The Maid-At-Arms: A Novel Read online

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  THE

  MAID-AT-ARMS

  A Novel

  By

  Robert W. Chambers

  Illustrated by

  Howard Chandler Christy

  1902

  TO

  MISS KATHARINE HUSTED

  PREFACE

  After a hundred years the history of a great war waged by a successfulnation is commonly reviewed by that nation with retrospectivecomplacency.

  Distance dims the panorama; haze obscures the ragged gaps in the pageantuntil the long lines of victorious armies move smoothly across thehorizon, with never an abyss to check their triumph.

  Yet there is one people who cannot view the past through a mirage. Themarks of the birth-pangs remain on the land; its struggle for breath wastoo terrible, its scars too deep to hide or cover.

  For us, the pages of the past turn all undimmed; battles, brutallyetched, stand clear as our own hills against the sky--for in this landwe have no haze to soften truth.

  Treading the austere corridor of our Pantheon, we, too, come at last tovictory--but what a victory! Not the familiar, gracious goddess,wide-winged, crowned, bearing wreaths, but a naked, desperate creature,gaunt, dauntless, turning her iron face to the west.

  The trampling centuries can raise for us no golden dust to cloak theflanks of the starved ranks that press across our horizon.

  Our ragged armies muster in a pitiless glare of light, every mandistinct, every battle in detail.

  Pangs that they suffered we suffer.

  The faint-hearted who failed are judged by us as though they failedbefore the nation yesterday; the brave are re-enshrined as we read; thetraitor, to us, is no grotesque Guy Fawkes, but a living Judasof to-day.

  We remember that Ethan Allen thundered on the portal of all earthlykings at Ticonderoga; but we also remember that his hatred for the greatstate of New York brought him and his men of Vermont perilously close tothe mire which defiled Charles Lee and Conway, and which engulfed poorBenedict Arnold.

  We follow Gates's army with painful sympathy to Saratoga, and there weapplaud a victory, but we turn from the commander in contempt, hisbrutal, selfish, shallow nature all revealed.

  We know him. We know them all--Ledyard, who died stainless, with his ownsword murdered; Herkimer, who died because he was not brave enough to dohis duty and be called a coward for doing it; Woolsey, the craven Majorat the Middle Fort, stammering filthy speeches in his terror when SirJohn Johnson's rangers closed in; Poor, who threw his life away forvanity when that life belonged to the land! Yes, we know themall--great, greater, and less great--our grandfather Franklin, whotrotted through a perfectly cold and selfishly contemptuous Frenchcourt, aged, alert, cheerful to the end; Schuyler, calm andimperturbable, watching the North, which was his trust, and utterlyunmindful of self or of the pack yelping at his heels; Stark, Morgan,Murphy, and Elerson, the brave riflemen; Spencer, the interpreter;Visscher, Helmer, and the Stoners.

  Into our horizon, too, move terrible shapes--not shadowy or lurid, butliving, breathing figures, who turn their eyes on us and hold out theirbutcher hands: Walter Butler, with his awful smile; Sir John Johnson,heavy and pallid--pallid, perhaps, with the memory of his brokenparole; Barry St. Leger, the drunken dealer in scalps; Guy Johnson,organizer of wholesale murder; Brant, called Thayendanegea, brave,terrible, faithful, but--a Mohawk; and that frightful she-devil, CatrineMontour, in whose hot veins seethed savage blood and the blood of agovernor of Canada, who smote us, hip and thigh, until the brawlingbrooks of Tryon ran blood!

  No, there is no illusion for us; no splendid armies, banner--laden,passing through unbroken triumphs across the sunset's glory; no wingedvictory, with smooth brow laurelled to teach us to forget the holocaust.Neither can we veil our history, nor soften our legends. Romance alonecan justify a theme inspired by truth; for Romance is more vital thanhistory, which, after all, is but the fleshless skeleton of Romance.

  R.W.C.

  BROADALBIN,

  May 26, 1902.

  CONTENTS

  I. THE ROAD TO VARICKS'. II. IN THE HALLWAY. III. COUSINS. IV. SIRLUPUS. V. A NIGHT AT THE PATROON'S. VI. DAWN. VII. AFTERMATH. VIII.RIDING THE BOUNDS. IX. HIDDEN FIRE. X. TWO LESSONS. XI. LIGHTS ANDSHADOWS. XII. THE GHOST-RING. XIII. THE MAID-AT-ARMS. XIV. ON DUTY. XV.THE FALSE-FACES. XVI. ON SCOUT. XVII. THE FLAG. XVIII. ORISKANY. XIX.THE HOME TRAIL. XX. COCK-CROW. XXI. THE CRISIS. XXII. THE END OF THEBEGINNING.