The Reckoning

There seemed to be an unusual amount of shipping at the Albany wharves as we glided in, and a great number of wagons and people scurrying about. In fact, I had never before observed such a bustle in Albany streets, but thought nothing of it at the moment, for I had not seen the town since war began. As the schooner dropped anchor at the wharf we were still arguing; as, arm in arm, we followed our two horses and our sea-chests which the men bore shoreward and up the steep hill to the Half-Moon Tavern, we argued every step; at the tavern we argued, she in her chamber, I in mine, the door open between; argued and argued, finally rising in our earnestness and meeting on the common threshold to continue a discussion in which tears, lips, and arms soon supplanted logic and reason.

Had she remained at West Point, although that fortress could not have been taken except by a regular siege, still she might have been subjected to all the horrors of blockade and bombardment, for since his Excellency had abandoned the Hudson with his army and was already half-way to Virginia, nothing now stood between West Point and the heavy British garrison of New York.

It was my knowledge of that more than her pleading that reconciled me to leave her in Albany.

But I was soon to learn that she was by no means secure in the choice I had made for her; for presently she retired to her own chamber and lay down on her bed to rest for an hour or so before supper, in order to recover from the fatigue and the constant motion of the long voyage; and I went out into the town to inquire where Colonel Willett might be found.

The sluggish Dutch burghers of Albany appeared to be active enough that lovely September afternoon; hurrying hither and thither through the streets, and not one among them sufficiently civil to stop and give me an answer to my question concerning Colonel Willett. At first I could make nothing of this amazing bustle and hurry; wagons, loaded with household furniture, clattered through the streets or toiled up and down the hills, discharging bedding, pots and pans, chairs, tables, the family clock, and Heaven knows what, on to the wharves, where a great many sloops and other craft were moored, the Wind-Flower among them.

In the streets, too, wagons were standing before fine residences and shops; servants and black slaves piled them high with all manner of goods. I even saw a green parrot in a cage, perched atop of a pile of corded bedding, and the bird cocked his head and called out continually: "Gad-a-mercy! Gad-a-mercy! Gad-a-mercy!"

An invalid soldier of Colonel Livingston's regiment, his right arm bandaged in splints, was standing across the street, apparently vastly amused by the bird in the wagon; and I crossed over to him and asked what all this exodus might signify.

"Why, the town is in a monstrous fright, friend," he drawled, cradling his shattered arm and puffing away at his cob-pipe. "Since April, when them red-devils of Brant's struck Cherry Valley for the second time, and cleaned up some score and odd women and children, these here thrifty Dutchmen in Albany have been ready to pack up and pull foot at the first breath o' foul news."

"But," said I, "what news has alarmed them now?"

"Hey? Scairt 'em? Waal, rumors is thicker than spotted flies in the sugar-bush. Some say the enemy are a-scalping at Torlock, some say Little Falls. We heard last week that Schenectady was threatened. It may be true, for there's a pest o' Tories loose in the outlying county, and them there bloody Iroquois skulk around the farms and shoot little children in their own dooryards."

"Do you believe there is any danger in Albany?" I asked incredulously.

He shrugged his shoulders, nursing his bandaged arm.

Then, troubled and apprehensive, I asked him where I might find Colonel Willett, and he said that a scout was now out toward Johnstown, and that Willett led it. This was all he knew, all the information I could get from him. Returning along the dusty, steep streets to the Half-Moon Tavern, I called in the stolid Dutch landlord, requesting information; but he knew nothing at all except that a number of timid people were packing up because an express had come in the night before with news that a body of Tories and Indians had attacked Cobleskill, taken a Mr. Warner, and murdered the entire family of a Captain Dietz—father, mother, wife, four little children, and a Scotch servant-girl, Jessie Dean.

Observing the horror with which I received the news he shook his head, pulled at his long pipe for a few moments in thoughtful silence, and said:

"What shall we do, sir? They kill us everywhere. Better die at home than in the bush. I think a man's as safe here in Albany as in any place, unless he quits all and leaves affairs to go to ruin to skulk in one o' the valley forts. But they've even burned Stanwix now, and the blockhouses are poor defense against Iroquois fire-arrows. If I had a wife I'd take her to Johnstown Fort; it's built of stone, they say. Besides, Marinus Willett is there. I wish to God he were here!"

We lingered in the empty tap-room for a while, talking in low voices of the peril; and I was certainly amazed, so utterly unprepared was I to find such a town as Albany in danger from the roaming scalping parties infesting the frontier.

Still, had my own headquarters been in Albany, I should have considered it the proper place for Elsin; but under these ominous, unlooked-for conditions I dared not leave her here, even domiciled with some family of my acquaintance, as I had intended. Indeed, I learned that the young patroon himself had gone to Heldeberg to arm his tenantry, and I knew that when Stephen Van Rensselaer took alarm it was not at the idle whistling of a kill-deer plover.

As far as I could see there was now nothing for Elsin but to go forward with me—strange irony of fate!—to Johnstown, perhaps to Butlersbury, the late residence of that mortal enemy of mine, who had brought upon her this dreadful trouble. How great a trouble it might prove to be I dared not yet consider, for the faint hope was ever in me that this unholy marriage might not stand the search of Tryon County's parish records—that the poor creature he had cast off might not have been his mistress after all, but his wife. Yes, I dared hope that he had lied, remembering what Mount and the Weasel told me. At any rate, I had long since determined to search what parish records might remain undestroyed in a land where destruction had reigned for four terrible years. That, and the chance that I might slay him if he appeared as he had threatened, were the two fixed ideas that persisted. There was little certainty, however, in either case, for, as I say, the records, if extant, might only confirm his pledged word, and, on the other hand, I was engaged by all laws of honor not to permit a private enmity to swerve me from my public duty. Therefore, I could neither abandon all else to hunt him down if he appeared as he promised to appear, nor take time in record-searching, unless the documents were close at hand.

Perplexed, more than anxious, I went up-stairs and entered my chamber. The door between our rooms still swung open, and, as I stepped forward to close it, I saw Elsin there, asleep on her bed, fingers doubled up in her rosy palms. So young, so pitifully alone she seemed, lying there sleep-flushed, face upturned, that my eyes dimmed as I gazed. Bitter doubts assailed me. I knew that I should have asked a flag and sent her north to Sir Frederick Haldimand—even though it meant a final separation for us—rather than risk the chances of my living through the armed encounter, the intrigues, the violence which were so surely approaching. I could do so still; it was not too late. Colonel Willett would give me a flag!

Miserable, undecided, overwhelmed with self-reproach, I stood there looking upon the unconscious sleeper. Sunlight faded from the patterned wall; that violet tint, which lingers with us in the north after the sun has set, deepened to a sadder color, then slowly thickened to obscurity; and from the window I saw the new moon hanging through tangled branches, dull as a silver-poplar leaf in November.

What if I die here on the frontier? The question persisted, repeating itself again and again. And my thoughts ran on in somber disorder: If I die—then we shall never know wedded happiness—never know the sweetest of intimacies. Our lives, uncompleted, what meaning is there in such lives? As for me, were my life to end all incomplete, why was I born? To live on, year after year, escaping the perils all are heir to, and then, when for the first instant life's true meaning is disclosed, to die, sterile, blighting, desolating another life, too? And must we put away offered happiness to wait on custom at our peril?—to sit cowed before convention, juggling with death and passion?

Darkness around me, darkness in my soul, I stood staring at her where she lay, arms bent back and small hands doubled up; and an overwhelming rush of tenderness and apprehension drew me forward to bend above her, hovering there, awed by the beauty of her—the pure lids, the lashes resting on the cheeks, the red mouth so exquisitely tranquil, curled like a scarlet petal of a flower fallen on snow.

Her love and mine! What cared we for laws that barred it?—what mattered any law that dared attempt to link her destiny with that man who might, perhaps, wear a title as her husband—and might not. Who joined them? No God that I feared or worshiped. Then, why should I not sunder a pact inspired by hell itself; and if the law of the land made by men of the land permitted us no sanctuary in wedlock, then why did we not seek that shelter in a happiness the law forbids, inspired by a passion no law could forbid?

I had but to reach forward, to bend and touch her, and where was Death's triumph if I fell at last? What vague and terrible justice could rob us of these hours? Never, never had I loved her as I did then. She breathed so quietly, lying there, that I could not see her body stir; her stillness awed me, fascinated me; so still, so inert, so marvelously motionless, that her very soul seemed asleep within her. Should I awake her, this child whose calm, closed lids, whose soft lashes and tinted skin, whose young soul and body were in my keeping here under a strange roof, in a strange land?

Slowly, very slowly, a fear grew in me that took the shape of horror. My reasoning was the reasoning of Walter Butler!—my argument his damning creed! Dazed, shaken, I sank to my knees, overwhelmed by my own perfidy; and she stirred in her slumber and stretched out one little hand. All the chivalry, all the manhood in me responded to that appeal in a passion of loyalty which swept my somber heart clean of selfishness.

And there in the darkness I learned the lesson that she believed I had taught to her—a lesson so easily forgotten when the heart's loud clamor drowns all else, and every pulse throbs reckless response. And it was cold reasoning and chill logic for cooling hot young blood—but it was neither reason nor logic which prevailed, I think, but something—I know not what—something inborn that conquered spite of myself, and a guilty and rebellious heart that, after all, had only asked for love, at any price—only love, but all of it, its sweetness unbridled, its mystery unfathomed—lest the body die, and the soul, unsatisfied, wing upward to eternal ignorance.

As I crouched there beside her, in the darkness below the tall hall-clock fell a-striking; and she moved, sighed, and sat up—languid-eyed and pink from slumber.

"Carus," she murmured, "how long have I slept? How long have you been here, my darling? Heigho! Why did you wake me? I was in paradise with you but now. Where are you? I am minded to drowse, and go find you in paradise again."

She pushed her hair aside and turned, resting her chin on one hand, regarding me with sweet, sleepy, humorous eyes that glimmered like amethysts in the moonlight.

"Were ever two lovers so happy?" she asked. "Is there anything on earth that we lack?—possessing each other so completely. Tell me, Carus."

"Nothing," I said.

"Nothing," she echoed, leaning toward me and resting in my arms for a moment, then laid her hands on my shoulders, and, raising herself to a sitting posture, fell a-laughing to herself.

"While you were gone this afternoon," she said, "and I was lying here, eyes wide open, seeming to feel the bed sway like the ship, I fell to counting the ticking of the stair-clock below, and thinking how each second was recording the eternity of my love for you. And as I lay a-listening and thinking, came one by the window singing 'John O'Bail', and I heard voices in the tap-room and the clatter of pewter flagons. On a settle outside the tap-room window, full in the sun, sat the songster and his companions, drinking new ale and singing 'John O'Bail'—a song I never chanced to hear before, and I shall not soon forget it for lack of schooling"—and she sang softly, sitting there, clasping her knees, and swaying with the quaint rhythm:

"'Where do you wend your way, John O'Bail,
Where do you wend your way?'
'I follow the spotted trail
Till a maiden bids me stay,'
'Beware of the trail, John O'Bail,
Beware of the trail, I say!'

"Thus it runs, Carus, the legend of this John O'Bail, how he sought the wilderness, shunning his kind, and traveled and trapped and slew the deer, until one day at sunrise a maid of the People of the Morning hailed him, bidding him stay:

"'Turn to the fire of dawn, John O'Bail,
Turn to the fire of dawn;
The doe that waits in the vale
Was a fawn in the year that's gone!'
And John O'Bail he heeds the hail
And follows her on and on.

"Oh, Carus, they sang it and sang it, hammering their pewters together, and roaring the chorus, and that last dreadful verse:

"'Where is the soul of you, John O'Bail,
Where is the soul you slew?
There's Painted Death on the trail,
And the moccasins point to you.
Shame on the name of John O'Bail–'"

She hesitated, peering through the shadows at me: "Who was John O'Bail, Carus? What is the Painted Death, and who are the People of the Morning?"

"John O'Bail was a wandering fellow who went a-gipsying into the Delaware country. The Delawares call themselves 'People of the Morning.' This John O'Bail had a son by an Indian girl—and that's what they made the ballad about, because this son is that mongrel demon, Cornplanter, and he's struck the frontier like a catamount gone raving mad. He is the 'Painted Death.'"

"Oh," she said thoughtfully, "so that is why they curse the name of John O'Bail."

After a moment she went on again: "Well, you'll never guess who it was singing away down there! I crept to my windows and peeped out, and there, Carus, were those two queer forest-running fellows who stopped us on the hill that morning–"

"Jack Mount!" I exclaimed.