The Reckoning Part 2

She looked around at me, pretty brows raised in quaint displeasure.

"Does the insolence of a rebel really amuse you, Mr. Renault?"

I was taken aback. Even among the British officers here in the city it had become the fas.h.i.+on to speak respectfully of the enemy, and above all of his Excellency.

"Why should it not amuse me?" I asked lightly.

She had moved her head again, and appeared to be absorbed in the view.

Presently she said, still looking out over the city: "That was a n.o.ble church once, that blackened arch across the way."

"That is Trinity--all that is left of it," I said. "St. Paul's is still standing--you may see it there to the north, just west of Ann Street and below Vesey."

She turned, leaning on the railing, following with curious eyes the direction of my outstretched arm.

"Please tell me more about this furnace you call a city, Mr. Renault,"

she said, with a pretty inflection of voice that flattered; and so I went over beside her, and, leaning there on the cupola rail together, we explored the damaged city from our bird's perch above it--the city that I had come to care for strangely, nay, to love almost as I loved my Mohawk hills. For it is that way with New York, the one city that we may love without disloyalty to our birthplace, a city which is home in a larger sense, and, in a sense, almost as dear to men as the birth-spot which all cherish. I know not why, but this is so; no American is long strange here; for it is the great hearth of the mother-land where the nation gathers as a family, each conscious of a share in the heritage established for all by all.

And so, together, this fair young English girl and I traced out the wards numbered from the cardinal points of the compa.s.s, and I bounded for her the Out-Ward, too, and the Dock-Ward. There was no haze, only a living golden light, clear as topaz, and we could see plainly the sentinels pacing before the Bridewell--that long two-storied prison, built of gloomy stone; and next to it the Almshouse of gray stone, and next to that the ma.s.sive rough stone prison, three stories high, where in a cupola an iron bell hung, black against the sky.

"You will hear it, some day, tolling for an execution," I said.

"Do they hang rebels there?" she asked, looking up at me so wonderingly, so innocently that I stood silent instead of answering, surprised at such beauty in a young girl's eyes.

"Where is King's College?" she asked. I showed her the building bounded by Murray, Chapel, Barckley and Church streets, and then I pointed out the upper barracks behind the jail, and the little lake beyond divided by a neck of land on which stood the powder-house.

Far across the West Ward I could see the windows of Mr. Lispenard's mansion s.h.i.+ning in the setting sun, and the road to Greenwich winding along the river.

She tired of my instruction after a while, and her eyes wandered to the bay. A few s.h.i.+ps lay off Paulus Hook; the Jersey sh.o.r.e seemed very near, although full two miles distant, and the islands, too, seemed close in-sh.o.r.e where the white wings of gulls flashed distantly.

A jack flew from the Battery, another above the fort, standing out straight in the freshening breeze from the bay. Far away across the East River I saw the accursed _Jersey_ swinging, her black, filthy bulwarks gilded by the sun; and below, her devil's brood of hulks at anchor, all with the wash hung out on deck a-drying in the wind.

"What are they?" she asked, surprising something else than the fixed smile of deference in my face.

"Prison s.h.i.+ps, madam. Yonder the rebels die all night, all day, week after week, year after year. That black hulk you see yonder--the one to the east--stripped clean, with nothing save a derrick for bow-sprit and a signal-pole for mast, is the _Jersey_, called by another name, sometimes----"

"What name?"

"Some call her '_The h.e.l.l_,'" I answered. And, after a pause: "It must be hot aboard, with every porthole nailed."

"What can rebels expect?" she asked calmly.

"Exactly! There are some thousand and more aboard the _Jersey_. When the wind sets from the south, on still mornings, I have heard a strange moaning--a low, steady, monotonous plaint, borne inland over the city.

But, as you say, what can rebels expect, madam?"

"What is that moaning sound you say that one may hear?" she demanded.

"Oh, the rebels, dying from suffocation--clamoring for food, perhaps--perhaps for water! It is hard on the guards who have to go down every morning into that reeking, stifling hold and drag out the dead rebels festering there----"

"But that is horrible!" she broke out, blue eyes wide with astonishment--then, suddenly silent, she gazed at me full in the face.

"It is incredible," she said quietly; "it is another rebel tale. Tell me, am I not right?"

I did not answer; I was thinking how I might use her, and the thought was not agreeable. She was so lovely in her fresh young womanhood, so impulsive and yet so self-possessed, so utterly ignorant of what was pa.s.sing in this war-racked land of mine, that I hesitated to go gleaning here for straws of information.

"In the north," she said, resting her cheek on one slender wrist, "we hear much of rebel complaint, but make nothing of it, knowing well that if cruelty exists its home is not among those st.u.r.dy men who are fighting for their King."

"You speak warmly," I said, smiling.

"Yes--warmly. We have heard Sir John Johnson slandered because he uses the Iroquois. But do not the rebels use them, too? My kinsman, General Haldimand, says that not only do the rebels employ the Oneidas, but that their motley congress enlists any Indian who will take their paper dollars."

"That is true," I said.

"Then why should we not employ Brant and his Indians?" she asked innocently. "And why do the rebels cry out every time Butler's Rangers take the field? We in Canada know Captain Walter Butler and his father, Colonel John Butler. Why, Mr. Renault, there is no more perfectly accomplished officer and gentleman than Walter Butler. I know him; I have danced with him at Quebec and at Niagara. How can even a rebel so slander him with these monstrous tales of ma.s.sacre and torture and scalps taken from women and children at Cherry Valley?" She raised her flushed face to mine and looked at me earnestly.

"Why even our own British officers have been disturbed by these slanders," she said, "and I think Sir Henry Clinton half believes that our Royal Greens and Rangers are merciless marauders, and that Walter Butler is a demon incarnate."

"I admit," said I, "that we here in New York have doubted the mercy of the Butlers and Sir John Johnson."

"Then let me paint these gentlemen for you," she said quickly.

"But they say these gentlemen are capable of painting themselves," I observed, tempted to excite her by the hint that the Rangers smeared their faces like painted Iroquois at their h.e.l.lish work.

"Oh, how shameful!" she cried, with a little gesture of horror. "What do you think us, there in Canada? Because our officers must needs hold a wilderness for the King, do you of New York believe us savages?"

The generous animation, the quick color, charmed me. She was no longer English, she was Canadienne--jealous of Canadian reputation, quick to resent, sensitive, proud--heart and soul believing in the honor of her own people of the north.

"Let me picture for you these gentlemen whom the rebels cry out upon,"

she said. "Sir John Johnson is a mild, slow man, somewhat sluggish and overheavy, moderate in speech, almost cold, perhaps, yet a perfectly gallant officer."

"His father was a wise and honest gentleman before him," I said sincerely. "Is his son, Sir John, like him?"

She nodded, and went on to deal with old John Butler--nor did I stay her to confess that these Johnsons and Butlers were no strangers to me, whose blackened Broadalbin home lay a charred ruin to attest the love that old John Butler bore my family name.

And so I stood, smiling and silent, while she spoke of Walter Butler, describing him vividly, even to his amber black eyes and his pale face, and the poetic melancholy with which he clothed the hidden blood-l.u.s.t that smoldered under his smooth pale skin. But there you have it--young, proud, and melancholy--and he had danced with her at Niagara, too, and--if I knew him--he had not spared her hints of that impetuous flame that burned for all pure women deep in the blackened pit of his own d.a.m.ned soul.

"Did you know his wife?" I asked, smiling.

"Walter Butler's--wife!" she gasped, turning on me, white as death.

There was a silence; she drew a long, deep breath; suddenly, the gayest, sweetest little laugh followed, but it was slowly that the color returned to lip and cheek.

"Is he not wedded?" I asked carelessly--the d.a.m.ned villain--at his Mohawk Valley tricks again!--and again she laughed, which was, no doubt, my wordless answer.

"Does he dance well, this melancholy Ranger?" I asked, smiling to see her laugh.

"Divinely, sir. I think no gentleman in New York can move a minuet with Walter Butler's grace. Oh, you New Yorkers! You think we are nothing--fit, perhaps, for a May-pole frolic with the rustic gentry! Do not deny it, Mr. Renault. Have we not heard you on the subject? Do not your officers from Philadelphia and New York come mincing and tiptoeing through Halifax and Quebec, all smiling and staring about, quizzing gla.s.ses raised? And--'Very pretty! monstrous charming! spike me, but the ladies powder here!' And, 'Is this green gra.s.s? Damme, where's the snow--and the polar bears, you know?'"

I laughed as she paused, breathlessly scornful, flushed with charming indignation.