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THE MASTER OF APPLEBY
A Novel Tale Concerning Itself in Part with
the Great Struggle in the Two Carolinas; but
Chiefly with the Adventures Therein of Two
Gentlemen Who Loved One and the Same Lady
by
FRANCIS LYNDE
Illustrations by T. de Thulstrup
New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Copyright 1902
The Bowen-Merrill Company
October
TO
Mr. Edward G. Richmond
OF CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE,
WHOSE KINDNESS AND ENCOURAGEMENT
MUST ALWAYS BE HELD IN LIVELY
REMEMBRANCE BY THE AUTHOR
THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY
INSCRIBED
[Illustration: But now I was fronting death and could be as firm as
she]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I I WHET MY FATHER'S SWORD 1
II KNITS UP SOME BROKEN ENDS 15
III MY ENEMY SCORES FIRST 25
IV MAY BE PASSED OVER LIGHTLY 36
V I LOST WHAT I HAD NEVER GAINED 47
VI RED WRATH MAY HEAL A WOUND 60
VII MY LADY HATH NO PART 75
VIII I TASTE THE QUALITY OF MERCY 88
IX A GOLDEN KEY UNLOCKED A DOOR 98
X A FORLORN HOPE CAME TO GRIEF 107
XI A LIE WAS MADE THE VERY TRUTH 114
XII THE NEWS CAME TO UNWELCOME EARS 129
XIII A PILGRIMAGE BEGINS 141
XIV THE BARONET PLAYED ROUGE-ET-NOIR 150
XV A HATCHET SINGS A MAN TO SLEEP 164
XVI JENNIFER THREW A MAIN WITH DEATH 171
XVII LOVE TOOK TOLL OF FRIENDSHIP 183
XVIII WE HEAR NEWS FROM THE SOUTH 194
XIX A STUMBLING HORSE BROUGHT TIDINGS 207
XX WE STRIVE AS MEN TO RUN A RACE 217
XXI WE KEPT LENTEN VIGILS IN TRINITYTIDE 228
XXII THE FATES GAVE LARGESS OF DESPAIR 235
XXIII WE KEPT THE FEAST OF BITTER HERBS 251
XXIV WE FOUND THE SUNKEN VALLEY 259
XXV UNCANOOLA TRAPPED THE GREAT BEAR 269
XXVI THE CHARRED STICK FOR A GUIDE 279
XXVII A KING'S TROOPER BECAME A WASTREL 287
XXVIII I SADDLE THE BLACK MARE 296
XXIX HAVING DANCED, WE PAY THE PIPER 309
XXX EPHRAIM YATES PRAYED FOR HIS ENEMIES 324
XXXI WE MAKE A FORCED MARCH 336
XXXII I AM BEDDED IN A GARRET 351
XXXIII I HEAR CHANCEFUL TIDINGS 361
XXXIV I MET A GREAT LORD AS MAN TO MAN 369
XXXV I FIGHT THE DEVIL WITH FIRE 376
XXXVI I RODE POST ON THE KING'S BUSINESS 382
XXXVII WHAT BEFELL AT KING'S CREEK 395
XXXVIII WE FIND THE GUN-MAKER 412
XXXIX THE THUNDER OF THE CAPTAINS 418
XL VAE VICTIS 432
XLI I PLAYED THE HOST AT MY OWN FIRESIDE 446
XLII MY LORD HAS HIS MARCHING ORDERS 454
XLIII I DRINK A DISH OF TEA 460
XLIV WE COME TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END 470
XLV WE FIND WHAT WE NEVER SOUGHT 480
XLVI OUR PIECE MISSED FIRE AT HARNDON ACRES 488
XLVII ARMS AND THE MAN 505
XLVIII WE KEPT TRYST AT APPLEBY 517
XLIX A LAWYER HATH HIS FEE 531
L RICHARD COVERDALE'S DEBT WAS PAID 549
LI THE GOOD CAUSE GAINS A CONVERT 562
LII BRINGS US TO THE JOURNEY'S END 573
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH I WHET MY FATHER'S SWORD
The summer day was all but spent when Richard Jennifer, riding express,
brought me Captain Falconnet's challenge.
'Twas a dayfall to be marked with a white stone, even in our Carolina
calendar. The sun, reaching down to the mountain-girt horizon in the
west, filled all the upper air with the glory of its departing, and the
higher leaf plumes of the great maples before my cabin door wrought
lustrous patterns in gilded green upon a zenith background of turquoise
shot with crimson, like the figurings of some rich old tapestries I had
once seen in my field-marshal's castle in the Mark of Moravia.
Beyond the maples a brook tinkled and plashed over the stones on its way
to the near-by Catawba; and its peaceful brawling, and the evensong of a
pair of clear-throated warblers poised on the topmost twigs of one of
the trees, should have been sweet music in the ears of a returned
exile. But on that matchless bride's-month evening of dainty sunset
arabesques and brook and bird songs, I was in little humor for
rejoicing.
The road made for the river lower down and followed its windings up the
valley; but Jennifer came by the Indian trace through the forest. I can
see him now as he rode beneath the maples, bending to the saddle horn
where the branches hung lowest; a pretty figure of a handsome young
provincial, clad in fashions three years behind those I had seen in
London the winter last past. He rode gentleman-wise, in small-clothes of
rough gray woolen and with stout leggings over his hose; but he wore his
cocked hat atilt like a trooper's, and the sword on his thigh was a good
service blade, and no mere hilt and scabbard for show such as our
courtier macaronis were just then beginning to affect.
Now I had known this handsome youngster when he was but a little lad;
had taught him how to bend the Indian bow and loose the reed-shaft arrow
in those happier days before the tyrant Governor Tryon turned hangman,
and the battle of the Great Alamance had left me fatherless. Moreover, I
had drunk a cup of wine with him at the Mecklenburg Arms no longer ago
than yesterweek--this to a renewal of our early friendship. Hence, I
must needs be somewhat taken aback when he drew rein at my door-stone,
doffed his hat with a sweeping bow worthy a courtier of the great Louis,
and said, after the best manner of Sir Charles Grandison:
"I have the honor of addressing Captain John Ireton, sometime of his
Majesty's Royal Scots Blues, and late of her Apostolic Majesty's
Twenty-ninth Regiment of Hussars?"
It was but an euphuism of the time, this formal preamble, declaring that
his errand had to do with the preliminaries of a private quarrel between
gentlemen. Yet I could scarce restrain a smile. For these upcroppings of
courtier etiquette have ever seemed to march but mincingly with the free
stride of our western backwoods. None the less, you are to suppose that
I made shift to match his bow in some fashion, and to say: "At your
service, sir."
Whereupon he bowed again, clapped hat to head and tendered me a sealed
packet.
"From Sir Francis Falconnet, Knight Bachelor of Beaumaris, volunteer
captain in his Majesty's German Legion," he announced, with stern
dignity.
Having no second to refer him to, I broke the seal of the cartel myself.
Since my enemy had seen fit to come thus far on the way to his end in
some gentlemanly manner, it was not for me to find difficulties among
the formalities. In good truth, I was overjoyed to be thus assured that
he would fight me fair; that he would not compel me to kill him as one
kills a wild beast at bay. For certainly I should have killed him in any
event: so much I had promised my poor Dick Coverdale on that dismal
November morning when he had choked out his life in my arms, the victim
first of this man's treachery, and, at the last, of his sword. So, as I
say, I was nothing loath, and yet I would not seem too eager.
"I might say that I have no unsettled quarrel with Captain Falconnet," I
demurred, when I had read the challenge. "He spoke slightingly of a
lady, and I did but--"
"Your answer, Captain Ireton!" quoth my youngster, curtly. "I am not
empowered to give or take in the matter of accommodations."
"Not so fast, if you please," I rejoined. "I have no wish to disappoint
your principal, or his master, the devil. Let it be to-morrow morning at
sunrise in the oak grove which was once my father's wood field, each man
with his own blade. And I give you fair warning, Master Jennifer; I
shall kill your bullyragging captain of light-horse as I would a vermin
of any other breed."
At this Jennifer flung himself from his saddle with a great laugh.
"If you can," he qualified. "But enough of these 'by your leave, sirs.'
I am near famished, and as dry as King David's bottle in the smoke. Will
you give me bite and sup before I mount and ride again? 'Tis a long
gallop back to town on an empty stomach, and with a gullet as dry as Mr.
Gilbert Stair's wit."
Here was my fresh-hearted Dick Jennifer back again all in a breath; and
I made haste to shout for Darius, and for Tomas to take his horse, and
otherwise to bestir myself to do the honors of my poor forest fastness
as well as I might.
Luckily, my haphazard larder was not quite empty, and there were
presently a bit of cold deer's meat and some cakes of maize bread
baked in the ashes to set before the guest. Also there was a cup of
sweet wine, home-pressed from the berries of the Indian scuppernong, to
wash them down. And afterward, though the evening was no more than
mountain-breeze cool, we had a handful of fire on the hearth for the
cheer of it while we smoked our reed-stemmed pipes.
It was over the pipes that Jennifer unburdened himself of the gossip of
the day in Queensborough.
"Have you heard the newest? But I know you haven't, since the
post-riders came only this morning. The war has shifted from the North
in good earnest at last, and we are like to have a taste of the
harryings the Jerseymen have had since '76. My Lord Cornwallis is come
as far as Camden, they say; and Colonel Tarleton has crossed the
Catawba."
"So? Then Mr. Rutherford is like to have his work cut out for him, I
take it."
Jennifer eyed me curiously. "Grif Rutherford is a stout Indian fighter;
no West Carolinian will gainsay that. But he is never the man to match
Cornwallis. We'll have help from the North."
"De Kalb?" I suggested.
Again the curious eyeshot. "Nay, John Ireton, you need not fear me,
though I am just now this redcoat captain's next friend. You know more
about the Baron de Kalb's doings than anybody else in Mecklenburg."
"I? What should I know?"
"You know a deal--or else the gossips lie most recklessly."
"They do lie if they connect me with the Baron de Kalb, or with any
other of the patriot side. What are they saying?"
"That you come straight from the baron's camp in Virginia--to see what
you can see."
"A spy, eh? 'Tis cut out of whole cloth, Dick, my lad. I've never took
the oath on either side."
He looked vastly disappointed. "But you will, Jack? Surely, you have not
to think twice in such a cause?"
"As between King and Congress, you mean? 'Tis no quarrel of mine."
"Now God Save us, John Ireton!" he burst out in a fine fervor of
youthful enthusiasm that made him all the handsomer, "I had never
thought to hear your father's son say the like!"
I shrugged.
"And why not, pray? The king's minion, Tryon, hanged my father and gave
his estate to his minion's minion, Gilbert Stair. So, in spite of your
declarations and your confiscations and your laws against alien
landholders, I come back to find myself still the son of the outlawed
Roger Ireton, and this same Gilbert Stair firmly lodged in my father's
seat."
Jennifer shrugged in his turn.
"Gilbert Stair--for sweet Madge's sake I'm loath to say it--Gilbert
Stair blows hot or cold as the wind sets fair or stormy. And I will say
this for him: no other Tryon legatee of them all has steered so fine a
course through these last five upsetting years. How he trims so
skilfully no man knows. A short month since, he had General Rutherford
and Colonel Sumter as guests at Appleby Hundred; now it is Sir Francis
Falconnet and the British light-horse officers who are honored. But let
him rest: the cause of independence is bigger than any man, or any man's
private quarrel, friend John; and I had hoped--"
I laid a hand on his knee. "Spare yourself, Dick. My business in
Queensborough was to learn how best I might reach Mr. Rutherford's
rendezvous."
For a moment he sat, pipe in air, staring at me as if to make sure that
he had heard aright. Then he clipt my hand and wrung it, babbling out
some boyish brava that I made haste to put an end to.
"Softly, my lad," I said; "'tis no great thing the Congress will gain by
my adhesion. But you, Richard; how comes it that I find you taking your
ease at Jennifer House and hobnobbing with his Majesty's officers when
the cause you love is still in such desperate straits?"
He blushed like a girl at that, and for a little space only puffed the
harder at his pipe.
"I did go out with the Minute Men in '76, if you must know, and smelt
powder at Moore's Creek. When my time was done I would have 'listed
again; but just at that my father died and the Jennifer acres were like
to go to the dogs, lacking oversight. So I came home and--and--"
He stopped in some embarrassment, and I thought to help him on.
"Nay, out with it, Dick. If I am not thy father, I am near old enough to
stand in his stead. 'Twas more than husbandry that rusted the sword in
its scabbard, I'll be bound."
"You are right, Jack; 'twas both more and less," he confessed,
shamefacedly. "'Twas this same Margery Stair. As I have said, her father
blows hot or cold as the wind sets, but not she. She is the fiercest
little Tory in the two Carolinas, bar none. When I had got Jennifer in
order and began to talk of 'listing again, she flew into a pretty rage
and stamped her foot and all but swore that Dick Jennifer in buff and
blue should never look upon her face again with her good will."
I had a glimpse of Jennifer the lover as he spoke, and the sight went
somewhat on the way toward casting out the devil of sullen rage that had
possessed me since first I had set returning foot in this my native
homeland. 'Twas a life lacking naught of hardness, but much of human
mellowing, that lay behind the home-coming; and my one sweet friend in
all that barren life was dead. What wonder, then, if I set this
frank-faced Richard in the other Richard's stead, wishing him all the
happiness that poor Dick Coverdale had missed? I needed little: would
need still less, I thought, before the war should end; and through this
love-match my lost estate would come at length to Richard Jennifer. It
was a meliorating thought, and while it held I could be less revengeful.
"Dost love her, Dick?" I asked.
"Aye, and have ever since she was in pinafores, and I a hobbledehoy in
Master Wytheby's school."
"So long? I thought Mr. Stair was a later comer in Mecklenburg."
"He came eight years ago, as one of Tryon's underlings. Madge was even
then motherless; the same little wilful prat-a-pace she has ever been. I
would you knew her, Jack. 'Twould make this shiftiness of mine seem less
the thing it is."
"So you have stayed at home a-courting while others fought to give you
leisure," said I, thinking to rally him. But he took it harder than I
meant.
"'Tis just that, Jack; and I am fair ashamed. While the fighting kept to
the North it did not grind so keen; but now, with the redcoats at our
doors, and the Tories sacking and burning in every settlement, 'tis
enough to flay an honest man alive. God-a-mercy, Jack! I'll go; I've got
to go, or die of shame!"
He sat silent after that, and as there seemed nothing that a curst old
campaigner could say at such a pass, I bore him company.
By and by he harked back to the matter of his errand, making some
apology for his coming to me as the baronet's second.
"'Twas none of my free offering, you may be sure," he added. "But it so
happened that Captain Falconnet once did me a like turn. I had chanced
to run afoul of that captain of Hessian pigs, Lauswoulter, at cards, and
Falconnet stood my friend--though now I bethink me, he did seem
over-anxious that one or the other of us should be killed."
"As how?" I inquired.
"When Lauswoulter slipped and I might have spitted him, and didn't,
Falconnet was for having us make the duel _à outrance_. But that's
beside the mark. Having served me then, he makes the point that I shall
serve him now."
"'Tis a common courtesy, and you could not well refuse. I love you none
the less for paying your debts; even to such a villain as this volunteer
captain."
"True, 'tis a debt, as you say; but I like little enough the manner of
its paying. How came you to quarrel with him, Jack?"
Now even so blunt a soldier as I have ever been may have some prickings
of delicacy where the truth might breed gossip--gossip about a tale
which I had said should die with Richard Coverdale and be buried in his
grave. So I evaded the question, clumsily enough, as has ever been my
hap in fencing with words.
"The cause was not wanting. If any ask, you may say he trod upon my foot
in passing."
Jennifer laughed.
"And for that you struck him? Heavens, man! you hold your life
carelessly. Do you happen to know that this volunteer captain of
light-horse is accounted the best blade in the troop?"
"Who should know that better than--" I was fairly on the brink of
betraying the true cause of quarrel, but drew rein in time. "I care not
if he were the best in the army. I have crossed steel before--and with a
good swordsman now and then."
"Anan?" said Jennifer, as one who makes no doubt. And then: "But this
toe-pinching story is but a dry crust to offer a friend. You spoke of a
lady; who was she? Or was that only another way of telling me to mind my
own affairs?"
"Oh, as to that; the lady was real enough, and Falconnet did grossly
asperse her. But I know not who she is, nor aught about her, save that
she is sweet and fair and good to look upon."
"Young?"
"Aye."
"And you say you do not know her? Let me see her through your eyes and
mayhap I can name her for you."
"That I can not. Mr. Peale's best skill would be none too great for the
painting of any picture that should do her justice. But she is small,
with the airs and graces of a lady of the quality; also, she has
witching blue eyes, and hair that has the glint of summer sunshine in
it. Also, she sits a horse as if bred to the saddle."
To my amazement, Jennifer leaped up with an oath and flung his pipe into
the fire.
"Curse him!" he cried. "And he dared lay a foul tongue to her, you say?
Tell me what he said! I have a good right to know!"
I shook my head. "Nay, Richard; I may not repeat it to you, since you
are the man's second. Truly, there is more than this at the back of our
quarrel; but of itself it was enough, and more than enough, inasmuch as
the lady had just done him the honor to recognize him."
"His words--his very words, Jack, if you love me!"
"No; the quarrel is mine."
"By God! it is not yours!" he stormed, raging back and forth before the
fire. "What is Margery Stair to you, Jack Ireton?"
I smiled, beginning now to see some peephole in this millstone of
mystery.
"Margery Stair? She is no more than a name to me, I do assure you; the
daughter of the man who sits in my father's seat at Appleby Hundred."
"But you are going to fight for her!" he retorted.
"Am I? I pledge you my word I did not know it. But in any case I should
fight Sir Francis Falconnet; aye, and do my best to kill him, too. Sit
you down and fill another pipe. Whatever the quarrel, it is mine."
"Mayhap; but it is mine, too," he broke in, angrily. "At all events,
I'll see this king's volunteer well hanged before I second him in such a
cause."
"That as you choose. But you are bound in honor, are you not?"
"No." He filled a fresh pipe, lighted it with a coal from the hearth,
and puffed away in silence for a time. When he spoke again it was not as
Falconnet's next friend.
"What you have told me puts a new face on the matter, Jack. Sir Francis
may find him another second where he can. If he has aught to say, I
shall tell him plain he lied to me about the quarrel, as he did. Now who
is there to see fair play on your side, John Ireton?"
At the question an overwhelming sense of my own sorry case grappled me.
Fifteen years before, I had left Appleby Hundred and my native province
as well befriended as the son of Roger Ireton was sure to be. And now--
"Dick, my lad, I am like to fight alone," said I.
He swore again at that; and here, lest I should draw my loyal Richard as
he was not, let me say, once for all, that his oaths were but the
outgushings of a warm and impulsive heart, rarely bitter, and never, as
I believe, backed by surly rancor or conscious irreverence.
"That you shall not, Jack," he asserted, stoutly. "I must be a-gallop
now to tell this king's captain to look elsewhere for his next friend;
but to-morrow morning I'll meet you in the road between this and the
Stair outlands, and we'll fare on together."
After this he would brook no more delay; and when Tomas had fetched his
horse I saw him mount and ride away under the low-hanging
maples--watched him fairly out of sight in the green and gold twilight
of the great forest before turning back to my lonely hearth and its
somber reminders.
I stirred the dying embers, throwing on a pine knot for better light.
Then I took down my father's sword from its deer-horn brackets over the
chimney-piece, and set myself to fine its edge and point with a bit of
Scotch whinstone. It was a good blade; a true old Andrea Ferara got in
battle in the seventeenth century by one of the Nottingham Iretons.
I whetted it well and carefully. It was not that I feared my enemy's
strength of wrist or tricks of fence; but fighting had been my trade,
and he is but a poor craftsman who looks not well to see that his tools
are in order against their time of using.
II
WHICH KNITS UP SOME BROKEN ENDS
It was in the autumn of the year '64, as I was coming of age, that my
father made ready to send me to England. Himself a conscience exile from
Episcopal Virginia, and a descendant of those Nottingham Iretons whose
best-known son fought stoutly against Church and King under Oliver
Cromwell, he was yet willing to humor my bent and to use the interest of
my mother's family to enter me in the king's service.
Accordingly, I took ship at Norfolk for "home," as we called it in those
days; and, after a stormy passage and overmuch waiting as my cousins'
guest in Lincolnshire, had my pair of colors in the Scots Blues, lately
home from garrison duty in the Canadas.
Of the life in barracks of a young ensign with little wit and less
wisdom, and with more guineas in his purse than was good for him, the
less said the better. But of this you may like to know that, what with a
good father's example, and some small heritage of Puritan decency come
down to me from the sound-hearted old Roundhead stock, I won out of
that devil's sponging-house, an army in the time of peace, with somewhat
less to my score than others had to theirs.
It was in this barrack life that I came to know Richard Coverdale and
his evil genius, the man Francis Falconnet. Coverdale was an ensign in
my own regiment, and we were sworn friends from the first. His was a
clean soul and a brave; and it was to him that I owed escape from many
of the grosser chargings on that score above-named.
As for Falconnet, he was even then a ruffler and a bully, though he was
not of the army. He was a younger son, and at that time there were two
lives between him and the baronetcy; but with a mother's bequeathings to
purchase idleness and to gild his iniquities, he was a fair example of
the _jeunesse dorée_ of that England; a libertine, a gamester, a
rakehell; brave as the tiger is brave, and to the full as pitiless. He
was a boon companion of the officers' mess; and for a time--and
purpose--posed as Coverdale's friend, and mine.
Since I would not tell my poor Dick's story to Richard Jennifer, I may
not set it down in cold words here for you. It was the age-old tragic
comedy of a false friend's treachery and a woman's weakness; a duel, and
the wrong man slain. And you may know this; that Falconnet's most
merciful role in it was the part he played one chill November morning
when he put Richard Coverdale to the wall and ran him through.
As you have guessed, I was Coverdale's next friend and second in this
affair, and but for the upsetting news of the Tryon tyranny in
Carolina,--news which reached me on the very day of the meeting,--I
should there and then have called the slayer to his account.
How my father who, Presbyterian and Ireton though he was, had always
been of the king's side, came to espouse the cause of the "Regulators,"
as they called themselves, I know not. In my youthful memories of him he
figures as the feudal lord of his own domain, more absolute than many of
the petty kinglings I came afterward to know in the German marches. But
this, too, I remember; that while his rule at Appleby Hundred was stern
and despotic enough, he was ever ready to lend a willing ear to any tale
of oppression. And if what men say of the tyrant Tryon's tax-gatherers
and law-court robbers be no more than half truth, there was need for any
honest gentleman to oppose them.
What that opposition came to in '71 is now a tale twice told. Taken in
arms against the governor's authority, and with an estate well worth
receiving, my father had little justice and less mercy accorded him.
With many others he was outlawed; his estates were declared forfeit; and
a few days later he, with Benjamin Merrill and four more captivated at
the Alamance, was given some farce of a trial and hanged.
When the news of this came to me you may well suppose that I had no
heart to continue in the service of the king who could sanction and
reward such villainies as these of the butcher William Tryon. So I threw
up my lieutenant's commission in the Blues, took ship for the Continent,
and, after wearing some half-dozen different uniforms in Germany, was
lucky enough to come at length to serviceable blows under my old
field-marshal on the Turkish frontier.
To you of a younger generation, born in the day of swift mail-coaches
and well-kept post-roads, the slowness with which our laggard news
traveled in that elder time must needs seem past belief. It was early in
the year '79 before I began to hear more than vague camp-fire tales of
the struggle going on between the colonies and the mother country; and
from that to setting foot once more upon the soil of my native Carolina
was still another year.
What I found upon landing at New Berne and saw while riding a jog-trot
thence to the Catawba was a province rent and torn by partizan warfare.
Though I came not once upon the partizans themselves in all that long
faring, there were trampled fields and pillaged houses enough to serve
as mile-stones; and in my native Mecklenburg a mine full charged, with
slow-match well alight for its firing.
Charleston had fallen, and Colonel Tarleton's outposts were already
widespread on the upper waters of the Broad and the Catawba. Thus it was
that the first sight which greeted my eyes when I rode into
Queensborough was the familiar trappings of my old service, and I was
made to know that in spite of Mr. Jefferson's boldly written Declaration
of Independence, and that earlier casting of the king's yoke by the
patriotic Mecklenburgers themselves, my boyhood home was for the moment
by sword-right a part of his Majesty's province of North Carolina.
You are not to suppose that these things moved me greatly. As yet I was
chiefly concerned with my own affair and anxious to learn at first hands
the cost to me of my father's connection with the Regulators.
Touching this, I was not long kept in ignorance. Of all the vast demesne
of Appleby Hundred there was no roof to shelter the son of the outlawed
Roger Ireton save that of this poor hunting lodge in the mighty forest
of the Catawba, overlooked, with the few runaway blacks inhabiting it,
in the intaking of an estate so large that I think not even my father
knew all the metes and bounds of it.
I shall not soon forget the interview with the lawyer in which I was
told the inhospitable truth. Nor shall I forget his truculent leer when
he hinted that I had best be gone out of these parts, since it was not
yet too late to bring down the sentence of outlawry from the father to
the son.
It was well for him that I knew not at the time that he was Gilbert
Stair's factor. For I was mad enough to have throttled him where he sat
at his writing table, matching his long fingers and smirking at me with
his evil smile. But of this man more in his time and place. His name was
Owen Pengarvin. I would have you remember it.
For a week and a day I lingered on at Queensborough, for what I knew
not, save that all the world seemed suddenly to have grown stale and
profitless, and my life a thing of small account. One day I would be
minded to go back to my old field-marshal and the keeping of the Turkish
border; the next I would ride over some part of my stolen heritage and
swear a great oath to bide till I should come to my own again. And on
these alternating days the storm of black rage filled my horizons and I
became a derelict to drive on any rock or shoal in this uncharted sea of
wrath.
On one of these gallops farthest afield I chanced upon the bridle-path
that led to our old hunting lodge in the forest depths. Tracing the path
to its end among the maples I found the cabin, so lightly touched by
time that the mere sight of it carried me swiftly back to those happy
days when my father and I had stalked the white-tailed deer in the hill
glades beyond, with this log-built cabin for a rest-camp. I spurred up
under the low-hanging trees. The door stood wide, and a thin wreath of
blue smoke curled upward from the mouth of the wattled chimney.
Then and there I had my first welcome home. Old black Darius--old when I
had last seen him at Appleby Hundred, and a very grandsire of ancients
now--was one of the runaways who made the forest lodge a refuge. He had
been my father's body-servant, and, notwithstanding all the years that
lay between, he knew me at once.
Thereupon, as you would guess, I came immediately into some small
portion of my kingdom. Though Darius was the patriarch, the other blacks
were also fugitives from Appleby Hundred; and for the son of Roger
Ireton there was instant vassalage and loyal service. But best of all,
on my first evening before the handful of fire in the great fire-place,
Darius brought me a package swathed in many wrappings of Indian-tanned
deerskin. It contained my father's sword, and, more precious than this,
a message from the dead. My father's farewell was written upon a leaf
torn from his journal, and was but a hasty scrawl. I here transcribe it.
_My Son:_
_I know not if this will ever come into your hands, but it and
my sword shall be left in trust with the faithful Darius. We
have made our ill-timed cast for liberty and it has failed, and
to-morrow I and five others are to die at the rope's end. I
bequeath you my sword--'tis all the tyrant hath left me to
devise--and my blessing to go with it when you, or another
Ireton, shall once more bare the true old blade in the sacred
cause of liberty._
_Thy father,_
_Roger Ireton._
You may be sure I conned these few brave words till I had them well by
heart; and later, when my voice was surer and my eyes less dim, I
summoned Darius and bade him tell me all he knew. And it was thus I
learned what I have here set down of my father's end.
The next day, all indecision gone, I rode to Queensborough to ascertain,
if so I might, how best to throw the weight of the good old Andrea into
the patriot scale, meaning to push on thence to Charlotte when I had got
the bearings of the nearest patriot force.
'Twas none so easy to learn what I needed to know; though, now I sought
for information, a curious thing or two developed. One was that this
light-horse outpost in our hamlet was far in advance of the army of
invasion--so far that it was dangersomely isolated, and beyond support.
Another was the air of secrecy maintained, and the holding of the troop
in instant readiness for fight or flight.
Why this little handful of British regulars should stick and hang so far
from Lord Cornwallis's main, which was then well down upon the Wateree,
I could not guess. But for the secrecy and vigilance there were good
reasons and sufficient. The patriot militia had been called out, and was
embodying under General Rutherford but a few miles distant near
Charlotte.
I had this information in guarded whispers from mine host of the tavern,
and was but a moment free of the tap-room, when I first saw Margery
Stair and so drank of the cup of trembling with madness in its lees.
She was riding, unmasked, down the high road, not on a pillion as most
women rode in that day, but upon her own mount with a black groom two
lengths in the rear. I can picture her for you no better than I could
for Richard Jennifer; but this I know, that even this first sight of her
moved me strangely, though the witching beauty of her face and the
proudness of it were more a challenge than a beckoning.
A blade's length at my right where I was standing in front of the
tavern, three redcoat officers lounged at ease; and to one of them my
lady tossed a nod of recognition, half laughing, half defiant. I turned
quickly to look at the favored one. He stood with his back to me; a man
of about my own bigness, heavy-built and well-muscled. He wore a
bob-wig, as did many of the troop officers, but his uniform was
tailor-fine, and the hand with which he was resettling his hat was
bejeweled--overmuch bejeweled, to my taste.
Something half familiar in the figure of him made me look again. In the
act he turned, and then I saw his face--saw and recognized it though
nine years lay between this and my last seeing of it across the body of
Richard Coverdale.
"So!" thought I. "My time has come at last." And while I was yet turning
over in my mind how best to bait him, the lady passed out of earshot,
and I heard him say to the two, his comrades, that foul thing which I
would not repeat to Jennifer; a vile boast with which I may not soil my
page here for you.
"Oh, come, Sir Frank! that's too bad!" cried the younger of the twain;
and then I took two strides to front him fairly.
"Sir Francis Falconnet, you are a foul-lipped blackguard!" I said; and,
lest that should not be enough, I smote him in the face so that he fell
like an ox in the shambles.
III
IN WHICH MY ENEMY SCORES FIRST
True to his promise, Richard Jennifer met me in the cool gray birthlight
of the new day at a turn in the river road not above a mile or two from
the rendezvous, and thence we jogged on together.
After the greetings, which, as you may like to know, were grateful
enough on my part, I would fain inquire how the baronet had taken his
second's defection; but of this Jennifer would say little. He had broken
with his principal, whether in anger or not I could only guess; and one
of Falconnet's brother officers, that younger of the twain who had cried
shame at the baronet's vile boast, was to serve in his stead.
It was such a daydawn as I have sometimes seen in the Carpathians; cool
and clear, but with that sweet dewy wetness in the lower air which
washes the over-night cobwebs from the brain, and is both meat and drink
to one who breathes it. On the left the road was overhung by the
bordering forest, and where the branches drooped lowest we brushed the
fragrance from the wild-grape bloom in passing. On the right the river,
late in flood, eddied softly; and sounds other than the murmuring of the
waters, the matin songs of the birds, and the dust-muffled hoof-beats of
our horses there were none. Peace, deep and abiding, was the key-note of
nature's morning hymn; and in all this sylvan byway there was naught
remindful of the fierce internecine warfare aflame in all the
countryside. Some rough forging of this thought I hammered out for
Jennifer as we rode along, and his laugh was not devoid of bitterness.
"Old Mother Nature ruffles her feathers little enough for any teapot
tempest of ours," he said. "But speaking of the cruelties, we provincial
savages, as my Lord Cornwallis calls us, have no monopoly. The
post-riders from the south bring blood-curdling stories of Colonel
Tarleton's doings. 'Tis said he overtook some of Mr. Lincoln's
reinforcements come too late. They gave battle but faint-heartedly,
being all unready for an enemy, and presently threw down their arms and
begged for quarter--begged, and were cut down as they stood."
"Faugh!" said I. "That is but hangman's work. And yet in London I heard
that this same Colonel Tarleton was with Lord Howe in Philadelphia and
was made much of by the ladies."
Jennifer's laugh was neither mirthful nor pleasant.
"'Tis a weakness of the sex," he scoffed. "The women have a fondness for
a man with a dash of the brute in him."
I laughed also, but without bitterness.
"You say it feelingly. Do you speak by the book?"
"Aye, that I do. Now here is my lady Madge preaching peace and all
manner of patience to me in one breath, and upholding in the next this
baronet captain who, though I would have seconded him at a pinch, is but
a pattern of his brutal colonel."
I put two and two together.
"So Falconnet is on terms at Appleby Hundred, is he?"
"Oh, surely. Gilbert Stair keeps open house for any and all of the
winning hand, as I told you."
The thought of this unspoiled young maiden having aught to do with such
a thrice-accursed despoiler of women made my blood boil afresh; and in
the heat of it I let my secret slip, or rather some small part of it.
"Sir Francis had ever a sure hand with the women," I said; and then I
could have bitten my masterless tongue.
"So?" queried Jennifer. "Then this is not your first knowing of him?"
"No." So much I said and no more.
We rode on in silence for a little space, and then my youthling must
needs break out again in fresh beseechings.
"Tell me what you know of him, and what it was he said of Madge," he
entreated. "You can't deny me now, Jack."
"I can and shall. It matters not to you or to any what he is or has
been."
"Why?"
"Because, as God gives me strength and skill, I shall presently run him
through, and so his account will be squared once for all with all
men--and all women, as well."
"God speed you," quoth my loyal ally. "I knew not your quarrel with him
was so bitter."
"It is to the death."
"So it seems. In that case, if by any accident he--"
I divined what he would say and broke in upon him.
"Nay, Dick; if he thrusts me out, you must not take up my quarrel. I
know not where you learned to twirl the steel, or how, but you may be
sure he would spit you like a trussed fowl in the first bout. I have
seen him kill a man who was reckoned the best short sword in my old
regiment of the Blues."
"Content yourself," said my young Hotspur, grandly. "If you spare him he
shall answer to me for that thing he said of Madge Stair; this though I
know not what it was he said."
I smiled at his fuming ardor, and glancing at the pair of pistols
hanging from his saddle-bow, asked if he could shoot.
"Indifferent well."
"Then make him challenge you and choose your own weapon. 'Tis your only
hope, and poor enough at that, I fear. I have heard he can clip a
guinea at ten paces."
From that we fell silent again, being but a little way from the
rendezvous, and so continued until, at a sudden turn in the road, we
came in sight of a rude barricade of felled trees barring the way.
Jennifer saw it first and pulled up short, loosing his pistols in their
cases as he drew rein.
"'Ware the wood!" he said sharply, and none too soon, for even as he
spoke the glade at our left filled as by magic with a motley troop
deploying into the road as to surround us.
"Now who are these?" I asked; "friends or foes?"
"Foes who will hang you in your own halter strap; Jan Howart's
Tories--the same that burned the Westcotts in their cabin a fortnight
since. Will your horse take that barricade, think you?"
"Aye,--standing, if need be."
"Then at them, in God's name. Charge!"
It needed but the word and we were in the thick of it. I remembered my
old field-marshal's maxim, _Von Feinden umringt, ist die Zeit zu
zerschmettern_; and truly, being so plentifully outnumbered, we did
strike both first and hard.
A line of the ragged horsemen strung itself awkwardly across the road to
guard the flimsy barricade, and at this we charged, stirrup to stirrup.
In the dash there was a scattering volley from the wood, answered
instantly by the bellowings of Jennifer's great pistols; and then we
came to the steel.
It was my first fleshing of the good old Andrea, and a better balanced
blade I had never swung in hand-to-hand mellay. As we closed with the
half-dozen defenders of the barrier, Jennifer reined aside to give me
room to play to right and left, and in the midst of it went nigh to
death because he held his hand to watch a cut and double thrust of mine.
"Over with you!" I shouted, pricking the man who would have mowed him
down with a great scythe handled as a sword.
Our horses took the barrier in a flying leap, straining themselves for
the race beyond. When we had pulled them down to a foot pace we were
safely out of rifle shot and there was space to count the cost.
There was no cost worth counting. A saddle horn bullet-shattered for me,
and the back of Jennifer's sword hand scored lightly across by another
of the random missiles summed up our woundings. Dick whipped out his
kerchief to twist about the scored hand, while I glanced back to see if
any Tory cared to follow.
"Lord, Jack! I owe you one to keep and one to pay back," quoth my
youngster, warmly. "I never saw a swordsman till this day!"
"Mere tricks, Dick, my lad; I have had fifteen years in which to learn
them. And these were but country yokels armed with farming tools. The
two with swords had little wit to use them."
"Oh, come!" said he. "I know a pretty bit of sword play when I see it.
If we come whole out of this adventure with the baronet you shall teach
me some of these 'mere tricks' of yours."
I promised, glancing back toward the dust-veiled barrier in the
distance.
"Dick, you passed this way an hour ago; was that breastwork in the road
then?"
"Not a stick of it."
"Then we may dare say our volunteer captain fights unwillingly."
"How so?" he demanded, being much too straightforward himself to suspect
duplicity in others.
"'Tis plain enough. This was a trap, meant to stop or delay us, and I'll
wager high it was the baronet who set and baited it. It would please him
well to be able to say what our failure to come would give him warrant
for. Let us gallop a bit, lest we be late and so play into his hand."
Jennifer smiled grimly and gave his horse the rein. "I think you'd
charge the Fall of Man to him if that would give you better leave to
kill him. I'd hate to own you for my enemy, John Ireton."
For all our swift speeding we were yet a little late at the rendezvous
under the tall oaks. When we came on the ground the baronet was walking
up and down arm in arm with his second, a broad-shouldered young Briton,
fair of skin and ruddy of face.
If Falconnet had set the Tory trap for us he veiled his disappointment
at its failure. His face, dark and inscrutable as it always was, was
made more sinister by the plasters knitting up his broken cheek, but I
was right glad to make sure that my blow had spared his eyes. Richly as
he deserved his fate, I thought it would be ill to think on afterward
that I had had him at a disadvantage of my own making.
There was little time wasted in the preliminaries. When Falconnet saw us
he dropped his second's arm and began to make ready. I gave my sword to
Jennifer, and the seconds went apart together. There was some measuring
and balancing of weapons, and then Richard came back.
"The baronet's sword is a good inch longer than yours in the blade, and
is somewhat heavier. Tybee has brought a pair of French short-swords
which he offers. Will you change your terms?"
"No; I am content to fight with my own weapon."
Jennifer nodded. "So I told him." And then: "There was no surgeon to be
had in town, Dr. Carew having gone with the Minute Men to join Mr.
Rutherford. Tybee says 'tis scarce in accordance with the later rulings
to fight without one."
"To the devil with their hairsplittings!" said I. "Let us have done with
them and be at it."
Falconnet was removing his coat, and I stripped mine. The seconds chose
the ground where the turf was short and firm, and yet yielding enough to
give good footing. We faced each other, my antagonist baring an arm
which, despite the bejeweled hand, was to the full as big-muscled as my
own. My glance went from his weapon, a rather heavy German blade,
straight and slender-pointed, to his face. He was smiling as one who
strives to make the outer man a mask to cover all emotion, and the
plasters on his cheek drew the smile into a grimace that was all but
devilish.
The seconds fell back, but when Jennifer would have given the signal I
stopped him.
"One moment, if you please. Sir Francis Falconnet, you know me?"
The thin-lidded eyes were veiled for an instant, and then he lied
smoothly.
"Your pardon, Captain Ireton; I have not that honor."
"'Tis a small matter, but you do lie this morning as basely as you lied
to Richard Coverdale nine years agone," said I; and then I signed
Jennifer to give the word.
"Attention, gentlemen! On guard!"
My enemy's sword leaped to meet mine, and at the same instant I heard
another click of steel betokening that the seconds had fallen to in a
bit of by-play between themselves, as was then the fashion. After that I
heard nothing for a time save the sibilant whisperings of the Ferara and
the German long-sword, and saw nothing save the fierce eyes glaring at
me out of the midst of the plaster-marred smile.
Recreant though he was, I must do my adversary the justice to say that
he was a skilful master of fence, agile as a French dancer, and withal
well-breathed and persevering. Twice, nay, thrice, before I found my
advantage he had pricked me lightly with that extra inch of slender
point. But when I had fairly felt his wrist I knew that his heavier
weapon would shortly prove his undoing; knew that the quick parry and
lightning-like thrust would presently lag a little, and then I should
have him.
Something of this prophecy of triumph he must have read in my eyes, for
on the instant he was up and at me like a madman, and I had my work well
cut out to hold him at the blade's length. I was so holding him; was, in
my turn, beginning to press him slowly, when there came a drumming of
hoofbeats on the soft turf, and then a woman's cry.
I looked aside, and to my dying day I shall swear that my antagonist did
likewise. What I saw was Mistress Margery Stair riding down upon us at a
hand-gallop, and I lowered my point, as any gentleman would.
In the very act--'twas while Jennifer was clutching at her bridle rein
to stay her from riding fair between us--I felt the hot-wire prick of
the steel in my shoulder and knew that my enemy had run me through as I
stood.
Of what befell afterward I have but dim memories. There were more
hoof-tramplings, and then I felt the dewy turf under my hands and soft
fingers tremblingly busy at my neckerchief. Then I saw swimmingly, as
through a veil of mist, a woman's face just above my own, and it was
full of horror; and I heard my enemy say: "'Twas most unfortunate and I
do heartily regret it, Mr. Jennifer. I saw not why he had lowered his
point. Can I say more?"
How Richard Jennifer made answer to this lie I know not; nor do I know
aught else, save by hear-say, of any further happening in that grassy
glade beneath my father's oaks. For the big German blade was a shrewd
blood-letter, and I fell asleep what time my lady was trying to stanch
with her kerchief the ebbing tide of life.
IV
WHICH MAY BE PASSED OVER LIGHTLY
When I came back to some clearer sensing of things, I found myself abed
in a room which was strange and yet strangely familiar. Barring a great
oaken clothes-press in one corner, a raree-show of curious china on the
shelves where the books should have been, and the face of an armored
soldier staring down at me from its frame over the chimney piece, where
I should have looked to see my mother's portrait, the room was a
counterpart of my old bedchamber at Appleby Hundred. There was even a
faint odor of lavender in the bed-linen; and the sense of smell, which
hath ever a better memory than any other, carried me swiftly back to my
boyhood, and to the remembrance that my mother had always kept a spray
or two of that sweet herb in her linen closet.
At the bedside there was a claw-footed table, which also had the look of
an old friend; and on it a dainty porringer, filled with cuttings of
fragrant sweetbriar. This was some womanly conceit, I said to myself;
and then I laughed, though the laugh set a pair of wolf's jaws at work
on my shoulder. For you must know that I had lived the full half of King
David's span of three-score and ten years, and more, and what womanly
softness had fallen to my lot had been well got and paid for.
I closed my eyes the better to remember what had befallen, and when I
opened them again was fain to wonder if the moment of back-reaching
stood not for some longer time. In the deep bay of the window was a
great chair of Indian wickerwork, and I could have sworn it had but now
been empty. Yet when I looked again a woman sat in it.
Now of a truth I had seen this woman's face but twice; and once it wore
a smile of teasing mockery and once was full of terror; but I thought I
should live long and suffer much before the winsome challenging beauty
of it would let me be as I had been before I had looked upon it.