1 A Question of Merit

I was Lieutenant Edward Charteris, of a very good family in the city of New York, and I saw no reason why I should take his insolence.

“There was Braddock,” I said, putting a queen upon the table.

His eyes were bent down upon his cards, and his cheeks were too ruddy to flush much. How red these English are!

“It was a cheat,” he said, taking the trick with his king. “We are not foxes to lie hid in thickets and forests and wait there for victims.”

“But in a country of thickets and forests one must learn to do it nevertheless, or he has no right to complain when he loses,” I said.

The trick was mine this time, and I stacked the captured cards neatly before me. We had been speaking of Fort William Henry and the great disaster there.

“You can’t talk, gentlemen, and play the game too; we are not women,” said Culverhouse, who wished to prevent a quarrel.

Culverhouse was my friend. Unlike most Englishmen, he did not seek to patronize us who were of the colonies, merely because we were of the colonies; but I had no mind to be put down, and I kept my attention fixed upon Spencer.

“Promise is not performance,” he said, leading with an ace. “You Americans criticise us much, but what have you in your turn done against the French?”

“There was Dieskau’s defeat at Lake George, our one victory of the war—a victory that saved Albany and nobody knows what else,” I said, following his lead.

“Sir William Johnson won that,” he said, curling his upper lip a little. “An Englishman by birth, I believe.”

“An Irishman,” I said, “and he spent the day in his tent. His soldiers, who were Americans, won the battle. They did the fighting, not Sir William.”

The loungers in the coffeehouse had been listening attentively. One of them hummed:

It was the beginning of a bad verse—not much rhyme in it that I could ever see—but it was very popular in our time, and it fit the case.

“Attend to the game, gentlemen!” said Graham, the Scotchman, who made the fourth of our party, a hare-brained fellow, but, like Culverhouse, not wanting a quarrel just then. “You are lagging in your play.”

The loungers in the coffeehouse had formed a circle around us at the sound of our words, which betokened a possible quarrel, and loungers love a quarrel in which they are not concerned. I was sorry for the moment I had come into the place, though I had not expected such an issue of it. Mynheer Steenwyck, our host, looked anxious, as if he feared for the fate of his bottles and tankards, and rubbed his fat Dutch chin uneasily. Through the window which faced me I could see the merchants of Hanover Square, many with their coats off, busy among their bales and packages, which half blocked the street. Perhaps, after all, it is they and not the generals who make a country great.

“Lieutenant Charteris has accused the English soldiers,” said Spencer, as if justifying himself to his brother officers.

“Lieutenant Spencer first accused the American soldiers,” I said.

“And yet the English have come over here to defend the Americans,” said Spencer, raising his voice a little.

“May Heaven defend us from our defenders, so I have heard Mr. Oliver de Lancey say when they tried to billet the soldiers upon him,” I replied.

Spencer’s eyes sparkled with anger, and he was preparing to make a fierce reply; but Culverhouse, still in the role of peacemaker, spoke first.

“It seems to me,” he said, “that both English and Americans who serve the same King should be the best of friends and allies. Of a certainty the French have given enough for both to do so far. You are a soldier of the King, Lieutenant Spencer, and so are you. Lieutenant Charteris.”

Whether his words would have stopped us I do not know, but at that moment I heard cries outside. I had heard a hum or distant murmur before, but paid no attention, thinking it was the ordinary noise of a busy town such as ours. Now it was much nearer and louder.

“I think it is a street affray, and perhaps a serious one,” cried Culverhouse, seizing the opportunity to put a stop to our affair. “Come, gentlemen, we will see what it is!”

He grasped me by the arm and half dragged me to the door. Any suspicion of my courage was saved, as the others, incited by curiosity, came too. The loungers crowded after us.

A crowd of men and boys, many of villainous look, had gathered about a man and a woman in the street and were shouting at them curses and other abuse as bad.

“Stone the French spy! Kill him!” they cried.

I could see over the crowd the head of the man whom they threatened. A face almost as dark as that of an Indian, but the darkness of weather, and not of nature, a fierce, curved nose, blue eyes, and very black hair—the whole a leonine countenance. He looked disdainfully at the crowd, and said something in the French tongue. Though I understood the language, I did not catch the words. The men and boys around him continued their abuse. I understood the trouble at once. We were very bitter then against the French, who, with their Indian allies, had committed many atrocities upon our border people.

A boy stooped, picked up a stone, and made ready to hurl it at the Frenchman. I sprang into the street and knocked the missile from his hand. Then I drew my sword and ordered the mob to scatter, illustrating the command with several flourishes of the weapon. Unarmed men do not like the naked edge of a sword, and they fell back to a respectful distance, giving us a full view of the Frenchman and his companion, whom I guessed at once to be his daughter. She had the same black hair and blue eyes, which is in woman, I think, a combination as striking and beautiful as it is rare. But where his face was as dark as leather, hers was as fair as the white rose.

While I was looking at her, the Frenchman was thanking me, though with much dignity.

I introduced myself briefly in the French language as Lieutenant Edward Charteris, of the King’s army.

“I am Raymond de St. Maur, of Quebec,” he said, “and this is my daughter. Mlle. Louise de St. Maur.”

I bowed, and she returned my bow in much the same manner as her father. The incident had brought a very bright flush into her cheeks, but I could not say that she showed fright. I said with the politeness of our times that it was a happiness and honor for me to have served them so opportunely.

“Is it one of the chief duties of your officers to protect guests from your own citizens?” asked M. de St. Maur, not at all moved by my compliment.

I did not reply directly, but introduced Culverhouse and the others, who had followed up my attack upon the mob. We offered to escort them to their house or wherever they might be going.

“We are the guests of Mr. Kennedy, your townsman,” said Mlle. de St. Maur, speaking for her father, and showing more graciousness than he, “and will thank you to protect us on our way there.”

M. de St. Maur, though yet very haughty of countenance, did not refuse the offered escort. The mob had gone farther down the square, but had not disappeared.

I led the way. I knew the Kennedy mansion very well, and likewise its owner, Archibald Kennedy, who, as all the world has heard, married Ann, Robert Watt’s handsome daughter, and became the Earl of Cassilis. Noticing that the old man and the girl looked around them with great curiosity, I began to point out the buildings of interest and note, in which our city abounds, if I do say it myself, and led them a somewhat devious way that I might prolong the journey, for I will admit that this French girl with the blue eyes and black hair attracted me much.

I took them by the Royal Exchange, a spacious and noble structure completed but two years before, and showed them the merchants and factors passing in such numbers and importance through the arcades that one might think it was London itself, so great had grown the trade of our port.

I had friends there—my own family is not so bad—and an attendant took us up to the noble Long Room, where the great dinners and entertainments are given. Then we passed out under the arcades and again through the busy press of merchants. I described some of them, and told to what an amazing extent their operations had grown, how they bought furs and skins from the most distant Indians, even from those around the farthest of the Great Lakes, how they carried on a fine trade with the West Indies, and what a traffic passed between us and England, and how we had even begun to build ships.

“Can you show such merchants as those in Quebec?” I asked of M. de St. Maur, making no effort to conceal my pride in our city’s opulence.

“No, but we can show better soldiers,” he replied with some dryness, as in truth he had a right to do, since the French, on the whole, had been beating us most lamentably.

But he had no criticism to make upon the noble spire of St. George’s Chapel, which, I hear, will compare very favorably with the great spires of Europe, and of which we are justly proud. Moreover, I long enjoyed the acquaintance of its rector, that distinguished and pious man, the Rev. Henry Barclay, who married the daughter of Anthony Rutgers.

I also showed them our first engine house, which was thought to be a marvel in its way, very few people having dreamed that such an ingenious contrivance for putting out destructive fires was possible. It was near twenty years old then, and stood in Broad Street, next to the watchhouse. I think the seigneur was somewhat puzzled by the engines, as, in fact, I was a bit myself, but neither of us said so.

I showed them our notable market just above the ferry across the Hudson, where the people came over from the Jerseys, and where the line of wagons filled with the produce of the farms was sometimes a full eighth of a mile in length.

I succeeded so well in monopolizing the conversation of Mlle. de St. Maur, who showed a pretty wit and much knowledge, that Culverhouse and the others began to frown at me and seek my place. But I held my own, and continued to talk to mademoiselle, pointing out this place and that, until we reached the house of Mr. Kennedy, a noble mansion on Broadway, very wide and handsome of front, with a splendid carved doorway in the center.

The seigneur, who I perceived had learned the stoicism of the Indians, would not allow himself to be impressed by anything, or at least he would not permit the appearance of it. He looked very closely about him, but there was no expression upon his strong, brown face. But when they walked up the stoop of Mr. Kennedy’s house, and he turned to dismiss us, he thanked us again with that fine, large courtesy which we associate with the great French seigneur.

“A Norman, I think,” said Culverhouse as we walked away together, Spencer and Graham having bid us adieu and gone in another direction.

I thought so too. It seemed fitting to me that his great stature and eagle face should belong to the race which took England and gave it the blood of which it boasts the loudest. Which stock on the French side, I may add, also has given us the most trouble.

“What is he, and what is he doing here?” I asked of Culverhouse, who knew the gossip of the town, while I had arrived but recently from duty at Albany.

“He is one of the great seigneurs of Canada,” replied Culverhouse, “and he has come here on behalf of Montcalm to treat with Loudoun for an exchange of prisoners. The earl having finished his cabbage planting at Halifax, may now be able to attend somewhat to the war.”

Culverhouse spoke with bitterness. Never was there a greater laggard than our commander in chief, and it was as galling to the English officers, his brethren, as it was to us, whom he said he came to protect. The earl was but a day back from Halifax, where he had nobly earned the title of cabbage planter, and we were wondering what garden he would cultivate next. Coming back from Halifax, when off the Massachusetts shore, he had received a message from Governor Shirley, sent out in a small boat, giving the dreadful news from William Henry. So he had arrived in New York, telling, ere his foot had scarce touched the landing, of the terrible things he was going to have done to M. Montcalm, how he had sent a message to Webb to chase the impudent Frenchman back to Canada, and how he was expecting even then to hear that his general had destroyed the French army.

After Culverhouse’s little outburst we were silent, thinking of our campaign, which had little cheer for us despite the earl’s magnificent promises, and when Culverhouse left me I went to my lodgings, where my thoughts ranged from the war to Mlle. de St. Maur’s blue eyes and Marion Arthur’s brown ones, and then back to the blue. I was wondering that very morning if I were about to fall in love with Marion Arthur. Never having been in love before, I could not be sure. I had often noted the symptoms in others, but I have also observed that a doctor who may be very skilled in the diseases of others knows little about his own. But Marion and I had been comrades in childhood, for she was my cousin, though three times removed.

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