CONSTANTIA AT SARATOGA
_“We don’t think much of Miss X— Y— my dear,
Quite too fond of the British Officers.”_
LIFE OF ELIZA PINKNEY.
The girl’s wits were so much more nimble than mine that she had
staggered under the news, recovered herself and done much to remove the
boxes from the trap-door before I could turn to help her. Then it hurt
me a little, I confess, that she had not a look for me, or a word. All
her thoughts were with Marion. She flew to the ladder, descended it, and
vanished, as if I had not existed, or as if I had not for twenty-four
hours spent myself in the effort to undo the misfortune which I had
brought upon her!
It was foolish of me to feel this, and more foolish to resent it. But I
did both and that so keenly, that I was in no haste to descend. The news
was good, her father was safe, and that was enough for her. That was all
for which she cared. Why should I go down among them, whoever they were!
There are times when we are all children, and stand aloof in sullenness,
saying that we will not play.
True, I had not done much for her—she had played her own game, it
seemed. But I had done what I could.
So it was Marion who presently, cool and neat and smoking the eternal
cigar, climbed up to me. He took in the wretched room with an
appreciative eye. “Home of the patriot!” he said, smiling. “This is what
you drive us to, Major.”
“It’s as full of fleas,” I cried peevishly, “as a starving dog!”
“I know,” he said. “The Carolina flea is grand. But I suppose that
you’ve not heard the news? We’ve hoodwinked you again, Craven.” This
time his tone was more grave but his eyes still twinkled. “Wilmer walked
past your sentries at nine o’clock last night, and he’s not a hundred
miles away at this moment and as free as air.”
“Thank God!” I said. And I meant it.
“Yes, you can’t fight a people, Major,” he continued. “You can’t fight a
people. You may be what you like on your side of the big water, but here
you’re no more than a garrison! You’re like a blind man plunging hither
and thither among people who see!”
“Suppose you descend to particulars,” I said coldly.
“The particular is Con, God bless her!” he answered. “There’s an
American girl for you! There’s a girl of spirit! Pity,” he continued
demurely, “that she’s a rebel! She wasn’t blind. By heaven, there wasn’t
a stone she left unturned from the moment you left the Bluff! She sent
to me and drew me into her plans. She sent to Levi, and drew him
in—silly girl—as if any good could come of those rogues! She drew you
into the scheme and made use, good use of you, Major. But all the time
she was her own best friend. She won a twenty-four hours respite from
your commander—that was life or death to her. Then, after learning
through her nigger and others the ways of the place, she cast dust in
your folks’ eyes by riding away to appeal to Cornwallis—it was
uncommonly clever that! And there, I give your folks credit—you can play
the gentleman when you please, Major. If all of you played it and played
it always,” he went on with a smile, “things would be very different
south of the Dan River. I should not be web-footed with living in the
swamps of the Pee Dee; and Sumter—” his smile broadened—“would not be
sore with riding bare-backed horses in his shirt.”
“I’m glad that you think we behaved well,” I said dryly. “But the fact
does not explain Captain Wilmer’s escape.”
“No, but Con made her market of the fact, God bless her, as of other
things,” he answered. And he looked at me so meaningly that the color
rose in my face. “She used it to get her interview with her father,
and—of course you were too gentlemanly to search her.”
“Which means?”
“That she took in a nigger outfit, and the rest of it, under her
skirts—wig, stain, and all. That night her boy, Tom, took the place of
the tavern waiter and carried in Wilmer’s supper and stayed while he ate
it. At nine o’clock there was a fight among some negro teamsters in
front of the tavern, and under cover of the skirmish Wilmer carried out
the tray, with a napkin in his mouth, crossed to the tavern, walked up
the yard as bold as brass, and vanished. Clever wasn’t it? Ten minutes
later when the guard was changed his black walked out too, carrying the
plates. I suppose, first and last,” Marion continued, thoughtfully
tapping his boot, “a dozen persons white and black, knew of the plan
before it came off—knew where the ’possum was—and not one peached. Weigh
that, Major, weigh that, if you please, and tell me, if you can, that
you still think you will beat us! Why you’re beaten already!”
“But Tom—”
“Oh, the nigger ran his risk,” Marion replied carelessly. “Wasn’t he
Wilmer’s boy, born on the place? He’d do that and more. And after all he
got clear. And by God—I don’t think that I ever saw a more curious thing
than I saw just now, and I’ll wager something it’s a sight that I shall
never see again.”
“What was it?” I asked dully. Seven words he had said earlier “she made
use, good use of you” were repeating themselves over and over again in
my brain.
“What was it? Why, a white woman on her knees kissing a black man’s
hands! A spoiled nigger, Major! You may take it from me, a spoiled
nigger! Wilmer may as well free him. He’ll never be worth a continental
cent to him again.”
“It was a clever plan,” I said. But I could not throw much spirit into
my words.
“Oh, she’s a jewel is Madam Constantia!” he answered. “It makes me laugh
now to think how she made use of us all. She wanted me to beat up
Winnsboro’ at sunrise to-day if Tom’s plan failed; as if I were likely
to venture my fellows against the whole British army! No, I couldn’t do
that, even for Wilmer. But I told her I would move up to Camden and be
at hand at daybreak to-day in case he was followed; and that if possible
I’d fall back by this road. As a fact Tom was here first with the news,
but those rogues—there’s a woman’s weak point, she don’t know whom to
trust—seized him, poor devil, for some reason of their own and when we
landed we found him tied up in a shed at the back.”
“What’s become of Levi?” I asked. Not that I cared one way or the other.
She had made use of me, good use of me—with the rest!
“Gone!” he said curtly. “And wise to go! We shall take their horses.
That’ll be some punishment. I would have strung him up with good will,
but there are times when we need a dirty tool.”
“Though you prefer a clean one,” I said bitterly. And I thought of
myself.
He laughed. “Madam Con will in future,” he said. “She’s had a lesson.
But, lord, how happy that girl is! Her father is safe, and she has saved
him!”
“Well, he’s no use as a spy any more!” I said. I was feeling mad, as the
saying is.
“That’s true,” he replied, not losing his good humor for a moment. “As
an American André—by your leave, Major—he’s blown upon. The risk always
made the girl miserable, and many’s the night, I fancy, that she has not
slept for thinking of him. Now that is at an end, and she’s doubly
happy. But there,” breaking off, “let us go into the open air. In a few
minutes I must be moving. My men are on the other bank, and when the fog
lifts we are too near your post at the Ferry and too far from our own
supports to be comfortable. I’ve a boat behind the mill and I can cross
in five minutes, but I shall not be happy until we are on the other side
of the Black River. I would not have come so far for any one but that
girl.”
“Nor I,” I said, forgetting myself for a moment.
Fortunately he had his back to me and perhaps he did not hear. A moment
later we were outside. “I am told that Rawdon has ordered you to be put
under arrest,” he said.
“You heard that?”
“Oh, we hear everything. The blind man’s moves are easy to follow. For
the matter of that Con saw your sword on my lord’s table. He was polite
as pie to her,” he continued, with a chuckle. “He was another of them!
He said a good deal about you; said that you’d thrown your commission in
his face, and he didn’t wonder—I suppose that was a compliment to
her—but that discipline must be maintained, and he didn’t know but that
he’d have to send you home.”
“There are times when we are all fools,” I said gloomily.
“Suppose I make you a prisoner?” he suggested.
“You would be a mean cur, General Marion, if you did!” I cried. For the
moment I was alarmed. Then I saw that he was smiling.
“Peppery as that are you?” he said. “I don’t wonder that my lord was for
putting you under arrest. But don’t be afraid. You’ve set us a good
example and we are going to follow it. Your fault, Major, is that you
think you are the only gentlemen in the world. Whereas we are of the
same blood or better!” He drew himself up, a heroic little figure, not
untouched by vanity. “Of the same blood or better!” he repeated. “And if
there are no gentlemen south of the Potomac River, then believe me, sir,
there are no gentlemen anywhere in the world.”
“Granted,” I said cordially. “But the misfortune is that you are not all
of a pattern.”
“No, nor you,” he riposted sharply. “There are good and bad, fine and
mean in every country, sir, and some day we shall understand that, and
shall cease to set down the faults of the few to the account of the
many. War is tolerable, Major; war between you and me! It is the abuse
of war that is intolerable. But I must go, or may be you will be making
me a prisoner. My compliments to Tarleton when you see him—a good man
but over sharp; over sharp, Major! Tell him that the Swamp Fox will give
him many a run yet, and will not be the first to go to ground if I can
help it.”
We had walked a little way from the mill, and while we talked a couple
of men had led out the horses. I had a glimpse of them as they vanished
round the corner of the building. Marion held out his hand.
“If we meet again, Major,” he said, “we will shoot at one another in all
good fellowship—all soldiers of the right sort are comrades in arms.
Meantime I wish you good fortune. And if, when the war is over—I expect
that by that time you will be once more a prisoner on parole—you have a
fancy for a little duck-shooting, there is none better than on the
Marion Plantation in St. John’s Parish.”
I could not resist his good humor and, depressed as I was, I returned
his grasp with spirit. It was impossible not to admire what I had heard
of him, and equally impossible not to like what I had seen of him. There
was in him a sparkle and a gaiety as well as an indomitable spirit that
explained the hold he had over his men, a hold that was firmest in the
darkest days and when the Swamp Fox’s life was not more easy than his.
“Certainly,” I said, “I will remember the duck-shooting, General. And if
I can procure leave for you to reside on your plantation, of which I
have no doubt we shall still be in possession, we may have the pleasure
of shooting the ducks in company.”
“Bah!” he cried laughing. “Long live the Thirteen States!”
“Long live King George!” I answered. “A clement and—”
“A very stupid sovereign!” he retorted gaily. He waved his hat, and I
waved mine. I understood that he did not wish me to learn the strength
of his party, or who were with him; and I made no attempt to follow him.
The sun was shining through the mist as he went round the house and
disappeared in the direction of the river.
Alas, the passing gaiety with which his good temper had infected me went
with him. For days I had lived upon excitement. The exhilaration of
movement, of effort, of danger, had borne me on. Above all the presence
of the girl, whose nearness set my pulses bounding, had filled my
thoughts and buoyed me up. Now in a twinkling I stood stripped of all,
and shivering. Excitement, exhilaration, danger, Constantia, all were
gone and I stood alone, by this cursed morass. I faced a future as flat
and dreary as the prospect before my eyes; and in the rebound, I could
almost have found it in my heart to pitch myself into one of the pale
channels which the sunlight revealed running this way and that across
the moss. The gaunt house beside me was not more lonely than I felt; and
ungrateful as we too often are to Providence—before whom I bow in
reverence as I write—the thought that I had just escaped from a violent
death went for little in my thoughts.
I was digging a hole in the mud with my heel and thinking of this when I
heard footsteps behind me. I turned sharply; who can measure the
swiftness with which hope leaps up in the heart? But the steps were only
Marion’s. He had appeared again at the corner of the house.
He did not approach me but called to me from a distance. “Have you any
message for my god-daughter,” he asked, “before I go?”
She has sent him back, I thought, to cover her retreat. Something, she
feels, is due to me; and this kind of left-handed message saves her
face. I felt it, I felt it sorely, but I pulled myself together—was I to
remind her of her debt? “To be sure,” I said as cooly as I could. “Be
good enough to congratulate her. Say how glad I am to have been of use
to her—along with others.”
“I’ll tell her,” he called out. “Very good!” And he laughed. “Good-bye,
then, till better times. And don’t forget the duck-shooting!”
I made him some reply. He waved his hat. He disappeared.
So it was all over. That was all that she had to say to me.
For a little while, for a few minutes, anger warmed me. Then that, too,
died down and left me chilled and miserable. I ground my heel farther
into the mud. The water welled up and mechanically I went on working at,
and enlarging, the hole.
I was paying dearly for a few hours of happiness; very dearly for the
belief which had lasted no more than a few hours, that she loved me. I
wondered now on what I had founded it. On the fact that she had drawn
back when it had come to hazarding my life? On that moment when she had
turned to me for help? On that other when she had clung to me? On a
blush, a look? Oh, fool! These were nothings, I saw now; things
imponderable, intangible, evasive as the air, fugitive as the wind. She
had not loved me. She had only made her market of me. She had only made
use of me. She had drawn me into her plans with others, with Tom, with
Levi, with her god-father, with Rawdon, with Paton! She had made her
market of us all—and saved her father’s life.
Well, I was glad she had! I would not for the world have had it
otherwise. If my love for her held anything that was good and honest and
unselfish—and I thought it did—I must rejoice with her, and I would. She
owed me nothing, while I owed her father my life. And so at worst we
were quits.
By this time the sun had drunk up the last of the fog, and showed the
flats in all their ugliness. Well, I would be going. There was no more
to be done here. It was all over.
I went into the mill and stood staring at the troop-horses. I saw that
with only one arm I should find it no easy matter to saddle them, but it
had to be done. First, however, I went upstairs to get my cloak, and I
found not mine only—on a box beside the expiring fire lay hers. So she
had left it as lightly as she had left me! Beside it, cast heedlessly on
the floor lay the pistol that had done so much for us. She had not given
a second thought to that either. I took it, and hid it in my breast. It
had lain in hers when she had been unhappy, when the heart, against
which it had pressed, had throbbed to bursting with the pain of fear and
of suspense. I would never part with it.
I went down, carrying the cloaks, and began to deal with the horses.
With some difficulty I saddled and bridled the one I had ridden, but the
gray proved to be a rogue. As often as I forced the bit between its
teeth it flung up its head and got rid of it before I could secure the
cheekstrap. Thrice I tried and thrice the brute baffled me and once hit
me heavily on the chin. A fourth time I tried and failing gave over with
an oath, and laid my face against the saddle. It was her saddle, and
heaven knows whether it was that which overcame me, or my helplessness,
or the feeling that they had left me to do this, but—
“You must let me help you with that.”
I started. The rush of joy was so over-powering, the shock of hearing
her voice so unexpected, that it dazzled me as if a flame had passed
before my eyes. On that instant of rapture followed another—of
unreasoning and unreasonable shame. How long had she been there? What
had she seen—she who had once called me a milksop? “I was tightening a
girth,” I mumbled, keeping my head lowered.
“Yes,” she said, “but it has slipped again, I think.”
I groped for it—it was indeed hanging under the horse’s barrel. I
murmured that the stable was so dark that it was almost impossible—
“You must let me help you.”
“You shall in a moment,” I answered. “I will just fix this.” And then—“I
thought that you had gone,” I muttered.
“Gone?” she cried.
“With General Marion.”
“Gone without thanking you?” she exclaimed. “Oh, impossible! You could
not think that of me! Gone without—”
“It was some mistake,” I said.
“It was a very great mistake,” she answered. “Will you allow me to pass
you?”
I made way for her to pass to the horse’s head. The stable was dark, I
have said, but as she went by, something prompted her to turn, and look
me in the face. “The brute hit me on the chin,” I said hurriedly.
She did not speak. I pulled down the gray’s head, and she thrust the bit
between its teeth. Then she proceeded to fasten the cheekstrap, but she
was so long about it that I saw that her fingers were trembling and that
her breath came as short and quick as if she had been running. “My
fingers are all thumbs this morning,” she said with a queer laugh. “With
joy, I suppose. But there, it’s done, Major Craven. Now I must get my
cloak,” she added, and she slipped quickly by me as if she were in a
hurry.
“I have it,” I said.
“And my pistol?”
“I have that too,” I said.
“Then I suppose that we had better be going,” she answered. “But perhaps
I ought to explain,” she continued, as she stood in the doorway with her
back to the light. “General Marion could not take me with him. He is
making for the Pee Dee and the great marshes, and hopes to be on the
other side of Lynch’s creek by night. He took Tom but he said that I
should embarrass him.”
“I see.”
“He thought that you would perhaps escort me as far as Camden,” she
continued soberly. “I have friends there who will receive me for the
night and send me home to-morrow by Rocky Mount and the fords of the
Catawba. He fancied that I had better avoid Winnsboro’.”
“I agree with him,” I said.
“I might be arrested, he fancied?”
“It is not impossible,” I assented dryly. I felt that something was
closing in on me and stopping all the sources of speech. This ordered
plan, this business-like arrangement—I was to be of use to the end it
seemed. Just of use! I strove desperately to resist the thought and yet
I could not.
“Then if there is nothing else,” she said slowly, “we might—be going, I
suppose?”
“I suppose so,” I answered heavily. And I turned the horses round.
“Or—do you think,” she suggested uncertainly, “that we had better eat
something before we start?”
“Let us eat it outside, then!” I replied. “I cannot breathe in this
place.”
“Yet you were ready enough to enter it!” she retorted. And then before I
could answer, “I must see what they’ve left!” she exclaimed. “There must
be something upstairs.”
She went nimbly up the ladder, leaving me staring after her. I turned
the horses round and secured them. Then, in a brown study, I went out
and for the first time I passed round the building, and saw the wide
river gliding by, and beyond it across the marshes the long low ridge
that goes by the name of the High Hills of Santee. The sun was shining
on the distant ridge, and on the water, and compared with the prospect
from the other side of the mill the view was cheerful and even gay. I
spread her cloak on a pile of lumber that littered the wharf, and then I
went back to fetch her.
She had found some corn-bread and molasses, and some cold cooked rice.
Even with the help of whisky of which there was more than of anything
else, it was a poor feast and she spread it in silence while I looked
on—thinking and thinking. From here to Camden was so many hours, two or
three or four. So long I should have her company. Then we should part.
As I rode away I should look back and see her framed in a doorway; or I
should stand myself and see her grow small as she receded, until she
turned some corner and was gone. And I should know that this was the
end. So many hours, two or three or four! And heavy on me all the time
the knowledge that I should spoil them by my unhappy temper, or my
dullness, or that strange feeling that benumbed my tongue and took from
me the power of speech.
She looked up. “It is quite ready,” she said. And then, lowering her
tone to a whisper, “Let us remember the last time we ate,” she said
reverently, “and be thankful.”
“Amen,” I said. “I thank God for your sake.”
“And I thank too,” she answered in a voice that shook a little, “all who
helped me.”
“Tom?”
“Ah, dear brave Tom!” she cried, tears in her voice.
We were eating by this time, and to lighten the talk, “I am not sure,” I
said, “that General Marion approved of the manner in which you thanked
him.”
“Thanked Tom? Because I kissed his hand? I believe I did,” she added
ingenuously. “Oh, it was a small thing! Surely it was a small thing to
do for him who had risked his life for me!”
Our eyes met. For a moment the red flamed in her cheeks but she met my
look bravely. “I am not ashamed,” she said. “I would do the same again
in the same case.”
The eyes that fell were mine. I was tongue-tied. Here was an opening but
how could I say that I was in the same case. How could I claim that the
risk I had run was to be compared with that which Tom had run. Or how
could I claim at all as a debt—what I wanted. Perish the thought! So I
went on eating, silent and stupid, thinking of the few, few hours that
separated us from Camden, thinking of the long, long time that would
follow. She said one or two things disjointedly; that her father would
free Tom, of course; that he was a very clever negro, and wonderful as a
bone-setter.
“I should know that,” I said.
“Yes,” she assented; and I stole a glance at her. She had found means to
plait up her hair and arrange her dress. She was another creature now
from the desperate, driven, tragical girl who had clung to me that
morning, whose heart had beaten for an instant against mine, whose
pistol at this moment lay hard and cold on my breast. My courage sank
lower and lower. Of that girl I had had hopes, on her I had had a claim.
But this one was a stranger.
Presently we had finished, and she rose and went down to the river to
wash her hands.
When she had done this she turned and came up the bank again, swinging
her hat in her hand, and softly crooning some song of praise. The sun
flamed from the water behind her, and out of that light she came towards
me, tall and slender and gracious, and with such a glory of thanksgiving
in her face, that my pride, or whatever it was, that stood between her
and me, and kept me silent, gave way and broke! What matter what she
thought? What matter if she trod me under foot, held me cheap, disdained
me? What matter? I went to meet her.
“You did that for Tom,” I said. “Have you nothing for me? For me, too?”
Her grave eyes met mine. She was nearly of a height with me. “For you,”
she said, “I have all that you choose to ask.”
“Yourself?” I cried.
“If it be your pleasure.”
And that, it may be thought, should have satisfied me, who an instant
before had despaired. But so presumptuous is success I was already
jealous, already exigent. “Ah, not as a debt?” I cried. “If you cannot
give me your love, Con?”
“I cannot,” she answered with smiling eyes. “It has been given to you
this month past.” Then as she hung back from me, blushing divinely,
“They have touched Tom’s black hands,” she said.
“God bless them for it!” I answered.
Later she told me that she had loved me from the hour I had kept silence
as to her part in the outrage at the Bluff. “I was ashamed, oh, I was
horribly ashamed of it,” she said. “I knew that neither my father nor my
god-father would have done that! Yet, I am not sure that it was not
earlier than that? I think it was your mention of the soldier’s wife
when you were yourself in—in danger—that clung to my memory, and would
not be shaken off, and—”
“Poor Simms!” I said. “And I once envied him!”
* * * * *
At Camden the Wateree becomes the Catawba, and happiness becomes memory
or anticipation, according as you gaze up or down the stream. For there,
in a tiny parlor in a white frame house looking on a poplar wood, I
parted from Constantia, and left her with the friends who were to see
her as far as Rocky Mount on her homeward journey. I fear that they were
rebels. But there are things which it is wise to leave _sub silentio_;
the dog that has found a bone does not bark. And my position was
delicate.
I felt that position grow more delicate in proportion as, with my face
turned towards Winnsboro’, I approached the camp. I was not sad; the
future held that which would make amends for present evils. But I knew
that I had an unpleasant passage before me, and my conscience was not
quite clear. At any rate I had misgivings, and taking care to reach the
camp at sunset, and as the guard was changing, I made my way to Paton’s
quarters without beat of drum. I was lucky enough to find him before the
Provost-Marshal found me.
He shook with laughter when he saw me. “Upon my honor, Major,” he said.
“We are all vastly obliged to you! You are a whole company of players in
yourself. As the hero-errant who relieves the Distressed Damsel and
releases the Beleaguered Knight you fill the stage. The camp is agog
with you. The latest about you is that the rebels have hung you from the
roof of a remote house in the marshes. And, lo, we are all lamenting
you, when in you walk as coolly as if the Dragon at Headquarters, robbed
of his prey, were not breathing Court Martials and Firing Parties and
the worst threats against you.”
“I had nothing to do with it,” I said stoutly.
“Innocent!”
“That is what I am.”
“Well, you will have to persuade my lord of it,” he retorted. “And
you’ll find your work prepared for you! Francis Rawdon-Hastings is in no
mean rage, my lad. The sooner you placate him the better. I hope the
lady has come to give evidence for you?”
I pooh-poohed this, but I took his hint and I went straight to
Headquarters, leaving him mightily amused. There, the storm was not slow
to break over me. My conduct was disgraceful, contumacious, subversive
of all discipline, flat mutiny. I had taken advantage of my position and
his lordship’s friendship, and the rest. I had collogued with convicted
rebels, I had wandered over the country with suspected persons. I should
be tried by Court Martial, I should find, whoever I was, that I could
not do these things with impunity! D—d if I could!
When I could be heard—and Webster, generally kind and easy-going, was
almost as bad as the Irishman, “But, my lord,” I said, “What had I to do
with the escape? It was not I who permitted the lady to visit her
father?”
That hit them between wind and water. They stared. “Then it was she?” my
lord exclaimed.
“Who took in the disguise, my lord? As I have since learned—it was. And
I venture to say that there is not an officer in the service in your
lordship’s position, or in any other, who would punish a daughter for
the attempt to save her father’s life!”
“The devil is that she did save it, sir!” he answered with vexation. But
he could not regain his old fluency, and presently he asked me to tell
him all I knew. I did so, feeling sure that he would be unable to
withhold his admiration; and the final result as far as I was concerned
was a reprimand and ten days confinement to camp—and an intolerable
amount of jesting! Some wag, Paton, I am afraid, discovered that her
name was Constantia and adding it to our Osgodby motto, the single word
“Virtus,” scrawled a whole series of “Virtus et Constantia” over my
books and papers. Perhaps in a silly way I liked it.
Certainly this was the least of my troubles. The greatest, or at any
rate, that which tried me most sharply, was the fact that I could not
communicate with Constantia without laying myself open to suspicion. For
several months I received no news of her and had to content myself with
doing all that I could to procure the release of her brother. Of me,
indeed, she heard through the mysterious channels which were open to her
side. But she was too thoughtful of me and too careful of my honor to
approach me through them. At length there came a change laden with
bitter sorrow to her. Her father fell in the engagement at Guildford
Court House in a gallant but vain attempt to stem the flight of the
Northern Militia. Stricken to the heart—though she had the satisfaction
of knowing that he had fallen on the field of honor—she abandoned the
Bluff which, exposed to incursions from both sides, was no longer a safe
place for her. With Aunt Lyddy and Mammy Jacks she came down to Charles
Town.
For how much the desire to see me counted in inducing her to take this
step, she knew and I guessed. And fortune which had frowned, presently
smiled on us. I was attached to General Leslie’s force in Charles Town,
and there I saw her almost daily and learned to know her as I had
learned to love her. I passed unscathed through the fight at Eutaw
Springs: she uninjured through many months of devoted attendance on her
sick and wounded countrymen. A month before the evacuation of the city
by the British, and when the approach of peace had already softened
men’s minds and made things easy which had been hard before, we were
married at St. Philip’s.
We passed our honeymoon on the Marion Plantation in St. John’s Parish
with a pass granted by General Greene; and there Constantia’s brother,
whose freedom I had procured two months before, joined us. When he, with
Aunt Lyddy and Mammy Jacks, went north to take up again the threads of
life at the Bluff, we crossed to the islands and thence sailed for
Europe in the Falmouth Packet.
With all our love for one another the last night in harbor was a sad
night for both. For Constantia, because she was leaving her native land.
For me it was saddened by the sight of the ships that lay beside us,
laden with those who had supported our cause and must now, for other
reasons than Constantia’s, face a life of exile. My heart bled for them;
nay, as I write twenty years later, it is still sore for them. But the
wound is healing, if slowly, and I look forward in hope and with
confidence to a day when the birth and the traditions which we share
will once more unite the two branches of our race, it may be in a common
cause, it may be in the face of a common peril.
So may it be!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“_It is one of the most beautiful romances he has produced._”
—_Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger._
SIR RIDER HAGGARD’S NEW NOVEL
LOVE ETERNAL
Crown 8vo. Cloth, $1.50 net
“... a romance concerned with two great themes—reincarnation and the
persistence of personal communication after death between persons who
love each other.... it has some excellent character drawing to recommend
it, and not a little basic truth of a kind which many persons are
groping for in these days of danger, loss and harsh handling by
fate.”—_San Francisco Chronicle._
“A sympathetic romance of love triumphant ... stands well above the
average of writings of this kind and will add new credit to the repute
of its versatile author.”—_The Tribune, New York._
“The reader’s attention is held, the glimpses of the war in those early
days when Godfrey was one of that immortal band of heroes to whom we owe
so immeasurable a debt, the ‘contemptible little English army,’ are well
done, and there is much that is both touching and beautiful in the
depiction of the love—love stronger far than death—between Isobel and
Godfrey.”—_The Times, New York._
“To the skeptic and doubter ‘Love Eternal’ will be read merely as a
pleasant love story; to the increasing number who feel there is
‘something in’ psychic communications, the book will carry a deeper
significance.”—_Detroit Free Press._
Longmans, Green & Co.
New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.