THE COURT IS CLOSED
_As I was walking all alane
I heard twa corbies making a mane
The tane unto the tither say:
‘Where sall we gang and dine to-day?’_
_‘Ye’ll sit on his white hause-bane
And I’ll pick out his bonnie blue een,
Wi’ ae lock o’ his gowden hair
We’ll theek our nest when it grows bare.’_
ANON.
“We had better speak low, Mr. Burton,” I said. “I will be as short as I
can. You know the position as well as I do, and that if I do my duty the
result will be a long rope and a short shrift before night.”
He looked about him, and drawing forward his ample skirts, he took with
much calmness—but I suspected that he was not as cool as he looked—a
seat on my bed. “Have you not made a mistake, Major?” he drawled.
“No,” I answered. “I have made no mistake, I understand many things now
that were dark to me before; what your daughter feared, and why she kept
you apart from me, and—and the enemy’s knowledge of our plans, Mr.
Burton.”
He shrugged his shoulders, and made no farther attempt to baffle me or
to deny his identity. He sat, a little hunched up on the low bed with
his hands in his pockets; and he looked at me, quizzically. Certainly,
he was a man of great courage. “Well,” he said, “we’re in trouble, sir.
It has come to that. Poor Con always said that it would, and that if I
took you in I should pay for it. Good Lord, if she saw us now! But, as
it turns out, the shoe is on the other foot, Major. It is you who will
have to pay for it. I saved your life, and you cannot give me up. You
cannot do it, my friend!”
I confess that his answer and his impudence confounded me and roused in
me an anger which I could hardly control. How I execrated alike the ill
luck that had brought my rescuers to the Bluff and the impulse that had
led them to wait for a last stirrup-cup—and so to find me! How above all
I cursed the chance that had put it into the Chief’s head to seek my
advice that morning—that morning of all mornings—before the news of my
return had gone abroad!
Even for the man before me I was concerned; he had saved my life, he had
treated me well, and he had done both in the face of strong temptation
to do otherwise. But I was not so much concerned for him as for
Constantia. Poor Constantia! The picture that rose before me, of the
girl, of her love for her father, of her anxiety, of the Bluff, of all,
rent my heart.
“How long have you been doing this?” I asked harshly. My voice sounded
in my own ears like another man’s.
He raised his eyebrows. He did not answer. He left the burden on me.
“You won’t say anything?”
“Only that I saved your life, Major,” he replied quaintly. “I’ve done my
stint, it is for you to do yours. You can’t give me up.”
He leaned back, his hands clasped about his knees, his eyes smiling.
Apparently he experienced no doubt, no anxiety, no alarm; only some
faint amusement. But probably behind the mask, which practice had made
to sit easily on him, fear was working as in other men; probably he felt
the halter not far from his neck. For when I did not answer, “You’ve not
brought me here for nothing, I suppose?” he said, speaking in a sharper
tone.
I had no difficulty in finding an answer to that. “No,” I said with the
bitterness I had so far repressed. “No, if you must know, I have brought
you here, to sink myself something lower than you! To pay the bill which
I owe for my life with my honor! Oh, its a damned fine pass, sir, you’ve
brought me to!” I continued savagely. “To soil hands that I’ve kept
clean so far, and dirty a name—”
“Stop!” he cried. He was on his feet in a moment, a changed man, sharp,
eager, angry. “Lower than me, you say? By G—d, let there be no mistake,
Major! If you think I’m ashamed of the work I am doing, I am not! And
I’ll not let it be said that I am! I am proud of it! I am doing work
that not one in ten thousand could do or dare do. Plenty will shoot off
guns and face death in hot blood—it’s a boy’s task. But to face death in
cold blood, and daily and hourly without rest or respite; to know that
the halter may enter with every man who comes into the room, with every
letter that is laid on the table, with a dropped word or a careless
look. To know that it’s waiting for you outside every house you leave.
To face that, day and night, week in week out—that needs nerve! That
calls for courage, I say it, sir, who know! And what is the upshot?” He
swelled himself out. “Where others strike blows, I win battles!”
“Ay,” I cried—he had more to say, had I let him go on—“but sometimes you
lose, and this time you have lost. And having lost, you look to me to
pay! You look to me, sir! You take the honor, d—n you, and you leave me
the dishonor! But by G—d, if it were not for your daughter,—”
“Ah!” he said, low-voiced and attentive.
“You should pay your losings this time, though you saved my life twice
over!”
“Oh, oh!” he said in the same low voice. He sat back on the bed again,
and stared at me, as if he saw a different man before him. After a
pause, “Well,” he said, “I was a fool, Major, to blow my trumpet, and
ruffle your temper. If I wanted to put my head in your folks’ noose,
that was the way to do it. But every mother dotes on her own booby.
Well, you’ll hear no more singing from me. I’m silent!”
“When I think,” I cried, “of your boasts of what you have done!”
“Don’t think of them,” he answered. “Set me dawn for a fool, Major, and
let it rest there. Or think of the Bluff and Con. She’s a good girl, and
fond of her father and—well, you know how it is with us.”
I was able to collect myself within a minute or two, and—“Mark me,” I
said firmly, “I will give you up, Wilmer, I will give you up still, if
you depart one jot from what I tell you. You will remain in this room
for twenty-four hours. By that time Major Wemyss will have done his
work, and as the time of the attack has been advanced by a night, what
you may have communicated to your people should not change the issue.
To-morrow I will release you, and give you two hours start. You will be
wise to avail yourself of it, for at the end of that time I shall see
Lord Rawdon, make a clean breast of it, and take the consequences. I
shall be dismissed, and if I get my deserts I shall be shot; in any case
my name will be disgraced. But if I am not to give you up, there is no
other way out of the pit in which you have caught me.”
He thought for a moment. Then “I will give you,” he said, “my word if
you like, Craven, not to pass on any more—”
“What, a spy’s word?” I cried—and very foolish it was of me to say it.
But the man had brought so much evil on me that I longed to wound him.
“No! I’ll have no truck with you and no bargain, Captain Wilmer. It
shall be as I have said, exactly as I have said,” I repeated, “or I call
in the nearest guard. That is plain speaking.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “As you please, my friend,” he said. “But why
not open Rawdon’s eyes as to me—when I’m gone? and say no more?”
“And leave myself in your power?” I cried. “No! I tell you I will make
no bargain with you and have no truck! That way traitors are made!”
“I will swear if you like, Major—”
“No,” I replied angrily, “if I do this, I will pay for it.”
He shrugged his shoulders once more. “Well! it’s your difficulty,” he
said dryly, relapsing into his earlier manner. “And it is for you to get
out of it.”
“Yes,” I said, “and I shall get out of it in my own way and on my own
terms.”
He did not answer and I turned to go, but I cast my eyes round the
place, before I left him. A glance was enough to assure me that a man of
his size could not pass through the window, while there was no other way
from the room except through the guarded door. I went down to Paton. I
must secure his help for I had still something to do.
Naturally a lively soul, he was agog with curiosity, which the trouble
in my face did not lessen. “What is the trouble, Major?” he asked,
taking my arm, and drawing me apart. “And where’s old Snuff and Sneeze?”
“He’s in my room and he’s going to stay there,” I said. Then I told him
a part of the truth; that I had a clue to a spy, a man in the camp at
this moment. I added that I believed Burton also knew the man and might
be tempted to warn him, if he were free to do so. That if Burton
attempted to leave the house, therefore, he must be arrested; but that I
aimed at avoiding this if possible, as I did not wish to estrange the
man. “I leave you on guard,” I said. “I depend on you, Paton.”
“But I’m on duty, Major,” he objected, “in an hour.”
“I shall be back in half an hour,” I explained. “After that I will be
answerable.”
“Very good,” he rejoined. “But you know what you are doing? You have no
doubt I suppose? Burton has the Chief’s ear, and Webster believes in him
and makes much of him. There’ll be the deuce of a fracas if he’s
arrested and there’s nothing in it.”
“Do you arrest him if he leaves the house,” I said, “and leave it to me
to explain. I don’t think he will, and as long as he remains upstairs
let him be. That’s clear, is it not?”
He allowed that it was, and with a heavy heart I left him in charge and
went on my errand.
I suppose that there were the same splashes of red among the trees,
where the King’s uniform peeped through the foliage, the same men
lounging about, the same squads practicing the Norfolk discipline, the
same rack of thin clouds passing across the sunshine, the same drum
playing the Retreat and the Tattoo, or the plaintive notes of Roslyn
Castle. But I neither saw nor heard any of these things. My whole mind
was bent on finding my lord and getting an express—no matter on what
excuse—sent after Wemyss to warn him, and to put him on his guard. An
orderly on a swift horse might still by hard riding overtake him; and
such a message as “the enemy expect you to-morrow night, but do not
expect you to-night—have a care” might avail. At worst it would relieve
my conscience, at the same time that it lessened the heavy weight of
responsibility that crushed me.
I should then have done all that I could, and nearly all that could be
done, were the truth known.
But my lord was not at Headquarters, nor could they say where he was;
and when I sought Webster, who had his lodgings at a tavern, a hundred
yards farther down the road, he, too, was away. He had gone to visit the
outposts eastward. Time was passing, Wemyss had a start of two hours,
and was himself riding express; every moment that I lost made it more
doubtful if he could be overtaken. With a groan I gave up the idea, and,
turning about, I made the best of my way back towards Paton’s quarters.
Fifty yards short of the house whom should I meet but Haybittle,
red-faced, grey-haired, and dogged, his green uniform shabby with hard
usage. He was riding up the street with an orderly behind him, and when
he saw me, he pulled his horse across the road and hailed me with a
grin. “Major,” he said, “What’s this? There’s a young woman of the name
of Simms hunting you like a wild cat. It’s easy to see what it is she
has against you! Come, I didn’t think it of you—really I didn’t, Major!
A man of your—”
“Pooh!” I cried, “it’s her husband that she wishes to hear of.”
“Oh, of course, it’s always the husband is the trouble!” he laughed.
“You are right there!”
“Well, come on,” I answered irritably, “I want to hear about the woman,
but I cannot stop now. Come to Paton’s and tell me what she said. He’s
waiting for me, and he’s next for duty. I am late as it is!”
I pushed on, and Haybittle turned his horse and followed at my heels.
Over my shoulder, “I wish you’d seen that Quaker fellow, Burton, a
minute ago,” he said. “Lord, he was a figure, Major! He’d borrowed a
troop-horse, he told me, and it had tripped over a tent-rope in the
lines and given him a fall. His stock was torn—”
I turned on the man so sharply, that his horse had much ado not to knock
me down. “What?” I cried. “You met Burton—now?”
“Two minutes ago. He was riding express for—”
“Riding?”
“To be sure, riding towards Mobley’s Meeting House, and sharp, too! Why,
what is it, man? You look as if you had seen a bailiff!”
I did not doubt. In a moment I knew. Though the house stood only twenty
paces from us and Paton was at the door, I did not go in to see. A wave
of anger, fierce, unreasoning, irresistible swept me away—and yet had I
reasoned what else could I have done? I seized Haybittle’s rein with my
free hand. “Then follow him!” I cried, pointing the way with my crippled
arm. “After him! Ride like fury, man! He’s a spy! After him! Stop him,
or shoot him!”
Haybittle stared at me as if I had gone mad. “Do you mean it?” he asked.
“Are you sure, Major? Quite sure?” He held his cane suspended in the
air.
“Go, man, go!” I cried, wildly excited. “My order! Follow him, follow
him! Fishdam is his point! Turn all after him that you meet. A spy!
Shout it before you as you go!”
“A spy?” Haybittle yelled. “D—n him, we’ll catch him!” His cane fell,
his horse leapt off at a galop. The orderly followed, his knee abreast
of the Captain’s crupper. Two troopers of the Fourteenth who were
passing, heard the cry, turned their horses, and spurred after them.
With a loud View Halloo the four pounded away down the road, spreading
the alarm before them, as they rode.
Paton who had heard what was said rushed into the house. He did not
believe it, I think. In a trice he was out again. “I can’t open the
door,” he panted. “The bed is against it. Round the house, Major!”
He led the way, we ran round the house. At the back the little window,
ten feet from the ground, was open. Below it a plot of rough orchard
ground, in which two or three trees had been felled, ran down to a
branch. On the farther side of the water were some horse lines. We
stared up at the window. “But, d—mme, man, he couldn’t do it!” Paton
cried. “He couldn’t pass. Burton is as fat as butter!”
I swore. “That’s what I forgot!” I said. “He’s padded! He’s as lean as a
herring!”
We ran round to the front again. The hallooing came faintly up the road.
Already all the camp in that direction was roused and in a ferment. Two
troopers galloped by us as we reached the road. An officer followed,
spurring furiously. “That’s Swanton on the bay that won the match last
week,” Paton said; and he yelled “Forrard away! After him! If Burton is
on a common troop-horse,” he continued, “and he cannot have had time to
pick and choose, his start won’t save him! The bay will be at his girths
within five miles!”
“If they are to catch him they must do it quickly,” I groaned. “If he
draws clear of the settlement, he knows the roads and they don’t.”
“He’ll be afraid to extend his horse until the alarm overtakes him,”
Paton answered. “He would be stopped if he did, and questioned. There
are many on the roads this morning. Haybittle noticed him, you see. But
what does it all mean, Craven?” he continued.
We were standing, looking down the road. Half a hundred others, all
staring the same way, were grouped about us. “He’s gone to warn Sumter,”
I said dully. The excitement was dying down in me and I was beginning to
see what lay before me—whether he escaped or were taken. “If he reaches
Sumter before Wemyss attacks—and Wemyss may not attack before
daybreak—heaven help us! The surprise will be on the wrong side!”
Paton whistled. “Our poor lads!” he said.
For a moment my anger rose anew. But, Paton looking curiously at me and
wondering, I don’t doubt, why I had given the man the chance to escape,
my heart sank again. Wilmer’s determined act, his grim persistence in
his damnable mission, had sunk me below anything I had foreseen. If he
escaped, the blood of our men lay on my conscience. If he were taken, I
had bargained with him to no purpose, and soiled my hands to no end. My
act must send him to the gallows, my very voice must witness against
him! And Con? Ay, poor Con, indeed, I thought. For even as I stood
stricken and miserable, gazing with scores of sight-seers down the road,
and waiting for the first news of the issue, she rose before my mind’s
eye, tall and slender and grave and dressed in white, as I had seen her
on that evening, when she had flung herself into her father’s arms; the
father whom I, then crouching in pain in the saddle below, was destined
to bring to this! To bring to this! I thought with horror of my arrival
at the Bluff, of the lights, the barking dogs, the blacks’ grinning
faces and staring eyeballs! I thought with terror of her cry that ill
would come of it—ill would come of it! I felt myself the blind tool of
fate working out a tragedy, which had begun beside poor Simms’s body in
that little clearing fringed with the red sumach bushes!
Why, oh why had not the man been content to stay where I had placed him?
And why, oh why—I saw the error now—had I not taken the parole he had
offered me? I did not doubt that he would have kept it, if I had trusted
him. But I had refused it, and the chance of striking a new and final
blow had tempted him to my undoing.
So different were my thoughts from the unconscious Paton’s, as shoulder
to shoulder we stared down the road; while round us the crowd grew dense
and men of the 23rd tossed questions from one to the other, and troopers
of the Legion coming up from Headquarters drew bridle to learn what was
on foot—until presently their numbers blocked the road. Bare-armed men,
still rubbing bit or lock, made wagers on the result, and peered into
the distance for the first flutter of news. A spy? Men swore grimly.
“Hell! I hope they catch him!” they growled.
Presently into the thick of this crowd there rode up the Brigadier,
asking with objurgations what the men meant by blocking the road. The
nearest to him gave ground, those farther away explained. One or two
pointed to me. He pushed his horse through the throng to my side.
“What’s this rubbish they are telling me?” he exclaimed peevishly.
“Burton, man? A spy? It’s impossible! You can’t be in earnest?”
“Yes, sir,” I said sorrowfully; and I knew that with those words I cast
the die. “He was fighting against us at King’s Mountain. He is
disguised, but I knew the man—after a time.”
“His name is not Burton?”
“No, sir,” I said. “His name is Wilmer.”
“What? The man who—” he stopped. He looked oddly at me, and raised his
eyebrows. My story was pretty well known in the camp by this time. Paton
had spread it. “Why, the very man that you—”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “The man who captured me—and treated me well.”
“Well, I am d—d! But there, I hope to God they take him, all the same!
Why he’s known everything, shared in everything, sat at our very tables!
Not a loyalist has been trusted farther, or known more! He must have
cost us hundreds of our poor fellows, if this be true. He’s—”
“He’s a brave man, General,” I said, speaking on I know not what
impulse.
“And he’ll look very well on a rope!” Webster retorted. “Still, Craven,
I’m sorry for you.”
I could say nothing to that, and a few moments later an end was put to
our suspense. A man came into sight far down the road, galloping towards
us. As he drew nearer I saw that it was a sutler on a wretched nag. He
waved a rag above his head, a signal which was greeted by the crowd with
a volley of cheers and cries. “They’ve caught him! Hurrah! They’ve
caught him!” a score of voices shouted.
I could not speak. Alike the tragedy of it, and the pity of it took me
by the throat, and choked me. I could have sworn at the heedless jeering
crowd, I could have spat curses at them. I waited only until another man
came up and confirmed the news. Then I went into the house and hid
myself.
Afterwards I learned that the horse which Wilmer had seized was a sorry
beast incapable of a gallop and well known in the troop. Viewed before
he had gone a mile, and aware that he was out-paced, the fugitive had
turned off the road, hoping to hide in the woods. But to do this he had
had to face his horse at a ditch, and the brute instead of leaping it,
had bundled into it. Before Wilmer could free himself or rise from the
ground his pursuers had come up with him.
I have said that I went into the house and hid myself. Poor Con! The
girl’s face rose before me, and dragged at my heartstrings. I saw her,
as I had seen her many times, bending her dark head over the
spinning-wheel, while the pigeons pecked about her feet, and the cattle
came lowing through the ford, and round the home pastures and the quiet
homestead stretched the encircling woods, and the misty hills; and I
turned my face to the wall and I wished that I had never been born! My
poor Con!
* * * * *
Owing to my lord’s absence from the camp during the greater part of the
day a court for the trial of the prisoner could not be assembled until
four in the afternoon. I dare not describe what those intervening hours
were to me, how long, how miserable, how cruelly armed with remorse and
upbraidings! Nor will I say much of the trial. The result from the first
was certain; there was no defence and there was other evidence than
mine. Since his disguise had been taken from him two men in the camp,
one a Tory from the Waxhaws, the other a deserter, had recognized the
prisoner; and for a time I hoped that the Court, having a complete case,
would dispense with my presence. My position, and the fact that he had
spared my life and sheltered me in his house had become generally known,
and many felt for me. But the laws of discipline are strict, and duty,
when the lives of men hang upon its performance, is harshly interpreted.
The Court saw no reason why I should be spared. At any rate they did not
spare me.
When the time to enter came I was possessed by a sharp fear of one
moment—the moment when I should meet Wilmer’s eyes. They had taken his
stuffed clothes from him and brushed the powder from his hair, and when
I entered he stood between his guards, a lean, straight sinewy
Southerner, very like the man who had stood over me with a Deckhard in
the little clearing. The light fell on his face, and he was smiling.
Whatever of inward quailing, whatever of the natural human shrinking
from the approach of death he felt, he masked to perfection. As for the
moment I had so much feared, it was over before I was aware.
“Hello, Major!” he said, and he nodded to me pleasantly. I don’t know
what my face showed, but he nodded again, as if he would have me know
that all was well with him and that he bore me no malice. “You want
another sup of whisky, Major,” he cried genially.
“I need hardly ask you after that,” the President said, clasping his
hands about the hilt of the sword which stood between his knees, “if you
know the prisoner?”
“I do, sir.”
“Tell your story, witness.”
The sharp, business-like tone steadied me, helped me. With a calmness
that surprised myself I stated that the prisoner before the Court, who
passed in Camp, and in disguise, under the name of Burton, was the same
man who under the name of Wilmer had fought against us at King’s
Mountain, and had there taken me when wounded, and cared for me in his
own house.
“You were present,” the President asked, “when the plans for Major
Wemyss’s advance were discussed at Headquarters before my Lord Rawdon?”
“I was, sir.”
“Was the prisoner also there?”
“He was, sir.”
“In disguise and under a false name?”
I bowed.
“He was taking part in the debate as one knowing the district?”
“He was.”
“You recognize the prisoner beyond a shadow of a doubt?”
“I do.”
Had the prisoner any questions to ask the witness? He shrugged his
shoulders and smiled. No, he had none. Other formalities followed—curt,
decent, all in order. A stranger coming in, ignorant of the issue, would
have thought that the matter at stake was trivial. The President’s eye
was already collecting the votes of the other members of the Court, when
I intervened. I stood forward. I desired to say something.
“Be short, sir. On what point?”
The prisoner’s admirable and humane conduct to me, which by preserving
my life had directly wrought his undoing. I desired some delay, and a
reference to Lord Cornwallis—
“The matter is irrelevant to the charge,” the President said, stopping
me harshly. “You can stand back, sir. Stand back!”
Finding—guilty. Sentence—in the usual form. Execution—within twenty-four
hours. All subject to confirmation by the acting Commander-in-Chief.
“The Court is closed.”
I have but sketched the scene, having no heart for more and no wish to
linger over it. There are hours so painful and situations so humiliating
that the memory shrinks from traversing the old ground. Wilmer, on his
side, had no ground for hope, and so could bear himself bravely and with
an effort could add magnanimity to courage. He could smile on me, call
me “Major” in the old tone, banter me grimly. But my part was harder. To
meet his eyes, aware of the return I had made; to know that I, whose
life he had saved and whom he had taken to his home, had doomed him to
an ignominious death; to shrink from the compassionate looks of friends
and the curious gaze of those who scented a new sensation and enjoyed
it; and as a background to all this to see in fancy the ashen face and
woful eyes of the girl I loved and had orphaned, the girl who far away
in that peaceful scene knew nothing of what was passing here—with all
this was it wonderful that when I went back to my quarters Paton refused
to leave me?
“No, I am not going,” he said. “You are too near the rocks, Major! It’s
no good looking at me as if you could kill me. I brought you away from
that place, I know, and I’m d—d sorry that I did! When you are next
taken you may rot in Continental dungeons till the end of time for me!
I’ll not interfere I warrant you. I’ve had my lesson. All the same,
Major, listen! You’re taking this too hardly. It’s no fault of yours.
The man himself doesn’t blame you. He had his chance. He knew the stake,
he went double or quits, and he lost; and he’s going to pay. Through
you? Well, or through me or through another—what does it matter?”
“And Con? His daughter?” I said. “It’s the same to her, I suppose! Oh,
it’s a jest, a d—d fine jest that fate has played me, isn’t it!” And I
laughed in his face, scaring him sadly, he told me afterwards.
For two or three minutes he was silent. Then he touched me on the
shoulder. “I was afraid of this,” he said softly. “See, here, man,
you’ll be the better for doing something. Go and see my lord. He’s a
gentleman. Tell him. Tell him all. See him before he goes out in the
morning—he will be dining now. I excused you, of course. I don’t think
he’ll grant your request; frankly I don’t think he dare grant it—it’s a
flagrant case! But you will be doing something!”
I agreed, miserably, because there was nothing else I could do. But I
had no hope of the result. And the slow and wretched hours went by while
I walked the room in a fever of suspense, and Paton in spite of my angry
remonstrances stayed with me, sometimes poring over a soldier’s
song-book by the light of the single candle, and at others going down
for a few moments to answer some curious friend. I could not face them
myself, and when the first came, I started to my feet. “Don’t for God’s
sake,” I cried, “tell them!”
“Lord, no!” he answered. “Do you think I’m an ass, Major? Your arm’s the
size of my leg—that’ll do for them! It’s all they’ll hear from me!”
The longest night has an end; and mercifully this was not one of the
longest. For about midnight, worn out by my feelings and broken by the
fatigue of the journey from Rocky Mount, I lay down, and promptly I fell
asleep and slept like a log till long after reveillé had sounded, and
the camp was astir. The awakening was dreary; but, thank God, I drew
strength from the new day. The sharpest agony had passed, I was now
master of myself, resigned to the worst and prepared for it. True, I
felt myself years older, I saw in life a tragedy. But in my sleep I had
risen to the tragic level, and, waking, I knew that it became me to face
life with the dignity with which her father was confronting death.