me for silence while she looked below. The window overhung the entrance
on that side, and through the opened air-casement I heard some
babblement of voices, though not the words.
"I must go down," she said. "'Tis company come, and my father is away."
She passed behind my chair, and, hearing her hand upon the latch, I had
thought her gone--gone down to welcome my enemy and his riding mate, the
factor. But while I was cursing my unready tongue and repenting that I
had not given her some small word of warning, she spoke again.
"You say 'Richard Jennifer or another.' What know you of any other,
Monsieur John?"
"Nay, I know nothing save what you have told me; and from that I have
been hoping there was no other."
"But if I say there may be?"
My heart went sick at that. True, I had thought to give her generously
to Dick, whose right was paramount; but to another--
"Margery, come hither where I may see you." And when she stood before me
like a bidden child: "Tell me, little comrade, who is that other?"
But now her mood was changed again, and from standing sweet and pensive
she fell a-laughing.
"What impudence!" she cried. "_Ma foi_! You should borrow Père
Matthieu's cassock and breviary; then, mayhap, I might confess to you.
But not before."
But still I pressed her.
"Tell me, Margery."
She tossed her head and would not look at me. "Dick Jennifer is but a
boy; suppose this other were a man full-grown."
"Yes?"
"And a soldier."
The sickness in my heart became a fire.
"O Margery! Don't tell me it is this fiend who came just now!"
All in a flash the jesting mood was gone, but that which took its place
was strange to me. Tears came; her bosom heaved. And then she would have
passed me but I caught her hands and held them fast.
"Margery, one moment: for your own sweet sake, if not for Dick's or
mine, have naught to do with this devil's emissary of a man. If you only
knew--if I dared tell you--"
But for once, it seemed, I had stretched my privilege beyond the limit.
She whipped her hands from my hold and faced me coldly.
"Sir Francis says you are a brave gentleman, Captain Ireton, and though
he knows well what you would be about, he has not sent a file of men to
put you in arrest. And in return you call him names behind his back. I
shall not stay to listen, sir."
With that she passed again behind my chair, and once again I heard her
hand upon the latch. But I would say my say.
"Forgive me, Margery, I pray you; 'twas only what you said that made me
mad. 'Tis less than naught if you'll deny it."
I waited long and patiently, and thought she must have gone before her
answer came. And this is what she said:
"If I must tell you then;'tis now two weeks and more since Sir Francis
Falconnet asked me to marry him. I--I hope you do feel better, Captain
Ireton."
And with these bitterest of all words to her leave-taking, she left me
to endure as best I might the hell of torment they had lighted for me.
VI
SHOWING HOW RED WRATH MAY HEAL A WOUND
It was full two days after the coming of the baronet and the
factor-lawyer Pengarvin before I saw my lady's face near-hand again, and
sometimes I was glad for Richard Jennifer's sake, but oftener would
curse and swear because I was bound hand and foot and could not balk my
enemy.
I knew Sir Francis and the lawyer still lingered on at Appleby
Hundred--indeed, I saw them daily from my window--and Darius would be
telling me that they waited upon the coming of some courier from the
south. But this I disbelieved. Some such-like lie the baronet might have
told, I thought; but when I saw him walk abroad with Margery on his arm,
pacing back and forth beneath the oaks and bending low to catch her
lightest word with grave and courtly deference that none knew better how
to feign, I knew wherefore he stayed--knew and raged afresh at my own
impotence, and for the thought that Margery was wholly at the mercy of
this devil.
Yours is a colder century than was ours, my dears. Your art has tempered
love and passion into sentiment, and hate you have learned to call
aversion or dislike. But we of that simple-hearted elder time were more
downright; and I have writ the word I mean in saying that my love was at
the mercy of this fiend.
I know not how it is or why, but there are men who have this gift--some
winning way to turn a woman's head or touch her heart; and I knew well
this gift was his. 'Twas not his face, for that was something less than
handsome, to my fancy; nor yet his figure, though that was big and
soldierly enough. It was rather in some subtlety of manner, some power
of simulation whereby in any womanly heart he seemed to stand at will
for that which he was not.
As I have said, I knew him well enough; knew him incapable of love apart
from passion, and that to him there was no sacredness in maiden chastity
or wifely vows. So he but gained his end he cared no whit what followed
after; ruin, broken hearts, lost souls, a man slain now and then to keep
the scale from tipping--all were as one to him, or to the Francis
Falconnet I knew.
And touching marriage, with Margery or any other, I feared that love
would have no word to say. Passion there might be, and that fierce
desire to have and wear which burns like any miser's fever in the blood;
but never love as lovers measure it. Why, then, had he proposed to
Margery? The answer did not tarry. Since he was now but a gentleman
volunteer it was plain that he had squandered his estate, and so might
brook the marriage chain if it were linked up with my father's acres.
It was a bait to lure such a gamester strongly. As matters stood with us
in that wan summer of exhaustion and defeat, the king's cause waxed and
grew more hopeful day by day. And in event of final victory a landless
baronet, marrying Margery's dower of Appleby Hundred, might snap his
fingers at the Jews who, haply, had driven him forth from England.
And as for Margery? Truly, she had told me, or as good as told me, that
her maiden love had pledged itself a pawn for Jennifer's redeeming. But
there be other things than love to sway a woman's will. This volunteer
captain with the winning way was of the _haute noblesse_, and he could
make her Lady Falconnet. Moreover, he was with her day by day; and you
may mark this as you will; that a present suitor hath ever the trump
cards to play against the absent lover.
So, brooding over this, I wore out two most dismal days--the first in
many I had had to pass alone. But on the morning of the third the sky
was lightened, though then the light was but a flash and darkness
followed quickly after. She came again and brought me a visitor; it was
this same Father Matthieu with whom she had jestingly compared me, and
lest I should take my punishment too lightly, stayed but to make the
good priest known to me.
Now I was born and bred an heretic, by any papist's reckoning, but I
have ever held it witless in that man who lets a creed obstruct a
friendship. Moreover, this sweet-faced cleric was the friendliest of
men; friendly, and yet the wiliest Jesuit of them all, since he read me
at a glance and fell straightway to praising Margery.
"A truly sweet young demoiselle," he said, by way of foreword, no sooner
was the door closed behind her, and while he preached a sermon on this
text I grew to know and love him.
He was a little man, as bone and muscle go, with deep-set eyes, and
features kind and mild and fine as any woman's; some such face as
Leonardo gave St. John, could that have been less youthful. I could not
tell his order, though from his well-worn cassock girded at the waist
with a frayed bit of hempen cord he might have been a Little Brother of
the Poor. But this I noted; that he was not tonsured, and his white
hair, soft and fine as Margery's, was like an aureole to the finely
chiseled features. As missionary men of any creed are apt, he looked far
older than he really was; and when he came to tell me of his life among
the Indians, it was patent how the years had multiplied upon him.
I listened, well enough content to learn him better by his own report.
"But you must find it thankless work; this gospeling in the wilderness,"
I ventured, when all was said. "'Tis but a hermit's life for any man of
parts; and after all, when you have done your utmost, your converts are
but savages, as they were."
At this he smiled and shook his head. _"Non, Monsieur_, not so. You are
a soldier and can not see beyond your point of sword. _Mais, mon ami_,
they have souls to save, these poor children of the forest, and they are
far more sinned against than sinning. I find them kind and true and
faithful; and some of them are noble, in their way."
I laughed. "I've read about those noble ones," I said. "'Twas in a book
called 'Hakluyt's Voyages.' Truly, I know them not as you do, for in my
youth I knew them most in war. We called them brave but cruel then; and
when I was a boy I could have shown you where, within a mile of this,
they burned poor Davie Davidson at the stake."
"Ah, yes; there has been much of that," he sighed. "But you must
confess, Captain Ireton, that you English carry fire and sword among
them, too."
From that he would have told me more about the savages, but I was
interested nearer home. As I have said, I was like any prisoner in a
dungeon for lack of news, and so by degrees I fetched him round to
telling me of what was going on beyond my window-sight of lawn and
forest.
Brave deeds were to the fore, it seemed. At Ramsour's Mill, a few miles
north and west, some little handful of determined patriots had bested
thrice their number of the king's partizans, and that without a leader
bigger than a county colonel. Lord Rawdon, in command of Lord
Cornwallis's van, had come as far as Waxhaw Creek, but, being
unsupported, had withdrawn to Hanging Rock. Our Mr. Rutherford was on
his way to the Forks of Yadkin to engage the Tories gathering under
Colonel Bryan. As yet, it seemed, we had no force of any consequence to
take the field against Cornwallis, though there were flying rumors of an
army marching from Virginia, with a new-appointed general at its head.
On the whole it was the king's cause that prospered, and the rising wave
of invasion bade fair to inundate the land. So thought my kindly gossip;
and, having naught to gain or lose in the great war, or rather having
naught to lose and everything to gain, whichever way these worldly cards
might run, he was a fair, impartial witness.
As you may well suppose, this news awoke in me the lust of battle, and I
must chafe the more for having it. And while my visitor talked on, and I
was listening with the outward ear, my brain was busy putting two and
two together. How came it that the British outpost still remained at
Queensborough, with my Lord Rawdon withdrawn and the patriot home guard
well down upon its rear? Some urgent reason for the stay there must be;
and at that I remembered what Darius had told me of its captain's
waiting for some messenger from the south.
I scored this matter with a question mark, putting it aside to think on
more when I should be alone. And when the priest had told me all the
news at large, we came again to speak of Margery.
"I go and come through all this borderland," he said, when I had asked
him how and why he came to Appleby Hundred, "but it was mam'selle's
message brought me here. She is my one ewe lamb in all this region, and
I would journey far to see her."
I wondered pointedly at this, for in that day the West was fiercely
Protestant and the Mother Church had scanty footing in the borderland.
"But Mistress Margery is not a Catholic!" said I.
His look forgave the protest in the words.
"Indeed, she is, my son. Has she not told you?"
Now truly she had not told me so in any measured word or phrase; and yet
I might have guessed it, since she had often spoken lovingly of this
same Father Matthieu. And yet it was incredible to me.
"But how--I do not understand how that can be," I stammered. "Surely,
she told me she was of Huguenot blood on the mother's side, and that
is--"
The missionary's smile was lenient still, but full of meaning.
"Not all who wander from the Catholic fold are lost forever, Captain
Ireton. The mother of this demoiselle lived all her life a Protestant, I
think, but when she came to die she sent for me. And that is how her
child was sent to France and grew up convent-bred. Monsieur Stair gave
his promise at the mother's death-bed, and though he liked it not, he
kept it."
"Aha, I see. And for this single lamb of your scant fold you brave the
terrors of our heretic backwoods? It does you credit, Father Matthieu.
The war fills all horizons now, mayhap, but I have seen the time in
Mecklenburg when your cassock would have been a challenge to the mob."
His smile was quite devoid of bitterness. "The time has not yet passed,"
he said, gently. "I have been six weeks on the way from Maryland hither,
hiding in the forest by day and faring on at night. Indeed, I was in
hiding on a neighboring plantation when our demoiselle's messenger found
me."
This put me keen upon remembering what had gone before; how he had said
at first that she had sent for him. I thought it strange, knowing how
perilous the time and place must be for such as he. But not until he
rose and, bidding me good day, left me to myself, did I so much as guess
the thing his coming meant. When I had guessed it; when I put this to
that--her telling me Sir Francis had proposed for her, and this her
sending for the priest--the madness of my love for her was as naught
compared to that anger which seized and racked me.
I know not how the hours of this black day were made to come and go,
grinding me to dust and ashes in their passage, yet leaving me alive and
keen to suffer at the end.
A thousand times that day I lived in torment through the scene in which
the priest had doubtless come to play his part of joiner. The stage for
it would be the great room fronting south; the room my father used to
call our castle hall. For guests I thought there would be space enough
and some to spare, for, as you know, our Mecklenburg was patriot to the
core. But as to this, the bridegroom's troopers might fill out the tale,
and in my heated fancy I could see them grouped beneath the
candle-sconces with belts and baldrics fresh pipe-clayed, and shakos
doffed, and _sabretaches_ well in front. "A man full-grown--a soldier,"
she had said; and trooper-guests were fitting in such case.
From serving in a Catholic land I knew the customs of the Mother Church.
So I could see the priest in cassock, alb and stole as he would stand
before some makeshift altar lit with candles. And as he stands they come
to kneel before him; my winsome Margery in all her royal beauty, a child
to love, and yet an empress peerless in her woman's realm; and at her
side, with his knee touching hers, this man who was a devil!
What wonder if I cursed and choked and cursed again when the maddening
thought of what all this should mean for my poor wounded Richard--and
later on, for Margery herself--possessed me? In which of these hot
fever-gusts of rage the thought of interference came, I know not. But
that it came at length--a thought and plan full-grown at birth--I do
know.
The pointing of the plan was desperate and simple. It was neither more
nor less than this: I knew the house and every turn and passage in it,
and when the hour should strike I said I should go down and skulk among
the guests, and at the crucial moment find or seize a weapon and fling
myself upon this bridegroom as he should kneel before the altar.
With strength to bend him back and strike one blow, I saw not why it
might not win. And as for strength, I have learned this in war: that so
the rage be hot enough 'twill nerve a dying man to hack and hew and stab
as with the strength of ten.
Although it was most terribly over-long in coming, the end of that black
day did come at last, and with it Darius to fetch my supper and the
candles. You may be sure I questioned him, and, if you know the blacks,
you'll smile and say I had my labor for my pains--the which I had. His
place was at the quarters, and of what went on within the house he knew
no more than I. But this he told me; that company surely was expected,
and that some air of mystery was abroad.
When he was gone I ate a soldier's portion, knowing of old how ill a
thing it is to take an empty stomach into battle. For the same cause I
drank a second cup of wine,--'twas old madeira of my father's
laying-in,--and would have drunk a third but that the bottle would not
yield it.
It was fully dark when I had finished, and, thinking ever on my plan,
would strive afresh to weld its weakest link. This was the hazard of the
weapon-getting. With full-blood health and strength I might have gone
bare-handed; but as it was, I feared to take the chance. So with a
candle I went a-prowling in the deep drawers of the old oaken
clothes-press and in the escritoire which once had been my mother's, and
found no weapon bigger than a hairpin.
It was no great disappointment, for I had looked before with daylight in
the room. Besides, the wine was mounting, and when the search was done
the hazard seemed the less. So I could rush upon him unawares and put my
knee against his back, I thought the Lord of Battles would give me
strength to break his neck across it.
At that I capped the candles, and, taking post in the deep bay of the
window, set myself to watch for the lighting of the great room at the
front. This had two windows on my side, and while I could not see them,
I knew that I should see the sheen of light upon the lawn.
The night was clear but moonless, and the thick-leafed masses of the
oaks and hickories rose a wall of black to curtain half the hemisphere
of starry sky. As always in our forest land, the hour was shrilly vocal,
though to me the chirping din of frogs and insects hath ever stood for
silence. Somewhere beyond the thicket-wall an owl was calling
mournfully, and I bethought me of that superstition--old as man, for
aught I know--of how the hooting of an owl betokens death. And then I
laughed, for surely death would come to one or more of those beneath my
father's roof within the compass of the night.
Behind the close-drawn curtain, though I could see it not, the virgin
forest darkened all the land; and from afar within its secret depths I
heard, or thought I heard, the dismal howling of the timber wolves.
Below, the house was silent as the grave, and this seemed strange to me.
For in the time of my youth a wedding was a joyous thing. Yet I would
remember that these present times were perilous; and also that my
bridegroom captained but a little band of troopers in a land but now
become fiercely debatable.
It must have been an hour or more before the sound of distance-muffled
hoofbeats on the road broke in upon the chirping silence of the night. I
looked and listened, straining eye and ear, hearing but little and
seeing less until three shadowy horsemen issued from the curtain-wall of
black beneath my window.
It was plain that others watched as well as I, for at their coming a
sheen of light burst from the opened door below, at which there were
sword-clankings as of armed men dismounting, and then a few low-voiced
words of welcome. Followed quickly the closing of the door and silence;
and when my eyes grew once again accustomed to the gloom, I saw below
the horses standing head to head, and in the midst a man to hold them.
"So!" I thought; "but three in all, and one of them a servant. 'Twill be
a scantly guested wedding." And then I raged within again to think of
how my love should be thus dishonored in a corner when she should have
the world to clap its hands and praise her beauty.
At that, and while I looked, the lawn was banded farther on by two
broad beams of light; and then I knew my time was come.
Feeling my way across the darkened chamber I softly tried the
door-latch. It yielded at the touch, but not the door. I pulled and
braced myself and pulled again. 'Twas but a waste of strength. The door
was fast with that contrivance wherewith my father used to bar me in
what time I was a boy and would go raccooning with our negro hunters. My
enemy was no fool. He had been shrewd enough to lock me in against the
chance of interruption.
I wish you might conceive the helpless horror grappling with me there
behind that fastened door; but this, indeed, you may not, having felt it
not. For one dazed moment I was sick as death with fear and frenzy and I
know not what besides, and all the blackness of the night swam sudden
red before my eyes. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the madness left
me cool and sane, as if the fit had been the travail-pain of some new
birth of soul. And after that, as I remember, I knew not rage nor haste
nor weakness--knew no other thing save this; that I had set myself a
task to do and I would do it.
My window was in shape like half a cell of honeycomb, and close beside
it on the outer wall there grew an ancient ivy-vine which more than once
had held my weight when I was younger and would evade my father's
vigilance.
I swung the casement noiselessly and clambered out, with hand and foot
in proper hold as if those youthful flittings of my boyhood days had
been but yesternight. A breathless minute later I was down and afoot on
solid ground; and then a thing chanced which I would had not. The man
whom I had called a servant turned and saw me.
"Halt! Who goes there?" he cried.
"A friend," said I, between my wishings for a weapon. For this servant
of my prefigurings proved to be a trooper, booted, spurred and armed.
"By God, I think you lie," he said; and after that he said no more, for
he was down among the horses' hoofs and I upon him, kneeling hard to
scant his breath for shoutings.
It grieves me now through all these years to think that I did kneel too
hard upon this man. He was no enemy of mine, and did but do--or seek to
do--his duty. But he would fight or die, and I must fight or die; and so
it ended as such strivings will, with some grim crackling of ribs--and
when I rose he rose not with me.
With all the fierce excitement of the struggle yet upon me, I stayed to
knot the bridle reins upon his arm to make it plain that he had fallen
at his post. That done, I took his sword as surer for my purpose than a
pistol; and hugging the deepest shadow of the wall, approached the
nearer window. It was open wide, for the night was sultry warm, and from
within there came the clink of glass and now a toast and now a trooper's
oath.
I drew myself by inches to the casement, which was high, finding some
foothold in the wall; and when I looked within I saw no wedding guests,
no priest, no altar; only this: a table in the midst with bottles on it,
and round it five men lounging at their ease and drinking to the king.
Of these five two, the baronet and the lawyer, were known to me, and I
have made them known to you. A third I guessed for Gilbert Stair. The
other two were strangers.
VII
IN WHICH MY LADY HATH NO PART
Seeing that I had taken a man's life for this, the chance of looking in
upon a drinking bout, you will not wonder that I went aghast and would
have fled for very shame had not a sudden weakness seized me. But in the
midst I heard a mention of my name and so had leave, I thought, to stay
and listen.
It was one of the late-comers who gave me this leave; a man well on in
years, grizzled and weather-beaten; a seasoned soldier by his look and
garb. Though his frayed shoulder-knot was only that of a captain of
foot,'twas plain enough he ranked his comrade, and the knight as well.
"You say you've bagged this Captain Ireton? Who may he be? Surely not
old Roger's son?"
"The same," said the baronet, shortly, and would be filling his glass
again. He could always drink more and feel it less than any sot I ever
knew.
"But how the devil came he here? The last I knew of him--'twas some
half-score years ago, though, come to think--he was a lieutenant in the
Royal Scots."
Mine enemy nodded. "So he was. But afterward he cut the service and
levanted to the Continent."
The questioner fell into a muse; then he laughed and clapped his leg.
"Ecod! I do remember now. There was a damned good mess-room joke about
him. When he was in the Blues they used to say his solemn face would
stop a merry-making. Well, after he had been in Austria a while they
told this on him; that his field-marshal had him listed for a majority,
and so he was presented to the empress. But when Maria Theresa saw him
she shrieked and cried out, '_Il est le père aux têtes rondes, lui-même!
Le portez-vous dehors!_' So he got but a captaincy after all; ha! ha!
ha!"