Essential Novelists - Harold Frederic. Frederic Harold
have seen her mimic them—the two solemn, long-faced men boring each other in the depths of the wilderness."
The talk had at last got around to me. Daisy laughed gayly at recollection of the London woman's jesting. Surely never a more innocent, less malicious laugh came from a maiden's merry lips, but it fell sourly on my ears.
"It is easy for people to be clever who do not scruple to be disagreeable," I said, without much relevancy.
"What is this, Douw?" Mr. Stewart turned half-way in his saddle and glanced inquiry back at me. "What is wrong with you? You were as glum all the evening long as a Tuscarora. Isn't the trip with Mr. Cross to your liking?"
"Oh, ay! I shall be glad to go."
It was on my perverse tongue's end to add the peevish thought that nobody would specially miss me, but I held it back.
"He has had a perfect Dutch fit on to-day," said Daisy, with good-natured sisterly frankness; "for all the world such as old Hon Yost Polhemus has when his yeast goes bitter. Whenever I looked down the table to him, at dinner, he was scowling across at poor Walter Butler or Sir John, as if he would presently eat them both. He was the only one who failed to tell me I looked well in the—the citified costume."
"Rather say I was the only one whose opinion you did not care for."
She was too sweet-tempered to take umbrage at my morose rejoinder, and went on with her mock-serious catalogue of my crimes:
"And what do you think, papa? Who should it be but our patient, equable Master Douw that was near quarrelling with Walter Butler, out by the lilacs, this very morning—and in the presence of ladies, too."
"No one ever saw me quarrel, 'ladies' or anybody else," I replied.
"Faith! then I did myself," Mr. Stewart laughingly called out. "And it was before a lady too—or the small beginnings of one. I saw him with my own eyes, Daisy, get knocked into the ashes by a young man, and jump up and run at him with both fists out—and all on your account, too, my lady; and then—"
"Oh, I am reminded!"
It was Daisy who cried out, and with visible excitement. Then she clapped her hand to her mouth with a pretty gesture; then she said:
"Or no! I will not tell you yet. It is so famous a secret, it must come out little by little. Tell me, papa, did you know that this Mr. Cross up at the Hall—Lady Berenicia's husband—is a cousin to the old Major who brought me to you, out of the rout at Kouarie?" "Is that your secret, miss? I knew it hours ago."
"How wise! And perhaps you knew that the Major became a Colonel, and then a General, and died last winter, poor man."
"Alas, yes, poor Tony! I heard that too from his cousin. Heigh-ho! We all walk that way."
Daisy bent forward to kiss the old man. "Not you, for many a long year, papa. And now tell me, did not this Major—my Major, though I do not remember him—take up a patent of land here, or hereabouts, through Sir William, while he was on this side of the water?"
"Why, we should be on his land now," said Mr. Stewart, reining up the horse.
We sat thus in the moonlight while he pointed out to us, as nearly as he knew them, the confines of the Cross patent. To the left of us, over a tract covered thick with low, gnarled undergrowth, the estate stretched beyond the brow of the hill, distant a mile or more. On our right, masked by a dense tangle of fir-boughs, lay a ravine, also a part of the property. We could hear, as we passed there, the gurgle of the water running at the gulf's bottom, on its way to the great leap over the rock wall, farther down, of which I have already written.
"Yes, this was what Tony Cross took up. I doubt he ever saw it. Why do you ask, girl?"
"Now for my secret," said Daisy. "The Major's elder son, Digby, inherits the English house and lands. The other son, Philip—the boy you fought with, Douw—is given this American land, and money to clear and settle it. He sailed with the others—he is in New York—he is coming here to live!"
"We'll make him welcome," cried Mr. Stewart, heartily.
"I hope his temper is bettered since last he was here," was the civillest comment I could screw my tongue to.
Clouds dimmed the radiance of the moon, threatening darkness, and we quickened our pace. There was no further talk on the homeward ride.
Chapter XI
As I Make My Adieux Mr. Philip Comes In.
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When the eventful day of departure came, what with the last packing, the searches to see that nothing should be forgotten, the awkwardness and slowness of hands unnerved by the excitement of a great occasion, it was high noon before I was ready to start. I stood idly in the hall, while my aunt put final touches to my traps, my mind swinging like a pendulum between fear that Mr. Cross, whom I was to join at Caughnawaga, would be vexed at my delay, and genuine pain at leaving my dear home and its inmates, now that the hour had arrived.
I had made my farewells over at my mother's house the previous day, dutifully kissing her and all the sisters who happened to be at home, but without much emotion on either side. Blood is thicker than water, the adage runs. Perhaps that is why it flowed so calmly in all our Dutch veins while we said good-by. But here in my adopted home—my true home—my heart quivered and sank at thought of departure.
"I could not have chosen a better or safer man for you to travel with than Jonathan Cross," Mr. Stewart was saying to me. "He does not look on all things as I do, perhaps, for our breeding was as different as the desk is different from the drum. But he is honest and courteous, well informed after his way, and as like what you will be later on as two peas in a pod. You were born for a trader, a merchant, a man of affairs; and you will be at a good school with him."
He went on in his grave, affectionate manner, telling me in a hundred indirect ways that I belonged to the useful rather than to the ornamental order of mankind, with never a thought in his good heart of wounding my feelings, or of letting me know that in his inmost soul he would have preferred me to be a soldier or an idler with race-horses and a velvet coat. Nor did he wound me, for I had too great a love for him, and yet felt too thorough a knowledge of myself to allow the two to clash. I listened silently, with tears almost ready at my eyes, but with thoughts vagrantly straying from his words to the garden outside.
Tulp was to go with me, and his parents and kin were filling the air with advice and lamentations in about equal measure, and all in the major key. Their shouts and wailing—they could not have made more ado if he had just been sold to Jamaica—came through the open door. It was not of this din I thought, though, nor of the cart which the negroes, while they wept, were piling high with my goods, and which I could see in the highway beyond.
I was thinking of Daisy, my sweet sister, who had gone into the garden to gather a nosegay for me.
Through the door I could see her among the bushes, her lithe form bending in the quest of blossoms. Were it midsummer, I thought, and the garden filled with the whole season's wealth of flowers, it could hold nothing more beautiful than she. Perhaps there was some shadow of my moody fit, the evening after the dinner at the Hall, remaining to sadden my thoughts of parting from her. I cannot tell. I only know that they were indeed sad thoughts. I caught myself wondering if she would miss me much—this dear girl who had known no life in which I had not had daily share. Yes, the tears were coming, I felt. I wrung my good old patron's hand, and turned my head away.
There came a clattering of hoofs on the road and the sound of male voices. Tulp ran in agape with the tidings that Sir John and a strange gentleman had ridden up, and desired to see Mr. Stewart. We at once walked out to the garden, a little relieved perhaps by the interruption.
Both visitors had had time to alight and leave their horses outside the wall. The younger Johnson stood in