dear lad; how she had thought he would make brazen love to her knowing
she was the wife of another. I thanked God in my heart that I had been
able to right him thus far.
After a time she said: "Why did you make me marry you, Monsieur John?
Oh, I have racked my brain so for the answer to that question. I know
you said it was to save my honor. But surely we have paid a heavier
penalty than any that could have been laid upon me had you left me as I
was."
"I was but a short-sighted fool, and no prophet," I rejoined, striving
hard to keep the bitterness of soul out of my words. "At the moment it
seemed the only way out of the pit of doubt into which my word to
Colonel Tarleton had plunged you. But there was another motive. You saw
the paper I signed that night, with Lieutenant Tybee and your father's
factor for the witnesses?"
"Yes."
"Do you know what it was?"
"No."
"'Twas the last will and testament of one John Ireton, gentleman, in
which he bequeathed to Margery, his wife, his estate of Appleby
Hundred."
"Appleby Hundred?" she echoed. "But my father--"
"Your father holds but a confiscator's title, and it, with many others,
has been voided by the Congress of North Carolina. Richard Jennifer is
my dear friend, and you--"
"I begin to understand--a little," she said, and now her voice was low
and she would not look at me. Then, in the same low tone: "But now--now
you would be free again?"
"How can you ask? As matters stand, I have marred your life and Dick's
most hopelessly. Do you wonder that I have been reckless of the hangman?
that I care no jot for my interfering life at this moment, save as the
taking of it may involve you and Richard?"
"No, surely," she said, still speaking softly. And now she gave me her
eyes to look into, and the hardness was all melted out of them. "Did you
come here, under the shadow of the gallows, to tell me this, Monsieur
John?"
"There shall be no more half-confidences between us, dear lady. I had my
leave of General Morgan on the score of our need for better information
of Lord Cornwallis's designs; but I should have come in any
case--wanting the leave, my commission as a spy, or any other excuse."
"To tell me this?"
"To do the bidding of your letter, and to say that whilst I live I shall
be shamed for the bitter words I gave you when I was sick."
"I mind them not; I had forgotten them," she said.
"But I have not forgotten, nor ever shall. Will you say you forgive me,
Margery?"
"For thinking I had poisoned you? How do you know I did not?"
"I have seen Scipio. Will you shrive me for that disloyalty, dear lady?"
"Did I not say I had forgotten it?"
"Thank you," I said, meaning it from the bottom of my heart. "Now one
thing more, and you shall send me to Father Matthieu. 'Tis a shameful
thing to speak of, but the thought of it rankles and will rankle till I
have begged you to add it to the things forgotten. That morning in your
dressing-room--"
She put up her hands as if she would push the words back.
"Spare me, sir," she begged. "There are some things that must always be
unspeakable between us, and that is one of them. But if it will help you
to know--that I know--how--how you came there--"
She was flushing most painfully, and I was scarce more at ease. But
having gone thus far, I must needs let the thought consequent slip into
words.
"Your father's motives have ever been misunderstandable to me. What
could he hope to gain by such a thing?"
I had no sooner said it than I could have bitten my masterless tongue.
For in the very voicing of the wonder I saw, or thought I saw, Gilbert
Stair's purpose. Since I had not made good my promise to die and leave
the estate to Margery, he would at least make sure of his daughter's
dowry in it by putting it beyond us to set the marriage aside as a thing
begun but not completed. So, having this behind-time flash of after-wit,
I made haste to efface the question I had asked.
"Your pardon, I pray you; I see now 'tis a thing we must both bury out
of sight. But to the other--the matter which has brought me hither; will
you put me in the way of finding Father Matthieu?"
We had talked on through the measures of a cotillion, and the dancers,
warm and wearied, were beginning to fill the entrance hall below. Our
poor excuse for privacy would be gone in a minute or two, and she spoke
quickly.
"You shall see Father Matthieu, and I will help you. But you must not
linger here. In a few days the army will be moving northward--Oh,
heavens! what have I said!"
"Nothing," I cut in swiftly; "you are speaking now to your husband--not
to the spy. Go on, if you please."
"We shall return to Appleby Hundred within the fortnight. There, if you
are still--if you desire it, you may meet the good _curé_, and--"
A much-bepowdered captain of cavalry was coming up the stair to claim
her, and I was fain to let her go. But at my passing of her to the step
below, I whispered: "I shall keep the tryst--my first and last with you,
dear lady. Adieu."
So soon as she was gone I made haste to find Richard, having, as I
feared, greatly overstayed my appointment to meet him at the door. He
was not among the promenaders in the hall, so I began to drift again,
through the ball-room and so on to where the spread table stood ringed
with its groups of nibblers. I had made no more than half the round of
the refectory when I saw Margery standing in the curtained arch, looking
this way and that, with anxious terror written plainly in her face.
"What is it?" I asked, when she had found me out.
"'Tis the worst that could happen," she whispered. "You are discovered,
both of you. Colonel Tarleton was too shrewd for us. He has let it be
known among the officers that there are two spies in the house, and
now--Hark! what is that?"
We were standing in a deep window-bay and I drew the curtain an inch or
two. The air without was filled with the trampling of hoofbeats on
greensward. A light-horse troop was surrounding the manor house.
I drew her arm in mine and led her back to the ball-room; 'twas now come
to this, that open publicity was our best safeguard. "We must find
Dick," said I. "Have you seen him?"
"No."
Together we made the slow circuit of the dancing-room, but Jennifer was
not to be found. Out of the tail of my eye I saw a soldier slipping in
here and there to stand statue-like against the wall. This brought it
to a matter of minutes, of seconds, mayhap, and still we looked in vain
for Dick.
"Oh, why did you bring him here? He will surely be taken!" Her voice was
tremulous with fear, and I answered as I could, being sore at heart, in
spite of all, that her chief concern should be for Richard.
But by now my purpose was well taken, and though it appeared that
Richard Jennifer was more than ever my successful rival, I pledge you,
my dears, I had no thought of leaving him behind. So we made another
slow round of the rooms, and whilst we were looking for Dick I spoke in
guarded whispers to warn my lady of Falconnet's return. But the warning
was not needed.
Her shudder of loathing shook the hand on my arm. "That man! Oh,
Monsieur John! I fear him day and night! If I could but run away; but we
are not finding Dick--we _must_ find him quickly!"
There was no other place to look save in the entrance hall, and at the
door one of the statue-like soldiers took two steps aside and barred the
way. I faced about and we plunged once again into the throng, but not
before I had had a glimpse of Richard in the hall beyond. When the
chance offered, I bent to whisper.
"Dick is in the hall, looking for me, go you to him and warn him. I may
not pass the door, as you have seen."
"He will not escape without you," she demurred.
"Tell him he must. Tell him I say he must!"
She glanced over her shoulder with a look in her eyes that made me think
of a wounded bird fluttering in the net of the fowler.
"Oh, 'tis hard, hard!" she murmured.
I snatched the word from her lips. "To choose between love and wifely
duty? Then I make it a command. Go, quickly!"
She went at that, and I made my way slowly to the far side of the
ball-room, taking post in a deep-recessed window giving upon the lawn.
Though it was January and the night was chill and raw, the rooms were
summer warm with the breath of the crush, and some one had swung the
casement.
Without, I could hear the horses of the waiting troop champing
restlessly at their bits, and now and again the low gentling words of
the riders. Why the colonel did not spring his trap at once I could not
guess; though I learned later that he had magnified our two-man spying
venture into a patriot foray meant to capture the whole houseful of
British officers at a swoop, and was taking his measures accordingly.
'Twas while I was listening to the champing horses that I heard my name
whispered in the darkness beyond the open casement; I turned slowly, and
the nearest of the soldier watchers began to edge his way toward my
window.
"'Tis I--Dick Jennifer," whispered the voice without. "Swing the
casement a little wider and out with you. Be swift about it, for God's
sake!"
"I am fair trapped," I whispered back. "Make off as you can."
"And leave you behind?" So much I heard; and then came sounds of a
struggle; the breath-catchings of two men locked in a strangler's hold,
a smothered oath or two, a fall on the turf under the window, followed
by the soft thudding of fist blows. I could bear it no longer. The
edging soldier had come within arm's reach, and when I swung the
casement a little wider, he laid a hand on my shoulder.
"In the name of the king!" he said; and this was all he had time or
leave to say. For at the summons I drove my fist against the point of
his wagging jaw, to send him plunging among the dancers, and the recoil
of the blow carried me clear of the window-seat with what a din and
clamor of a hue and cry to speed the parting guest as you may figure for
yourselves.
The alighting ground of the leap was the body of Dick's late antagonist
lying prone beneath the window ledge; but the lad himself was up and
ready to catch me when I stumbled over the vanquished one.
"'Tis legs for it now," he cried. "Make for the avenue and the horses at
the hitch-rail!"
At rising twenty a man may run fast and far; at rising forty he may
still run far if the first hundred yards do not burst his bellows. So
when we had darted through the thin line of encircling horsemen and were
flying down the broad avenue with all the troopers who had caught sight
of us thundering at our heels, Dick was the pace-setter, whilst I made
but a shifty second, gasping and panting and dying a thousand deaths in
the effort to catch my second wind.
"Courage!" shouted Dick, flinging the word back over his shoulder as he
ran. "There is help ahead if we can live to reach the gate!"
But, luckily for me, the help was nearer at hand. Half way down the
box-bordered drive, when I was at my last gasp, the shrill yell of the
border partizans rose from the shrubbery on the right, and a voice that
I shall know and welcome in another world cried out:
"Stiddy, boys! stiddy till ye can see the whites o' their eyes! Now,
then; give it to 'em hot _and_ heavy!"
A haphazard banging of guns followed and the pursuit drew rein in some
confusion, giving us time to reach the great gate and the horse-rail,
and to loose and mount the gray and the sorrel we had marked out.
Whilst we were about this last, Ephraim Yeates came loping down the
avenue and through the gate to vault into the saddle of the first horse
he could lay hands on; and so it was that we three took the northward
road in the silver starlight, with the pursuit now in order again and in
full cry behind us.
'Twas not until we had safely run the gantlet of the vedette lines by a
by-path known to the old hunter, and had shaken off the troopers that
were following, that I found time to ask what had become of the men who
had formed the ambush in the shrubbery.
The old man gave me his dry chuckle of a laugh.
"'Twas the same old roose de geer, as the down-country Frenchers 'u'd
say. I stole the drunken sergeant's gun and two others, and let 'em off
one to a time. As for the screechin', one bazoo's as good as a dozen, if
so be ye blow it fierce enough."
"'Twas cut and dried beforehand," Dick explained. "I had an inkling of
what was afoot from Ephraim, here, whom I stumbled on when I dropped
from the stair window that Madge opened for me. He went to set his
one-man ambush whilst I was trying to warn you."
"So," said I. "Our skins are whole, but after all we have come off with
never a word to take back to Dan Morgan--unless you have the word."
"Not I," Dick said, ruefully.
The old man chuckled again.
"Ye ain't old enough, neither one o' ye, ez I allow. It takes a right
old person to fish out the innards of an inimy's secrets. Colonel
Tarleton, hoss, foot and dragoons, with the seventh rigiment and a part
o' the seventy-first, will take the big road for Dan Morgan's camp
to-morrow at sun-up. And right soon atterwards, Gin'ral Cornwallis'll
foller on. Is that what you youngsters was trying to find out?"
XLVII
ARMS AND THE MAN
In that book he wrote--the book in which he never so much as names the
name of Ireton--my Lord Cornwallis's commissary-general, Charles
Stedman, damns Colonel Tarleton in a most gentlemanly manner for his
ill-success at the Cowpens, and would charge to his account personal the
failure of Cornwallis's plan to crush in detail the patriot Army of the
South.
Now little as I love, or have cause to love, Sir Banastre
Tarleton,--they tell me he has been knighted and now wears a
major-general's sword-knot,--'tis but the part of outspoken honest
enmity to say that we owed the victory at the Cowpens to no remissness
on the part of the young legion commander who, if he were indeed the
most brutal, was also the most active and enterprising of Lord
Cornwallis's field officers.
No, it was no remissness nor lack of bravery on the part of the enemy.
'Twas only that the tide had turned. King's Mountain had been fought and
won, and there were to be no more Camdens for us.
In the affair at the cow pastures, which followed hard upon Richard's
and my return from our flying visit to Winnsborough, the very elements
fought for us and against the British. As for instance: Tarleton, with
his famous legion of horse, and infantry enough to make his numbers
exceed ours, began his march on the eleventh and was rained on and mired
for four long days before he had crossed the Broad and had come within
scouting distance of us.
Left to himself, Dan Morgan would have locked horns with the enemy at
the fording of the Pacolet; but in the council of war, our colonel and
John Howard of the Marylanders were for drawing Tarleton still deeper
into the wilderness, and farther from the British main, which was by
this moved up as far as Turkey Creek. So we broke camp hastily and fell
back into the hill country; and on the night of the sixteenth took post
on the northern slope of a low ridge between two running streams.
For its backbone our force had some three hundred men of the Maryland
line and two companies of Virginians. These formed our main, and were
posted on the rising ground with John Howard for their commander. A
hundred and fifty paces in their front, partly screened in the open
pine, oak and chestnut wooding of the ground, were Pickens's Carolinians
and the Georgians; militiamen, it is true, but skilled riflemen, and
every man of them burning hot to be avenged on Tarleton's pillagers.
Still farther to the front, disposed as right and left wings of
outliers, were Yeates and his fellow borderers and some sixty of the
Georgians set to feel the enemy's approach; and in the reserve, posted
well to the rear of the Marylanders and Virginians, was our own
colonel's troop guarding the horses of the dismounted Georgians.
'Twas when we were all set in order to await the sun's rising and the
enemy's approach that Dan Morgan rode the lines and harangued us. He was
better at giving and taking shrewd blows than at speech-making; but we
all knew his mettle well by now, and I think there was never a man of us
to laugh at his unwonted grandiloquence and solemn periods. In the
harangue the two battle lines had their orders: to be steady; to aim
low; and above all to hold their fire till the enemy was within sure
killing distance.
"'Tis a brave old Daniel," said Dick, whilst the general was sawing the
air for the benefit of the South Carolinians. "'Twill not be his fault
if we fail. But you are older at this business than any of us, Jack;
what think you of our chances?"
I laughed, and the laugh was meant to be grim. I knew the temper of the
British regulars, and how, when well led, they could play the hammer to
anybody's anvil.
"Any raw recruit can prophesy before the fact," said I. "We have
Tarleton, his legion, the Seventh, a good third of the Seventy-first,
and two pieces of artillery in our front. If they do not give a good
account of themselves, 'twill be because Tarleton has marched them
leg-stiff to overtake us."
Dick fell silent for the moment, and when he spoke again some of Dan
Morgan's solemnity seemed to have got into his blood.
"I have a sort of coward inpricking that I sha'n't come out of this with
a whole skin, Jack; and there's a thing on my mind that mayhap you can
take off. You have had Madge to yourself a dozen times since that day
last autumn when I asked her for the hundredth time to put me out of
misery. As I have said, she would not hear me through; but she gave me a
look as I had struck her with a whip. Can you tell me why?"
The morning breeze heralding the sunrise was whispering to the leafless
branches overhead, and there was nothing in all Dame Nature's peaceful
setting of the scene to hint at the impending war-clash. Yet the war
portent was abroad in all the peaceful morning, and my mood marched with
the lad's when I gave him his answer.
"Truly, I could tell you, Richard; and it is your due to know it from no
other lips than mine. Mayhap, a little later, when restitution can go
hand in hand with repentance and confession--"
"No, no;" he cut in quickly. "Tell me now, Jack; your 'little later' may
be all too late--for me. Does she love you?--has she said she loves
you?"
"Nay, dear lad; she despises me well and truly, and has never missed the
chance of saying so. Wait but a little longer and I pledge you on the
honor of a gentleman you shall have her for your very own. Will that
content you?"
At my assurance his mood changed and in a twinkling he became the
dauntless soldier who fights, not to die, but to win and live.
"With that word to keep me I shall not be killed to-day, I promise you,
Jack; and that in spite of this damned queasiness that was showing me
the burying trench." And then he added softly: "God bless her!"
I could say amen to that most heartily; did it, and would have gone on
to add a benison of my own, but at the moment there were sounds of
galloping horses on our front, and presently three red-coated officers,
one of them the redoubtable Colonel Tarleton himself, rode out to
reconnoitre us most coolly.
I doubt if he would have been so rash had he known that Yeates and his
borderers were concealed in easy pistol-shot; but the simultaneous
cracking of a dozen rifles warned and sent the trio scuttling back to
cover.
Dick swore piteously, with the snap-shot skirmishers for a target. "The
fumblers!" he raged. "'Twas the chance of a life-time, and they all
missed like a lot of boys at their first deer stalking!"
"They will have another chance, and that speedily," I ventured; and,
truly, the chance did not tarry.
From our view point on the rising ground we could see the enemy forming
under cover of the wood; and as we looked, the two pieces of cannon
were thrust to the front to bellow out the signal for the assault.
'Twas a sight to stir the blood when the enemy broke cover into the
opener wooding of the field to the tune of the roaring cannon, the
volleyings of small arms and the defiant huzzaings of the men. The sun
was just peering over the summit of Thicketty Mountain, and his level
rays fell first upon the charging line sweeping in like a tidal wave of
red death to crumple our skirmishers before it.
"Lord!" says Richard; "if Yeates and the Indian come alive out of
that--"
But the outliers closed upon our first line in decent good order, firing
as they could; and in less time than it takes to write it down the
onsweeping wave of red was upon the Carolinians. We looked to see the
militia fire and run, home-guard fashion; but these men of Pickens's
were made of more soldierly stuff. They took the fire of the assaulting
line like veterans, giving ground only when it came to the bayonet push.
"That fetches it to us," said Richard, most coolly; drawing his claymore
when the Carolinians began to come home like spindrift ahead of the wave
of red. Then he had a steadying word for the men of his company, and a
hearty shout and a curse for some of the Georgians who had cut around
the flanks of our main to come at their horses in the rear.
But the lad's assertion that our time was come was only a half
prophecy. The Marylanders, with the Virginians on either flank, stood
firm, giving the onrushing wave a shock that went near to breaking it.
But the British were better bayoneted than we, and when it came to the
iron our lads must needs give ground sullenly, fighting their way
backward as a stubborn assault fights its way inch by inch forward.
"Here come their reserves," said Dick, pointing with his blade to a
second red line forming in the farther vistas of the wood. "Lord! shall
we never get into it?"
'Twas just here that an order sent by Colonel Howard to his first
company, directing it to charge by the flank, came near costing us a
rout. The order was misunderstood,--'twas received at the precise moment
of the upcoming of the British reserves,--and the Marylanders fell back.
In the turning of a leaf our entire fighting front gave way, and what of
the Georgians there were left in the mellay made a frantic dash for the
horses.
At this crisis John Howard saved the day for us by shrewdly executing
the most difficult manoeuver that is ever essayed by a field officer in
the heat of battle. Suffering his men to drift backward until the enemy,
sure now of success, were rushing on in disorder to give the _coup de
grâce_, he gave the quick command: "About face! Fire! Charge!"
I saw the volley delivered in the faces of the redcoats at pike's length
range; saw the Virginians on the flanks bend to encircle the enemy; saw
the rout transfer itself at the roar of the muskets from our side to the
recoiling British. Then I heard Dick's shouted command. "Charge them,
lads! they're sabering the Georgians!"
A section of Tarleton's horse had hewed its way past our flank and was
at work on the militiamen scrambling for their mounts. At it we went,
with our brave colonel a horse's length ahead of the best rider in the
troop, pistols banging and sword blades whistling, and that other
curious sound you will hear only when the cavalry engages--the heavy
dunch of the horses coming together like huge living missiles hurled
from catapults.
'Twas soon over, and the enemy, horse and foot, was flying in hopeless
confusion through the open wood. Our troop led the pursuit; and this
brings me to an incident in which thy old chronicler--figuring in the
histories as an unnamed sergeant--had his share.
It was in the hot part of the chase, and Colonel Tarleton--a true Briton
in this, that he would be first in the charge and last in the
retreat--was galloping with two of his aides in rear of the dragoons.
Since many of us knew the British commander by sight, there was a great
clapping-to of spurs to overtake and cut him off. In this race three
horses outdistanced all the others; the great bay ridden by Colonel
Washington, a snappy little gray bestridden by the colonel's boy bugler,
and my own mount.
When the crisis came, our colonel had the wind of the boy and me and
was calling on Colonel Tarleton to surrender at discretion. For answer
the three British officers wheeled and fell upon him. Never was a man
nearer his death. In a whiff, Tarleton was foining at him in front
whilst the two aides were rising in their stirrups on either hand to cut
him down.