The Shadow of the North: A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign, Altsheler [reading eggs books txt] 📗

doubt. I was sure that at the right time he would return."

Mr. Hardy came presently and then Willet. They made no display of emotion, but their joy was deep. Then Robert told his story to them all.

"Did you see any name on the wrecked schooner?" asked Mr. Hardy.

"None at all," replied Robert. "If she had borne a name at any time
I'm sure it was painted out."

"Nor did you hear the captain called by name, either?"

"No, sir. It was always just 'captain' when the men addressed him."

"That complicates our problem. There's no doubt in my mind that you were the intended victim of a conspiracy, from which you were saved by the storm. I can send a trusty man down the North Jersey coast to examine the wreck of the schooner, but I doubt whether he could learn anything from it."

He drew Willet aside and the two talked together a while in a low voice, but with great earnestness.

"We have our beliefs," said Willet at length, "but we shall not be able to prove anything, no, not a thing, and, having nothing upon which to base an accusation against anybody, we shall accuse nobody."

"'Tis the prudent way," Hardy concurred, "though there is no doubt in my mind about the identity of the man who set this most wicked pot to brewing."

Robert had his own beliefs, too, but he remained silent.

"We'll keep the story of your absence to ourselves," said Mr. Hardy. "We did not raise any alarm, believing that you would return, a belief due in large measure to the faith of Tayoga, and we'll explain that you were called away suddenly on a mission of a somewhat secret nature to the numerous friends who have been asking about you."

Willet concurred, and he also said it was desirable that they should depart at once for Virginia, where the provincial governors were to meet in council, and from which province Braddock's force, or a considerable portion of it, would march. Then Robert, after a substantial supper, went to his room and slept. The next morning, both Charteris and Grosvenor came to see him and expressed their delight at his return. A few days later they were at sea with Grosvenor and other young English officers, bound for the mouth of the James and the great expedition against Fort Duquesne.

CHAPTER XIV THE VIRGINIA CAPITAL

They were on a large schooner, and while Robert looked forward with eagerness to the campaign, he also looked back with regret at the roofs of New York, as they sank behind the sea. The city suited him. It had seemed to him while he was there that he belonged in it, and now that he was going away the feeling was stronger upon him than ever. He resolved once more that it should be his home when the war was over.

Their voyage down the coast was stormy and long. Baffling winds continually beat them back, and, then they lay for long periods in dead calms, but at last they reached the mouth of the James, going presently the short distance overland to Williamsburg, the town that had succeeded Jamestown as the capital of the great province of Virginia.

Spring was already coming here in the south and in the lowlands by the sea, and the tinge of green in the foliage and the warm winds were grateful after the winter of the cold north. Robert, eager as always for new scenes, and fresh knowledge, anticipated with curiosity his first sight of Williamsburg, one of the oldest British towns in North America. He knew that it was not large, but he found it even smaller than he had expected.

He and his comrades reached it on horseback, and they found that it contained only a thousand inhabitants, and one street, straight and very wide. On this street stood the brick buildings of William and Mary, the oldest college in the country, a new capitol erected in the place of one burned, not long before, and a large building called the Governor's Palace. It looked very small, very quiet, and very content.

Robert was conscious of a change in atmosphere that was not a mere matter of temperature. Keen, commercial New York was gone. Here, people talked of politics and the land. The men who came into Williamsburg on horseback or in their high coaches were owners of great plantations, where they lived as patriarchs, and feudal lords. The human stock was purely British and the personal customs and modes of thought of the British gentry had been transplanted.

"I like it," said Grosvenor. "I feel that I've found England again."

"There appears to be very little town life," said Robert. "It seems strange that Williamsburg is so small, when Virginia has many more people than New York or Pennsylvania or Massachusetts."

"They're spread upon the land," said Willet. "I've been in Virginia before. They don't care much about commerce, but you'll find that a lot of the men who own the great plantations are hard and good thinkers."

Robert soon discovered that in Virginia a town was rather a meeting place for the landed aristocracy than a commercial center. The arrival of the British troops and of Americans from other colonies brought much life into the little capital. The people began to pour in from the country houses, and the single street was thronged with the best horses and the best carriages Virginia could show, their owners, attended by swarms of black men and black women whose mouths were invariably stretched in happy grins, their splendid white teeth glittering.

There was much splendor, a great mingling of the fine and the tawdry, as was inevitable in a society that maintained slavery on a large scale. Nearly all the carriages had been brought from London, and they were of the best. When their owners drove forth in the streets or the country roundabout they were escorted by black coachmen and footmen in livery. The younger men were invariably on horseback, dressed like English country gentlemen, and they rode with a skill and grace that Robert had never before seen equaled. The parsons, as in England, rode with the best, and often drank with them too.

It was a proud little society, exclusive perhaps, and a little bit provincial too, possibly, but it was soon to show to the world a group of men whose abilities and reputation and service to the state have been unequaled, perhaps, since ancient Athens. One warm afternoon as Robert walked down the single street with Tayoga and Grosvenor, he saw a very young man, only three or four years older than himself, riding a large, white horse.

The rider's lofty stature, apparent even on horseback, attracted Robert's notice. He was large of bone, too, with hands and feet of great size, and a very powerful figure. His color was ruddy and high, showing one who lived out of doors almost all the time.

The man, Robert soon learned, was the young officer, George Washington, who had commanded the Virginians in the first skirmish with the French and Indians in the Ohio country.

"One of most grave and sober mien," said Grosvenor. "I take him to be of fine quality."

"There can scarce be a doubt of it," said Robert.

But he did not dream then that succeeding generations would reckon the horseman the first man of all time.

Robert, Willet and Tayoga saw the governor, Dinwiddie, a thrifty Scotchman, and offered to him their services, saying that they wished to go with the Braddock expedition as scouts.

"But I should think, young sir," said Dinwiddie to Robert, "that you, at least, would want a commission. 'Twill be easy to obtain it in the Virginia troops."

"I thank you, sir, for the offer, which is very kind," said Robert, "but I have spent a large part of my life in the woods with Mr. Willet, and I feel that I can be of more use as a scout and skirmisher. You know that they will be needed badly in the forest. Moreover, Mr. Willet would not be separated from Tayoga, who in the land of the Six Nations, known to themselves as the Hodenosaunee, is a great figure."

Governor Dinwiddie regarded the Onondaga, who gave back his gaze steadily. The shrewd Scotchman knew that here stood a man, and he treated him as one.

"Have your way," he said. "Perhaps you are right. Many think that General Braddock has little to fear from ambush, they say that his powerful army of regulars and colonials can brush aside any force the French and Indians may gather, but I've been long enough in this country to know that the wilderness always has its dangers. Such eyes as the eyes of you three will have their value. You shall have the commissions you wish."

Willet was highly pleased. He had been even more insistent than Robert on the point, saying they must not sacrifice their freedom and independence of movement, but Grosvenor was much surprised.

"An army rank will help you," he said.

"It's help that we don't need," said Robert smiling.

The governor showed them great courtesy. He liked them and his penetrating Scotch mind told him that they had quality. Despite his hunter's dress, which he had resumed, Willet's manners were those of the great world, and Dinwiddie often looked at him with curiosity. Robert seemed to him to be wrapped in the same veil of mystery, and he judged that the lad, whose manners were not inferior to those of Willet, had in him the making of a personage. As for Tayoga, Dinwiddie had been too long in America and he knew too much of the Hodenosaunee not to appreciate his great position. An insult or a slight in Virginia to the coming young chief of the Clan of the Bear, of the nation Onondaga would soon be known in the far land of the Six Nations, and its cost would be so great that none might count it. Just as tall oaks from little acorns grow, so a personal affront may sow the seed of a great war or break a great alliance, and Dinwiddie knew it.

The governor, assisted by his wife and two daughters, entertained at his house, and Robert, Tayoga, Willet, and Grosvenor, arrayed in their best, attended, forming conspicuous figures in a great crowd, as the Virginia gentry, also clad in their finest, attended. Robert, with his adaptable and imaginative mind, was at home at once among them. He liked the soft southern speech, the grace of manner and the good feeling that obtained. They were even more closely related than the great families of New York, and it was obvious that they formed a cultivated society, in close touch with the mother country, intensely British in manner and mode of thought, and devoted in both theory and practice to personal independence.

As the spring was now well advanced the night was warm and the windows and doors of the Governor's Palace were left open. Negroes in livery played violins and harps while all the guests who wished danced. Others played cards in smaller rooms, but there was no such betting as Robert had seen at Bigot's ball in Quebec. There was some drinking of claret and punch, but no intoxication. The general note was of great gayety, but with proper restraints.

Robert noticed that the men, spending their lives in the open air and having abundant and wholesome food, were invariably tall and big of bone. The women looked strong and their complexions were rosy. The same facility of mind that had made him like New York and Quebec, such contrasting places, made him like Williamsburg too, which was different from either.

Quickly at home, in this society as elsewhere, the hours were all too short for him. Both he and Grosvenor, who was also adaptable, seeing good in everything, plunged deep into the festivities. He danced with young women and with old, and Willet more than once gave him an approving glance. It seemed that the hunter always wished him to fit himself into any group with which he might be cast, and to make himself popular, and to do so Robert's temperament needed little encouragement.

The music and the dancing never ceased. When the black musicians grew tired their places were taken by others as black and as zealous, and on they went in a ceaseless alternation. Robert learned that the guests would dance all night and far into the next day, and that frequently at the great houses a ball continued two days and two nights.

About three o'clock in the morning, after a long dance that left him somewhat weary, he went upon one of the wide piazzas to rest and take the