Essential Novelists - Harold Frederic. Frederic Harold
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heads or their estates or their peace for not so much as a single promise kept, or a single smile without speculation in it. Let them rot out, I say, and be damned to them!"
"But he was such a goodly lad, Tony. Think of him as we knew him—and now!"
"No, I'll not think, Tom," broke in the officer, "for, when I do, then I too get soft-hearted. And I'll waste no more feeling or faith on any of 'em—on any of 'em, save the only true man of the lot, who's had the wit to put the ocean 'twixt him and them. And you're content here, Tom?"
"Oh, ay! Why not?" said Mr. Stewart. "It is a rude life in some ways, no doubt, but it's free and it's honest. I have my own roof, such as it is, and no one to gainsay me under it. I hunt, I fish, I work, I study, I dream—precisely what pleases me best."
"Ay, but the loneliness of it!"
"Why, no! I see much of Johnson, and there are others round about to talk with, when I'm driven to it. And then there's my young Dutchman—Douw, yonder—who bears me company, and fits me so well that he's like a second self."
The Major looked over toward my corner with a benevolent glance, but without comment. Presently he said, while he took more meat upon his plate:
"You've no thought of marrying, I suppose?"
"None!" said my patron, gravely and with emphasis.
The Major nodded his handsome head meditatively. "Well, there's a deal to be said on that side," he remarked. "Still, children about the hearth help one to grow old pleasantly. And you always had a weakness for brats."
Mr. Stewart said again: "I have my young Dutchman."
Once more the soldier looked at me, and, I'll be bound, saw me blushing furiously. He smiled and said:
"He seems an honest chap. He has something of your mouth, methinks."
My patron pushed his dish back with a gesture of vexation.
"No!" he said, sharply. "There's none of that. His father was a dominie over the river; his mother, a good, hard-working lady, left a widow, struggles to put bread in a dozen mouths by teaching a little home-school for infants. I have the boy here because I like him—because I want him. We shall live together—he and I. As he gets older this hut will doubtless grow into a house fit for gentlemen. Indeed, already I have the logs cut out in part for an addition, on the other side of the chimney."
The Major rose at this, smiling again, and frankly put out his hand.
"I meant no harm, you know, Tom, by my barracks jest. Faith! I envy the lad the privilege of living here with you. The happiest days of my life, dear friend, were those we spent together while I was waiting for my bride."
Mr. Stewart returned his smile rather sadly, and took his hand.
The time for parting had come. The two men stood hand in hand, with moistened eyes and slow-coming words, meeting for perhaps the last time in this life; for the Major was to stop but an hour at Fort Johnson, and thence hasten on to New York and to England, bearing with him weighty despatches.
While they still stood, and the negro was tying Master Philip's hat over his ears, my aunt entered the room, bearing in her arms the poor little waif from the massacre. The child had been washed and warmed, and wore over her dress and feet a sort of mantle, which the good woman had hastily and somewhat rudely fashioned meantime.
"Oh, we came near forgetting her!" cried Philip. "Wrap her snug and warm, Bob, for the journey."
The Major looked blank at sight of the child, who nestled in my aunt's arms. "What am I to do with her?" he said to my patron.
"Why, papa, you know she is going to England with us," said the boy.
"Tut, lad!" spoke the Major, peremptorily; then, to Mr. Stewart: "Could Sir William place her, think you, or does that half-breed swarm of his fill the house? It seemed right enough to bring her out from the Palatine country, but now that she's out, damme! I almost wish she was back again. What a fool not to leave her at Herkimer's!"
I do not know if I had any clear idea of what was springing up in Mr. Stewart's mind, but it seems to me that I must have looked at him pleadingly and with great hope in my eyes, during the moment of silence which followed. Mr. Stewart in turn regarded the child attentively.
"Would it please you to keep her here, Dame Kronk?" he asked at last.
As my aunt made glad assent, I could scarcely refrain from dancing. I walked over to the little girl and took her hand in mine, filled with deep joy.
"You render me very grateful, Tom," said Major Cross, heartily. "It's a load off my mind.—Come, Philip, make your farewells. We must be off."
"And isn't the child to be mine—to go with us?" the boy asked, vehemently.
"Why be childish, Philip?" demanded the Major. "Of course it's out of the question."
The English lad, muffled up now for the ride, with his large flat hat pressed down comically at the sides by the great knitted comforter which Bob had tied under his chin, scowled in a savage fashion, bit his lips, and started for the door, too angry to say good-by. When he passed me, red-faced and wrathful, I could not keep from smiling, but truly rather at his swaddled appearance than at his discomfiture. He had sneered at my apron, besides.
With a cry of rage he whirled around and struck me full in the face, knocking me head over heels into the ashes on the hearth. Then he burst into a fit of violent weeping, or rather convulsions more befitting a wild-cat than a human being, stamping furiously with his feet, and screaming that he would have the child.
I picked myself out of the ashes, where my hair had been singed a trifle by the embers, in time to see the Major soundly cuff his offspring, and then lead him by the arm, still screaming, out of the door. There Bob enveloped him in his arms, struggling and kicking, and put him on the horse. Major Cross, returning for a final farewell word, gave me a shilling as a salve for my hurts, physical and mental, and said:
"I am sorry to have so ill-tempered a son. He cannot brook denial, when once he fixes his heart on a thing. However, he'll get that beaten out of him before he's done with the world. And so, Tom, dear, dear old comrade, a last good-by. God bless you, Tom! Farewell."
"God bless you—and yours, mon frère!"
We stood, Mr. Stewart and I, at the outer gate, and watched them down the river road, until the jutting headland intervened. As we walked slowly back toward the house, my guardian said, as if talking partly to himself:
"There is nothing clearer in natural law than that sons inherit from their mothers. I know of only two cases in all history where an able man had a father superior in brain and energy to the mother—Martin Luther and the present King of Prussia. Perhaps it was all for the best."
To this I of course offered no answer, but trudged along through the melting snow by his side.
Presently, as we reached the house, he stopped and looked the log structure critically over.
"You heard what I said, Douw, upon your belonging henceforth to this house—to me?"
"Yes, Mr. Stewart."
"And now, lo and behold, I have a daughter as well! To-morrow we must plan out still another room for our abode."
Thus ended the day on which my story properly and prophetically begins—the day when I first met Master Philip Cross.
Chapter IV
In Which I Become the Son of the House.
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The French, for some reason or other, did not follow up their advantage and descend upon the lower Valley; but had they done so there could scarcely have been a greater panic among the Palatines. All