How Vere Came to Newark, and Bee
Consented to be Betrothed to Him.
It was the last day of 1813 when the raid that Ferguson had escaped
joining was made, and Buffalo and Black Rock went up in flames.
Fortunately the terrified inhabitants had fled, when their troops
retreated--it is not very clear why--but everything they left was
destroyed or carried off. And so 1813 ended, with black ashes strewn
on either side of Niagara River, and a blacker hate in the hearts of
Americans and Canadians alike.
Bee shivered, not with cold, but at the thought of the hate of war,
as she left the house one brilliantly cold January day. She meant to
take a long sledge drive by herself, and think things over. Like
many others on both sides, the war hurt her cruelly, because in many
ways it was so like a civil war. Yet after seeing the burning of
Newark, she could not blame the savage retaliation from the Canadian
side, and she could not hate Ned, or Betty and Sir John, with whom
her brother had been quite willing to leave her--"But," she thought,
"I cannot possibly be happy, or think of marrying a Canadian till
this war is over, without anyone I love getting killed."
Then she saw Ned. He had left the house for the first time, to try a
short walk, but he had over-rated his strength, and he was
staggering, when a cutter drew up beside him, and he looked into
Bee's bright face, as she said--"Oh, dear, how foolish men are. When
you wanted to go out, why didn't you let someone know, and we would
have taken you out. Get in here now."
"Just back to the house, please, Miss Bee," said Ned as he obeyed and
sat down among the soft, thick furs. "Your guardians would not allow
you to be with me a moment, if they knew what you do of me--what I
told you at York--Miss Bee, what are you doing?"
For the wilful girl had let the spirited horse go, and they were
flying out of ruined Newark, and away across the open country, where
the keen air thrilled Ned like wine. Her horse kept Bee's hands
full, but she looked round at Ned for a moment as she spoke, and he
wondered that he had never noticed how bright and soft her eyes were.
"Listen," she said, "of course I never repeated what you told me, but
I know Cousin Betty suspects something--I thought you must have
written and told her--and she doesn't mind at all. She said that
women must always overlook a few things in a man, and I'm sure I can
overlook you being accused of a crime you did not commit."
Ned gasped, realizing that there was a big misunderstanding
somewhere--but he was so desperately lonely. Shut in with his
secret, it was hard for him to refuse the sweet comradeship of this
warm-hearted girl.
"Miss Bee," he began gravely, "you must have mistaken Mrs. Haslem. I
believe Sir John will reach Newark to-day, and when he sees my name
marked for honour, he may consent that I receive pardon for what I
did not do; but I know I shall lose all other rewards; I shall
doubtless be allowed to fight in the ranks till the end of the war,
and afterwards I can find something to do. I know my father will
never forgive me, and I will never go back to Dr. Brown with this
stain on my name. You should not ride out with me like this."
Ned spoke with all the bitterness that had been fermenting in his
brain so long, and with his hot hands clenched under the furs. Then
a small hand, that was cool and very firm was suddenly laid on them,
and its touch calmed Ned strangely--"You know very well that I will
be your friend till death," said Bee Goode.
Behind them at Newark, Sir John and Vere had arrived, and the baronet
sent Vere off to find Bee, while he talked over Ned's case with the
Niagara officers.
Vere rode off, greatly disturbed to know that Ned had not deserted
with Sells, and dropped forever out of his world. He hated him with
all his weak, unwholesome nature, and then he saw him, in the sledge
with the girl his grandfather had determined he should marry.
In a moment he was beside them, shouting with an oath--"I thought
your dirty American blood would show some time, you minx! What spy
work are you plotting with this deserter?"
[Illustration: "Take that! you coward!"]
Instantly Bee was on her feet, and with the strength of anger, struck
him across the face with her whip--"Take that, you coward," she
cried, "and never dare to speak to me again." Then turning her horse
she drove home in a storm of jangling bells and flying hoofs.
She left Ned at the hospital door, and went to find Chloe waiting
with her one silk dress--blue with a white flower pattern.
"Missy must dress up fine to-night," said the old nurse. "Mr. Vere
is here, the gentleman who is to marry you, honey."
Bee thought Chloe was mad for a moment, but when the woman repeated
what Betty had told her, she understood the mistake she had made at
York.
"But I won't dress, I'll stay in my room, and lock the door while
that cowardly liar is in the house," she cried. "And to-night we
will run away, you and I to my brother."
"We can't, honey," said Chloe sympathetically. "There's miles of
snow and burnt houses, and soldiers who would stop us, and that
almighty wild river that nobody can't get over nohow. Let me dress
you, honey, and make you look pretty, then you can go down and ask
Mr. Percy to help you--he's here now."
Percy had not seen Bee since he left her, a slip of a girl, to go on
to York, a year before, and for an instant he hardly recognized this
silk-robed, pale-faced young woman, with her haughty poise, and
flashing eyes. Then she was speaking to him, passionately and
impulsively, repeating what Ned had told her at York, until he said,
so sternly that she started at him--"That's enough, Bee, this is the
first time you have shown yourself untrue to the Haslem name, let it
be the last. Vere has his faults, but no man of our family could be
a coward or lie."
"My name is Goode, sir," said Bee, at white heat now, "and I am sorry
that I am half a Haslem if their family pride makes them blind to the
vices of a relative. Sir, I demand that you send me across to my
brother--to my father's people."
"Bee!" exclaimed Betty aghast, but Percy, after a keen look at the
girl, said slowly and sternly--"I have just come from considering Ned
Edgar's case. If he admits to having been afraid to deliver the note
at York, we can pardon his panic--seeing what his record has been
since--on his first day under fire, unless he persists in this
attempt to smirch the name of another man."
Bee read a threat to Ned in the emphasis Percy put on his last words,
and she forgot herself, thinking of Ned's possible danger. Then in
came Sir John, furious, for Vere had given him his version of the red
welt on his face, but the angry words on the old man's lips were
checked as he saw the child he had left at York shot up into young
womanhood--"Bless me," he exclaimed, "I didn't know you."
She made a mocking little courtesy to him. "My cousin did not know
me either, it would seem, sir. I met a sick soldier and was driving
him home, when Vere met us and spoke insultingly to me; I hope sir,
you will say I did right to strike him."
"Bless me," Sir John repeated helplessly. "I don't know what the
world is coming to."
He was relieved at hearing the summons to dinner then, the dinner
which was to publicly announce the betrothal of Vere and Bee. Such
family arrangements for the marriage of young people who hardly knew
one another were not uncommon then, and the guests did not pay
particular attention to the sulky boy, who felt that he hated this
"Yankee girl," as he called her in his heart, who had so openly shown
that she was on his enemy's side. And the girl herself, who in
white-faced silence heard her grandfather's speech, felt trapped,
believing that if she resisted it meant further injustice and
suffering for Ned.
The evening was almost over when Archy got Bee away by herself. "I
thought you would like to know about Ned," he said bluntly. "He just
wouldn't say anything, only that him or Vere Haslem was a blamed
liar, and we could decide which it was."
"What are you going to do with him?"
"Because of what he did here, he will be pardoned for what he did, or
didn't, at York."
"Then you don't think he is guilty?"
"Not so fast, young lady. I don't know, and the only way to find
out, is to wait and watch them both. The liar will act the coward
and lie again, sure."
"You may have to wait a long time for that; and while you are
watching both, you treat Vere Haslem as if he were innocent, and Ned
as if he were guilty. You are cruelly hard on him."
"There's a heap of hard things in life; one of them is that the day
we clear Ned, we break Sir John's heart."
* * *
And Bee, who remembered that she loved her grandfather, shivered.
She had not expected to sleep that night, but health and youth
asserted themselves and she rested well, and woke in the sunny
morning feeling that somehow things could not be as bad as she had
thought them in the night. She was greatly helped to this
comparative cheerfulness by a talk she heard under her window, where
Ferguson was energetically telling Kawque, the Mohawk scout, the
story of Ned and Vere. The Indian grunted such emphatic assent to
Ferguson's belief in his friend, that Bee was half comforted. At
least Ned had true friends.
Ferguson's friendship was doubly warm now that he knew the reason for
Ned's "backsliding", and it helped the boy through the ordeal of
returning to his comrades, reduced in rank.
Ferguson had ridden home with Percy that evening, and the men had
scattered to their messes, busy getting supper and preparing for the
night. Each mess consisted of about a dozen men who divided the work
among them, the non-commissioned officers always being exempt. Ned,
to whom no one had yet spoken, picked up a pail to fetch water,
washing to take his part in the work before he was ordered to by the
sergeant. But Tim snatched the pail from him.
"Me Swaddler friend," he said earnestly, "unless you are wishful to
go back to hospital immediate, you won't try to work round this mess."
Perplexed, Ned looked at his sergeant, but that man only said,
"Better put off arguing with Tim for a few years, Ned, you haven't
the weight to stand up to him yet."
So Ned knew he had been tried and acquitted by a very powerful
court--the opinion of the men among whom he lived. After hearing of
Ned's condemnation at Kingston the regiment had talked of nothing
else for a week. They had also compared notes with a company just
arrived, and decided which man had lied. Now with rough delicacy
they let Ned know what their verdict had been, and that they knew his
reduction was only temporary.
* * *
Betty had moved to St. Davids, a village by Queenston Heights, where
Percy and Sir John came often, and Vere seldom. He managed to find
duties, any duties, to keep him from meeting the fiancée he now
detested. And still Sir John delighted in Bee's brightness, and
believed that in practically forcing her to marry Vere he was doing
the best for the girl he really loved, and for the family whose
honour was rooted in his heart.
Spring came, and there was some skirmishing on Lake Ontario. Erie
was entirely in American hands. But on land there were only a few
raids by the Americans, who had a new general, Winfield Scott, who
was carefully training the army with which he meant to take Upper
Canada that summer. If he did not, he well knew Canada would not be
taken at all, for England was making peace with France. Earnestly
Canadians were praying that peace might be made with the United
States also, though they were as ready as ever to fight if the
American flag should again be carried across their border by armed
men.
A breathless June evening Bee stood alone in Betty's garden, thinking
that July was very near, and feeling desperately afraid. Betty had
spoken to her very decidedly--"Of course you will marry Vere in three
weeks." To herself she said, "The boy is steady enough now, and this
wretched business of Ned Edgar's refusing to take back his shameful
lie that Vere never gave him the letter, makes it all the more
necessary that we should stand by him."
Alone in the hot June dusk Bee shivered. She was too young and too
affectionate to be able to defy Sir John and Betty, and as she
helplessly prayed for some one who could advise her, a man who walked
noiselessly as an Indian, came beside her, and she held out her hands
to him with a little cry of joy. "Papa Edgar; you have escaped! But
you are so thin!"
"Prisons aren't palaces," said Edgar indifferently, "In the winter
there was no fire and in the summer no air, below decks, where we
were. We lay on the bare planking. But down in Montreal harbour,
our prisoners were on similar other prison hulks so I had nothing to
complain of--it was the fortune of war. At last Tahata came one
night and helped me to escape."
Edgar bore his enemies no grudge for his rough prison--he lived in a
rough age--it was really the memory of Ned that had aged him, and he
tried fiercely to stop Bee when she mentioned his name. He still
thought him with Sells the deserter. But the girl insisted on
telling him all, and the light of her faith in his son kindled hope
in his heart again. Ned might be, nay, must be, soon proved
innocent. Then another thought made him exclaim, "But you must not
marry this villain, child."
"You will help me not to, sir," said Bee confidently as she clung to
him, and Edgar frowned to himself. He was on duty, scouting with his
Indians, and he had snatched only a moment to speak to his one-time
ward. He knew he was helpless to aid her; he could not possibly take
her from the Haslems. Then among the bushes he saw the dark face of
Kawque the scout.
Kawque was to stay at St. Davids, and used to quick thinking and
daring action, Edgar spoke reassuring farewell as on sudden impulse
he went to the Indian.
The first thing he had meant to tell the Mohawk was unnecessary.
Kawque was quite sure already of Ned's innocence, and Edgar looked
visibly younger as he heard what Kawque could tell him--"Blessings on
that Methodist after all," he thought, then spoke earnestly to the
Indian about Bee. Kawque nodded; he never wasted words.
"Bee Goode not marry till you say so, all right," he said decidedly.
And so Edgar went off, not stopping to think that the methods of an
Iroquois warrior in preventing a formally arranged aristocratic
wedding might prove startling.