of poor Peggy Shippen’s face; disturbed me so greatly that I scarcely
heard the traitor’s question which gave me the opportunity I had been
flattering him for. The distracting thing was a fleeting glimpse of
another fair face at an upper window of the house; a clean-cut profile
appearing for a single instant behind the leaded panes, and then
vanishing so quickly that I began to doubt that it had been there. Now
I could have sworn upon a stack of Bibles that there was only one face
in all the world that could have flung that profile outline upon any
window that was ever glazed, and that face I had left safely behind me
in Virginia.
Could it be possible--but no, it was only a fancied resemblance, I told
myself; and then I flogged my wits into line again in time to answer
Arnold’s leave-taking query that had been all but lost in the sudden
jangle of emotions.
“What can you do for me, Mr. Arnold?” I echoed. “That is for you to
determine. From what Sir Henry Clinton said, or rather hinted at, I
hoped you might be able to make use of me in some way. But I shall be
at my best if you keep me near your person, sir. Of that I am very
sure.”
Again he swallowed the bait like a greedy gudgeon.
“You shall come to me at my headquarters this afternoon, Mr. Page,”
he said, with the air of one of the great ones of earth dealing out
largesse to a reverent and admiring vassal; and then he ascended the
steps and the door was opened quickly for him by the woman who stood
inside.
Some things were made plain to me on my chilly walk back to the
southward, with its opportunity for quiet reflection. One was that
I had not overrated Arnold’s appetite for flattery, which was in
truth even grosser than I had imagined. Another developed out of the
side-glimpse given me of the traitor’s domestic affairs. It was not
passing strange that Arnold should not wish to have his family with
him in the house in the lower town where, as Castner had told me,
he ate and slept and had his regimental rendezvous. But I saw more
than disinclination in the town-wide severing. It spoke eloquently of
the traitor’s social isolation that Arnold should be only a daylight
visitor at the house where his wife and child were, without doubt, the
guests of family friends of the Shippens.
I was wondering upon what footing he stood in this house, and if he
were only tolerated there as he seemed to be elsewhere, when the
recollection of the face I had seen at the upper window came to haunt
and perplex me again. My last letter from Beatrix Leigh had pictured
her hived up in the great house at Sevenoaks, in County Warwick, her
father and brothers gone to the south with General Greene,--in whose
campaign against Cornwallis she was patently more interested than
she was in our humdrum New York fuse-sputterings,--and her mother
and all the other women-folk of the tidewater homeland shuddering in
anticipation of the long-threatened descent of the British upon the
Virginia coast.
She had given me no hint of any intended desertion of Sevenoaks, and
though she had many friends in Philadelphia, where her schooling had
been, I thought it the height of improbability that she would get even
that far on the way to New York in these troublous times. Weighing all
these things in the mental balance, I saw how absurd it was to let a
momentary sight of a beautiful face at a window run me so far aside
from the beaten path of calm reasoning. In sober fact the fancied
identification proved nothing but this: that Beatrix Leigh’s face was
so constantly present in my mind and heart that I was ready to find and
adore it under any suggestive guise.
Having now some little time to call my own, I first secured a lodging
at the tavern where the ham had made me homesick for the smoke-houses
of Virginia, and then set out to find Sergeant Champe. That I should
chance upon him readily enough, I had no doubt; but with the town full
of soldiers it proved a more difficult thing than I had foreseen, so
difficult that the noon hour found me still groping for my accomplice.
But one thing I did find, namely, the barracks of the “Loyal American
Legion,” and, with due respect for any true Loyalists there may have
been in this traitor-built corps, I never saw a more hang-dog shuffling
of men than these who were shortly to call our Judas “General.” They
were a curst lot, too, for in all my introductory foregathering with
them, I could not find more than three or four who would join me in a
soldierly pot of wine.
Castner joined me at the midday meal at my inn, this time as my guest;
and now I began to regret my knowing of this fine young fellow, who was
condoning in me what must have appeared to him as the most deplorable
wickedness a soldier can be guilty of. I foresaw complications, if our
acquaintance should go on ripening into friendship; I must use him, or
any other man coming in my way, to forward the great end in view, and
already the idea of making the young, fine-faced, upright lieutenant an
innocent accessory was growing repugnant to me. So I thought it no more
than right to give him his warning--which I did.
“You have rooms in the barracks, Mr. Castner?” I asked when we had come
to the long-stemmed pipes after the meal in the inn common-room.
“No,” he replied. “Being on detached duty as one of Sir Henry’s aides,
I live as I please.”
“And where does it please you to live, if I may ask?”
“In this house at the present time. It is not so good as the best,
perhaps; but it is far better than the worst.”
Here was a promise of more complications. My necessary meetings with
Champe, which I had thought this tavern so near the fort might
shelter, could scarcely come under the same roof with Castner and not
awaken suspicion. Yet I reflected that I was not tied to the tavern
looking down Broad Way to Sir Henry Clinton’s headquarters with any
string; I could break loose whenever I chose.
“It is very good, indeed,” I allowed, thinking still of the breakfast
ham and eggs. Then quite abruptly: “You have taken a fancy to me, Mr.
Castner, and it does you little credit. You will live longer and have
more money and a better digestion, if you give me the cold shoulder.”
The young Briton’s smile was altogether good-natured.
“If I were inclined to be suspicious, which I trust I am not, I might
wonder why you particularly wish to be quit of me, Mr. Page,” he said
mildly.
“I don’t, on my own account,” I denied bluntly. “But I am telling you
the truth--for your own good. Have you ever fought a duel, Lieutenant?”
He admitted that he had, and had come off second best. But it was a
mere point of honor with a brother officer, and no life-and-death
affair.
“Then you are committed to the code? You think a challenged man should
fight?”
“I think a challenged gentleman will always fight,” he corrected.
I hooked an arm over the back of my chair and looked him full in the
face.
“Let me tell you something, Mr. Castner--always for your own good, you
will remember. Yesterday, about this time or a little later, I slapped
a man’s face. He sent his friend to my friend, and this morning at
daybreak, as I have reason to suppose, a party of three which should
have been a party of four, met in a grassy cove on the riverside
just below the town of Nyack. At that hour, or possibly a short time
afterward, I was breakfasting very pleasantly here with you, as you
will recall.”
He was evidently shocked, as I meant him to be, and for a little while
he was unable to find the fitting word. When he did find it, it was a
most gentlemanly word, I had to admit.
“You have your reasons for telling me this, Mr. Page, and you will
pardon me if I say that they do not appear upon the surface. I will ask
you one question--which you may answer or not, as it pleases you: Does
Sir Henry Clinton know of this?”
“I told him, as nearly as I can remember, in much the same words.”
“Yet he condoned this--this----”
“The poltroonery?” I cut in, helping him out. “Yes, in a way. But his
way made a just and even-handed discrimination between a brave man
and a coward. You will observe that he did not billet me with his own
people; he turned me over to Mr. Benedict Arnold. Now will you give me
the cold shoulder, Mr. Castner?”
He took time to think about it, regarding me now a bit wistfully, I
thought, and again, angrily. It was a test that a tried friend might
have balked at, and he was only an acquaintance of a few hours.
“You have neither the face nor the carriage of a coward,” he said at
length, speaking slowly. “Moreover, you are from the South, where your
kinsmen would brand you for a deed such as you have described. No, Mr.
Page, I shall not cold-shoulder you, because I know very well that you
have carefully kept back the key to your riddle. Some day you will
think well enough of me to let me have it.”
What could I do with this generous, noble-minded fellow who would not
believe ill of me on my own word? There seemed to be nothing for it but
to take him as he stood; to make the best of his abounding nobility
of character and friendly loyalty. Yet it was now all the harder to
deceive him and to play upon this very friendship, as I feared I might
be obliged to. I have heard of those who are said to pray, sometimes,
to be delivered from their friends, and I have always had a hot corner
of despising saved for these cold-blooded ones. But now I found myself
on the brink of saying the same unthankful prayer in my own behalf.
When we rose from the table, Castner asked me very kindly if I would
walk abroad with him, saying that we might visit the fortification,
if I wished. But here I laid down a rule which I meant to adhere to:
a spy I might be; a spy I surely should be in every way that might in
the future prove helpful to our side. But I did not need to make this
friendly lieutenant a blind accomplice, and I would not.
So I pleaded my afternoon engagement with the arch traitor, and was
glad I had it to plead; and I went to keep it, a little later, leaving
Castner to smoke another pipe by himself before the fire in the tavern
bar.
Arnold was writing at his table in the front room of the upper suite
when his man, who, as I noted, wore the uniform of the new legion,
marshaled me in. Though the event proved that I was expected, Arnold
went on with his writing without so much as a look for me, and again I
had a chance to mark the deepening furrows in his brow and the brooding
look in the moody eyes.
When he was quite through he dropped the quill with a sigh and turned
to me.
“Well, Mr. Page, you find me serving myself as I can,” he said. “None
the less, I will serve you, too, as I may. Will you take a commission
in the new legion?”
I wondered a little at his reckless haste. Had I been in his shoes, I
think I should have considered well before confiding in a man whose
very presence was a proof of his perfidy to others. But at that time
I had yet to learn that the enlisting of the “Loyal American” Legion
had proved a stupendous task for our traitor, and one which tried
him to the last reserve of his ambitious will. There were privates
in the ranks who scorned to serve under him; and when it came to the
officering, the difficulties were almost insurmountable. No British
regular would go with him willingly, and the few he had were under
peremptory orders from Sir Henry Clinton. So now, when he had a chance
to secure a subaltern whose fame as a troop leader was not, if I do say
it, altogether of the worst, he caught at it.
I made no bones of accepting the commission, meaning that there should
be no occasion for my holding it longer than the kidnapping purpose
should require; and so I told him, with more flattery, that myself and
my sword were at his disposal, or, if he desired, I would place myself
in the ranks, as possibly many a better man had done.
“No, no, Mr. Page,” he made haste to say. “We don’t value you so
lightly as that. You shall have a captain’s commission when we are
ready to sail, and in the meantime, if you please, you may serve as my
aide.”
It was here that my wonder burst into speech. Was the man gone totally
blind on the side of caution?
“If I speak freely, Mr. Arnold, it is only a subordinate’s duty,” I
began. “As your aide I shall be responsible in some sense for your
personal safety. That I can not be, if you take in every piece of
flotsam and jetsam that drifts across the lines, as you have me.”
He smiled soberly.
“As I said this morning, Mr. Page, you are either a very shrewd young
man, or a very mirror of frankness. Don’t you see that your raising
of such a question is the best possible proof of your own purity of
motives? But I am not so careless as I may seem. Since we walked
together this morning, you have been vouched for by an unimpeachable
authority.”
“Now angels and ministers of grace defend us!” said I, to the inward
Richard Page: “who in the devil’s name has been thrusting a finger into
my pie?” But aloud, I said: “It is a good thing to have friends, Mr.
Arnold, even if one can not always thank them for specific favors.”
“Nevertheless, you may soon have an opportunity of thanking this one,”
he amended; but after this he left me still bewildered as to the how
and when and where, passing at once into detail matters concerning
the new legion, telling me of the trouble he had been at to find
drillmasters and to get the raw levies whipped into some semblance of
an effective fighting force.
After some talk of this nature he began sounding me delicately in the
Virginian part of me, and instantly I divined that the new legion was
to take the field in that quarter, and that my knowledge of the coast
and people was an asset that he was counting on in bribing me with the
captain’s commission. Whereupon I had a chance to exercise my inventive
faculty again; and what he did not know about Virginia and the temper
of her people when I was through--well, it would not have filled
Governor Thomas Jefferson’s library at Monticello, perhaps, but it
would certainly have furnished matter for a goodish-sized volume in the
same, I dare swear.
Yet Arnold took it, or seemed to take it, all as Gospel truth, the more
readily, I think, because I taxed him with the purpose of invading
my native province; and when he would neither deny nor affirm, fell
to pleadings for exemptions for my kinsfolk and others, when he, and
our triumphant legion, should be carrying fire and sword into the
rebellious colony. And afterward, I prayed most heartily, with my head
in the dust, that God would forgive me for this excess of daredeviling,
for, as He is my witness, I had no more thought that this consummate
villain would live to lead an army into Virginia than I had that he
would come back from the gallows-grave in which I hoped to see him
comfortably planted.
It was while we were talking that one of Sir Henry Clinton’s aides, not
Castner but another, came in with a bulky packet addressed to Arnold.
I sat quietly by while he opened it, and when I saw the blue ribbon
and the great seal appended to the parchment as he unfolded it, I was
at no loss to account for the sudden lighting up of his eyes and the
smile--it was almost a smirk--of gratification that went with it.
The parchment was his brevet as brigadier-general in His Majesty’s
Army, and I hastened to improve the shining hour for another gentle
stuffing of his vanity. Rising quickly from my chair, I stood at
attention before him, gave him the graceful British salute in my best
style, and said, with a true Virginia bow to go with the words: “Let me
be the first to congratulate you, General Arnold.”
He tried to laugh it off, tossing the document carelessly upon the
writing-table, and calling it a bauble which wise men valued at its
true worth. But the gratified smile was still playing fitfully across
his face even as he spoke; and in a little while he left me, going to
the alcove at the farther end of the long room, where a new uniform was
laid out carefully upon the bed.
His viewing of his finery set me to thinking of my own needs in that
direction. As Arnold’s aide, I must have a captain’s uniform, and I was
the more anxious to hasten it because it would give me an excuse to
carry serviceable weapons, which my civilian’s clothes did not. So I
broached this subject to my lord Lucifer Judas when he came back to my
end of the room, and said I should be ashamed to serve a general in my
citizen’s garmentings, and that I hoped my service was to begin at once.
There was no dispute upon this point, Arnold seeming to be as eager
to have a bedecked-out captain to tag him around the town, as I was
eager to be the tag. And now it appeared that he had overshot the mark
in his quartermaster’s stores, having, as he assured me, several more
outfittings than he had officers, and among these possibly a captain’s.
Hence, I was shortly afterward sent to the legion barracks with an
order for my bedizenry, and a second order upon the regimental tailor
to cut and alter and fit the same for me that I might report to General
Arnold in full panoply by six o’clock at the latest.
I went willingly enough, being glad to escape from the company of a man
who stirred up all the evil I ever owned and made my fingers itch to
lay hold of him. And because the afternoon was half spent when I began,
and because the fussy little Dutch tailorman had to measure and fit and
try and measure again, I lost another chance of finding John Champe,
and thereby sealed his fate as well as my own, as will appear a little
farther on.
Since I was ordered to report to Arnold at six o’clock, I had an early
supper at my tavern, and expected to miss Castner. But he came in and
sat down at my table before I was through, and I was sure I saw scorn
in his honest blue eyes for my new plumage.
“I like you better otherwise,” he said, when I had laughingly given him
leave to open his mind. “I hate to see you in that--gentleman’s livery.”
“What!” I retorted; “after I have told you how emphatically it fits me?”
“Yes; even after that.”
“Well,” said I; “I hope you may never have to wear it, Mr. Castner,
since you dislike it so warmly.”
“Zounds, man!” he cried, leaping from his chair as if I had pricked him
with a sword’s point, “do you know everything?”
Of course, I modestly disclaimed the charge, and begged him to sit down
and be at his ease again; but he began to walk the floor of the small
snuggery where I had my supper served, biting his lip and giving a very
fair imitation of a man too deeply enraged to be able to swear it off
easily.
Naturally, I was curious to know how I had unwittingly stirred the mud
in the depths of his soul-pool, but I would not question him. Apart
from having no special claim upon his confidence, I knew he would tell
me of his own accord when the rage-pot became hot enough to boil over.
But the way in which he began to tell me was with a sober question.
“Mr. Page,--Captain Page, I should say,--for the honor of the king’s
service you must advise me how you came to know a thing which, I
am solemnly assured, has never been mentioned outside of Sir Henry
Clinton’s cabinet. If we have traitors that near to us, we must know
it.”
Now I was able to laugh at him and once more to beg him to sit down and
to compose himself.
“I know nothing; less than nothing, Lieutenant Castner,” I protested.
“What did I say to stir you so?”
“You do know!” he insisted. “I saw it in your eyes when you wished that
I might not have to wear the uniform of Mr. Arnold’s Loyal Americans. I
must know how you found out!”
I laughed again. “So you are to wear it?” I asked. “I’m sure I could
not desire a better fellow officer. Yet I think you need not borrow
trouble in advance, if it be Mr. Arnold you object to.”
He sat down and rested his elbows on the table, and tried to look me
through and through with eyes that were only meant to see out of, and
to be read by others.
“More mysteries,” he fumed. And then he added: “They are dangerous,
Captain, most peculiarly dangerous for a man in your situation.”
“This is no mystery,” I replied boldly, never letting him loose the
eyehold for an instant. “Have you never heard that Mr. Arnold’s health
is most precarious? It is, I promise you; every one on the other side
of the Neutral Ground knows it well. He will drop off very suddenly
some day, Mr. Castner. I may go so far as to say, in strictest
confidence to you, that I marked some of the symptoms while I was with
him to-day.”
“You surprise me,” he said; but I saw that the nail was holding. Then
he asked in a tone that was almost sympathetic, what the malady was.
“It has never been written out in any doctor’s book, I believe,” I
rejoined gravely. “It is an obscure thing, coming suddenly and tying a
man in knots, so that at the last he can move neither hand nor foot.”
I had him fairly mesmerized by this time, and his voice was hushed when
he said: “And you say Mr. Arnold has this--this disease?”
“There is little doubt of it. Indeed, I overheard two men, officers
they were in our--in the rebel army, speaking of it only last night,
and, naturally, they were lamenting that it had not carried him off
before he carried himself off. One of those men had known Mr. Arnold
from the beginning, I believe.”
For a long minute Castner was silent, and he seemed to have forgotten
the supper that the pretty serving maid had brought him. When he spoke
he was plumbing me again with the honest eyes--or he thought he was.
“It is a hard thing to say, Captain Page,” he said, speaking like a
man who has been digging in the very bottom layer of his convictions,
“but sometimes I think that an outcome like this which you say is
threatening would be the best for all concerned.”
“I am sure it would,” I agreed brazenly. But I immediately took the
edge off by adding: “For the king’s cause, of course. Mr. Arnold
has his abilities; no one will deny that. But however honest he may
be in his--ah--convictions, let us say, the obloquy that attaches to
eleventh-hour repentances in the popular mind will hamper him, and
through him the cause for which he fights.”
Castner smiled leniently.
“You are a strange young man, Mr. Page. You discuss such matters as
if they were as remote from you as the stars. Yet you come under Mr.
Arnold’s ban--if it be a ban--yourself.”
“Not quite,” I countered hardly. “I have convictions, you see, and I
was never living up to them more faithfully than I am at this moment.
But now I must beg your leave to go. I am due at Mr. Arnold’s quarters
at six o’clock.”
It was but a short walk in the starlit evening to the house next door
to Sir Henry Clinton’s. There was a soldier on guard at Arnold’s door
now, a tall man standing stiffly in the way to stop me until he saw my
Loyal American uniform and the captain’s shoulder-knot. Then he let me
pass without a word, and also, as I observed, without the salute.
Arnold was writing again when I ascended to the working room, and with
a nod to me and a wave of the shapely hand toward a chair, he went
on for a full hour, I should think, filling sheet after sheet with
industrious application and singleness of purpose. It was certainly
no lightening of my responsibility that made me sleepy when the
quill-scratching grew by and by into a soothing lullaby. But there had
been a strenuous night and a none too restful day to follow it, and
before I realized that I had been asleep, I awoke to find Sir Judas
standing over me, with the gloomy scowl of half-aroused suspicion
wrinkling his brow, his hands behind him, and his attitude that of a
spy at the windows of the unsuspecting.
It is none so easy to come out of a sound sleep in full possession of
all the faculties. My first half-waking impression was that something,
a word muttered in my sleep, perhaps, had betrayed me, and the impulse
that went with it prompted me to spring up and throttle the traitor
before he could give the alarm. In good fact, I was starting from
my chair with this same insane purpose tugging at me, when his word
reassured me.
“You sleep soundly, Captain Page, and I am old enough and burdened
enough to envy you the gift of it,” he said moodily. And then, with
a touch of sympathy that made me wish he would always show me only
the hateful side of him: “I was about to command your attendance for
the evening, but you will be needing rest to fit you for to-morrow’s
duties, which will be arduous enough.”
Having a good grip upon my senses by this time, I protested at once
that I was fit and much refreshed by my sleep, which I found, to
my astonishment, had stretched above an hour. Also, I expressed a
willingness, which was entirely unfeigned, to accompany him wherever he
was going, and I thought his somber eyes lighted a little at that.
“Have you ever heard me spoken of as a timid man, Captain Page?” he
asked, with a lifting of the brow that was meant for a smile.
I had not, and I said so. His worst enemy never denied him courage and
intrepidity, I think; and when I remembered the stories they told of
the rash boy who had fired a pistol at his sister’s French admirer, and
had once stripped his coat and offered to fight a stout constable who
was interfering with some of his lawless pranks, I could well believe
that the daredevil boy of a dozen years was the legitimate father of
the man of forty.