horses were nosing niftily at their strange surroundings, and the
hoof-strokes of the redcoat troop could be plainly heard on the gravel
of the avenue, that I chanced to lift my eyes to the stair. There,
looking down upon us with speechless astoundment in the blue-gray eyes,
stood our dear lady.
Another instant and she was with us, stamping her foot and crying: "_Mon
Dieu!_ what is this? Are you gone mad, both of you?"
Dick's answer was another burst of laughter, loud enough, you would
think, to be heard by those beyond the door.
"Behold four witless brute beasts, Mistress Madge--two horses and two
asses," he said. And then to old Anthony: "Open the door, Tony, and
invite the gentlemen in."
But Margery was before him. Ah, my dears, a man's wit is like a
matchlock, fizzing and sputtering its way noisily to find the powder
whilst the enemy hath time to ride up and saber the musketeer; but a
woman's is like the spark in a tinder-box--a quick snip of flint and
steel and you have your fire. In a flash my lady had torn down the heavy
curtains from an inner doorway and was carpeting a horse path for us to
the rear.
"Quick!" she cried; "lead them gently, for the love of heaven!"
She went before us, padding the way with whatever came first to hand,
rugs, curtains, table-coverings, and I know not what besides; and by the
time the British troopers were hammering at the outer door, we were deep
within the old mansion and had made shift to drag the unwilling horses
by one and two-step descents to a room half under and half out of
ground, which served as a sort of ante-dungeon to the wine cellar.
Here I thought we might be safe for the moment, but not so my lady.
Calling Dick to help her--in all the fierce haste of it I marked that
she called to Dick and not to me--she unlocked and opened the door to
the wine vault, and in a trice we two and the luckless horses were
safely jailed in pitchy darkness, with the stout oaken door slammed
behind us, the bolt shot in the lock, and the key withdrawn, as we could
see by the spot of light which came through the keyhole.
Richard was the first to break the grave-like silence of our dungeon.
"Lord!" said he; "did ever you see such sharp-wit work in all your
adventures? What a soldier's wife she'd make!"
I smiled at that, being safe to smile in the darkness. For was she not a
soldier's wife? I hugged that saying as we cling to the thing that is
slipping from us. True, I was here to give her freely over to another
and a better soldier; but while she was mine I would claim her, in my
heart, at least.
The excitement of the narrow escape somewhat overpast, we sat long on
the edge of a wine-bin, speculating in whispers as to what would befall,
and listening vainly for the footsteps which would forecast our release
or our capture by the enemy. But when no sounds, threatening or
encouraging, came from the upper world, we groped about till we found
the cellar candle, lighted it with flint and steel and tinder-box, and
took a survey of our jail.
'Twas the same old cavernous wine vault of my youthful remembrance, such
an one as has not its mate in all Carolina to this good day, as I firmly
believe. My father's hobby was to build for all eternity; and this
stone-arched cellarage was more like a cathedral crypt than a store-room
for a country gentleman's table-stock of wines.
Dick held the candle aloft and scanned the bottle racks, none so greatly
depleted as they might have been, had any hand but that close-fisted one
of Gilbert Stair's taken the key in charge after my father.
"There is no lack of potables," says my candle-bearer; "but, unhappily,
there is never so much as a dry crust to soak in them. And as for the
horses, I'll venture they'd give it all, pint for pint, for a good
feeding of oats."
"Truly," said I; and then we fell to stripping the straw casings from
the bottles of madeira to give the poor beasts a feed of rye-stalks
which had grown and ripened their grain many a year before either the
sorrel or the gray was foaled.
Having no time-measure save our own impatience, it seemed a weary while
before we heard the key rasping in the lock of our prison door.
"'Tis Madge," said Dick, with a true lover's gift of second sight; and
'twas he who went to help her swing the thick-slabbed oak.
What passed between them I did not hear, nor want to hear. But when the
door was swung to and locked again I knew we were not free to go
abroad.
Richard came back to me in the inner vault bearing gifts; the better
part of a boiled ham with bread to match, a jug of water from the well,
and more candles.
"We are not to starve, but that is our best news, thus far," he said.
"Of all the houses on our side of the river, Lord Cornwallis must needs
pitch upon this manor of Appleby for his rallying headquarters. Madge
can not guess when he and the army will be gone, and she is frighted
stiff for our sakes."
This was sober news, indeed, but we could do naught but make the best of
it. As for me, I was most anxious to know if the good priest were at
Appleby, and what of my chance for seeing him; but of this I could say
no word to Richard.
So, when we had done full justice to my lady's bounty, we stowed the
horses in the deepest of the vaults and stripped more of the bottle
coverings for them. But having only the jug of water, we could do no
more than swab their mouths out with a wetted kerchief in lieu of giving
them a drink.
When all was done we sat ourselves down to wait as we must; and when the
silence and solitude had wrought their perfect work, we fell to talking
in low tones to match the place and circumstance; and I do think in
those quiet hours, walled in as we were from all the disturbments of the
outer world, we came closer than we had come for many months.
And while we sat and talked the long day wore on to evening and a storm
came on, as we could determine, though no otherwise than by the muffled
rolling of the thunder which, since we could not see the lightning nor
hear the rain, we took at first for the booming of distant cannon.
I can not tell you all we spoke of in that day-long immurement. There
was some talk of the great struggle for independence, now, though we
knew it not, drawing near to its close; and there was much of
reminiscence, harking back to the exciting and tragic scenes in which we
two had had our entrances and our exits. Also, there was a tribute paid
to the memory of our true old friend and trusted comrade in arms,
Ephraim Yeates, so lately gone to his own place. 'Twas at this time I
learned what of the old man's gifts and peculiarities I have
hereinbefore set down; for Richard had known him long and well.
From speaking of old Ephraim and his sudden taking-off we came to things
more nearly present; and at length Dick would lay a finger gently upon
the mystery in which he was as yet walking as one blindfolded.
"'Tis not a shameful thing; don't tell me it is that, Jack," he would
say; and I gave him speedy assurance upon that head.
"No,'tis never shameful; so much I may lay an oath to."
"Yet you said once--in that black night when I went mad and would have
killed you--that your life lay between Madge and me."
"So it did--and does. And God will bear me witness, dear lad, that I
have worn that life upon my sleeve."
"Nay," he said, very gently; "you need not go so high for a witness;
have I not seen?"
We fell silent upon that, and there, in the candle-yellowed gloom of our
dungeon harbor, I fought the fellest battle of my life; fought it and
won it, too, my dears, once and for all. There was a cold sweat on my
brow when I began in low tones to tell him the story of that fateful
night in June. At rising forty 'tis no light thing to lose a
friend--nay, to turn a friend's love into scorn and loathing and bitter
hatred.
He heard me through without a word; and at the end, when I looked to see
him spring up and bid me draw and let him have his one poor chance for
satisfaction, he still sat motionless, winking and staring at the
guttering candle. And when he spoke 'twas with a quivering of the lip
that was not of anger.
"Dear God," said he; "'tis I who stand in the way."
"No; for she loves you, Richard, as dearly as she hates me. And 'tis not
so hopeless now, else I had never screwed together the courage to tell
you all this. She has at last consented to the Church's undoing of the
incomplete marriage--'twas this she wrote me about when we were at the
Cowpens, and 'twas her letter that set me upon going to Winnsborough to
see the priest. I missed him there, as you know; but I am here now by
her own appointment to meet him in her father's house."
He shook his head slowly. "You've killed the hope in me, Jack. I do
think you are all at sea; 'tis you she loves--not me."
I could afford to smile at that.
"If you could see how she has ever gone about to prove that she did not
love me, you would rest easy on that score, dear lad."
But he would only shake his head again.
"'Twas to save your life she rode in on us that morning under the oaks
in the glade."
"'Twas a womanly horror of a duel and bloodshed, more belike," said I.
"But she has saved your life thrice since then, as you confess."
"Yes; from a strained sense of wifely duty, as she took good care to
tell me."
"None the less--ah, Jack, you do not know her as I do; she would never
have consented to stand before the priest with you had there not been
something warmer than hatred in her heart."
"'Twas a bitter necessity, fairly forced upon her. Tell me; had there
been a spark of love for me in her heart, would she have treated me as
the dust beneath her feet on that long infaring from the western
mountains? She never spoke a word to me, Dick, in all those weeks."
"Which may prove no more than that you said or did something to cut her
to the quick. 'Twould be well in your way, Jack. She is as sensitive as
she should be, and you are blunter than I--which is the worst I could
say of you."
"No, no; you are far beside the mark. You forget that the breaking of
the marriage is of her own proposing--at least, I should say I only
hinted at it."
"There may be two sides to that, as well. Have you ever told her that
you love her, Jack?"
"Surely not! I have been all kinds of a poltroon in this matter, as I
have confessed, but this one thing I have not done."
"Well," said he, speaking slowly, as one who thinks the path out word by
word, "what if she believes 'tis you who want your freedom? What if you
have made her that bitterest thing in all the world--a woman scorned?"
I would not listen to him more.
"This is all the merest folly, Richard, as I will prove to you beyond
the question of a doubt. Do you mind that little interval in the
Cherokees' torture-play when they came to bind us afresh for the
burning?"
"I mind no more of that horror-night than I can help."
"Well, in that hour, when death was waiting for all three of us, she
wrote a little farewell note to the man she loved. 'Twas for you, Dick,
but her Indian messenger blundered and gave it me."
He got upon his feet at that and began to pace slowly back and forth
under the gloomy archings. But ere long he paused to grasp and wring my
hand most lovingly, saying, "Who am I, Jack, to buy my happiness at such
a price?"
"Nay, lad; 'tis neither you nor I who should figure greatly in the
matter; 'tis our dear lady. She must e'en have what she longs for, if
you, or I, or both of us, should have to go above stairs and put our
necks into my Lord Cornwallis's noose."
"Now, by heaven, Jack Ireton, 'tis you who are the true lover and the
gentleman; and I am naught but a selfish churl with my face in my own
trencher!" he burst out, wringing my hand yet again. "'Tis as you say;
yet I will not be driven from this; for aught you have told me to prove
it otherwise, Madge has yet to choose between us, and she shall have
that choice, fairly and squarely, and knowing that you love her, before
we three go apart again."
I smiled, and tried hard to keep the heart-soreness out of my reply.
"As for that, my lad, I have had my stirrup-cup long since, and have
drained it to the dregs with a wry face, as an old man must when a young
man brews for him. But if the priest--"
Jennifer had resumed his pacing sentry beat, and at this juncture a most
singular thing happened. Though we were sealed in, as I have said, from
all the outer world with no crack nor cranny for a peephole, a blinding
flash of lightning, blue and ghastly, came suddenly to fill the whole
cellar with its vivid glare.
"Good Lord!" says Richard, clapping his hands to his eyes; "where did
that come from?"
I was wholly at a loss for a moment. Then I remembered that there was,
or had been in my boyhood days, a narrow, iron-barred window in the
farther end of the wine cellar, opening beneath that other window of the
great south room where I had climbed to spy upon the conspirators on the
night of Captain John Stuart's visit to Appleby. So it chanced that when
another flash came I was looking straight over Dick's head at the place
in the farther arching of the vault where the little window should be.
The momentary glare showed me the low square of the window opening, and
framed for a flitting instant therein a face of most devilish malignity
peering in upon me with foxy-fierce eyes; the face, to wit, of Gilbert
Stair's lawyer-factor.
In a twinkling the vision was gone, and in the space between the flash
and the crash there was a sound as of a wooden shutter slamming in
place. Dick heard the noise without knowing the cause of it, being so
far beneath the window as to see nothing but the lighting of the glare.
"What was that?" he demanded, when the thunder gave him leave.
"'Twas our trapper clapping the shutter on the window over your head,"
said I. "He was looking in to see if we were ripe for hanging."
"'Tis no time for riddles; what mean you?"
"I mean that we shall have a file of redcoats down upon us as soon as
ever Mr. Owen Pengarvin can give the alarm."
"Oho!" said Dick; and then he pulled his sword from its scabbard, and I
could see the battle-veins swelling in his forehead. "They can hang me
when I am too dead to cut and thrust more--not sooner."
I got me up and went to find the sword which I had laid aside in the
horse-baiting. 'Twas a poor blade--one of our captures at the Cowpens;
and when I tried its temper it snapped in my hand.
"Never mind," said I; "give me the broadsword scabbard and I will play
it as a cudgel, 'tis long enough and full heavy enough."
He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder, swearing out his love for me
as if I had said something moving. "You are every inch a soldier, Jack;
you would put heart into a worse craven than I am ever like to be." And
he loosed the iron scabbard and gave it me.
Now ensued a most painful time of waiting and listening for the tramp of
our takers. We posted us near the door, a little to the side, so that
its inswing might not catch us; and so, bracing for the onset, we waited
till the strain of suspense grew so great that we both started like
frighted children, when finally the key was thrust into the lock and the
bolt shot back.
But when the heavy door gave inward, as at the pushing of a weak or
timid hand, we saw our dear lady standing in the half gloom of the
ante-dungeon, breathless and trembling with excitement.
"Come!" she panted; "come quickly--there is not an instant to spare.
The factor has betrayed you; he will be here directly with the
dragoons!"
I cut in swiftly. "He has not seen Dick; does he know we are both here?"
She had one hand on her heart to still its tumultuous beating, and the
other held behind her, and she could scarce speak more for her eagerness
to have us out and away.
"No; it was you he saw; and my father heard Colonel Tarleton give the
order. Lieutenant Tybee is to take a file of his troopers and hang
without grace the man he will find hiding in the wine cellar; those were
his very words. Oh, merciful heaven! will you never stir?"
Richard gave a low whistle.
"So Tybee has come alive in good time to square the old account with
us," he would say; but my wonder was greater on the other head. "Your
father?" I gasped. "And he sent you to save me?"
"Surely," she said. "Are you not once again his guest, Captain Ireton?"
Then she stamped her foot, and though the candle-light was of the
poorest, I could see her eyes flash. "Will you squander the last moment
in silly questions?" she burst out. "Come, I say!"
I smiled. "Give me that sword you are hiding behind you and I will keep
the door whilst you spirit Dick away. He is not to be in this."
She gave me the weapon, though not, as I made sure, in any consenting to
my proposal. I could have cried out in sheer joy when I found the sword
to be my own good blade of proof--the ancient Ferara willed me by my
father.
Sharp as the crisis was, I make no doubt I should have asked her then
and there how she came by the blade I had last seen when my Lord
Cornwallis tried to break it over his knee; but the march of events
suddenly became too swift for me. There was a sound of cautious
footsteps in the inclined passage leading from the butler's pantry
above, and our chance for escape that way was gone.
"Too late!" said Dick; and with an arm about Margery he whipped behind
the great oaken door opened back against the cellar wall, whispering me
to follow.
We were scarce in hiding, with the door well drawn back to screen us,
when the cautious footsteps came slowly into the out-cellar. Peeping
through the crack behind the door we saw Pengarvin--alone.
What brought him there without his tale of armed men at his back no man
will ever know; but since his ways were always crooked and devious, I
guessed he would not wish to appear in the matter in his own proper
person, and yet could not deny himself a 'forehand peep to see if the
trap were still safe shut and secure.
'Twas evident he was much disconcerted at finding the door open and the
wine vault apparently empty. At first he would start and dodge as if to
run away; then his rage got the better of his caution and he had one of
those senseless cursing fits I have before told you of, raving and
swearing and promising all manner of fiendish recompense to Mistress
Margery when he should have her in his power.
A little longer dwelling upon this variation of the cursing
theme--ravings in which Dick learned for the first time of the factor's
design to marry my widow and the estate--and I do think the lad would
have gone out to make him sing another tune. But now the factor left off
suddenly to cock his ear and listen, and afterward to come tiptoeing
into the cellar, all eyes to spy and legs to run if a mouse should but
squeak at him.
He was muttering to himself as he passed our hiding place.
"By all the devils, he must be here, some gait. The little jade would
have warned him if she had known; but it is known only to the doddering
old miser and me, and the girl is safe in her bed-room. Happen this
devil of an Austrian captain has drunken himself sodden; ah, that would
be a rare jest--to wake with the rope around his neck! If those cursed,
slow-footed dragoons would but come! Damme! I'll have that bull-necked
lieutenant cashiered if his high and mighty loitering balks me in this."
He stopped before the wine cask whereon the flickering candle stood and
craned his neck to look beyond it. The candle was guttering smokily, and
he reached a shaking thumb and finger to pluck the "dead man" from the
wick. At that we heard him muttering again.
"'Twas a play to make the very devil envious; and to have it marred by
that pig of a lieutenant! No one knew me in it save the legion colonel,
and could we have sprung the trap fair and softly, not even Mistress
Margery herself could have laid this swashbuckler's death at my door.
But now he's gone--vanished like a straw bailee, and all because that
damned understrapper of Colonel Tarleton's must needs turn up his nose
at a bit of sheriff's work. Curse him!"
The candle was burning brightly now, and he crept catlike around the
cask to peer into the bin beyond it. Just then the shutter to the little
window of espial fell open with a shrill creaking of its rusty hinges,
and a blue glare of lightning came to prick out every nook and corner of
the cellar. Being almost within a blade's length of the factor, I saw
him plainly; saw him start back and put his hands to his face and drop
down all of a tremble on the bin's edge, where I had been sitting when
he discovered me.
To second the flash a prolonged drum-roll of thunder dinned upon the
still air of the vault, and mingled with the thunder came other flashes,
searing the eye and making the candle flame appear as a sickly orange
halo in the blue-white glare. What with the play of the storm artillery
we could neither see nor hear for the moment; but when the candle-light
came to its own again the scene had changed as if by magic. Under cover
of the thunder din a squad of dragoons had come to ring the factor in
where he sat upon the edge of the wine bin.
"So-ho!" said my good friend Tybee, with a little strident laugh, "'tis
you I am to take out and hang, is it, Master Lawyer? I thought mayhap
you'd double on your track once too often, and so it seems you have. Up
with you and come along."
All in a flash Pengarvin was up and bursting out in a trembling
frenzy-fit of protestation.
"Oh, 'tis all a mistake, my good sir--a devil's own trap! I--I am not
the man; I pledge you my sacred word! I--hands off, you cursed villains,
or I'll have the law on you!" this last when one of the men cast the
noose of a rope over his head whilst a second drew his arms to his sides
in the looping of another cord. "By God! you shall all smart for this;
all, I say! Take me to Colonel Tarleton. The king has no stancher friend
in all the province than I. Why, damme,'twas I who--"
A trooper came behind and gagged him with the loose end of the rope; and
Tybee held the candle to light the knotting of it. And so they marched
him out, with Tybee muttering between his teeth that it was
rat-catcher's work, and no soldier's, this killing of vermin, and
bidding his men make haste.
L
HOW RICHARD COVERDALE'S DEBT WAS PAID
For some breathless moments after we three were left alone in the
Stygian darkness of the wine cellar, no word was spoken. The rolling of
the thunder drum was muffled now, as it were booming out the dirge of
the man who had digged a pit and had himself fallen therein; and the
lightning flashes coming at longer intervals served but to intensify the
gloom they lit up for the instant.
It was a minced oath from Richard that first broke the spell that bound
us.
"'Twas too much for Madge," said he, "she has fainted. Swing the door,
and light another candle."
I did both as quickly as might be, and we bedded her on the floor,
stripping our coats to soften the stone flagging for her and trying by
all the means known to two unskilled soldier leeches to bring her to.
"Water!" said Dick; but when we had laved her face with that, and with
wine as well, without effect, we were well dismayed, I do assure you.
For all our efforts she lay as one dead; and neither of us could be
cold enough to pry her lips apart to play the drenching doctor with the
wine.
"Lord!" cried Dick, the sweat standing out upon his face in great drops;
"this is terrible! What shall we do?"
"Jeanne will know what to do," I asserted. "We must get her out of this
and up to her chamber."
Richard started to his feet and stooped to gather the dear body of her
in his arms. But in the act he paused and straightened himself to look
fixedly at me.
"Do you take her, Jack; she is--she is--your wife."
"Nay," said I, drawing back. "You are her own true lover; and could she
choose her bearer--"
"A murrain on your finickings!" he burst out. "She may die whilst we are
haggling over the right to help her. Take her up quick, man, and
begone!"
"But bethink you, Dick," I urged; "if you are taken, you have one chance
in ten of faring as an officer and a prisoner of war. For me 'tis a
spy's death as swift as they can drag me to it."
Now you will know, my dears, how much I loved these two when I could
twist a cord of such mean fiber to bind them closer together. Richard's
eyes flashed and his lip curled.
"Overlook it in me, if you can," he said, with fine scorn. "I had not
thought upon the peril of it." And with that he took her in his arms as
she had been a child to be carried, and I swung the door for him. But
on the threshold he gave me back my sorry little subterfuge. "Once more,
your forgiveness, Jack. I knew well you were but lying to give me
precedence. Can you trust me with her?"
"Aye, dear lad; now and ever," said I; and so I pushed him out.