Cardigan. Chambers Robert William

world knows, that Sir William Johnson had never broken his word to man or savage.

      But still I faced him, now hurling safe defiance, now muttering revenge, until the scornful rebuke in his eyes began to shame me into silence. Tingling already with self-contempt, I dropped my head a little, not so low but what I could see Sir William's bulk motionless before me.

      Presently he said, as though to himself: "If the boy's a coward, no man can lay the sin to me."

      "I am not a coward!" I burst out, all a-quiver again, "and I ask your pardon, sir, for daring you to lay whip on me, – knowing your promise!"

      Sir William scowled at me.

      "To prove it," I went on, desperately, still trembling at the word "coward," "I will give you leave to drive a fish-hook through my hand and cut it out with your knife; and I'll laugh at the pain – as did that Mohawk lad when you cut the pike-hook out of his hand!"

      "What the devil have I to do with your fish-hook and your Mohawks!" shouted Sir William, with a hearty oath.

      Mortified, I shrank back while he fumed and cracked his whip and swore I was doomed to folly and a most vicious future.

      "You assume the airs of a man," he roared – "you with your sixteen unbirched years – you with your gross ignorance and grosser impudence! A vicious lad, a bad, undutiful, sullen lad, ever at odds with the others, never diligent save with the fishing-rod – a lazy, quarrelsome rustic, a swaggering, forest-running fellow, without the polish or the presence of a gentleman's son! Shame on you!"

      I set my teeth and shut both eyes, opening one, however, when I heard him move.

      "I'll polish you yet!" he said, with an oath; "I'll polish you, and I'll temper you like the edge on a Mohawk hatchet."

      "One red belt," I added, impudently, meaning that I defied him.

      "Which you will cover with a white belt before the fires in this hearth are dead," he answered, gulping down the disrespect.

      He laid his heavy hand on the door, then, turning, he bade me write with the chalk on the slate the history of Proserpine in verse, and await his further pleasure.

      Sir William had shut the school-room door upon me. I listened. Had he locked it I should have kicked the panelling out into the hallway.

      Standing there alone in the school-room beside the great slate, I read in dull anger the names of those who, tasks ended, were now free of the hateful place; here Esk had left his name above his sum, all smears; here fat Peter had written seven times, "David did die and so must I."

      With a bit of buckskin I dusted these scrawls from the slate, slowly, for I was not yet of a mind to begin my task.

      I opened the window behind me. A sweet spring wind was blowing. Putting up my nose to scent it, I saw the sky bluer than a heron's egg, and a little white cloud a-sailing up there all alone.

      That year the snow had gone out in April, and the same day the blue-birds flew into the sheep-fold. Now, on this second day of May, robins were already running over the ground below the school-room window, a-tilting for worms like jack-snipes along the creek.

      Folding my arms to lean on the sill, I could see a corner of the northern block-house, with a soldier standing guard below in the sunshine, and I peppered him well with spit-balls, he being a friend of mine.

      His mystified anger brought but temporary pleasure to me. Behind me lay that villanous slate, and my task to deal with the ravishment of that silly creature, Proserpine – and that, too, in verse! Had it been my long-legged Diana with her view-halloo and her hounds and shooting her arrows like a Huron squaw from the lakes! But no! – my business lay with a puny, cowslip-pulling maid who had strayed from the stockade and got her deserts, too, for aught I know.

      Leaning there in the breezy casement I tried to forget the jade, attentively observing the birds and the young fruit-trees, Sir William's pride. Now that the snow had melted I could see where mice, working under the crust in midwinter, had fatally girdled two young apple-trees; and I was sorry, loving apples as I do.

      For a while my mind was occupied in devising a remedy against girdling; then the distant sparkle of the river caught my eye, and straightway my thoughts slipped into their natural channel, smoothly as the river flowed there in the sunshine; and I laid my plans for the taking of that bull-trout who had so grossly deceived and flouted me the past year – ay, not only me, but also that master of the craft, Sir William himself.

      Thinking of Sir William, my lagging thoughts drifted back again to my desk. It madded me to pine here, making rhymes, while outside the sweet wind whispered: "Come out, Michael – come out into the green delight!"

      Now Sir William had bidden me, not only to write my verses, but also to bide here awaiting his good pleasure. That meant he would return by-and-by. I had no stomach for further quarrels. Besides, I was ashamed of my disrespect and temper, and indeed, selfish, idle beast that I was, I did truly love Sir William because I knew he was the greatest man of our times – and because he loved me.

      Resolved at last to accomplish some verses as proof of a contrite and diligent spirit, I set to work; and this is what I made:

      "Proserpine did roam the hills,

      Intent on culling daffydills;

      Alas, in gleeful girlish sport,

      She wandered too far from the fort,

      Forgetting that no belt of peace,

      Bound the people of Pluto from war to cease;

      Alas, old Pluto lay in wait,

      To ambush all who stayed out late;

      And with a dreadful war-whoop he

      Ran after the doomed Proserpine – "

      Absorbed in my task, and, moreover, considerably affected by the piteous plight of the maid, I stepped back from the slate and for a moment conceived a generous idea of introducing somebody to rescue Proserpine and leave Pluto damaged – perhaps scalped. Reflection, however, dissuaded me from such a liberty, not that I found the anachronism at all discordant, for, living all my life in a family where Indians were oftener seen than white men, my hazy notions concerning classic myths were inextricably mixed with the reality of my own life, and were also gayly coloured by the legends I learned from my red neighbours. So, lazy dunce that I was, with but a fraction of my attention fixed on my tasks, mythology to me was but a Græco-Mohawk medley of jumbled fables, interesting only when they concerned war or the chase.

      Still I did not feel at liberty to rescue Proserpine in my verses or plump a war-arrow into Pluto. Besides I knew it would enrage Sir William.

      As I stood there, breathing hard, resolved to finish the wretched maiden quickly and let the metre go a-limping, behind me I heard the door stealthily open, and I knew that long-legged wild-cat thing, Silver Heels, had crept in, her moccasins making no noise.

      I pretended not to notice her, knowing she had come to taunt me; and, for a space, she stood behind me, very still. Clearly, she was reading my verses, and I became angry. Not to show it, I made out to whistle and to draw a picture of a fish on the slate. Then she knew I had seen her and laughed hatefully.

      "Oh," said I, "if there is somebody come a-prying, it must be Silver Heels!" And I turned around, pretending amazement at the justness of my hazard.

      "You saw me," she answered, disdainfully.

      "It is your hour for the stocks," I hinted.

      "I won't go," she retorted.

      To secure that grace of carriage and elegance of presence necessary for a young lady of quality, and to straighten her back, which truly was as straight as a pine, Sir William and Mistress Molly were accustomed to strap her to a pine plank and lock her in the stocks for an hour at noon, forbidding Peter, Esk, and me to tickle the soles of her feet.

      It was noon now; I could hear the guard changing at the north block-house, tramp! tramp! tramp! across the stony way.

      "If you don't go to the stocks now," I said, "you'll be sorry when you do go."

      "If you tickle