sweetness of her, and so I saw her then as few ever saw her, I think,
with the womanly barriers of defense all down. 'Tis a hard test, and one
that makes a blank at rest of many a face beautiful enough in action;
but though this lady's face was to the full as changeful as any April
sky, it was never less than triumphantly beautiful.
I had said her eyes were blue, but now they were deep wells reflecting
the soft gray of the clouded sky beyond the window-panes. I had made
sure that her lips lent themselves most readily to mocking smiles
scornful of any wit less trenchant than her own; but now these mocking
lips were pensive, and with the rounded cheek and chin gave her the look
of a sweet child wanting to be kissed. I had said her hair was bright in
the sunlight, and so, indeed, it was; but lacking the sun it still held
the dull luster of burnished copper in its masses, and her simple,
care-free dressing of it at a time when _les grandes dames_ were
frizzing and powdering and adding art to art to mar the woman's crown of
glory, gave her yet more the look of a child.
Lastly, I had called her small, and certainly her figure was girlish
beside those grenadier dames of Maria Theresa's court to whom my old
field-marshal had once presented me. But when she rose and went to stand
in the window-bay I marked this; that not any duchess or margravine of
them all had a more queenly bearing, or, with all their stays and
furbelows, could match her supple grace and lissom figure.
What with the blood-lettings and the wound fever, coupled with the
subtle witchery of her presence thus in my sick room, it is little to be
wondered at that a curious madness came over me, or that I forgot for
the moment the loyalty due to my dear lad. Could I have stood before her
and, reading but half consent in the deep-welled eyes, have clipt her in
my arms and laid my lips to hers, I would have run to pay the price, in
earth or heaven or hell, I thought, deeming the fierce joy of it well
worth any penalty.
At this I should have stirred, I suppose, for she came quickly and
stood beside me.
"You have slept long and well, Captain Ireton," she said; and in all the
thrilling joy of her nearer presence I found space to mark that her
voice had in it that sweet quality of sympathy which is all womanly.
"They say I am good only to fetch and carry--may I fetch you anything?"
I fear the madness of the moment must still have been upon me, for I
said: "Since you are here yourself, dear lady, I need naught else."
At a flash I had my whipping in a low dipped curtsy and a mocking smile
like that she had flung to Falconnet.
"_Merci! mon Capitaine_," she said; and for all my wincings under the
sharp lash of her sarcasm I was moved to wonder how she had the French
of it. And then she added: "Is it the custom for Her Apostolic Majesty's
officers to come out of a death-swound only to pay pretty compliments?"
"'Twas no compliment," I denied; and, indeed, I meant it. Then I asked
where I was, and to whom indebted, though I had long since guessed the
answer to both questions.
In a trice the mocking mood was gone and she became my lady hostess,
steeped to her finger-tips in gracious dignity.
"You are at Appleby Hundred, sir. 'Twas here they fetched you because
there was no other house so near, and you were sorely hurt. Richard
Jennifer and my black boy made a litter of the saddle-cloths, and with
Sir Francis and Mr. Tybee to help--"
I think she must have seen that this thrust was sharper than that of the
German long-sword, for she stopped in mid-sentence and looked away from
me. And, surely, I thought it was the very irony of fate that I should
thus be brought half dead to the house that was my father's, with my
enemy and his second to share the burden of me.
"But your father?" I queried, when the silence had grown over-long.
"My father is away at Queensborough, so you must e'en trust yourself to
my tender mercies, Captain Ireton. Are you strong enough to have your
wound dressed?"
She asked, but waited for no answer of mine. Summoning a black boy to
hold the basin of water, she fell to upon the wound-dressing with as
little ado as if she had been a surgeon's apprentice on a battle-field,
and I a bloodless ancient too old to thrill at the touch of a woman's
hands.
"Dear heart! 'tis a monstrous ugly hurt," she declared, replacing the
wrappings with deft fingers. "How came you to go about picking a quarrel
with Sir Francis?"
"'Twas not of my seeking," I returned, and then I could have cursed my
foolish tongue.
"Is that generous, Captain Ireton? We hear something of the talk of the
town, and that says--"
"That says I struck him without sufficient cause. I am content to let it
stand so."
"Nay, but you should not be content. Is there not strife enough in this
unhappy land without these causeless bickerings?"
Here was my lady turned preacher all in a breath and I with no words to
answer her. But I could not let it go thus.
"I knew Sir Francis Falconnet in England," said I, hoping by this to
turn her safe aside.
"Ah; then there was a cause. Tell it me."
"Nay, that I may not."
Though she was hurting me sorely in the wound-dressing, and knew it, she
laughed.
"'Tis most ungallant to deny a lady, sir. But I shall know without the
telling; 'twas about a woman. Tell me, Captain Ireton, is she fair?"
Seeing that her mood had changed again, I tried to give her quip for
jest; but what with the pain of the sword-thrust and the sweet agony of
her touches I could only set my teeth against a groan. She went on
drawing the bandagings, little heedful how she racked me, I thought; and
yet when all was done she stood beside me all of a tremble, as any
tender-hearted woman might.
"There," she said; "'tis over for a time, and I make no doubt you are
glad enough. Now you have nothing to do save to lie quiet till it
heals."
"And how long will that be, think you?"
"We shall see; a long time, I hope. You shall be punished properly for
your hot temper, I promise you, Captain Ireton."
With that she left me and went to stand in the window-bay; and from
lying mouse-still and watching her over-steadily I fell asleep again.
When I awoke the day was in its gloaming and she was gone.
After this I saw her no more for six full circlings of the clock-hands,
and grew fair famished for a sight of her sweet face. But to atone, she,
or some messenger of Richard Jennifer's, brought me my faithful Darius,
and he it was who fetched me my food and drink and dressed my wound.
From him I gleaned that the master of Appleby Hundred had returned from
Queensborough, and that there were officers in red coats continually
going back and forth, always with a hearty welcome from Gilbert Stair.
Now, though the master of my stolen heritage had little cause to love
me, I thought he had still less to fear me; so it seemed passing strange
that he came not once to my bedchamber to pass the time of day with his
unbidden guest, or to ask how he fared. But in this, as in many other
things, I reckoned without my enemy, though I might have known that Sir
Francis would be oftenest among the red-coated officers coming and
going.
But stranger than this, or than my lady's continued avoidance of me, was
the lack of a visit from Richard Jennifer. Knowing well my dear lad's
loyalty to the patriot cause, I could only conjecture that he had
finally broken Margery's enforced truce to go and join Mr. Rutherford's
militia, which, as Darius told me, was rallying to attack a Tory
stronghold at Ramsour's Mill.
With this surmise I was striving to content myself on that evening of
the third day, when Mistress Margery burst in upon me, bright-eyed and
with her cheeks aflame.
"Captain Ireton, I will know the true cause of this quarrel which,
failing in yourself, you pass on to Richard Jennifer!" she cried. "Was
it not enough that you should get yourself half slain, without sending
this headstrong boy to his death?"
Now in all my surmisings I had not thought of this, and truly if she had
sought far and wide for a whip to scourge me with she could have found
no thong to cut so deep.
"God help me!" I groaned. "Has this fiend incarnate killed my poor lad?"
"No, he is not dead," she confessed, relenting a little. "But he has the
baronet's bullet through his sword-arm for the sake of your over-seas
disagreement with Sir Francis."
I could not tell her that though my quarrel with this villain was but
the avenging of poor Dick Coverdale's wrongs, Richard Jennifer's was for
the baronet's affront to her. So I bore the blame in silence, glad
enough to be assured that my dear lad was only wounded.
"Why don't you speak, sir?" she snapped, flying out at me in a passion
for my lack of words.
"What should I say? I have not forgot that once you called me
ungenerous."
"You should defend yourself, if you can. And you should ask my pardon
for calling my father's guest hard names."
"The last I will do right heartily. 'Twas but the simple truth, but it
was ill-spoken in your presence, Mistress Stair."
At this she laughed merrily; and in all my world-wanderings I had never
heard a sound so gladsome as this sweet laugh of hers when she would be
on the forgiving hand.
"Surely any one would know you are a soldier, Captain Ireton. No other
could make an apology and renew the offense so innocently in the same
breath." Then her mood changed again in the dropping of an eyelid, and
she sighed and said: "Poor Dick!"
As ever when she was with me, my eyes were devouring her; and at the
sigh and the trembling of the sweet lips in sympathy I found that
curious love-madness coming upon me again. Then I saw that I must
straightway dig some chasm impassable between this woman and me, as I
should hope to be loyal to my friend. So I said: "He loves you well,
Mistress Margery."
She glanced up quickly with a smile which might have been mocking or
loving; I could not tell which it was.
"Did he make you his deputy to tell me so, Captain Ireton?"
Now I might have known that she was only luring me on to some pitfall of
mockery, but I did not, and must needs burst out in some clumsy
disclaimer meant to shield my dear lad. And in the midst of it she
laughed again.
"Oh, you do amuse me mightily, _mon Capitaine_," she cried. "I do
protest I shall come to see you oftener. Tis as good as any play!"
"Saw you ever a play in this backwoods wilderness?" I asked, glad of any
excuse to change the talk and keep her by me.
"No, indeed. But you are not to think that no one has seen the great
world save only yourself, Captain Ireton. What would you say if I should
tell you that I, too, have seen your London, and even your Paris?"
Here I must blunder again and say that I had been wondering how else she
came by the Parisian French; but at this her jesting mood vanished
suddenly and she spoke softly.
"I had it of my mother, who came of the Huguenots. She spoke it always
to me. But my father speaks it not, and now I am losing it for want of
practice."
How is it that love transforms the once contemptible into a thing most
highly to be prized? My eight years of campaigning on the Continent had
given me the French speech, or so much of it as the clumsy tongue of me
could master, and I had always held it in hearty English scorn. Yet now
I was eager enough to speak it with her, and to take as my very own the
little cry of joy wherewith she welcomed my hesitant mouthing of it.
From that we fell to talking in her mother's tongue of the hardships of
those same Huguenot _émigrés_; and when I looked not at her I could
speak in terms dispassionate and cool of this or aught else; and when I
looked upon her my heart beat faster and my blood leaped quickly, and I
knew not always what it was I said.
After a time--'twas when Darius fetched me my supper and the
candles--she went away; and so ended a day which saw the beginning of a
struggle fiercer than any the turbaned Turk had ever given me. For when
I had eaten, and was alone with time to think, I knew well that I loved
this woman and should always love her; this in spite of honor, or
loyalty to Richard Jennifer, or any other thing in heaven or earth.
V
HOW I LOST WHAT I HAD NEVER GAINED
Though I dared not hope she would keep her promise and was sometimes so
sorely beset as to tremble at her coming, Margery looked in upon me
oftener, and soon there grew up between us a comradeship the like of
which, I think, had never been between a woman loved and a man who,
loving her, was yet constrained to play the part of her true lover's
friend.
If I played this part but stumblingly; if at times the madness of my
passion would not be denied the look or word or hand-clasp not of poor
cool friendship; I have this to comfort me: that in after time, when my
dear lad came to know, he forgave me freely--nay, held me altogether
blameless, as I was not.
Of what these looks and words and hand-clasps meant to Margery I had no
hint. But in my hours of sanity, when I would pass these slippings in
review, I could recall no answering flash of hers to salt the woundings
of the conscience-whip. So far from it, it seemed, as this sweet
comradeship budded and blossomed on the stock of a better acquaintance,
she came to hold me more as if I were some cross between a father or an
elder brother, and some closer confidant of her own sex.
You are not to understand that she was always thus, nor over-often. More
frequently that side of her which I soon came to call the mother's was
turned to me, and I was made to stand a target for her wit and raillery.
But she was ever changeful as a child, and in the midst of some light
jesting mood would sober instantly and give my age its due.
In some of these, her soberer times, I felt her lean upon me as my
sister might, had I had one; at others she would frankly set me in her
father's place, declaring I must tell her what to say or do in this or
that entanglement. Again, and this came oftener as our friendship grew,
she would talk to me as surely woman never talked to any but a kinsman,
telling me naïvely of her conquests, and sparing no gallant of them all
save only Richard Jennifer.
And of Dick and his devotion she spoke now and then, as well, though
never mockingly, as of the others. Nay, once when I pressed her on this
point, asking her plainly if my dear lad had not good cause to hope, she
would only smile and turn her face away, and say that of all the men she
knew the hopeful ones pleased her best. So I was thus assured that if it
were a scale for love to tip, my lady's heart would fall to Richard.
Now I took this to be a hopeful sign, that she would tell me freely of
these her little heart affairs; and seeing her so safe upon the side of
friendship, held the looser rein upon my own unchartered passion. So
long as I could keep my love well masked and hidden what harm could come
to her or any if I should give it leave to live in prison? None, I
thought; and yet at times was made a very coward by the thought. For
love, like other living things, will grow by what it feeds upon, and
once full-grown, may haply come to laugh at bonds, however strong or
cunningly devised.
With such a fever in my veins it was little wonder that my wound healed
slowly. As time passed by, with never a word of news from the world
without--if Margery knew aught of the fighting she would never lisp a
syllable to me--and with Gilbert Stair still keeping churlishly beyond
the sight or sound of me, I fretted sorely and would be gone.
Yet this was but a passing mood. When Margery was with me I was not
ill-content to eat the bread of sufferance in her father's house, and
angry pride had scanty footing. But when she was away this same pride
took sharp revenges, getting me out of bed to bully Darius into dressing
me that I might foot it up and down the room while I was still unfit for
any useful thing.
One morning in the summer third of June my lady came early and surprised
me at this business of pacing back and forth. Whereat she scolded me as
was her wont when I grew restive.
"What weighty thing have you to do that you should be so fierce to be
about it, Monsieur Impetuous?" she cried. "_Fi donc!_ you'd try the
patience of a saint!"
"Which you are not," I ventured. "But truly, Margery, I am growing
stronger now, and the bed does irk me desperately, if you must know.
Besides--"
"Well, what is there else besides? Do I not pamper you enough?"
I laughed. "I'll say whatever you would have me say--so it be not the
truth."
"I'll have you say nothing until you sit down."
She pushed the great chair of Indian wickerwork into place before the
window-bay, and when I was at rest she drew up a low hassock and sat at
my feet.
"Now you may go on," she said.
"You have not told me what you would have me say."
"The truth," she commanded.
"'"What is truth," said jesting Pilate,'" I quoted. "Why do you suppose
my Lord Bacon thought the Roman procurator jested at such a time and
place?"
"You are quibbling, Monsieur John. I want to know why you are so
impatient to be gone."
"Saw you ever a man worthy the name who could be content to bide
inactive when duty calls?"
"That is not the whole truth," she said, half absently. "You think you
are unwelcome here."
"'Twas you said that; not I. But I must needs know your father will be
relieved when he is safely quit of me."
"'Twas you said that, not I, Monsieur John," she retorted, giving me
back my own words. "Has ever word been brought you that he would speed
your parting?"
"Surely not, since I am still here. But you must know that I have never
seen his face, as yet."
"And is that strange? You must not forget that he is Gilbert Stair, and
you are Roger Ireton's son."
"I am not likely to forget it. But still a word of welcome to the
unbidden guest would not have come amiss. And it was none of my
seeking--this asylum in his house."
"True; but that has naught to do with any coolness of my father's."
"What is it, then?--besides the fact that I am Roger Ireton's son?"
"I think 'twas what you said to Mr. Pengarvin."
"That little smirking wretch? What has he to say or do in this?"
She looked away from me and said: "He is my father's factor and man of
affairs."
"Ah, I have always to be craving your pardon, Margery. But I said naught
to this parchment-faced--to this Mr. Pengarvin, that might offend your
father, or any."
"How, then, will you explain this, that you swore to drive my father
from Appleby Hundred as soon as ever you had raised a following among
the rebels?"
"'Tis easily explained: this thrice-accursed--oh, pardon me again, I
pray you; I will not name him any name at all. What I meant to say was
that he lied. I made no threats to him; to tell the plain truth, I was
too fiercely mad to bandy words with him."
"What made you mad, Monsieur John?"
"'Twas his threat to me--to taint me with my father's outlawry. Do you
greatly blame me, Margery?"
"No."
Thereat a silence came and sat between us, and I fell to loving her the
more because of it; but when she spoke I always loved her more for
speaking.
"My father has had little peace since coming here," she said, at length.
"He is old and none too well; and as for king and Congress, asks nothing
but his right to hold aloof. And this they will not give him."
Remembering what Jennifer had told me of Gilbert Stair's trimming, I
smiled within.
"That is the way of all the world in war-time, _ma petite_. A partizan
may suffer once for all, but both sides hold a neutral lawful prey."
'Twas as the spark to tinder; my word the spark and in her eyes the
answering flash.
"I tell him so!" she cried. "I tell him always that the king will have
his own again. But still he halts and hesitates; and when these rebels
come and quarter on us--"
I fear she must have seen my inward smile this time, for she broke off
in the midst, and I made haste to forestall her flying out at me.
"Oh, come, my dear; you should not be so fierce with him when you
yourself have brought a rebel to his house to nurse alive."
She looked me fairly in the eye. "You should be the last to remind me of
my treason, Monsieur John."
"Then you are free to call it treason, are you, Margery?" I said.
She looked away from me again. "How can it well be less than treason?"
Then suddenly she turned and clasped her hands upon my knee. "You must
not be too hard upon me, Monsieur John. I've tried to do my duty as I
saw it, and I have asked no questions. And yet I know much more than you
have told me."
"What do you know?"
"I know your wound has been your safety. If you should leave this room
and house to-day you would never wear the buff and blue again, Captain
Ireton."
"You mean they would hang me for a spy. Will you believe me, Margery, if
I say I have not yet worn the buff and blue at all?"
"_Oh_!" The little exclamation was of pure delight. "Then they were all
mistaken? You are no rebel, after all?"
Was ever man so tempted since the fall of Adam? As I have writ it down
for you in measured words, I was no more than half a patriot at this
time. And love has made more traitors than its opposites of lust or
greed. In no uncertain sense I was a man without a country; and this
fair maiden on the hassock at my feet was all the world to me. I saw in
briefer time than any clock hands ever measured how much a yielding word
might do for me; and then I thought of Richard Jennifer and was myself
again.
"Nay, little one," I said; "there has been no mistake. For their own
purposes my enemies have passed the word that I am here as the Baron de
Kalb's paid spy. That is no mistake; 'tis a lie cut out of whole cloth.
I came here straight from New Berne, and back of that from London and
the Continent, and scarcely know the buff and blue by sight. But I am
Carolina born, dear lady; and this King George's governor hanged my
father. So, when God gives me strength to mount and ride--"
"Now who is fierce?" she cried. And then, like lightning: "Will you
raise a band of rebels and come and take your own again?"
"You know I will not," I protested, so gravely that she laughed again,
though now there were tears, from what well-spring of emotion I knew
not, in her eyes.
"Oh, mercy me! Have you never one little grain of imagination, Monsieur
John? You are too monstrous literal for our poor jesting age." Then she
sobered quickly and added this: "And yet I fear that this is what my
father fears."
I did not tell her that he might have feared it once with reason, or
that now the houseless dog she petted should have life of me though mine
enemy should sick him on. But I did say her father had no present cause
to dread me.
"He thinks he has. And surely there is cause enough," she added.
I smiled, and, loving her the more for her fairness, must smile again.
"Nay, you have changed all that, dear lady. Truly, I did at first fly
out at him and all concerned for what has made me a poor pensioner in my
father's house--or rather in the house that was my father's. But that
was while the hurt was new. I have been a soldier of fortune too long to
think overmuch of the loss of Appleby Hundred. 'Twas my father's,
certainly; but 'twas never mine."
"And yet--and yet it should be yours, John Ireton." She said it bravely,
with uplifted face and eloquent eyes that one who ran might read.
"'Tis good and true of you to say so, little one; but there be two sides
to that, as well. So my father's acres come at last to you and Richard
Jennifer, I shall be well content, I do assure you, Margery."
She sprang up from her low seat and went to stand in the window-bay.
After a time she turned and faced me once again, and the warm blood was
in cheek and neck, and there was a soft light in her eyes to make them
shine like stars.
"Then you would have me marry Richard Jennifer?" she asked.
'Twas but a little word that honor bade me say, and yet it choked me and
I could not say it.
"Dick would have you, Margery; and Dick is my dear friend--as I am his."
"But you?" she queried. "Were you my friend, as well, is this as you
would have it?"
My look went past her through the lead-rimmed window-panes to the great
oaks and hickories on the lawn; to these and to the white road winding
in and out among them. While yet I sought for words in which to give her
unreservedly to my dear lad, two horsemen trotted into view. One of them
was a king's man; the other a civilian in sober black. The redcoat rode
as English troopers do, with a firm seat, as if the man were master of
his mount; but the smaller man in black seemed little to the manner
born, and daylight shuttled in and out beneath him, keeping time to the
jog-trot of his beast.
I thought it passing strange that with all good will to answer her,
these coming horsemen seemed to hold me silent. And, indeed, I did not
speak until they came so near that I could make them out.
"I am your friend, Margery mine; as good a friend as you will let me be.
And as between Richard Jennifer and another, I should be a sorry friend
to Dick did I not--"