The Hidden Children by Robert W. Chambers (books to improve english .TXT) 📗

that a dreadful Cinderella awakening is in store for me."

"Yes—but she wore the slipper in the end."

Lois gave me a shy, sweet look, then, suddenly animated, turned eagerly once more to discuss her wardrobe with her new friend.

"Your Mr. Hake has excellent taste, Euan," observed Mrs. Bleecker. "Or," she added laughingly, "perhaps your late prayer helped." And to Lois she said mischievously: "You know, my dear, that Mr. Loskiel was accustomed to petition God very earnestly that your wardrobe should please you."

Lois looked at me, the smile curving her lips into a happy tenderness.

"He is so wonderful," she said, with no embarrassment. And I saw Mrs. Bleecker look up at her, then smilingly at me, with the slightest possible nod of approbation.

For two hours and more that pair of women remained happy among the ribbons and laces; and every separate article Lois brought to me naively, for me to share her pleasure. And once or twice I saw Mrs. Bleecker watching us intently; and when discovered she only laughed, but with such sweetness and good will that it left me happy and reassured.

"We have arranged that Miss de Contrecoeur is to share my room with me at Croghan's," said Mrs. Bleecker. "And, Euan, I think you should send a wagon for her box at once. The distance is short; we will stroll home together."

I took my leave of them, contented, and walked back to the fort alone, my heart full of thankfulness for what God had done for her that day.

CHAPTER X IN GARRISON

The end of the month was approaching, and as yet we had received no marching orders, although every evening the heavy-laden batteaux continued to arrive from Albany, and every morning the slow wagon train left for the lake, escorted by details from Schott's irregulars, and Franklin's Wyoming militia.

But our veteran rifle battalion did not stir, although all the other regular regiments had marched to Otsego; and Colonel Gansevoort's 3rd N. Y. Regiment of the Line, which was now under orders to remain and guard the Valley, had not yet returned, although early in the week an Oneida runner had come in with letters for Mrs. Bleecker and Mrs. Lansing from their husbands, saying that the regiment was on its way to the fort, and that they, the ladies, should continue at Croghan's as long as Morgan's Rifles were remaining there in garrison.

Cooler weather had set in with an occasional day of heavy summer rain; and now our garrison life became exceedingly comfortable, especially agreeable because of the ladies' hospitality at Croghan's new house.

Except for Lois and for them my duties on special detail would have become most irksome to me, shut off from the regiment as I was, with only the Mohican to keep an eye on, and nothing else whatever to do except to write at sundown every evening in my daily journal.

Not that I had not come to care a great deal for the Siwanois; indeed, I was gradually becoming conscious of a very genuine affection for this tall Mohican, who, in the calm confidence of our blood-brotherhood, was daily revealing his personality to me in a hundred naive and different ways, and with a simplicity that alternately touched and amused me.

For, after his own beliefs and his own customs, he was every inch a man—courteous, considerate, proud, generous, loyal, and brave. Which seem to me to be the general qualifications for a gentleman.

Except the Seneca Mountain Snakes, the nations of the Long House, considering their beliefs, customs, and limited opportunities, were not a whit inferior to us as men. And the Mohicans have always been their peers.

For, contrary to the general and ignorant belief, except for the Senecas, the Iroquois were civilised people; their Empire had more moral reasons for its existence than any other empire I ever heard of; because the League which bound these nations into a confederacy, and which was called by them "The Great Peace," had been established, not for the purpose of waging war, but to prevent it.

Until men of my own blood and colour had taught them treachery and ferocity and deceit, they had been, as a confederacy, guiltless of these things. Before the advent of the white man, a lie among the Iroquois was punished by death; also, among them, unchastity was scarcely known so rare was it. Even now, that brutal form of violence toward women, white or red, either in time of war or peace, was absolutely non-existent. No captive woman needed to fear that. Only the painted Tories—the blue-eyed Indians—remained to teach the Iroquois that such wickedness existed. For, as they said of themselves, the People of the Morning were "real men."

They had a federal constitution; they had civil and political ceremonies as wisely conceived and as dignified as they were impressive, romantic, and beautiful. Their literature, historical and imaginative, was handed down from generation to generation; and if memory were at fault, there were the wampum belts in their archives to corroborate tradition.

Their federal, national, tribal, sept, and clan systems were devised solely to prevent international decadence and fraternal strife; their secret societies were not sinister; their festivals and dances not immodest; their priesthood not ignoble. They were sedentary and metropolitan people—dwellers in towns—not nomads; they had cattle and fowls, orchards and grain-fields, gardens for vegetables, corrals for breeding stock. They had many towns—some even of two hundred houses, of which dwellings many were cellared, framed, and glazed.

They had their well-built and heavily stockaded forts which, because the first Frenchmen called them chateaux, were still known to us as "castles."

Their family life was, typically, irreproachable; they were tender and indulgent husbands and fathers, charitable neighbours, gay and good-humoured among their friends; and their women were deferred to, respected, and honoured, and had a distinct and important role to play in the social and political practices of the Confederacy.

If they, by necessity, were compelled to decimate the Eries, crush the Hurons, and subdue the Lenape and "make women of them," the latter term meant only that the Lenape could not be trusted to bear arms as allies.

Yet, with truest consideration and courtesy toward these conquered ones, and with a kindly desire to disguise and mitigate a necessary and humiliating restriction, the Iroquois had recognised their priesthood and their clans; had invested the Lenape with the fire-rights at Federal Councils; and had even devised for them a diplomatic role. They were henceforward the ambassadors of the Confederacy, the diplomats and political envoys of the Long House.

And if the Delawares never forgot or forgave their position as a subject nation, yet had the Iroquois done all they dared to soften a nominal servitude which they believed was vitally necessary to the peace and well-being of the entire Iroquois Confederacy.

Of this kind of people, then, were the Iroquois, naturally—not, alas, wholly so after the white man had drugged them with rum, cheated them, massacred them, taught them every vice, inoculated them with every disease.

For I must bear witness to the truth of this, spite of the incredulity of my own countrymen; and, moreover, it is true that the Mohicans were, in all virtuous and noble things, the peers of the civilised people of the Long House.

Those vile, horse-riding, murdering, thieving nomad Indians of the plains—those homeless, wandering, plundering violators of women and butchers of children, had nothing whatever in common with our forest Indians of the East—were a totally different race of people, mentally, spiritually, and physically. And these two species must ever remain distinct—the Gens des Prairies and the Gens du Bois.

Only the Senecas resembled the degraded robbers of the Western plains in having naturally evil and debased propensities, and entertaining similar gross and monstrous customs and most wicked superstitions. But in the Long House the Senecas were really aliens; every nation felt this, from the Canienga and Oneida peoples, whose skin was almost as white as our own, to the dusky Onondaga, Tuscarora, and Cayuga—darker people, but no less civilised than the tall, stalwart, and handsome keepers of the Eastern Gate.

I have ventured to say this much concerning the Iroquois so that it may better be understood among my own countrymen how it was possible for me, a white man of unmixed blood, to love and respect a red man of blood as pure and unmixed as mine. A dog-trader learns many things about dogs by dealing in them; an interpreter who deals with men never, ultimately, mistakes a real man, white or red.

My isolation from the regiment, as I say, was now more than compensated by the presence of the ladies at Croghan's house. And Lois had now been lodged with them for more than a week. How much of her sad history Mrs. Bleecker had seen fit to impart to Lana Helmer and Angelina Lansing I did not know. But it seemed to be generally understood in the garrison that Lois had arrived from Albany on Mrs. Bleecker's invitation, and that the girl was to remain permanently under her protection.

The romantic fact that Lois was the orphan of white captives to the Senecas, and had living neither kith nor kin, impressed Angelina sentimentally, and Lana with an insatiable curiosity, if not with suspicion.

As for Boyd, he had not recognised her at all, in her powder, patches, and pretty gowns. That was perfectly plain to Lois and to me. And I could understand it, too, for I hardly recognised her myself. And after the novelty of meeting her had worn off he paid her no particular attention—no doubt because of his headlong, impatient, and undisguised infatuation for Lana, which, with her own propensity for daring indiscretion, embarrassed us all more or less.

No warrant had been given me to interfere; I was on no such intimate terms with Boyd; and as for Lana, she heeded Mrs. Bleecker's cautious sermons as lightly as a bluebird, drifting, heeds the soft air that thrills with his careless flight-song.

What officers there were, regular and militia, who had not yet gone to Otsego Lake, came frequently to Croghan's to pay their respects; and every afternoon there were most agreeable parties at Croghan's; nor was our merriment any less restrained for our lack of chairs and tables and crockery to contain the cakes and nougats, syllabubs and custards, that the black wench, Gusta, contrived for us. Neither were there glasses sufficient to hold the sweet native wines, or enough cups to give each a dish of the rare tea which had come from France, and which Mr. Hake had sent to me from Albany, the thoughtful soul!

If I did not entirely realise it at the time, nevertheless it was a very happy week for me. To see Lois at last where she belonged; to see her welcomed, respected, and admired by the ladies and gentlemen at Croghan's—courted, flattered, sought after in a company so respectable, and so naturally and sweetly holding her own among them without timidity or effort, was to me a pleasure so wonderful that even the quick, light shafts of jealousy—which ignoble but fiery darts were ever buzzing about my ass's ears, sometimes stinging me—could not fatally wound my satisfaction or my deep thankfulness that her dreadful and wretched trials were ended at last, after so many years.

What seemed to Angelina and Lana an exceedingly quick intimacy between Lois and me sentimentally interested the former, and, as I have said, aroused the mischievous, yet not unkindly, curiosity of the latter. Like all people who are deep in intrigue themselves, any hint of it in others excited her sophisticated curiosity. So when we concluded it might be safe to call each other Lois and Euan, Lana's curiosity leaped over all bounds to the barriers of impertinence.

There was, as usual, a respectable company gathered at Croghan's that afternoon; and a floating-island and tea and a punch. Lois, in her usual corner by the northern window, was so beset and surrounded by officers of ours, and Schott's, Franklin's, and Spalding's, and staff-officers halted for the day, that I had quite despaired of a word with her for the present; and had somewhat sulkily seated myself on the stairs to bide my time. What between love, jealousy, and hurt pride that she had not instantly left her irksome poppinjays at the mere sight of me, and flown to me under the noses of them all, I was in two minds whether I would remain in the house or no—so absurd and horridly unbalanced is a young man's mind when love begins meddling with and readjusting its accustomed mechanism. Long, long were my ears in those first days of my heart's undoing!

Solemnly brooding on woman's coldness, fickleness, and general ingratitude, and silently hating every gallant who crowded about her to hold her cup, her fan, her plate, pick up her handkerchief or a bud fallen from her corsage, I could not, however, for the life of me keep my eyes from the cold-blooded little jilt.

She had evidently been out walking before I arrived, for she