A Virginia Scout Part 12

"Does Pennsylvania still blame Michael Cresap for the death of Logan's people?" asked the governor.

"Many of them do, because Connolly reduced him in rank. His reinstatement at Your Excellency's command is not so generally known."

"Confusion and bickering!" wrathfully exclaimed the governor. "Virginia demanding a decisive war--England opposed to it. Our militia captains stealing each other's men--Sir William Johnson's death is most untimely."

Sir William Johnson dead! For the moment I was stunned. My facial expression was so p.r.o.nounced that His Excellency kindly added:

"The sad news has just reached us. Never was he needed more and wanted more. The colonies have been so used to having him hold the Iroquois in check that few have paused to picture what might happen if his influence were removed from the Six Nations."

He rose and paced the room for a few turns. Then with a short bow to me he addressed the colonel, saying:

"With your permission, Colonel, I believe I shall retire for an hour. When the man Ward comes I wish to question him."

"By all means, Your Excellency, take a bit of rest. I shall call you if the fellow comes."

I turned to go and the colonel walked with me to the door, urging me to return and remain his guest that night. I thanked him, explaining an acceptance of his kind offer would depend on circ.u.mstances. He walked with me to my horse and with a side-glance at the house softly inquired:

"What do the people over the mountains and in Pennsylvania say about the Quebec Bill now before Parliament?"

"I do not remember hearing it mentioned. I do not think any of the settlers are interested in it."

"Not interested!" he groaned. "And if it is approved[3] by Parliament the American colonies will be robbed of hundreds of thousands of square miles of territory. They will lose the lands which already have been given them in their own charters. Think of Virginia and Pennsylvania quarreling over the junction of two rivers when we stand fair to lose all the country west of the Alleghanies. Young man, there's going to be war." This was very softly spoken.

"We're in it now," I stupidly replied.

"I am speaking of war with England," he whispered.

I could scarcely accept it as being a true prophecy. I was not disturbed by it. The quarreling between colonies and the mother-country was an old story. Hiding my skepticism I asked, "When will it begin?"

"It began in 1763, when the English Ministry decided to collect revenues from the colonies," was the quiet reply. "It will soon be open war. I verily believe I am entertaining in my humble home to-day the last royal governor of Virginia."

[3] The Quebec Bill, to take effect in 1775, was approved June 22, 1774, or before Colonel Lewis and Morris had their conversation.

CHAPTER V

LOVE COMES A CROPPER

"I am speaking of a war with England." These words of Colonel Lewis rang in my ears as I rode to Salem. They had sounded fantastic when he uttered them. Now that I was alone they repeated themselves most ominously. The flying hoofs of my horse pounded them into my ears. War with England was unthinkable, and yet the colonel's speech lifted me up to a dreary height and I was gazing over into a new and very grim world.

For years, from my first connected thoughts, there had been dissension after dissension between England and America. My father before me had lived through similar disputes. But why talk of war now? Many times the colonies had boiled over a bit; then some concession was made, and what our orators had declared to be a crisis died out and became a dead issue.

To be sure another "crisis" always took the place of the defunct one, but the great fact remained that none of those situations had led to war.

Perhaps if some one other than Colonel Lewis had indulged in the dire foreboding it would have made less of an impression. At the time he spoke the words I had not been disturbed. Now that I was remembering what an unemotional level-headed man he was the effect became acc.u.mulative. The farther I left Richfield behind and the longer I mulled over his sinister statement the more I worried.

As I neared Salem my meditations continued disquieting and yet were highly pleasing. I was on my way to meet Patricia Dale. I was born on the Mattapony and left an orphan at an early age. I had gone to Williamsburg when turning sixteen, and soon learned to love and wear gold and silver buckles on a pewter income.

In my innocence, rather ignorance, I unwittingly allowed my town acquaintances to believe me to be a chap of means. When I discovered their false estimate I did not have the courage to disillusion them. My true spending-pace was struck on my eighteenth birthday, and inside the year I had wasted my King William County patrimony.

Just what process of reasoning I followed during that foolish year I have never been able to determine. I must have believed it to be imperative that I live up to the expectations of my new friends. As a complement to this idiotic obsession there must have been a grotesque belief that somehow, by accident or miracle, I would be kept in funds indefinitely. I do recall my amazement at the abrupt ending of my dreams. I woke up one morning to discover I had no money, no a.s.sets. There were no odds and ends, even, of wreckage which I could salvage for one more week of the old life.

Among my first friends had been Ericus Dale and his daughter, Patricia. To her intimates she was known as Patsy. As was to be expected when an awkward boy meets a dainty and wonderful maid, I fell in love completely out of sight. At nineteen I observed that the girl, eighteen, was becoming a toast among men much older and very, very much more sophisticated than I.

She was often spoken of as the belle of Charles City County, and I spent much time vainly wis.h.i.+ng she was less attractive. Her father, engaged in the Indian-trade, and often away from home for several months at a time, had seemed to be very kindly disposed to me.

I instinctively hurried to the Dales to impart the astounding fact that I was bankrupt. One usually speaks of financial reverses as "cras.h.i.+ng about"

one's head. My wind-up did not even possess that poor dignity; for there was not enough left even to rattle, let alone crash.

The youth who rode so desperately to the Dale home that wonderful day tragically to proclaim his plight, followed by fervid vows to go away and make a new fortune, has long since won my sympathy. I have always resented Ericus Dale's att.i.tude toward that youth on learning he was a pauper. It is bad enough to confess to a girl that one has not enough to marry on; but it is h.e.l.l to be compelled to add that one has not enough to woo on.

How it wrung my heart to tell her I was an impostor, that I was going to the back-country and begin life all over. Poor young devil! How many like me have solemnly declared their intentions to begin all over, whereas, in fact, they never had begun at all.

And why does youth in such juvenile cataclysms feel forced to seek new fields in making the fresh start? Shame for having failed, I suppose. An unwillingness to toe the scratch under the handicap of having his neighbors know it is his second trial.

But so much had happened since that epochal day back in Williamsburg that it seemed our parting had been fully a million years ago. It made me smile to remember how mature Patsy had been when I meekly ran her errands and gladly wore her yoke in the old days.

Three years of surveying, scouting and despatch-bearing through the trackless wilderness had aged me. I prided myself I was an old man in worldly wisdom. Patsy Dale had only added three years to her young life. I could even feel much at ease in meeting Ericus Dale. And yet there had been no day during my absence that I did not think of her, still idealizing her, and finding her fragrant memory an anodyne when suffering in the wilderness.

The sun was casting its longest shadows as I inquired for the house and rode to it. If my heart went pit-a-pat when I dismounted and walked to the veranda it must have been because of antic.i.p.ation. As I was about to rap on the casing of the open door I heard a deep voice exclaim:

"This country's going to the dogs! We need the regulars over here. Using volunteers weakens a country. Volunteers are too d.a.m.ned independent.

They'll soon get the notion they're running things over here. Put me in charge of Virginia, and I'd make some changes. I'd begin with Dunmore and wind up with the backwoodsmen. Neither Whigs nor Tories can save this country. It's trade we want, trade with the Indians."

I could not hear that any one was answering him, and after a decent interval I rapped again. At last I heard a slow heavy step approaching from the cool twilight of the living-room.

"Aye? You have business with me, my man?" demanded Dale, staring into my face without appearing to recognize me. He had changed none that I could perceive. Short, square as though chopped out of an oak log. His dark hair still kinked a bit and suggested great virility. His thick lips were pursed as of old, and the bushy brows, projecting nearly an inch from the deep-set eyes, perhaps had a bit more gray in them than they showed three years back.

"Ericus Dale, you naturally have forgotten me," I began. "I am Basdel Morris. I knew you and your daughter three years ago in Williamsburg."

"Oh, young Morris, eh? I'm better at remembering Indian faces than white.

Among 'em so much. So you're young Morris, who made a fool of himself trying to be gentry. Sit down. Turned to forest-running, I should say."

And he advanced to the edge of the veranda and seated himself. He had not bothered to shake hands.

"I had business with Colonel Lewis and I wished to see you and Patsy before going back," I explained. I had looked for bluntness in his greeting, but I had expected to be invited inside the house.

"Pat's out," he mumbled, his keen gaze roaming up and down my forest garb.

"But she'll be back. Morris, you don't seem to have made much of a hit at prosperity since coming out this way."

"I'm dependent only on myself," I told him. "Personal appearance doesn't go for much when you're in the woods."

"Ain't it the truth?" he agreed. "In trade?"

"Carrying despatches between Fort Pitt and Governor Dunmore just now.