crew, and if they were dependable.
“We’re full-handed; ten--countin’ the mate and the cook--and I’ve tried
’em, every one.”
“Good. They’ll fight, if they have to?”
“For me and the _Nancy Jane_--yes; but in the war, we’re neutrals,
Captain Page,” he answered warily.
“Like the devil you are!” I retorted, laughing at him. And then in
low tones: “You weren’t so precisely neutral that night when you hung
off and on in the river and dropped a dinghy to ferry two men and a
prisoner across to Jersey, Captain Sprigg.”
If I had given him an inch of a dagger between the ribs as I bent over
to whisper this to him, he would not have jumped back any more quickly.
“Sufferin’ Jehoshaphat!” he ejaculated thickly. “Who be you, anyway?”
“Never mind me, Captain Elijah; we were talking about the schooner and
her crew. Good men and true, you say: and have you any arms aboard?”
He blew out his lips like a dying man gasping for breath. “Would I be
tellin’ it to a redcoat officer if I had?” he demanded.
“That is enough,” I laughed. “Now we can come to the arrangements for
the day and night. You are footloose and can go where you please in the
town. Watch the Queen’s Rangers’ barracks, and if the men are ordered
to the northern road, do you come back here and stand before this
tavern door. I’ll see you, and be with you promptly, to tell you what
next.”
I said nothing of all this to Champe when I went back to Arnold’s
house and found the sergeant dozing before the fire in the
orderly-room--which was possibly a mistake. But Champe had not invited
my confidence in any matter remotely concerning Beatrix and her
venture, and I think I was a little afraid of his tongue.
So, while he dozed in his chair, I paced a nervous sentry-beat between
the door and the window which commanded a view of the tavern, fearful
lest the plan of sending Major Simcoe afield would not work; fearful
also, lest Arnold might find some service for me which would interfere
with my keeping of the appointment with Captain Sprigg.
As it happened, however, the strain on my patience was the only
one I was called on to bear. It was exactly four o’clock, as I
noticed--having pulled my watch out of its pocket so many times during
the long interval that it had grown bright from the handling--it was
four to the minute, I say, when I saw Sprigg standing in front of the
tavern door. There was nothing in the way to stop me from hurrying
across to him, but I had a sudden access of caution and did not hurry.
“Well?” said I, when I had lounged most leisurely up to my sour-faced
tryst-keeper, and there was a whole world of impatience in the single
word.
“You’re a master hand at plotting,” he commented. “Thing worked” (he
said “wukked”) “like a charm. Hull clamjamfrey of Simcoe’s men trotted
out on the north road ’bout half an hour ago. Now what?”
“For you, Captain Sprigg, a small thing first, and a bigger one
afterward. Have a dinghy at the foot of Amsterdam lane by eight o’clock
to-night, and make sure of just one thing--that it waits until its
passengers come, if that shall not be until midnight. With the ladies
on board, the game is yours, to play out as you can.”
“Then I won’t have to go back and see Miss Leigh?”
“No; I’ll see her and bring her and my--the other lady, down to the
boat to-night.”
“No need for you to go. I guess I c’n see to all that,” he said slyly.
Then he added: “Might get you into trouble--with that red coat o’
yours, Captain Page.”
I did not mean to delegate this last service I might ever render
Beatrix to him or to any one. But now, upon second thought, his jesting
after-word sank in: it might be an added risk--not for me, as he had
hinted, but for the women. So I reluctantly changed the order and
told him to go to the Vandeventer house to serve as an escort for the
ladies, when all was ready.
He promised; and when I had seen him on his way down to the waterside,
I once more returned to Arnold’s house. For the time had now come when
boldness must take the place of caution. I dare not run the risk of
arousing the traitor’s suspicions by going clandestinely to the house
where Margaret Shippen was; and on the other hand I could not dodge the
necessity for telling Beatrix in person that her plea had been received
and acted on, and that Sprigg would come for her and Cousin Ju at the
fortunate moment.
Arnold bade me come in, when I had climbed the stair and tapped on his
door, and, as always, I found him writing like a scrivener.
“A cousin of mine is in town, and I am told she is leaving before long,
General,” I began. “Have I your permission to go and bid her good-by?”
He looked up, and so far forgot his dignity as to make a wry face.
“I have had the pleasure--in deference to your relationship, Captain
Page, I call it a pleasure--of meeting Mistress Pettus; also of taking
at her hands the blame for your leaving of the other army. I should
think you would be glad to have a fair duty excuse for omitting your
leave-takings.”
“So I might, under other circumstances,” I began; “but--”
“But Mistress Pettus has a traveling companion, you would say. Strange
that I should overlook, even for a fleeting moment, so charming a
fact. Ah, Captain, I can guess very well what has made you such a
willing letter carrier for me. I know of but one dear lady who is more
beautiful than Mistress Beatrix Leigh--which you may take for high
praise, since I have been permitted to see only the scornful curve of
Mistress Leigh’s lips and an unfriendly light in her eyes.”
I can not tell how it ground me to have him talking thus of Beatrix,
in the kindly familiarity of a friend--this man with whom, come what
might, I meant to close in a death-grapple a few hours further on. It
is said that all the world loves a lover, and surely this applies to
that part of the world which is itself in the sweet toils. With all his
hideous faults, Arnold was still the devoted husband-lover of Margaret
Shippen; let him have the credit for that. And since he was--but I saw
that I must get away speedily.
“I have your permission, then, General?” I asked; and he gave it in a
courtly bow, and turned back to his writing.
I confess I had a most evil turn when the orderly on duty in the lower
hall saluted and let me out into the open air. From force of habit--the
habit of the hunted--I glanced up and down the street before venturing
beyond the shelter of the doorway. It was well that I did, for just
past the tavern, three men were coming on abreast, two of them plainly
recognizable as Lieutenant Charles Castner and the spy, James Askew;
and the third was strangely familiar in his gait and carriage, though
for the down-drooped hat-brim I could not see his face.
My first impulse was to warn Champe; the next to stand still and see
what form the catastrophe threatened to take. If the trio was coming on
to Arnold’s door, I would step inside, call the sergeant to his duty,
and we would die as soldiers should.
But this test of last-ditch courage was not made. At the door of the
hostelry the three men turned in and disappeared, and a few minutes
later, Castner came out alone and made straight for Sir Henry Clinton’s
quarters. That was my cue, and going to the orderly-room, I roused
Champe from his nap before the hearth.
“Castner is back,” I said hastily. “He came down the street just now
with Askew and another man, left his companions at the tavern, and has
gone alone to Sir Henry Clinton’s house.”
The sergeant yawned and felt tenderly of his throat, a gesture that was
growing into a habit with him.
“Orders, Captain Dick,” he said, parrot-like.
“There are none. I am going into the town for an hour or more, and you
may do as you think best: stay here and face it out when it comes, or
cut and run for it. You may have an hour’s grace, or two or three, or
no time at all.”
“And you,” he said; “what will you do?”
“I shall come back here and see the grist put through the mill, as I
may be allowed to.”
“Then here I stay,” he announced calmly, sitting down; and so I left
him, hoping little ever to see him again as a free man.
There was no corporal’s guard waiting to seize me at the outer door, as
I more than half expected there would be; and taking advantage of the
gathering dusk, I got away from the dangerous neighborhood as swiftly
and unobtrusively as possible, arguing that it would take some little
time for Castner to spread a net that would reach over any very wide
area of the town.
Fifteen minutes later I was rattling the knocker on Mr. Vandeventer’s
door; and this time it was Beatrix who opened to me.
“Oh!” she gasped; “I thought you would never come!” And when I stepped
within: “Something has happened--your face tells me. Oh, Dick! is
there--are you in danger?”
Her eager solicitude was a balm to my soul, and just at that moment I
was needing balms. But I had no notion of adding my burdens to hers,
since hers were surely heavy enough as they lay.
“There is no day or hour without its danger for a soldier,” I told her
evasively, and not to delay the chief matter--which was the getting of
her and my cousin safely a-sea before my _coup de grace_--or Benedict
Arnold’s--should fall--I asked if we might have privacy absolute for a
few moments while I should instruct her what she was to do.
At this, she led me into the little room that I was coming to know as
the chamber of mingled bliss and torment, and carefully closed the door.
“Cousin Ju is sleeping,” she said. “I persuaded her, expecting that our
night’s rest would be sadly broken. It will be, I know, Dick; I can
read that in your face, too.”
I laughed, and said I must have a face like a large-print book;
whereat she came to me and took the face in question between her
soft palms, and for the moment I forgot everything save the loving,
tender eyes that were gazing into mine, and the sweet lips with the
tiny Cupid’s-bow curve at the corners of the sensitive mouth, and the
perfect oval of their setting, and the masses of lustrous hair to frame
the oval--but this would not do!
“Yes; your rest is likely to be disturbed,” I told her, and thereupon
gave her an outline of the plan for the evasion of the order making a
potential troopship of the _Nancy Jane_.
Her eyes were shining when I explained how Major Simcoe’s troop had
been got out of the way.
“How like your cool daring that was, Dick! No one else would have
thought of trying to move a whole regiment to get a score of men
delayed in their embarking,” she commented.
“I would have undertaken to move Sir Henry’s army in the mass to serve
you, dear,” I replied. Then I rehearsed the simple details again, so
there might be no misunderstanding. “You are to make yourselves ready
and stay here quietly until Captain Sprigg comes for you, no matter
how late that may be. He will take you by the quieter streets to the
river, and his boat will be in waiting. Once on board the schooner, you
must obey the captain in everything. He may have to fight his way out
of the harbor; I hope he may not, but it is possible. If he does--”
“If he does, I shall not forget that I am a Leigh, and that my lover is
the handsomest, bravest soldier that ever drew sword,” she said, making
me blush again. Then she passed suddenly to my affair. “But you have
been talking altogether of us and our safety, Dick, and I am much more
concerned for yours. I know now that you are a true man and no traitor,
and the knowledge makes me shiver and cringe for every passing moment:
you’ll be taken--and--I shall not be here. Oh, Dick! when will it be
over? How long must you stay here under the shadow of that dreadful
thing on Gallows Hill?”
“It will be over--to-night,” I prophesied, comforting her as I could.
“But you do not say that you will escape!” she returned, her quick
intuition penetrating behind the masking words.
“No; I can not say that, Beatrix. The thing I am pledged to do is a
most desperate thing: and the promise of success is not great. Yet, as
I say, it will be over to-night.”
“Dick,” she said, coming close again, “what is this mission of yours
that puts your life in jeopardy every hour, that has made you lay aside
your dignity as an officer, that has been great enough to bring you
here as a deserter and to take a service, every step in which must be
a wretched lie? We may well be parting for the last time in our two
lives, Dick, dear: don’t deny me this time.”
If she had not said that word about the parting--a word which was all
too likely to be true--I think I might still have withstood her. But
that one word broke down the barrier of my resolve, and so, flinging my
soldier promise to Mr. Hamilton to the winds, I told her all, in tones
that grew more and more the tones of shame when I realized what it
meant to spread the harsh, brutal, military necessity of the kidnapping
plan upon the tables of a pure woman’s mind and heart.
She heard me through without interruption, sitting, as she had sat that
other night, gazing steadfastly into the heart of the embers on the
hearthstone. But when I had made an end, she began to speak in a low
voice, never letting her eyes meet mine.
“I do not at all understand these things, Dick: no woman ever can, I
fear. We are taught at our mother’s knees that a lie is wrong; a thing
to shudder at, to turn away from in loathing. We are taught that the
finest things in those we love are truth and honor, and that the finest
of all is the high honor’s honor that rises above the most binding
necessity, or seeming necessity, that can constrain us. Yet you tell me
that all this must go down at the bidding of a thing called military
duty; that one must lie, cheat, steal, swear false oaths--”
“No,” I interposed. “By some curious oversight I have not yet been
required to take the oath of allegiance to King George.”
She put the excuse aside with a little gesture of patient weariness.
“What does it matter whether or not you have missed the chance of
saying over the formal words? By every act and word and the breath
you draw, you are protesting that you are a true man in your present
standing. The man you will strike down to-night has had no hint of
warning; miserable traitor as he is, he still believes you are his
friend--not only his captain servant, but his friend. He trusts
you with his love-letters to his wife; he takes you fully into his
confidence. Is it not so?”
“It is,” I confessed. And then I broke out passionately: “But my word
is passed; I must not give this up, Beatrix! You must not make me give
it up!”
“And I shall not try, Dick, dear,” she went on in the same low tone. “I
shall merely try to fit myself into this new, this terrible scheme of
things: for I must believe in you: I must believe that you are doing
the right and honorable thing, though every fiber of me shudders in
horror at it. Oh, Dick, dear--don’t you see what a woman’s love must
be?”
God of love, but I did see! I saw that her ideal had fallen into ruins
at her feet, and that she was trying to gather up the poor fragments,
calling them precious, still! How swift and sure her stroke had been!
How unerringly her keen unsullied sense of the higher right and wrong
had set its arrow quivering in the very heart of the target! Yet in
very shame I could not yield without a struggle.
“The man is the basest of traitors; he has put himself beyond the pale
of mercy,” I insisted.
“I am not speaking for the man: God knows how I detest and fear him,
though, for Peggy’s sake, I have tried to see only that humaner side of
him she would have me see. Nor do I say one word for poor heart-broken
Margaret, whom your deed will condemn to a living death. But for
yourself ... for your honor’s honor: oh, Dick, dear; is it too late to
save that?”
I rose and went to stand beside her chair, knowing now that the angel I
spoke of a while back had indeed come with the saving heavenly fire to
light my poor candle that the vindictive blast had blown out.
“No, Beatrix, love; it is not too late to stop, though it may well be
too late to turn back in safety. There is another involved in this with
me: a man from Major Lee’s Legion. He will be furious; but if I recant,
he at least, must be saved.”
“For so generous a thing as that, Dick, your own good heart will
answer; you would never leave a subordinate to pay the score, of
course,” she said with the air of one who knows full well that blood
and breeding have their responsibilities that may not be pushed aside.
From that I went a little deeper into the confessional pool, telling
her how Seytoun had harried me, knowing that he was safe behind my
promise to her, and how, if I should be happy enough ever to return
alive to the Tappan camp, I should be branded from end to end of it if
I should still refuse to fight Seytoun for his satisfaction.
At this she wished to know particularly the cause of quarrel and how
Seytoun had offended; and when I told her that, too, and how he had
cast the slur not only upon the women of my own house, but also upon
hers, she bit her lip and I saw the beautiful eyes kindle.
“I would have saved his miserable life for him, Dick, if I could. That
was why I made you promise--I knew you would remember his killing of
your kinsman and slay him without mercy if you ever got him at your
sword’s point. And now, my lover, I release you. If he pushes this
quarrel on you--”
It was enough, and I took her in my arms and kissed her, saying,
because it had to be said, sooner or later:
“Good-by, dearest. The parting time has come. In the larger matter I
can’t promise; but I’ll do what lies in me. If I am strong enough to
rise to your high plane, I’ll come to you, if I can--when I can--with
clean hands. But if I am not great enough, I shall not ask you to marry
the fragments.”
“But I love the fragments,” she said simply; and this was her word of
leave-taking.
Once more out in the keen cold air of the December night and I was face
to face with the moment of decision. Love, duty, honor, and vindictive
hatred of Benedict Arnold all dragged me their several ways; but
when at last I won back unhindered to the house of doom, and to the
guard-room where John Champe was pacing moodily back and forth before a
cold hearth, the decision was no longer trembling in the balance. As if
a veil had been swept aside I saw into what depths vindictive rage and
soldier patriotism had plunged me. Mr. Hamilton, himself, I felt sure,
would be the first to call me back if he could know that I must sink
myself neck-deep in a mire of perfidy too foul to be borne if I were to
accomplish now the thing he had sent me to do.
XX
TRAITORS ALL
IT WAS still early in the evening when I reentered the ground-floor
room of Arnold’s house--the room of the cold hearth--on my return from
the soul-searching, but most heart-warming interview with Beatrix
Leigh. Champe wheeled quickly to face me at the door-closing, and I saw
that his day-long moodiness had vanished to give place to suppressed
excitement.
“My God!” he said grittingly. “I thought you’d never come!--or that the
provost-guard with the handcuffs would get here first. Sir Judas has
played fairly into our hands at last. For a good half-hour past he has
been walking in the garden--alone!”
“Ah?” said I, seeing how poignantly the matter had climaxed in my short
absence, and not seeing, in the suddenness of it, what course I ought
to steer. “So you think our chance has come?”
“Think?” he echoed; “think? Why, Captain Dick, isn’t it the very bone
and marrow of the thing we’ve been praying for? We’ve but to go quietly
and raise the boat from the river-bottom where we sank it, to make
all ready, nab him, and away up-river in the darkness. The very night
belongs to us--black dark, and with the wind quartering right to blow
us where we wish to go. Come; we are wasting the precious minutes!” And
while he was struggling into his watchcoat he kept on saying over and
over again: “Good God--if he will only give us time!”
He was out and away before I could say more to him, and I followed more
leisurely, turning over in my mind a dozen expedients which might serve
in the last resort to make this climaxing broadside flash in the pan.
For now there was no more hesitation. In the open field, or even with
the poor chance that the hunted fox has, after he has heard the dogs
baying at his heels, I would have flung myself upon the traitor to take
him, or let him kill me as I tried. But to win his confidence, as I
had, and then to steal up and garrote him like a wretched footpad was
no longer among the possibilities for an officer and a gentleman--and a
Virginian.
None the less, there was a thing to be done, and done quickly. Champe
had no such scruples as these I had so lately admitted, and I must
swiftly invent a way to stop him from putting his neck solus, as you
might say, into the hangman’s halter. For I made no doubt that, lacking
my help or countenance at the pinch, my dour-faced sergeant would
thrust me aside, with a saber slash if no other means offered, and
fling himself madly into the kidnapping breach single-handed and alone.
You are to figure these reflections flashing themselves upon the
mental mirror as I stepped from the fireless guard-room into the broad
entrance hall which was used as a lounging place indifferently by
Arnold’s aides or Sir Henry Clinton’s. When I passed through there were
three young fellows with their feet to the fire; young Hetheridge,
Ensign Brewster, and an aide of General Phillips’ whose name I had
heard but had promptly forgotten.
“Good evening to you, Captain Page,” said Hetheridge; “are you off
after your black-faced sergeant? What ails the beggar that half the
time he forgets to salute his betters in passing?”
I was about to make some indifferent rejoinder and go on to the door
when the thought struck me that here was a chance to drive a small nail
for Champe against the day of need.
“The sergeant is a law to himself, like one of the old Cromwell
Ironsides,” I replied lightly. “He should have been born in the other
century, when we should have seen him going about with a Bible in
one hand and a two-edged slaughter sword in the other. I advise you
young gentlemen to walk straight: otherwise he’ll be denouncing you as
traitors, some fine day when you least suspect it.”
Brewster laughed.
“He looks like a man who would denounce his own blood brother if the
occasion should arise. For the last half-hour he has been raging up and
down in that cold guard-room muttering and cursing to himself like a
madman, and I dare swear I heard your name mingled in his maledictions,
Captain Page.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I agreed readily. “The sergeant has had a
suspicious eye on me for some little time past. He is a grim devil
of a fellow, I promise you, and no man’s good company. I begged the
general’s permission to keep him by me as a soldier-servant, but lord!
he’d sour the milk before the milkmaid could get it strained into her
crocks.”
“Being such a devil, I wonder he didn’t stay with the other
devils--saving your presence, Captain,--on the far side of the Neutral
Ground,” young Hetheridge put in.
Now all this talk was a cruel wasting of most critical time, but I
paused to drive the saving nail yet a little farther into the wood.
“Champe may be like some others of that devilish rank and file you
speak of, Mr. Hetheridge; one who has been constrained against his will
to go barefoot and empty-bellied in a cause that meant nothing to him.
At any rate, you can find no fault with his present loyalty. You may
believe it or not, as you please, but when he first saw me here in New
York he took me for a spy, broke into my room at the tavern and all but
had me choked to death before I could get the better of him.”
There was a laugh at this, and then the young fellow whose name I could
not remember, said: “I wish you joy of such a soldier-servant as that;
I do, indeed.” And, as I laid a hand on the door-latch; “Drink an extra
posset for me, while you’re about it, Captain Page, if that’s what you
are going after. My throat is as dry as a desert.”
It was well that they should think I was on my way to the tavern, and
I vanished while the notion lay uppermost in their minds. Champe was
waiting for me at the corner of the house, and he was fairly shaking
with fierce impatience.