Beulah was a great favourite with the captain, Maud being only his darling; he listened always to whatever the former said, therefore, with indulgence and respect. He often told the chaplain that his daughter Beulah had the true feelings of her sex, possessing a sort of instinct for whatever was right and becoming, in woman.
“Well, Bob may have the baronetcy, then,” he said, smiling. “Major Sir Robert Willoughby will not sound amiss in a despatch.”
“But, Bob cannot have it, father,” exclaimed Maud—“No one can have it but you; and it’s a pity it should be lost.”
“Let him wait, then, until I am out of the way; when he may claim his own.”
“Can that be done?” inquired the mother, to whom nothing was without interest that affected her children. “How is it, Mr. Woods?—may a title be dropped, and then picked up again?—how is this, Robert?”
“I believe it may, my dear mother—it will always exist, so long as there is an heir, and my father’s disrelish for it will not be binding on me.”
“Oh! in that case, then, all will come right in the end—though, as your father does not want it, I wish you could have it, now.”
This was said with the most satisfied air in the world, as if the speaker had no possible interest in the matter herself, and it closed the conversation, for that time. It was not easy to keep up an interest in anything that related to the family, where Mrs. Willoughby was concerned, in which heart did not predominate. A baronetcy was a considerable dignity in the colony of New York in the year of our Lord, 1775, and it gave its possessor far more importance than it would have done in England. In the whole colony there was but one, though a good many were to be found further south; and he was known as “Sir John,” as, in England, Lord Rockingham, or, in America, at a later day, La Fayette, was known as “The Marquis.” Under such circumstances, then, it would have been no trifling sacrifice to an ordinary woman to forego the pleasure of being called “my lady.” But the sacrifice cost our matron no pain, no regrets, no thought even: The same attachments which made her happy, away from the world, in the wilderness where she dwelt, supplanted all other feelings, and left her no room, or leisure, to think of such vanities. When the discourse changed, it was understood that “Sir Hugh” was not to be “Sir Hugh,” and that “Sir Robert” must bide his time.
“Where did you fall in with the Tuscarora, Bob?” suddenly asked the captain, as much to bring up another subject, as through curiosity. “The fellow had been so long away, I began to think we should never see him again.
“He tells me, sir, he has been on a war path, somewhere out among the western savages. It seems these Indians fight among themselves, from time to time, and Nick has been trying to keep his hand in. I found him down at Canajoharie, and took him for a guide, though he had the honesty to own he was on the point of coming over here, had I not engaged him.”
“I’ll answer for it he didn’t tell you that, until you had paid him for the job.”
“Why, to own the truth, he did not, sir. He pretended something about owing money in the village, and got his pay in advance. I learned his intentions only when we were within a few miles of the Hut.”
“I’m glad to find, Bob, that you give the place its proper name. How gloriously Sir Hugh Willoughby, Bart., of The Hut, Tryon county, New York, would sound, Woods!—Did Nick boast of the scalps he has taken from the Carthaginians?”
“He lays claim to three, I believe, though I have seen none of his trophies.”
“The Roman hero!—Yet, I have known Nick rather a dangerous warrior. He was out against us, in some of my earliest service, and our acquaintance was made by my saving his life from the bayonet of one of my own grenadiers. I thought the fellow remembered the act for some years; but, in the end, I believe I flogged all the gratitude out of him. His motives, now, are concentrated in the little island of Santa Cruz.”
“Here he is, father,” said Maud, stretching her light, flexible form out of a window. “Mike and the Indian are seated at the lower spring, with a jug between them, and appear to be in a deep conversation.”
“Ay, I remember on their first acquaintance, that Mike mistook Saucy Nick, for Old Nick. The Indian was indignant for a while, at being mistaken for the Evil Spirit, but the worthies soon found a bond of union between them, and, before six months, he and the Irishman became sworn friends. It is said whenever two human beings love a common principle, that it never fails to make them firm allies.”
“And what was the principle, in this case, captain Willoughby?” inquired the chaplain, with curiosity.
“Santa Cruz. Mike renounced whiskey altogether, after he came to America, and took to rum. As for Nick, he was never so vulgar as to find pleasure in the former liquor.”
The whole party had gathered to the windows, while the discourse was proceeding, and looking out, each individual saw Mike and his friend, in the situation described by Maud. The two amateurs—connoisseurs would not be misapplied, either—had seated themselves at the brink of a spring of delicious water, and removing the corn-cob that Pliny the younger had felt it to be classical to affix to the nozzle of a quart jug, had, some time before, commenced the delightful recreation of sounding the depth, not of the spring, but of the vessel. As respects the former, Mike, who was a wag in his way, had taken a hint from a practice said to be common in Ireland, called “potatoe and point,” which means to eat the potatoe and point at the butter; declaring that “rum and p’int” was every bit as entertaining as a “p’int of rum.” On this principle, then, with a broad grin on a face that opened from ear to ear whenever he laughed, the county Leitrim-man would gravely point his finger at the water, in a sort of mock-homage, and follow up the movement with such a suck at the nozzle, as, aided by the efforts of Nick, soon analyzed the upper half of the liquor that had entered by that very passage. All this time, conversation did not flag, and, as the parties grew warm, confidence increased, though reason sensibly diminished. As a part of this discourse will have some bearing on what is to follow, it may be in place to relate it, here.
“Ye’re a jewel, ye be, ould Nick, or young Nick!” cried Mike, in an ecstasy of friendship, just after he had completed his first half-pint. “Ye’re as wilcome at the Huts, as if ye owned thim, and I love ye as I did my own brother, before I left the county Leitrim—paice to his sowl!”
“He dead?” asked Nick, sententiously; for he had lived enough among the pale-faces to have some notions of then theory about the soul.
“That’s more than I know—but, living or dead, the man must have a sowl, ye understand, Nicholas. A human crathure widout a sowl, is what I call a heretick; and none of the O’Hearns ever came to that.”
Nick was tolerably drunk, but by no means so far gone, that he had not manners enough to make a grave, and somewhat dignified gesture; which was as much as to say he was familiar with the subject.
“All go ole fashion here?” he asked, avoiding every appearance of curiosity, however.
“That does it—that it does, Nicholas. All goes ould enough. The captain begins to get ould; and the missus is oulder than she used to be; and Joel’s wife looks a hundred, though she isn’t t’irty; and Joel, himself, the spalpeen—he looks—” a gulp at the jug stopped the communication.
“Dirty, too?” added the sententious Tuscarora, who did not comprehend more than half his friend said.
“Ay, dir-r-ty—he’s always that. He’s a dirthy fellow, that thinks his yankee charactur is above all other things.”
Nick’s countenance became illuminated with an expression nowise akin to that produced by rum, and he fastened on his companion one of his fiery gazes, which occasionally seemed to penetrate to the centre of the object looked at.