HICKORY KNOB
_For I must go where lazy peace
Will hide her drowsy head,
And for the sport of Kings increase
The number of the dead._
_But first I’ll chide thy cruel theft
Can I in war delight?
Who being of my heart bereft
Can have no heart to fight?_
DAVENANT.
I don’t know how long I had been lost in these musings when Wilmer’s
return to the house put an end to them. As he crossed the veranda,
carrying his gun and followed by a black boy trailing two wild turkeys
after him, he turned as if he were going to join me. But he changed his
mind at the last moment and paused some paces from me. “It’s a pity it’s
that arm, Major,” he said. “There’s a glut of turkeys in the woods. But
you’ve had other sport at home, I hear?”
A little offended I put a question with my eyes.
He grinned. “They’re hard to understand are women,” he said. “Beyond you
and me, Major. We’ll say no more than that.”
He nodded and went on, entering the house before I could answer. But
again I had that queer passing impression of another man, a jovial,
easy, talkative fellow, fond of a glass and a toast. Perhaps it was his
smile. A smile would naturally shorten a man’s face. Perhaps it was the
sunlight. Or perhaps it was just a fancy that had taken hold of me.
Wilmer, like most Southerners, had humor of a kind, but he was certainly
neither jovial nor talkative, and I should not have described him as an
easy companion. His wit was of the dry and caustic sort, that leaves the
person addressed at a disadvantage.
He left home again three days later—to join Davy’s band I gathered; and
I had seen so little of him, while he was at the Bluff, that I did not
miss him. I was beginning to recover my strength and from day to day I
went farther afield. Sometimes I passed the ford and wandered up the
pasture, a vast park-like meadow, broken by clumps of oaks and
chestnuts, trees that in that country mark good soil as poplars indicate
a poor site. Or I might venture into the forest and amid the undergrowth
of sweet-scented myrtle and dogwood and honeysuckle—and other shrubs
less healthy—I would put up a deer or come on the tracks of a bear; or
in the sombre twilight of the pine woods, with their melancholy festoons
of gray moss, I would hear the tapping of the Southern woodpecker. Aunt
Lyddy made friends with me and talked of Braddock and Washington and
Wolfe and the heroes of the last war; and at times would betray by a
look of distress and a tremor of the hands that she was conscious that
something was amiss in her world and that things did not consort with
reality as they should. On these occasions the girl, if she were
present, would humor her and reassure her with incredible tact and
kindness; and at the same time she would dare me with stormy eyes to
come within so much as a mile of explanation. Her patience with Aunt
Lyddy was indeed the measure of her impatience with me. And set me far
from her.
Yet at a distance we were better friends now. She never joined me where
I sat on the veranda, but she would sometimes of an afternoon take her
seat at the spinning-wheel at the farther end by the old blood hound;
and I would, though timidly, wander that way and draw her into unwilling
talk; at any rate it seemed to be unwilling on her side and it was
certainly jejune. She never asked me to be seated, and seldom, while I
was there, looked up from her task; but she would answer, and bit by bit
I learned something of her family story. On her mother’s side she was of
French blood; it was on that side that she was akin to Marion, and the
result was that she spoke French in a way that put me to shame. When she
named her mother.
“You were greatly attached to her?” I ventured.
“She was my mother,” she answered.
“And your father?”
“He is more to me than anything in the world,” she replied with the same
simplicity. “He was my mother’s last charge to me.”
“And no doubt you are often anxious about him?”
“Anxious?” For once she looked at me. And then in a tone of feeling, too
tragic, as it seemed to me, for the occasion, “God knows how anxious!”
she said. “God knows what is the weight I have to bear!”
I thought her answer over-strained. I thought her anxiety more than the
occasion required; and I felt about for an explanation. “You are so near
the fighting,” I said lamely, for I felt that I was making excuse for
her. “Doubtless it is more trying to you.”
“I am so near,” she answered with the same depth of feeling. “And so
helpless! So helpless! I sit and wait! And wait!”
“That is too often the woman’s part, I fear.”
“God forbid,” she replied with extraordinary bitterness, “that my part
should fall to the lot of many women. He cannot be so cruel!”
I drew away after that. I did not dare to press her farther, for I
thought that she was overwrought and hardly herself. The note of tragedy
seemed to be out of place in face of this calm country-side, of the
still woods, of the lowing cattle, of the smiling negroes going about
their tasks under our eyes.
But all our talks were not of this nature, and stoutly as she guarded
the approaches to intimacy, there were times when I caught her in a
gentler mood or by sheer meekness broke down the barrier of her reserve;
so that perforce she grew more kind. At such times she listened while I
talked of my home and my people and the England, which she knew only
through the pages of Addison and Goldsmith and Richardson; or I
described the long voyage with its stale water and sour beef which had
brought me hither; or she spoke herself, not willingly, of the old
plantation on the Ashapoo, of society on the French Santee, where she
had visited the Marions, of her boarding school at Charles Town, of the
Cecilia Society with its concerts, and the old Provincial Library. It
was clear that Wilmer had been in better circumstances, but when I
ventured to sympathize with her on her isolation her only answer was,
“Give us peace! Only give us peace!”
“Peace?” I echoed. “Yes.”
And I knew that I was losing my own peace. I knew that the pose of her
small head, as it bent over the wheel or the needle, the slender grace
of her figure, the proud sadness of her eyes were coming between me and
the rest of the world; and that beside a kind look from those eyes, that
now dwelt absently on things unseen by me, and now viewed me with a cold
attention, hardly anything in life had any value for me, or any
sweetness. Had I met her elsewhere and in ordinary conditions, I believe
that I should have succumbed to her charm. But here, where she was the
one woman, set in this lonely place as in a frame, encircled by the
peace of green glades and scented hemlocks, by myrtle and reddening
sumach, and where, besides, she walked a perplexing puzzle, a sphinx, a
figure for vain imaginings—was any other issue possible?
A rebel? The daughter of a planter? I thought no more of such things.
Here, where every morning I looked across the valley to the far-off
mountains, where the endless spaces of the air smiled beneath my eyes,
here, within touch of the primitive forest and the wide prairies, such
distinctions lost their meaning. The busy life of the camp, the Norfolk
Discipline—how often had I cursed it!—the jovial dinner, the ride, the
foray, faded into a dream; and even the quarrel which had brought us—a
mere handful of pigmies, over the boundless ocean to this land, seemed
no longer of moment, but a mere trifle, the play of children quarreling
in some squalid alley of a distant town.
And whether in this, love opened my eyes or closed them, whether I now
saw things by the light of truth or duped myself for a season, what
matter? In a month from my coming I had waded in over shoes, over boots.
For me the die was cast and I knew that I dreaded nothing so much as the
day that should see my back turned on the Bluff. The old life had lost
its savour and seemed, as I looked back, an impossible procession of
dull routine and distasteful days.
Doubtless had I been French I must have spoken. But there is in us a
vast force of silence. Where the Frenchman is proud we, until a certain
day comes, are ashamed of passion. And apart from the distance which she
maintained between us, there was a dignity about Constantia as she moved
in the midst of her household, and governed her slaves, that set all
thought of love at defiance. I could not bring myself to believe that
she regarded me as anything but an unlucky encumbrance, one of the evils
of war. Indeed, as my arm improved and my strength returned, and I stood
in less need of help or pity, I fancied that her intolerance of my
presence grew and increased. She noted when the month that Marion had
named came to an end. She showed trouble at his non-appearance, and
fretted without disguise at the delay. At times she was ice to me. And
then I, who would have given the world for a kind word from her lips,
could have cursed her for her unconsciousness!
Not that I had not once or twice intoxicating moments. Once I looked up
from my book as I sat on the porch and I found her eyes brooding upon
me. For a few seconds mine held them—it seemed as if she could not drag
hers away! Then, as she at last turned her head, I saw the blood dye the
whiteness of her neck and cheek to the very hair; and for a delicious
minute my heart rioted madly. Again I was standing over her one day and
I had fallen silent, gazing at and worshipping her slender neck and
high-braided head. I suppose she felt my eyes upon her, for slowly I saw
the same blush spread over the white—slowly and irresistibly; and to
stay the foolish words that rose to my lips I had to go away and hide
myself in my room, where I sat gripping the cold fingers of my bandaged
arm until the blood burned in them. Why, why had she blushed, I asked
myself? For when I met her next, she was cold as Diana and distant as a
star. And as if she were not satisfied with that, but must punish me
farther, she presently sent to me to ask if I would be good enough to
leave the veranda free next day, as she wished to examine a small parcel
of a new staple of cotton. As the veranda was the only place where I had
the chance of seeing her, this was enough to vex me; but I had no choice
except to obey, and I spent the greater part of the morrow in my own
room and in a bad temper. I was there about three in the afternoon
fretting and fuming and trying to read when I heard the patter of naked
feet crossing the porch, a sound that was quickly followed by a stir in
the house. A moment later the commotion grew to something like an alarm.
Voices rose here and there in various keys, I caught cries of affright,
a door was slammed hurriedly, silence followed. And on that, to tell the
truth, my heart sank.
“Marion is here,” I thought. “He has come for me.” And if Marion’s
return had meant release and freedom instead of a prison hospital at
Hillsboro’ I do not know that I should have been much better pleased!
I did not go out or make inquiry. I considered that I had been cast on
my own company with little thought and small ceremony; and pride bade me
wait until I was summoned. I clung, too, to hope as long as it was
possible to do so. It might not be Marion. The stir might have nothing
to do with me. And so some minutes, five perhaps, passed. Then with no
warning there came a sharp knock at my door, and Mammy Jacks entered.
The woman looked flustered and alarmed.
“Marse Craven”, she said, “Missie, she up’n sond fer you. She des
tarryin’ fer you de no’th aidge uv Hick’ry Knob, en I ’low de sooner’n
you go de better. A little mo’ en you miss er en de kindlin’ll be in de
fier. You gwine?”
I stared at the woman. I fancied at first that I had not understood her.
“Hickory Knob?” I said. “Why it is two miles from here! Madam Constantia
cannot have walked there! I heard her voice less than—”
“Go ’long! Aint I done tell you she ridin’ Injun Belle?” Mammy Jacks
replied scornfully. “She tuck’n sond piccaninny fer you. You gwine ter
go? Co’se,”—she turned away with great dignity—“ef you hev udder fish
ter fry, it’s notin ter Mammy Jacks. She done tell you.”
“Stop!” I said, my mind a jumble of impossible conjectures, “Don’t be in
such a hurry. I’ll go, of course, if I can be of use. But I don’t
understand—”
“Dat’s needer yer nor dar,” Mammy Jacks answered. “Ef you ’er too
bigitty ter go, Marse, dar’s an eend. Eh? You gwine? Clar to goodness
den, sooner’n you skip de better! Ef you not fine Missie no’th aidge uv
de Knob you ter wait an hour twel she come. Bimeby she trompin’ round.
She sholy boun’ ter come.”
I followed the woman from the room, still marvelling, still questioning,
my head in a whirl. She hurried me through the living-room to the door
at the rear of the house which looked towards the negroes’ cabins—low
huts of shingle, vine-clad, mushroom-like, dwarfed by the giant shade
trees that rose above them. Beside the house-door stood a black boy with
a single cloth about him, who still panted from the speed at which he
had come. His face was strange to me, and I asked if he were coming with
me.
“Look like you know de track widout him!” the woman rejoined. “Aint you
bin ter de Knob de las’ week uz ever wuz? You better run ’long er
Missie’ll be dar befo’ you! Den you’ll hear mo’ en you pleez’d ter like.
Dat’s w’at I’m thinking, Marse Craven.”
I strode off without waiting for more, passed beside the cabins and
skirted the negroes’ patches of corn and vegetables. Beyond these I
plunged into the woods, following a fairly-marked track. The Knob was a
rocky point, rising well over a hundred feet above the forest roof, some
two miles southwest of the Bluff. I had visited it for the sake of the
view which I was told its summit afforded; and I should have gone a
second time if about the same distance northwest of the Knob, there had
not risen above the trees another hill—King’s Mountain. Its slopes were
greener, it was more pleasant to the eye. But I knew that on those
slopes, above which vultures and crows hovered in the air, the bodies of
my fellows lay unburied. And that thought had been too much for me. I
had not gone again.
But to-day that and all kindred thoughts were far from my mind as I
pushed my way along the narrow track, now thrusting aside the scented
plants that form in Carolina so large a part of the undergrowth, and now
traversing the gloom of a pinewood where the feet sank without a sound
in the rotting leaves. Even the heat and flies, even the scurry of a doe
and fawn across my path were little heeded. My mind was in a tumult of
wonder and conjecture. I thought only of Constantia, of her summons, of
her possible need. I strove to imagine what had happened, what had, or
could have, happened, to lead her to send for me; above all, I wondered
what she could want with me at Hickory Knob, a place distant and
solitary—she who had never offered me her company abroad, never gone
farther with me than to that sliprail?
Wondering, I sought the answer to these questions and sought it
fruitlessly. I could find no answer that consorted with her character or
was at one with her treatment of me. Had she met with an accident? She
would not send for me. Had she fallen into hostile hands? I could do
nothing, maimed and unarmed as I was. Was Marion with her? Then, why did
he not come to the house? No conjecture that presented itself agreed
with the facts, and I could only hasten my pace as much as my arm
permitted, and look forward to seeing her.
Where should I find her? At the foot of the rock? Or at the summit? Or
would she perhaps be waiting for me at a certain flat stone on a level
with the tree-tops, which formed a convenient seat, and which a carpet
of nutshells and broken corncobs pointed out as a favorite resort of the
negroes? I could not tell. The tangle of forest vines about me was not
more blind or more confused than were my thoughts.
I came at last, sweating at every pore, and fighting the swarms of flies
that accompanied me to the foot of the little hill. She was not there; I
could hear nothing. The stillness of afternoon lay heavy on the woods.
Impatient of delay, I paused for a moment only, then I started to scale
the hill and in less than a minute I stood beside the flat stone I have
mentioned. She was not there, and I did not tarry, I climbed on, now
slipping on the shale, and now clutching at branches of the myriad
azaleas that earlier in the year clothed the bare hill with flame. At
length I reached the summit which was no bigger than the floor of a
barn.
She was not there and I stood awhile, glad to take breath and to cool my
heated face. I looked abroad over the silent trees, over the carpet of
forest which autumn was beginning to dye to its pattern. I viewed for a
moment the smooth green head of King’s Mountain, that to the westward
rose above the trees. Then I turned to mark, in the direction whence I
came, the cleft in the woods which marked the clearing about the Bluff.
Beyond it the forest sank and was replaced by the more distant view of
the mountains.
I waited, expecting, with each moment that passed, to hear the movements
of her mare on the path. How would she look? What countenance would she
put on? What would she, what could she have to say to me? I lost myself
in a fever of anticipation. Ten minutes passed, twenty minutes, at last
the full half hour! And still she did not come. Still there was no sign
of her, no sound of her approach.
At length the heat of expectancy began to give place to the chill of
doubt. Had I mistaken, could I have mistaken the place? Or was there
another path up the Knob and could she be waiting for me at the foot of
the farther side. I hurried across the top, I descended some distance, I
called, I whistled. I strove to pierce the thickets with my eyes. Then,
harassed by the thought that while I lingered, she might be mounting by
the proper track, I toiled again to the summit and looked abroad. She
had not appeared, and my heart sank. Doubt in its turn began to give
place to suspicion. Had I been tricked? And if so, to what end?
Desperately I searched the trees with my eyes. She might still come, but
the hour I had been told to wait was nearly up. Indeed in no long time
the sun would set, and twilight in Carolina is brief. If I remained on
the Knob until it was dark, I should have small chance of returning
through the woods without a fall that in my crippled condition might be
serious.
I was now angry as well as suspicious. I had been duped—for some reason;
duped by a trick too transparent to deceive a child. I had been sent out
of the way; I had not a doubt of it now. I only wondered that I had been
so easily gulled. Still I would not act in a hurry. They should not say
that I had left the rendez-vous before the time. They should not have
that excuse. So I waited fuming and fretting until the hour expired, and
then reckoning that I should have no more daylight than would suffice
for my return, I scrambled down the rocky slope, and in a state of cold
anger very different from the heat of anticipation in which I had come,
I made the best of my way towards home.
A man, and a soldier, does not like to be tricked. He does not choose to
be treated as a child even for his own good. And in this case the lure
which they had used, the bait which I had swallowed so greedily, seemed
to imply a knowledge of my feelings that made me hot only to think of
it. Had the girl been amusing herself with me? Had she, cold and distant
as she seemed, been laughing at me? Worst of all, had she taken that d—d
grinning black woman into her confidence? No wonder that as I labored on
I cursed the boggy piece that delayed me, the roots over which I
stumbled, the thorns that snatched at my clothes?
I did not consider what I should say. My one longing was to confront
them. But I had not reckoned with the darkness that fell earlier in the
woods than in the open, and soon I had to pick my way for fear of a fall
which might injure my arm. When I came in sight of the cabins it was
dusk and a light already shone from one of the windows of the house.
I was making for this light, with angry words on my lips, when a figure
rose suddenly in the path before me and barred my way. It was Mammy
Jacks. Apparently she had been crouching on the ground on the look-out
for my coming.
“Fer de Lord’s sake, stop, honey!” she gibbered, bringing her ugly face
close to mine, her eyeballs and her teeth shining in the gloom. “Der’s
Cap’en Levi dar, en de udder rapscallions! Ef you go in, you no mo’
chance den a rooster in de pan! Der ain’t no Marse Marion ter ’elp you
loose de rope dis time! Ain’t you no eyes ter see de hosses?” And she
clutched me by the arm and held me.
I did see then—with a decided shock—a row of saddled horses standing
beside the porch, thirty yards from us. With them were a couple of men
lounging, as if on guard. The row extended round the corner of the house
so that I could not count either men or horses and the dusk made all
indistinct. The windows, now that I was nearer, showed more than one
light, though these were darkened from time to time as a figure passed
across them. A murmur of voices, a stir of feet, the clink of glass, and
now and again a loud laugh issued from the windows and mingled with the
jingle of bit and stirrup-iron.
“See dat? W’at I tell you?” Mammy Jacks repeated in terror that was
certainly not feigned; and she clung firmly to my sleeve. “You go in, en
you sholy hang! Cap’en Levi, he mighty mad atter you en he make an eend
dis time! Look like dey sarched de cabins, en you kin hide in dar! Hide
in dar, Marse Craven! Fust thing you know de Cap’en’ll get up en go. He
go fer sho’ in ten minutes.”
I let her push me towards the door of the nearest hut; to hide there, as
she said, seemed to be the wisest course for the present. But either the
reek of the shack repelled me, or her insistence touched the wrong note.
My pride rose and on the very threshold I turned. Why should I hide? I
had Marion’s word and the girl’s word. And weeks had elapsed and nothing
had happened since Levi’s last attempt. Was this some new trick for my
good for if so, I would not stoop to it. The part I had played at the
Bluff had been poor so far; I was not going to make it worse and
disgrace myself by hiding in a nigger’s hut from a parcel of low rebels
whom a single man with a pistol had put to flight.
“No!” I cried; and I resisted the woman’s thrust. “I’ll be hanged if I
do, Mammy! I’ll see Levi and all his crew with their father the devil
first!”
“Den you’ll hatter hang!” she gibbered, struggling to detain me. “Fer de
Lord’s sake, honey, ’tend ter me! Don’t go in dar!” she protested, her
voice rising to a shriek. “Don’t go in dar! Dey’ll hang you fer sho!
Dey’ll—Marse Craven—fer de Lord’s sake—”
But I wrested myself from her hands, I flung out of the hut. As I did
so, some one in the house laughed aloud, a pair of hands clapped
applause, a glass shivered on the floor. I was being tricked, I was sure
of it now; and I bounded across the short space to the door, Mammy
Jacks’ wail of despair in my ears. I evaded a second figure that slipped
out of the gloom and tried to stop me, I thrust open the door that was
already ajar, and a pace inside the room I stood, confounded.
The table was spread for a meal and spread as I had never seen it laid
at the Bluff, with glass and silverware and all that was rarest in the
house. On it were meat and drink and whisky and even wine. At the head
of the table staring at me with laughter frozen on her lips—aye, and
with terror in her eyes—sat Constantia. At the foot was Aunt Lyddy, I
believe, but I did not take her in at a first glance. For between them,
seated at the table were three men in regimentals that glittered with
gold lace. Two of them wore the green of Tarleton’s British Legion, one
was in the King’s scarlet. And my amazement may be imagined when I saw
that the one in scarlet, was young Paton, my own particular friend on
the Staff! While of the others the nearer to me was Haybittle, a grim,
hard-bitten veteran, who had never risen beyond a pair of colors in the
regular service, but now ranked in the Legion as a Captain. I knew him
well.
On both sides there was a moment of silence and astonishment. I glared
at them.
The first to recover from his surprise and to find his voice was Paton.
He pushed back his chair, and sprang to his feet. “Who-hoop!” he
shouted. “Who-hoop! Run to earth, by Gad! Look at him, Haybittle! You’d
think he saw a ghost instead of the King’s uniform. Here’s his health!”
He swung his glass round his head. “A bumper! A bumper!”
I stood stock still. “But how—how do you come here?” I stammered at
last. I stared at Paton in his scarlet, at the glittering table, at the
candles that shed a soft light upon it, but it was only the girl’s
stricken face that I apprehended with my mind. And even while I put the
question to Paton, my brain asked another—what did her look of horror,
of despair mean? “How do you come here?” I repeated. “You are not
prisoners?”
“Prisoners!” Haybittle answered in his harsher tones. “Good G—d, no!
We’ve come for you, Major, and a deuce of a ride we’ve had to fetch you!
We’d pretty well given you up too!”
“Thanks to this young lady who lied to us!” the third man struck in. I
knew him slightly—a New York Tory holding a commission in Tarleton’s
horse and like many loyalists more bitter than the regulars. “It would
serve Madam right,” he continued rudely, “if we burned the roof over her
head! And for my part I’m for doing it!”
“Hold your tongue, Carroll!” Paton cried angrily. “You’re always for
burning some poor devil’s house or playing some silly trick of that
sort! Don’t be afraid, Miss Wilmer,” he continued, “You played your
hand, and had a right to play it, and played it well! And by jove, such
a face as yours, if you will allow me to say so, knows no laws. But I
can tell you,” he went on, addressing me, “my lady came pretty near to
bamboozling us, Major! We were just toasting her in a last glass when
you came in looking like Banquo’s ghost—and damme, almost as pale! Five
minutes more and we should have been off and away!”
“And we ought to be away now!” Haybittle said, rising to his feet.
“Sergeant! Get ’em to horse. Don’t lose a minute!”
“I’m on parole,” I said.
“Parole be hanged!” Haybittle answered bluntly. “We retake you! Hit in
the arm, eh, Major? Well, you can ride and we’ve a horse for you. And
ride we must as if the devil were behind us. I’m not for doing anything
to this young lady,” with an awkward look at her, “because she fibbed to
us! But I don’t trust her for that reason, and—”
“Steady, Captain Haybittle,” I said, regaining my voice and my
faculties—the girl continued to sit and look before her with the same
stricken face. “This lady’s father saved my life when I was wounded and
helpless. He has sheltered me and treated me more than well, and more
than humanely. Not a dog must be injured here, or a truss taken, or you
will have to reckon with me. I am the senior officer here—”
“No, by G—d, you’re not, Major,” Haybittle retorted bluntly. “Not till
your name’s replaced on the active list, and that can’t be till you have
reported yourself at Headquarters as returned to duty. General Tarleton
put me in charge of the expedition, and I’ll give up the lead to no
one—with all respect to you.”
“And I’m for doing something! I’m for teaching these rebels a lesson!”
Carroll protested, encouraged by Haybittle’s action.
“You’ll learn a lesson yourself, Lieutenant,” Haybittle rejoined, “and
that pretty quickly if you don’t see the men to horse. While we’re
mounting, throw forward vedettes as far as the smithy we passed. Off,
man, and see to it!” Then to me, “We’re thirty miles from Fishing Creek,
where our supports are, and seventy miles from our lines. Green is at
Charlotte, a deal too near us for my taste, and has thrown forward
Sumter’s men. I’ll give you three minutes, Major, by my watch to get
your things together—not a second more. We’re only twenty, all told, and
before we are ten miles from here we shall have the country swarming on
our backs.”
He hurried out. Carroll had already gone. Paton with a sly look at me
and a glance at the girl—who still sat silent in her chair—went after
him.
I approached her diffidently, “Miss Wilmer,” I said, “have you nothing
to say to me before I go?”
She awoke as from a dream. She met my eyes. “You are going then?” she
said.
“I have no choice.”
“And your parole—is nothing?”
“It is put an end to by my re-capture,” I said. “Colonel Marion will
understand that. But I want you to understand something more; that
nothing—nothing can put an end to the gratitude which I owe to your
father and to you. When it shall be safe for me to return—”
“To the Bluff?”
“Yes—for I shall return, Miss Wilmer, be sure of that. And when I do
return to the Bluff I shall be free to tell you, and to prove to you—”
“How great is your gratitude!” she cried, rising to her feet and
substituting other words for mine—for indeed it was of something more
than gratitude I was going to speak. “Your gratitude?” she repeated,
with a look and in a voice that cut me to the heart. “Will it be worth
more than your word? Will it sever one of the meshes that bind you? Will
it evade one of your cruel laws? Will it save one life? No, Major
Craven! If the day comes for me to ask a return, to crave a favor, to
plead to you, aye, even on my knees, I know that the law that frees you
to-day will bind you then! And I shall find your gratitude no better
than your word! For me, you can take it, sir—where it may mean more!”
She pointed scornfully to the old lady who sat, wondering and bemused,
at the farther end of the table. And yet I doubt if Aunt Lyddy was more
bemused at that moment than I was. The girl’s outbreak was to me beyond
all understanding. I was astonished, indignant, nay, sorely hurt! For
what had I done. What beyond that which I was doing, could I do? “You
are cruel, and unjust!” I cried. “What have I done that you should wound
me, at this moment? Believe me, if you could read my heart, Miss
Wilmer—”
“I do not wish to read it!” she answered passionately. “Take it there
with your gratitude! I value both at their true worth!” Again she
pointed to poor Aunt Lyddy who gazed at us, understanding nothing of the
debate. And that was the end, for before, hurt and angry, I could find
words with which to answer the girl or to reproach her, the opportunity
was past. Haybittle bustled in, his sword clanking on the floor.
“Time! Time!” he cried. “You must come, Major. Not another moment!” He
took me by the sound arm and forced me towards the door. “You are
playing with lives,” he continued, “and I don’t choose to hazard mine
for the sake of a girl’s eyes. No offence to you, Miss,” he flung over
his shoulder. “You’d make a fine tragedy queen, be hanged if you
wouldn’t. To look at you one would think that we’d done God knows what
to you, and a good many would! There’s temptation and to spare. Now boot
and saddle, Major! We’ve risked more than enough to get hold of you! Let
us be going!”