The Reckoning

I bowed, rising, and pointing to a chair. "It is business, then, not pleasure, as I take it, Captain Butler, that permits me to receive you?"

"The business and the pleasure both are mine, Mr. Renault," he said, which was stilted enough to be civil. "The business, sir, is this: Sir Henry Clinton received me like a gentleman, but as soon as Sir Peter had retired he listened to me as though I were demented when I exposed my plan to burn New York and take the field. I say he used me with scant civility, and bowed me out, like the gross boor he is!"

"He is commander-in-chief, Mr. Butler."

"What do I care!" burst out Butler, his dark eyes a golden blaze. "Am I not an Ormond-Butler? Why should a Clinton affront an Ormond-Butler? By Heaven! I must swallow his airs and his stares and his shrugs because he is my superior; but I may one day rise in military rank as high as he—and I shall do so, mark me well, Mr. Renault!—and when I am near enough in the tinseled hierarchy to reach him at thirty paces I shall use the privilege, by God!"

"There are," said I blandly, "many subalterns on his staff who might serve your present purpose, Captain Butler."

"No, no," he said impatiently, his dark eyes wandering about the chamber, "I have too much at stake to call out fledglings for a sop to injured pride. No, Mr. Renault, I shall first take vengeance for a deeper wrong—and the north lies like an unreaped harvest for the sickle that Death and I shall set a-swinging there."

I bent my head, meditating; then looking up:

"You say I know where this Thendara lies?"

"Yes," he answered sullenly. "You know as well as I do what is written in the Book of Rites."

At first his words rang meaningless, then far in my memory a voice called faintly, and a pale ray of light grew through the darkened chambers of my brain. And now I knew, now I remembered, now I understood where that lost town must lie—the town of Thendara, lost ever and forever, only to be forever found again as long as the dark Confederacy should endure.

Awed, I sat in silence; and he turned his gloomy eyes now on me, now on the darkened window, gnawing his lip in savage retrospection.

Instantly I was aware that he doubted me, and why. I looked up at him, astounded; he lifted his brooding head and I made a rapid sign, saying in the Mohawk tongue: "Karon-ta-Ke?—at the Tree?"

"Karon-ta-Kowa-Kon—at the great tree. Sat-Kah-tos—thou seest. There lies the lost town of Thendara. And, save for the council, where you and I have a Wolf's clan-right, no living soul could know what that word Thendara means. God help the Oneida who betrays!"

"Since when and by what nation have you been raised up to sit in the council of condolence?" I asked haughtily; for, strange as it may appear to those who know not what it means to wear the Oneida clan-mark of nobility, I, clean-blooded and white-skinned, was as fiercely proud of this Iroquois honor as any peer of England newly invested with the garter. And it was strange, too, for I was but a lad when chosen for the mystic rite; but never except once—the day before I left the north to serve his Excellency's purpose in New York—had I been present when that most solemn rite was held, and the long roll of dead heroes called in honor of the Great League's founder, Hiawatha.

And so, though I am pure white in blood and bone and every instinct, and having nigh forgotten that I wore the Wolf—and, too, the Long House being divided and I siding with the Oneidas, and so at civil war with the shattered league that served King George—yet I turned on Walter Butler as a Mohawk might turn upon a Delaware, scornfully questioning his credentials, demanding his right to speak as one who had heard the roll-call of those Immortals who founded the "Great Peace" three hundred years ago.

"The Delawares named me, and the council took me," he said with perfect calmness. "The Delaware nation mourned their dead; and now I sit for the Wolf Clan—my elder brother, Renault."

"A Delaware clan is not named in the Rite," I said coldly—"nor is there kinship between us because you are adopted by the Delawares. I am aware that clanship knows no nations; and I, an Oneida Wolf, am brother to a Cayuga Wolf; but I am not brother to you."

"And why not to the twin clan of my adopted nation?" he asked angrily.

"Yours is a cleft ensign and a double clan," I sneered; "which are you, Gray Wolf or Yellow Wolf?"

"Yellow," he said, struggling to keep his temper; "and if we Delawares of the Wolf-Clan are not named in the Book of Rites, nevertheless we sit as ensigns among the noble, and on the same side of the council-lodge as your proud Oneidas. We have three in the council as well as you, Mr. Renault. If you were a Mohawk I should hold my peace, but a Delaware may answer an Oneida. And so I answer you, sir."

How strange it seems now—we two white men, gentlemen of quality, completely oblivious to blood, birth, tradition, breeding—our primal allegiance, our very individualities sunk in the mystical freemasonry of a savage tie which bound us to the two nations we assumed to speak for, Oneida and Delaware—two nations of the great Confederacy of the Iroquois that had adopted us, investing us with that clan nobility of which we bore the ensign.

And we were in deadly earnest, too, standing proudly, fiercely, for our prerogatives; he already doubly suspicious of me because the Oneida nation which had adopted me stood for the rebel cause, yet, in his mealy-mouthed way, assuming that by virtue of Wolf clanship, as well as by that sentiment he supposed was loyalty to the King, I would do nothing to disrupt the council which I now knew must decide upon the annihilation of the Oneida nation, as well as upon the raid he contemplated.

"Do you imagine that I shall sit with head averted while four nations and your Delawares combine to plan the murder of my Oneidas?" I demanded passionately. "When the council sits at Thendara I shall send a belt to every clan in the Oneida nation, and I care not who knows it!"

He rose, pale and menacing. "Mr. Renault," he said, "do you understand that a word from you would be a treason to the King? You can be a clansman of the Wolf and at the same time be loyal to the King and to the Iroquois Confederacy; but you can not send a single string of wampum to the Oneidas and be either loyal to the Six Nations or to your King. The Oneidas are marked for punishment; the frontier is doomed—doomed, even though this frittering commander in New York will neither aid me nor his King. A word of warning to the Oneidas is a warning to the rebels. And that, sir, I can not contemplate, and you must shrink from."

"Do you deceive yourself that I shall stand silent and see the Oneida nation ruined?" I asked between my teeth.

"Are you Oneida, or are you a British subject of King George? Are you an Iroquois renegade of the renegade Oneida nation, or are you first of all an Iroquois of the Wolf-Clan? As a white man, you are the King's subject; as an Iroquois, you are still his subject. As an Oneida only, you must be as black a rebel as George Washington himself. That is the limpid logic of the matter, Mr. Renault. A belt to the Oneidas, and you become traitor to the Confederacy and a traitor to your King. And that, I say, you can not contemplate!"

I fairly ground my teeth, subduing the rage and contempt that shook me. "Since when, Captain Butler," I sneered, "have the Oneidas learned to swallow Delaware threats? By God, sir, the oldest man among the council can not remember when a Delaware dared speak without permission of an Iroquois! As an Iroquois and an Oneida, I bid the Delawares to speak only when addressed. But as a white man, I answer you that I require no instruction concerning my conduct, and shall merely thank you for your good intentions and your kind advice, which is the more generous because unsolicited and wholly undesired!"

Again that menacing glare came into his eyes as he stood staring at me. But I cared not; he was not my guest, and he had outraged no roof of mine that the law of hospitality must close my mouth lest I betray the salt he had eaten within my walls.

"I am thinking," he said slowly, "that we did well to burn a certain house in Tryon Bush."

"Think as you please, Captain Butler," I said, bowing. "The door swings open yonder for your convenience."

He surveyed me scornfully. "I trust," he said pleasantly, "to resume this discussion at a time more opportune."

"That also shall be at your convenience," I said. Suddenly such a loathing for the man came over me that I could scarce return his salute and maintain that courteous calm which challenged men must wear at such a moment.

He went away; and I, pacing my chamber lightly, whistled for Dennis, and when he came bade him curl and frizz and powder and perfume me as he had never done before. So to my bath, and then to court the razor, lathered cheek and chin, nose in the air, counting the posies on the wall, as I always did while Dennis shaved me of the beard I fondly feared might one day suddenly appear.

And all the while, singing in my ears, I heard the meaning phrase he used at parting. Challenged? Not quite, but threatened with a challenge. The cards were mine to play—a pretty hand, with here and there a trump. Could I meet him and serve my country best? Aye, if I killed him. And, strangely, I never thought that he might kill me; I only weighed the chances. If I killed him he could not blab and danger me with hints of meddling or of rank disloyalty; but if I only maimed him he would never rest until suspicious eyes must make my mission useless. Suddenly I was aware that I had been a fool to anger him, if I wished to stay here in New York; nay, it was patent that unless I killed him he must one day work a mischief to our cause through me. A sneaking and unworthy happiness crept slowly over me, knowing that once my mission terminated here I was free to hoist true colors, free to bear arms, free to maintain openly the cause I had labored for so long in secret. No more mole's work a-burrowing into darkness for a scrap to stay my starving country's maw; no more slinking, listening, playing the stupid indifferent!

And all the while my conscience was at work, urging me to repair the damage my forgetful passion had wrought, urging me to heal the breach with Butler, using what skill I might command, so that I could stay here where his Excellency had set me, plying my abhorred trade in useful, unendurable obscurity.

It was a battle now 'twixt pride and conscience, 'twixt fierce desire and a loathed duty—doubly detested since I had spied a way to freedom and had half tasted a whiff of good free air, untainted by deception.

"O Lord!" I groaned within myself, "will no one set me free of this pit of intrigue and corruption in which I'm doomed to lurk? Must I, in loyalty to his Excellency, repair this fault—go patch up all with Butler, and deceive him so that his hawk's eyes and forked tongue may not set folk a-watching this house sidewise?"

But while Dennis's irons were in my hair I thought: "Nevertheless, I must send a belt to our allies, the Oneidas; and then I dare not stay! Oh, joy!"

But the joy was soon dashed. My belt must go first to Colonel Willett, and then to his Excellency, and it might be that he would judge it best to let the Oneidas fight their own battles and so decline to send my belt.

By the time I had arrived so far in my mental argument Dennis had curled, powdered, and tied my hair in the most fashionable manner, using a black flamboyant ribbon for the clubbed queue, a pearl-gray powder à la Rochambeau; but I was not foolish enough to permit him to pass a diamond pin into my hair, for I had once seen that fashion affected by Murray, Earl of Dunmore, that Royal Governor of Virginia who had laid Norfolk in ashes out of pure vindictiveness.

My costume I shall describe, not, I hope, from any unworthy vanity, but because I love beautiful things. Therefore, for the pleasure of others who also admire, and prompted alone by a desire to gratify, I neither seek nor require excuses for recalling what I wore that night at the Artillery ball. The lace at the stock was tied full and fastened with brilliants; the coat of ivory silk, heavily embroidered with golden filigree, fell over a waistcoat of clouded ivory and gold mesh, fashionably short, and made by Thorne. My breeches were like the coat, ivory silk, buckled with gold; the stockings were white silk, a bunch of ribbon caught by the jeweled buckles at either knee; and upon my double-channeled pumps, stitched by Bass, buckles of plain dull gold. There was blond lace at throat and cuff. I confess that, although I did not wear two watches, a great bunch of seals dangled from the fob; and the small three-cornered French hat I tucked beneath my arm was laced like a Nivernois, and dressed and cocked by the most fashionable hatter in Hanover Square.

The mirror before which I stood was but half long enough, so I bade Dennis place it upon the floor, whence it should reflect my legs and gilded court-sword. Pleased, I obtained several agreeable views of my costume, Dennis holding two mirrors for me while I pondered, hesitating where to place the single patch of black.

"Am I fine, Dennis?" I asked.

"Now God be good to the ladies, sir!" he said, so seriously that I laughed like a boy, whisked out my sword, and made a pass at my mirrored throat.

"At all events," I thought, "I'll be handsomely clothed if there's a scratch-quarrel with Walter Butler—which God avert!" Then for the first time it occurred to me that it might not be Walter Butler, but I myself, lying stretched on the lawn behind the Coq d'Or, and I was comforted to know that, however low misfortune might lay me, I should be clothed suitably and as befitted a Renault.

CHAPTER V

THE ARTILLERY BALL

When I descended from my chamber to the south drawing-room I found there a respectable company of gentlemen assembled, awaiting the ladies who had not yet appeared. First I greeted Sir Henry Clinton, who had at that moment entered, followed by his staff and by two glittering officers of his Seventh Light Dragoons. He appeared pale and worn, his eyes somewhat inflamed from overstudy by candle-light, but he spoke to me pleasantly, as did Oliver De Lancey, the Adjutant-General, who had succeeded poor young André—an agreeable and accomplished gentleman, and very smart in his brilliant uniform of scarlet loaded with stiff gold.

O'Neil, in his gay dress of the Seventeenth Dragoons, and Harkness, wearing similar regimentals, were overflushed and frolicksome, no doubt having already begun their celebration for the victory of the Flatbush birds, which they had backed so fortunately at the Coq d'Or. Sir Peter, too, was in mischievous good spirits, examining my very splendid costume as though he had not chosen it for me at his own tailor's.

"Gad, Carus!" he exclaimed, "has his Majesty appointed a viceroy in North America—or is it the return of that Solomon whose subjects rule the Dock Ward still?"