolation of being cut off and left with nothing but the guesses of strangers overcame me. I sobbed so the hoarse choke echoed in the cabin. Skenedonk opened his arms, and my father and mother let me lean on the Oneida's shoulder.

I have thought since that they resented with stoical pain his taking their white son from them. They both stood severely reserved, passively loosening the filial bond.

All the business of life was suspended, as when there is death in the lodge. Skenedonk and I sat down together on a bunk.

"Lazarre," my father spoke, "do you want to be educated?"

The things we pine for in this world are often thrust upon us in a way to choke us. I had tramped miles, storming for the privileges that had made George Croghan what he was. Fate instantly picked me up from unendurable conditions to set me down where I could grow, and I squirmed with recoil from the shock.

I felt crowded over the edge of a cliff and about to drop into a valley of rainbows.

"Do you want to live in De Chaumont's house and learn his ways?"

My father and mother had been silent when I questioned them. It was my turn to be silent.

"Or would you rather stay as you are?"

"No, father," I answered, "I want to go."

The camp had never been dearer. I walked among the Indian children when the evening fires were lighted, and the children looked at me curiously as at an alien. Already my people had cut me off from them.

"What I learn I will come back and teach you," I told the young men and women of my own age. They laughed.

"You are a fool, Lazarre. There is a good home for you at St. Regis. If you fall sick in De Chaumont's house who will care?"

"Skenedonk is my friend," I answered.

"Skenedonk would not stay where he is tying you. When the lake freezes you will be mad for snowshoes and a sight of the St. Lawrence."

"Perhaps so. But we are not made alike. Do not forget me."

They gave me belts and garters, and I distributed among them all my Indian property. Then, as if to work a charm which should keep me from breaking through the circle, they joined hands and danced around me. I went to every cabin, half ashamed of my desertion, yet unspeakably craving a blessing. The old people variously commented on the measure, their wise eyes seeing the change in one who had been a child rather than a young man among them.

If the wrench from the village was hard, the induction into the manor was harder. Skenedonk took me in his boat, skirting the long strip of mountainous shore which separated us from De Chaumont.

He told me De Chaumont would permit my father to pay no more than my exact reckoning.

"Do you know who sends the money?" I inquired.

The Oneida did not know. It came through an agent in New York.

"You are ten years older than I am. You must remember very well when I was born."

"How can that be?" answered Skenedonk. "Nobody in the tribe knows when you were born."

"Are children not like the young of other creatures? Where did I come from?"

"You came to the tribe with a man, and Chief Williams adopted you."

"Did you see the man?"

"No. I was on the other side of the ocean, in France."

"Who saw him?"

"None of our people. But it is very well known. If you had noticed anything you would have heard the story long ago."

What Skenedonk said was true. I asked him, bewildered—"Why did I never notice anything?"

The Oneida tapped his bald head.

"When I saw you first you were not the big fellow with speaking eyes that you are to-day. You would sit from sunrise to sunset, looking straight ahead of you and never moving except when food was put in your hand. As you grew older the children dragged you among them to play. You learned to fish, and hunt, and swim; and knew us, and began to talk our language. Now at last you are fully roused, and are going to learn the knowledge there is in books."

I asked Skenedonk how he himself had liked books, and he shook his head, smiling. They were good for white men, very good. An Indian had little use for them. He could read and write and cast accounts. When he made his great journey to the far country, what interested him most was the behavior of the people.

We did not go into the subject of his travels at that time, for I began to wonder who was going to teach me books, and heard with surprise that it was Doctor Chantry.

"But I struck him with the little knife that springs out of a box."

Skenedonk assured me that Doctor Chantry thought nothing of it, and there was no wound but a scratch. He looked on me as his pupil. He knew all kinds of books.

Evidently Doctor Chantry liked me from the moment I showed fight. His Anglo-Saxon blood was stirred. He received me from Skenedonk, who shook my hand and wished me well, before paddling away.

De Chaumont's house was full as a hive around the three sides of its flowered court. A ball was in preparation, and all the guests had arrived. Avoiding these gentry we mounted stairs toward the roof, and came into a burst of splendor. As far as the eye could see through square east and west windows, unbroken forests stretched to the end of the world, or Lake George wound, sown thick with islands, ranging in size from mere rocks supporting a tree, to wooded acres.

The room which weaned me from aboriginal life was at the top of the central building. Doctor Chantry shuffled over the clean oak floor and introduced me to my appointments. There were curtains like frost work, which could be pushed back from the square panes. At one end of the huge apartment was my huge bed, formidable with hangings. Near it stood a table for the toilet. He opened a closet door in the wall and showed a spiral staircase going down to a tunnel which led to the lake. For when De Chaumont first came into the wilderness and built the central house without its wings, he thought it well to have a secret way out, as his chateau in the old country had.

"The tunnel is damp," said Doctor Chantry. "I never venture into it, though all the corner rooms below give upon this stairway, and mine is just under yours."

It was like returning me the lake to use in my own accustomed way. For the remainder of my furniture I had a study table, a cupboard for clothes, some arm-chairs, a case of books, and a massive fireplace with chimney seats at the end of the room opposite the bed.

I asked Doctor Chantry, "Was all this made ready for me before I was sure of coming here?"

"When the count decides that a thing will be done it is usually done," said my schoolmaster. "And Madame de Ferrier was very active in forwarding the preparations."

The joy of youth in the unknown was before me. My old camp life receded behind me.

Madame de Ferrier's missal-book lay on the table, and when I stopped before it tongue-tied, Doctor Chantry said I was to keep it.

"She gives it to you. It was treasured in her family on account of personal attachment to the giver. She is not a Catholic. She was brought up as good a Protestant as any English gentlewoman."

"I told her it was my mother's. It seemed to be my mother's. But I don't know—I can't remember."

My master looked at the missal, and said it was a fine specimen of illumination. His manner toward me was so changed that I found it hard to refer to the lancet. This, however, very naturally followed his examination of my head. He said I had healthy blood, and the wound was closing by the first intention. The pink cone at the tip of his nose worked in a whimsical grin as he heard my apology.

"It is not often you will make the medicine man take his own remedy, my lad."

We thus began our relation with the best feeling. It has since appeared that I was a blessing to Doctor Chantry. My education gave him something to do. For although he called himself physician to Count de Chaumont, he had no real occupation in the house, and dabbled with poetry, dozing among books. De Chaumont was one of those large men who gather in the weak. His older servants had come to America with his father, and were as attached as kindred. A natural parasite like Doctor Chantry took to De Chaumont as means of support; and it was pleasing to both of them.

My master asked me when I wanted to begin my studies, and I said, "Now." We sat down at the table, and I learned the English alphabet, some phrases of English talk, some spelling, and traced my first characters in a copy-book. With consuming desire to know, I did not want to leave off at dusk. In that high room day lingered. The doctor was fretful for his supper before we rose from our task.

Servants were hurrying up and down stairs. The whole house had an air of festivity. Doctor Chantry asked me to wait in a lower corridor while he made some change in his dress.

I sat down on a broad window sill, and when I had waited a few minutes, Mademoiselle de Chaumont darted around a corner, bare armed and bare necked. She collapsed to the floor at sight of me, and then began to dance away in the opposite direction with stiff leaps, as a lamb does in spring-time.

I saw she was in pain or trouble, needing a servant, and made haste to reach her; when she hid her face on both arms against the wall.

"Go off!" she hissed. "—S-s-s! Go off! I haven't anything on!—Don't go off! Open my door for me quick!—before anybody else comes into the hall!"

"Which door is it?" I asked. She showed me. It had a spring catch, and she had stepped into the hall to see if the catch was set.

"The catch was set!" gasped Mademoiselle de Chaumont. "Break the door—get it open—anyway—Quick!"

By good fortune I had strength enough in my shoulder to set the door wide off its spring, and she flew to the middle of the room slamming it in my face.

Fitness and unfitness required nicer discrimination than the crude boy from the woods possessed. When I saw her in the ball-room she had very little more on than when I saw her in the hall, and that little clung tight around her figure. Yet she looked quite unconcerned.

After we had eaten supper Doctor Chantry and I sat with his sister where we could see the dancing, on a landing of the stairway. De Chaumont's generous house was divided across the middle by a wide hall that made an excellent ball-room. The sides were paneled, like the walls of the room in which I first came to my senses. Candles in sconces were reflected by the polished, dark floor. A platform for his fiddlers had been built at one end. Festoons of green were carried from a cluster of lights in the center of the ceiling, to the corners, making a bower or canopy under which the dancers moved.

It is strange to think that not one stone remains upon another and scarcely a trace is left of this manor. When De Chaumont determined to remove to his seat at Le Rayville, in what was then called Castorland, he had his first hold pulled down.

Miss Chantry was a blunt woman. Her consideration for me rested on my being her brother's pupil. She spoke more readily than he did. From our cove we looked over the railing at an active world.

"Madame Eagle is a picture," remarked Miss Chantry. "—— Eagle! What a name for civilized people to give a christened child! But these French are as likely as not to call their boys Anne or Marie, and it wouldn't surprise me if they called their girls Cat or Dog. Eagle or Crow, she is the handsomest woman on the floor."

"Except Mademoiselle Annabel," the doctor ventured to amend.

"That Annabel de Chaumont," his sister vigorously declared, "has neither conscience nor gratitude. But none of the French have. They will take your best and throw you away with a laugh."

My master and I watched the brilliant figures swimming in the glow of wax candles. Face after face could be singled out as beautiful, and the scant dresses revealed taper forms. Madame de Ferrier's garments may have been white or blue or yellow; I remember only her satin arms and neck, the rosy color of her face, and the powder on her hair making it white as down. Where this assembly was collected from I did not know, but it acted on the spirits and went like volatile essence to the brain.

"Pheugh!" exclaimed Miss Chantry, "how the French smell!"

I asked her why, if she detested them so, she lived in a French family, and she replied that Count de Chaumont was an exception, being almost English in his tastes. He had lived out of France since his father came over with La Fayette to help the rebellious Americans.

I did not know who the rebellious Americans were, but inferred that they were people of whom Miss Chantry thought almost as little as she did of the French.

Croghan looked quite a boy among so many experienced gallants, but well appointed in his dress and stepping through the figures featly. He was, Miss Chantry said, a student of William and Mary College.

"This company of gentry will be widely scattered when it disperses home," she told us. "There is at least one man from over-seas."

I thought of the Grignon and Tank families, who were probably on the road to Albany. Miss Chantry bespoke her brother's attention.

"There he is."

"Who?" the doctor inquired.

"His highness," she incisively responded, "Prince Jerome Bonaparte."

I remembered my father had said that Bonaparte was a great soldier in a far off country, and directly asked Miss Chantry if the great soldier was in the ball-room.

She breathed a snort and turned upon my master. "Pray, are you teaching this lad to call that impostor the great soldier?"

Doctor Chantry denied the charge and cast a weak-eyed look of surprise at me.

I said my father told me Bonaparte was a great soldier, and begged to know if he had been deceived.

"Oh!" Miss Chantry responded in a tone which slighted Thomas Williams. "Well! I will tell you facts. Napoleon Bonaparte is one of the worst and most dangerous men that ever lived. He sets the world by the ears, and carries war into every country of Europe. That is his youngest brother yonder—that superfine gallant, in the long-tailed white silk coat down to his heels, and white small-clothes, with diamond buckles in his shoes, and grand lace stock and ruffles. Jerome Bonaparte spent last winter in Baltimore; and they say he is traveling in the north now to forget a charming American that Napoleon will not let him marry. He has got his name in the newspapers of the day, and so has the young lady. The French consul warned her officially. For Jerome Bonaparte may be made a little king, with other relations of your great soldier."

The young man who might be made a little king was not as large as I was myself, and had a delicate and womanish cut of countenance. I said he was not fit for a king, and Miss Chantry retorted that neither was Napoleon Bonaparte fit for an emperor.

"What is an emperor?" I inquired.

"A chief over kings," Doctor Chantry put in. "Bonaparte is a conqueror and can set kings over the countries he has conquered."

I said that was the proper thing to do. Miss Chantry glared at me. She had weak hair like her brother, but her eyes were a piercing blue, and the angles of her jaws were sharply marked.

Meditating on things outside of my experience I desired to know what the white silk man had done.

"Nothing."

"Then why should the emperor give him a kingdom?"

"Because he is the emperor's brother."

"But he ought to do something himself," I insisted. "It is not enough to accept a chief's place. He cannot hold it if he is not fit."

"So the poor Bourbons found. But they were not upstarts at any rate. I hope I shall live to see them restored."

Here was another opportunity to inform myself. I asked Miss Chantry who the Bourbons were.

"They are the rightful kings of France."

"Why do they let Bonaparte and his brothers take their place?"

Doctor Chantry turned from the promenaders below and, with slow and careful speech, gave me my first lesson in history.

"There was a great civil war in France called the Revolution, when part of the people ran mad to kill the other part. They cut off the heads of the king and queen, and shut up the two royal children in prison. The dauphin died."

"What is a dauphin?"

"The heir to the throne of France was called the dauphin."

"Was he the king's son?"

"The king's eldest son."

"If he had brothers were they dauphins too?"

"No. He alone was the dauphin. The last dauphin of France had no living brothers. He had only a sister."

"You said the dauphin died."

"In a prison called the Temple, in Paris."

"Was the Temple a prison?"

"Yes."

Madame de Ferrier had said her father and some other person did not believe the dauphin died in the Temple.

"Suppose he was alive?" I hazarded.

"Suppose who was alive?" said Miss Chantry.

"The dauphin."

"He isn't."

"Did all the people believe he was dead?"

"They didn't care whether he was dead or not. They went on killing one another until this man Bonaparte put himself at the head of the army and got the upper hand of them. The French are all fire and tow, and the man who can stamp on them is their idol."

"You said you hoped you would live to see the Bourbons restored. Dead people cannot be restored."

"Oh, the Bourbons are not all dead. The king of France had brothers. The elder one of these would be king now if the Bourbons came back to the throne."

"But he would not be king if the dauphin lived?"

"No," said Miss Chantry, leaning back indifferently.

My head felt confused, throbbing with the dull ache of healing. I supported it, resting my elbow on the railing.

The music, under cover of which we had talked, made one of its pauses. Annabel de Chaumont looked up at us, allowing the gentleman in the long-tailed silk coat to lead her toward the stairs.