You knew the wild blade of a half-score years ago, and now you'd make
the grown man pay scot and lot for that same youngster's misdeeds. Have
you never a touch of human kindliness in you?"
To know how this affected me you must turn back to that place where I
have tried to picture out this man for you. I said he had a gift to turn
a woman's head or touch her heart. I should have said that he could use
this gift at will on any one. For the moment I forgot his cool disposal
of me in the talk with Captain Stuart; forgot how he had lied to make me
out a spy and so had brought me to this pass.
So I could only say: "You killed my friend, Frank Falconnet, and--"
"Tush!" said he. "That quarrel died nine years ago. Your reviving of it
now is but a mask."
"For what?" I asked.
"For your just resentment in sweet Margery's behalf. Believe it or not,
as you like, but I could love you for that blow you gave me, John
Ireton. I had been losing cursedly at cards that day, and mine host's
wine had a dash of usquebaugh in it, I dare swear. At any rate, I knew
not what it was I said till Tybee said it over for me."
"But the next morning you took a cur's advantage of me on this very spot
and ran me through," I countered.
"Name it what you will and let it go at that. There was murder in your
eye, and you are the better swordsman. You put me upon it for my life,
and when you gave me leave, I did not kill you, as I might."
"No; you reserved me for this."
He took a step nearer and seemed strangely agitated.
"You forced my hand, John Ireton," he said, speaking low that the others
might not hear. "You had her ear from day to day and used your
privilege against me. As an enemy who merely sought my life for
vengeance's sake I could spare you; but as a rival--"
I laughed, and sanity began to come again. "Make an end of it," I said.
"I'd rather hear the muskets speak than you."
For reply he took a folded paper from his pocket and spread and held it
so that I might read. It was a letter from my Lord Cornwallis, directing
Captain Falconnet to send his prisoner, Captain John Ireton, sometime
lieutenant in the Royal Scots Blues, under guard to his Lordship's
headquarters in South Carolina.
"Can you read it?" he asked.
I nodded.
"Well, this supersedes the colonel's sentence. If I say the word to
Ensign Farquharson you will be remanded."
"To be shot or hanged a little later, I suppose?"
"No. Have you any notion why my Lord Charles is sending for you?"
"No," said I, in my turn; and, indeed, I had not.
"He knows your record as an officer, and would give you a chance to
'list in your old service."
"I would not take it--at your hands or his."
"You'd best take it. But in any event, you'll have your life and
honorable safe-conduct beyond the lines."
"Make an end," I said again. "I understand you will obey his Lordship's
order, or disregard it, as your own interest directs. What would you
have me do?"
"A very little thing to weigh against a life. Mr. Gilbert Stair is my
very good friend."
I let that go uncontradicted.
"His title to the estate is secure enough, as you know, but you can make
it better," he went on.
This saying of his told me what I had only guessed: that as yet he had
not been admitted into Gilbert Stair's full confidence; also, that he
had no hint of what had taken place in my chamber some hour or two past
midnight. At that, a joy fierce like pain came to thrill me.
"Go on," said I.
"Your route to Camden lies through Charlotte. Your guard will give you
time and opportunity to execute a quitclaim in Mr. Stair's favor."
"Is that all?" I asked.
"No; after that our ways must lie apart--or yours and Margery's, at all
events. Give me your word of honor that you relinquish any claim you
have, or think you have, upon her, and I pass this letter on to the
ensign."
"And if I refuse?"
He came so near that I could see the lurking devil in his eyes.
"If you refuse? Harken, John Ireton; if you had a hundred lives to
thrust between me and the thing I crave, I'd take them all." So much he
said calmly; then a sudden gust of passion seized him, and for once, I
think, he spoke the simple truth. "God! I'd sink my soul in Calvin's
hell to have her!"
I could not wholly mask the smile of triumph that his words evoked. This
fox of maiden vineyards was entrapped at last. I saw the fire of such a
passion as such a man may know burning in his eyes; and then I knew why
he was come upon this errand.
"So?" said I. "Then Mistress Margery sent you here to save me?" 'Twas
but a guess, but I made sure it hit the truth.
He swore a sneering oath. "So the priest carried tales, did he? Well,
make the most of it; she would not have her father's guest taken from
his bed and hanged like a dog."
I smiled again. "'Twas more than that: she would even go so far as to
beg her husband's life a boon from that same husband's mortal enemy."
"Bah!" he scoffed. "That lie of yours imposed upon the colonel, but I
had better information."
"A lie, you say? True, 'twas a lie when it was uttered. But afterward,
some hour or so past midnight, by the good help of Father Matthieu, and
with your Lieutenant Tybee for one witness and the lawyer for another,
we made a sober truth of it."
I hope, for your own peace of mind, my dears, that you may never see a
fellow human turn devil in a breath as I did then. His man's face fell
away from him like a vanishing mask, and in the place of it a hideous
demon, malignant and murderous, glared upon me. Twice his hand sought
the sword-hilt, and once the blade was half unsheathed. Then he thrust
his devil-face in mine and hissed his parting word at me so like a snake
it made me shudder with abhorrence.
"You've signed your own death warrant, you witless fool! You'd play the
spoil-sport here as you did once before, would you? Curse you! I wish
you had a hundred lives that I might take them one by one!" Then he
wheeled sharp upon his heel and gave the order to the ensign. "Belt him
to the tree, Farquharson, and make an end of him. I've kept you waiting
over-long."
They strapped me to a tree with other belts, and when all was ready the
ensign stepped aside to give the word. Just here there came a little
pause prolonged beyond the moment of completed preparation. I knew not
why they waited, having other things to think of. I saw the firing line
drawn up with muskets leveled. I marked the row of weather-beaten faces
pillowed on the gun-stocks with eyes asquint to sight the pieces. I
remember counting up the pointing muzzles; remember wondering which
would be the first to belch its fire at me, and if, at that short range,
a man might live to see the flash and hear the roar before the bullets
killed the senses.
But while I screwed my courage to the sticking place and sought to hold
it there, the pause became a keen-edged agony. A glance aside--a glance
that cost a mightier effort than it takes to break a nightmare--showed
me the ensign standing ear a-cock, as one who listens.
What he heard I know not, for all the earth seemed hushed to silence
waiting on his word. But on the instant the early morning stillness of
the forest crashed alive, and pandemonium was come. A savage yell to set
the very leaves a-tremble; a crackling volley from the underwood that
left a heap of writhing, dying men where but now the firing squad had
stood; then a headlong charge of rough-clad horsemen--all this befell in
less than any time the written words can measure.
I sensed it all but vaguely at the first, but when a passing horseman
slashed me free I came alive, and life and all it meant to me was
centered in a single fierce desire. Falconnet had escaped the fusillade;
was making swiftly for his horse, safe as yet from any touch of lead or
steel. So I might reach and pull him down, I cared no groat what
followed after.
It was not so to be. In the swift dash across the glade I went too near
the shambles in the midst. The corporal of the firing squad, a bearded
Saxon giant, whose face, hideously distorted, will haunt me while I
live, lay fairly in the way, his heels drumming in the death agony, and
his great hands clutching at the empty air.
I leaped to clear him. In the act the clutching hands laid hold of me
and I was tripped and thrown upon the heap of dead and dying men, and
could not free myself in time to stop the baronet.
I saw him gain his horse and mount; saw the flash of his sword and the
skilful parry that in a single parade warded death on either hand; saw
him drive home the spurs and vanish among the trees, with his
horse-holding trooper at his heels.
And then my rescuers, or else my newer captors, picked me up hastily;
and I was hoisted behind the saddle of the nearest, and so was borne
away in all the hue and cry of a most unsoldierly retreat.
XIII
IN WHICH A PILGRIMAGE BEGINS
As you have guessed before you turned this page, the men who charged so
opportunely to cut me out of peril were my captors only in the saving
sense.
Their overnight bivouac was not above a mile beyond the glade of
ambushment. It was in a little dell, cunningly hid; and the embers of
the camp-fires were still alive when we of the horse came first to this
agreed-on rallying point.
Here at this rendezvous in the forest's heart I had my first sight of
any fighting fragment of that undisciplined and yet unconquerable
patriot home-guard that even in defeat proved too tough a morsel for
British jaws to masticate.
They promised little to the eye of a trained soldier, these border
levies. In fancy I could see my old field-marshal,--he was the father of
all the martinets,--turn up his nose and dismiss them with a
contemptuous "_Ach! mein Gott!_" And, truly, there was little outward
show among them of the sterling metal underneath.
They came singly and in couples, straggling like a routed band of
brigands; some loading their pieces as they ran. There was no hint of
soldier discipline, and they might have been leaderless for aught I saw
of deference to their captain. Indeed, at first I could not pick the
captain out by any sign, since all were clad in coarsest homespun and
well-worn leather, and all wore the long, fringed hunting shirt and
raccoon-skin cap of the free borderers.
Yet these were a handful of the men who had fought so stoutly against
the Tory odds at Ramsour's Mill, their captain being that Abram Forney
of whom you may read in the histories; and though they made no military
show, they lacked neither hardihood nor courage, of a certain
persevering sort.
"Ever come any closter to your Amen than that, stranger?" drawled one of
them, a grizzled borderer, lank, lean and weather-tanned, with a face
that might have been a leathern mask for any hint it gave of what went
on behind it. "I'll swear that little whip'-snap' officer cub had the
word 'Fire' sticking in his teeth when I gave him old Sukey's mouthful
o' lead to chaw on."
I said I had come as near my exit a time or two before, though always in
fair fight; and thereupon was whelmed in an avalanche of questions such
as only simple-hearted folk know how to ask.
When I had sufficiently accounted for myself, Captain Forney--he was the
limber-backed young fellow I had ridden behind--gripped my hand and
gave me a hearty welcome and congratulation.
"My father and yours were handfast friends, Captain Ireton. More than
that, I've heard my father say he owed yours somewhat on the score of
good turns. I'm master glad I've had a chance to even up a little;
though as for that, we should both thank the Indian." At which he looked
around as one who calls an eye-muster and marks a missing man. "Where is
the chief, Ephraim?"--this to the grizzled hunter who was methodically
reloading his long rifle.
"He's back yonder, gathering in the hair-crop, I reckon. Never you mind
about him, Cap'n. He'll turn up when he smells the meat a-cooking,
immejitly, _if_ not sooner."
Here, as I imagine, I looked all the questions that lacked answers; for
Captain Forney took it in hand to fit them out with explications.
"'Tis Uncanoola, the Catawba," he said; "one of the friendlies. He was
out a-scouting last night and came in an hour before daybreak with the
news that Colonel Tarleton was set upon hanging a spy of ours. From that
to our little ambushment--"
"I see," said I, wanting space to turn the memory leaves. "This Catawba:
is he a man about my age?" Captain Forney laughed. "God He only knows an
Indian's age. But Uncanoola has been a man grown these fifteen years or
more. I can recall his coming to my father's house when I was but a
little cadger."
At that, I remembered, too; remembered a tall, straight young savage,
as handsome as a figure done in bronze, who used sometimes to meet me in
the lonelier forest wilds when I was out a-hunting; remembered how at
first I was afraid of him; how once I would have shot him in a fit of
boyish race antipathy and sudden fright had he not flung away his
firelock and stood before me defenseless.
Also, I recalled a little incident of the terrible scourge in '60 when
the black pox bade fair to blot out this tribe of the Catawbas; how when
my father had found this young savage lying in the forest,
plague-stricken and deserted by all his tribesmen, he had saved his life
and earned an Indian friendship.
"I know this Uncanoola," I said. "My father befriended him in the plague
of '60, and was never sorry for it, as I believe." Then I would ask if
these Catawbas had ranged themselves on the patriot side, a question
which led the young militia captain to give me the news at large while
his borderers were breaking camp and making their hasty preparations for
the day's march.
"'Tis liberty or death with us now; we've burnt our bridges behind us,"
he said, when he had confirmed the tidings I had had the day before from
Father Matthieu. "And since here in Carolina we have to fight each man
against his neighbor, 'tis like to go hard with us, lacking help from
the North."
"Measured by this morning's work, Captain Forney, these irregulars of
yours seem well able to give a good account of themselves," I ventured.
He shook his head doubtfully. He was but a boy in years, but war is a
shrewd schoolmaster, and this youth, like many another on the fighting
frontier, had matriculated early.
"You've seen us at our best," he amended. "We can ambush like the
Indians, fire a volley, yell, charge--and run away."
"What's that ye're saying, youngster?" The grizzled hunter had finished
reloading his rifle, and, lounging in earshot with all the freedom of
the border, would take the captain up sharply on this last.
"You heard me, Eph Yeates," replied my young captain, curtly.
The old man leaned his rifle against a tree, spat on his hands, cut a
clumsy caper in air, and gave tongue in a yell that should have been
heard by Tarleton's men at Appleby.
"By the eternal 'coonskins! I can gouge the eye out of ary man that says
Eph Yeates carn't stand up fair and square and whop his weight in
wildcats; and I can do it now, _if_ not sooner!" he shrilled. "Come on,
you pap-eating, apron-stringed, French-daddied--"
Where the blast of vituperative insult would have spent itself in
natural course we were not to know, for in the midst another of the
borderers, a wiry little man in greasy deerskin, came up behind the
capering ancient, whipped an arm around his neck, and in a trice the two
went down, kicking, scratching, buffeting and mauling, as like to a
pair of battling bobcats as was ever seen.
For a moment I thought my youngster would let them have it out to the
finish, but he did not. At his order some of the others pulled the twain
apart, reluctantly, I fancied; and when the thing was done the old man
caught up his rifle and strode away in blackest wrath without a look
behind him.
Captain Forney shrugged and spread his hands as his French father might
have done.
"Now you know wherein our weakness lies, Captain Ireton," he said.
"There goes as true a man and as keen a shot as ever pulled trigger. Let
him fight in his own way, and he'll take cover and name his man for
every bullet in his pouch. But as for yielding to decent authority, or
standing against trained troops in open field--" He shrugged again and
turned to tighten his saddle-girth.
"I see," said I. Then I asked him of his plans and intendings, and was
told that he and his handful were a-march to join General Rutherford,
who was gone to the Forks of Yadkin to break up some Tory embodiment
thereabouts.
"You have your work cut out to dodge the British light-horse, Captain
Forney," said I; capping the venture by telling him what little I knew
of Tarleton's dispositions, and also of the Indian-arming plot I had
overheard.
"We'll dodge the redcoats, never you fear; we're at our best in that,"
he rejoined, carelessly. "And as to the Cherokee upstirring, that's an
old story. The king's men have tried it twice and they have not yet
caught Jack Sevier or Jimmie Robertson a-napping. Ease your mind on that
score, Captain Ireton, and come along with us, if you have nothing
better to do. I can promise you hard living, and hard fighting enough to
keep it in countenance."
At this I was brought down to some consideration of the present and its
demands. As fortune's wheel had twirled, I had my life, to be sure; but
by the having of it was made the basest traitor to my friend--to
Jennifer, and no whit less to Margery.
'Twas out of any thought that I should take the field against the common
enemy, leaving this tangled web of mystery and misery behind. In
sheerest decency I owed it first to Jennifer to make a swift and frank
confession of the ill-concluded tale of happenings. That done, I owed it
equally to him and Margery to find some way to set aside the midnight
marriage.
So I fell back upon my wound for an excuse, telling the captain that I
was not yet fit to take the field--which was true enough. Whereupon he
and his men set me well beyond the danger of immediate pursuit and we
parted company.
When I was left alone I had no plan that reached beyond the day's end.
Since to go to Jennifer House by daylight would be to run my neck afresh
into the noose, I saw nothing for it but to lie in hiding till
nightfall. The hiding place that promised best was the old hunting lodge
in the forest, and thitherward I turned my face.
It was a wise man who said that he who goes with heavy heart drags
heavy feet as well; but while I live I shall remember how that saying
clogged the path for me that morning, making the shrub-sweet summer air
grow thick and lifeless as I toiled along. For sober second thought, and
the unnerving reaction which comes upon the heels of some sharp peril
overpast, left me aghast at the coil in which a tricky fate had
entangled me.
The second thought made plain the dispiteous hardness of it all, showing
me how I had reasoned like a boy in planning for retrieval. Would
Jennifer believe my tale, though I should swear it out word for word on
the Holy Evangelists? I doubted it; and striving to see it through his
eyes, was made to doubt it more. For death should have been my
justifier, and death had played me false.
As for setting the midnight marriage aside, I made sure the lawyer tribe
could find a way, if that were all. But here there was a loyal daughter
of the Church to reckon with. Loathing her bonds, as any true-hearted
maiden must, would Margery consent to have them broken by the law? I
knew well she would not. Though our poor knotting of the tie had been
little better than a tragic farce, it lacked nothing of force to bind
the tender conscience of a woman bred to look upon the churchly rite as
final.
So, twist and turn it as I might, the coil was desperate; and as I
strode on gloomily, measuring this the first stage in a pilgrimage I had
never thought to make, a fire of sullen anger began to smoke and
smolder within me, and I could find it in my heart to curse the cruel
kindness of my rescuers; to sorrow in my inmost soul that they had come
between to make a living recreant of one who would fain have died an
honest man.
XIV
HOW THE BARONET PLAYED ROUGE-ET-NOIR
The sun was well above the tree-tops, and the morning was abroad for all
the furred and feathered wood-folk, when I forsook the Indian path to
make a prudent circle of reconnaissance around the cabin in the maple
grove.
Happily, there was no need for the cautionary measure. The hunting lodge
was undiscovered as yet by any enemy; and when I showed myself my poor
black vassals ran to do my bidding, weeping with childish joy to have me
back again.
Since old Darius was still at Appleby Hundred, Tomas ranked as
majordomo; and I bade him post the blacks in a loosely drawn sentry line
about the cabin, this against the chance that Falconnet might stumble on
the place in searching for me. For I made no doubt his Tory spies would
quickly pass the word that I was not with Abram Forney's band, and hence
must be in hiding.
When all was done I flung myself upon the couch of panther-skins, hoping
against hope that sleep might come to help me through the hours of
waiting. 'Twas a vain hope. There was never a wink of forgetfulness for
me in all the long watches of the summer day, and I must lie wide-eyed
and haggard, thinking night would never come, and making sure that fate
had never before walled a man in such a dungeon of despair.
There was no loophole of escape with honor; The heavens were brass, with
all the horizons narrowed to a bounding wall to hem me in on every side.
There was no sally-port in all this wall save one--the one that death
had promised to open at the dawn. The promise had been broken. True,
death had thrust the key within the lock, and I had heard the grating of
the bolts; and yet the key had been withdrawn and I was left a prisoner
of life.
There was no hope of other outlet. Now there was space to view it
calmly, I saw how foolish was the thought that Margery would connive at
any breaking of the marriage bond. She would bear my name, and hate me
for the giving of it; would go on hating me, I thought, to all eternity;
but she would never take her freedom back again, save at a dead man's
hands.
It was thus that each fresh scanning of the prison wall that shut me in
this dungeon of dishonor fetched me once and again to this one
sally-port of death. And when it came to this; that I had searched in
vain for other outlet, you will not think it strange that I sat down in
spirit at this postern to see if I might open it with my own hands.
It was not love of life that made me hesitate. At two-score years he
who has lived at all has lived his best; and if he live beyond the
turning point of youthful ardor he must beg the grace of younger men to
linger yet a little longer on the stage which once was his and now is
theirs.
No, it was not any love of life for life's own sake that held me back.
'Twas rather that the Ireton blood is linked up with that thing we call
a conscience, a heritage from those simple-hearted ancestors to whom the
suicide was a soul accurst--a soul impenitent, whose very outer husk of
flesh and bones they used to bury at the crossing of the ways, with a
sharpened stake to pinion it.
'Twas this ancestral conscience made me cowardly; and when the sight of
my father's sword--Darius had rescued and restored it to its place upon
the chimney-breast--would set me thinking of the Israelitish king, and
how, when all was lost, he fell upon his blade and died, this horror of
the suicide came to give me pause.
Besides, that way to right the double wrong was not so clear as it might
seem. As matters stood, my living for the present was Margery's best
safeguard. Till she became my widow and my heir-at-law, the mercenary
baronet would play his cards to win her honorably. I doubted not he'd
make hot love to her; but while she stayed a wife, and was not yet a
widow, he'd keep his passion decently in bounds, if only for the better
compassing of his end.
But from this horn of the dilemma I slipped to fall upon the other. If
my living on as Margery's husband was her safety for the time, it was an
offering of idol-meats upon the altar of my dear lad's friendship. What
would he think of me? How could I go about to make it plain that I had
robbed him for his own honor's sake?--that it was not I but fate that
was to blame?
These questions came up answerless, like deep-sea plummets where no
bottom is. I saw the way no farther on than this; that I must go
straightway to Jennifer and tell him all. Beyond that point the darkness
was Egyptian, and I could only hope that tricky fate would turn again
and blot me out, and make it plain to Richard, and to my dear lady, that
love, and not base treachery, had set me on to do as I had done.