think it made me tenderer of Dick, whose bearing to me through all these
tempestuous weeks was most nobly generous and forgiving. I say forgiving
because I was often but the curstest of companions, as you would guess.
For when I was not bent upon finding that wicket gate of death which
would let me from the path of these two, I was in a wicked tertian of
the mind whose chill was of despair, and whose fever was a hot desire
to look once more into the eyes of my dear lady before the wicket gate
should open for me.
'Twas this desire that finally drew me to her--the desire and another
thing which shall have mention in its place. The new year was now come,
and the Southern Army, as yet too weak to cope with the enemy, was cut
into two wings of observation; one under General Greene himself at
Cheraw Hill, the other and lesser in the knoll forests of the Broad with
Daniel Morgan for its chief; both watching hawk-like the down-sitting of
my Lord Cornwallis, who seemed to have taken root at Winnsborough.
As you will know, Washington's light-horse was with Morgan; and we ate,
drank and well-nigh slept in the saddle. But for all our scoutings and
outridings, and all Dan Morgan's hearty cursings at the ill success of
them, we could come by no sure inkling of Lord Cornwallis's designs. As
I have said, the British commander seemed to have taken root and was now
waiting to sprout and grow.
It was at this lack-knowledge crisis that I volunteered to go to the
British camp at Winnsborough in my old quality of spy; did this and had
my leave and orders before Dick learned of it.
Left to my own devices, I fear I should have slipped away without
telling Jennifer. But, as so many times before, fate intervened to drive
me where I had not meant to go. On the morning set for my departure I
woke to find a letter pinned to the ground beside me with an Indian
scalping-knife thrust through it.
Dick was sitting by the newly-kindled fire, nursing his knees and most
palpably waiting for me to wake and find my missive.
"What is it?" I asked, eying the ominous thing distrustfully.
"'Tis a letter, as you see. Uncanoola left it." Then, most surlily:
"'Tis from Madge, and to you. There is your name on the back of it."
At this I must needs read the letter, with the lad looking on as if he
would eat me. 'Twas dated at Winnsborough, and was brief and to the
point.
_Monsieur:
"When last we met you said the Church might undo what the Church had
done. I have spoken to the good Père Matthieu, and he has consented
to write to the Holy Father at Rome. But it is necessary that he
should have your declaration. Since the matter is of your own
seeking, mayhap you can devise a way to communicate with Père
Matthieu, who is at present with us under our borrowed roof here."_
That was all, and it was signed only with her initial. I read it through
twice and then again to gain time. For Dick was waiting.
"'Tis a mere formal matter of business," said I, when I could put him
off no longer.
"Business?" he queried, the red light of suspicion coming and going in
his eye. "What business can you have with Mistress Madge Stair, pray?"
"'Tis about--it touches the title to Appleby Hundred," said I,
equivocating as clumsily as a schoolboy caught in a fault. "Of course
you know that the confiscation act of the North Carolina Congress
re-established my right and title to the estate?"
"No," said he; "you never told me." Then: "She writes you about this?"
"About a matter touching it, as I say."
"As you did not say," he growled; after which a silence came and sat
between us, I holding the open letter in my hand and he staring gloomily
at the back of it.
When the silence grew portentous I told him of my design to go a-spying.
He looked me in the eye and his smile was not pleasant to see.
"You are lying most clumsily, Jack; or at best you are telling me but
half the truth. You are going to see Mistress Margery."
"That is altogether as it may happen," I retorted, striving hard to keep
down the flame of insensate rivalry which his accusings always kindled
in me.
"It is not. Winnsborough is neither London nor yet Philadelphia, that
you may miss her in the crowd. And you do not mean to miss her."
"Well? And if I do chance to see her--what then?"
"Don't mad me, Jack. You should know by this what a fool she has made of
me."
"'Tis your own folly," I rejoined hotly. "You should blame neither the
lady nor the man to whom she has given nothing save--"
"Save what?" he broke in savagely.
I recoiled on the brink as I had so many times before. The months of
waiting for the death I craved had hardened me.
"Save a thing you would value lightly enough without her love. Let us
have done with this bickering; find the colonel and ask his leave to go
with me, if you like. Then you may do the love-making whilst I do the
spying."
"No," said he; "not while you stand it upon such a leg as that."
I reached across and gripped his hand and wrung it. "Shall we never have
the better of these senseless vaporings?" I cried. "'Tis as you say; I
can neither live sane nor die mad without another sight of her, Dick,
and that is the plain truth. And yet, mark me, this next seeing of her
will surely set a thing in train that will make her yours and not mine.
Get your leave and come with me on your own terms. Mayhap she will show
you how little she cares for me, and how much she cares for you."
So this is how it came about that we two, garbed as decent planters and
mounted upon the sleekest cobs the regiment afforded, took the road for
Winnsborough together on a certain summer-fine morning in January in the
year of battles, seventeen hundred and eighty-one.
XLV
IN WHICH WE FIND WHAT WE NEVER SOUGHT
'Tis fifty miles as a bird would fly it from the grazing uplands of the
Broad known as the Cowpens to the lower plantation region lying between
that stream and the farther Catawba or Wateree; and Richard Jennifer and
I ambled the distance leisurely, as befitted our mission and disguise,
cutting the journey evenly in half for the first night's lodging, which
we had at the house of one Philbrick--as hot a Tory as we pretended to
be.
From our host of the night we learned that within two days the British
outposts on the Wateree and the Broad had been advanced; and there were
rumors in the air that Lord Cornwallis, who was hourly expecting General
Leslie with two thousand of Sir Henry Clinton's men from New York, would
presently move on to the long-deferred conquest of North Carolina.
"Has Cornwallis lost his wits?" Dick would say, when we were a-jog on
the southward road again. "'Tis a braver lordling than I gave him credit
for being--if he will put his head in a trap that will close behind him
and cut him off from his line and base."
I laughed. "You may wager Jennifer House against an acre of the Cowpens
that Lord Charles will do no such unsoldierly thing. If this rumor be
true, we have heard only the half of it."
"And the other half will be?--"
"That my Lord Cornwallis will do his prettiest to pull the teeth of one
or the other of the trap-jaws before he trusts himself within them."
Jennifer was silent for an ambling minute or two. Then he said: "'Twill
be our teeth he'll try to pull, then. The Broad is nearer than the
Pedee; and ours is the weaker of the two jaws."
"Right you are," said I. "And now we know what we have to discover."
"Anan?" he queried.
"We must learn by hook or crook who is to be sent against Dan Morgan,
and when."
"That should be easy--if the use of it afterward be not choked out of us
at a rope's end."
"We can divide the rope's-end chance of failure by two. We may work
together as the opportunity offers, but once within the lines we must
pass as strangers to each other, or at most as chance acquaintances of
the road."
"Good," said he; and then his jaw dropped. "But what if one of us be
taken? Never ask me to stand by stranger-wise and see you hanged, Jack!"
"I shall both ask it and promise to do the same by you. Your hand on it
before we go a step farther, if you please."
"'Tis out of all reason," he demurred.
"'Tis the only reasonable course. Bethink you, this is no knight-errant
venture; we are two of Dan Morgan's soldiers bent upon doing a thing
most needful for the welfare of the country and its cause. 'Tis a duty
higher than any obligation friendship lays on Richard Jennifer or John
Ireton."
At this he yielded the point, though I could see that the proposal
jumped little with the promptings of his generous heart.
"'Tis a scurvy trap you have set for me," he grumbled. "The risk is
chiefly yours, and you know it. You are known to Lord Cornwallis, and to
God knows how many more of them, and belike--"
The interruption came in the shape of a troop of redcoat horsemen
galloping in the road to meet us, and we were shortly surrounded and put
sharply to the question. We answered each for himself. Dick was a
loyalist from Yorkville way, eager to be set in arms against the bandit
Daniel Morgan. I was a refugee from "hornets'-nest" Mecklenburg, also
bent upon revenge.
The troop officer passed us on, something doubting, as I suspected. But
we were riding in the right direction, and he was unwilling to clog
himself with a pair of plain country gentlemen held in leash as
prisoners.
A few miles farther down the road the same brace of lies got us safely
through the loosely drawn vedette line, and by evening we were in sight
of our goal.
Viewing it from the rising ground of approach, Winnsborough appeared
less as a town than as a partly fortified camp. The few houses of the
village were lost in the field of tents, huts and troop shelters, and
measuring by the spread of these, it would seem that my Lord
Cornwallis's army had been considerably augmented since I had last seen
it in Charlotte. I spoke of this, but Dick was intent upon the business
of the moment.
"Aye; there are enough of them, God knows. But tell me, Jack--I'm new to
this game--what's to do first when we are among them?"
I laughed at him. "You are my troop commander, Captain Jennifer. 'Tis
for you to make the dispositions."
"Have your joke and be hanged to you. There are no captains here."
"If you leave it to me, we shall ride boldly to the tavern, put up as
travelers, and listen to the gossips, each for himself," I replied; and
this is what we did.
The village tavern, servilely bearing the king's arms thinly painted
over the palmetto tree of South Carolina on its swinging sign-board, was
a miserable doggery, full to overflowing with a riffraff of carousing
soldiery. Separating by mutual consent in the public tap-room, Richard
and I presently drifted together again at a small table in a corner,
with a black boy in attendance to set before us such poor entertainment
as the hostelry afforded.
"Well, what luck?" asked Dick, mumbling it behind his hand, though he
might safely have shouted it aloud in the din and clamor of the place.
I shook my head. "Nothing as yet, save that I overheard a tipsy corporal
telling his tipsier sergeant that the officers would be holding a revel
to-night at a Tory manor house situate somewhere beyond the camp
confines to the northward; the house of one Master Marmaduke Harndon, if
I heard the name aright." Then I added: "This rabble is too drunken to
serve our purpose. 'Tis only the common soldiery, and we shall learn
nothing here."
"There was at least one who was not a ranker," said Dick, and there was
something akin to awe in his voice. Then he leaned across the table to
whisper. "Jack, I've fair had a fright!"
I smiled. Fear, of God, man or the devil, was not one of the lad's
weaknesses.
"You may grin as you please," he went on; "but answer me this; do the
dead come back to life?"
"Not this side of the resurrection reveille, if we may believe the
dominies."
"Then I have seen a ghost--a most horrible mask of a man we both know to
our cost."
"Name him and I will tell you whether he be a ghost or no."
"'Tis the ghost of Frank Falconnet; or else it is what of the man
himself the fire hath left," said Dick, and I marked his shiver at the
word.
"No!" said I.
"I tell you yes."
I sprang up, but the lad reached across the table and smote me back into
the chair.
"Softly, old firebrand; 'twas you who said the public matter must take
precedence of the private. Moreover, if this be Francis Falconnet whom I
have seen, your sweetest revenge on him will be to let him live--as he
is."
"I will kill him as I would a wild beast," I raged, thinking of that
midnight scene in the great forest when my sweet lady had gone on her
knees to this fiend in human guise. "And so should you," I added, "if
you care aught for the honor of the woman who loves you."
But now it was this hot-headed Richard I have drawn for you who saw
farthest and clearest.
"All in good time," he said, coolly. "At this present we have Dan
Morgan's fish to fry, and sitting here saucing this devil's mess of a
supper with thoughts of private revenge will never fry it. Set your wits
at work; Falconnet's ghost has put mine hopelessly out of gear. Ye gods!
but 'twas a most fearsome thing to look at!"
I did not answer him at once, and whilst I plied knife and fork for the
sake of appearances, I would think upon what he had discovered. This
reappearance of Francis Falconnet was not to be passed over lightly.
What would he do, or seek to do? Nay, what devilish thing was it he
might not do? If the fire had burned his passion out, it had doubtless
kindled a feller blaze of revenge. And if his thirst was for vengeance,
how could he quench it in a deeper draft than by harrying the woman we
both loved? 'Twas only by a mighty effort that I could drag myself back
to Dick's urging and the needs of the hour.
"To have some chance of hearing gossip to our purpose, we must make
shift to gain admittance to this officers' rout at the manor house," I
said.
"The devil!" quoth Dick, "I venture that's easier said than done--for
two plain country gentlemen."
"Never fear; there will be others there lacking fine clothes, and so the
throng be great enough, we may pass current in it."
Richard pushed his plate back with a grimace of disgust.
"Let us be at it, then. Another grapple with this pig-bait will finish
me outright."
A half-hour later we were tethering our cobs at the already crowded
hitching-rail in front of a goodly mansion some mile or more beyond the
camp limits on the northward road; a rambling manor house to the full as
large as Appleby Hundred, with a shaven lawn in front, and within,
lights and music and sounds of revelry.
"By the Lord Harry! but this Master Harndon would seem to be a man of
substance," says Dick. And then: "Can you pick out a good horse in the
dark, Jack? It may come to a race for our necks, by and by, and these
cobs of ours are too broad-backed for speed."
I said I could, and so we went deeper into the cavalcade at the
hitch-rail and marked out two clean-limbed chargers, a gray and a
sorrel; this before we gave the final touches to our plan of action and
passed up the broad avenue to the manor house.
XLVI
HOW OUR PIECE MISSED FIRE AT HARNDON ACRES
For a doorkeeper some one or another of the officer guests had set a
sergeant on guard; but though the night was yet young the man passed us
into the great entrance hall with a hiccough and a wink that spoke thus
early of an open house and freely flowing good cheer.
As we had hoped to find it, this rout at Master Harndon's was a stifling
jam, and a good half of the guests were in civilian plain clothes,
neither Paris nor London having as yet reached so far into the Carolina
plantations to proscribe homespun and to prescribe the gay toggeries of
the courts. This for the men, I hasten to add; for then, as now, our
American dames and maids would put a year's cropping of a plantation on
their backs, thinking nothing of it; and there was no lack of shimmering
silks and stiff brocades, of high-piled _coiffures_, paint, patches and
powder at this merrymaking at Harndon Acres.
Lacking an introducer, and wanting, moreover, nothing save the leave to
have standing-room in the throng as lookers-on, we gave Mr. Marmaduke
Harndon, a sleek, rotund little gentleman, smirking and bowing and
tapping the lid of his silver snuff-box, a wide berth; and with an
agreement to meet later for the comparing of notes, Jennifer and I went
apart at the door of the ball-room, each to lose himself in the
assembled company as an otter slips into a pool, namely, without
ruffling it.
'Twas easily done. Winnsborough had by this time become a refuge camp
for all the loyalists in the region roundabout, and there were many in
the present company who were strangers one to another, uneasy, shifting
figures in the gay throng, beneath the notice alike of haughty dames and
prinking dandy officers. Beneath the notice, I say; yet I would qualify
this, for more than one of the epauletted macaronis trod upon my toes or
bustled me rudely in the crush till I trembled, not for my own
self-control, but for Richard's, making sure that the lad was having no
more gentlemanly welcome than I.
'Twas with some notion of finding ampler room for my feet that I edged
away through the fringing wall-crowd in the dancing-room toward a
curtained archway at the back. As yet I had overheard naught save the
silly persiflage of the belles and beaux--a word here and another
there--and I was beginning to fear that this was as poor a place to look
for information as was the pothouse, when a thing befell to set me
a-quiver with all the thrillings the human heart-strings can thrum to in
one and the same instant of time.
I had shouldered my way out of the ball-room medley and into the less
crowded room at the back. This proved to be a rear withdrawing-room
serving for the nonce as a refectory. There were little groups and knots
of chatterers standing about; fair maids, each with her ring of
redcoated courtiers, laughing and jesting or picking daintily at the
viands on the great oaken table in the midst.
Rounding the promontory of the table's-end to come to anchor in some
quiet eddy where I could listen unnoticed for the word I was thirsting
for, I must needs entangle the button of my coat-cuff in the delicate
lace of a lady's sleeve in passing.
The wearer of the sleeve had her back to me, and I saw the white
shoulders go up in a little shrug of petulance whilst I sought to
disentangle the button. Then she turned to face me and the words of
apology froze on my lips. 'Twas Mistress Margery, standing at ease
with--good heavens! with Richard Jennifer and Colonel Banastre Tarleton
for her company!
Here was a halter, with a double snaffle at the end of it, was the
thought that flashed upon me; and I was gathering my wits to brazen it
out in some such manner as to leave Jennifer unattainted, when my lady
give a little start and a shriek.
"La, Mr. Septimus; how you startled me!" she cried. Then, without a
tremor of the lip or a pause for breath-taking, she presented me:
"Colonel Tarleton; Mr. Septimus Ireton, of Iretondene in Virginia." And
next to Dick: "Mr. Richard; my very good friend, Mr. Ireton."
'Twas done so cleverly and with such an air that even Dick, who had
known her from childhood, was struck dumb with admiration, as his face
sufficiently advertised. And, indeed, I had much ado to play my own part
with any decent self-possession, though I did make shift to bow stiffly,
and to say: "I see I should have brought the Iretondene title deeds with
me to make you sure that I am not my rebel cousin John, Mistress
Margery. Your servant, Colonel Tarleton; and yours, Mr. Richard."
Dick's bow was an elaborate hiding of his tell-tale face; but the
colonel's was the slightest of nods, and I could feel the sloe-black
eyes of him boring into my very soul.
Had my lady given him but a moment's time I make no doubt he would have
come instantly at the truth and the little farce would have been turned
into a tragedy on the spot. But she gave him no time. The spinet in the
ball-room alcove was tinkling out the overture to a minuet, and she laid
the tips of her dainty fingers on the colonel's arm.
"This will be ours to walk through, will it not, Colonel Tarleton?" she
said, playing the sprightly minx to the very climax of perfection. Then
she dipped us a curtsy. "_Au revoir_, gentlemen. 'Tis a thousand pities
you had not joined sooner and so had the red coat and small-sword to
grace you here."
When they were gone, Dick laughed sardonically.
"Saw you ever such a cool-blood little jade in all your life? 'Twas with
me as it was with you; I, too, stumbled upon them, and the colonel
bustled me and set his heel on my foot. I daresay I should have had
myself in irons in another moment but for Madge. She slipped in between
and introduced us as sweetly as you please."
"Nevertheless," said I, "the colonel recognized us both."
"No! Think you so?"
"'Tis certain enough to play upon. What we do now must be done quickly
or not at all. What have you overheard?"
He swore softly. "Never a cursed word; less than nothing of any interest
to Dan Morgan."
"We must try again. 'Twill surely be talked of here if the army is about
to move. Do you take a turn in the anteroom and meet me in a quarter of
an hour at the outer door."
At the word, Dick promptly lost himself in the throng whilst I made a
slow circuit of the refreshment table. Once I thought I had the clue
when a girl hanging on the arm of an infantry lieutenant said: "Will it
be true that you will presently go out to hunt the rebels down, Mr.
Thornicroft?" But the prudent lieutenant smiled and put her off
cleverly, leaving his fair questioner--and me--none the wiser.
I went on, drifting aimlessly from group to group and dallying of set
purpose. If I had read Colonel Tarleton's glance aright, the moments
were growing diamond-precious; but as yet neither half of my errand was
done. Come what might, I must see Margery again and have her tell me
where and how to find the priest; and 'twas borne in upon me that she
would come back to seek me as soon as she could be free of her partner
in the dance.
The forecast as to my lady had its fulfilment while yet the spinetter
was striking out the final chords of the minuet. A lady dropped her
kerchief, and I was before her swain in stooping to pick it up. As I
bowed low in returning the bit of lace to its owner, a voice that I had
learned to know and love whispered in my ear.
"Make your way to the clock landing of the stair; I must have speech
with you," it said; and for a wonder I was cool enough to obey with no
more than a sidelong glance at my lady passing on the arm of another
epauletted dangler.
She was before me at the meeting place, and there was no laughing
welcome in the deep-welled eyes. Instead, they flashed me a look that
made me wince.
"What folly is this, sir?" she demanded. "Will you never have done
taking my honor and your own life into your reckless hands?"
I bowed my head to the storm. With the dagger of my miserable errand
sticking in my heart there was no fight in me.
"I am but come to do your bidding," I said, slowly, for the words cost
me sorely in the coin of anguish. "I had your letter, and if you will
say how I may find Father Matthieu--"
She broke me in the midst. "_Mon Dieu!_" she cried. "Could I guess that
you would come here, into the very noose of the gallows? Oh, how you do
heap scorn on scorn upon me! Once you made me give silent consent to a
falsehood you told; twice, nay, thrice, you have made me disloyal to the
king; and now you come again to make me look the world in the face and
tell a smiling lie to shield you! O Holy Mother, pity me!" And with this
she put her face in her hands and began to sob.
Now we were only measurably isolated on the stair, and some sense of the
hazard we took--a hazard involving her as well as Richard and
myself--steadied me with a sudden shock.
"Control yourself," I whispered. "What is done, is done; and the misery
is not all yours to suffer. Tell me how I may find the priest, and I
will do my errand and begone."
"You can not stay to find him now--you must not," she insisted, coming
out of the fit of despair with a rebound. "He is in the town--indeed, I
know not where he is just now. Can you not endure it a little longer,
Captain Ireton?"
"No," said I, sullenly. "I have been living a lie all these months to
the friend I love best, and I will not do it more."
Could I be mistaken? Surely there was a flash not of anger in the eyes
that were lifted to mine, and a tremulous note of eagerness in the
voice that said: "Then Dick does not know?--you have not told him?"
"No; I have told no one."
"Poor Dick!" she said softly. "I thought he knew, and I--"