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."