The Master of Appleby
by Francis Lynde · English · Gutenberg #17690 · 778,421 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Master of Appleby
Author: Francis Lynde
Illustrator: Thure de Thulstrup
Release date: February 6, 2006 [eBook #17690]
Most recently updated: December 13, 2020
Language: English
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THE MASTER OF APPLEBY
A Novel Tale Concerning Itself in Part with
the Great Struggle in the Two Carolinas; but
Chiefly with the Adventures Therein of Two
Gentlemen Who Loved One and the Same Lady
by
FRANCIS LYNDE
Illustrations by T. de Thulstrup
New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Copyright 1902
The Bowen-Merrill Company
October
TO
Mr. Edward G. Richmond
OF CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE,
WHOSE KINDNESS AND ENCOURAGEMENT
MUST ALWAYS BE HELD IN LIVELY
REMEMBRANCE BY THE AUTHOR
THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY
INSCRIBED
[Illustration: But now I was fronting death and could be as firm as
she]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I I WHET MY FATHER'S SWORD 1
II KNITS UP SOME BROKEN ENDS 15
III MY ENEMY SCORES FIRST 25
IV MAY BE PASSED OVER LIGHTLY 36
V I LOST WHAT I HAD NEVER GAINED 47
VI RED WRATH MAY HEAL A WOUND 60
VII MY LADY HATH NO PART 75
VIII I TASTE THE QUALITY OF MERCY 88
IX A GOLDEN KEY UNLOCKED A DOOR 98
X A FORLORN HOPE CAME TO GRIEF 107
XI A LIE WAS MADE THE VERY TRUTH 114
XII THE NEWS CAME TO UNWELCOME EARS 129
XIII A PILGRIMAGE BEGINS 141
XIV THE BARONET PLAYED ROUGE-ET-NOIR 150
XV A HATCHET SINGS A MAN TO SLEEP 164
XVI JENNIFER THREW A MAIN WITH DEATH 171
XVII LOVE TOOK TOLL OF FRIENDSHIP 183
XVIII WE HEAR NEWS FROM THE SOUTH 194
XIX A STUMBLING HORSE BROUGHT TIDINGS 207
XX WE STRIVE AS MEN TO RUN A RACE 217
XXI WE KEPT LENTEN VIGILS IN TRINITYTIDE 228
XXII THE FATES GAVE LARGESS OF DESPAIR 235
XXIII WE KEPT THE FEAST OF BITTER HERBS 251
XXIV WE FOUND THE SUNKEN VALLEY 259
XXV UNCANOOLA TRAPPED THE GREAT BEAR 269
XXVI THE CHARRED STICK FOR A GUIDE 279
XXVII A KING'S TROOPER BECAME A WASTREL 287
XXVIII I SADDLE THE BLACK MARE 296
XXIX HAVING DANCED, WE PAY THE PIPER 309
XXX EPHRAIM YATES PRAYED FOR HIS ENEMIES 324
XXXI WE MAKE A FORCED MARCH 336
XXXII I AM BEDDED IN A GARRET 351
XXXIII I HEAR CHANCEFUL TIDINGS 361
XXXIV I MET A GREAT LORD AS MAN TO MAN 369
XXXV I FIGHT THE DEVIL WITH FIRE 376
XXXVI I RODE POST ON THE KING'S BUSINESS 382
XXXVII WHAT BEFELL AT KING'S CREEK 395
XXXVIII WE FIND THE GUN-MAKER 412
XXXIX THE THUNDER OF THE CAPTAINS 418
XL VAE VICTIS 432
XLI I PLAYED THE HOST AT MY OWN FIRESIDE 446
XLII MY LORD HAS HIS MARCHING ORDERS 454
XLIII I DRINK A DISH OF TEA 460
XLIV WE COME TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END 470
XLV WE FIND WHAT WE NEVER SOUGHT 480
XLVI OUR PIECE MISSED FIRE AT HARNDON ACRES 488
XLVII ARMS AND THE MAN 505
XLVIII WE KEPT TRYST AT APPLEBY 517
XLIX A LAWYER HATH HIS FEE 531
L RICHARD COVERDALE'S DEBT WAS PAID 549
LI THE GOOD CAUSE GAINS A CONVERT 562
LII BRINGS US TO THE JOURNEY'S END 573
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH I WHET MY FATHER'S SWORD
The summer day was all but spent when Richard Jennifer, riding express,
brought me Captain Falconnet's challenge.
'Twas a dayfall to be marked with a white stone, even in our Carolina
calendar. The sun, reaching down to the mountain-girt horizon in the
west, filled all the upper air with the glory of its departing, and the
higher leaf plumes of the great maples before my cabin door wrought
lustrous patterns in gilded green upon a zenith background of turquoise
shot with crimson, like the figurings of some rich old tapestries I had
once seen in my field-marshal's castle in the Mark of Moravia.
Beyond the maples a brook tinkled and plashed over the stones on its way
to the near-by Catawba; and its peaceful brawling, and the evensong of a
pair of clear-throated warblers poised on the topmost twigs of one of
the trees, should have been sweet music in the ears of a returned
exile. But on that matchless bride's-month evening of dainty sunset
arabesques and brook and bird songs, I was in little humor for
rejoicing.
The road made for the river lower down and followed its windings up the
valley; but Jennifer came by the Indian trace through the forest. I can
see him now as he rode beneath the maples, bending to the saddle horn
where the branches hung lowest; a pretty figure of a handsome young
provincial, clad in fashions three years behind those I had seen in
London the winter last past. He rode gentleman-wise, in small-clothes of
rough gray woolen and with stout leggings over his hose; but he wore his
cocked hat atilt like a trooper's, and the sword on his thigh was a good
service blade, and no mere hilt and scabbard for show such as our
courtier macaronis were just then beginning to affect.
Now I had known this handsome youngster when he was but a little lad;
had taught him how to bend the Indian bow and loose the reed-shaft arrow
in those happier days before the tyrant Governor Tryon turned hangman,
and the battle of the Great Alamance had left me fatherless. Moreover, I
had drunk a cup of wine with him at the Mecklenburg Arms no longer ago
than yesterweek--this to a renewal of our early friendship. Hence, I
must needs be somewhat taken aback when he drew rein at my door-stone,
doffed his hat with a sweeping bow worthy a courtier of the great Louis,
and said, after the best manner of Sir Charles Grandison:
"I have the honor of addressing Captain John Ireton, sometime of his
Majesty's Royal Scots Blues, and late of her Apostolic Majesty's
Twenty-ninth Regiment of Hussars?"
It was but an euphuism of the time, this formal preamble, declaring that
his errand had to do with the preliminaries of a private quarrel between
gentlemen. Yet I could scarce restrain a smile. For these upcroppings of
courtier etiquette have ever seemed to march but mincingly with the free
stride of our western backwoods. None the less, you are to suppose that
I made shift to match his bow in some fashion, and to say: "At your
service, sir."
Whereupon he bowed again, clapped hat to head and tendered me a sealed
packet.
"From Sir Francis Falconnet, Knight Bachelor of Beaumaris, volunteer
captain in his Majesty's German Legion," he announced, with stern
dignity.
Having no second to refer him to, I broke the seal of the cartel myself.
Since my enemy had seen fit to come thus far on the way to his end in
some gentlemanly manner, it was not for me to find difficulties among
the formalities. In good truth, I was overjoyed to be thus assured that
he would fight me fair; that he would not compel me to kill him as one
kills a wild beast at bay. For certainly I should have killed him in any
event: so much I had promised my poor Dick Coverdale on that dismal
November morning when he had choked out his life in my arms, the victim
first of this man's treachery, and, at the last, of his sword. So, as I
say, I was nothing loath, and yet I would not seem too eager.
"I might say that I have no unsettled quarrel with Captain Falconnet," I
demurred, when I had read the challenge. "He spoke slightingly of a
lady, and I did but--"
"Your answer, Captain Ireton!" quoth my youngster, curtly. "I am not
empowered to give or take in the matter of accommodations."
"Not so fast, if you please," I rejoined. "I have no wish to disappoint
your principal, or his master, the devil. Let it be to-morrow morning at
sunrise in the oak grove which was once my father's wood field, each man
with his own blade. And I give you fair warning, Master Jennifer; I
shall kill your bullyragging captain of light-horse as I would a vermin
of any other breed."
At this Jennifer flung himself from his saddle with a great laugh.
"If you can," he qualified. "But enough of these 'by your leave, sirs.'
I am near famished, and as dry as King David's bottle in the smoke. Will
you give me bite and sup before I mount and ride again? 'Tis a long
gallop back to town on an empty stomach, and with a gullet as dry as Mr.
Gilbert Stair's wit."
Here was my fresh-hearted Dick Jennifer back again all in a breath; and
I made haste to shout for Darius, and for Tomas to take his horse, and
otherwise to bestir myself to do the honors of my poor forest fastness
as well as I might.
Luckily, my haphazard larder was not quite empty, and there were
presently a bit of cold deer's meat and some cakes of maize bread
baked in the ashes to set before the guest. Also there was a cup of
sweet wine, home-pressed from the berries of the Indian scuppernong, to
wash them down. And afterward, though the evening was no more than
mountain-breeze cool, we had a handful of fire on the hearth for the
cheer of it while we smoked our reed-stemmed pipes.
It was over the pipes that Jennifer unburdened himself of the gossip of
the day in Queensborough.
"Have you heard the newest? But I know you haven't, since the
post-riders came only this morning. The war has shifted from the North
in good earnest at last, and we are like to have a taste of the
harryings the Jerseymen have had since '76. My Lord Cornwallis is come
as far as Camden, they say; and Colonel Tarleton has crossed the
Catawba."
"So? Then Mr. Rutherford is like to have his work cut out for him, I
take it."
Jennifer eyed me curiously. "Grif Rutherford is a stout Indian fighter;
no West Carolinian will gainsay that. But he is never the man to match
Cornwallis. We'll have help from the North."
"De Kalb?" I suggested.
Again the curious eyeshot. "Nay, John Ireton, you need not fear me,
though I am just now this redcoat captain's next friend. You know more
about the Baron de Kalb's doings than anybody else in Mecklenburg."
"I? What should I know?"
"You know a deal--or else the gossips lie most recklessly."
"They do lie if they connect me with the Baron de Kalb, or with any
other of the patriot side. What are they saying?"
"That you come straight from the baron's camp in Virginia--to see what
you can see."
"A spy, eh? 'Tis cut out of whole cloth, Dick, my lad. I've never took
the oath on either side."
He looked vastly disappointed. "But you will, Jack? Surely, you have not
to think twice in such a cause?"
"As between King and Congress, you mean? 'Tis no quarrel of mine."
"Now God Save us, John Ireton!" he burst out in a fine fervor of
youthful enthusiasm that made him all the handsomer, "I had never
thought to hear your father's son say the like!"
I shrugged.
"And why not, pray? The king's minion, Tryon, hanged my father and gave
his estate to his minion's minion, Gilbert Stair. So, in spite of your
declarations and your confiscations and your laws against alien
landholders, I come back to find myself still the son of the outlawed
Roger Ireton, and this same Gilbert Stair firmly lodged in my father's
seat."
Jennifer shrugged in his turn.
"Gilbert Stair--for sweet Madge's sake I'm loath to say it--Gilbert
Stair blows hot or cold as the wind sets fair or stormy. And I will say
this for him: no other Tryon legatee of them all has steered so fine a
course through these last five upsetting years. How he trims so
skilfully no man knows. A short month since, he had General Rutherford
and Colonel Sumter as guests at Appleby Hundred; now it is Sir Francis
Falconnet and the British light-horse officers who are honored. But let
him rest: the cause of independence is bigger than any man, or any man's
private quarrel, friend John; and I had hoped--"
I laid a hand on his knee. "Spare yourself, Dick. My business in
Queensborough was to learn how best I might reach Mr. Rutherford's
rendezvous."
For a moment he sat, pipe in air, staring at me as if to make sure that
he had heard aright. Then he clipt my hand and wrung it, babbling out
some boyish brava that I made haste to put an end to.
"Softly, my lad," I said; "'tis no great thing the Congress will gain by
my adhesion. But you, Richard; how comes it that I find you taking your
ease at Jennifer House and hobnobbing with his Majesty's officers when
the cause you love is still in such desperate straits?"
He blushed like a girl at that, and for a little space only puffed the
harder at his pipe.
"I did go out with the Minute Men in '76, if you must know, and smelt
powder at Moore's Creek. When my time was done I would have 'listed
again; but just at that my father died and the Jennifer acres were like
to go to the dogs, lacking oversight. So I came home and--and--"
He stopped in some embarrassment, and I thought to help him on.
"Nay, out with it, Dick. If I am not thy father, I am near old enough to
stand in his stead. 'Twas more than husbandry that rusted the sword in
its scabbard, I'll be bound."
"You are right, Jack; 'twas both more and less," he confessed,
shamefacedly. "'Twas this same Margery Stair. As I have said, her father
blows hot or cold as the wind sets, but not she. She is the fiercest
little Tory in the two Carolinas, bar none. When I had got Jennifer in
order and began to talk of 'listing again, she flew into a pretty rage
and stamped her foot and all but swore that Dick Jennifer in buff and
blue should never look upon her face again with her good will."
I had a glimpse of Jennifer the lover as he spoke, and the sight went
somewhat on the way toward casting out the devil of sullen rage that had
possessed me since first I had set returning foot in this my native
homeland. 'Twas a life lacking naught of hardness, but much of human
mellowing, that lay behind the home-coming; and my one sweet friend in
all that barren life was dead. What wonder, then, if I set this
frank-faced Richard in the other Richard's stead, wishing him all the
happiness that poor Dick Coverdale had missed? I needed little: would
need still less, I thought, before the war should end; and through this
love-match my lost estate would come at length to Richard Jennifer. It
was a meliorating thought, and while it held I could be less revengeful.
"Dost love her, Dick?" I asked.
"Aye, and have ever since she was in pinafores, and I a hobbledehoy in
Master Wytheby's school."
"So long? I thought Mr. Stair was a later comer in Mecklenburg."
"He came eight years ago, as one of Tryon's underlings. Madge was even
then motherless; the same little wilful prat-a-pace she has ever been. I
would you knew her, Jack. 'Twould make this shiftiness of mine seem less
the thing it is."
"So you have stayed at home a-courting while others fought to give you
leisure," said I, thinking to rally him. But he took it harder than I
meant.
"'Tis just that, Jack; and I am fair ashamed. While the fighting kept to
the North it did not grind so keen; but now, with the redcoats at our
doors, and the Tories sacking and burning in every settlement, 'tis
enough to flay an honest man alive. God-a-mercy, Jack! I'll go; I've got
to go, or die of shame!"
He sat silent after that, and as there seemed nothing that a curst old
campaigner could say at such a pass, I bore him company.
By and by he harked back to the matter of his errand, making some
apology for his coming to me as the baronet's second.
"'Twas none of my free offering, you may be sure," he added. "But it so
happened that Captain Falconnet once did me a like turn. I had chanced
to run afoul of that captain of Hessian pigs, Lauswoulter, at cards, and
Falconnet stood my friend--though now I bethink me, he did seem
over-anxious that one or the other of us should be killed."
"As how?" I inquired.
"When Lauswoulter slipped and I might have spitted him, and didn't,
Falconnet was for having us make the duel _à outrance_. But that's
beside the mark. Having served me then, he makes the point that I shall
serve him now."
"'Tis a common courtesy, and you could not well refuse. I love you none
the less for paying your debts; even to such a villain as this volunteer
captain."
"True, 'tis a debt, as you say; but I like little enough the manner of
its paying. How came you to quarrel with him, Jack?"
Now even so blunt a soldier as I have ever been may have some prickings
of delicacy where the truth might breed gossip--gossip about a tale
which I had said should die with Richard Coverdale and be buried in his
grave. So I evaded the question, clumsily enough, as has ever been my
hap in fencing with words.
"The cause was not wanting. If any ask, you may say he trod upon my foot
in passing."
Jennifer laughed.
"And for that you struck him? Heavens, man! you hold your life
carelessly. Do you happen to know that this volunteer captain of
light-horse is accounted the best blade in the troop?"
"Who should know that better than--" I was fairly on the brink of
betraying the true cause of quarrel, but drew rein in time. "I care not
if he were the best in the army. I have crossed steel before--and with a
good swordsman now and then."
"Anan?" said Jennifer, as one who makes no doubt. And then: "But this
toe-pinching story is but a dry crust to offer a friend. You spoke of a
lady; who was she? Or was that only another way of telling me to mind my
own affairs?"
"Oh, as to that; the lady was real enough, and Falconnet did grossly
asperse her. But I know not who she is, nor aught about her, save that
she is sweet and fair and good to look upon."
"Young?"
"Aye."
"And you say you do not know her? Let me see her through your eyes and
mayhap I can name her for you."
"That I can not. Mr. Peale's best skill would be none too great for the
painting of any picture that should do her justice. But she is small,
with the airs and graces of a lady of the quality; also, she has
witching blue eyes, and hair that has the glint of summer sunshine in
it. Also, she sits a horse as if bred to the saddle."
To my amazement, Jennifer leaped up with an oath and flung his pipe into
the fire.
"Curse him!" he cried. "And he dared lay a foul tongue to her, you say?
Tell me what he said! I have a good right to know!"
I shook my head. "Nay, Richard; I may not repeat it to you, since you
are the man's second. Truly, there is more than this at the back of our
quarrel; but of itself it was enough, and more than enough, inasmuch as
the lady had just done him the honor to recognize him."
"His words--his very words, Jack, if you love me!"
"No; the quarrel is mine."
"By God! it is not yours!" he stormed, raging back and forth before the
fire. "What is Margery Stair to you, Jack Ireton?"
I smiled, beginning now to see some peephole in this millstone of
mystery.
"Margery Stair? She is no more than a name to me, I do assure you; the
daughter of the man who sits in my father's seat at Appleby Hundred."
"But you are going to fight for her!" he retorted.
"Am I? I pledge you my word I did not know it. But in any case I should
fight Sir Francis Falconnet; aye, and do my best to kill him, too. Sit
you down and fill another pipe. Whatever the quarrel, it is mine."
"Mayhap; but it is mine, too," he broke in, angrily. "At all events,
I'll see this king's volunteer well hanged before I second him in such a
cause."
"That as you choose. But you are bound in honor, are you not?"
"No." He filled a fresh pipe, lighted it with a coal from the hearth,
and puffed away in silence for a time. When he spoke again it was not as
Falconnet's next friend.
"What you have told me puts a new face on the matter, Jack. Sir Francis
may find him another second where he can. If he has aught to say, I
shall tell him plain he lied to me about the quarrel, as he did. Now who
is there to see fair play on your side, John Ireton?"
At the question an overwhelming sense of my own sorry case grappled me.
Fifteen years before, I had left Appleby Hundred and my native province
as well befriended as the son of Roger Ireton was sure to be. And now--
"Dick, my lad, I am like to fight alone," said I.
He swore again at that; and here, lest I should draw my loyal Richard as
he was not, let me say, once for all, that his oaths were but the
outgushings of a warm and impulsive heart, rarely bitter, and never, as
I believe, backed by surly rancor or conscious irreverence.
"That you shall not, Jack," he asserted, stoutly. "I must be a-gallop
now to tell this king's captain to look elsewhere for his next friend;
but to-morrow morning I'll meet you in the road between this and the
Stair outlands, and we'll fare on together."
After this he would brook no more delay; and when Tomas had fetched his
horse I saw him mount and ride away under the low-hanging
maples--watched him fairly out of sight in the green and gold twilight
of the great forest before turning back to my lonely hearth and its
somber reminders.
I stirred the dying embers, throwing on a pine knot for better light.
Then I took down my father's sword from its deer-horn brackets over the
chimney-piece, and set myself to fine its edge and point with a bit of
Scotch whinstone. It was a good blade; a true old Andrea Ferara got in
battle in the seventeenth century by one of the Nottingham Iretons.
I whetted it well and carefully. It was not that I feared my enemy's
strength of wrist or tricks of fence; but fighting had been my trade,
and he is but a poor craftsman who looks not well to see that his tools
are in order against their time of using.
II
WHICH KNITS UP SOME BROKEN ENDS
It was in the autumn of the year '64, as I was coming of age, that my
father made ready to send me to England. Himself a conscience exile from
Episcopal Virginia, and a descendant of those Nottingham Iretons whose
best-known son fought stoutly against Church and King under Oliver
Cromwell, he was yet willing to humor my bent and to use the interest of
my mother's family to enter me in the king's service.
Accordingly, I took ship at Norfolk for "home," as we called it in those
days; and, after a stormy passage and overmuch waiting as my cousins'
guest in Lincolnshire, had my pair of colors in the Scots Blues, lately
home from garrison duty in the Canadas.
Of the life in barracks of a young ensign with little wit and less
wisdom, and with more guineas in his purse than was good for him, the
less said the better. But of this you may like to know that, what with a
good father's example, and some small heritage of Puritan decency come
down to me from the sound-hearted old Roundhead stock, I won out of
that devil's sponging-house, an army in the time of peace, with somewhat
less to my score than others had to theirs.
It was in this barrack life that I came to know Richard Coverdale and
his evil genius, the man Francis Falconnet. Coverdale was an ensign in
my own regiment, and we were sworn friends from the first. His was a
clean soul and a brave; and it was to him that I owed escape from many
of the grosser chargings on that score above-named.
As for Falconnet, he was even then a ruffler and a bully, though he was
not of the army. He was a younger son, and at that time there were two
lives between him and the baronetcy; but with a mother's bequeathings to
purchase idleness and to gild his iniquities, he was a fair example of
the _jeunesse dorée_ of that England; a libertine, a gamester, a
rakehell; brave as the tiger is brave, and to the full as pitiless. He
was a boon companion of the officers' mess; and for a time--and
purpose--posed as Coverdale's friend, and mine.
Since I would not tell my poor Dick's story to Richard Jennifer, I may
not set it down in cold words here for you. It was the age-old tragic
comedy of a false friend's treachery and a woman's weakness; a duel, and
the wrong man slain. And you may know this; that Falconnet's most
merciful role in it was the part he played one chill November morning
when he put Richard Coverdale to the wall and ran him through.
As you have guessed, I was Coverdale's next friend and second in this
affair, and but for the upsetting news of the Tryon tyranny in
Carolina,--news which reached me on the very day of the meeting,--I
should there and then have called the slayer to his account.
How my father who, Presbyterian and Ireton though he was, had always
been of the king's side, came to espouse the cause of the "Regulators,"
as they called themselves, I know not. In my youthful memories of him he
figures as the feudal lord of his own domain, more absolute than many of
the petty kinglings I came afterward to know in the German marches. But
this, too, I remember; that while his rule at Appleby Hundred was stern
and despotic enough, he was ever ready to lend a willing ear to any tale
of oppression. And if what men say of the tyrant Tryon's tax-gatherers
and law-court robbers be no more than half truth, there was need for any
honest gentleman to oppose them.
What that opposition came to in '71 is now a tale twice told. Taken in
arms against the governor's authority, and with an estate well worth
receiving, my father had little justice and less mercy accorded him.
With many others he was outlawed; his estates were declared forfeit; and
a few days later he, with Benjamin Merrill and four more captivated at
the Alamance, was given some farce of a trial and hanged.
When the news of this came to me you may well suppose that I had no
heart to continue in the service of the king who could sanction and
reward such villainies as these of the butcher William Tryon. So I threw
up my lieutenant's commission in the Blues, took ship for the Continent,
and, after wearing some half-dozen different uniforms in Germany, was
lucky enough to come at length to serviceable blows under my old
field-marshal on the Turkish frontier.
To you of a younger generation, born in the day of swift mail-coaches
and well-kept post-roads, the slowness with which our laggard news
traveled in that elder time must needs seem past belief. It was early in
the year '79 before I began to hear more than vague camp-fire tales of
the struggle going on between the colonies and the mother country; and
from that to setting foot once more upon the soil of my native Carolina
was still another year.
What I found upon landing at New Berne and saw while riding a jog-trot
thence to the Catawba was a province rent and torn by partizan warfare.
Though I came not once upon the partizans themselves in all that long
faring, there were trampled fields and pillaged houses enough to serve
as mile-stones; and in my native Mecklenburg a mine full charged, with
slow-match well alight for its firing.
Charleston had fallen, and Colonel Tarleton's outposts were already
widespread on the upper waters of the Broad and the Catawba. Thus it was
that the first sight which greeted my eyes when I rode into
Queensborough was the familiar trappings of my old service, and I was
made to know that in spite of Mr. Jefferson's boldly written Declaration
of Independence, and that earlier casting of the king's yoke by the
patriotic Mecklenburgers themselves, my boyhood home was for the moment
by sword-right a part of his Majesty's province of North Carolina.
You are not to suppose that these things moved me greatly. As yet I was
chiefly concerned with my own affair and anxious to learn at first hands
the cost to me of my father's connection with the Regulators.
Touching this, I was not long kept in ignorance. Of all the vast demesne
of Appleby Hundred there was no roof to shelter the son of the outlawed
Roger Ireton save that of this poor hunting lodge in the mighty forest
of the Catawba, overlooked, with the few runaway blacks inhabiting it,
in the intaking of an estate so large that I think not even my father
knew all the metes and bounds of it.
I shall not soon forget the interview with the lawyer in which I was
told the inhospitable truth. Nor shall I forget his truculent leer when
he hinted that I had best be gone out of these parts, since it was not
yet too late to bring down the sentence of outlawry from the father to
the son.
It was well for him that I knew not at the time that he was Gilbert
Stair's factor. For I was mad enough to have throttled him where he sat
at his writing table, matching his long fingers and smirking at me with
his evil smile. But of this man more in his time and place. His name was
Owen Pengarvin. I would have you remember it.
For a week and a day I lingered on at Queensborough, for what I knew
not, save that all the world seemed suddenly to have grown stale and
profitless, and my life a thing of small account. One day I would be
minded to go back to my old field-marshal and the keeping of the Turkish
border; the next I would ride over some part of my stolen heritage and
swear a great oath to bide till I should come to my own again. And on
these alternating days the storm of black rage filled my horizons and I
became a derelict to drive on any rock or shoal in this uncharted sea of
wrath.
On one of these gallops farthest afield I chanced upon the bridle-path
that led to our old hunting lodge in the forest depths. Tracing the path
to its end among the maples I found the cabin, so lightly touched by
time that the mere sight of it carried me swiftly back to those happy
days when my father and I had stalked the white-tailed deer in the hill
glades beyond, with this log-built cabin for a rest-camp. I spurred up
under the low-hanging trees. The door stood wide, and a thin wreath of
blue smoke curled upward from the mouth of the wattled chimney.
Then and there I had my first welcome home. Old black Darius--old when I
had last seen him at Appleby Hundred, and a very grandsire of ancients
now--was one of the runaways who made the forest lodge a refuge. He had
been my father's body-servant, and, notwithstanding all the years that
lay between, he knew me at once.
Thereupon, as you would guess, I came immediately into some small
portion of my kingdom. Though Darius was the patriarch, the other blacks
were also fugitives from Appleby Hundred; and for the son of Roger
Ireton there was instant vassalage and loyal service. But best of all,
on my first evening before the handful of fire in the great fire-place,
Darius brought me a package swathed in many wrappings of Indian-tanned
deerskin. It contained my father's sword, and, more precious than this,
a message from the dead. My father's farewell was written upon a leaf
torn from his journal, and was but a hasty scrawl. I here transcribe it.
_My Son:_
_I know not if this will ever come into your hands, but it and
my sword shall be left in trust with the faithful Darius. We
have made our ill-timed cast for liberty and it has failed, and
to-morrow I and five others are to die at the rope's end. I
bequeath you my sword--'tis all the tyrant hath left me to
devise--and my blessing to go with it when you, or another
Ireton, shall once more bare the true old blade in the sacred
cause of liberty._
_Thy father,_
_Roger Ireton._
You may be sure I conned these few brave words till I had them well by
heart; and later, when my voice was surer and my eyes less dim, I
summoned Darius and bade him tell me all he knew. And it was thus I
learned what I have here set down of my father's end.
The next day, all indecision gone, I rode to Queensborough to ascertain,
if so I might, how best to throw the weight of the good old Andrea into
the patriot scale, meaning to push on thence to Charlotte when I had got
the bearings of the nearest patriot force.
'Twas none so easy to learn what I needed to know; though, now I sought
for information, a curious thing or two developed. One was that this
light-horse outpost in our hamlet was far in advance of the army of
invasion--so far that it was dangersomely isolated, and beyond support.
Another was the air of secrecy maintained, and the holding of the troop
in instant readiness for fight or flight.
Why this little handful of British regulars should stick and hang so far
from Lord Cornwallis's main, which was then well down upon the Wateree,
I could not guess. But for the secrecy and vigilance there were good
reasons and sufficient. The patriot militia had been called out, and was
embodying under General Rutherford but a few miles distant near
Charlotte.
I had this information in guarded whispers from mine host of the tavern,
and was but a moment free of the tap-room, when I first saw Margery
Stair and so drank of the cup of trembling with madness in its lees.
She was riding, unmasked, down the high road, not on a pillion as most
women rode in that day, but upon her own mount with a black groom two
lengths in the rear. I can picture her for you no better than I could
for Richard Jennifer; but this I know, that even this first sight of her
moved me strangely, though the witching beauty of her face and the
proudness of it were more a challenge than a beckoning.
A blade's length at my right where I was standing in front of the
tavern, three redcoat officers lounged at ease; and to one of them my
lady tossed a nod of recognition, half laughing, half defiant. I turned
quickly to look at the favored one. He stood with his back to me; a man
of about my own bigness, heavy-built and well-muscled. He wore a
bob-wig, as did many of the troop officers, but his uniform was
tailor-fine, and the hand with which he was resettling his hat was
bejeweled--overmuch bejeweled, to my taste.
Something half familiar in the figure of him made me look again. In the
act he turned, and then I saw his face--saw and recognized it though
nine years lay between this and my last seeing of it across the body of
Richard Coverdale.
"So!" thought I. "My time has come at last." And while I was yet turning
over in my mind how best to bait him, the lady passed out of earshot,
and I heard him say to the two, his comrades, that foul thing which I
would not repeat to Jennifer; a vile boast with which I may not soil my
page here for you.
"Oh, come, Sir Frank! that's too bad!" cried the younger of the twain;
and then I took two strides to front him fairly.
"Sir Francis Falconnet, you are a foul-lipped blackguard!" I said; and,
lest that should not be enough, I smote him in the face so that he fell
like an ox in the shambles.
III
IN WHICH MY ENEMY SCORES FIRST
True to his promise, Richard Jennifer met me in the cool gray birthlight
of the new day at a turn in the river road not above a mile or two from
the rendezvous, and thence we jogged on together.
After the greetings, which, as you may like to know, were grateful
enough on my part, I would fain inquire how the baronet had taken his
second's defection; but of this Jennifer would say little. He had broken
with his principal, whether in anger or not I could only guess; and one
of Falconnet's brother officers, that younger of the twain who had cried
shame at the baronet's vile boast, was to serve in his stead.
It was such a daydawn as I have sometimes seen in the Carpathians; cool
and clear, but with that sweet dewy wetness in the lower air which
washes the over-night cobwebs from the brain, and is both meat and drink
to one who breathes it. On the left the road was overhung by the
bordering forest, and where the branches drooped lowest we brushed the
fragrance from the wild-grape bloom in passing. On the right the river,
late in flood, eddied softly; and sounds other than the murmuring of the
waters, the matin songs of the birds, and the dust-muffled hoof-beats of
our horses there were none. Peace, deep and abiding, was the key-note of
nature's morning hymn; and in all this sylvan byway there was naught
remindful of the fierce internecine warfare aflame in all the
countryside. Some rough forging of this thought I hammered out for
Jennifer as we rode along, and his laugh was not devoid of bitterness.
"Old Mother Nature ruffles her feathers little enough for any teapot
tempest of ours," he said. "But speaking of the cruelties, we provincial
savages, as my Lord Cornwallis calls us, have no monopoly. The
post-riders from the south bring blood-curdling stories of Colonel
Tarleton's doings. 'Tis said he overtook some of Mr. Lincoln's
reinforcements come too late. They gave battle but faint-heartedly,
being all unready for an enemy, and presently threw down their arms and
begged for quarter--begged, and were cut down as they stood."
"Faugh!" said I. "That is but hangman's work. And yet in London I heard
that this same Colonel Tarleton was with Lord Howe in Philadelphia and
was made much of by the ladies."
Jennifer's laugh was neither mirthful nor pleasant.
"'Tis a weakness of the sex," he scoffed. "The women have a fondness for
a man with a dash of the brute in him."
I laughed also, but without bitterness.
"You say it feelingly. Do you speak by the book?"
"Aye, that I do. Now here is my lady Madge preaching peace and all
manner of patience to me in one breath, and upholding in the next this
baronet captain who, though I would have seconded him at a pinch, is but
a pattern of his brutal colonel."
I put two and two together.
"So Falconnet is on terms at Appleby Hundred, is he?"
"Oh, surely. Gilbert Stair keeps open house for any and all of the
winning hand, as I told you."
The thought of this unspoiled young maiden having aught to do with such
a thrice-accursed despoiler of women made my blood boil afresh; and in
the heat of it I let my secret slip, or rather some small part of it.
"Sir Francis had ever a sure hand with the women," I said; and then I
could have bitten my masterless tongue.
"So?" queried Jennifer. "Then this is not your first knowing of him?"
"No." So much I said and no more.
We rode on in silence for a little space, and then my youthling must
needs break out again in fresh beseechings.
"Tell me what you know of him, and what it was he said of Madge," he
entreated. "You can't deny me now, Jack."
"I can and shall. It matters not to you or to any what he is or has
been."
"Why?"
"Because, as God gives me strength and skill, I shall presently run him
through, and so his account will be squared once for all with all
men--and all women, as well."
"God speed you," quoth my loyal ally. "I knew not your quarrel with him
was so bitter."
"It is to the death."
"So it seems. In that case, if by any accident he--"
I divined what he would say and broke in upon him.
"Nay, Dick; if he thrusts me out, you must not take up my quarrel. I
know not where you learned to twirl the steel, or how, but you may be
sure he would spit you like a trussed fowl in the first bout. I have
seen him kill a man who was reckoned the best short sword in my old
regiment of the Blues."
"Content yourself," said my young Hotspur, grandly. "If you spare him he
shall answer to me for that thing he said of Madge Stair; this though I
know not what it was he said."
I smiled at his fuming ardor, and glancing at the pair of pistols
hanging from his saddle-bow, asked if he could shoot.
"Indifferent well."
"Then make him challenge you and choose your own weapon. 'Tis your only
hope, and poor enough at that, I fear. I have heard he can clip a
guinea at ten paces."
From that we fell silent again, being but a little way from the
rendezvous, and so continued until, at a sudden turn in the road, we
came in sight of a rude barricade of felled trees barring the way.
Jennifer saw it first and pulled up short, loosing his pistols in their
cases as he drew rein.
"'Ware the wood!" he said sharply, and none too soon, for even as he
spoke the glade at our left filled as by magic with a motley troop
deploying into the road as to surround us.
"Now who are these?" I asked; "friends or foes?"
"Foes who will hang you in your own halter strap; Jan Howart's
Tories--the same that burned the Westcotts in their cabin a fortnight
since. Will your horse take that barricade, think you?"
"Aye,--standing, if need be."
"Then at them, in God's name. Charge!"
It needed but the word and we were in the thick of it. I remembered my
old field-marshal's maxim, _Von Feinden umringt, ist die Zeit zu
zerschmettern_; and truly, being so plentifully outnumbered, we did
strike both first and hard.
A line of the ragged horsemen strung itself awkwardly across the road to
guard the flimsy barricade, and at this we charged, stirrup to stirrup.
In the dash there was a scattering volley from the wood, answered
instantly by the bellowings of Jennifer's great pistols; and then we
came to the steel.
It was my first fleshing of the good old Andrea, and a better balanced
blade I had never swung in hand-to-hand mellay. As we closed with the
half-dozen defenders of the barrier, Jennifer reined aside to give me
room to play to right and left, and in the midst of it went nigh to
death because he held his hand to watch a cut and double thrust of mine.
"Over with you!" I shouted, pricking the man who would have mowed him
down with a great scythe handled as a sword.
Our horses took the barrier in a flying leap, straining themselves for
the race beyond. When we had pulled them down to a foot pace we were
safely out of rifle shot and there was space to count the cost.
There was no cost worth counting. A saddle horn bullet-shattered for me,
and the back of Jennifer's sword hand scored lightly across by another
of the random missiles summed up our woundings. Dick whipped out his
kerchief to twist about the scored hand, while I glanced back to see if
any Tory cared to follow.
"Lord, Jack! I owe you one to keep and one to pay back," quoth my
youngster, warmly. "I never saw a swordsman till this day!"
"Mere tricks, Dick, my lad; I have had fifteen years in which to learn
them. And these were but country yokels armed with farming tools. The
two with swords had little wit to use them."
"Oh, come!" said he. "I know a pretty bit of sword play when I see it.
If we come whole out of this adventure with the baronet you shall teach
me some of these 'mere tricks' of yours."
I promised, glancing back toward the dust-veiled barrier in the
distance.
"Dick, you passed this way an hour ago; was that breastwork in the road
then?"
"Not a stick of it."
"Then we may dare say our volunteer captain fights unwillingly."
"How so?" he demanded, being much too straightforward himself to suspect
duplicity in others.
"'Tis plain enough. This was a trap, meant to stop or delay us, and I'll
wager high it was the baronet who set and baited it. It would please him
well to be able to say what our failure to come would give him warrant
for. Let us gallop a bit, lest we be late and so play into his hand."
Jennifer smiled grimly and gave his horse the rein. "I think you'd
charge the Fall of Man to him if that would give you better leave to
kill him. I'd hate to own you for my enemy, John Ireton."
For all our swift speeding we were yet a little late at the rendezvous
under the tall oaks. When we came on the ground the baronet was walking
up and down arm in arm with his second, a broad-shouldered young Briton,
fair of skin and ruddy of face.
If Falconnet had set the Tory trap for us he veiled his disappointment
at its failure. His face, dark and inscrutable as it always was, was
made more sinister by the plasters knitting up his broken cheek, but I
was right glad to make sure that my blow had spared his eyes. Richly as
he deserved his fate, I thought it would be ill to think on afterward
that I had had him at a disadvantage of my own making.
There was little time wasted in the preliminaries. When Falconnet saw us
he dropped his second's arm and began to make ready. I gave my sword to
Jennifer, and the seconds went apart together. There was some measuring
and balancing of weapons, and then Richard came back.
"The baronet's sword is a good inch longer than yours in the blade, and
is somewhat heavier. Tybee has brought a pair of French short-swords
which he offers. Will you change your terms?"
"No; I am content to fight with my own weapon."
Jennifer nodded. "So I told him." And then: "There was no surgeon to be
had in town, Dr. Carew having gone with the Minute Men to join Mr.
Rutherford. Tybee says 'tis scarce in accordance with the later rulings
to fight without one."
"To the devil with their hairsplittings!" said I. "Let us have done with
them and be at it."
Falconnet was removing his coat, and I stripped mine. The seconds chose
the ground where the turf was short and firm, and yet yielding enough to
give good footing. We faced each other, my antagonist baring an arm
which, despite the bejeweled hand, was to the full as big-muscled as my
own. My glance went from his weapon, a rather heavy German blade,
straight and slender-pointed, to his face. He was smiling as one who
strives to make the outer man a mask to cover all emotion, and the
plasters on his cheek drew the smile into a grimace that was all but
devilish.
The seconds fell back, but when Jennifer would have given the signal I
stopped him.
"One moment, if you please. Sir Francis Falconnet, you know me?"
The thin-lidded eyes were veiled for an instant, and then he lied
smoothly.
"Your pardon, Captain Ireton; I have not that honor."
"'Tis a small matter, but you do lie this morning as basely as you lied
to Richard Coverdale nine years agone," said I; and then I signed
Jennifer to give the word.
"Attention, gentlemen! On guard!"
My enemy's sword leaped to meet mine, and at the same instant I heard
another click of steel betokening that the seconds had fallen to in a
bit of by-play between themselves, as was then the fashion. After that I
heard nothing for a time save the sibilant whisperings of the Ferara and
the German long-sword, and saw nothing save the fierce eyes glaring at
me out of the midst of the plaster-marred smile.
Recreant though he was, I must do my adversary the justice to say that
he was a skilful master of fence, agile as a French dancer, and withal
well-breathed and persevering. Twice, nay, thrice, before I found my
advantage he had pricked me lightly with that extra inch of slender
point. But when I had fairly felt his wrist I knew that his heavier
weapon would shortly prove his undoing; knew that the quick parry and
lightning-like thrust would presently lag a little, and then I should
have him.
Something of this prophecy of triumph he must have read in my eyes, for
on the instant he was up and at me like a madman, and I had my work well
cut out to hold him at the blade's length. I was so holding him; was, in
my turn, beginning to press him slowly, when there came a drumming of
hoofbeats on the soft turf, and then a woman's cry.
I looked aside, and to my dying day I shall swear that my antagonist did
likewise. What I saw was Mistress Margery Stair riding down upon us at a
hand-gallop, and I lowered my point, as any gentleman would.
In the very act--'twas while Jennifer was clutching at her bridle rein
to stay her from riding fair between us--I felt the hot-wire prick of
the steel in my shoulder and knew that my enemy had run me through as I
stood.
Of what befell afterward I have but dim memories. There were more
hoof-tramplings, and then I felt the dewy turf under my hands and soft
fingers tremblingly busy at my neckerchief. Then I saw swimmingly, as
through a veil of mist, a woman's face just above my own, and it was
full of horror; and I heard my enemy say: "'Twas most unfortunate and I
do heartily regret it, Mr. Jennifer. I saw not why he had lowered his
point. Can I say more?"
How Richard Jennifer made answer to this lie I know not; nor do I know
aught else, save by hear-say, of any further happening in that grassy
glade beneath my father's oaks. For the big German blade was a shrewd
blood-letter, and I fell asleep what time my lady was trying to stanch
with her kerchief the ebbing tide of life.
IV
WHICH MAY BE PASSED OVER LIGHTLY
When I came back to some clearer sensing of things, I found myself abed
in a room which was strange and yet strangely familiar. Barring a great
oaken clothes-press in one corner, a raree-show of curious china on the
shelves where the books should have been, and the face of an armored
soldier staring down at me from its frame over the chimney piece, where
I should have looked to see my mother's portrait, the room was a
counterpart of my old bedchamber at Appleby Hundred. There was even a
faint odor of lavender in the bed-linen; and the sense of smell, which
hath ever a better memory than any other, carried me swiftly back to my
boyhood, and to the remembrance that my mother had always kept a spray
or two of that sweet herb in her linen closet.
At the bedside there was a claw-footed table, which also had the look of
an old friend; and on it a dainty porringer, filled with cuttings of
fragrant sweetbriar. This was some womanly conceit, I said to myself;
and then I laughed, though the laugh set a pair of wolf's jaws at work
on my shoulder. For you must know that I had lived the full half of King
David's span of three-score and ten years, and more, and what womanly
softness had fallen to my lot had been well got and paid for.
I closed my eyes the better to remember what had befallen, and when I
opened them again was fain to wonder if the moment of back-reaching
stood not for some longer time. In the deep bay of the window was a
great chair of Indian wickerwork, and I could have sworn it had but now
been empty. Yet when I looked again a woman sat in it.
Now of a truth I had seen this woman's face but twice; and once it wore
a smile of teasing mockery and once was full of terror; but I thought I
should live long and suffer much before the winsome challenging beauty
of it would let me be as I had been before I had looked upon it.
She knew not that I was awake and slaking the thirst of my eyes upon the
sweetness of her, and so I saw her then as few ever saw her, I think,
with the womanly barriers of defense all down. 'Tis a hard test, and one
that makes a blank at rest of many a face beautiful enough in action;
but though this lady's face was to the full as changeful as any April
sky, it was never less than triumphantly beautiful.
I had said her eyes were blue, but now they were deep wells reflecting
the soft gray of the clouded sky beyond the window-panes. I had made
sure that her lips lent themselves most readily to mocking smiles
scornful of any wit less trenchant than her own; but now these mocking
lips were pensive, and with the rounded cheek and chin gave her the look
of a sweet child wanting to be kissed. I had said her hair was bright in
the sunlight, and so, indeed, it was; but lacking the sun it still held
the dull luster of burnished copper in its masses, and her simple,
care-free dressing of it at a time when _les grandes dames_ were
frizzing and powdering and adding art to art to mar the woman's crown of
glory, gave her yet more the look of a child.
Lastly, I had called her small, and certainly her figure was girlish
beside those grenadier dames of Maria Theresa's court to whom my old
field-marshal had once presented me. But when she rose and went to stand
in the window-bay I marked this; that not any duchess or margravine of
them all had a more queenly bearing, or, with all their stays and
furbelows, could match her supple grace and lissom figure.
What with the blood-lettings and the wound fever, coupled with the
subtle witchery of her presence thus in my sick room, it is little to be
wondered at that a curious madness came over me, or that I forgot for
the moment the loyalty due to my dear lad. Could I have stood before her
and, reading but half consent in the deep-welled eyes, have clipt her in
my arms and laid my lips to hers, I would have run to pay the price, in
earth or heaven or hell, I thought, deeming the fierce joy of it well
worth any penalty.
At this I should have stirred, I suppose, for she came quickly and
stood beside me.
"You have slept long and well, Captain Ireton," she said; and in all the
thrilling joy of her nearer presence I found space to mark that her
voice had in it that sweet quality of sympathy which is all womanly.
"They say I am good only to fetch and carry--may I fetch you anything?"
I fear the madness of the moment must still have been upon me, for I
said: "Since you are here yourself, dear lady, I need naught else."
At a flash I had my whipping in a low dipped curtsy and a mocking smile
like that she had flung to Falconnet.
"_Merci! mon Capitaine_," she said; and for all my wincings under the
sharp lash of her sarcasm I was moved to wonder how she had the French
of it. And then she added: "Is it the custom for Her Apostolic Majesty's
officers to come out of a death-swound only to pay pretty compliments?"
"'Twas no compliment," I denied; and, indeed, I meant it. Then I asked
where I was, and to whom indebted, though I had long since guessed the
answer to both questions.
In a trice the mocking mood was gone and she became my lady hostess,
steeped to her finger-tips in gracious dignity.
"You are at Appleby Hundred, sir. 'Twas here they fetched you because
there was no other house so near, and you were sorely hurt. Richard
Jennifer and my black boy made a litter of the saddle-cloths, and with
Sir Francis and Mr. Tybee to help--"
I think she must have seen that this thrust was sharper than that of the
German long-sword, for she stopped in mid-sentence and looked away from
me. And, surely, I thought it was the very irony of fate that I should
thus be brought half dead to the house that was my father's, with my
enemy and his second to share the burden of me.
"But your father?" I queried, when the silence had grown over-long.
"My father is away at Queensborough, so you must e'en trust yourself to
my tender mercies, Captain Ireton. Are you strong enough to have your
wound dressed?"
She asked, but waited for no answer of mine. Summoning a black boy to
hold the basin of water, she fell to upon the wound-dressing with as
little ado as if she had been a surgeon's apprentice on a battle-field,
and I a bloodless ancient too old to thrill at the touch of a woman's
hands.
"Dear heart! 'tis a monstrous ugly hurt," she declared, replacing the
wrappings with deft fingers. "How came you to go about picking a quarrel
with Sir Francis?"
"'Twas not of my seeking," I returned, and then I could have cursed my
foolish tongue.
"Is that generous, Captain Ireton? We hear something of the talk of the
town, and that says--"
"That says I struck him without sufficient cause. I am content to let it
stand so."
"Nay, but you should not be content. Is there not strife enough in this
unhappy land without these causeless bickerings?"
Here was my lady turned preacher all in a breath and I with no words to
answer her. But I could not let it go thus.
"I knew Sir Francis Falconnet in England," said I, hoping by this to
turn her safe aside.
"Ah; then there was a cause. Tell it me."
"Nay, that I may not."
Though she was hurting me sorely in the wound-dressing, and knew it, she
laughed.
"'Tis most ungallant to deny a lady, sir. But I shall know without the
telling; 'twas about a woman. Tell me, Captain Ireton, is she fair?"
Seeing that her mood had changed again, I tried to give her quip for
jest; but what with the pain of the sword-thrust and the sweet agony of
her touches I could only set my teeth against a groan. She went on
drawing the bandagings, little heedful how she racked me, I thought; and
yet when all was done she stood beside me all of a tremble, as any
tender-hearted woman might.
"There," she said; "'tis over for a time, and I make no doubt you are
glad enough. Now you have nothing to do save to lie quiet till it
heals."
"And how long will that be, think you?"
"We shall see; a long time, I hope. You shall be punished properly for
your hot temper, I promise you, Captain Ireton."
With that she left me and went to stand in the window-bay; and from
lying mouse-still and watching her over-steadily I fell asleep again.
When I awoke the day was in its gloaming and she was gone.
After this I saw her no more for six full circlings of the clock-hands,
and grew fair famished for a sight of her sweet face. But to atone, she,
or some messenger of Richard Jennifer's, brought me my faithful Darius,
and he it was who fetched me my food and drink and dressed my wound.
From him I gleaned that the master of Appleby Hundred had returned from
Queensborough, and that there were officers in red coats continually
going back and forth, always with a hearty welcome from Gilbert Stair.
Now, though the master of my stolen heritage had little cause to love
me, I thought he had still less to fear me; so it seemed passing strange
that he came not once to my bedchamber to pass the time of day with his
unbidden guest, or to ask how he fared. But in this, as in many other
things, I reckoned without my enemy, though I might have known that Sir
Francis would be oftenest among the red-coated officers coming and
going.
But stranger than this, or than my lady's continued avoidance of me, was
the lack of a visit from Richard Jennifer. Knowing well my dear lad's
loyalty to the patriot cause, I could only conjecture that he had
finally broken Margery's enforced truce to go and join Mr. Rutherford's
militia, which, as Darius told me, was rallying to attack a Tory
stronghold at Ramsour's Mill.
With this surmise I was striving to content myself on that evening of
the third day, when Mistress Margery burst in upon me, bright-eyed and
with her cheeks aflame.
"Captain Ireton, I will know the true cause of this quarrel which,
failing in yourself, you pass on to Richard Jennifer!" she cried. "Was
it not enough that you should get yourself half slain, without sending
this headstrong boy to his death?"
Now in all my surmisings I had not thought of this, and truly if she had
sought far and wide for a whip to scourge me with she could have found
no thong to cut so deep.
"God help me!" I groaned. "Has this fiend incarnate killed my poor lad?"
"No, he is not dead," she confessed, relenting a little. "But he has the
baronet's bullet through his sword-arm for the sake of your over-seas
disagreement with Sir Francis."
I could not tell her that though my quarrel with this villain was but
the avenging of poor Dick Coverdale's wrongs, Richard Jennifer's was for
the baronet's affront to her. So I bore the blame in silence, glad
enough to be assured that my dear lad was only wounded.
"Why don't you speak, sir?" she snapped, flying out at me in a passion
for my lack of words.
"What should I say? I have not forgot that once you called me
ungenerous."
"You should defend yourself, if you can. And you should ask my pardon
for calling my father's guest hard names."
"The last I will do right heartily. 'Twas but the simple truth, but it
was ill-spoken in your presence, Mistress Stair."
At this she laughed merrily; and in all my world-wanderings I had never
heard a sound so gladsome as this sweet laugh of hers when she would be
on the forgiving hand.
"Surely any one would know you are a soldier, Captain Ireton. No other
could make an apology and renew the offense so innocently in the same
breath." Then her mood changed again in the dropping of an eyelid, and
she sighed and said: "Poor Dick!"
As ever when she was with me, my eyes were devouring her; and at the
sigh and the trembling of the sweet lips in sympathy I found that
curious love-madness coming upon me again. Then I saw that I must
straightway dig some chasm impassable between this woman and me, as I
should hope to be loyal to my friend. So I said: "He loves you well,
Mistress Margery."
She glanced up quickly with a smile which might have been mocking or
loving; I could not tell which it was.
"Did he make you his deputy to tell me so, Captain Ireton?"
Now I might have known that she was only luring me on to some pitfall of
mockery, but I did not, and must needs burst out in some clumsy
disclaimer meant to shield my dear lad. And in the midst of it she
laughed again.
"Oh, you do amuse me mightily, _mon Capitaine_," she cried. "I do
protest I shall come to see you oftener. Tis as good as any play!"
"Saw you ever a play in this backwoods wilderness?" I asked, glad of any
excuse to change the talk and keep her by me.
"No, indeed. But you are not to think that no one has seen the great
world save only yourself, Captain Ireton. What would you say if I should
tell you that I, too, have seen your London, and even your Paris?"
Here I must blunder again and say that I had been wondering how else she
came by the Parisian French; but at this her jesting mood vanished
suddenly and she spoke softly.
"I had it of my mother, who came of the Huguenots. She spoke it always
to me. But my father speaks it not, and now I am losing it for want of
practice."
How is it that love transforms the once contemptible into a thing most
highly to be prized? My eight years of campaigning on the Continent had
given me the French speech, or so much of it as the clumsy tongue of me
could master, and I had always held it in hearty English scorn. Yet now
I was eager enough to speak it with her, and to take as my very own the
little cry of joy wherewith she welcomed my hesitant mouthing of it.
From that we fell to talking in her mother's tongue of the hardships of
those same Huguenot _émigrés_; and when I looked not at her I could
speak in terms dispassionate and cool of this or aught else; and when I
looked upon her my heart beat faster and my blood leaped quickly, and I
knew not always what it was I said.
After a time--'twas when Darius fetched me my supper and the
candles--she went away; and so ended a day which saw the beginning of a
struggle fiercer than any the turbaned Turk had ever given me. For when
I had eaten, and was alone with time to think, I knew well that I loved
this woman and should always love her; this in spite of honor, or
loyalty to Richard Jennifer, or any other thing in heaven or earth.
V
HOW I LOST WHAT I HAD NEVER GAINED
Though I dared not hope she would keep her promise and was sometimes so
sorely beset as to tremble at her coming, Margery looked in upon me
oftener, and soon there grew up between us a comradeship the like of
which, I think, had never been between a woman loved and a man who,
loving her, was yet constrained to play the part of her true lover's
friend.
If I played this part but stumblingly; if at times the madness of my
passion would not be denied the look or word or hand-clasp not of poor
cool friendship; I have this to comfort me: that in after time, when my
dear lad came to know, he forgave me freely--nay, held me altogether
blameless, as I was not.
Of what these looks and words and hand-clasps meant to Margery I had no
hint. But in my hours of sanity, when I would pass these slippings in
review, I could recall no answering flash of hers to salt the woundings
of the conscience-whip. So far from it, it seemed, as this sweet
comradeship budded and blossomed on the stock of a better acquaintance,
she came to hold me more as if I were some cross between a father or an
elder brother, and some closer confidant of her own sex.
You are not to understand that she was always thus, nor over-often. More
frequently that side of her which I soon came to call the mother's was
turned to me, and I was made to stand a target for her wit and raillery.
But she was ever changeful as a child, and in the midst of some light
jesting mood would sober instantly and give my age its due.
In some of these, her soberer times, I felt her lean upon me as my
sister might, had I had one; at others she would frankly set me in her
father's place, declaring I must tell her what to say or do in this or
that entanglement. Again, and this came oftener as our friendship grew,
she would talk to me as surely woman never talked to any but a kinsman,
telling me naïvely of her conquests, and sparing no gallant of them all
save only Richard Jennifer.
And of Dick and his devotion she spoke now and then, as well, though
never mockingly, as of the others. Nay, once when I pressed her on this
point, asking her plainly if my dear lad had not good cause to hope, she
would only smile and turn her face away, and say that of all the men she
knew the hopeful ones pleased her best. So I was thus assured that if it
were a scale for love to tip, my lady's heart would fall to Richard.
Now I took this to be a hopeful sign, that she would tell me freely of
these her little heart affairs; and seeing her so safe upon the side of
friendship, held the looser rein upon my own unchartered passion. So
long as I could keep my love well masked and hidden what harm could come
to her or any if I should give it leave to live in prison? None, I
thought; and yet at times was made a very coward by the thought. For
love, like other living things, will grow by what it feeds upon, and
once full-grown, may haply come to laugh at bonds, however strong or
cunningly devised.
With such a fever in my veins it was little wonder that my wound healed
slowly. As time passed by, with never a word of news from the world
without--if Margery knew aught of the fighting she would never lisp a
syllable to me--and with Gilbert Stair still keeping churlishly beyond
the sight or sound of me, I fretted sorely and would be gone.
Yet this was but a passing mood. When Margery was with me I was not
ill-content to eat the bread of sufferance in her father's house, and
angry pride had scanty footing. But when she was away this same pride
took sharp revenges, getting me out of bed to bully Darius into dressing
me that I might foot it up and down the room while I was still unfit for
any useful thing.
One morning in the summer third of June my lady came early and surprised
me at this business of pacing back and forth. Whereat she scolded me as
was her wont when I grew restive.
"What weighty thing have you to do that you should be so fierce to be
about it, Monsieur Impetuous?" she cried. "_Fi donc!_ you'd try the
patience of a saint!"
"Which you are not," I ventured. "But truly, Margery, I am growing
stronger now, and the bed does irk me desperately, if you must know.
Besides--"
"Well, what is there else besides? Do I not pamper you enough?"
I laughed. "I'll say whatever you would have me say--so it be not the
truth."
"I'll have you say nothing until you sit down."
She pushed the great chair of Indian wickerwork into place before the
window-bay, and when I was at rest she drew up a low hassock and sat at
my feet.
"Now you may go on," she said.
"You have not told me what you would have me say."
"The truth," she commanded.
"'"What is truth," said jesting Pilate,'" I quoted. "Why do you suppose
my Lord Bacon thought the Roman procurator jested at such a time and
place?"
"You are quibbling, Monsieur John. I want to know why you are so
impatient to be gone."
"Saw you ever a man worthy the name who could be content to bide
inactive when duty calls?"
"That is not the whole truth," she said, half absently. "You think you
are unwelcome here."
"'Twas you said that; not I. But I must needs know your father will be
relieved when he is safely quit of me."
"'Twas you said that, not I, Monsieur John," she retorted, giving me
back my own words. "Has ever word been brought you that he would speed
your parting?"
"Surely not, since I am still here. But you must know that I have never
seen his face, as yet."
"And is that strange? You must not forget that he is Gilbert Stair, and
you are Roger Ireton's son."
"I am not likely to forget it. But still a word of welcome to the
unbidden guest would not have come amiss. And it was none of my
seeking--this asylum in his house."
"True; but that has naught to do with any coolness of my father's."
"What is it, then?--besides the fact that I am Roger Ireton's son?"
"I think 'twas what you said to Mr. Pengarvin."
"That little smirking wretch? What has he to say or do in this?"
She looked away from me and said: "He is my father's factor and man of
affairs."
"Ah, I have always to be craving your pardon, Margery. But I said naught
to this parchment-faced--to this Mr. Pengarvin, that might offend your
father, or any."
"How, then, will you explain this, that you swore to drive my father
from Appleby Hundred as soon as ever you had raised a following among
the rebels?"
"'Tis easily explained: this thrice-accursed--oh, pardon me again, I
pray you; I will not name him any name at all. What I meant to say was
that he lied. I made no threats to him; to tell the plain truth, I was
too fiercely mad to bandy words with him."
"What made you mad, Monsieur John?"
"'Twas his threat to me--to taint me with my father's outlawry. Do you
greatly blame me, Margery?"
"No."
Thereat a silence came and sat between us, and I fell to loving her the
more because of it; but when she spoke I always loved her more for
speaking.
"My father has had little peace since coming here," she said, at length.
"He is old and none too well; and as for king and Congress, asks nothing
but his right to hold aloof. And this they will not give him."
Remembering what Jennifer had told me of Gilbert Stair's trimming, I
smiled within.
"That is the way of all the world in war-time, _ma petite_. A partizan
may suffer once for all, but both sides hold a neutral lawful prey."
'Twas as the spark to tinder; my word the spark and in her eyes the
answering flash.
"I tell him so!" she cried. "I tell him always that the king will have
his own again. But still he halts and hesitates; and when these rebels
come and quarter on us--"
I fear she must have seen my inward smile this time, for she broke off
in the midst, and I made haste to forestall her flying out at me.
"Oh, come, my dear; you should not be so fierce with him when you
yourself have brought a rebel to his house to nurse alive."
She looked me fairly in the eye. "You should be the last to remind me of
my treason, Monsieur John."
"Then you are free to call it treason, are you, Margery?" I said.
She looked away from me again. "How can it well be less than treason?"
Then suddenly she turned and clasped her hands upon my knee. "You must
not be too hard upon me, Monsieur John. I've tried to do my duty as I
saw it, and I have asked no questions. And yet I know much more than you
have told me."
"What do you know?"
"I know your wound has been your safety. If you should leave this room
and house to-day you would never wear the buff and blue again, Captain
Ireton."
"You mean they would hang me for a spy. Will you believe me, Margery, if
I say I have not yet worn the buff and blue at all?"
"_Oh_!" The little exclamation was of pure delight. "Then they were all
mistaken? You are no rebel, after all?"
Was ever man so tempted since the fall of Adam? As I have writ it down
for you in measured words, I was no more than half a patriot at this
time. And love has made more traitors than its opposites of lust or
greed. In no uncertain sense I was a man without a country; and this
fair maiden on the hassock at my feet was all the world to me. I saw in
briefer time than any clock hands ever measured how much a yielding word
might do for me; and then I thought of Richard Jennifer and was myself
again.
"Nay, little one," I said; "there has been no mistake. For their own
purposes my enemies have passed the word that I am here as the Baron de
Kalb's paid spy. That is no mistake; 'tis a lie cut out of whole cloth.
I came here straight from New Berne, and back of that from London and
the Continent, and scarcely know the buff and blue by sight. But I am
Carolina born, dear lady; and this King George's governor hanged my
father. So, when God gives me strength to mount and ride--"
"Now who is fierce?" she cried. And then, like lightning: "Will you
raise a band of rebels and come and take your own again?"
"You know I will not," I protested, so gravely that she laughed again,
though now there were tears, from what well-spring of emotion I knew
not, in her eyes.
"Oh, mercy me! Have you never one little grain of imagination, Monsieur
John? You are too monstrous literal for our poor jesting age." Then she
sobered quickly and added this: "And yet I fear that this is what my
father fears."
I did not tell her that he might have feared it once with reason, or
that now the houseless dog she petted should have life of me though mine
enemy should sick him on. But I did say her father had no present cause
to dread me.
"He thinks he has. And surely there is cause enough," she added.
I smiled, and, loving her the more for her fairness, must smile again.
"Nay, you have changed all that, dear lady. Truly, I did at first fly
out at him and all concerned for what has made me a poor pensioner in my
father's house--or rather in the house that was my father's. But that
was while the hurt was new. I have been a soldier of fortune too long to
think overmuch of the loss of Appleby Hundred. 'Twas my father's,
certainly; but 'twas never mine."
"And yet--and yet it should be yours, John Ireton." She said it bravely,
with uplifted face and eloquent eyes that one who ran might read.
"'Tis good and true of you to say so, little one; but there be two sides
to that, as well. So my father's acres come at last to you and Richard
Jennifer, I shall be well content, I do assure you, Margery."
She sprang up from her low seat and went to stand in the window-bay.
After a time she turned and faced me once again, and the warm blood was
in cheek and neck, and there was a soft light in her eyes to make them
shine like stars.
"Then you would have me marry Richard Jennifer?" she asked.
'Twas but a little word that honor bade me say, and yet it choked me and
I could not say it.
"Dick would have you, Margery; and Dick is my dear friend--as I am his."
"But you?" she queried. "Were you my friend, as well, is this as you
would have it?"
My look went past her through the lead-rimmed window-panes to the great
oaks and hickories on the lawn; to these and to the white road winding
in and out among them. While yet I sought for words in which to give her
unreservedly to my dear lad, two horsemen trotted into view. One of them
was a king's man; the other a civilian in sober black. The redcoat rode
as English troopers do, with a firm seat, as if the man were master of
his mount; but the smaller man in black seemed little to the manner
born, and daylight shuttled in and out beneath him, keeping time to the
jog-trot of his beast.
I thought it passing strange that with all good will to answer her,
these coming horsemen seemed to hold me silent. And, indeed, I did not
speak until they came so near that I could make them out.
"I am your friend, Margery mine; as good a friend as you will let me be.
And as between Richard Jennifer and another, I should be a sorry friend
to Dick did I not--"
She heard the clink of horseshoes on the gravel and turned, signing to
me for silence while she looked below. The window overhung the entrance
on that side, and through the opened air-casement I heard some
babblement of voices, though not the words.
"I must go down," she said. "'Tis company come, and my father is away."
She passed behind my chair, and, hearing her hand upon the latch, I had
thought her gone--gone down to welcome my enemy and his riding mate, the
factor. But while I was cursing my unready tongue and repenting that I
had not given her some small word of warning, she spoke again.
"You say 'Richard Jennifer or another.' What know you of any other,
Monsieur John?"
"Nay, I know nothing save what you have told me; and from that I have
been hoping there was no other."
"But if I say there may be?"
My heart went sick at that. True, I had thought to give her generously
to Dick, whose right was paramount; but to another--
"Margery, come hither where I may see you." And when she stood before me
like a bidden child: "Tell me, little comrade, who is that other?"
But now her mood was changed again, and from standing sweet and pensive
she fell a-laughing.
"What impudence!" she cried. "_Ma foi_! You should borrow Père
Matthieu's cassock and breviary; then, mayhap, I might confess to you.
But not before."
But still I pressed her.
"Tell me, Margery."
She tossed her head and would not look at me. "Dick Jennifer is but a
boy; suppose this other were a man full-grown."
"Yes?"
"And a soldier."
The sickness in my heart became a fire.
"O Margery! Don't tell me it is this fiend who came just now!"
All in a flash the jesting mood was gone, but that which took its place
was strange to me. Tears came; her bosom heaved. And then she would have
passed me but I caught her hands and held them fast.
"Margery, one moment: for your own sweet sake, if not for Dick's or
mine, have naught to do with this devil's emissary of a man. If you only
knew--if I dared tell you--"
But for once, it seemed, I had stretched my privilege beyond the limit.
She whipped her hands from my hold and faced me coldly.
"Sir Francis says you are a brave gentleman, Captain Ireton, and though
he knows well what you would be about, he has not sent a file of men to
put you in arrest. And in return you call him names behind his back. I
shall not stay to listen, sir."
With that she passed again behind my chair, and once again I heard her
hand upon the latch. But I would say my say.
"Forgive me, Margery, I pray you; 'twas only what you said that made me
mad. 'Tis less than naught if you'll deny it."
I waited long and patiently, and thought she must have gone before her
answer came. And this is what she said:
"If I must tell you then;'tis now two weeks and more since Sir Francis
Falconnet asked me to marry him. I--I hope you do feel better, Captain
Ireton."
And with these bitterest of all words to her leave-taking, she left me
to endure as best I might the hell of torment they had lighted for me.
VI
SHOWING HOW RED WRATH MAY HEAL A WOUND
It was full two days after the coming of the baronet and the
factor-lawyer Pengarvin before I saw my lady's face near-hand again, and
sometimes I was glad for Richard Jennifer's sake, but oftener would
curse and swear because I was bound hand and foot and could not balk my
enemy.
I knew Sir Francis and the lawyer still lingered on at Appleby
Hundred--indeed, I saw them daily from my window--and Darius would be
telling me that they waited upon the coming of some courier from the
south. But this I disbelieved. Some such-like lie the baronet might have
told, I thought; but when I saw him walk abroad with Margery on his arm,
pacing back and forth beneath the oaks and bending low to catch her
lightest word with grave and courtly deference that none knew better how
to feign, I knew wherefore he stayed--knew and raged afresh at my own
impotence, and for the thought that Margery was wholly at the mercy of
this devil.
Yours is a colder century than was ours, my dears. Your art has tempered
love and passion into sentiment, and hate you have learned to call
aversion or dislike. But we of that simple-hearted elder time were more
downright; and I have writ the word I mean in saying that my love was at
the mercy of this fiend.
I know not how it is or why, but there are men who have this gift--some
winning way to turn a woman's head or touch her heart; and I knew well
this gift was his. 'Twas not his face, for that was something less than
handsome, to my fancy; nor yet his figure, though that was big and
soldierly enough. It was rather in some subtlety of manner, some power
of simulation whereby in any womanly heart he seemed to stand at will
for that which he was not.
As I have said, I knew him well enough; knew him incapable of love apart
from passion, and that to him there was no sacredness in maiden chastity
or wifely vows. So he but gained his end he cared no whit what followed
after; ruin, broken hearts, lost souls, a man slain now and then to keep
the scale from tipping--all were as one to him, or to the Francis
Falconnet I knew.
And touching marriage, with Margery or any other, I feared that love
would have no word to say. Passion there might be, and that fierce
desire to have and wear which burns like any miser's fever in the blood;
but never love as lovers measure it. Why, then, had he proposed to
Margery? The answer did not tarry. Since he was now but a gentleman
volunteer it was plain that he had squandered his estate, and so might
brook the marriage chain if it were linked up with my father's acres.
It was a bait to lure such a gamester strongly. As matters stood with us
in that wan summer of exhaustion and defeat, the king's cause waxed and
grew more hopeful day by day. And in event of final victory a landless
baronet, marrying Margery's dower of Appleby Hundred, might snap his
fingers at the Jews who, haply, had driven him forth from England.
And as for Margery? Truly, she had told me, or as good as told me, that
her maiden love had pledged itself a pawn for Jennifer's redeeming. But
there be other things than love to sway a woman's will. This volunteer
captain with the winning way was of the _haute noblesse_, and he could
make her Lady Falconnet. Moreover, he was with her day by day; and you
may mark this as you will; that a present suitor hath ever the trump
cards to play against the absent lover.
So, brooding over this, I wore out two most dismal days--the first in
many I had had to pass alone. But on the morning of the third the sky
was lightened, though then the light was but a flash and darkness
followed quickly after. She came again and brought me a visitor; it was
this same Father Matthieu with whom she had jestingly compared me, and
lest I should take my punishment too lightly, stayed but to make the
good priest known to me.
Now I was born and bred an heretic, by any papist's reckoning, but I
have ever held it witless in that man who lets a creed obstruct a
friendship. Moreover, this sweet-faced cleric was the friendliest of
men; friendly, and yet the wiliest Jesuit of them all, since he read me
at a glance and fell straightway to praising Margery.
"A truly sweet young demoiselle," he said, by way of foreword, no sooner
was the door closed behind her, and while he preached a sermon on this
text I grew to know and love him.
He was a little man, as bone and muscle go, with deep-set eyes, and
features kind and mild and fine as any woman's; some such face as
Leonardo gave St. John, could that have been less youthful. I could not
tell his order, though from his well-worn cassock girded at the waist
with a frayed bit of hempen cord he might have been a Little Brother of
the Poor. But this I noted; that he was not tonsured, and his white
hair, soft and fine as Margery's, was like an aureole to the finely
chiseled features. As missionary men of any creed are apt, he looked far
older than he really was; and when he came to tell me of his life among
the Indians, it was patent how the years had multiplied upon him.
I listened, well enough content to learn him better by his own report.
"But you must find it thankless work; this gospeling in the wilderness,"
I ventured, when all was said. "'Tis but a hermit's life for any man of
parts; and after all, when you have done your utmost, your converts are
but savages, as they were."
At this he smiled and shook his head. _"Non, Monsieur_, not so. You are
a soldier and can not see beyond your point of sword. _Mais, mon ami_,
they have souls to save, these poor children of the forest, and they are
far more sinned against than sinning. I find them kind and true and
faithful; and some of them are noble, in their way."
I laughed. "I've read about those noble ones," I said. "'Twas in a book
called 'Hakluyt's Voyages.' Truly, I know them not as you do, for in my
youth I knew them most in war. We called them brave but cruel then; and
when I was a boy I could have shown you where, within a mile of this,
they burned poor Davie Davidson at the stake."
"Ah, yes; there has been much of that," he sighed. "But you must
confess, Captain Ireton, that you English carry fire and sword among
them, too."
From that he would have told me more about the savages, but I was
interested nearer home. As I have said, I was like any prisoner in a
dungeon for lack of news, and so by degrees I fetched him round to
telling me of what was going on beyond my window-sight of lawn and
forest.
Brave deeds were to the fore, it seemed. At Ramsour's Mill, a few miles
north and west, some little handful of determined patriots had bested
thrice their number of the king's partizans, and that without a leader
bigger than a county colonel. Lord Rawdon, in command of Lord
Cornwallis's van, had come as far as Waxhaw Creek, but, being
unsupported, had withdrawn to Hanging Rock. Our Mr. Rutherford was on
his way to the Forks of Yadkin to engage the Tories gathering under
Colonel Bryan. As yet, it seemed, we had no force of any consequence to
take the field against Cornwallis, though there were flying rumors of an
army marching from Virginia, with a new-appointed general at its head.
On the whole it was the king's cause that prospered, and the rising wave
of invasion bade fair to inundate the land. So thought my kindly gossip;
and, having naught to gain or lose in the great war, or rather having
naught to lose and everything to gain, whichever way these worldly cards
might run, he was a fair, impartial witness.
As you may well suppose, this news awoke in me the lust of battle, and I
must chafe the more for having it. And while my visitor talked on, and I
was listening with the outward ear, my brain was busy putting two and
two together. How came it that the British outpost still remained at
Queensborough, with my Lord Rawdon withdrawn and the patriot home guard
well down upon its rear? Some urgent reason for the stay there must be;
and at that I remembered what Darius had told me of its captain's
waiting for some messenger from the south.
I scored this matter with a question mark, putting it aside to think on
more when I should be alone. And when the priest had told me all the
news at large, we came again to speak of Margery.
"I go and come through all this borderland," he said, when I had asked
him how and why he came to Appleby Hundred, "but it was mam'selle's
message brought me here. She is my one ewe lamb in all this region, and
I would journey far to see her."
I wondered pointedly at this, for in that day the West was fiercely
Protestant and the Mother Church had scanty footing in the borderland.
"But Mistress Margery is not a Catholic!" said I.
His look forgave the protest in the words.
"Indeed, she is, my son. Has she not told you?"
Now truly she had not told me so in any measured word or phrase; and yet
I might have guessed it, since she had often spoken lovingly of this
same Father Matthieu. And yet it was incredible to me.
"But how--I do not understand how that can be," I stammered. "Surely,
she told me she was of Huguenot blood on the mother's side, and that
is--"
The missionary's smile was lenient still, but full of meaning.
"Not all who wander from the Catholic fold are lost forever, Captain
Ireton. The mother of this demoiselle lived all her life a Protestant, I
think, but when she came to die she sent for me. And that is how her
child was sent to France and grew up convent-bred. Monsieur Stair gave
his promise at the mother's death-bed, and though he liked it not, he
kept it."
"Aha, I see. And for this single lamb of your scant fold you brave the
terrors of our heretic backwoods? It does you credit, Father Matthieu.
The war fills all horizons now, mayhap, but I have seen the time in
Mecklenburg when your cassock would have been a challenge to the mob."
His smile was quite devoid of bitterness. "The time has not yet passed,"
he said, gently. "I have been six weeks on the way from Maryland hither,
hiding in the forest by day and faring on at night. Indeed, I was in
hiding on a neighboring plantation when our demoiselle's messenger found
me."
This put me keen upon remembering what had gone before; how he had said
at first that she had sent for him. I thought it strange, knowing how
perilous the time and place must be for such as he. But not until he
rose and, bidding me good day, left me to myself, did I so much as guess
the thing his coming meant. When I had guessed it; when I put this to
that--her telling me Sir Francis had proposed for her, and this her
sending for the priest--the madness of my love for her was as naught
compared to that anger which seized and racked me.
I know not how the hours of this black day were made to come and go,
grinding me to dust and ashes in their passage, yet leaving me alive and
keen to suffer at the end.
A thousand times that day I lived in torment through the scene in which
the priest had doubtless come to play his part of joiner. The stage for
it would be the great room fronting south; the room my father used to
call our castle hall. For guests I thought there would be space enough
and some to spare, for, as you know, our Mecklenburg was patriot to the
core. But as to this, the bridegroom's troopers might fill out the tale,
and in my heated fancy I could see them grouped beneath the
candle-sconces with belts and baldrics fresh pipe-clayed, and shakos
doffed, and _sabretaches_ well in front. "A man full-grown--a soldier,"
she had said; and trooper-guests were fitting in such case.
From serving in a Catholic land I knew the customs of the Mother Church.
So I could see the priest in cassock, alb and stole as he would stand
before some makeshift altar lit with candles. And as he stands they come
to kneel before him; my winsome Margery in all her royal beauty, a child
to love, and yet an empress peerless in her woman's realm; and at her
side, with his knee touching hers, this man who was a devil!
What wonder if I cursed and choked and cursed again when the maddening
thought of what all this should mean for my poor wounded Richard--and
later on, for Margery herself--possessed me? In which of these hot
fever-gusts of rage the thought of interference came, I know not. But
that it came at length--a thought and plan full-grown at birth--I do
know.
The pointing of the plan was desperate and simple. It was neither more
nor less than this: I knew the house and every turn and passage in it,
and when the hour should strike I said I should go down and skulk among
the guests, and at the crucial moment find or seize a weapon and fling
myself upon this bridegroom as he should kneel before the altar.
With strength to bend him back and strike one blow, I saw not why it
might not win. And as for strength, I have learned this in war: that so
the rage be hot enough 'twill nerve a dying man to hack and hew and stab
as with the strength of ten.
Although it was most terribly over-long in coming, the end of that black
day did come at last, and with it Darius to fetch my supper and the
candles. You may be sure I questioned him, and, if you know the blacks,
you'll smile and say I had my labor for my pains--the which I had. His
place was at the quarters, and of what went on within the house he knew
no more than I. But this he told me; that company surely was expected,
and that some air of mystery was abroad.
When he was gone I ate a soldier's portion, knowing of old how ill a
thing it is to take an empty stomach into battle. For the same cause I
drank a second cup of wine,--'twas old madeira of my father's
laying-in,--and would have drunk a third but that the bottle would not
yield it.
It was fully dark when I had finished, and, thinking ever on my plan,
would strive afresh to weld its weakest link. This was the hazard of the
weapon-getting. With full-blood health and strength I might have gone
bare-handed; but as it was, I feared to take the chance. So with a
candle I went a-prowling in the deep drawers of the old oaken
clothes-press and in the escritoire which once had been my mother's, and
found no weapon bigger than a hairpin.
It was no great disappointment, for I had looked before with daylight in
the room. Besides, the wine was mounting, and when the search was done
the hazard seemed the less. So I could rush upon him unawares and put my
knee against his back, I thought the Lord of Battles would give me
strength to break his neck across it.
At that I capped the candles, and, taking post in the deep bay of the
window, set myself to watch for the lighting of the great room at the
front. This had two windows on my side, and while I could not see them,
I knew that I should see the sheen of light upon the lawn.
The night was clear but moonless, and the thick-leafed masses of the
oaks and hickories rose a wall of black to curtain half the hemisphere
of starry sky. As always in our forest land, the hour was shrilly vocal,
though to me the chirping din of frogs and insects hath ever stood for
silence. Somewhere beyond the thicket-wall an owl was calling
mournfully, and I bethought me of that superstition--old as man, for
aught I know--of how the hooting of an owl betokens death. And then I
laughed, for surely death would come to one or more of those beneath my
father's roof within the compass of the night.
Behind the close-drawn curtain, though I could see it not, the virgin
forest darkened all the land; and from afar within its secret depths I
heard, or thought I heard, the dismal howling of the timber wolves.
Below, the house was silent as the grave, and this seemed strange to me.
For in the time of my youth a wedding was a joyous thing. Yet I would
remember that these present times were perilous; and also that my
bridegroom captained but a little band of troopers in a land but now
become fiercely debatable.
It must have been an hour or more before the sound of distance-muffled
hoofbeats on the road broke in upon the chirping silence of the night. I
looked and listened, straining eye and ear, hearing but little and
seeing less until three shadowy horsemen issued from the curtain-wall of
black beneath my window.
It was plain that others watched as well as I, for at their coming a
sheen of light burst from the opened door below, at which there were
sword-clankings as of armed men dismounting, and then a few low-voiced
words of welcome. Followed quickly the closing of the door and silence;
and when my eyes grew once again accustomed to the gloom, I saw below
the horses standing head to head, and in the midst a man to hold them.
"So!" I thought; "but three in all, and one of them a servant. 'Twill be
a scantly guested wedding." And then I raged within again to think of
how my love should be thus dishonored in a corner when she should have
the world to clap its hands and praise her beauty.
At that, and while I looked, the lawn was banded farther on by two
broad beams of light; and then I knew my time was come.
Feeling my way across the darkened chamber I softly tried the
door-latch. It yielded at the touch, but not the door. I pulled and
braced myself and pulled again. 'Twas but a waste of strength. The door
was fast with that contrivance wherewith my father used to bar me in
what time I was a boy and would go raccooning with our negro hunters. My
enemy was no fool. He had been shrewd enough to lock me in against the
chance of interruption.
I wish you might conceive the helpless horror grappling with me there
behind that fastened door; but this, indeed, you may not, having felt it
not. For one dazed moment I was sick as death with fear and frenzy and I
know not what besides, and all the blackness of the night swam sudden
red before my eyes. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the madness left
me cool and sane, as if the fit had been the travail-pain of some new
birth of soul. And after that, as I remember, I knew not rage nor haste
nor weakness--knew no other thing save this; that I had set myself a
task to do and I would do it.
My window was in shape like half a cell of honeycomb, and close beside
it on the outer wall there grew an ancient ivy-vine which more than once
had held my weight when I was younger and would evade my father's
vigilance.
I swung the casement noiselessly and clambered out, with hand and foot
in proper hold as if those youthful flittings of my boyhood days had
been but yesternight. A breathless minute later I was down and afoot on
solid ground; and then a thing chanced which I would had not. The man
whom I had called a servant turned and saw me.
"Halt! Who goes there?" he cried.
"A friend," said I, between my wishings for a weapon. For this servant
of my prefigurings proved to be a trooper, booted, spurred and armed.
"By God, I think you lie," he said; and after that he said no more, for
he was down among the horses' hoofs and I upon him, kneeling hard to
scant his breath for shoutings.
It grieves me now through all these years to think that I did kneel too
hard upon this man. He was no enemy of mine, and did but do--or seek to
do--his duty. But he would fight or die, and I must fight or die; and so
it ended as such strivings will, with some grim crackling of ribs--and
when I rose he rose not with me.
With all the fierce excitement of the struggle yet upon me, I stayed to
knot the bridle reins upon his arm to make it plain that he had fallen
at his post. That done, I took his sword as surer for my purpose than a
pistol; and hugging the deepest shadow of the wall, approached the
nearer window. It was open wide, for the night was sultry warm, and from
within there came the clink of glass and now a toast and now a trooper's
oath.
I drew myself by inches to the casement, which was high, finding some
foothold in the wall; and when I looked within I saw no wedding guests,
no priest, no altar; only this: a table in the midst with bottles on it,
and round it five men lounging at their ease and drinking to the king.
Of these five two, the baronet and the lawyer, were known to me, and I
have made them known to you. A third I guessed for Gilbert Stair. The
other two were strangers.
VII
IN WHICH MY LADY HATH NO PART
Seeing that I had taken a man's life for this, the chance of looking in
upon a drinking bout, you will not wonder that I went aghast and would
have fled for very shame had not a sudden weakness seized me. But in the
midst I heard a mention of my name and so had leave, I thought, to stay
and listen.
It was one of the late-comers who gave me this leave; a man well on in
years, grizzled and weather-beaten; a seasoned soldier by his look and
garb. Though his frayed shoulder-knot was only that of a captain of
foot,'twas plain enough he ranked his comrade, and the knight as well.
"You say you've bagged this Captain Ireton? Who may he be? Surely not
old Roger's son?"
"The same," said the baronet, shortly, and would be filling his glass
again. He could always drink more and feel it less than any sot I ever
knew.
"But how the devil came he here? The last I knew of him--'twas some
half-score years ago, though, come to think--he was a lieutenant in the
Royal Scots."
Mine enemy nodded. "So he was. But afterward he cut the service and
levanted to the Continent."
The questioner fell into a muse; then he laughed and clapped his leg.
"Ecod! I do remember now. There was a damned good mess-room joke about
him. When he was in the Blues they used to say his solemn face would
stop a merry-making. Well, after he had been in Austria a while they
told this on him; that his field-marshal had him listed for a majority,
and so he was presented to the empress. But when Maria Theresa saw him
she shrieked and cried out, '_Il est le père aux têtes rondes, lui-même!
Le portez-vous dehors!_' So he got but a captaincy after all; ha! ha!
ha!"
Now this was but a mess-room gibe, as he had said, cut out of unmarred
cloth, at that. Our Austrian Maria ever had a better word than
"roundhead" for her soldiers. But yet it stung, and stung the more
because I had and have the Ireton face, and that is unbeloved of women,
and glum and curst and solemn even when the man behind it would be
kindly. So when they laughed and chuckled at this jest, I lingered on
and listened with the better grace.
"What brought him over-seas, Sir Francis?" 'Twas not the grizzled jester
who asked, but the younger officer, his comrade.
Falconnet smiled as one who knows a thing and will not tell, and turned
to Gilbert Stair.
"What was it, think you, Mr. Stair?" he said, passing the question on.
At this they all looked to the master of Appleby Hundred, and I looked,
too. He was not the man I should have hit upon in any throng as the
reaver of my father's estate; still less the man who might be Margery's
father. He had the face of all the Stairs of Ballantrae without its
simple Scottish ruggedness; a sort of weasel face it was, with pale-gray
eyes that had a trick of shifty dodging, and deep-furrowed about the
mouth and chin with lines that spoke of indecision. It was not of him
that Margery got her firm round chin, or her steadfast eyes that knew
not how to quail, nor aught of anything she owed a father save only her
paternity, you'd say. And when he spoke the thin falsetto voice matched
the weak chin to a hair.
"I? Damme, Sir Francis, I know not why he came--how should I know?" he
quavered. "Appleby Hundred is mine--mine, I tell you! His title was well
hanged on a tree with his damned rebel father!"
A laugh uproarious from the three soldiers greeted his petulant
outburst; after which the baronet enlightened the others.
"As you know, Captain John, Appleby Hundred once belonged to the rebel
Roger Ireton, and Mr. Stair here holds but a confiscator's title. 'Tis
likely the son heard of the war and thought he stood some chance to come
into his own again."
"Oh, aye; sure enough," quoth the elder officer, tilting his bottle
afresh. And then: "Of course he promptly 'listed with the rebels when he
came? Trust Roger Ireton's son for that."
My baronet wagged his head assentingly to this; then clinched the lie in
words.
"Of course; we have his commission. He is on De Kalb's staff, 'detached
for special duty.'"
"A spy!" roared the jester. "And yet you haven't hanged him?"
Sir Francis shrugged like any Frenchman. "All in good time, my dear
Captain. There were reasons why I did not care to knot the rope myself.
Besides, we had a little disagreement years agone across the water;
'twas about a woman--oh, she was no mistress of his, I do assure
you!"--this to quench my jester's laugh incredulous. "He was keen upon
me for satisfaction in this old quarrel, and I gave it him, thinking
he'd hang the easier for a little blooding first."
Here the factor-lawyer cut in anxiously. "But you will hang him, Sir
Francis? You've promised that, you know."
I did not hate my enemy the more because he turned a shoulder to this
little bloodhound and quite ignored the interruption.
"So we fought it out one morning in Mr. Stair's wood-field, and he had
what he came for. Not to give him a chance to escape, we brought him
here, and as soon as he is fit to ride I'll send him to the colonel.
Tarleton will give him a short shrift, I promise you, and then"--this
to the master of Appleby Hundred--"then your title will be well quieted,
Mr. Stair."
At this the weather-beaten captain roared again and smote the table till
the bottles reeled.
"I say, Sir Frank, that's good--damned good! So you have him crimped
here in his own house, stuffing him like a penned capon before you wring
his neck. Ah! ha! ha! But 'tis to be hoped you have his legs well tied.
If he be any son of my old mad-bull Roger Ireton, you'll hardly hang him
peacefully like a trussed fowl before the fire."
The baronet smiled and said: "I'll be your warrant for his safety! We've
had him well guarded from the first, and to-night he is behind a barred
door with Mr. Stair's overseer standing sentry before it. But as for
that, he's barely out of bed from my pin-prick."
Having thus disposed of me, they let me be and came to the graver
business of the moment, with a toast to lay the dust before it. It was
Falconnet who gave the toast.
"Here's to our bully redskins and their king--How do you call him,
Captain Stuart? Ocon--Ocona--"
"Oconostota is the Chelakee of it, though on the border they know him
better as 'Old Hop.' Fill up, gentlemen, fill up; 'tis a dry business,
this. Allow me, Mr. Stair; and you, Mr.--er--ah--Pengarden. This same
old heathen is the king's friend now, but, gentlemen all, I do assure
you he's the very devil himself in a copper-colored skin. 'Twas he who
ambushed us in '60, and but for Attakullakulla--"
"Oh, Lord!" groaned Falconnet. "I say, Captain, drown the names in the
wine and we'll drink them so. 'Tis by far the easiest way to swallow
them."
By this, the grizzled captain's mention of the old Fort Loudon massacre,
I knew him for that same John Stuart of the Highlanders who, with
Captain Damaré, had so stoutly defended the frontier fort against the
savages twenty years before; knew him and wondered I had not sooner
placed him. When I was but a boy, as I could well remember, he had been
king's man to the Cherokees; a sort of go-between in times of peace, and
in the border wars a man the Indians feared. But now, as I was soon to
learn, he was a man for us to fear.
"'Tis carried through at last," he went on, when the toast was drunk.
And then he stopped and held up a warning finger. "This business will
not brook unfriendly ears. Are we safe to talk it here, Mr. Stair?"
It was Falconnet who answered.
"Safe as the clock. You passed my sentry in the road?"
"Yes."
"He is the padlock of a chain that reaches round the house. Let's have
your news, Captain."
"As I was saying, the Indians are at one with us. 'Twas all fair sailing
in the council at Echota; the Chelakees being to a man fierce enough to
dig the hatchet up. But I did have the devil's own teapot tempest with
my Lord Charles. He says we have more friends than enemies in the border
settlements, and these our redskins will tomahawk them all alike."
I made a mental note of this and wondered if my Lord Cornwallis had met
with some new change of heart. He was not over-squeamish as I had known
him. Then I heard the baronet say:
"But yet the thing is done?"
"As good as done. The Indians are to have powder and lead of us, after
which they make a sudden onfall on the over-mountain settlements. And
that fetches us to your part in it, Sir Frank; and to yours, Mr. Stair.
Your troop, Captain, will be the convoy for this powder; and you, Mr.
Stair, are requisitioned to provide the commissary."
There was silence while a cat might wink, and then Gilbert Stair broke
in upon it shrilly.
"I can not, Captain Stuart; that I can not!" he protested, starting from
his chair. "'Twill ruin me outright! The place is stripped,--you know it
well, Sir Francis,--stripped bare and clean by these thieving rebel
militia-men; bare as the back of your hand, I tell you! I--"
But the captain put him down in brief.
"Enough, Mr. Stair; we'll not constrain you against your will. But 'tis
hinted at headquarters that you are but a fair-weather royalist at
best--nay, that for some years back you have been as rebel as the rest
in this nesting-place of traitors. As a friend--mind you, as a friend--I
would advise you to find the wherewithal to carry out my Lord's
commands. Do you take me, Mr. Stair?"
The trembling old man fell back in his chair, nodding his "yes" dumbly
like a marionette when the string has been jerked a thought too
violently, and his weasel face was moist and clammy. I know not what
double-dealing he would have been at before this, but it was surely
something with the promise of a rope at the publishing of it.
So he and his factor fell to ciphering on a bit of paper, reckoning ways
and means, as I took it, while Falconnet was asking for more particular
orders.
"You'll have them from headquarters direct," said Stuart. "Oconostota
will furnish carriers, a Cherokee escort, and guides. The rendezvous
will be hereabouts, and your route will be the Great Trace."
"Then we are to hold on all and wait still longer?"
"That's the word: wait for the Indians and your cargo."
Falconnet's oath was of impatience.
"We've waited now a month and more like men with halters round their
necks. The country is alive with rebels."
Whereupon Captain Stuart began to explain at large how the northern
route had been chosen for its very hazards, the better to throw the
partizans off the scent. I listened, eager for every word, but when the
horses stirred behind me I was set back upon the oft-recurrent
under-thought of how the gloom did also hide a silent figure lying
prone, with the three bridle reins knotted round its wrist.
But though the unnerving under-thought would not begone, the scene
within the great room held me fast by eye and ear. The master and his
factor sat apart, their heads together over the knotty problem of
subsistence for the convoy troop. At the table-end, with the bottle
gurgling now at one right hand and now at another, the three king's men
drank confusion to the rebels, and in the intervals discussed the
powder-convoy's route across the mountains. The senior plotter had some
map or chart of his own making, and he was pricking out on it for
Falconnet the route agreed upon in council with the Cherokees.
At this cool outlaying of the working plan, some proper sense of what
this plot of savage-arming meant to every undefended cabin on the
frontier seized and thrilled me. I knew, as every border-born among us
knew, the dismal horrors of an Indian massacre; and this these men were
planning was treacherous murder on an unwarned people. All was to be
done in midnight secrecy. Supplied with ammunition, the Cherokees, led
by this Captain Stuart or some other, were first to fall upon the
over-mountain settlements. These laid waste, the Indians were to form a
junction with the army of invasion, and so to add the torch and tomahawk
and scalping knife to British swords and muskets.
It was a plot to make the blood run cold in my veins, or in the veins of
any man who knew the cruel temper of these savages; and when I thought
upon the fate of my poor countrymen beyond the mountains, I saw what lay
before me.
The settlers must be warned in time to fight or fly.
But while I listened, with every faculty alert to reckon with the task
of rescue, I take no shame in saying that the problem balked me. Lacking
the strength to mount and ride in my own proper person, there was
nothing for it but to find a messenger; and who would he be in a region
at the moment distraught with war's alarums, and needing every man for
self-defense?
At that, I thought of Jennifer. True, he was wounded, too; but he would
know how best to pass the word to those in peril. I made full sure he'd
find a way if I could reach him; and when I had it simmered down to
this, the problem simplified itself. I must have speech with Dick before
the night was out, though I should have to crawl on hands and knees the
half-score miles to Jennifer House.
Having decided, I was keen to be about it while the night should
last--the friendly darkness, and some fine flush of excitement which
again had come at need to take the place of healthful vigor. But when I
would have quit the window to begone upon my errand a sober second
thought delayed me. If my simple counterplot should fail, some knowledge
of the powder-convoy's route would be of prime importance. Lacking the
time to warn the over-mountain men, the next best thing would be to set
some band of patriot troopers upon the trail and so to overtake the
convoy. Nay, on this second thought's rehearsing the last expedient
seemed the better of the two, since thus the plot would come to naught
and we would be the gainers by the capture of the powder.
So now you know why I should stick and hang by toe and finger-tip and
glare across the little space that gaped between my itching fingers and
the bit of parchment passed from hand to hand around the table's end. If
I could make a shift to rob them of this map--
It was a desperate chance, but in the frenzy of the moment I resolved to
take it. Their placings round the table favored me. Gilbert Stair and
the lawyer sat fair across from me, but they were still intent upon
their figurings. Of the trio at the table's end, the baronet and the
captain had their backs to me. The younger officer sat across, and he
was staring broadly at my window, though with wine-fogged eyes that saw
not far beyond the bottle-neck, I thought.
My one hope hinged upon the boldness of a dash. If I could spring within
and sweep the two candlesticks from the table, there was a chance that I
might snatch the parchment in the darkness and confusion and escape as I
had come.
So I began by inches to draw me up and feel for some better launching
hold. But in the midst, for all my care and caution, I slipped and lost
my grip upon the casement; lost that and got another on the wooden
shutter opened back against the outer wall, and then went down, pulling
the shutter from its rusted hinges in crashing clamor fit to rouse the
dead.
As if they were quick echoes, other crashings followed as of chairs
flung back; and then the window just above me filled with crowding
figures. I marvel that I had the wit to lie quiet as I had fallen, but I
had; and those above, looking from a lighted room into the belly of the
night, saw nothing. Then Captain Stuart shouted to his dragoon
horse-holder.
"Ho! Tom Garget; this way, man!" he cried; and when he had no answer,
put a leg across the window seat to clamber out. 'Twas in the very act,
while I was watching catlike every movement, that I saw the precious
scrap of parchment in his hand.
Here was the chance I had prayed for. Tom Garget's sword had clattered
down beside me, and with it I sprang afoot and cut a whizzing circle by
my doughty captain's ear that made him cringe and gasp and all but
tumble out upon me. The bit of parchment fluttered down and in a trice I
had it safe.
You may think small of me, if so you must, my dears, when I confess what
followed after. No man is braver than his opportunity, and I had little
stomach for a fight with three unwounded men. Hence it was narrowed now
to a bold sortie for the horses, and this I made while yet the captain
hung in air and sought his foothold.
With all my breathless haste it was not done too soon, nor soon enough.
When I had quickly freed a horse from the dead hand that held it
tethered, and was making shift to climb into the saddle, they thronged
upon me; the captain from his window, the others pouring hotly through
the gaping doorway.
I made shift to get astride the horse, to prick the poor beast with the
point of sword, and so to break away in some brief dash beneath the
oaks. But it was a chase soon ended. As I remember, I was reeling in the
saddle what time the foremost of them overtook me. I held on grimly till
the horse pursuing lapped the one I rode by head, by neck and presently
by withers. Then I turned and would be making frantic-feeble passes with
the sword at the man upon his back.
It was my plotting captain who rode me thus to earth; and when I thrust
he laughed and swore, and turned the blade aside with his bare hand.
Then, pressing closer, he struck me with his fist, and thereupon the
night and all its happenings went blank as if the blow had been a cannon
shot to crush my skull.
VIII
IN WHICH I TASTE THE QUALITY OF MERCY
Two ways there be to fetch a stunned man to his senses, as they will
tell you who have seen the rack applied: one is to slack the tension on
the cracking joints and minister cordials to the victim; the other to
give the straining winch a crueller twist. It was not the gentler way my
captors took, as you would guess; and when I came to know and see and
feel again a pair of them were kicking me alive, and I was sore and
aching from their buffetings.
How long a time came in between my futile dash for liberty and this
harsh preface to their dragging of me back to the manor house, I could
not tell. It must have been an hour or more, for now a gibbous moon hung
pale above the tree-tops, and all around were bivouac fires and horses
tethered to show that in the interval a troop had come and camped.
The scene within the great fore-room of the house had been shifted, too.
A sentry was pacing back and forth before the door--a Hessian grenadier
by the size and shako of him; and when the two trooper bailiffs thrust
me in, and I had winked and blinked my eyes accustomed to the
candle-light, I saw the table had been swept of its bottles and glasses,
and around it, sitting as in council, were some half-score officers of
the British light-horse with their colonel at the head.
As it chanced, this was my first sight near at hand of that British
commander whose name in after years the patriot mothers spoke to fright
their children. He did not look a monster. As I recall him now, he was a
short, square-bodied man, younger by some years than myself, and yet
with an old campaigner's head well set upon aggressive shoulders. His
eyes were black and ferrety; and his face, well seasoned by the Carolina
sun, was swart as any Arab's. A man, I thought, who could be
gentle-harsh or harsh-revengeful, as the mood should prompt; who could
make well-turned courtier compliments to a lady and damn a trooper in
the self-same breath.
This was that Colonel Banastre Tarleton who gave no quarter to
surrendered men; and when I looked into the sloe-black eyes I saw in
them for me a waiting gibbet.
"So!" he rapped out, when I was haled before him. "You're the spying
rebel captain, eh? Are you alive enough to hang?"
His lack of courtesy rasped so sorely that I must needs give place to
wrath and answer sharply that there was small doubt of it, since I could
stand and curse him.
He scowled at that and cursed me back again as heartily as any
fishwife. Then suddenly he changed his tune.
"They tell me you were in the service once and left it honorably. I am
loath to hang a man who has worn the colors. Would it please you best to
die a soldier's death, Captain Ireton?"
I said it would, most surely.
He said I should have the boon if I would tell him what an officer on
the Baron de Kalb's staff should know: the strength of the Continentals,
the general's designs and dispositions, and I know not what besides. I
think it was my laugh that made him stop short and damn me roundly in
the midst.
"By God, I'll make you laugh another tune!" he swore. "You rebels are
all of a piece, and clemency is wasted on you!"
"Your mercy comes too dear; you set too high a price upon it, Colonel
Tarleton. If, for the mere swapping of a rope for a bullet, I could be
the poor caitiff your offer implies, hanging would be too good for me."
"If that is your last word--But stay; I'll give you an hour to think it
over."
"It needs not an hour nor a minute," I replied. "If I knew aught about
the Continental army--which I do not--I'd see you hanged in your own
stirrup-leather before I'd tell you, Colonel Tarleton. Moreover, I
marvel greatly--"
"At what?" he cut in rudely.
"At your informant's lack of invention. He might have brought me
straight from General Washington's headquarters while he was about it.
'Twould be no greater lie than that he told you."
He heard me through, then fell to cursing me afresh, and would be
sending an aide-de-camp hot-foot for Falconnet.
While the messenger was going and coming there was a chance for me to
look around like a poor trapped animal in a pitfall, loath to die
without a struggle, yet seeing not how any less inglorious end should
offer. The eye-search went for little of encouragement; there was no
chance either to fight or fly. But apart from this, the probing of the
shadows revealed a thing that set me suddenly in a fever, first of rage,
and then of apprehension.
As I have said, this gathering-room of our old house was in size like an
ancient banquet hall. It had a gable to itself in breadth and height,
and at the farther end there was a flight of some few steps to reach the
older portion of the house beyond. The upper end of this low stair
pierced the thick wall of the older house, and in the shadows of the
niche thus formed I saw my lady Margery.
She was standing as one who looks and listens; and my rage-fit blazed
out upon the descrying of a shadowy figure of a man behind her; a man I
guessed in jealous wrath to be the baronet--a reasonless suspicion,
since the volunteer captain would certainly have made his presence known
when his colonel had called for him. But while my heart was yet afire my
lady moved aside as if to have a better sight of us below; and then I
saw it was the priest behind her.
While I was watching her, and we were waiting yet upon the
aide-de-camp's return, there was a stir without, and when it reached the
door the sentry challenged. Some confab followed, and I overheard enough
to tell me that a scouting party had come in, bringing a prisoner. The
colonel bade me stand aside, and passed the word to fetch the prisoner
before him. When the thing was done I set my teeth upon a groan. For it
was Richard Jennifer.
Luckily, he did not single me out among the bystanders, being fresh come
from the night without to the glare of candle-light within; and while
the swart-faced colonel plied him with questions I had a chance to look
him up and down. Though his arm was still in its sling, he was seemingly
the better of his wound. There was a glow of health and strength
returning in cheek and eye, and I thought him handsomer than ever what
time he stood forth boldly and fronted down the bullying colonel.
Knowing the Jennifer stock and its fine scorn of subterfuge, I feared it
would go hard with Richard; and so, indeed, it had gone, lacking a word
in season from an enemy. When Tarleton would have made him choose
between the taking of the king's oath and captivity in the hulks at
Charleston, a burly Hessian captain at the table spoke the word in
season.
"_Verdammt!_ mine Colonel; I vill know dis Mr. Yennifer. He is a prave
yoong schalavags, and he is not gone out mit der rebels. Give him to me
for mine plunders."
The colonel laughed and showed his teeth. Having one man to hang he
could afford to be lenient with another.
"What will you do with him, Captain Lauswoulter? By the look of him he'd
make but indifferent sausage-meat."
"Vat shall I do mit him? I shall make him mine best bows and send him
home, py Gott! Ve did had some liddle troubles mit der cards, and ven
mine foot was slipped on dis _verdammt_ grease-grass, he did not run me
t'rough so like he might."
"Oh; an affair of honor? Well, we'll count that in his favor. Take him
away, Trelawny, and quarter yourself and twenty men upon him at Jennifer
House. You have your parole, Mr. Jennifer; but by the Lord, if you break
it by so much as a wink or a nod, Trelawny will hang you to your own
ridge-pole."
Given a hearing, Jennifer would have spoiled it all by swearing hotly he
had given no parole, but at the word the colonel roared him down like a
bull of Bashan, and in the hubbub my brave lad was hustled out.
Though I was full to bursting with my news there was nothing I could do;
and when it was fairly over and he was gone, I was right glad he had not
seen me. For I knew well his steel-true loyalty, and that at sight of me
in trouble he would have lost his slender chance of guarded liberty,
and with it my last hope of sending word across the mountains; though,
as for that, the hope was well-nigh dead at any rate.
While Jennifer's guard and quota were mounting at the door the
aide-de-camp returned, and that without the baronet. I caught but here
and there a word of his report; enough to gather that the captain-knight
was not yet in from posting out the sentries.
I made no doubt his absence was designed. He would have Margery believe
that he had spared me honorably as an enemy wounded, and so had left me
to the tender mercies of his colonel, well assured that Tarleton would
not spare me. And this the colonel did not mean to do, as I was now to
hear in brief.
"You put a bold front on, Captain Ireton, but 'tis to no purpose, this
time," he began. "'Tis charged against you that you rode here from the
baron's camp with your commission in your pocket, and came and went
within our lines like any other spy. You are a soldier, sir, and you
know that's hanging. Yet I will hear you if you've anything to say."
I made so sure that I should hang in any case that it seemed foolish to
answer, and so I saved my breath. Withal he was the terror of our
Southland, this tyrant colonel gave me time to consider; and while he
waited, grim and silent, the candles on the table guttered and ran down,
and the dim light failed till I could no longer see the face of her I
loved framed in the archway of the stair.
I thought it hard that I had seen my last of her sweet face thus through
thickening shadows, as a dream might fade. Nevertheless, I would be glad
that I had seen her thus, since otherwise, I thought, I must have gone
without this last or any other sight of her.
It was while I was still straining my eyes for one more glimpse of her,
and while the court room silence deepened dense upon us like the
shadows, that Colonel Tarleton signed to those who guarded me. A hand
was laid upon my shoulder, but when I would have turned to go with them
a woman's cry cut sharp into the stillness. Then, before any one could
say a word or think a thought, my dauntless little lady stood beside me,
her eyes alight and all her glorious beauty heightened in a blaze of
generous emotion.
"For shame! Colonel Tarleton," she cried. "Do you come thus into my
father's house and take a wounded guest and hang him? You say he is a
spy, but that he can not be, for he has lain abed in this same house a
month or more. You shall not hang him!"
At this there was a mighty stir about the table, as you may guess; and
some would smile, and some would snuff the candles for a better sight of
her sweet face. And through it all, the while my heart went near to
bursting at this fresh proof of her most fearless loyalty, I ground my
teeth in wrath that all those men should look their fill and say by wink
and nod and covert smile that this were somewhat more than hostess
loyalty.
But it was the colonel's mocking smile that lashed me sharpest; his
smile and what he said; and yet not that so much as what he left to be
inferred.
"Ha! How is this, Mistress Margery? Do you keep open house for the
king's enemies? That spells treason, my dear young lady, and hath an
ugly look for you, besides."
"It should have no look at all, save that of hospitality, sir," she
countered, bravely. "Surely I may plead for justice to a wounded man who
was, and is, my father's guest?"
"And yet he is a spy, and spies must hang."
"He is no spy."
The colonel's bow made but a mock of true politeness.
"You should not make me contradict a lady, Mistress Margery. 'Tis
evident you have not all his confidence. He was captured red-handed in
the act at yonder window, listening to that which he may never know and
live to prate about. Besides, he killed a sentry for his chance to
listen, and for that I'd hang him if he were my own father's guest."
So much he said as mild as if he had not left his reading of the law to
figure in our annals as King George's butcher. Then in a sudden gust of
rage he turned upon the priest, cursing him brutally and threatening
vengeance for his bringing of the lady to the court room.
My brave one stood a moment, shocked as she had warrant for. Then,
before the priest or I or any one could stop her, she ran to throw
herself upon her knees at Colonel Tarleton's feet--to kneel and plead
for me as I would gladly have died a thousand deaths rather than have
her plead; for life for me, or if not that, at least for some brief
respite that the priest might shrive me.
And in the end she won the respite, though I did think it far too dearly
bought. When he granted it the colonel lifted her and took her hand,
bowing low over it with courtly deference. "For your sake, Mistress
Margery, it shall be put off till morning," he said; then gave the
order: At dawn they would march me out and hang me, and I would best be
ready. For later than the sunrise of a new day the king himself might
not delay my taking off.
"You know too much, my cursing Captain," was his parting word. "Were it
not for Mistress Margery and my promise, you should not keep the breath
to tell it over night."
IX
HOW A GOLDEN KEY UNLOCKED A DOOR
Having my dismissal and reprieve I was remanded to the custody of that
young Lieutenant Tybee whom you have met and known as Falconnet's second
in the duel. Interpreting his orders liberally, he suffered me to keep
my own room for the night. I had expected manacles and a roommate guard
at the least, but my gentlemanly jailer spared me both. When he had me
safe above-stairs, he barred the door upon me, set a sentry pacing back
and forth in the corridor without, and another to keep an eye upon the
window from below, and so left me.
There was no great need for either sentry, or for bolts and bars. What
with the night's adventures and my scarce-healed wound, I was far sped
on that road which ends against the blind wall of exhaustion, as you may
well suppose. For while a man may borrow strength of wine or rage or
passion, these lenders are but pitiless usurers and will demand their
pound of flesh; aye, and have it, too, when all the principal is spent.
So, when Tybee barred the door and left me with a single candle to my
lighting, I was fain to fall upon the bed in utter weariness, thinking
that the respite bought by my sweet lady's humbling was more dearly
bought than ever, and that the truest mercy would have been the rope and
tree without this interval of waiting.
To me in this grim Doubting Castle of despair the priest came. He was a
good man and a true, this low-voiced missioner to the savages, and he
would be a curster man than I who failed to give him his due meed of
praise and love. For in this dismal interval of waiting, with death so
sure and near that all the air was growing chill and lifeless at its
presence, he was a ready help in time of need. If I were "heretic" to
him, I swear I knew it not for aught he said or did; and though I
trusted that when my time was come I should stand forth with some small
simple-hearted show of courage, yet when he went away I felt I was the
stronger for his coming. And this, mark you, though I was still
unshriven, and he had never named the churchly rite to me.
When he was gone I fell to wearing out the time afoot; and, lest you
think me harder than I was, it may be said that while I did not make
confession to the kindly priest, I hope I tried to make my peace with
God in some such simpler fashion as our forebears did. 'Twas none so
great a matter, for one who lives a soldier's life must needs be ripe
for plucking hastily.
But in the final casting of accounts there was an item written down in
red, and one in black, and these would not be scored across for all the
travail of a soul departing. The one in black was bitter sorrow for the
fate from which I might not live to save my loved one; the one in red
was this; that I should die and carry hence the knowledge that might
else nip the Indian onfall in the bud.
No sooner was the priest away than I began to upbraid myself because I
had not told him of this British-Indian murder plan. And yet on second
thought 'twas clear that it had been but a poor shifting of the burden
to weaker shoulders; and thankless, too, for Tarleton would be sure to
put him on the question-rack to make him tell of all that passed between
us.
As I had let him go, he would have naught to tell, and so was safe,
where otherwise he might be hanged or buried in the hulks for knowing
what I knew. No, it were best he knew it not; but how was I to rid me of
this burden?--of this and of that other laid upon me for my love?
The question asked itself a many a time, and was as often answerless,
before there came a stir without and voices in the corridor. It was the
changing of the guard, I guessed, and so it proved, since presently I
heard the clanking of the officer's sword, and double footfalls
minishing into silence.
The sentry newly come paced back and forth to a low-hummed quick-step of
his own, bestirring himself as one who, roused but now from sleep,
would wake himself and be alert. He made more noise than did the other,
and that is why I marked it when the footfalls ceased abruptly. A moment
afterward the bar was lifted cautiously from its socket, the latch
clicked gently, and the door swung open. I looked, and must needs look
again to make assurance sure. For on the threshold stood my lady
Margery, and just behind her some broad figure of a woman whom I knew
for her stout Norman tiring-maid.
She gave me little time for any word of welcome or of deprecation. While
still I stood amazed she dragged the woman in with her and closed the
door. At that I found my tongue.
"Margery! Why have you come?" I spoke in French, and she was quick to
lay a finger on her lip.
"Speak to me in English, if you please," she whispered. "Jeanne knows
nothing, and she need not know. But you ask why I come: could I do less
than come, dear friend?"
I had always marveled that she could be so mocking hard at times, and at
other times--as now--so soft and gentle. And though I thought it cruel
that I should have to fight my battle for the losing of her over again,
I had not the heart to chide her.
"You could have done much less, dear lady," I said, taking her hands in
mine; "much less, and still be blameless. You have done too much for me
already. I would you had not done so much, I would to God I had been
hanged before you went upon your knees to that--"
She freed one hand and laid a finger on my lip--nay, it was her palm,
and if I took a dying man's fair leave and kissed it softly, I think she
knew it not.
"Hush!" she commanded. "Is this a time to harbor bitter thoughts? I
thought you might have other things to say to me, Monsieur John."
"There is no other thing that I may say."
"Not anything at all?"
"Naught but a parting hope for you. I hope you will be true and loyal to
yourself, Margery _mia_."
"To myself? I do not understand."
"I think you do--I think you must."
"But I do not."
I turned it over more than once in my mind if I should tell her all I
had feared; should tell her how I came to kill a man and was fair set to
kill another had I found a wedding afoot in the great fore-room. I could
not bring myself to do it, and yet I thought it would go hard with me if
I should leave her still unwarned.
"If I should try to make you understand, you will be angry, as you were
before."
The wicker chair was close beside the table and she sat down. And when
she spoke she had her hands tight-clasped across her knee and would not
look at me.
"Is it--about--Sir Francis?"
"It is," said I, pausing once more upon the brink of full confession.
She waited patiently for me to speak further; waited and let me fight it
out in slow pacings up and down before her chair. Without, the night was
calm and still, and through the opened casement came the measured beat
of footfalls on the gravel where the outer sentry kept his watch beneath
the window. Within, the single candle battled feebly with the gloom and
lighted naught for me save my dear lady's face, pensive now and saintly
sweet as it had been that morning when I had dwelt upon it the while she
knew it not. And in the background stood the sleepy tire-woman, giving
no sign of life save now and then a tortured yawn behind her hand.
I think my lady must have known how hard it was for me to speak, for,
when the silence had grown overlong, she said, gently: "I bought these
flying minutes of the sentry, Monsieur John. Will you not use them?"
"If I should say the thing I ought to say, you'll think the minutes
dearly bought, I fear."
"No, that I shall not, if it will ease your mind."
"Then tell me why you sent for Father Matthieu."
The light was dim, as I have said, yet I could see the faint flush
spread from neck to cheek.
"You are not of the Church, Monsieur John. You would not understand if I
should tell you."
"I think I understand without your telling. You said Sir Francis
Falconnet had asked for you."
"'Twas you who drove me to say it."
"Because I tried to warn you?"
"Because you would be vengeful when you should have been forgiving."
"'Twas not revenge, just then, though while I live I shall have ample
cause to hate this man."
"What was it, then?"
"It was love; love for you, and--and Richard Jennifer."
She rose, and I could see her eyes ashine for all the half-gloom of the
candle-light.
"You are a loyal friend!" she said, and there was that within the words
to make me glad, whatever fate the dawn should have in store for me.
"You always think of others first; you think of others now, when--when
death--Oh, Monsieur John! what can I do for you? Say quick! The man is
coming to the door!"
"Now I have told you this, there is but one other thing, Margery dear;
one little thing that will not let me die in peace. If I might have ten
words with Richard Jennifer--"
She left me in a fever-flutter of excitement, whipped to the door, and
had a word with him who stood without. I heard the chink of coin, and
then she hastened back to me, all eagerness and tremulous impatience.
"Tell me--tell me instantly what I must do. I am not afraid. Shall I
ride down to Jennifer House and fetch Dick here?"
"He is a prisoner, and if he were not, they would not let him see me.
Besides, I would not let you go on such an errand. And yet--God help me,
Margery! there is many an innocent life hanging on this; the lives of
helpless women and little children. Have you ever a messenger to send, a
man who will risk his life and can be trusted fully?"
"Yes, yes!" she cried. "Write it down for me and Dick shall have it.
Quick; for Our Lady's sake, be quick about it! _O Sancta Maria, mater.
Dei_--"
The low impassioned chant of the Roman litany was ringing in my ears as
I sat down to the table to write my message to Richard Jennifer. There
were quills and an ink-pot at hand, but no paper. I felt mechanically in
my pocket and found, not some old letter, as I hoped, but the crumpled
parchment map snatched and hidden when Captain Stuart had winced and
dropped it at the bidding of the whistling sword about his ears.
How it was they had not searched me for it, I know not; though haply the
captain did not guess how he had lost it. Be that as it might, I had it
safe, and Dick should have it safe, and use it, too, to some good
purpose, as I fondly hoped.
You'd hardly think from the slow and clumsy spinning of this tale that I
could crowd the narrative of all that I had seen and heard into a
niggard three-score words or less. But this I did, writing them upon the
margin of the captain's map, and noting in an added line the pricking
out of the powder convoy's route. And while my pen was looping on the
flourish to my name, my eager little lady seized the pounce-box, sanded
me the heavy trailings of the quill, snatched and hid the parchment in
her bosom, and was gone.
And but for this; that I heard the door-latch click behind her, and then
the heavy wooden bar fall into place, I might have thought the
happenings of the hour the unsubstantial fancies of a dream.
X
HOW A FORLORN HOPE CAME TO GRIEF
Although I could not hope to know the outcome of this desperate cast to
speed the warning to the over-mountain settlements--could never live to
know it, as I thought--I screened the candle and stood beside the open
window, not to see or hear, but rather from the lack of sight or sound
to gather some encouragement. For sure, I reasoned, if Margery's
messenger should fail to pass the sentries there would be clamor enough
to tell me of it.
So while the minutes of this safety-silence multiplied and there was
space for sober after-thought, I fell to casting up the chances of
success. Now that Margery was gone, and with her all the fine enthusiasm
that such devoted souls as hers do always radiate, it was plain enough
that nothing less than a miracle could bring success. Tarleton's Legion
was made up of veterans schooled well in border warfare, and though the
bivouac seemed but a camp of motionless figures fast manacled in
sleep--I could see them strewn like dead men round the smoldering
fires--I made no doubt the sentries were alert and wakeful. How then
was any messenger of Margery's to pass the lines, or, passing them, to
come at Jennifer, who by this time would be at Jennifer House, a
prisoner in all but name?
Chewing such wormwood thoughts as these, I watched and listened while
the measured minutes, circling slow on leaden wings, pecked at my heart
in passing, and despair, cold like a winter fog, had chilled me to the
bone. For now it came to me that while I would be saving life, mayhap I
had been periling it again. There was small doubt that if the messenger
were taken with my letter, his life would pay the forfeit. And if the
fear of death should make him tell who sent him and to whom he was
sent,--I had been careful so to word the letter as to shield my
correspondent,--both Margery and Dick would be involved.
'Tis worthy of remark how, building on the simplest supposition, we
seldom prophesy aright. For all my fine-spun theories the manner of the
thing that happened was all unlike the forecast. Suddenly, and in
silence, out of the ghostly shadows of the trees and into the wan
moonlight of the open space beneath my window, with neither shout nor
crash of sentry-gun to give me warning, came three figures riding
abreast--a man in trooper trappings on either hand, and on the led horse
sandwiched in between, a woman.
You may believe my heart went cold at the sight. I knew at once what she
had done--this fearless maid who would be loyal to her friend at any
cost. Having no messenger she could trust--she knew it well when she had
promised me--she had taken the errand upon herself, braving a hazard
that would have daunted many a man.
I thought the worst had surely now befallen, and wished a hundred times
that I had died before it came to this. But there was worse in store.
Her captors passed the word while yet I looked and choked with rage and
grief; and then the bivouac buzzed alive, and men came running, some
with arms and some with torches, these last to flash the light upon her
and to jeer and laugh. At length--it seemed an age to me--an officer
appeared to flog the rabble into order; then she was taken from her
horse and led into the house.
Anon the windows of the great fore-room flung bands of yellow torchlight
out upon the lawn, and I knew that Tarleton's court was set again. At
that the pains of hell gat hold upon me and I did pray as I had never
prayed before that God would grant me this one boon--to stand beside her
in this time of trial; to give me tongue of eloquence to tell them all
that she was innocent; to give me breath to swear she knew not why she
went, or what the message was she carried.
Yours is a skeptic age, my dears, and you have learned to scoff at
things you do not understand. But, so long as I shall live, I must
believe that agonizing plea was answered. While yet the anguish of it
wrung my soul there came a hasty trampling in the corridor, the
sentry's challenge, and then a quick unbarring of the door. I turned
upon my heel to face a young ensign come with two men at his back to
take me to the colonel.
They bound me well and strongly with many wrappings of stout cord before
they led me down. Nor must you think me broken-spirited because I let
them. In any other cause but this I hope I should have fought to die
unmanacled; but now I suffered gladly this little, seeing I had made my
dear lady suffer so greatly.
When we were come into the room below they let me stand beside her, as I
had prayed God they might; and when I stole a glance at her I was fain
to think my coming gave her courage and support. For you must know the
place was fair alive with men, and flaring light with torches; and they
had never offered her a chair.
The colonel stood apart, the center of a group of officers, and
Falconnet was with him. Hovering on the edges of the group, as if afraid
to show themselves too boldly in such a coil, were Gilbert Stair and
that smooth parchment-visaged knave, his factor. The while they thrust
me forth to take my place at Margery's side, the good old priest came
and would have joined us; but they would not suffer him.
[Illustration]
So we two stood alone together as we had stood before; but now my lady's
eyes were downcast, and her lips and cheeks were pale. Yet she was more
beautiful than I had ever seen her--so beautiful that I would swear
the sum of all the precious gifts in God's great universe might be
expressed for me in this; that I might die to save her from this shame
and agony.
When my guards had thrust me forward, the colonel made short work of our
fresh offense.
"'Twas a dastard's trick, my Captain--this tangling of the lady in your
treason," he began. "How did you get your speech with her?"
"That is none of your affair, Colonel Tarleton," I retorted boldly,
thinking that with such a man the shortest word were ever the best. "Yet
I may say that the lady knew not what she did, nor why. As for my
getting speech with her, she was not any way to blame. I tampered with
your sentry."
"By God, you lie!" was his comment on this. "She might have tampered
with the guard and so got leave to keep a midnight tryst with you, but
not you." And then to my poor frighted love: "Have you no shame,
Mistress Margery Stair?"
Now I have said that she was changeful as any child or April sky, but
never had I seen her pass from mood to mood as she did then. One moment
she stood a woman tremulous and tearful as any woman caught in desperate
deed; the next she became a goddess vilified, and if her look had been a
dagger I think her flashing eyes had killed him where he stood.
"You've found a way to make me speak, sir, and I wish you joy of it.
'Twas I who bribed your sentry, and I did go to Captain Ireton's room."
The colonel laughed and shot a gibe sharp at my enemy.
"How is this, Sir Francis. Did I not tell you you had thrust an inch or
so too high? By God, sir, I think you will come over-late, if ever you
do come at all. This captain-emeritus hath forestalled you beautifully."
As more than once before in this eventful night, the air went flaming
red before my eyes and helpless wrath came uppermost. I saw no way to
clear her, and had there been the plainest way, dumb rage would still
have held me tongue-tied. So I could only mop and mow and stammer, and,
when the words were found, make shift to blunder out that such an
accusation did the lady grievous wrong; that she had come attended and
at my beseeching, to take a message from a dying man to one who was his
friend.
For my pains I had a brutal laugh in payment; a laugh that, starting
with the colonel, went the rounds in jeering grins of incredulity. And
on the heels of it the colonel swore afresh, cursing me for a clumsy
liar.
"A likely story, that!" he scoffed. "Next you will say she knew not what
this message was."
"I said it once. She knew not what the message was, nor why I sent it."
I felt her eyes upon me as I spoke, and turned to find them full of
tearful pleading. "Oh, tell the truth!" she whispered. "Don't you see?
He has the letter!"
I looked, and sure enough he held it in his hand; and then I understood
the flash of irony in the sloe-black eyes of him.
"You lie clumsily, Captain Ireton, though it is a gentlemanly lie and
does you honor. But we have trapped you fairly and you may as well make
a clean breast of it. Your mistress knew very well what you would have
her do, and since she is your mistress, went to do it."
While he was speaking I had a thought white-hot from some forge-fire of
inspiration--a thought to tip an arrow of conviction and set it
quivering in the mark. I would not stop to measure it; to look aside at
her or any other lest one brief glance apart should send the arrow
wavering from its course. So I looked the colonel boldly in the eye and
drew the bow and sped the shaft.
"You think no other than a mistress would have done this, Colonel
Tarleton--that it was done for love? Well, so it was; but with the love
there went a duty."
"A duty, say you? How is that?"
I bowed as best I might, being so tightly bound; then fixed his eye
again.
"You had forgot that honor is not wholly dead, sir. This lady is my
wife."
XI
HOW A LIE WAS MADE THE VERY TRUTH
For some small instant I dared not loose my eye-grip on the colonel, to
glance aside at Falconnet, or Gilbert Stair, or at the woman close
beside me. If I had flinched or wavered, or let an eyelid droop but by
the thickness of a hair, this keen-eyed colonel would have been upon me
to cut the ground beneath my feet and leave me dangling by the lie.
But as it was, I faced him down; and winning him, won all. There was a
muttered oath from Falconnet, a tremulous cry of rage from where her
father stood; and then I sought my lady's eyes to read my sentence in
them.
She gave me but a glance, and though I tried as I had never tried before
to read her meaning it was hid from me. But this I marked; that she did
draw aside from me, and that her face was cold and still, and that her
lips were pressed together as if not all nor any should ever make her
speak again.
At this sharp crisis, when a look or word would cost me more than death
and my dear lady her honor, it was the colonel who, all unwittingly,
stood my friend. A breath of doubt upon my lie and we were lost; and
once I thought he would have breathed it. But he did not. Instead, he
broke out in a laugh, with a gibe flung first at Gilbert Stair and then
at Falconnet.
"God save us! I give you joy, Mr. Stair, and you, Sir Francis. These two
have duped you bravely. By heavens! Sir Frank; 'twas you who should have
had the sword thrust in the duel. In that event you might have stood in
Captain Ireton's shoes, and so had the priest fetched for your benefit."
Then he turned to Margery with a bow that had no touch of mockery in it.
"I crave your pardon, Madam; I knew not you were pleading for your
husband's life an hour ago. It grieves me that I may not spare him to
you longer than the night, but war is cruel at its best."
She stood like any statue done in cold Carrara while he spoke; and when
she made no sign he gave the word to recommit me.
"Take him away, Lieutenant Tybee, and see he has a bribe-proof man this
time to keep him company. Madam Ireton, I'll put you on your honor: you
may have access to him, but there must be no messages carried in or out.
To your quarters, gentlemen. We must ride far and hard to-morrow."
When his final word had set her free, my frozen maiden came to life and
ran to throw herself in helpless sobbings, not upon her father, as you
would think, but upon the good priest. And it was Father Matthieu who
led her, still crying softly, out of the throng and up the low stair;
and now I marked that all the rough soldiery stood aside and made way
for her with never a man among them to scoff or sneer or point a gibe.
At her going, Tybee drew his sword and cut the cord that bound me.
"These youngling cubs are over-cautious, Captain Ireton. We shall not
make it harder for each other than we must," he said, with bluff good
nature. And then: "Will you lead the way to your room, sir?"--this to
give the youngling cub another lesson, I suppose.
I walked beside him to the stair, and when I stumbled, being weak and
spent, he took my arm and steadied me, and I did think it kindly done.
At my own door he gave me precedence again, saying, with a touch of the
grateful Old World courtesy, "After you, sir," and standing aside to let
me enter first. When we were both within he touched upon the colonel's
mandate.
"I must obey my orders, Captain Ireton, but by your good leave I shall
not lock you up with any trooper; I'll stay with you myself."
I thought this still more kindly than aught he had done before, and so I
told him. But he put it off lightly.
"'Tis little enough any one can do for you, my friend, but I will do
that little as I can. You are like to have a visitor, I take it; if you
have, I'm sure 'twill be a comfort if your body-guard can be stone
blind and deaf."
So saying, he dragged the big wicker chair into the window-bay, planted
himself deep within it with his back to all the room, and so left me to
my own devices.
Being spent enough to sleep beneath the shadow of a gibbet, I threw
myself full-length upon the bed and was, I think, adrift upon the ebb
tide of exhaustion and forgetfulness when once again the shifting of the
wooden door-bar roused me. I rose up quickly, but Tybee was before me.
There was some low-voiced conference at the door; then Tybee came to me.
"'Tis Mr. Gilbert Stair," he said. "He has permission from the colonel
and insists that he must see you _solus_. I'll take your word and leave
you, if you like."
At first I hung reluctant, wanting little of the host who came so late
to see his guest. Then, as if a sudden flash of lightning had revealed
it, I realized, as I had not before, how I had set the feet of my dear
lady in a most hideous labyrinth of deception; how this lie that I had
told to bridge a momentary gap must leave her neither maid nor widow in
the morning.
"Yes, yes; for God's sake let him in, Mr. Tybee!" I burst out. "I am
fair crazed with weariness, and had forgot. 'Tis most important, I do
assure you."
The thing was done at once, and before I knew it I was alone with the
old man who, though he was my supplanter, was also Margery's father. He
entered cautiously, shielding his bedroom candle with his hand and
peering over it to make me out, as if his venturing in were not
unperilous. And I marked that when he put the candle down upon the
table, he edged away and felt behind him for the door as if to make sure
of his retreat in case of need.
"Sit down, Captain Ireton; sit down, I beg of you," he said, in his
thin, rasping treble. And when I had obeyed: "I think you must know what
I've come for, Captain Ireton?"
I said I could guess; and he began again, volubly now, as if to have it
over in the shortest space.
"'Twas not a gentlemanly thing for you to do, Captain Ireton--this
marrying of a foolish girl out of hand while you were here a guest; and
as for the priest that did it, I--I'll have him hanged before the army
leaves, I promise you. But now 'tis done, I hope ye're prepared to make
the best of it?"
I saw at once that his daughter had not yet confided in him; that he was
still entangled in my lie. So I thought it well to probe him deeper
while I might.
"What would you call 'the best' if I may ask?" said I, growing the
cooler with some better seeing of the way ahead.
"The marriage settlements!" he cried shrilly, coming to the point at
once, as any miser would. "'Tis the merest matter of form, as ye may
say, for your title to Appleby Hundred is well burnt out, I promise you.
But for the decent look of it you might make over your quitclaim to your
wife."
"Aye, truly; so I might."
"And so you should, sir; that you should, ye miserable, spying
runag"--he choked and coughed behind his hand and then began again
without the epithets. "'Tis the very least ye can do for her now, when
you have the rope fair around your curs--ahem--your--your rebel neck.
Only for the form's sake, to be sure, ye understand, for she'd inherit
after you in any case."
I saw his drift at last, and, not caring to spare him, sped the shaft of
truth and let it find the joint in his harness.
"'Tis as you say, Mr. Stair. But as it chances, Mistress Margery is not
my wife."
If I had flung the candle at him where he stood fumbling behind him for
the door-latch,'twould not have made him shrink or dodge the more.
"Wha--what's that ye say?" he piped in shrillest cadence. "Not married?
Then you--you--"
"I lied to save her honor--that was all. A wife might do the thing she
did and go scot free of any scandal; but not a maid, as you could see
and hear."
For some brief time it smote him speechless, and in the depth of his
astoundment he forgot his foolish fear of me and fell to pacing up and
down, though always with the table cannily between us. And as he
shuffled back and forth the thin lips muttered foolish nothings, with
here and there a tremulous oath. When all was done he dropped into a
chair and stared across at me with leaden eyes; and truly he had the
look of one struck with a mortal sickness.
"I think--I think you owe me something now beyond your keeping, Captain
Ireton," he quavered, at length, mumbling the words as do the palsied.
"Since you are Margery's father, I owe you anything a dying man can
pay," said I.
"Words; empty words," he fumed. "If it were a thing to do, now--"
"You need but name the thing and I will do it willingly."
Instead of naming it he shot a question at me, driving it home with
certain random thrustings of the shifty eyes.
"Who is your next of kin, Captain Ireton?"
"Septimus, of the same name, master of Iretondene, on the James River,
and a major in the Virginia line," I answered, wondering how my cousin
once removed should figure in the present coil. But Gilbert Stair's next
question dispelled the mystery.
"If you should die intestate, this Septimus would be your heir?"
"As next of kin, I should suppose he would. But I have nothing to
devise."
"True; and yet"--he paused again as if the wording of it were not easy.
"Be free to speak your mind, Mr. Stair," said I.
"'Tis this," he cried, gathering himself as with an effort. "You've
claimed my daughter as your wife before them all, and when you die
to-morrow morning you'll leave her neither wife nor maid. I think--I
think you'd best make that lie of yours the truth."
If one of his thin hands that clutched the chair arms had pressed a
secret spring and loosed a trap to send me gasping down an oubliette, I
should have been the less astounded. Indeed, for some short space I
thought him mad; yet, on second thought, I saw the method in his
madness. Could Margery be brought to view it calmly, this was a sword to
cut the knot of all entanglements.
As matters stood, the world would call her widow at my death; and since
a woman is first of all the keeper of her own good name, she would never
dare aver the truth. So in common justice she should own the name the
world would call her by. Again, as matters stood, no wrong could come of
it to her, or Richard Jennifer, or any. Dick would love her none the
less because a dying man had given her his name for some few hours. And
if, at any future time, the Ireton title should revive and this poor
double-dealing miser should be forced to quit his hold on Appleby
Hundred, my father's acres would be hers in her own right. One breach in
all this sudden-builded wall I saw, but could not mend it. With the
Ireton acres hers by double right, the baronet would press his suit with
greater vigor than before. But as to this, no further act of mine could
help or hinder; and if I died her husband she would in decency delay a
while.
So summing up in far less time than it has cost to write it out for you,
I gave my host his answer.
"I told you you might name the deed, and I would do it, Mr. Stair. If
you can make your daughter understand--"
"The jade will do as she is bid," he cut in wrathfully. "If she will
drag my good name in the mire, I'm damned if she sha'n't pay the scot.
And now about the settlements, Captain Ireton; you'll be making her
legatee residuary?"
At this I saw his drift again, most clearly; that he would never stickle
for his daughter's honor, but for the quieting of his title to my
father's lands--a title that my cousin Septimus might dispute. It was
enough to set me obstinate against him; but I constrained myself to
think of Margery and Richard Jennifer, and not at all of this poor petty
miser.
"I'll sign a quitclaim in her favor, if that is what you mean," I said.
"But 'tis a mere pen-scratch for the lawyers to haggle over. As you said
a while ago, the wife will be the husband's heir-at-law, in any event."
"True; but we'd best be at it in due and proper form." He rose and
hobbled to the door and was so set upon haste that his shaking hand
played a rattling tattoo on the latch. "I--I'll go and have the papers
drawn, and you will sign them, Captain Ireton; I have your passed word
that you will sign them?"
"Aye; they shall be signed."
He went away at that, and Tybee entered. Much to my comfort, the
lieutenant asked no questions; so far from it, he crossed the room
without a word, flung himself into the great chair and left me to my own
communings.
These were not altogether of assurance. Though I had promised readily
enough to make my lie a truth, I saw that all was yet contingent upon my
lady's viewing of the proposal. That I could win her over I had some
hope, if only they would leave the task for me. But there was room to
fear that this poor miser father would make it all a thing of property
and so provoke her to resistance. And, notwithstanding what he
said--that she would do as she was bid--I thought I knew her temper well
enough to prophesy a hitch. For I made sure of one thing, that if she
put her will against the world, the world would never move her.
'Twas past midnight, with Tybee dozing in his chair, when next I heard
some stirrings in the corridor. As before, it was the lifting of the
wooden bar that roused my friendly guard, and when he went to parley at
the door I stood apart and turned my back.
When I looked again my company was come. At the table, busied with a
parchment that might have been a ducal title deed for size, stood
Gilbert Stair and the factor-lawyer, Owen Pengarvin. A little back of
them the good old Father Matthieu had Margery on his arm. And in the
corner Tybee stood to keep the door.
I grouped them all in one swift eye-sweep, and having listed them,
strove to read some lessoning of my part in my dear lady's face. She
gave me nothing of encouragement, nor yet a cue of any kind to lead to
what it was that she would have me say or do. As I had seen it last,
under the light of the flaring torches in the room below, her face was
cold and still; and she was standing motionless beside the priest,
looking straight at me, it seemed, with eyes that saw nothing.
It was the factor-lawyer who broke the silence, saying, with his
predetermined smirk, that the parchment was ready for my signature.
Thinking it well beneath me to measure words with this knavish
pettifogger, I looked beyond him and spoke to his master.
"I would have a word or two in private with your daughter before this
matter ripens further, Mr. Stair," I said.
My lady dropped the priest's arm and came to stand beside me in the
window-bay. I offered her a chair but she refused to sit. There was so
little time to spare that I must needs begin without preliminary.
"What has your father told you, Margery?" I asked.
"He tells me nothing that I care to know."
"But he has told you what you must do?"
"Yes." She looked with eyes that saw me not.
"And you are here to do it of your own free will?"
"No."
"Yet it must be done."
"So he says, and so you say. But I had rather die."
"'Tis not a pleasing thing, I grant you, Margery; notwithstanding, of
our two evils it is by far the less. Bethink you a moment: 'tis but the
saying of a few words by the priest, and the bearing of my name for some
short while till you can change it for a better."
Her deep-welled eyes met mine, and in them was a flash of anger.
"Is that what marriage means to you, Captain Ireton?"
"No, truly. But we have no choice. 'Tis this, or I must leave you in the
morning to worse things than the bearing of my name. I would it had not
thus been thrust upon us, but I could see no other way."
"See what comes of tampering with the truth," she said, and I could see
her short lip curl with scorn. "Why should you lie and lie again, when
any one could see that it must come to this--or worse?"
"I saw it not," I said. "But had I stopped to look beyond the moment's
need and seen the end from the beginning, I fear I should have lied yet
other times. Your honor was at stake, dear lady."
"My honor!"--this in bitterest irony. "What is a woman's honor, sir,
when you or any man has patched and sewed and sought to make it whole
again? I will not say the word you'd have me say!"
"But you must say it, Margery. 'Tis but the merest form; you forget that
you will be a wife only in name. I shall not live to make you rue it."
"You make me rue it now, beforehand. _Mon Dieu!_ is a woman but a thing,
to stand before the priest and plight her troth for 'merest form'?
You'll make me hate you while I live--and after!"
"You'd hate me worse, Margery dear, if I should leave you drowning in
this ditch. And I can bear your hatred for some few hours, knowing that
if I sinned and robbed you, I did make restitution as I could."
She heard me through with eyelids down and some fierce storm of passion
shaking her. And when she answered her voice was low and soft; yet it
cut me like a knife.
"You drive me to it--listen, sir, _you drive me to it_! And I have said
that I shall hate you for it. Come; 'tis but a mockery, as you say; and
they are waiting."
I sought to take her hand and lead her forth, but this she would not
suffer. She walked beside me, proud and cold and scornful; stood beside
me while I sat and read the parchment over. It was no marriage
settlement; it was a will, drawn out in legal form. And in it I
bequeathed to Margery Ireton as her true jointure, not any claim of
mine to Appleby Hundred, _but the estate itself_.
I read it through as I have said, and, looking across to these two
plotters, the miser-master and his henchman, smiled as I had never
thought to smile again.
"So," said I; "the truth is out at last. I wondered if the confiscation
act had left you wholly scatheless, Mr. Stair. Well, I am content. I
shall die the easier for knowing that I have lain a guest in my own
house. Give me the pen."
'Twas given quickly, and I signed the will, with Tybee and the lawyer
for the witnesses; Margery standing by the while and looking on; though
not, I made sure, with any realizing of the business matter.
When all was done the priest found his book, and we stood before him;
the woman who had sworn to hate, and the man who, loving her to full
forgetfulness of death itself, must yet be cold and formal, masking his
love for her dear sake, and for the sake of loyalty to his friend. And
here again 'twas Tybee and the lawyer who were the witnesses; the one
well hated, and the other loved if but for this; that when the time came
for the giving of the ring, he drew a gold band from his little finger
and made me take and use it.
And so that deed was done in some such sorry fashion as the time and
place constrained; and had you stood within the four walls of that upper
room you would have thought the chill of death had touched us, and that
the low-voiced priest was shriving us the while we knelt to take his
benediction. All through this farce--which was in truth the grimmest of
all tragedies--my lady played her part as one who walks in sleep; and at
the end she let her father lead her out with not a word or look or sign
to me.
You'd guess that I would take it hard--her leaving of me thus, as I made
sure, for all eternity; and I did take it hard. For when the strain was
off, and there was no one by to see or hear save my good-hearted
death-watch, I must needs go down upon my knees beside the bed in
childish weakness, and sob and choke and let the hot tears come as I had
not since at this same bedside I had knelt a little lad to take my
mother's dying love.
XII
HOW THE NEWS CAME TO UNWELCOME EARS
Though all the western quarter of the sky was night-black and spangled
yet with stars, the dawn was graying slowly in the east when Tybee
roused me.
"They have not come for you as yet," he said; "so I took time by the
forelock and passed the word for breakfast. It heartens a man to eat a
bite and drink a cup of wine just on the battle's edge. Will you sit and
let me serve you, Captain Ireton?"
"That I will not," said I; adding that I would blithely share the
breakfast with him. Whereat he laughed and clipt my hand, and swore I
was a true soldier and a brave gentleman to boot.
So we sat and hobnobbed at the table; and Tybee lighted all the remnant
candle-ends, and broached the wine and pledged me in a bumper before we
fell to upon the cold haunch of venison.
My summons came when we had shared the heel-tap of the bottle. It was my
toast to this kind-hearted youngster, and we drained it standing what
time the stair gave back the tread of marching men. Tybee crashed his
glass upon the floor and wrung my hand across the table.
"Good by, my Captain; they have come. God damn me, sir, I'll swear they
might do worse than let you go, for all your spying. You've carried off
this matter with the lady as a gentleman should, and whilst I live, she
shall not lack a friend. If you have any word to leave for her--"
I shook my head. "No," said I; then, on second thought: "And yet there
is a word. You saw how I must see the matter through to shield the
lady?"
"Surely; 'twas plain enough for any one to see."
"Then I shall die the easier if you will undertake to make it plain to
Richard Jennifer. He must be made to know that I supplanted him only in
a formal way, and that to save the lady's honor."
The lieutenant promised heartily, and as he spoke, the oaken bar was
lifted and my reprieve was at an end.
Having the thing to despatch before they broke their fast, my soldier
hangmen marched me off without ado. The house and all within it seemed
yet asleep, but out of doors the legion vanguard was astir, and newly
kindled camp-fires smoked and blazed among the trees. In shortest space
we left these signs of life behind, and I began to think toward the end.
'Tis curious how sweet this troubled life of ours becomes when that day
wakes wherein it must be shuffled off! As a soldier must, I thought I
had held life lightly enough; nay, this I know; I had often worn it
upon my sleeve in battle. But now, when I was marching forth to this
cold-blooded end without the battle-chance to make it welcome, all
nature cried aloud to me.
The dawn was not unlike that other dawn a month past when I had ridden
down the river road with Jennifer; a morning fair and fine, its cup
abrim and running over with the wine of life. I thought the cool, moist
air had never seemed so sweet and fragrant; that nature's garb had never
seemed so blithe. There was no hint nor sign of death in all the wooded
prospect. The birds were singing joyously; the squirrels, scarce alarmed
enough to scamper out of sight, sat each upon his bough to chatter at us
as we passed. And once, when we were filing through a bosky dell with
softest turf to muffle all our treadings, a fox ran out and stood with
one uplifted foot, and was as still as any stock or stone until he had
the scent of us.
A mile beyond the outfields of Appleby Hundred we passed the legion
picket line, and I began to wonder why we went so far; wondered and made
bold to ask the ensign in command, turning it into a grim jest and
saying I misliked to come too weary to my end.
The ensign, a curst young popinjay, as little officer cubs are like to
be, answered flippantly that the colonel had commuted my sentence; that
I was to be shot like a soldier, and that far enough afield so the
volleying would not wake the house.
So we fared on, and a hundred yards beyond this point of question and
reply came out into an open grove of oaks: then I knew where they had
brought me--and why. 'Twas the glade where I had fought my losing battle
with the baronet. On its farther confines two horses nibbled
rein's-length at the grass, with Falconnet's trooper serving-man to hold
them; and, standing on the very spot where he had thrust me out, my
enemy was waiting.
'Twas all prearranged; for when the ensign had saluted he marched his
men a little way apart and drew them up in line with muskets ported. But
at a sign from Falconnet, two of the men broke ranks and came to strap
me helpless with their belts. I smiled at that, and would not miss the
chance to jeer.
"You are a sorry coward, Captain Falconnet, as bullies ever are," I
said. "Would not your sword suffice against a man with empty hands?"
He passed the taunt in silence, and when the men had left me, said: "I
have come to speed your parting, Captain Ireton. You are a thick-headed,
witless fool, as you have always been; yet since you've blundered into
serving me, I would not grudge the time to come and thank you."
"I serve you?" I cried. "God knows I'd serve you up in collops at the
table of your master, the devil, could I but stand before you with a
carving tool!"
He laughed softly. "Always vengeful and vindictive, and always because
you must ever mess and meddle with other men's concerns," he retorted.
"And yet I say you've served me."
"Tell me how, in God's name, that I may not die with that sin unrepented
of."
"Oh, in many small ways, but chiefly in this affair with the little lady
of Appleby."
"Never!" I denied. "So far as decent speech could compass it, I have
ever sought to tell her what a conscienceless villain you are."
He laughed again at that.
"You know women but indifferently, my Captain, if you think to breach a
love affair by a cannonade of hard words. But I am in no humor to
dispute with you. You have lost, and I have won; and, were I not here to
come between, you'd look your last upon the things of earth in shortest
order, I do assure you."
"You?--you come between?" I scoffed. "You are all kinds of a knave, Sir
Francis, but your worst enemy never accused you of being a fool!"
There was a look in his eyes that I could never fathom.
"You are bitter hard, John Ireton--bitter and savage and unforgiving.
You knew the wild blade of a half-score years ago, and now you'd make
the grown man pay scot and lot for that same youngster's misdeeds. Have
you never a touch of human kindliness in you?"
To know how this affected me you must turn back to that place where I
have tried to picture out this man for you. I said he had a gift to turn
a woman's head or touch her heart. I should have said that he could use
this gift at will on any one. For the moment I forgot his cool disposal
of me in the talk with Captain Stuart; forgot how he had lied to make me
out a spy and so had brought me to this pass.
So I could only say: "You killed my friend, Frank Falconnet, and--"
"Tush!" said he. "That quarrel died nine years ago. Your reviving of it
now is but a mask."
"For what?" I asked.
"For your just resentment in sweet Margery's behalf. Believe it or not,
as you like, but I could love you for that blow you gave me, John
Ireton. I had been losing cursedly at cards that day, and mine host's
wine had a dash of usquebaugh in it, I dare swear. At any rate, I knew
not what it was I said till Tybee said it over for me."
"But the next morning you took a cur's advantage of me on this very spot
and ran me through," I countered.
"Name it what you will and let it go at that. There was murder in your
eye, and you are the better swordsman. You put me upon it for my life,
and when you gave me leave, I did not kill you, as I might."
"No; you reserved me for this."
He took a step nearer and seemed strangely agitated.
"You forced my hand, John Ireton," he said, speaking low that the others
might not hear. "You had her ear from day to day and used your
privilege against me. As an enemy who merely sought my life for
vengeance's sake I could spare you; but as a rival--"
I laughed, and sanity began to come again. "Make an end of it," I said.
"I'd rather hear the muskets speak than you."
For reply he took a folded paper from his pocket and spread and held it
so that I might read. It was a letter from my Lord Cornwallis, directing
Captain Falconnet to send his prisoner, Captain John Ireton, sometime
lieutenant in the Royal Scots Blues, under guard to his Lordship's
headquarters in South Carolina.
"Can you read it?" he asked.
I nodded.
"Well, this supersedes the colonel's sentence. If I say the word to
Ensign Farquharson you will be remanded."
"To be shot or hanged a little later, I suppose?"
"No. Have you any notion why my Lord Charles is sending for you?"
"No," said I, in my turn; and, indeed, I had not.
"He knows your record as an officer, and would give you a chance to
'list in your old service."
"I would not take it--at your hands or his."
"You'd best take it. But in any event, you'll have your life and
honorable safe-conduct beyond the lines."
"Make an end," I said again. "I understand you will obey his Lordship's
order, or disregard it, as your own interest directs. What would you
have me do?"
"A very little thing to weigh against a life. Mr. Gilbert Stair is my
very good friend."
I let that go uncontradicted.
"His title to the estate is secure enough, as you know, but you can make
it better," he went on.
This saying of his told me what I had only guessed: that as yet he had
not been admitted into Gilbert Stair's full confidence; also, that he
had no hint of what had taken place in my chamber some hour or two past
midnight. At that, a joy fierce like pain came to thrill me.
"Go on," said I.
"Your route to Camden lies through Charlotte. Your guard will give you
time and opportunity to execute a quitclaim in Mr. Stair's favor."
"Is that all?" I asked.
"No; after that our ways must lie apart--or yours and Margery's, at all
events. Give me your word of honor that you relinquish any claim you
have, or think you have, upon her, and I pass this letter on to the
ensign."
"And if I refuse?"
He came so near that I could see the lurking devil in his eyes.
"If you refuse? Harken, John Ireton; if you had a hundred lives to
thrust between me and the thing I crave, I'd take them all." So much he
said calmly; then a sudden gust of passion seized him, and for once, I
think, he spoke the simple truth. "God! I'd sink my soul in Calvin's
hell to have her!"
I could not wholly mask the smile of triumph that his words evoked. This
fox of maiden vineyards was entrapped at last. I saw the fire of such a
passion as such a man may know burning in his eyes; and then I knew why
he was come upon this errand.
"So?" said I. "Then Mistress Margery sent you here to save me?" 'Twas
but a guess, but I made sure it hit the truth.
He swore a sneering oath. "So the priest carried tales, did he? Well,
make the most of it; she would not have her father's guest taken from
his bed and hanged like a dog."
I smiled again. "'Twas more than that: she would even go so far as to
beg her husband's life a boon from that same husband's mortal enemy."
"Bah!" he scoffed. "That lie of yours imposed upon the colonel, but I
had better information."
"A lie, you say? True, 'twas a lie when it was uttered. But afterward,
some hour or so past midnight, by the good help of Father Matthieu, and
with your Lieutenant Tybee for one witness and the lawyer for another,
we made a sober truth of it."
I hope, for your own peace of mind, my dears, that you may never see a
fellow human turn devil in a breath as I did then. His man's face fell
away from him like a vanishing mask, and in the place of it a hideous
demon, malignant and murderous, glared upon me. Twice his hand sought
the sword-hilt, and once the blade was half unsheathed. Then he thrust
his devil-face in mine and hissed his parting word at me so like a snake
it made me shudder with abhorrence.
"You've signed your own death warrant, you witless fool! You'd play the
spoil-sport here as you did once before, would you? Curse you! I wish
you had a hundred lives that I might take them one by one!" Then he
wheeled sharp upon his heel and gave the order to the ensign. "Belt him
to the tree, Farquharson, and make an end of him. I've kept you waiting
over-long."
They strapped me to a tree with other belts, and when all was ready the
ensign stepped aside to give the word. Just here there came a little
pause prolonged beyond the moment of completed preparation. I knew not
why they waited, having other things to think of. I saw the firing line
drawn up with muskets leveled. I marked the row of weather-beaten faces
pillowed on the gun-stocks with eyes asquint to sight the pieces. I
remember counting up the pointing muzzles; remember wondering which
would be the first to belch its fire at me, and if, at that short range,
a man might live to see the flash and hear the roar before the bullets
killed the senses.
But while I screwed my courage to the sticking place and sought to hold
it there, the pause became a keen-edged agony. A glance aside--a glance
that cost a mightier effort than it takes to break a nightmare--showed
me the ensign standing ear a-cock, as one who listens.
What he heard I know not, for all the earth seemed hushed to silence
waiting on his word. But on the instant the early morning stillness of
the forest crashed alive, and pandemonium was come. A savage yell to set
the very leaves a-tremble; a crackling volley from the underwood that
left a heap of writhing, dying men where but now the firing squad had
stood; then a headlong charge of rough-clad horsemen--all this befell in
less than any time the written words can measure.
I sensed it all but vaguely at the first, but when a passing horseman
slashed me free I came alive, and life and all it meant to me was
centered in a single fierce desire. Falconnet had escaped the fusillade;
was making swiftly for his horse, safe as yet from any touch of lead or
steel. So I might reach and pull him down, I cared no groat what
followed after.
It was not so to be. In the swift dash across the glade I went too near
the shambles in the midst. The corporal of the firing squad, a bearded
Saxon giant, whose face, hideously distorted, will haunt me while I
live, lay fairly in the way, his heels drumming in the death agony, and
his great hands clutching at the empty air.
I leaped to clear him. In the act the clutching hands laid hold of me
and I was tripped and thrown upon the heap of dead and dying men, and
could not free myself in time to stop the baronet.
I saw him gain his horse and mount; saw the flash of his sword and the
skilful parry that in a single parade warded death on either hand; saw
him drive home the spurs and vanish among the trees, with his
horse-holding trooper at his heels.
And then my rescuers, or else my newer captors, picked me up hastily;
and I was hoisted behind the saddle of the nearest, and so was borne
away in all the hue and cry of a most unsoldierly retreat.
XIII
IN WHICH A PILGRIMAGE BEGINS
As you have guessed before you turned this page, the men who charged so
opportunely to cut me out of peril were my captors only in the saving
sense.
Their overnight bivouac was not above a mile beyond the glade of
ambushment. It was in a little dell, cunningly hid; and the embers of
the camp-fires were still alive when we of the horse came first to this
agreed-on rallying point.
Here at this rendezvous in the forest's heart I had my first sight of
any fighting fragment of that undisciplined and yet unconquerable
patriot home-guard that even in defeat proved too tough a morsel for
British jaws to masticate.
They promised little to the eye of a trained soldier, these border
levies. In fancy I could see my old field-marshal,--he was the father of
all the martinets,--turn up his nose and dismiss them with a
contemptuous "_Ach! mein Gott!_" And, truly, there was little outward
show among them of the sterling metal underneath.
They came singly and in couples, straggling like a routed band of
brigands; some loading their pieces as they ran. There was no hint of
soldier discipline, and they might have been leaderless for aught I saw
of deference to their captain. Indeed, at first I could not pick the
captain out by any sign, since all were clad in coarsest homespun and
well-worn leather, and all wore the long, fringed hunting shirt and
raccoon-skin cap of the free borderers.
Yet these were a handful of the men who had fought so stoutly against
the Tory odds at Ramsour's Mill, their captain being that Abram Forney
of whom you may read in the histories; and though they made no military
show, they lacked neither hardihood nor courage, of a certain
persevering sort.
"Ever come any closter to your Amen than that, stranger?" drawled one of
them, a grizzled borderer, lank, lean and weather-tanned, with a face
that might have been a leathern mask for any hint it gave of what went
on behind it. "I'll swear that little whip'-snap' officer cub had the
word 'Fire' sticking in his teeth when I gave him old Sukey's mouthful
o' lead to chaw on."
I said I had come as near my exit a time or two before, though always in
fair fight; and thereupon was whelmed in an avalanche of questions such
as only simple-hearted folk know how to ask.
When I had sufficiently accounted for myself, Captain Forney--he was the
limber-backed young fellow I had ridden behind--gripped my hand and
gave me a hearty welcome and congratulation.
"My father and yours were handfast friends, Captain Ireton. More than
that, I've heard my father say he owed yours somewhat on the score of
good turns. I'm master glad I've had a chance to even up a little;
though as for that, we should both thank the Indian." At which he looked
around as one who calls an eye-muster and marks a missing man. "Where is
the chief, Ephraim?"--this to the grizzled hunter who was methodically
reloading his long rifle.
"He's back yonder, gathering in the hair-crop, I reckon. Never you mind
about him, Cap'n. He'll turn up when he smells the meat a-cooking,
immejitly, _if_ not sooner."
Here, as I imagine, I looked all the questions that lacked answers; for
Captain Forney took it in hand to fit them out with explications.
"'Tis Uncanoola, the Catawba," he said; "one of the friendlies. He was
out a-scouting last night and came in an hour before daybreak with the
news that Colonel Tarleton was set upon hanging a spy of ours. From that
to our little ambushment--"
"I see," said I, wanting space to turn the memory leaves. "This Catawba:
is he a man about my age?" Captain Forney laughed. "God He only knows an
Indian's age. But Uncanoola has been a man grown these fifteen years or
more. I can recall his coming to my father's house when I was but a
little cadger."
At that, I remembered, too; remembered a tall, straight young savage,
as handsome as a figure done in bronze, who used sometimes to meet me in
the lonelier forest wilds when I was out a-hunting; remembered how at
first I was afraid of him; how once I would have shot him in a fit of
boyish race antipathy and sudden fright had he not flung away his
firelock and stood before me defenseless.
Also, I recalled a little incident of the terrible scourge in '60 when
the black pox bade fair to blot out this tribe of the Catawbas; how when
my father had found this young savage lying in the forest,
plague-stricken and deserted by all his tribesmen, he had saved his life
and earned an Indian friendship.
"I know this Uncanoola," I said. "My father befriended him in the plague
of '60, and was never sorry for it, as I believe." Then I would ask if
these Catawbas had ranged themselves on the patriot side, a question
which led the young militia captain to give me the news at large while
his borderers were breaking camp and making their hasty preparations for
the day's march.
"'Tis liberty or death with us now; we've burnt our bridges behind us,"
he said, when he had confirmed the tidings I had had the day before from
Father Matthieu. "And since here in Carolina we have to fight each man
against his neighbor, 'tis like to go hard with us, lacking help from
the North."
"Measured by this morning's work, Captain Forney, these irregulars of
yours seem well able to give a good account of themselves," I ventured.
He shook his head doubtfully. He was but a boy in years, but war is a
shrewd schoolmaster, and this youth, like many another on the fighting
frontier, had matriculated early.
"You've seen us at our best," he amended. "We can ambush like the
Indians, fire a volley, yell, charge--and run away."
"What's that ye're saying, youngster?" The grizzled hunter had finished
reloading his rifle, and, lounging in earshot with all the freedom of
the border, would take the captain up sharply on this last.
"You heard me, Eph Yeates," replied my young captain, curtly.
The old man leaned his rifle against a tree, spat on his hands, cut a
clumsy caper in air, and gave tongue in a yell that should have been
heard by Tarleton's men at Appleby.
"By the eternal 'coonskins! I can gouge the eye out of ary man that says
Eph Yeates carn't stand up fair and square and whop his weight in
wildcats; and I can do it now, _if_ not sooner!" he shrilled. "Come on,
you pap-eating, apron-stringed, French-daddied--"
Where the blast of vituperative insult would have spent itself in
natural course we were not to know, for in the midst another of the
borderers, a wiry little man in greasy deerskin, came up behind the
capering ancient, whipped an arm around his neck, and in a trice the two
went down, kicking, scratching, buffeting and mauling, as like to a
pair of battling bobcats as was ever seen.
For a moment I thought my youngster would let them have it out to the
finish, but he did not. At his order some of the others pulled the twain
apart, reluctantly, I fancied; and when the thing was done the old man
caught up his rifle and strode away in blackest wrath without a look
behind him.
Captain Forney shrugged and spread his hands as his French father might
have done.
"Now you know wherein our weakness lies, Captain Ireton," he said.
"There goes as true a man and as keen a shot as ever pulled trigger. Let
him fight in his own way, and he'll take cover and name his man for
every bullet in his pouch. But as for yielding to decent authority, or
standing against trained troops in open field--" He shrugged again and
turned to tighten his saddle-girth.
"I see," said I. Then I asked him of his plans and intendings, and was
told that he and his handful were a-march to join General Rutherford,
who was gone to the Forks of Yadkin to break up some Tory embodiment
thereabouts.
"You have your work cut out to dodge the British light-horse, Captain
Forney," said I; capping the venture by telling him what little I knew
of Tarleton's dispositions, and also of the Indian-arming plot I had
overheard.
"We'll dodge the redcoats, never you fear; we're at our best in that,"
he rejoined, carelessly. "And as to the Cherokee upstirring, that's an
old story. The king's men have tried it twice and they have not yet
caught Jack Sevier or Jimmie Robertson a-napping. Ease your mind on that
score, Captain Ireton, and come along with us, if you have nothing
better to do. I can promise you hard living, and hard fighting enough to
keep it in countenance."
At this I was brought down to some consideration of the present and its
demands. As fortune's wheel had twirled, I had my life, to be sure; but
by the having of it was made the basest traitor to my friend--to
Jennifer, and no whit less to Margery.
'Twas out of any thought that I should take the field against the common
enemy, leaving this tangled web of mystery and misery behind. In
sheerest decency I owed it first to Jennifer to make a swift and frank
confession of the ill-concluded tale of happenings. That done, I owed it
equally to him and Margery to find some way to set aside the midnight
marriage.
So I fell back upon my wound for an excuse, telling the captain that I
was not yet fit to take the field--which was true enough. Whereupon he
and his men set me well beyond the danger of immediate pursuit and we
parted company.
When I was left alone I had no plan that reached beyond the day's end.
Since to go to Jennifer House by daylight would be to run my neck afresh
into the noose, I saw nothing for it but to lie in hiding till
nightfall. The hiding place that promised best was the old hunting lodge
in the forest, and thitherward I turned my face.
It was a wise man who said that he who goes with heavy heart drags
heavy feet as well; but while I live I shall remember how that saying
clogged the path for me that morning, making the shrub-sweet summer air
grow thick and lifeless as I toiled along. For sober second thought, and
the unnerving reaction which comes upon the heels of some sharp peril
overpast, left me aghast at the coil in which a tricky fate had
entangled me.
The second thought made plain the dispiteous hardness of it all, showing
me how I had reasoned like a boy in planning for retrieval. Would
Jennifer believe my tale, though I should swear it out word for word on
the Holy Evangelists? I doubted it; and striving to see it through his
eyes, was made to doubt it more. For death should have been my
justifier, and death had played me false.
As for setting the midnight marriage aside, I made sure the lawyer tribe
could find a way, if that were all. But here there was a loyal daughter
of the Church to reckon with. Loathing her bonds, as any true-hearted
maiden must, would Margery consent to have them broken by the law? I
knew well she would not. Though our poor knotting of the tie had been
little better than a tragic farce, it lacked nothing of force to bind
the tender conscience of a woman bred to look upon the churchly rite as
final.
So, twist and turn it as I might, the coil was desperate; and as I
strode on gloomily, measuring this the first stage in a pilgrimage I had
never thought to make, a fire of sullen anger began to smoke and
smolder within me, and I could find it in my heart to curse the cruel
kindness of my rescuers; to sorrow in my inmost soul that they had come
between to make a living recreant of one who would fain have died an
honest man.
XIV
HOW THE BARONET PLAYED ROUGE-ET-NOIR
The sun was well above the tree-tops, and the morning was abroad for all
the furred and feathered wood-folk, when I forsook the Indian path to
make a prudent circle of reconnaissance around the cabin in the maple
grove.
Happily, there was no need for the cautionary measure. The hunting lodge
was undiscovered as yet by any enemy; and when I showed myself my poor
black vassals ran to do my bidding, weeping with childish joy to have me
back again.
Since old Darius was still at Appleby Hundred, Tomas ranked as
majordomo; and I bade him post the blacks in a loosely drawn sentry line
about the cabin, this against the chance that Falconnet might stumble on
the place in searching for me. For I made no doubt his Tory spies would
quickly pass the word that I was not with Abram Forney's band, and hence
must be in hiding.
When all was done I flung myself upon the couch of panther-skins, hoping
against hope that sleep might come to help me through the hours of
waiting. 'Twas a vain hope. There was never a wink of forgetfulness for
me in all the long watches of the summer day, and I must lie wide-eyed
and haggard, thinking night would never come, and making sure that fate
had never before walled a man in such a dungeon of despair.
There was no loophole of escape with honor; The heavens were brass, with
all the horizons narrowed to a bounding wall to hem me in on every side.
There was no sally-port in all this wall save one--the one that death
had promised to open at the dawn. The promise had been broken. True,
death had thrust the key within the lock, and I had heard the grating of
the bolts; and yet the key had been withdrawn and I was left a prisoner
of life.
There was no hope of other outlet. Now there was space to view it
calmly, I saw how foolish was the thought that Margery would connive at
any breaking of the marriage bond. She would bear my name, and hate me
for the giving of it; would go on hating me, I thought, to all eternity;
but she would never take her freedom back again, save at a dead man's
hands.
It was thus that each fresh scanning of the prison wall that shut me in
this dungeon of dishonor fetched me once and again to this one
sally-port of death. And when it came to this; that I had searched in
vain for other outlet, you will not think it strange that I sat down in
spirit at this postern to see if I might open it with my own hands.
It was not love of life that made me hesitate. At two-score years he
who has lived at all has lived his best; and if he live beyond the
turning point of youthful ardor he must beg the grace of younger men to
linger yet a little longer on the stage which once was his and now is
theirs.
No, it was not any love of life for life's own sake that held me back.
'Twas rather that the Ireton blood is linked up with that thing we call
a conscience, a heritage from those simple-hearted ancestors to whom the
suicide was a soul accurst--a soul impenitent, whose very outer husk of
flesh and bones they used to bury at the crossing of the ways, with a
sharpened stake to pinion it.
'Twas this ancestral conscience made me cowardly; and when the sight of
my father's sword--Darius had rescued and restored it to its place upon
the chimney-breast--would set me thinking of the Israelitish king, and
how, when all was lost, he fell upon his blade and died, this horror of
the suicide came to give me pause.
Besides, that way to right the double wrong was not so clear as it might
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