admittance to the house, and who took on himself the responsibility of
breaking in upon the party in the supper-room.
I shall not soon forget the scene that fronted us when we came into my
Lord's presence. The supper was in some sort a gala feast held in honor
of my Lord's accession to his earldom. The table, lighted by great
silver candelabra which I recognized as Ireton heirlooms, was well
filled around by the members of the commander-in-chief's military
family, with the earl at the head, and Mistress Margery, bedight as
befitted a lady of the quality, behind the tea-urn at the foot.
At our incoming all eyes were turned upon us, but it required my Lord's
sharp question to make me leave off dwelling upon my sweet lady's
radiant beauty.
"How now, Captain Ireton? Do you bring us news from the major?"
I broke the fascinating eyehold and turned slowly to face my fate.
"I do, my Lord."
"Well, what of him? You left him hastening to rejoin with his new
loyalist levies, I hope?"
I drew my sword, reversed it and laid it upon the table.
"May all the enemies of the Commonwealth be even as he is, my Lord," I
said, quietly.
Now, truly, I had hanged my petard well and 'twas plain the shock of it
had gone far to shatter the wall of confidence our enemies had builded
on the field of Camden and elsewhere. Had a hand-grenade with the fuse
alight been dropped upon the table, the consternation could scarce have
been greater. To a man the tableful was up and thronging round me; but
above all the hubbub I heard a little cry of misery from the table-foot
where my lady sat.
"How is this, sir?--explain yourself!" thundered my Lord, forgetting
for once his mild suavity.
"'Tis but a brief tale, and I will make it as crisp as may be in the
telling," I replied. "I came upon the major some miles this side of the
crossing of the Broad. He was marching to rejoin you, in accordance with
his orders. But when he had your Lordship's command to stand and fight,
he obeyed."
"My command?--but I gave him no such order!"
"Nay, truly, you did not--neither in the original nor in the duplicate,
my Lord. But when we had waylaid Lieutenant Tybee and quenched the
duplicate, and had so amended the original as to make it fit our
purpose, the brave major thanked you for what you had not done and made
his stand to await the upcoming of the over-mountain men."
For a moment I thought they would hew me limb from limb, but my Lord
quelled the fierce outburst with a word.
"Put up your swords, gentlemen. We shall know how to deal with this
traitor," he said. And then to me: "Go on, sir, if you please; there has
been a battle, as I take it?"
"There has, indeed. The mountain men came up with us in the afternoon of
the Saturday. In an hour one-third of the major's force was dead or
dying, the major himself was slain, and every living man left on the
field was a prisoner."
Again a dozen swords hissed from their scabbards, and again I heard the
little cry of misery from the table-foot. I bowed my head, looking
momently to pay the penalty; but once more my Lord put the swords
aside.
"Let us have a clean breast of it this time, Captain Ireton," he said.
"You know well what you have earned, and nothing you can say will make
it better or worse for you. Was this your purpose in making your
submission to me?"
"It was."
"And you have been a rebel from the first?"
I met the cold anger in the womanish eyes as a condemned man might.
"I have, my Lord--since the day nine years agone when I learned that
your king's minions had hanged my father in the Regulation."
"Then it was a farrago of lies you told me about your adventures in the
western mountains?"
"Not wholly. It was your Lordship's good pleasure to send succors of
powder and lead to your allies, the western savages. I and three others
followed Captain Falconnet and his Indians, and I have the honor to
report that we overtook and exploded them with their own powder cargo."
"And Captain Sir Francis Falconnet with them?"
"I do so hope and trust, my Lord."
He turned short on his heel, and for a moment a silence as of death fell
upon the room. Then he took the Ferara from the table and sought to
break it over his knee; but the good blade, like the cause it stood for,
bent like a withe and would not snap.
"Put this spy in irons and clear the room," he ordered sharply. And
this is how the little drama ended: with the supper guests crowding to
the door; with my Lord pacing back and forth at the table-head; with two
sergeants bearing me away to await, where and how I knew not, the word
which should efface me.
XLIII
IN WHICH I DRINK A DISH OF TEA
Being without specific orders what to do with me, my two sergeant
bailiffs thrust me into that little den of a strong-room below stairs
where I had once found the master of the house, and one of them mounted
guard whilst the other fetched the camp armorer to iron me.
The shackles securely on, I was left to content me as I could, with the
door ajar and my two jailers hobnobbing before it. Having done all I had
hoped to do, there was nothing for it now but to wait upon the
consequences. So, hitching my chair up to the oaken table, I made a
pillow of my fettered wrists and presently fell adoze.
I know not what hour of the night it was when the half-blood Scipio, who
was Mr. Gilbert Stair's body-servant, came in and roused me. I started
up suddenly at his touch, making no doubt it was my summons. But the
mulatto brought me nothing worse than a cold fowl and a loaf, with a
candle-end to see to eat them by, and a dish of hot tea to wash them
down.
I knew well enough whom I had to thank for this, and was set wondering
that my lady's charity was broad enough to mantle even by this little my
latest sins against the king's cause. None the less, I ate and drank
gratefully, draining the tea-dish to the dregs--which, by the by, were
strangely bitter.
I had scarce finished picking the bones of the capon before sleep came
again to drag at my eyelids, a drowsiness so masterful that I could make
no head against it. And so, with the bitter taste of the tea still on my
tongue, I fell away a second time into the pit of forgetfulness.
When I awakened from what seemed in the memory of it the most unresting
sleep I ever had, it was no longer night, and I was stretched upon the
oaken settle in that same lumber garret where I had been bedded through
that other night of hiding. So much I saw at the waking glance; and then
I realized, vaguely at first, but presently with startling emphasis,
that it was the westering sun which was shining in at the high roof
windows, that the shackles were still on, and that my temples were
throbbing with a most skull-splitting headache.
Being fair agasp with astoundment at this new spinning of fate's wheel,
I sprang up quickly--and was as quickly glad to fall back upon the
pallet. For with the upstart a heaving nausea came to supplement the
headache, and for a long time I lay bat-blind and sick as any landsman
in his first gale at sea.
The sunlight was fading from the high windows, and I was deep sunk in a
sick man's megrims, before aught came to disturb the silence of the
cobwebbed garret. From nausea and racking pains I had come to the stage
of querulous self-pity. 'Twas monstrous, this burying a man alive, ill,
fettered, uncared-for, to live or die in utter solitude as might happen.
I could not remotely guess to whom I owed this dismal fate, and was too
petulant to speculate upon it. But the meddler, friend or foe, who had
bereft me of my chance to die whilst I was fit and ready, came in for a
Turkish cursing--the curse that calls down in all the Osmanli variants
the same pangs in duplicate upon the banned one.
It was in the midst of one of these impotent fits of malediction that
the wainscot door was opened and closed softly, and light footsteps
tiptoed to my bedside. I shut my eyes wilfully when a voice low and
tender asked: "Are you awake, Monsieur John?"
I hope you will hold me forgiven, my dears, if I confess that what with
the nausea and the headache, the fetters and the solitude, I was rabid
enough to rail at her. 'Twas so near dusk in the ill-lighted garret that
I could not see how she took it; but she let me know by word of mouth.
"_Merci, Monsieur_," she said, icily. And then: "Gratitude does not seem
to be amongst your gifts."
At this I broke out in all a sick man's pettishness.
"Gratitude! Mayhap you will tell me what it is I have to be grateful
for. All I craved was the chance to die as a soldier should, and some
one must needs spoil me of that!"
"Selfish--selfish always and to the last," she murmured. "Do you never
give a moment's thought to the feelings of others, Captain Ireton?"
This was past all endurance.
"If I had not, should I be here this moment?" I raved. "You do make me
sicker than I was, my lady."
"Yet I say you are selfish," she insisted. "What have I done that you
should come here to have yourself hanged for a spy?"
"Let us have plain speech, in God's name," I retorted. "You know well
enough there was no better way in which I could serve you."
"Do I, indeed, _mon ami_?" she flashed out. "Let me tell you, sir, had
she ever a blush of saving pride, Margery Stair--or Margery Ireton, if
you like that better--would kill you with her own hand rather than have
it said her husband died upon a gallows!"
A sudden light broke in upon me and I went blind in the horror of it.
"God in Heaven!" I gasped; "'twas you, then? I do believe you poisoned
me in that dish of tea you sent me last night!"
She laughed, a bitter little laugh that I hated to think on afterward.
"You have a most chivalrous soul, Captain Ireton. I do not wonder you
are so fierce to shake it free of the poor body of clay."
"But you do not deny it!" I cried.
"Of what use would it be? I have said that I would not have you die
shamefully on the gallows; so I may as well confess to the poppy-juice
in the tea. Tell me, Monsieur John; was it nasty bitter?"
"Good Lord!" I groaned; "are you a woman, or a fiend?"
"Either, or both, as you like to hold me, sir. But come what might, I
said you should not die a felon's death. And you have not, as yet."
"Better a thousand times the rope and tree than that I should rot by
inches here with you to sit by and gird at me. Ah, my lady, you are
having your revenge of me."
"_Merci, encore._ Shall I go away and leave you?"
"No, not that." A cold sweat broke out upon me in a sudden childish
horror of the solitude and the darkness and the fetters. And then I
added: "But 'twould be angel kindness if you would leave off torturing
me. I am but a man, dear lady, and a sick man at that."
All in a flash her mood changed and she bent to lay a cool palm on my
throbbing temples.
"Poor Monsieur John!" she said softly; "I meant not to make you suffer
more, but rather less." Then she found water and a napkin to wring out
and bind upon my aching head.
At the touch and the word of womanly sympathy I forgot all, and the
love-madness came again to blot out the very present memory of how she
had brought me to this.
"Ah, that is better--better," I sighed, when the pounding hammers in my
temples gave me some surcease of the agony.
"Then you forgive me?" she asked, whether jestingly or in earnest I
could not tell.
"There is none so much to forgive," I replied. "One hopeless day last
summer I put my life in pledge to you; and you--in common justice you
have the right to do what you will with it."
"Ah; now you talk more like my old-time Monsieur John with the healing
sword-thrust. But that day you speak of was not more hopeless for you
than for me."
"I know it," said I, thinking only of how the loveless marriage must
grind upon her. "But it must needs be hopeless for both till death steps
in to break the bond."
Again she laughed, that same bitter little laugh.
"Indeed, it was a great wrong you did that night, sir. I could wish, as
heartily as you, that it might be undone. But this is idle talk. Let me
see if this key will fit your manacles. I have been all day finding out
who had it, and I am not sure it will be the right one, after all."
But it did prove to be the right one; and when the irons were off I felt
more like a man and less like a baited bear.
"That is better," said I, drawing breath of unfeigned relief. "I bear my
Lord Charles no malice, but 'twas a needless precaution, this ironing of
a man who was never minded to run away."
"But you are going to run away," she said, decisively; "and that as
soon as ever you are able to hold a horse between your knees. Shall I
bring you another dish of tea? Nay, never look so horrified; I shall not
poison you this time."
"Stay," I cried. "You mean that you are going to help me escape? 'Tis a
needless prolonging of the agony. Go and tell the guards where they can
find me."
She stopped midway to the wainscot door and turned to give me my answer.
"No; you are a soldier, and--and I will not be a gallows-widow. Do you
hear, sir? If you are so eager to die, there is always the
battle-field." And with that she left me.
I may pass over the two succeeding days in the silence I was condemned
to endure through the major part of them. After that first visit,
Margery came only at stated intervals to bring me food and drink, and my
nurse was an old black beldame, either deaf and dumb, or else so newly
from the Guinea Coast as to be unable to twist her tongue to the
English.
And in the food-bringings I could neither make my lady stay nor answer
any question; this though I was hungering to know what was going on
beyond the walls of my garret prison. Indeed, she would not even tell me
how I had been spirited away from the two sergeants keeping watch over
me in her father's strong-room below stairs. "That is Scipio's secret,"
she would say, laughing at me, "and he shall keep it."
But in the evening of the third day the mystery bubble was burst, and I
learned from Margery's lips the thing I longed to know. Lord Cornwallis
had decided to abandon North Carolina, and in an hour or two the army
would be in motion for withdrawal to the southward.
"Now, thanks be to God!" I said, most fervently. "King's Mountain has
begun the good work, and we shall show Farmer George a thing or two he
had not guessed."
On this, my lady drew herself up most proudly and her lip curled.
"You forget, sir, you are speaking to Mr. Gilbert Stair's daughter."
"True," said I; "I did forget. We are at cross purposes in this, as in
all things else. I crave your pardon, Madam."
Her eyes were snapping by now. Never tell me, my dears, that eyes of the
blue-gray can not flash fire when they will.
"How painstakingly you will go about to make me hate you!" she burst
out. And then, all in the same breath: "But you will be rid of me
presently, for good and all."
"Nay, then, Mistress Margery, you are always taking an ell of meaning
for my inch of speech. 'Tis I who should do the ridding."
"_Mon Dieu!_" she cried, in a sudden burst of petulance; "I am sick to
death of all this! Is there no way out of this coil that is strangling
us both, Captain Ireton?"
"I had thought to make a way three days ago; did so make it, but you
kept me from walking in it. Yet that way is still open--if you will but
drop a word in my Lord's ear when you go below stairs."
"Oh, yes--a fine thing; the wife betray the husband!" This with another
lip-curl of scorn. "I have some shreds and patches of pride left, sir,
if you have not."
"Then free me of my obligation to you and let me do it myself. I am well
enough to hang."
"And so make me a consenting accomplice? Truly, as I have said before,
you have a most knightly soul, Captain Ireton."
I closed my eyes in very weariness.
"You are hard to please, my lady."
"You have not to try to please me, sir. I am going away--to-night."
"Going away?" I echoed. "Whither, if I may ask?"
"My father has taken protection and we shall go south with the army. As
Lord Cornwallis says, Mecklenburg is a hornets' nest of rebellion, and
in an hour or two after we are gone you will be amongst your friends."
She made to leave me now, but I would not let her go without trying the
last blunt-pointed arrow in the quiver of expedients.
"Stay a moment," I begged. "You are leaving the untangling of this coil
you speak of to a chance bullet on a battle-field. Had you ever thought
that the Church can undo what the Church has done?"
Again I had that bitter laugh which was to rankle afterward in memory.
"You are a most desperate, pertinacious man, Captain Ireton. Failing all
else, you would even storm Heaven itself to gain your end," she scoffed;
then, at the very pitch-point of the scornful outburst she put her face
in her hands and fell a-sobbing as if her heart would break.
I knew not what to say or do, and ended, man-like, by saying and doing
nothing. And so, still crying softly, she let herself out at the
wainscot door, and this was our leave-taking.
XLIV
HOW WE CAME TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END
It was on the third day of December, a cheerless and comfortless day at
the close of the most inclement autumn I ever remember, that the patriot
Army of the South was paraded on the court-house common in Charlotte to
listen to the reading of General Gates's final order, the order
announcing the arrival of Major-general Greene from Washington's
headquarters to take over the command of the field forces in the
Carolinas.
As members of Colonel William Washington's light-horse, Richard Jennifer
and I were both present at this installation of the new field commander;
and it was here that we both had our first sight of Nathaniel Greene,
the "Hickory Quaker."
Now the historians, as is their wont, have pictured Greene the general
to the complete effacement of Greene the man, and it is in my mind that
you may like to see the new commander as we saw him, making his first
inspection of Horatio Gates's poor "shadow of an army" on that dismal
December day in Charlotte.
In years he was rising forty; and as weight goes he was a heavy man,
pressing hard upon fifteen stone with the knuckle of it under his
waistcoat. None the less, though his great bulk made him sit his horse
more like a farmer than a soldier, he had the muscular shoulders and
arms of the anchor-smiths, to which trade he had been bred.
The hint of grossness which his figure gave was not borne out by his
face. Like my Lord Cornwallis's, his eyes were womanish large, and nose
and mouth and the lift of the brow were cast in a mold to match; yet
there was that in his face which made it the mask of a soul thoughtful
and serene; and his ruddy complexion and fair hair gave him a look of
openness that a dark man is like to miss.
A skilled soldier, with a good promise of strenuous patience, was my
summing up of him, and Dick saw him as I did, though with a more
prophetic eye.
"He will make his mark, Jack, look you; not in stubborn in-fighting at
the barrier, mayhap, like Dan Morgan, nor in a brilliant dash, like our
colonel, but in his own anchor-smith's way--a heat at a time, and a blow
at a time," said Jennifer; and I nodded.
Stirrup to stirrup with the new commander as he passed down the line
rode Daniel Morgan, big, strong, masterful, handsome, the very pick and
choice of leaders for his rough and ready riflemen. Like most of his
men, he scorned to wear a uniform, appearing on parade, as in the field,
in a neat-fitting hunting-shirt of Indian-tanned buckskin with
fringings of the same--a costume that set off his gigantic figure as no
tailor-fine coat could have set it off.
When he pulled his horse down to make it keep step with the sedater
pacings of the general's, we could hear him declaring, with an oath,
that his Eleventh Virginia alone would give a good account of all the
Tories between the Catawba and the Broad; and when the cavalcade passed
the rifle corps, the men flung their hats and cheered their leader in
open defiance of all discipline.
Ah me! they tell me that in after years this stout Daniel, the
"Lion-bearder," as we used to dub him, became a doddering old man, even
as thy old tale-teller is now; that he put off all his roistering ways
and might be found any Lord's Day shouting, not curses, as of yore, but
psalm tunes, in the church whereof he was a pillar! But 'twas the other
Daniel we knew; the bluff, hearty man of his two hands, who could pummel
the best boxer in his own regiment of fisticuffers; who could out-curse,
out-buffet and out-drink the hardiest frontiersman on the border.
Next conspicuous in the general's suite was our colonel, the pink of
light-horse commanders, with only Harry Lee in all the patriot rank and
file for his peer. 'Tis a thousand pities that William Washington, "the
Marcellus of the army," has had to suffer the eclipse which must dim the
luster of all who walk in the shadow of a greater of the same name. For
surely there never was a finer gentleman, a truer friend, a nobler
patriot, or, according to his opportunities, an abler officer than was
our beloved colonel of the light dragoons.
But this is all beside the mark, you will say; and you will be chafing
restively to know how Dick and I had come together in this troop of
Colonel Washington's; to know this in a word and to pass on at a gallop
to the happenings which followed. Nay, in fancy's eye I can see you
turning the page impatiently, wondering where and when and how this
tiresome old word-spinner will make an end.
As Margery had promised, I passed out of my garret prison and out of
door on that memorable evening of October fourteenth to find the British
gone from Charlotte and the town jubilant with patriotic joy.
Having nothing to detain me, and being bound in honor by the wish of my
dear lady not to follow and give myself up to the retreating British
general, I took horse and rode to Salisbury, where I had the great good
fortune to find Dick, already breveted a captain in Colonel Washington's
command, hurrying his troop southward to whip on the British withdrawal.
Here was my chance to drown heartburnings in an onsweeping tide of
action, and then and there I became a gentleman volunteer in Dick's
company, asking nothing of my dear lad save that I might ride at his
stirrup and share his hazards.
Touching the hazards, there were plenty of them in the seven weeks
preceding and the month or more following our new general's coming to
take the field, as you may know in detail if you care to follow the
gallopings of Colonel Washington's light-horse troop through the pages
of the histories. But these have little or naught to do with my tale,
and I pass them by with the word you will anticipate; that in all the
dashes and forays and brushes with the enemy's foraging parties and
outposts, no British or Tory bullet could find its billet in the man who
was enamored of death.
As for my most miserable entanglement, the lapse of time made it neither
better nor worse, nor greatly different; and there was little in all the
skirmishings and gallopings to beat off the bandog of conscience, or
that other and still fiercer wild beast of starved love, that gnawed at
me day and night.
Though the hope for some easement would now and then lift its head, I
was reminded daily that hope itself was hopeless; and when the days
lengthened into weeks and the weeks into months, bringing no salving for
the double hurt, I knew that time could only make me love Margery the
more; that there be wounds that heal, and others that open afresh at
each remembrance of the hand that gave them.
One grain of comfort I had in all these dreary weeks. 'Twas whilst we
were quartering in Charlotte, and I had chanced to fall upon the
half-blood Scipio who had been left by Gilbert Stair to be the
caretaker of the deserted town house.
As you will remember, 'twas he who had brought me the drugged tea, and
the word I had from him made me hot with shame for the cruel imputation
I had put upon my dear lady. "Yas, sar; gib um sleep-drop to make buckra
massa hol' still twell we could tote 'im froo de window an' 'roun' de
house an' up de sta'r. Soljah gyards watch um mighty close dat night;
yes, sar!" And thus this nightmare thought of mine was turned into
another thorn to prick me on the self-accusing side. 'Twas her keen
woman's wit, and no cold-blooded plan to cheat the gallows, that made
her give me the sleeping draft. Having the object-lesson of my late
surrender before her, she had no mind to let me mar the rescue by waking
to forbid it. And when I taxed her, 'twas natural pride that drove her
to let me go on thinking the unworthy thought, if so I would.