Rewards and Fairies Part 23

He was standing behind them, his fiddle under his arm.

'Gracious, you startled me!' said Una.

'_You_ startled old Priscilla Savile,' Puck called from below them.

'Come and sit by their fire. She ought to have put it out before they left.'

They dropped down the ferny side of the shaw. Una raked the ashes together, Dan found a dead wormy oak branch that burns without flame, and they watched the smoke while Pharaoh played a curious wavery air.

'That's what the girl was humming to the baby,' said Una.

'I know it,' he nodded, and went on:

'Ai Lumai, Lumai, Lumai! Luludia!

Ai Luludia!'

He pa.s.sed from one odd tune to another, and quite forgot the children.

At last Puck asked him to go on with his adventures in Philadelphia and among the Seneca Indians.

'I'm telling it,' he said, staring straight in front of him as he played. 'Can't you hear?'

'Maybe, but _they_ can't. Tell it aloud,' said Puck.

Pharaoh shook himself, laid his fiddle beside him, and began:

'I'd left Red Jacket and Cornplanter riding home with me after Big Hand had said that there wouldn't be any war. That's all there was to it. We believed Big Hand and we went home again--we three braves. When we reached Lebanon we found Toby at the cottage with his waistcoat a foot too big for him--so hard he had worked amongst the yellow-fever people.

He beat me for running off with the Indians, but 'twas worth it--I was glad to see him,--and when we went back to Philadelphia for the winter, and I was told how he'd sacrificed himself over sick people in the yellow fever, I thought the world and all of him. No I didn't neither.

I'd thought that all along. That yellow fever must have been something dreadful. Even in December people had no more than begun to trinkle back to town. Whole houses stood empty and the n.i.g.g.e.rs was robbing them out.

But I can't call to mind that any of the Moravian Brethren had died. It seemed like they had just kept on with their own concerns, and the good Lord he'd just looked after 'em. That was the winter--yes, winter of Ninety-three--the Brethren bought a stove for the Church. Toby spoke in favour of it because the cold spoiled his fiddle hand, but many thought stove-heat not in the Bible, and there was yet a third party which always brought hickory coal foot-warmers to service and wouldn't speak either way. They ended by casting the Lot for it, which is like pitch and toss. After my summer with the Senecas, church-stoves didn't highly interest me, so I took to haunting round among the French _emigres_ which Philadelphia was full of. My French and my fiddling helped me there, d'ye see. They come over in shiploads from France, where, by what I made out, every one was killing every one else by any means, and they spread 'emselves about the city--mostly in Drinker's Alley and Elfrith's Alley--and they did odd jobs till times should mend. But whatever they stooped to, they were gentry and kept a cheerful countenance, and after an evening's fiddling at one of their poor little proud parties, the Brethren seemed old-fashioned. Pastor Meder and Brother Adam Goose didn't like my fiddling for hire, but Toby said it was lawful in me to earn my living by exercising my talents. He never let me be put upon.

'In February of Ninety-four--No, March it must have been, because a new amba.s.sador called Fauchet had come from France, with no more manners than Genet the old one--in March, Red Jacket came in from the Reservation bringing news of all kind friends there. I showed him round the city, and we saw General Washington riding through a crowd of folk that shouted for war with England. They gave him quite rough music, but he looked 'twixt his horse's ears and made out not to notice. His stirrup brished Red Jacket's elbow, and Red Jacket whispered up, "My brother knows it is not easy to be a chief?" Big Hand shot just one look at him and nodded. Then there was a scuffle behind us over some one who wasn't hooting at Washington loud enough to please the people. We went away to be out of the fight. Indians won't risk being hit.'

'What do they do if they are?' Dan asked.

'Kill, of course. That's why they have such proper manners. Well, then, coming home by Drinker's Alley to get a new shirt which a French Vicomte's lady was washing to take the stiff out of (I'm always choice in my body-linen) a lame Frenchman pushes a paper of b.u.t.tons at us. He hadn't long landed in the United States, and please would we buy. He sure-ly was a pitiful scrattel--his coat half torn off, his face cut, but his hands steady; so I knew it wasn't drink. He said his name was Peringuey, and he'd been knocked about in the crowd round the Stadt--Independence Hall. One thing leading to another we took him up to Toby's rooms, same as Red Jacket had taken me the year before. The compliments he paid to Toby's Madeira wine fairly conquered the old man, for he opened a second bottle and he told this Monsieur Peringuey all about our great stove dispute in the Church. I remember Pastor Meder and Brother Adam Goose dropped in, and although they and Toby were direct opposite sides regarding stoves, yet this Monsieur Peringuey he made 'em feel as if he thought each one was in the right of it. He said he had been a clergyman before he had to leave France. He admired at Toby's fiddling, and he asked if Red Jacket, sitting by the spinet, was a simple Huron. Senecas aren't Hurons, they're Iroquois, of course, and Toby told him so. Well, then, in due time he arose and left in a style which made us feel he'd been favouring us, instead of us feeding him.

I've never seen that so strong before--in a man. We all talked him over but couldn't make head or tail of him, and Red Jacket come out to walk with me to the French quarter when I was due to fiddle at a party.

Pa.s.sing Drinker's Alley again we saw a naked window with a light in it, and there sat our b.u.t.ton-selling Monsieur Peringuey throwing dice all alone, right hand against left.

'Says Red Jacket, keeping back in the dark, "Look at his face!"

'I was looking. I protest to you I wasn't frightened like I was when Big Hand talked to his gentlemen. I--I only looked, and I only wondered that even those dead dumb dice 'ud dare to fall different from what that face wished. It--it _was_ a face!

'"He is bad," says Red Jacket. "But he is a great chief. The French have sent away a great chief. I thought so when he told us his lies. Now I know."

'I had to go on to the party, so I asked him to call round for me afterwards and we'd have hymn-singing at Toby's as usual.

'"No," he says. "Tell Toby I am not Christian to-night. All Indian." He had those fits sometimes. I wanted to know more about Monsieur Peringuey, and the _emigre_ party was the very place to find out. It's neither here nor there of course, but those French _emigre_ parties they almost make you cry. The men that you bought fruit of in Market Street, the hairdressers and fencing-masters and French teachers, they turn back again by candlelight to what they used to be at home, and you catch their real names. There wasn't much room in the wash-house, so I sat on top of the copper and played 'em the tunes they called for--"_Si le Roi m'avait donne_," and such nursery stuff. They cried sometimes. It hurt me to take their money afterwards, indeed it did. And there I found out about Monsieur Peringuey. He was a proper rogue too! None of 'em had a good word for him except the Marquise that kept the French boarding-house on Fourth Street. I made out that his real name was the Count Talleyrand de Perigord--a priest right enough, but sorely come down in the world. He'd been King Louis' amba.s.sador to England a year or two back, before the French had cut off King Louis' head; and, by what I heard, that head wasn't hardly more than hanging loose before he'd run back to Paris and prevailed on Danton, the very man which did the murder, to send him back to England again as Amba.s.sador of the French Republic! That was too much for the English, so they kicked him out by Act of Parliament, and he'd fled to the Americas without money or friends or prospects. I'm telling you the talk in the wash-house. Some of 'em was laughing over it. Says the French Marquise, "My friends, you laugh too soon. That man will be on the winning side before any of us."

'"I did not know you were so fond of priests, Marquise," says the Vicomte. His lady did my washing, as I've told you.

'"I have my reasons," says the Marquise. "He sent my uncle and my two brothers to Heaven by the little door,"--that was one of the _emigre_ names for the guillotine. "He will be on the winning side if it costs him the blood of every friend he has in the world."

'"Then what does he want here?" says one of 'em. "We have all lost our game."

'"My faith!" says the Marquise. "He will find out, if any one can, whether this canaille of a Washington means to help us to fight England.

Genet (that was my amba.s.sador in the _Embuscade_) has failed and gone off disgraced; Fauchet (he was the new man) hasn't done any better, but our abbe will find out, and he will make his profit out of the news.

Such a man does not fail."

'"He begins unluckily," says the Vicomte. "He was set upon to-day in the street for not hooting your Washington." They all laughed again, and one remarks, "How does the poor devil keep himself."

'He must have slipped in through the wash-house door, for he flits past me and joins 'em, cold as ice.

'"One does what one can," he says. "I sell b.u.t.tons. And you, Marquise?"

'"I?"--she waves her poor white hands all burned--"I am a cook--a very bad one--at your service, abbe. We were just talking about you."

'They didn't treat him like they talked of him. They backed off and stood still.

"'I have missed something then," he says. "But I spent this last hour playing--only for b.u.t.tons, Marquise--against a n.o.ble savage, the veritable Huron himself."

'"You had your usual luck, I hope?" she says.

'"Certainly," he says. "I cannot afford to lose even b.u.t.tons in these days."

'"Then I suppose the child of nature does not know that your dice are usually loaded, Father Tout-a-tous," she continues. I don't know whether she meant to accuse him of cheating. He only bows.

'"Not yet, Mademoiselle Cunegonde," he says, and goes on to make himself agreeable to the rest of the company. And that was how I found out our Monsieur Peringuey was Count Charles Maurice Talleyrand de Perigord.'

Pharaoh stopped, but the children said nothing.

'You've heard of him?' said Pharaoh.

Una shook her head.

'Was Red Jacket the Indian he played dice with?' Dan asked.

'He was. Red Jacket told me the next time we met. I asked if the lame man had cheated. Red Jacket said no--he had played quite fair and was a master player. I allow Red Jacket knew. I've seen him, on the Reservation, play himself out of everything he had and in again. Then I told Red Jacket all I'd heard at the party concerning Talleyrand.

'"I was right," he says. "I saw the man's war-face when he thought he was alone. That is why I played him. I played him face to face. He is a great chief. Do they say why he comes here?"

'"They say he comes to find out if Big Hand makes war against the English," I said.

'Red Jacket grunted. "Yes," he says. "He asked me that too. If he had been a small chief I should have lied. But he is a great chief. He knew I was a chief, so I told him the truth. I told him what Big Hand said to Cornplanter and me in the clearing--'There will be no war.' I could not see what he thought. I could not see behind his face. But he is a great chief. He will believe."

'"Will he believe that Big Hand can keep his people back from war?" I said, thinking of the crowds that hooted Big Hand whenever he rode out.

'"He is as bad as Big Hand is good, but he is not as strong as Big Hand," says Red Jacket. "When he talks with Big Hand he will feel this in his heart. The French have sent away a great chief. Presently he will go back and make them afraid."

'Now wasn't that comical? The French woman that knew him and owed all her losses to him; the Indian that picked him up, cut and muddy on the street and played dice with him; they neither of 'em doubted that Talleyrand was something by himself--appearances notwithstanding.'