XLIV
HOW WE CAME TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END
It was on the third day of December, a cheerless and comfortless day at the close of the most inclement autumn I ever remember, that the patriot Army of the South was paraded on the court-house common in Charlotte to listen to the reading of General Gates's final order, the order announcing the arrival of Major-general Greene from Washington's headquarters to take over the command of the field forces in the Carolinas.
As members of Colonel William Washington's light-horse, Richard Jennifer and I were both present at this installation of the new field commander; and it was here that we both had our first sight of Nathaniel Greene, the "Hickory Quaker."
Now the historians, as is their wont, have pictured Greene the general to the complete effacement of Greene the man, and it is in my mind that you may like to see the new commander as we saw him, making his first inspection of Horatio Gates's poor "shadow of an army" on that dismal December day in Charlotte.
In years he was rising forty; and as weight goes he was a heavy man, pressing hard upon fifteen stone with the knuckle of it under his waistcoat. None the less, though his great bulk made him sit his horse more like a farmer than a soldier, he had the muscular shoulders and arms of the anchor-smiths, to which trade he had been bred.
The hint of grossness which his figure gave was not borne out by his face. Like my Lord Cornwallis's, his eyes were womanish large, and nose and mouth and the lift of the brow were cast in a mold to match; yet there was that in his face which made it the mask of a soul thoughtful and serene; and his ruddy complexion and fair hair gave him a look of openness that a dark man is like to miss.
A skilled soldier, with a good promise of strenuous patience, was my summing up of him, and Dick saw him as I did, though with a more prophetic eye.
"He will make his mark, Jack, look you; not in stubborn in-fighting at the barrier, mayhap, like Dan Morgan, nor in a brilliant dash, like our colonel, but in his own anchor-smith's way—a heat at a time, and a blow at a time," said Jennifer; and I nodded.
Stirrup to stirrup with the new commander as he passed down the line rode Daniel Morgan, big, strong, masterful, handsome, the very pick and choice of leaders for his rough and ready riflemen. Like most of his men, he scorned to wear a uniform, appearing on parade, as in the field, in a neat-fitting hunting-shirt of Indian-tanned buckskin with fringings of the same—a costume that set off his gigantic figure as no tailor-fine coat could have set it off.
When he pulled his horse down to make it keep step with the sedater pacings of the general's, we could hear him declaring, with an oath, that his Eleventh Virginia alone would give a good account of all the Tories between the Catawba and the Broad; and when the cavalcade passed the rifle corps, the men flung their hats and cheered their leader in open defiance of all discipline.
Ah me! they tell me that in after years this stout Daniel, the "Lion-bearder," as we used to dub him, became a doddering old man, even as thy old tale-teller is now; that he put off all his roistering ways and might be found any Lord's Day shouting, not curses, as of yore, but psalm tunes, in the church whereof he was a pillar! But 'twas the other Daniel we knew; the bluff, hearty man of his two hands, who could pummel the best boxer in his own regiment of fisticuffers; who could out-curse, out-buffet and out-drink the hardiest frontiersman on the border.
Next conspicuous in the general's suite was our colonel, the pink of light-horse commanders, with only Harry Lee in all the patriot rank and file for his peer. 'Tis a thousand pities that William Washington, "the Marcellus of the army," has had to suffer the eclipse which must dim the luster of all who walk in the shadow of a greater of the same name. For surely there never was a finer gentleman, a truer friend, a nobler patriot, or, according to his opportunities, an abler officer than was our beloved colonel of the light dragoons.
But this is all beside the mark, you will say; and you will be chafing restively to know how Dick and I had come together in this troop of Colonel Washington's; to know this in a word and to pass on at a gallop to the happenings which followed. Nay, in fancy's eye I can see you turning the page impatiently, wondering where and when and how this tiresome old word-spinner will make an end.
As Margery had promised, I passed out of my garret prison and out of door on that memorable evening of October fourteenth to find the British gone from Charlotte and the town jubilant with patriotic joy.
Having nothing to detain me, and being bound in honor by the wish of my dear lady not to follow and give myself up to the retreating British general, I took horse and rode to Salisbury, where I had the great good fortune to find Dick, already breveted a captain in Colonel Washington's command, hurrying his troop southward to whip on the British withdrawal.
Here was my chance to drown heartburnings in an onsweeping tide of action, and then and there I became a gentleman volunteer in Dick's company, asking nothing of my dear lad save that I might ride at his stirrup and share his hazards.
Touching the hazards, there were plenty of them in the seven weeks preceding and the month or more following our new general's coming to take the field, as you may know in detail if you care to follow the gallopings of Colonel Washington's light-horse troop through the pages of the histories. But these have little or naught to do with my tale, and I pass them by with the word you will anticipate; that in all the dashes and forays and brushes with the enemy's foraging parties and outposts, no British or Tory bullet could find its billet in the man who was enamored of death.
As for my most miserable entanglement, the lapse of time made it neither better nor worse, nor greatly different; and there was little in all the skirmishings and gallopings to beat off the bandog of conscience, or that other and still fiercer wild beast of starved love, that gnawed at me day and night.
Though the hope for some easement would now and then lift its head, I was reminded daily that hope itself was hopeless; and when the days lengthened into weeks and the weeks into months, bringing no salving for the double hurt, I knew that time could only make me love Margery the more; that there be wounds that heal, and others that open afresh at each remembrance of the hand that gave them.
One grain of comfort I had in all these dreary weeks. 'Twas whilst we were quartering in Charlotte, and I had chanced to fall upon the half-blood Scipio who had been left by Gilbert Stair to be the caretaker of the deserted town house.
As you will remember, 'twas he who had brought me the drugged tea, and the word I had from him made me hot with shame for the cruel imputation I had put upon my dear lady. "Yas, sar; gib um sleep-drop to make buckra massa hol' still twell we could tote 'im froo de window an' 'roun' de house an' up de sta'r. Soljah gyards watch um mighty close dat night; yes, sar!" And thus this nightmare thought of mine was turned into another thorn to prick me on the self-accusing side. 'Twas her keen woman's wit, and no cold-blooded plan to cheat the gallows, that made her give me the sleeping draft. Having the object-lesson of my late surrender before her, she had no mind to let me mar the rescue by waking to forbid it. And when I taxed her, 'twas natural pride that drove her to let me go on thinking the unworthy thought, if so I would.
I did penance for my disloyalty as a despairing lover might, and I do think it made me tenderer of Dick, whose bearing to me through all these tempestuous weeks was most nobly generous and forgiving. I say forgiving because I was often but the curstest of companions, as you would guess. For when I was not bent upon finding that wicket gate of death which would let me from the path of these two, I was in a wicked tertian of the mind whose chill was of despair, and whose fever was a hot desire to look once more into the eyes of my dear lady before the wicket gate should open for me.
'Twas this desire that finally drew me to her—the desire and another thing which shall have mention in its place. The new year was now come, and the Southern Army, as yet too weak to cope with the enemy, was cut into two wings of observation; one under General Greene himself at Cheraw Hill, the other and lesser in the knoll forests of the Broad with Daniel Morgan for its chief; both watching hawk-like the down-sitting of my Lord Cornwallis, who seemed to have taken root at Winnsborough.
As you will know, Washington's light-horse was with Morgan; and we ate, drank and well-nigh slept in the saddle. But for all our scoutings and outridings, and all Dan Morgan's hearty cursings at the ill success of them, we could come by no sure inkling of Lord Cornwallis's designs. As I have said, the British commander seemed to have taken root and was now waiting to sprout and grow.
It was at this lack-knowledge crisis that I volunteered to go to the British camp at Winnsborough in my old quality of spy; did this and had my leave and orders before Dick learned of it.
Left to my own devices, I fear I should have slipped away without telling Jennifer. But, as so many times before, fate intervened to drive me where I had not meant to go. On the morning set for my departure I woke to find a letter pinned to the ground beside me with an Indian scalping-knife thrust through it.
Dick was sitting by the newly-kindled fire, nursing his knees and most palpably waiting for me to wake and find my missive.
"What is it?" I asked, eying the ominous thing distrustfully.
"'Tis a letter, as you see. Uncanoola left it." Then, most surlily: "'Tis from Madge, and to you. There is your name on the back of it."
At this I must needs read the letter, with the lad looking on as if he would eat me. 'Twas dated at Winnsborough, and was brief and to the point.
Monsieur:
"When last we met you said the Church might undo what the Church had done. I have spoken to the good Père Matthieu, and he has consented to write to the Holy Father at Rome. But it is necessary that he should have your declaration. Since the matter is of your own seeking, mayhap you can devise a way to communicate with Père Matthieu, who is at present with us under our borrowed roof here."
That was all, and it was signed only with her initial. I read it through twice and then again to gain time. For Dick was waiting.
"'Tis a mere formal matter of business," said I, when I could put him off no longer.
"Business?" he queried, the red light of suspicion coming and going in his eye. "What business can you have with Mistress Madge Stair, pray?"
"'Tis about—it touches the title to Appleby Hundred," said I, equivocating as clumsily as a schoolboy caught in a fault. "Of course you know that the confiscation act of the North Carolina Congress re-established my right and title to the estate?"
"No," said he; "you never told me." Then: "She writes you about this?"
"About a matter touching it, as I say."
"As you did not say," he growled; after which a silence came and sat between us, I holding the open letter in my hand and he staring gloomily at the back of it.
When the silence grew portentous I told him of my design to go a-spying. He looked me in the eye and his smile was not pleasant to see.
"You are lying most clumsily, Jack; or at best you are telling me but half the truth. You are going to see Mistress Margery."
"That is altogether as it may happen," I retorted, striving hard to keep down the flame of insensate rivalry which his accusings always kindled in me.
"It is not. Winnsborough is neither London nor yet Philadelphia, that you may miss her in the crowd. And you do not mean to miss her."
"Well? And if I do chance to see her—what then?"
"Don't mad me, Jack. You should know by this what a fool she has made of me."
"'Tis your own folly," I rejoined hotly. "You should blame neither the lady nor the man to whom she has given nothing save—"
"Save what?" he broke in savagely.
I recoiled on the brink as I had so many times before. The months of waiting for the death I craved had hardened me.
"Save a thing you would value lightly enough without her love. Let us have done with this bickering; find the colonel and ask his leave to go with me, if you like. Then you may do the love-making whilst I do the spying."
"No," said he; "not while you stand it upon such a leg as that."
I reached across and gripped his hand and wrung it. "Shall we never have the better of these senseless vaporings?" I cried. "'Tis as you say; I can neither live sane nor die mad without another sight of her, Dick, and that is the plain truth. And yet, mark me, this next seeing of her will surely set a thing in train that will make her yours and not mine. Get your leave and come with me on your own terms. Mayhap she will show you how little she cares for me, and how much she cares for you."
So this is how it came about that we two, garbed as decent planters and mounted upon the sleekest cobs the regiment afforded, took the road for Winnsborough together on a certain summer-fine morning in January in the year of battles, seventeen hundred and eighty-one.
XLV
IN WHICH WE FIND WHAT WE NEVER SOUGHT
'Tis fifty miles as a bird would fly it from the grazing uplands of the Broad known as the Cowpens to the lower plantation region lying between that stream and the farther Catawba or Wateree; and Richard Jennifer and I ambled the distance leisurely, as befitted our mission and disguise, cutting the journey evenly in half for the first night's lodging, which we had at the house of one Philbrick—as hot a Tory as we pretended to be.
From our host of the night we learned that within two days the British outposts on the Wateree and the Broad had been advanced; and there were rumors in the air that Lord Cornwallis, who was hourly expecting General Leslie with two thousand of Sir Henry Clinton's men from New York, would presently move on to the long-deferred conquest of North Carolina.
"Has Cornwallis lost his wits?" Dick would say, when we were a-jog on the southward road again. "'Tis a braver lordling than I gave him credit for being—if he will put his head in a trap that will close behind him and cut him off from his line and base."
I laughed. "You may wager Jennifer House against an acre of the Cowpens that Lord Charles will do no such unsoldierly thing. If this rumor be true, we have heard only the half of it."
"And the other half will be?—"
"That my Lord Cornwallis will do his prettiest to pull the teeth of one or the other of the trap-jaws before he trusts himself within them."
Jennifer was silent for an ambling minute or two. Then he said: "'Twill be our teeth he'll try to pull, then. The Broad is nearer than the Pedee; and ours is the weaker of the two jaws."
"Right you are," said I. "And now we know what we have to discover."
"Anan?" he queried.
"We must learn by hook or crook who is to be sent against Dan Morgan, and when."
"That should be easy—if the use of it afterward be not choked out of us at a rope's end."
"We can divide the rope's-end chance of failure by two. We may work together as the opportunity offers, but once within the lines we must pass as strangers to each other, or at most as chance acquaintances of the road."
"Good," said he; and then his jaw dropped. "But what if one of us be taken? Never ask me to stand by stranger-wise and see you hanged, Jack!"
"I shall both ask it and promise to do the same by you. Your hand on it before we go a step farther, if you please."
"'Tis out of all reason," he demurred.
"'Tis the only reasonable course. Bethink you, this is no knight-errant venture; we are two of Dan Morgan's soldiers bent upon doing a thing most needful for the welfare of the country and its cause. 'Tis a duty higher than any obligation friendship lays on Richard Jennifer or John Ireton."
At this he yielded the point, though I could see that the proposal jumped little with the promptings of his generous heart.
"'Tis a scurvy trap you have set for me," he grumbled. "The risk is chiefly yours, and you know it. You are known to Lord Cornwallis, and to God knows how many more of them, and belike—"
The interruption came in the shape of a troop of redcoat horsemen galloping in the road to meet us, and we were shortly surrounded and put sharply to the question. We answered each for himself. Dick was a loyalist from Yorkville way, eager to be set in arms against the bandit Daniel Morgan. I was a refugee from "hornets'-nest" Mecklenburg, also bent upon revenge.
The troop officer passed us on, something doubting, as I suspected. But we were riding in the right direction, and he was unwilling to clog himself with a pair of plain country gentlemen held in leash as prisoners.
A few miles farther down the road the same brace of lies got us safely through the loosely drawn vedette line, and by evening we were in sight of our goal.
Viewing it from the rising ground of approach, Winnsborough appeared less as a town than as a partly fortified camp. The few houses of the village were lost in the field of tents, huts and troop shelters, and measuring by the spread of these, it would seem that my Lord Cornwallis's army had been considerably augmented since I had last seen it in Charlotte. I spoke of this, but Dick was intent upon the business of the moment.
"Aye; there are enough of them, God knows. But tell me, Jack—I'm new to this game—what's to do first when we are among them?"
I laughed at him. "You are my troop commander, Captain Jennifer. 'Tis for you to make the dispositions."
"Have your joke and be hanged to you. There are no captains here."
"If you leave it to me, we shall ride boldly to the tavern, put up as travelers, and listen to the gossips, each for himself," I replied; and this is what we did.
The village tavern, servilely bearing the king's arms thinly painted over the palmetto tree of South Carolina on its swinging sign-board, was a miserable doggery, full to overflowing with a riffraff of carousing soldiery. Separating by mutual consent in the public tap-room, Richard and I presently drifted together again at a small table in a corner, with a black boy in attendance to set before us such poor entertainment as the hostelry afforded.
"Well, what luck?" asked Dick, mumbling it behind his hand, though he might safely have shouted it aloud in the din and clamor of the place.
I shook my head. "Nothing as yet, save that I overheard a tipsy corporal telling his tipsier sergeant that the officers would be holding a revel to-night at a Tory manor house situate somewhere beyond the camp confines to the northward; the house of one Master Marmaduke Harndon, if I heard the name aright." Then I added: "This rabble is too drunken to serve our purpose. 'Tis only the common soldiery, and we shall learn nothing here."
"There was at least one who was not a ranker," said Dick, and there was something akin to awe in his voice. Then he leaned across the table to whisper. "Jack, I've fair had a fright!"
I smiled. Fear, of God, man or the devil, was not one of the lad's weaknesses.
"You may grin as you please," he went on; "but answer me this; do the dead come back to life?"
"Not this side of the resurrection reveille, if we may believe the dominies."
"Then I have seen a ghost—a most horrible mask of a man we both know to our cost."
"Name him and I will tell you whether he be a ghost or no."
"'Tis the ghost of Frank Falconnet; or else it is what of the man himself the fire hath left," said Dick, and I marked his shiver at the word.
"No!" said I.
"I tell you yes."
I sprang up, but the lad reached across the table and smote me back into the chair.
"Softly, old firebrand; 'twas you who said the public matter must take precedence of the private. Moreover, if this be Francis Falconnet whom I have seen, your sweetest revenge on him will be to let him live—as he is."
"I will kill him as I would a wild beast," I raged, thinking of that midnight scene in the great forest when my sweet lady had gone on her knees to this fiend in human guise. "And so should you," I added, "if you care aught for the honor of the woman who loves you."
But now it was this hot-headed Richard I have drawn for you who saw farthest and clearest.
"All in good time," he said, coolly. "At this present we have Dan Morgan's fish to fry, and sitting here saucing this devil's mess of a supper with thoughts of private revenge will never fry it. Set your wits at work; Falconnet's ghost has put mine hopelessly out of gear. Ye gods! but 'twas a most fearsome thing to look at!"
I did not answer him at once, and whilst I plied knife and fork for the sake of appearances, I would think upon what he had discovered. This reappearance of Francis Falconnet was not to be passed over lightly. What would he do, or seek to do? Nay, what devilish thing was it he might not do? If the fire had burned his passion out, it had doubtless kindled a feller blaze of revenge. And if his thirst was for vengeance, how could he quench it in a deeper draft than by harrying the woman we both loved? 'Twas only by a mighty effort that I could drag myself back to Dick's urging and the needs of the hour.
"To have some chance of hearing gossip to our purpose, we must make shift to gain admittance to this officers' rout at the manor house," I said.
"The devil!" quoth Dick, "I venture that's easier said than done—for two plain country gentlemen."
"Never fear; there will be others there lacking fine clothes, and so the throng be great enough, we may pass current in it."
Richard pushed his plate back with a grimace of disgust.
"Let us be at it, then. Another grapple with this pig-bait will finish me outright."
A half-hour later we were tethering our cobs at the already crowded hitching-rail in front of a goodly mansion some mile or more beyond the camp limits on the northward road; a rambling manor house to the full as large as Appleby Hundred, with a shaven lawn in front, and within, lights and music and sounds of revelry.
"By the Lord Harry! but this Master Harndon would seem to be a man of substance," says Dick. And then: "Can you pick out a good horse in the dark, Jack? It may come to a race for our necks, by and by, and these cobs of ours are too broad-backed for speed."
I said I could, and so we went deeper into the cavalcade at the hitch-rail and marked out two clean-limbed chargers, a gray and a sorrel; this before we gave the final touches to our plan of action and passed up the broad avenue to the manor house.
XLVI
HOW OUR PIECE MISSED FIRE AT HARNDON ACRES
For a doorkeeper some one or another of the officer guests had set a sergeant on guard; but though the night was yet young the man passed us into the great entrance hall with a hiccough and a wink that spoke thus early of an open house and freely flowing good cheer.
As we had hoped to find it, this rout at Master Harndon's was a stifling jam, and a good half of the guests were in civilian plain clothes, neither Paris nor London having as yet reached so far into the Carolina plantations to proscribe homespun and to prescribe the gay toggeries of the courts. This for the men, I hasten to add; for then, as now, our American dames and maids would put a year's cropping of a plantation on their backs, thinking nothing of it; and there was no lack of shimmering silks and stiff brocades, of high-piled coiffures, paint, patches and powder at this merrymaking at Harndon Acres.
Lacking an introducer, and wanting, moreover, nothing save the leave to have standing-room in the throng as lookers-on, we gave Mr. Marmaduke Harndon, a sleek, rotund little gentleman, smirking and bowing and tapping the lid of his silver snuff-box, a wide berth; and with an agreement to meet later for the comparing of notes, Jennifer and I went apart at the door of the ball-room, each to lose himself in the assembled company as an otter slips into a pool, namely, without ruffling it.
'Twas easily done. Winnsborough had by this time become a refuge camp for all the loyalists in the region roundabout, and there were many in the present company who were strangers one to another, uneasy, shifting figures in the gay throng, beneath the notice alike of haughty dames and prinking dandy officers. Beneath the notice, I say; yet I would qualify this, for more than one of the epauletted macaronis trod upon my toes or bustled me rudely in the crush till I trembled, not for my own self-control, but for Richard's, making sure that the lad was having no more gentlemanly welcome than I.
'Twas with some notion of finding ampler room for my feet that I edged away through the fringing wall-crowd in the dancing-room toward a curtained archway at the back. As yet I had overheard naught save the silly persiflage of the belles and beaux—a word here and another there—and I was beginning to fear that this was as poor a place to look for information as was the pothouse, when a thing befell to set me a-quiver with all the thrillings the human heart-strings can thrum to in one and the same instant of time.
I had shouldered my way out of the ball-room medley and into the less crowded room at the back. This proved to be a rear withdrawing-room serving for the nonce as a refectory. There were little groups and knots of chatterers standing about; fair maids, each with her ring of redcoated courtiers, laughing and jesting or picking daintily at the viands on the great oaken table in the midst.
Rounding the promontory of the table's-end to come to anchor in some quiet eddy where I could listen unnoticed for the word I was thirsting for, I must needs entangle the button of my coat-cuff in the delicate lace of a lady's sleeve in passing.
The wearer of the sleeve had her back to me, and I saw the white shoulders go up in a little shrug of petulance whilst I sought to disentangle the button. Then she turned to face me and the words of apology froze on my lips. 'Twas Mistress Margery, standing at ease with—good heavens! with Richard Jennifer and Colonel Banastre Tarleton for her company!
Here was a halter, with a double snaffle at the end of it, was the thought that flashed upon me; and I was gathering my wits to brazen it out in some such manner as to leave Jennifer unattainted, when my lady give a little start and a shriek.
"La, Mr. Septimus; how you startled me!" she cried. Then, without a tremor of the lip or a pause for breath-taking, she presented me: "Colonel Tarleton; Mr. Septimus Ireton, of Iretondene in Virginia." And next to Dick: "Mr. Richard; my very good friend, Mr. Ireton."
'Twas done so cleverly and with such an air that even Dick, who had known her from childhood, was struck dumb with admiration, as his face sufficiently advertised. And, indeed, I had much ado to play my own part with any decent self-possession, though I did make shift to bow stiffly, and to say: "I see I should have brought the Iretondene title deeds with me to make you sure that I am not my rebel cousin John, Mistress Margery. Your servant, Colonel Tarleton; and yours, Mr. Richard."
Dick's bow was an elaborate hiding of his tell-tale face; but the colonel's was the slightest of nods, and I could feel the sloe-black eyes of him boring into my very soul.
Had my lady given him but a moment's time I make no doubt he would have come instantly at the truth and the little farce would have been turned into a tragedy on the spot. But she gave him no time. The spinet in the ball-room alcove was tinkling out the overture to a minuet, and she laid the tips of her dainty fingers on the colonel's arm.
"This will be ours to walk through, will it not, Colonel Tarleton?" she said, playing the sprightly minx to the very climax of perfection. Then she dipped us a curtsy. "Au revoir, gentlemen. 'Tis a thousand pities you had not joined sooner and so had the red coat and small-sword to grace you here."
When they were gone, Dick laughed sardonically.
"Saw you ever such a cool-blood little jade in all your life? 'Twas with me as it was with you; I, too, stumbled upon them, and the colonel bustled me and set his heel on my foot. I daresay I should have had myself in irons in another moment but for Madge. She slipped in between and introduced us as sweetly as you please."
"Nevertheless," said I, "the colonel recognized us both."
"No! Think you so?"
"'Tis certain enough to play upon. What we do now must be done quickly or not at all. What have you overheard?"
He swore softly. "Never a cursed word; less than nothing of any interest to Dan Morgan."
"We must try again. 'Twill surely be talked of here if the army is about to move. Do you take a turn in the anteroom and meet me in a quarter of an hour at the outer door."
At the word, Dick promptly lost himself in the throng whilst I made a slow circuit of the refreshment table. Once I thought I had the clue when a girl hanging on the arm of an infantry lieutenant said: "Will it be true that you will presently go out to hunt the rebels down, Mr. Thornicroft?" But the prudent lieutenant smiled and put her off cleverly, leaving his fair questioner—and me—none the wiser.
I went on, drifting aimlessly from group to group and dallying of set purpose. If I had read Colonel Tarleton's glance aright, the moments were growing diamond-precious; but as yet neither half of my errand was done. Come what might, I must see Margery again and have her tell me where and how to find the priest; and 'twas borne in upon me that she would come back to seek me as soon as she could be free of her partner in the dance.
The forecast as to my lady had its fulfilment while yet the spinetter was striking out the final chords of the minuet. A lady dropped her kerchief, and I was before her swain in stooping to pick it up. As I bowed low in returning the bit of lace to its owner, a voice that I had learned to know and love whispered in my ear.
"Make your way to the clock landing of the stair; I must have speech with you," it said; and for a wonder I was cool enough to obey with no more than a sidelong glance at my lady passing on the arm of another epauletted dangler.
She was before me at the meeting place, and there was no laughing welcome in the deep-welled eyes. Instead, they flashed me a look that made me wince.
"What folly is this, sir?" she demanded. "Will you never have done taking my honor and your own life into your reckless hands?"
I bowed my head to the storm. With the dagger of my miserable errand sticking in my heart there was no fight in me.
"I am but come to do your bidding," I said, slowly, for the words cost me sorely in the coin of anguish. "I had your letter, and if you will say how I may find Father Matthieu—"
She broke me in the midst. "Mon Dieu!" she cried. "Could I guess that you would come here, into the very noose of the gallows? Oh, how you do heap scorn on scorn upon me! Once you made me give silent consent to a falsehood you told; twice, nay, thrice, you have made me disloyal to the king; and now you come again to make me look the world in the face and tell a smiling lie to shield you! O Holy Mother, pity me!" And with this she put her face in her hands and began to sob.
Now we were only measurably isolated on the stair, and some sense of the hazard we took—a hazard involving her as well as Richard and myself—steadied me with a sudden shock.
"Control yourself," I whispered. "What is done, is done; and the misery is not all yours to suffer. Tell me how I may find the priest, and I will do my errand and begone."
"You can not stay to find him now—you must not," she insisted, coming out of the fit of despair with a rebound. "He is in the town—indeed, I know not where he is just now. Can you not endure it a little longer, Captain Ireton?"
"No," said I, sullenly. "I have been living a lie all these months to the friend I love best, and I will not do it more."
Could I be mistaken? Surely there was a flash not of anger in the eyes that were lifted to mine, and a tremulous note of eagerness in the voice that said: "Then Dick does not know?—you have not told him?"
"No; I have told no one."
"Poor Dick!" she said softly. "I thought he knew, and I—"
She paused, and in the pause it flashed upon me how she had wronged my dear lad; how she had thought he would make brazen love to her knowing she was the wife of another. I thanked God in my heart that I had been able to right him thus far.
After a time she said: "Why did you make me marry you, Monsieur John? Oh, I have racked my brain so for the answer to that question. I know you said it was to save my honor. But surely we have paid a heavier penalty than any that could have been laid upon me had you left me as I was."
"I was but a short-sighted fool, and no prophet," I rejoined, striving hard to keep the bitterness of soul out of my words. "At the moment it seemed the only way out of the pit of doubt into which my word to Colonel Tarleton had plunged you. But there was another motive. You saw the paper I signed that night, with Lieutenant Tybee and your father's factor for the witnesses?"
"Yes."
"Do you know what it was?"
"No."
"'Twas the last will and testament of one John Ireton, gentleman, in which he bequeathed to Margery, his wife, his estate of Appleby Hundred."
"Appleby Hundred?" she echoed. "But my father—"
"Your father holds but a confiscator's title, and it, with many others, has been voided by the Congress of North Carolina. Richard Jennifer is my dear friend, and you—"
"I begin to understand—a little," she said, and now her voice was low and she would not look at me. Then, in the same low tone: "But now—now you would be free again?"
"How can you ask? As matters stand, I have marred your life and Dick's most hopelessly. Do you wonder that I have been reckless of the hangman? that I care no jot for my interfering life at this moment, save as the taking of it may involve you and Richard?"
"No, surely," she said, still speaking softly. And now she gave me her eyes to look into, and the hardness was all melted out of them. "Did you come here, under the shadow of the gallows, to tell me this, Monsieur John?"
"There shall be no more half-confidences between us, dear lady. I had my leave of General Morgan on the score of our need for better information of Lord Cornwallis's designs; but I should have come in any case—wanting the leave, my commission as a spy, or any other excuse."
"To tell me this?"
"To do the bidding of your letter, and to say that whilst I live I shall be shamed for the bitter words I gave you when I was sick."
"I mind them not; I had forgotten them," she said.
"But I have not forgotten, nor ever shall. Will you say you forgive me, Margery?"
"For thinking I had poisoned you? How do you know I did not?"
"I have seen Scipio. Will you shrive me for that disloyalty, dear lady?"
"Did I not say I had forgotten it?"
"Thank you," I said, meaning it from the bottom of my heart. "Now one thing more, and you shall send me to Father Matthieu. 'Tis a shameful thing to speak of, but the thought of it rankles and will rankle till I have begged you to add it to the things forgotten. That morning in your dressing-room—"
She put up her hands as if she would push the words back.
"Spare me, sir," she begged. "There are some things that must always be unspeakable between us, and that is one of them. But if it will help you to know—that I know—how—how you came there—"
She was flushing most painfully, and I was scarce more at ease. But having gone thus far, I must needs let the thought consequent slip into words.
"Your father's motives have ever been misunderstandable to me. What could he hope to gain by such a thing?"
I had no sooner said it than I could have bitten my masterless tongue. For in the very voicing of the wonder I saw, or thought I saw, Gilbert Stair's purpose. Since I had not made good my promise to die and leave the estate to Margery, he would at least make sure of his daughter's dowry in it by putting it beyond us to set the marriage aside as a thing begun but not completed. So, having this behind-time flash of after-wit, I made haste to efface the question I had asked.
"Your pardon, I pray you; I see now 'tis a thing we must both bury out of sight. But to the other—the matter which has brought me hither; will you put me in the way of finding Father Matthieu?"
We had talked on through the measures of a cotillion, and the dancers, warm and wearied, were beginning to fill the entrance hall below. Our poor excuse for privacy would be gone in a minute or two, and she spoke quickly.
"You shall see Father Matthieu, and I will help you. But you must not linger here. In a few days the army will be moving northward—Oh, heavens! what have I said!"
"Nothing," I cut in swiftly; "you are speaking now to your husband—not to the spy. Go on, if you please."
"We shall return to Appleby Hundred within the fortnight. There, if you are still—if you desire it, you may meet the good curé, and—"
A much-bepowdered captain of cavalry was coming up the stair to claim her, and I was fain to let her go. But at my passing of her to the step below, I whispered: "I shall keep the tryst—my first and last with you, dear lady. Adieu."
So soon as she was gone I made haste to find Richard, having, as I feared, greatly overstayed my appointment to meet him at the door. He was not among the promenaders in the hall, so I began to drift again, through the ball-room and so on to where the spread table stood ringed with its groups of nibblers. I had made no more than half the round of the refectory when I saw Margery standing in the curtained arch, looking this way and that, with anxious terror written plainly in her face.
"What is it?" I asked, when she had found me out.
"'Tis the worst that could happen," she whispered. "You are discovered, both of you. Colonel Tarleton was too shrewd for us. He has let it be known among the officers that there are two spies in the house, and now—Hark! what is that?"
We were standing in a deep window-bay and I drew the curtain an inch or two. The air without was filled with the trampling of hoofbeats on greensward. A light-horse troop was surrounding the manor house.
I drew her arm in mine and led her back to the ball-room; 'twas now come to this, that open publicity was our best safeguard. "We must find Dick," said I. "Have you seen him?"
"No."
Together we made the slow circuit of the dancing-room, but Jennifer was not to be found. Out of the tail of my eye I saw a soldier slipping in here and there to stand statue-like against the wall. This brought it to a matter of minutes, of seconds, mayhap, and still we looked in vain for Dick.
"Oh, why did you bring him here? He will surely be taken!" Her voice was tremulous with fear, and I answered as I could, being sore at heart, in spite of all, that her chief concern should be for Richard.
But by now my purpose was well taken, and though it appeared that Richard Jennifer was more than ever my successful rival, I pledge you, my dears, I had no thought of leaving him behind. So we made another slow round of the rooms, and whilst we were looking for Dick I spoke in guarded whispers to warn my lady of Falconnet's return. But the warning was not needed.
Her shudder of loathing shook the hand on my arm. "That man! Oh, Monsieur John! I fear him day and night! If I could but run away; but we are not finding Dick—we must find him quickly!"
There was no other place to look save in the entrance hall, and at the door one of the statue-like soldiers took two steps aside and barred the way. I faced about and we plunged once again into the throng, but not before I had had a glimpse of Richard in the hall beyond. When the chance offered, I bent to whisper.
"Dick is in the hall, looking for me, go you to him and warn him. I may not pass the door, as you have seen."
"He will not escape without you," she demurred.
"Tell him he must. Tell him I say he must!"
She glanced over her shoulder with a look in her eyes that made me think of a wounded bird fluttering in the net of the fowler.
"Oh, 'tis hard, hard!" she murmured.
I snatched the word from her lips. "To choose between love and wifely duty? Then I make it a command. Go, quickly!"
She went at that, and I made my way slowly to the far side of the ball-room, taking post in a deep-recessed window giving upon the lawn. Though it was January and the night was chill and raw, the rooms were summer warm with the breath of the crush, and some one had swung the casement.
Without, I could hear the horses of the waiting troop champing restlessly at their bits, and now and again the low gentling words of the riders. Why the colonel did not spring his trap at once I could not guess; though I learned later that he had magnified our two-man spying venture into a patriot foray meant to capture the whole houseful of British officers at a swoop, and was taking his measures accordingly.
'Twas while I was listening to the champing horses that I heard my name whispered in the darkness beyond the open casement; I turned slowly, and the nearest of the soldier watchers began to edge his way toward my window.
"'Tis I—Dick Jennifer," whispered the voice without. "Swing the casement a little wider and out with you. Be swift about it, for God's sake!"
"I am fair trapped," I whispered back. "Make off as you can."
"And leave you behind?" So much I heard; and then came sounds of a struggle; the breath-catchings of two men locked in a strangler's hold, a smothered oath or two, a fall on the turf under the window, followed by the soft thudding of fist blows. I could bear it no longer. The edging soldier had come within arm's reach, and when I swung the casement a little wider, he laid a hand on my shoulder.
"In the name of the king!" he said; and this was all he had time or leave to say. For at the summons I drove my fist against the point of his wagging jaw, to send him plunging among the dancers, and the recoil of the blow carried me clear of the window-seat with what a din and clamor of a hue and cry to speed the parting guest as you may figure for yourselves.
The alighting ground of the leap was the body of Dick's late antagonist lying prone beneath the window ledge; but the lad himself was up and ready to catch me when I stumbled over the vanquished one.
"'Tis legs for it now," he cried. "Make for the avenue and the horses at the hitch-rail!"
At rising twenty a man may run fast and far; at rising forty he may still run far if the first hundred yards do not burst his bellows. So when we had darted through the thin line of encircling horsemen and were flying down the broad avenue with all the troopers who had caught sight of us thundering at our heels, Dick was the pace-setter, whilst I made but a shifty second, gasping and panting and dying a thousand deaths in the effort to catch my second wind.
"Courage!" shouted Dick, flinging the word back over his shoulder as he ran. "There is help ahead if we can live to reach the gate!"
But, luckily for me, the help was nearer at hand. Half way down the box-bordered drive, when I was at my last gasp, the shrill yell of the border partizans rose from the shrubbery on the right, and a voice that I shall know and welcome in another world cried out:
"Stiddy, boys! stiddy till ye can see the whites o' their eyes! Now, then; give it to 'em hot and heavy!"
A haphazard banging of guns followed and the pursuit drew rein in some confusion, giving us time to reach the great gate and the horse-rail, and to loose and mount the gray and the sorrel we had marked out.
Whilst we were about this last, Ephraim Yeates came loping down the avenue and through the gate to vault into the saddle of the first horse he could lay hands on; and so it was that we three took the northward road in the silver starlight, with the pursuit now in order again and in full cry behind us.
'Twas not until we had safely run the gantlet of the vedette lines by a by-path known to the old hunter, and had shaken off the troopers that were following, that I found time to ask what had become of the men who had formed the ambush in the shrubbery.
The old man gave me his dry chuckle of a laugh.
"'Twas the same old roose de geer, as the down-country Frenchers 'u'd say. I stole the drunken sergeant's gun and two others, and let 'em off one to a time. As for the screechin', one bazoo's as good as a dozen, if so be ye blow it fierce enough."
"'Twas cut and dried beforehand," Dick explained. "I had an inkling of what was afoot from Ephraim, here, whom I stumbled on when I dropped from the stair window that Madge opened for me. He went to set his one-man ambush whilst I was trying to warn you."
"So," said I. "Our skins are whole, but after all we have come off with never a word to take back to Dan Morgan—unless you have the word."
"Not I," Dick said, ruefully.
The old man chuckled again.
"Ye ain't old enough, neither one o' ye, ez I allow. It takes a right old person to fish out the innards of an inimy's secrets. Colonel Tarleton, hoss, foot and dragoons, with the seventh rigiment and a part o' the seventy-first, will take the big road for Dan Morgan's camp to-morrow at sun-up. And right soon atterwards, Gin'ral Cornwallis 'll foller on. Is that what you youngsters was trying to find out?"