Mr. Arnold: A romance of the Revolution

THE rain had abated by morning, but the wind was still blowing rather more than half a gale out of the southeast when the watery sun rose over the housetops.

With the reporting of the first orderly for the day, a young man from Clinton’s staff-family whom I had not seen before, I went out, ostensibly for a breath of fresh air, but really for news—news of Castner. The tap-room of the tavern offered the most promising source, and thither I went to hobnob with the barman.

There was no news—which was good news. Castner had not been in his room or at the inn since his morning meal there of the day before the yesterday; though the barman had seen him later that same day, crossing the green in company with a smallish man in citizen’s clothes. Pressed more closely, my tap-turner was sure he had seen the smallish man in gray at some other time; and after more brain cudgellings: “Sure, then! ’twould be the same man you’d be taking up to your room, either befoor or afther—I’d not be remimbering which.”

This was explicit, as far as it went, though it was anything but reassuring. I had known Castner but a little while, yet one of his characteristics, patient pertinacity, was written out large in his sturdy jaw and steadfast gray eyes for the merest passer-by to read. I thought he would hang on to whatever clue he had found, and pull and tug at it until he had drawn it out to some workable length. And, according to the barman’s story, the clue—James Askew by name—was fairly in his hands.

One other bit of news the barman gave me that was also disconcerting. The night gale, which had blown too hard for our enterprise, Champe’s and mine, had blown the war-ships back to New York from whatever port they had been calling at; and now, my news-vendor told me, the sailing of the fleet waited only on a favorable shift of the wind.

“Two chances against us—Castner and the fleet-sailing,” I said to myself, faring back to my prison cell in Arnold’s house, and breakfast, “both of them more than likely to ripen before we see another night. Truly, the devil fights for his own!”

It was Arnold himself who gave me leave to go out again after the morning meal had been despatched, coming down to us in one of his kindly moods, and saying that we need not confine ourselves so closely to the house during the day. I hated him most cordially when he gave himself the air of a simple-hearted, kindly gentleman, as he very well could. It seemed unfair that he should so often remind me of the thorn of reluctance that was pricking me; a hurt that went deeper with every gentlemanly thing that he did, and every fresh trust he reposed in me.

For, charge it to what account of self-love, or pride, or vanity, I would in the man, he had assuredly been indulgent to us and had unquestionably saved our two lives; and while he was a traitor and false to his oath and his soldier honor, a vague and disquieting wonder was beginning to stir in me, asking if I supposed that, with all his oath-breakings, he would consent to do what I was doing.

So, when he told me I was free to go abroad in the town, I replied, rather churlishly, as I remember, that I knew my duty and would try to do it; after which I spent the better part of the day before the fire in the orderly-room, going to the windows now and again to see if there were any signs of Castner coming to hang me, and behaving so sourly to Champe that the sergeant finally took the privilege Arnold had given us, and went out.

He had been gone something over an hour when he returned with a piece of news. Hanging about the waterside, and keeping an eye out for anything that might bring grist to our mill, Champe had been accosted by a man, a stranger and a sailor, as the sergeant described him, and a New Englander by his speech. This man had asked for me by name, and had pitched upon the first soldier he saw wearing the Loyal Americans’ uniform for information of me. He claimed to have urgent business, going so far as to say to Champe that I would rue it smartly if I denied him an interview.

“Where did you leave him?” I asked, when the sergeant had finished his tale.

“In the tap-room of the tavern. And I made sure he had no following.”

“Damn his following!” I growled, well-nigh desperate from the day-long grinding of the mill of reflection; “I’ll fight him, or any dozen of him, at the dropping of a handkerchief, if that is what he wants!” And with that snappish word of thanks for Champe’s loyal forethought, I strode off to the tavern.

For once in a way, Champe’s description personal had been accurate enough. The man who was awaiting me was a sailor, and he hailed from Massachusetts. What the sergeant had omitted to mention was that he was as curst and crabbed by nature as I was at that moment by my mood.

For the first few minutes, as I recall it, we merely bickered at each other, snarling like a fair of unfriendly dogs. Then some shrewd, dry, verbal slap of his jarred a laugh loose in me; after which we got on better.

“I want no truck with ye, nor with any of your kind, Captain,” he warned me, when the ice was broken, “but I was told to come and find ye, and so I have. You’re from Virginia, and they tell me that ye have no schoolmasters in those parts: would it be too much to wonder if ye could read a smitch o’ writing?”

“Give me the letter,” I said, ignoring the gibe and knowing now that he was somebody’s messenger.

The missive was from Beatrix, and it voiced—somewhat formally, lest the letter should fall into the wrong hands—a plaintive little call for help. It ran:

I turned to the crabbed mariner.

“You are Captain Sprigg, of the Nancy Jane?” I asked.

“I’m nobody, of nothing,” he answered. Then he began spitefully to accuse Beatrix of bad faith. “It’s an ill thing to trust a woman: she promised me there should be no naming of names, and—”

I crossed over to where he stood and chucked him under the chin to make him hold up his head and pay attention.

“One word derogatory to the good name, the birth, breeding, beauty or discretion of that lady, Captain Sprigg, and I shave off your ears, and split your nose, and otherwise improve your personal appearance till your own cabin-boy won’t know you. The lady wrote no names in her letter—having given you her word that she wouldn’t.”

It seems that I had somewhat mistaken my man. While I was bullying and staring him down, something cold began to press against my stomach, namely, the muzzle of a huge horse pistol that the captain had fished out of the folds of his loose coat.

“Keep your chin-chuckin’s for the women-folks; they like it better,” he said, quite without heat. And then: “I’ve done my errand; what are you going to do?”

“First tell me a few things,” I suggested, wisely ignoring the pistol which he rather ostentatiously concealed under the coat flap. “You know the purport of this letter?”

“Bein’ as I told her how she might fix it, I guess maybe I do.”

“You have the tobacco aboard?”

“All aboard and safe under hatches.”

“Where is your ship?”

He waved a gnarled and tarry hand in the general direction of the East River.

“She’s hangin’ in the stream, ready to trip her anchor.”

“But you’ve had orders to join the fleet in the lower bay?”

“No; I’ve had orders to hold the schooner ready to take on twenty men of Major Simcoe’s troop.”

“You have no idea when they’ll come aboard?”

“No more’n a cat with six blind kittens.”

“You are a good sailor and a daring one. Captain Elijah Sprigg, and the Nancy Jane is not afraid of any weather that blows; so much I know of you and your ship. Could you get to sea in spite of the gale, the guard ships, and the fleet, if it were needful?”

“Not in daylight, with women-folks aboard. And you wouldn’t want me to try it, neither, Captain Page.”

“No,” I agreed thoughtfully. “A chance shot might make me poorer than any beggar that lives, Captain Sprigg. We must not take that risk.”

“I thought ye wouldn’t want to. But if them soldiers ever get aboard of me, Miss Leigh’s charter goes glimmering, and so does her daddy’s tobacco, I guess.”

Again I studied the awkward situation and a possible solution of it began to take some shape in my mind.

“You could get under way after dark and crawl out of the harbor, do you think, Captain Sprigg?” I asked; “even if the weather does chance to be pretty bad?”

“The weather will be no worse to-night than it is now,” he asserted. “But the frigate has come back, and the fleet will most likely get sailing orders. That means that my redcoat passengers will be atop of me sometime to-day.”

At this I gave him some notion of what was in my mind. Champe had told me that the greater part of Major Simcoe’s command, the mounted Rangers, was still in the barracks, Sir Henry being reluctant to part with his best cavalry force until the last moment. Twice within the last two days the Rangers had been ordered out on the Tarrytown road to meet and repel incursions from our camps on the Hudson. Possibly a false alarm might be raised that would send them out again; and when I got this far, Sprigg interrupted me.

“You’re a man of ideas. Captain Page, I’ll say that for ye, and a dum’ sight loyaler to your little girl than ye be to the coat you’re wearin’. I’ve got a man in my crew who lives up Tarrytown way; a good sharp fellow without any wool in his brains. He’s just back from home this morning, and I shouldn’t be at all s’prised if he c’d tell some sort of a yarn about Baylor’s Horse ’r Major Lee’s Legion a-swoopin’ down this way. If we only had a dollar ’r so to kind o’ stimulate his mem’ry—”

I gave the captain two guineas.

“Will that be enough?”

“More’n enough; you make me recollect that old sayin’ about a fool and his money, Captain Page.”

“Never mind: this is no time for half-measures. Get your man into action swiftly, and let him do what he has to without reference to me. A word to some under officer at the fort will be sufficient; it will reach Sir Henry Clinton as fast as an orderly can run with it.”

“All right; so far, so good. What next?”

I thought for a moment, and then asked how many men he mustered in his crew, and if they were dependable.

“We’re full-handed; ten—countin’ the mate and the cook—and I’ve tried ’em, every one.”

“Good. They’ll fight, if they have to?”

“For me and the Nancy Jane—yes; but in the war, we’re neutrals, Captain Page,” he answered warily.

“Like the devil you are!” I retorted, laughing at him. And then in low tones: “You weren’t so precisely neutral that night when you hung off and on in the river and dropped a dinghy to ferry two men and a prisoner across to Jersey, Captain Sprigg.”

If I had given him an inch of a dagger between the ribs as I bent over to whisper this to him, he would not have jumped back any more quickly.

“Sufferin’ Jehoshaphat!” he ejaculated thickly. “Who be you, anyway?”

“Never mind me, Captain Elijah; we were talking about the schooner and her crew. Good men and true, you say: and have you any arms aboard?”

He blew out his lips like a dying man gasping for breath. “Would I be tellin’ it to a redcoat officer if I had?” he demanded.

“That is enough,” I laughed. “Now we can come to the arrangements for the day and night. You are footloose and can go where you please in the town. Watch the Queen’s Rangers’ barracks, and if the men are ordered to the northern road, do you come back here and stand before this tavern door. I’ll see you, and be with you promptly, to tell you what next.”

I said nothing of all this to Champe when I went back to Arnold’s house and found the sergeant dozing before the fire in the orderly-room—which was possibly a mistake. But Champe had not invited my confidence in any matter remotely concerning Beatrix and her venture, and I think I was a little afraid of his tongue.

So, while he dozed in his chair, I paced a nervous sentry-beat between the door and the window which commanded a view of the tavern, fearful lest the plan of sending Major Simcoe afield would not work; fearful also, lest Arnold might find some service for me which would interfere with my keeping of the appointment with Captain Sprigg.

As it happened, however, the strain on my patience was the only one I was called on to bear. It was exactly four o’clock, as I noticed—having pulled my watch out of its pocket so many times during the long interval that it had grown bright from the handling—it was four to the minute, I say, when I saw Sprigg standing in front of the tavern door. There was nothing in the way to stop me from hurrying across to him, but I had a sudden access of caution and did not hurry.

“Well?” said I, when I had lounged most leisurely up to my sour-faced tryst-keeper, and there was a whole world of impatience in the single word.

“You’re a master hand at plotting,” he commented. “Thing worked” (he said “wukked”) “like a charm. Hull clamjamfrey of Simcoe’s men trotted out on the north road ’bout half an hour ago. Now what?”

“For you, Captain Sprigg, a small thing first, and a bigger one afterward. Have a dinghy at the foot of Amsterdam lane by eight o’clock to-night, and make sure of just one thing—that it waits until its passengers come, if that shall not be until midnight. With the ladies on board, the game is yours, to play out as you can.”

“Then I won’t have to go back and see Miss Leigh?”

“No; I’ll see her and bring her and my—the other lady, down to the boat to-night.”

“No need for you to go. I guess I c’n see to all that,” he said slyly. Then he added: “Might get you into trouble—with that red coat o’ yours, Captain Page.”

I did not mean to delegate this last service I might ever render Beatrix to him or to any one. But now, upon second thought, his jesting after-word sank in: it might be an added risk—not for me, as he had hinted, but for the women. So I reluctantly changed the order and told him to go to the Vandeventer house to serve as an escort for the ladies, when all was ready.

He promised; and when I had seen him on his way down to the waterside, I once more returned to Arnold’s house. For the time had now come when boldness must take the place of caution. I dare not run the risk of arousing the traitor’s suspicions by going clandestinely to the house where Margaret Shippen was; and on the other hand I could not dodge the necessity for telling Beatrix in person that her plea had been received and acted on, and that Sprigg would come for her and Cousin Ju at the fortunate moment.

Arnold bade me come in, when I had climbed the stair and tapped on his door, and, as always, I found him writing like a scrivener.

“A cousin of mine is in town, and I am told she is leaving before long, General,” I began. “Have I your permission to go and bid her good-by?”

He looked up, and so far forgot his dignity as to make a wry face.

“I have had the pleasure—in deference to your relationship, Captain Page, I call it a pleasure—of meeting Mistress Pettus; also of taking at her hands the blame for your leaving of the other army. I should think you would be glad to have a fair duty excuse for omitting your leave-takings.”

“So I might, under other circumstances,” I began; “but—”

“But Mistress Pettus has a traveling companion, you would say. Strange that I should overlook, even for a fleeting moment, so charming a fact. Ah, Captain, I can guess very well what has made you such a willing letter carrier for me. I know of but one dear lady who is more beautiful than Mistress Beatrix Leigh—which you may take for high praise, since I have been permitted to see only the scornful curve of Mistress Leigh’s lips and an unfriendly light in her eyes.”

I can not tell how it ground me to have him talking thus of Beatrix, in the kindly familiarity of a friend—this man with whom, come what might, I meant to close in a death-grapple a few hours further on. It is said that all the world loves a lover, and surely this applies to that part of the world which is itself in the sweet toils. With all his hideous faults, Arnold was still the devoted husband-lover of Margaret Shippen; let him have the credit for that. And since he was—but I saw that I must get away speedily.

“I have your permission, then, General?” I asked; and he gave it in a courtly bow, and turned back to his writing.

I confess I had a most evil turn when the orderly on duty in the lower hall saluted and let me out into the open air. From force of habit—the habit of the hunted—I glanced up and down the street before venturing beyond the shelter of the doorway. It was well that I did, for just past the tavern, three men were coming on abreast, two of them plainly recognizable as Lieutenant Charles Castner and the spy, James Askew; and the third was strangely familiar in his gait and carriage, though for the down-drooped hat-brim I could not see his face.

My first impulse was to warn Champe; the next to stand still and see what form the catastrophe threatened to take. If the trio was coming on to Arnold’s door, I would step inside, call the sergeant to his duty, and we would die as soldiers should.

But this test of last-ditch courage was not made. At the door of the hostelry the three men turned in and disappeared, and a few minutes later, Castner came out alone and made straight for Sir Henry Clinton’s quarters. That was my cue, and going to the orderly-room, I roused Champe from his nap before the hearth.

“Castner is back,” I said hastily. “He came down the street just now with Askew and another man, left his companions at the tavern, and has gone alone to Sir Henry Clinton’s house.”

The sergeant yawned and felt tenderly of his throat, a gesture that was growing into a habit with him.

“Orders, Captain Dick,” he said, parrot-like.

“There are none. I am going into the town for an hour or more, and you may do as you think best: stay here and face it out when it comes, or cut and run for it. You may have an hour’s grace, or two or three, or no time at all.”

“And you,” he said; “what will you do?”

“I shall come back here and see the grist put through the mill, as I may be allowed to.”

“Then here I stay,” he announced calmly, sitting down; and so I left him, hoping little ever to see him again as a free man.

There was no corporal’s guard waiting to seize me at the outer door, as I more than half expected there would be; and taking advantage of the gathering dusk, I got away from the dangerous neighborhood as swiftly and unobtrusively as possible, arguing that it would take some little time for Castner to spread a net that would reach over any very wide area of the town.

Fifteen minutes later I was rattling the knocker on Mr. Vandeventer’s door; and this time it was Beatrix who opened to me.

“Oh!” she gasped; “I thought you would never come!” And when I stepped within: “Something has happened—your face tells me. Oh, Dick! is there—are you in danger?”

Her eager solicitude was a balm to my soul, and just at that moment I was needing balms. But I had no notion of adding my burdens to hers, since hers were surely heavy enough as they lay.

“There is no day or hour without its danger for a soldier,” I told her evasively, and not to delay the chief matter—which was the getting of her and my cousin safely a-sea before my coup de grace—or Benedict Arnold’s—should fall—I asked if we might have privacy absolute for a few moments while I should instruct her what she was to do.

At this, she led me into the little room that I was coming to know as the chamber of mingled bliss and torment, and carefully closed the door.

“Cousin Ju is sleeping,” she said. “I persuaded her, expecting that our night’s rest would be sadly broken. It will be, I know, Dick; I can read that in your face, too.”

I laughed, and said I must have a face like a large-print book; whereat she came to me and took the face in question between her soft palms, and for the moment I forgot everything save the loving, tender eyes that were gazing into mine, and the sweet lips with the tiny Cupid’s-bow curve at the corners of the sensitive mouth, and the perfect oval of their setting, and the masses of lustrous hair to frame the oval—but this would not do!

“Yes; your rest is likely to be disturbed,” I told her, and thereupon gave her an outline of the plan for the evasion of the order making a potential troopship of the Nancy Jane.

Her eyes were shining when I explained how Major Simcoe’s troop had been got out of the way.

“How like your cool daring that was, Dick! No one else would have thought of trying to move a whole regiment to get a score of men delayed in their embarking,” she commented.

“I would have undertaken to move Sir Henry’s army in the mass to serve you, dear,” I replied. Then I rehearsed the simple details again, so there might be no misunderstanding. “You are to make yourselves ready and stay here quietly until Captain Sprigg comes for you, no matter how late that may be. He will take you by the quieter streets to the river, and his boat will be in waiting. Once on board the schooner, you must obey the captain in everything. He may have to fight his way out of the harbor; I hope he may not, but it is possible. If he does—”

“If he does, I shall not forget that I am a Leigh, and that my lover is the handsomest, bravest soldier that ever drew sword,” she said, making me blush again. Then she passed suddenly to my affair. “But you have been talking altogether of us and our safety, Dick, and I am much more concerned for yours. I know now that you are a true man and no traitor, and the knowledge makes me shiver and cringe for every passing moment: you’ll be taken—and—I shall not be here. Oh, Dick! when will it be over? How long must you stay here under the shadow of that dreadful thing on Gallows Hill?”

“It will be over—to-night,” I prophesied, comforting her as I could.

“But you do not say that you will escape!” she returned, her quick intuition penetrating behind the masking words.

“No; I can not say that, Beatrix. The thing I am pledged to do is a most desperate thing: and the promise of success is not great. Yet, as I say, it will be over to-night.”

“Dick,” she said, coming close again, “what is this mission of yours that puts your life in jeopardy every hour, that has made you lay aside your dignity as an officer, that has been great enough to bring you here as a deserter and to take a service, every step in which must be a wretched lie? We may well be parting for the last time in our two lives, Dick, dear: don’t deny me this time.”

If she had not said that word about the parting—a word which was all too likely to be true—I think I might still have withstood her. But that one word broke down the barrier of my resolve, and so, flinging my soldier promise to Mr. Hamilton to the winds, I told her all, in tones that grew more and more the tones of shame when I realized what it meant to spread the harsh, brutal, military necessity of the kidnapping plan upon the tables of a pure woman’s mind and heart.

She heard me through without interruption, sitting, as she had sat that other night, gazing steadfastly into the heart of the embers on the hearthstone. But when I had made an end, she began to speak in a low voice, never letting her eyes meet mine.

“I do not at all understand these things, Dick: no woman ever can, I fear. We are taught at our mother’s knees that a lie is wrong; a thing to shudder at, to turn away from in loathing. We are taught that the finest things in those we love are truth and honor, and that the finest of all is the high honor’s honor that rises above the most binding necessity, or seeming necessity, that can constrain us. Yet you tell me that all this must go down at the bidding of a thing called military duty; that one must lie, cheat, steal, swear false oaths—”

“No,” I interposed. “By some curious oversight I have not yet been required to take the oath of allegiance to King George.”

She put the excuse aside with a little gesture of patient weariness.

“What does it matter whether or not you have missed the chance of saying over the formal words? By every act and word and the breath you draw, you are protesting that you are a true man in your present standing. The man you will strike down to-night has had no hint of warning; miserable traitor as he is, he still believes you are his friend—not only his captain servant, but his friend. He trusts you with his love-letters to his wife; he takes you fully into his confidence. Is it not so?”

“It is,” I confessed. And then I broke out passionately: “But my word is passed; I must not give this up, Beatrix! You must not make me give it up!”

“And I shall not try, Dick, dear,” she went on in the same low tone. “I shall merely try to fit myself into this new, this terrible scheme of things: for I must believe in you: I must believe that you are doing the right and honorable thing, though every fiber of me shudders in horror at it. Oh, Dick, dear—don’t you see what a woman’s love must be?”

God of love, but I did see! I saw that her ideal had fallen into ruins at her feet, and that she was trying to gather up the poor fragments, calling them precious, still! How swift and sure her stroke had been! How unerringly her keen unsullied sense of the higher right and wrong had set its arrow quivering in the very heart of the target! Yet in very shame I could not yield without a struggle.

“The man is the basest of traitors; he has put himself beyond the pale of mercy,” I insisted.

“I am not speaking for the man: God knows how I detest and fear him, though, for Peggy’s sake, I have tried to see only that humaner side of him she would have me see. Nor do I say one word for poor heart-broken Margaret, whom your deed will condemn to a living death. But for yourself ... for your honor’s honor: oh, Dick, dear; is it too late to save that?”

I rose and went to stand beside her chair, knowing now that the angel I spoke of a while back had indeed come with the saving heavenly fire to light my poor candle that the vindictive blast had blown out.

“No, Beatrix, love; it is not too late to stop, though it may well be too late to turn back in safety. There is another involved in this with me: a man from Major Lee’s Legion. He will be furious; but if I recant, he at least, must be saved.”

“For so generous a thing as that, Dick, your own good heart will answer; you would never leave a subordinate to pay the score, of course,” she said with the air of one who knows full well that blood and breeding have their responsibilities that may not be pushed aside.

From that I went a little deeper into the confessional pool, telling her how Seytoun had harried me, knowing that he was safe behind my promise to her, and how, if I should be happy enough ever to return alive to the Tappan camp, I should be branded from end to end of it if I should still refuse to fight Seytoun for his satisfaction.

At this she wished to know particularly the cause of quarrel and how Seytoun had offended; and when I told her that, too, and how he had cast the slur not only upon the women of my own house, but also upon hers, she bit her lip and I saw the beautiful eyes kindle.

“I would have saved his miserable life for him, Dick, if I could. That was why I made you promise—I knew you would remember his killing of your kinsman and slay him without mercy if you ever got him at your sword’s point. And now, my lover, I release you. If he pushes this quarrel on you—”

It was enough, and I took her in my arms and kissed her, saying, because it had to be said, sooner or later:

“Good-by, dearest. The parting time has come. In the larger matter I can’t promise; but I’ll do what lies in me. If I am strong enough to rise to your high plane, I’ll come to you, if I can—when I can—with clean hands. But if I am not great enough, I shall not ask you to marry the fragments.”

“But I love the fragments,” she said simply; and this was her word of leave-taking.

Once more out in the keen cold air of the December night and I was face to face with the moment of decision. Love, duty, honor, and vindictive hatred of Benedict Arnold all dragged me their several ways; but when at last I won back unhindered to the house of doom, and to the guard-room where John Champe was pacing moodily back and forth before a cold hearth, the decision was no longer trembling in the balance. As if a veil had been swept aside I saw into what depths vindictive rage and soldier patriotism had plunged me. Mr. Hamilton, himself, I felt sure, would be the first to call me back if he could know that I must sink myself neck-deep in a mire of perfidy too foul to be borne if I were to accomplish now the thing he had sent me to do.