I had stepped from the dining-hall out to the gun-room. Clocks in the
house were striking midnight. In the dining-room the company had now
taken to drinking in earnest, cheering and singing loyal songs, and
through the open door whirled gusts of women's laughter, and I heard the
thud of guitar-strings echo the song's gay words.
All was cool and dark in the body of the house as I walked to the front
door and opened it to bathe my face in the freshening night. I heard the
whippoorwill in the thicket, and the drumming of the dew on the porch
roof, and far away a sound like ocean stirring--the winds in the pines.
The Maker of all things has set in me a love for whatsoever He has
fashioned in His handiwork, whether it be furry beast or pretty bird, or
a spray of April willow, or the tiny insect-creature that pursues its
dumb, blind way through this our common world. So come I by my love for
the voices of the night, and the eyes of the stars, and the whisper of
growing things, and the spice in the air where, unseen, a million tiny
blossoms hold up white cups for dew, or for the misty-winged things that
woo them for their honey.
Now, in the face of this dark, soothing truce that we call night, which
is a buckler interposed between the arrows of two angry suns, I stood
thinking of war and the wrong of it. And all around me in the darkness
insects sang, and delicate, gauzy creatures chirked and throbbed and
strummed in cadence, while the star's light faintly silvered the still
trees, and distant monotones of the forest made a sustained and steady
rushing sound like the settling ebb of shallow seas. That to my
conscience I stood committed, I could not doubt. I must draw sword, and
draw it soon, too--not for Tory or rebel, not for King or Congress, not
for my estates nor for my kin, but for the ancient liberties of
Englishmen, which England menaced to destroy.
That meant time lost in a return to my own home; and yet--why? Here in
this county of Tryon one might stand for liberty of thought and action
as stanchly as at home. Here was a people with no tie or sympathy to
weld them save that common love of liberty--a scattered handful of
races, without leaders, without resources, menaced by three armies,
menaced, by the five nations of the great confederacy--the Iroquois.
To return to the sea islands on the Halifax and fight for my own acres
was useless if through New York the British armies entered to the heart
of the rebellion, splitting the thirteen colonies with a flaming wedge.
At home I had no kin to defend; my elder brother had sailed to England,
my superintendent, my overseers, my clerks were all Tory; my slaves
would join the Minorcans or the blacks in Georgia, and I, single-handed,
could not lift a finger to restrain them.
But here, in the dire need of Tryon County, I might be of use. Here was
the very forefront of battle where, beyond the horizon, invasion,
uncoiling hydra folds, already raised three horrid, threatening crests.
Ugh!--the butcher's work that promised if the Iroquois were uncaged! It
made me shudder, for I knew something of that kind of war, having seen a
slight service against the Seminoles in my seventeenth year, and
against the Chehaws and Tallassies a few months later. Also in November
of 1775 I accompanied Governor Tonyn to Picolata, but when I learned
that our mission was the shameful one of securing the Indians as British
allies I resigned my captaincy in the Royal Rangers and returned to the
Halifax to wait and watch events.
And now, thoughtful, sad, wondering a little how it all would end, I
paced to and fro across the porch. The steady patter of the dew was like
the long roll beating--low, incessant, imperious--and my heart leaped
responsive to the summons, till I found myself standing rigid, staring
into the darkness with fevered eyes.
The smothered, double drumming of a guitar from the distant revel
assailed my ears, and a fresh, sweet voice, singing:
"As at my door I chanced to be
A-spinning,
Spinning,
A grenadier he winked at me
A-grinning,
Grinning!
As at my door I chanced to be
A grenadier he winked at me.
And now my song's begun, you see!
"My grenadier he said to me.
So jolly,
Jolly,
'We tax the tea, but love is free,
Sweet Molly,
Molly!'
My grenadier he said to me,
'We tax the tea, but love is free!'
And so my song it ends, you see,
In folly,
Folly!"
I listened angrily; the voice was Dorothy Varick's, and I wondered that
she had the heart to sing such foolishness for men whose grip was
already on her people's throats.
In the dining-hall somebody blew the view-halloo on a hunting-horn, and
I heard cheers and the dulled roar of a chorus:
"--Rally your men!
Campbell and Cameron,
Fox-hunting gentlemen,
Follow the Jacobite back to his den!
Run with the runaway rogue to his runway,
Stole-away!
Stole-away!
Gallop to Galway,
Back to Broadalbin and double to Perth;
Ride! for the rebel is running to earth!"
And the shrill, fierce Highland cry, "Gralloch him!" echoed the infamous
catch, till the night air rang faintly in the starlight.
"Cruachan!" shouted Captain Campbell; "the wild myrtle to clan Campbell,
the heather to the McDonalds! An't--Arm, chlanna!"