The Maid-At-Arms. Robert W. Chambers
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captain echoed obsequiously. Claire Putnam coquetted with her paddle-stick fan, defending her roses from Sir George Covert, while Sir John Johnson stared at them in cold disapproval; and I saw Magdalen Brant, chin propped on her clasped hands, close her eyes and breathe deeply while the wine burned her face, setting torches aflame in either cheek. Later, when I spoke to her, she laughed pitifully, saying that her ears hummed like bee-hives. Then she said that she meant to go, but made no movement; and presently her dark eyes closed again, and I saw the fever pulse beating in her neck.
Some one had overturned a silver basin full of flowers, and a servant, sopping up the water, had brushed Walter Butler so that he flew into a passion and flung a glass at the terrified black, which set Sir Lupus laughing till he choked, but which enraged me that he should so conduct in the presence of his host's daughter.
Yet if Sir Lupus could not only overlook it, but laugh at it, I, certes, had no right to rebuke what to me seemed a gross insult.
Toasts flew fast now, and there was a punch in a silver bowl as large as a bushel--and spirits, too, which was strange, seeing that the ladies remained at table.
Then Captain Campbell would have all to drink the Royal Greens, standing on chairs, one foot on the table, which appeared to be his regiment's mess custom, and we did so, the ladies laughing and protesting, but finally planting their dainty shoes on the edge of the table; and Magdalen Brant nigh fell off her chair--for lack of balance, as Sir George Covert protested, one foot alone being too small to sustain her.
"That Cinderella compliment at our expense!" cried Betty Austin, but Sir Lupus cried: "Silence all, and keep one foot on the table!" And a little black slave lad, scarce more than a babe, appeared, dressed in a lynx-skin, bearing a basket of pretty boxes woven out of scented grass and embroidered with silk flowers.
At every corner he laid a box, all exclaiming and wondering what the surprise might be, until the little black, arching his back, fetched a yowl like a lynx and ran out on all fours.
"The gentlemen will open the boxes! Ladies, keep one foot on the table!" bawled Sir Lupus. We bent to open the boxes; Magdalen Brant and Dorothy Varick, each resting a hand on my shoulder to steady them, peeped curiously down to see. And, "Oh!" cried everybody, as the lifted box-lids discovered snow-white pigeons sitting on great gilt eggs.
The white pigeons fluttered out, some to the table, where they craned their necks and ruffled their snowy plumes; others flapped up to the loop-holes, where they sat and watched us.
"Break the eggs!" cried the patroon.
I broke mine; inside was a pair of shoe-roses, each set with a pearl and clasped with a gold pin.
Betty Austin clapped her hands in delight; Dorothy bent double, tore off the silken roses from each shoe in turn, and I pinned on the new jewelled roses amid a gale of laughter.
"A health to the patroon!" cried Sir George Covert, and we gave it with a will, glasses down. Then all settled to our seats once more to hear Sir George sing a song.
A slave passed him a guitar; he touched the strings and sang with good taste a song in questionable taste:
"Jeanneton prend sa fauçille."
A delicate melody and neatly done; yet the verse--
"Le deuxième plus habile
L'embrassant sous le menton"--
made me redden, and the envoi nigh burned me alive
with blushes, yet was rapturously applauded, and the
patroon fell a-choking with his gross laughter.
Then Walter Butler would sing, and, I confess, did
it well, though the song was sad and the words too
melancholy to please.
"I know a rebel song," cried Colonel Claus. "Here,
give me that fiddle and I'll fiddle it, dammy if I don't--ay,
and sing it, too!"
In a shower of gibes and laughter the fiddle was
fetched, and the Indian fighter seized the bow and drew
a most distressful strain, singing in a whining voice:
"Come hearken to a bloody tale,
Of how the soldiery
Did murder men in Boston,
As you full soon shall see.
It came to pass on March the fifth
Of seventeen-seventy,
A regiment, the twenty-ninth.
Provoked a sad affray!"
"Chorus!" shouted Captain Campbell, beating time:
"Fol-de-rol-de-rol-de-ray--
Provoked a sad affray!"
"That's not in the song!" protested Colonel Claus, but everybody sang it in whining tones.
"Continue!" cried Captain Campbell, amid a burst of laughter. And Claus gravely drew his fiddle-bow across the strings and sang:
"In King Street, by the Butcher's Hall
The soldiers on us fell,
Likewise before their barracks
(It is the truth I tell).
And such a dreadful carnage
In Boston ne'er was known;
They killed Samuel Maverick--
He gave a piteous groan."
And, "Fol-de-rol!" roared Captain Campbell, "He gave a piteous groan!"
"John Clark he was wounded,
On him they did fire;
James Caldwell and Crispus Attucks
Lay bleeding in the mire;
Their regiment, the twenty-ninth,
Killed Monk and Sam I Gray,
While Patrick Carr lay cold in death
And could not flee away--
"Oh, tally!" broke out Sir John; "are we to listen to such stuff all night?"
More laughter; and Sir George Covert said that he feared Sir John Johnson had no sense of humor.
"I have heard that before," said Sir John, turning his cold eyes on Sir George. "But if we've got to sing at wine, in Heaven's name let us sing something sensible."
"No, no!" bawled Claus. "This is the abode of folly to-night!" And he sang a catch from "Pills to Purge Melancholy," as broad a verse as I cared to hear in such company.
"Cheer up, Sir John!" cried Betty Austin; "there are other slippers to drink from--"
Sir John stood up, exasperated, but could not face the storm of laughter, nor could Dorothy, silent and white in her anger; and she rose to go, but seemed to think better of it and resumed her seat, disdainful eyes sweeping the table.
"Face the fools," I whispered. "Your confusion is their victory."
Captain McDonald, stirring the punch, filled all glasses, crying out that we should drink to our sweethearts in bumpers.
"Drink 'em in wine," protested Captain Campbell, thickly. "Who but a feckless McDonald wud drink his leddy in poonch?"
"I said poonch!" retorted McDonald, sternly. "If ye wish wine, drink it; but I'm thinkin' the Argyle Campbells are better judges o' blood than of red wine.
"Stop that clan-feud!" bawled the patroon, angrily.
But the old clan-feud blazed up, kindled from the ever-smouldering embers of Glencoe, which the massacre of a whole clan had not extinguished in all these years.
"And why should an Argyle Campbell judge blood?" cried Captain Campbell, in a menacing voice.