2 An Unsought Interview

I was in the midst of such thoughts and surmises when John Smoot came and told me that his master, Mr. Arthur, wished to see me. John’s manner was darkly important, and I guessed that the business which Mr. Arthur wished to have with me would not be of a very soothing nature. Some strain in our relations had appeared long since, and it was increased by his suspicion that I sought Marion for a wife—a suspicion and a dissent that were very far from keeping me from her. Even before that morning I would stop and wonder if in truth I were about to fall in love with her, and then I would cease to study the problem and leave its solution to the future. But I was compelled to admit that she was very fair. There was no girl of the de Lanceys, or the de Peysters, or the Livingstons, or the Philipses, or the Kennedys, or the Coldens, or of all the boasted beauties of our town, who could surpass her.

Moreover, it was a matter of common repute in New York that Mr. Arthur looked for something beyond the colonies for his daughter. His father had been born in the old country, and he had been sent there himself to be educated and to receive the English stamp, his aptness at the learning being so great that he had ever remained a mighty stickler for the glory and the grandeur and the ways of England. He affected sometimes to cheapen his own country and the people who were his countrymen, which caused many ill remarks to be made about him, for we had begun to raise our heads in America. There were so many officers of high rank and noble birth coming over then from Britain to engage in the great war with the French that I was quite sure Mr. Arthur would seek to make an engagement between his daughter and one of them. He placed high value upon rank, and his wealth was sufficient to prepare the way for an alliance of that kind. That he had some such thought in his mind when he sent for me I did not doubt.

Bidding John to tell him that I would be there speedily, I prepared for the interview, arranging my toilet with great care, which I hold always to be the duty of a gentleman.

I wore my new uniform of the Royal Americans, which was a very pretty affair, and confidence in one’s clothes imparts great strength to the backbone. So I went on, walking with a martial stride, and swinging my sword until I made it jingle gallantly in its scabbard.

The front part of Mr. Arthur’s establishment was used as a warehouse. There was a great muck of boxes and barrels about, and a dozen stout fellows were at work among them. It was said that Mr. Arthur, when the times were more given to peace, sent every year a rich store of goods into the Spanish and French West India Islands, contrary to the laws and regulations of their Catholic Majesties, the august sovereigns of Spain and France. But that was not a matter about which I bothered myself, nor in truth did any one else, for no merchant in the town was held to be a more respectable man than Mr. Arthur, who had acquired in the course of many years a great fortune and a most acrid port-wine temper.

I asked for Mr. Arthur, and one of the fellows, with undue curtness, I thought, when my martial appearance is considered, directed me to the office in the rear. Mr. Arthur was writing at his desk. Two candles, burning directly in front of him, for the twilight comes early in our latitudes, heightened the ruddy tints of his face and deepened the lines about his mouth. Remembering that if he had anything disagreeable to say it might be well to let him know that I was prepared, I jingled my sword again. The sound aroused him from his task, as well it might, for it was a most military clatter. He turned around and looked at me in a very critical manner. I kept my hand upon my sword and expanded my chest somewhat, but Mr. Arthur did not seem to be very much impressed.

“Ah! it is Master Edward Charteris, I believe,” he said in an exceedingly dry tone.

“It is,” I replied, “and I am now a lieutenant in the army of his Britannic Majesty.”

As I said this I jingled my sword for the third time and threw my shoulders very far back, in order to keep myself from looking that degree of littleness which I felt. I liked not his manner at all. It was patronizing, which I resented, for our branch of the family, though not as well sugared with riches as his, was as good and of equal repute in all the country.

But my bearing, which I thought Marion—and the new French girl, too, for that matter—would have admired, seemed to have no effect upon this crusty old merchant. Accordingly, I stood upon my dignity, and waited in silence to hear what he might have to say.

“I inferred from your apparel,” he said in a tone of some satire, “that you had become an officer in the service of our King. Be sure that you wear worthily the livery of his Majesty, our most gracious sovereign.”

“I do not need that advice,” I said with a little heat. I had heard so much of our most gracious sovereign recently that I was growing tired of him and his graciousness.

“It is just as well to give it,” he replied. “All young men are the better for good counsel, though they may not relish it in the telling.”

I felt an increase of resentment. But I was under some obligations to him. He was my nearest relative left alive, and perhaps I owed a little to his care, though I doubted not, knowing his nature, that he had made a good profit out of it. So I said nothing.

“I sent for you,” he said, “because I have heard something about you to-day.”

“Nothing to my discredit, I hope,” I said lightly. “Something very much to your discredit,” he said with great gravity of manner. “I hear that you have been insulting the officers of the King in a coffeehouse, and even fastening a quarrel upon them. I hear also that you have spoken in the most disloyal manner of our noble sovereign and the generals whom he has sent over to protect us from the French and their allies.”

I haven’t much reverence for kings; I have never been able to discover in all my reading of history that they deserve it. I cared little, therefore, for his charge of disloyalty, but I felt the flush of anger when he accused me of forcing a quarrel upon the British officers when I believed that I had been in the right. I said as much, telling him that some one had brought him a false report. I added, moreover, that I would not be patronized by any Englishman, nor did I think that any one in the colonies should so humble himself.

“Ah!” he said, speaking more slowly than before; “I have heard much lately about the fine airs the people in the colonies are giving themselves. It seems that what I have heard is true.”

“You are one of us yourself,” I replied.

“By the accident of birth, yes,” he said, and his heightened tones showed that my shaft had touched a tender spot, “but in spirit, no. I have always accounted myself an Englishman born on a foreign shore, and I shall return to the land which nourished my ancestors. I intend that my daughter shall marry there.”

I had nothing to say to these declarations, which he made with some pomposity of manner. His allusion to his daughter and my silence seemed to bring him back to the main subject which he had in mind when he sent for me.

“I wished to speak to you of two things. Lieutenant Charteris,” he said; “one is your deportment toward the officers from England, which is offensive to me, and the other is in regard to my daughter. You and she of necessity have been thrown much together, and the liking between you must go no further. As I said, I shall make a home in England, and I intend that my daughter shall marry there. I warn you for your own benefit.”

This was plain speaking to a certainty. I was not aware, as I have said, that I was in love with Marion, though there had been some little gossip in the town that it would be a fitting match. I scarce knew whether to be angry or amused. I resolved to draw him out, and see what further he had to say.

“Then you object to me because I am not an Englishman?” I said.

“That is one among my several reasons.”

“At least, I shall never try to become an Englishman.”

“Let us be grateful that we are spared that much wasted effort.”

“Nor would I become one if I could. I shall remain true to my own country.”

“Your high-flown sentiments sound very well in the mouth of a young man, but we can dispense with them at present.”

“You are bent upon having Marion marry among the English?” I asked.

“And what if I am?” he asked sharply.

“She might prefer one of her countrymen,” I said.

“I trust that she has judgment and discretion,” he replied.

I would have been very humble indeed not to be angered by his sneers at me and my countrymen, and as I turned to leave I could not refrain from discharging an arrow at him.

“Do not forget one thing, Mr. Arthur,” I said, “though you may call yourself an Englishman, the English themselves will never call you such.”

His countenance fell a little, but in a moment he said, without any change of tone:

“I bid you good day. Master Charteris. I wish you a noble career in the King’s service.”

I made no reply, but left full of wrath at his high and haughty treatment of me, as I believe I had a right to be. I was thinking angrily about this, and such was my state of mind that I failed to notice where I was walking after I reached the street, and nearly ran over one of our townsmen. He brought me to myself with a jerk, and peered into my face by the light of one of the street lanterns that hung near.

“It’s Master Edward Charteris, eh?” he said; “prowling about and trying to run down decent citizens in the street! I took you at first, with your fine uniform and clanking sword, to be one of those young Hotspurs from over seas, who talk so much and do so little. But perhaps such as you have been corrupted by them with their swaggering airs and loud oaths.”

It was Master Martin Groot, a most respectable man, with a fine soul for a bargain, but an inveterate grumbler. I made my apologies in the best style I could command, and would have gone on, but he held to my arm.

“There is no occasion for hurry, lad,” he said. “I forgive you for running over me, for I verily believe you did not see where you were going. Your uniform is very fine—a pretty sum it must have cost!—and becomes you, but there is trouble in your face. What is it, lad? Is it something about these gay English cock-sparrows, who are always going to beat the French, and who are always getting beaten?”

“No,” I said hastily, and somewhat impatiently, “I have no trouble at all, Master Martin.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said bluntly. “Two-and-twenty does not have such a face as that for nothing.”

A sympathetic tone in the man’s voice kept me from being angry. But I could not tell him what really ailed me. I was not sure that it was anything. I made an evasive reply. I was worried about the war, I said. I wondered why we shilly-shallied so long in New York instead of going to the front and displaying the same activity that was so characteristic of our enemies, and which accounted for their notable successes.

“That may or may not be,” he said, a doubtful look on his broad face. “But I never knew the fate of a campaign to rest with such mighty weight upon one so young before. I am a peaceful man, and even a man of wisdom, Master Charteris, a trader in search of gain, not glory; but, now that you wear the King’s uniform, I give you a warning. Beware of the officers who have been sent over seas to help us and but despise us. An idle, empty, and worthless set. They corrupt our youth with their drinkings and their dancings and their debaucheries, and do not protect our borders from the French. The land were well rid of them!”

He took his grip from my arm and let me pass. My wearing of the King’s uniform had caused me to receive two warnings within the hour, and it was not difficult for me to say which was the kindlier of the two. But I thought that Groot went to extremities. He was always a dogmatic man. Nor did he love the English any the more because he had no English blood in his veins. He was overfond of saying that his Dutch forefathers should have held New Amsterdam, in which I did not agree with him, for I could respect the liberty and might of England without cheapening mine own country.

I suppose it was perversity, but, having been warned not to pay my addresses to Marion, I decided that I would call upon the maiden.

I walked briskly toward Mr. Arthur’s fine house in Queen Street, near the mansions of William Walton and Abraham de Peyster, which have been considered worthy of much praise, and found Marion in the rose garden.

“You have something to tell me!” she said with a pert air. I dare say a look of importance was upon my face.

“Of a certainty,” I said lightly. “Your father has just told me that he intends for you to marry an Englishman. He did not say that he preferred one with a title, but he hinted as much. He wants you to be ‘my lady’ with a train of servants and a husband who can take you to court.”

“That would be famous,” said Marion, a gratified look showing on her pretty countenance. “Truly it would, to have many servants and to go to court. Oh, I should like so dearly to go to court!”

I was a little piqued, though I. was far from having the right to feel so. It was not for me to dictate her preferences.

“So you would like to be a great lady?” I asked.

“In truth, I would!” she exclaimed. “What woman would not?”

I knew of none, and I turned the talk to the fashions and festivities of the day, of which we had great plenty in New York, and at the end of an agreeable hour I left, sure that her crusty old father would have been very wrathful had he known that directly after receiving his warning I had gone to see his daughter. There was pleasure in the thought. I am not ashamed of it; therefore I admit it.

►   ▲