passage and out by a rear door, giving them a friendly slap to point
them toward the stables.
This done I went back to my immurement, and I know not how long it was
that I paced a weary sentry beat up and down the narrow limits of the
wine cellar, alone with such thoughts as go to make the sum of that
despair which follows hard upon the heels of some climaxing catastrophe.
But I do know that, as the hours dragged on leadenshod, a slow fever of
impatience came to dry the blood in my veins; to make me hunger and
thirst for leave to say the final word to Father Matthieu, and so to be
set at liberty to find the bottom of the pit into which a mocking fate
had plunged me.
'Twas all over now. My dear lad was told, and he had forgiven me; the
persecuting, plotting factor was effaced, and he could never trouble my
sweet lady more. Between the two I loved there stood only the shadow of
the marriage, and this the good priest would presently help me to
dispel.
And after that ... I dared not look beyond. There is a way beset with
lions, and any man who bears the name of man in honor may draw his sword
and fix his eye upon the goal and hew his path to it, joying in the
conflict. But there is also another way, a desert trail owning no peril
more affrighting than its own dread waste and limitless monotony; and
when his eyes behold the dismal prospect, and his feet have pressed the
hitherward sands of this desert of despair, a man may well pause to gird
his loins, to cross himself and patter such a prayer for strength and
fortitude as his creed hath taught him.
To such a faring through all the days and nights of this grim desert of
a future these lonely hours in the wine vault were a fitting vigil, as I
conceived; and when I had hugged my misery close, and a sort of
monstrous self-pity had come to make a seeming virtue of the hard
necessity, I was best pleased to be alone. In such a frame of mind the
sound of footsteps in the out-cellar, warning me that more company was
coming, sent a wave of sullen anger to submerge me, and I do think 'twas
in me to turn my back upon a friend who should come to tell me I was
free to go at large.
Since I had led forth the good horses the great oaken door had stood
ajar. So I wondered why my visitor made so much ado rattling the key in
the lock. Then it came to me suddenly that the noise and delay were
meant to give me timely warning; and at the scent of threatening
peril--a peril I might cope with and grapple soldierwise--I became a man
again. A sweep of my hat sent the sputtering candle flying from its
barrel head to the farther corner of the vault, and I dropped quickly
behind a row of empty wine-butts to await what should befall.
Had she been a ghost, Mistress Margery would scarce have startled me
more when she swung the door to let me see her. She was gowned in her
best; there was a heightened color in her cheek; her eyes were like
stars. Truly, I do think I never saw her so beautiful as she appeared at
that moment, standing under the massive arch of the doorway with her
candle held high to light the inner gloom.
"This way, Scipio," she said, tripping ahead of the mulatto to point out
the madeira bin. "We shall give my Lord and his gentlemen the best the
Appleby cellar holds to speed their parting." Wherewith she stood aside
to wait whilst he filled his basket with the straw-cased bottles.
At this I saw why she had come. Lord Cornwallis and his gentlemen were
about to take the road, and the wine was wanted for the stirrup-cup.
Trusting my fate to no hand less loyal than her own, she had come
herself with Scipio to stand betwixt me and possible discovery. And her
word to the serving man was also a word to me to let me know my
prisonment was near an end.
I thought it a most generous thing in her; the last of all her many
wifely loyalties; and I would have given much for leave to stand forth
and tell her so. Indeed, when the mulatto had poised his basket upon
his head and vanished, and she was lingering to take a last look around
before she followed him, I was upon the point of speaking.
But whilst I hesitated I saw her start back with a little cry of terror.
Standing in the arched doorway through which the mulatto had but now
passed was a man cloaked, hatted, booted and spurred as for the road. At
her cry he doffed his hat and ...
My dears, I shall never be able to draw for you the hideous death-mask
this man was wearing for a face. Seamed and scarred, shriveled and livid
in purple and crimson welts, you would think a nine-thonged whip of fire
had scourged out every semblance of comeliness, leaving only the
skeleton frame on which to hang this ghastly caricature of a human face.
Fearing him not at all, I could scarce forbear a shudder at the sight of
this walking death-mask of the libertine, Sir Francis Falconnet.
And if his face were terrifying in repose, 'twas fair demoniac when he
laughed.
"Ha!" he said, bowing again in a mockery of politeness. "You are
surprised, Mistress Margery; you heard my Lord's order and thought I
would be by now some miles on the road to Salisbury?"
"If you were the loyal soldier you should be, sir," she said, drawing
herself up proudly, "you would be at the head of your troop, as his
Lordship directed." And then, with a gesture that was most queenly:
"Stand aside, Sir--Libertine, and let me pass."
His answer was another mocking laugh, and he stepped within to close
the door and lock it. When he turned to front her again his face was the
face of a tormented devil.
"By God! you think too lightly of me, Mistress Margery. Before ever this
day dawned I owed you much, but like a spiteful little hellicat you must
needs add to the score by making me a target for your wit at the
supper-table. 'Twill cost a life to more than one of them who laughed
with you, my lady, but 'twill cost you dearer still."
He came nearer as he spoke, thrusting that horrible face farther into
the circle of candle-light; but she would not draw back nor flinch a
hair, and I marked that the hand that held the candlestick was as steady
as a rock. But when he made an end she flung a quick glance over her
shoulder and my heart leaped for joy. For then I knew she was leaning
upon me.
"Once more, Captain Falconnet, will you let me pass?" she said.
"No!" he snarled, adding a horrid blasphemy. "'Twas passion in me once,
and I am none so sure there was not a time when you could have cooled it
into love. But now 'tis hatred and revenge." He snapped his fingers in
her face. "The thing they'll find here in the morning--"
He fell face downward at her feet and I set my heel in the small of his
back to hold him whilst I could drive the point of the Ferara between
his ribs. But my dear lady would not have it so.
"No, no! for the love of heaven, not that, Monsieur John!" she cried;
and for the moment her fine courage was all swallowed up of pity and she
became a compassionate woman pleading for a life.
But now my blood was up. "You are my wife," I said, coldly. "If he had a
dozen lives I should take them all for that which he said to you."
"But not that way--oh, not that way, I do beseech you!" she begged.
"Think of what it will mean to you--and--and to me. For your own sake,
Monsieur John."
I took my heel from the man's back.
"Your wish is law to me, dear lady. But your way is clear now; you may
go."
She took a step toward the door.
"You will not kill him when I am gone, Monsieur John?"
"By the name he bears he was doubtless born a gentlemen; since you wish
it, he shall die like one."
I saw she did not take my meaning; that when she was gone I should let
him have his chance to die sword in hand.
"Remember, I have your promise," she said, turning to go. "The army is
on the march for Salisbury, and in a little while your friends will be
here to--"
The sentence ended in a very womanly shriek of terror. Watching his
chance, my dastard enemy had bounded to his feet to make a quick lunge,
not at me, but at her.
Of course I came between to parry the murderous thrust, and after that
it was life for one of us and death for the other. I looked to see my
lady run, shrieking; indeed, I called to her to go; but she stood fast
as if her terror had frozen her; and so it was her candle that lighted
the grim vault for the duel.
As you will know full well, I was not minded to give this
thrice-accursed fiend more than the gentleman's chance I had promised to
give him. But now, as twice before, he fought most desperately, trying
by every trick of fence to come between me and the silent little figure
holding the candle aloft. As I have often said, he was a pretty
swordsman, and at this crisis, with life at stake, and all the fury of
the seven devils of disappointed vengeance to nerve his arm, his sword
play was most masterly.
Yet twice in his stamping rushes I found my opening; once the Ferara's
point passed his blade, and but for the ringed guard of the German
long-sword that stopped it when his parry failed, the steel would have
passed through him. After this he grew warier, having in mind, as I
supposed, that other time when I had shown him that my wrist and arm
could outweary his. Yet his savage onset never flagged for an instant;
and when the light fell upon his hideous face, I could see the fierce
eyes glinting like a basilisk's, with no sign in them that my time was
come to press him home.
None the less, I did press him, inch by inch, driving him at each new
clash of the steel a little deeper into the gloom that crowded close
upon the narrow circle of candle-light. He saw my object--to push him to
unfamiliar ground where he might trip and stumble in the darkness--and
he strove furiously to defeat it. Yet he had no choice, and presently I
had him among the empty wine-butts, foining and parrying for his life
and pouring out such blasphemies as would make your blood run cold.
Here the end came quickly. Being entangled among the broached butts he
had no room to play skilfully. So presently it chanced that he caught
his point in the chine of a cask and his blade snapped short at the
hilt. With a yelling oath, hissing hot from the devil's thumb-book, he
snatched up the broken blade to fling and stick it javelin-wise in my
shoulder; and then I saw the dull gleam of the candle-light on the
barrel of a pistol.
Had he aimed the pistol at me, I trust I should still have given him his
gentleman's chance. But when I saw him level the weapon at my dear lady
... they came in one and the same heart-beat; the sword-thrust that
found his life and took it; the crash of the pistol-shot echoing like a
clap of thunder in the close vault, and pitchy darkness to draw its
curtain over all.
I know not how I reached her, pulling the broken sword-blade from my
shoulder as I ran; nor can I tell you how an upgushing spring of
thankfulness choked me when I found her unharmed by the bullet which had
snuffed the candle out.
She was in a most piteous state, now it was all over; and though I
charged it all where I supposed it should belong--to the account of a
natural womanly passion to cling to something in her moment of
weakness--yet the blood ran quick in my veins when she suffered me to
lead her out of that dismal, smoking death-pit, she clinging to me the
while so close that I could feel the warmth of her and the fluttering of
her dear heart beneath my hand.
She said no word, nor did I, till we were come above stairs. We found
the rooms on the main floor deserted by all save the blacks, who were
clearing away the debris of the feast of leave-taking. In the hall we
came upon old Anthony, putting on the chain of the outer door. Here my
lady drew apart from me.
"Is my Lord gone?" she asked.
"Yis, Missa. He say tell yo' he gwine tek it mighty hawd yo' no come ter
gib him de sti'up-cup."
"And my father?"
"Gone to de lib'ry to wait fo' Massa Pengarbin; yis, Missa."
She turned away, shuddering at this mention of the factor for whose
coming the master would wait long and in vain, and I heard her murmur:
"Oh, the horror of this night!" But in a moment she came back to me, and
was her cool, calm self again.
"For that I am here, alive and well, I thank you, Captain Ireton. Need I
say more?"
I can not tell you what was in the words to make me hot with anger, as I
had but now been hot with love. But the new wound in my shoulder was
bleeding freely, and I would not let her see I was hurt; and if aught
will stanch a wound, 'tis anger.
"You need not say so much," I retorted, bowing low. "You have spoken now
and then of certain duties binding upon those who are knotted up, ever
so loosely, in the marriage bond; I have my part in these as well as
you, Mistress Margery."
She bit her lip and was upon the edge of tears. I saw what I had done
and would curse the masterless tongue that must needs add its word-thong
to the night's whip of scourgings.
When she spoke again it was to say: "This is your own house, Captain
Ireton; what will you do?"
"One question first, is Richard Jennifer safe?"
"He is."
"Then, by your good leave, I shall do what I came to do."
She bent her head in acquiescence.
"You will find the--the person whom you wish to see in your old room in
the north gable. Shall I have Anthony light you up?"
"No; I can find the way."
My hand was on the stair rail when the cruel irony of it struck me like
a blow. She had planned the loosing of the bond in the very room where
we had knelt to take the good father's blessing upon it.
I stepped back, stumbled, I should say, for a curious weakness had come
upon me, and drew her arm in mine.
"We will go together, if you please, my lady. 'Tis only just to me that
you should hear what I must say to Father Matthieu."
And so, dear heart! she bore with me to the last; and together we
climbed the stair to come into the upper corridor with the room of
destiny at its farther end.
We came as far as the door; I mind it perfectly, for I remember marking
that the wooden bar my father had put upon it was gone, and the iron
brackets as well. But whilst I was groping for the latch there came a
taste of blood in my mouth, and I heard my dear lady's voice as if she
were calling to me across the eternal abysses. "Monsieur John!--you are
hurt!" And then, from a still remoter distance: "Oh, Father
Matthieu--Dick! come quickly! He is dying!"
LI
IN WHICH THE GOOD CAUSE GAINS A CONVERT
Which one of you, my dears, faring across the frontier of the shadow
land of dreams into the no less mysterious country of the real, can not
recall the struggle of the waking senses to knot up the gossamer
filament of the night's fantasies with the coarser web of reality?
For a time, longer or shorter as the dream thread holds, the vagaries of
the night are shuttled into the warp of life. But presently comes the
master-weaver Reason to point out this or that fantastic pattern; to bid
the ear listen to the measured clacking of the day-loom, and the eye to
mark that the web of reality has grown never an inch for all the
shuttlings of the sleeping-time. Whereupon, full-blood consciousness
regains her sway, and you sigh, gladly or sorrowfully, and say, "Dear
God, 'twas but a dream I dreamed!"
Some such awakening came to me on a day whereof I knew not the name or
its number in the calendar.
I was lying in bed in my old room at Appleby Hundred. The armored
soldier was glowering down upon me from his frame over the chimney
piece; the great blackened clothes-press loomed darkly in its corner;
the show of curious china filled the shelves where my boyhood books had
rested; and there was the same faint smell of lavender in the bed linen
that once--was it yesterday or months ago?--had minded me of my mother.
When I sought to move me on the pillows the dream seemed more than ever
dream-sure. The pain of a sword wound was grinding at my shoulder, and I
was bandaged stiff as I had been that other day.
So I said, as you have said in like awakenings, "Dear God,'twas but a
dream!" and saying it, would turn my head to see if Mistress Margery
were sitting where I last remembered her.
She was there, in very deed and truth, deep in the hollow of the great
chair of Indian wickerwork; and as before, the soft graying of the
evening sky was mirrored in her eyes.
I sighed, and there was a catching of the breath at the bottom of it.
Truly, the wondrous dream had had its agonies, but there were also
beatitudes to tip the scale the other way. For I had dreamed this
sweet-faced watcher was my wife--in name, at least.
'Twas while I looked, minding not the eye-ache the effort cost, that she
rose and came softly to the bedside. She said no word, but, as once in
the dream-time, she laid a cool palm on my forehead. Weak as I was--and
surely King David was not weaker when he wrote his bones were gone to
water--the old love-madness of that other day came to thrill me at her
touch, and I made as if I would take her hand and press it to my lips.
"Nay, sir," she said, with a swift return to sick-room discipline, "you
must not stir; you have been sorely hurt."
"Aye," said I; "I do remember; 'twas in a duel with one Francis
Falconnet. He said he would make you his--"
Now the soft palm was laid on my lips, and I kissed it till she snatched
it away.
"_Ma foi!_" she cried; "I think you are in a hopeful way to recover now,
Captain Ireton. I do protest I shall go and send old Anthony to sit with
you."
"Anthony?" said I; "he was in the dream, too, putting up the chain on
the hall door."
"Ah, _mon Dieu_!" she said softly, as if to herself, "he is wandering
yet." At which, as if to try to help me: "'Twas no dream; you did see
him putting on the chain."
"Did I? I made sure I dreamed it. But tell me another thing; was it not
yesterday that I met Sir Francis Falconnet under the oaks in the wood
field and got this pair of redhot pincers in my shoulder?"
She turned away, and if I ever saw a tear there was one trembling in her
eyelashes.
"'Twas three full weeks ago," she said. "And it was not in the wood
field--'twas in the wine cellar. Never tell me you do not remember; I--I
could never--ah, Mother of Sorrows! that would be worse than all."
Here was a curious coil, but I could break one strand of it, at least,
and so I did.
"I remember well enough," I hastened to say. "But being here, and seeing
you there in the great chair, carried me back to that other time, making
all the interval stand as a dream. Have I been ailing?"
"You have been terribly near to death, Monsieur John; so near that
Doctor Carew has twice given you over."
"No," said I; "there was no fear of that. I am like that man in the old
German folk tale who made a compact with the Evil One, selling thereby
his chance to die. Death would not take me as a gift, Mistress Margery;
I have tried him too often."
"Hush!" she said; "'tis an ill thing to jest about. Why should you want
to die?"
"Rather ask why I should choose to live. But this is beside the mark.
You should have let me die, dear lady; but since you did not, we must
e'en make the best of it."
She faced me with a smile that struggled with some deeper stirring of
the heart; I knew not what.
"'Tis a monstrous doleful alternative, _n'est-ce pas_? And I must not
let you talk of doleful things; indeed, I must not let you talk at
all--'tis Doctor Carew's order."
So saying, she smoothed the counterpane and straightened my pillows;
and after giving me a great spoonful of some cordial that first set a
pleasant glow alight in me and afterward made me drowsy, she took post
again in the hollow of the big chair and was so sitting when I fell
asleep.
This day's awakening was the first of many so nearly of a piece that I
lost the count of them; and sleep, deep and dreamless for the better
part, stole away the hours till the memory of that inch-by-inch return
to health and strength is itself like the memory of the vaguest of
dreams.
By times when I awoke it was the bluff Doctor Carew bending over me to
dress my wound; at other times it was Margery come to tempt me with a
bowl of broth or some other kickshaw from the kitchen. Now and again I
awoke to find Scipio or old Anthony standing watch at my bedside; and
once--but that was after I was up and in my clothes and able to sit and
drowse in the great chair--I opened my eyes to find that my company was
the master of the house.
He was sitting as I had seen him sit once before, behind a lighted
candle at the little table with a parchment spread out under his bony
hands. He was mumbling over the written words of it when I looked, but
at my stirring he gave over and sat back in his chair to cross his thin
legs and match his long fingers by the ends, and wink and blink at me as
though he had but now discovered that he was not alone.
"I give ye good even, Captain Ireton," he said, finally, rasping the
greeting out at me as it had been a curse. "I hope ye've slept well."
I said I had, and thanked him, once for the wish, and again for his
coming to see me. I know not how it was, but if there had been rancor in
my former thoughts of him 'twas something abated now.
"Ye've had a nearhand escape this time, sir," he said, after a longish
pause.
"One more or less of a good many since we were last met together in this
room, Mr. Stair," I would say.
He muttered something to himself about the devil taking precious good
care of his own; and I laughed.
"That is as it may be; but my being here this second time a pensioner on
your bounty is by no good will of mine, I do assure you, sir."
He sat nodding at me as if I had said a thing to be most heartily agreed
to. But his spoken word belied the nods.
"The ways of Providence are inscrutable--something inscrutable, Captain
Ireton. I make no doubt ye are sufficiently thankfu' for all your
mercies."
"Why, as to that, there may be two ways of looking at it. As a soldier,
I may justly repine at a fate which ties me here when I should be in the
field."
"Well said, sir; brawly said; 'tis the part of a good soldier to be ay
wanting to be in the thick o' the fighting. But now that ye're a man of
substance, Captain Ireton, ye will be owing other debts to our country
than the one ye can pay with a hantle o' steel."
"'Our country,' did you say, Mr. Stair?" I asked, feigning a surprise
which no one knowing him could feel in very truth.
"And what for no? 'Tis the birthland of some--yourself, for example, and
the leal land of adoption for others--your humble servant, to wit. I've
taken the solemn oath of allegiance to the Congress, I'd have ye to
know."
At this I must needs laugh outright.
"Have you taken it one more time than you have forsworn it, Mr. Stair?"
"Laugh and ye will," he said, quite placably; "ye shall never laugh the
peetriotism out o' me. 'Tis little enough an old man can do, but the
precious cause o' liberty will never have to ask that little twice,
Captain Ireton."
Since he would ever be on the winning side, this foreshadowed good
tidings, indeed. So I would ask him straight what news there was.
"Have they not told ye? 'Tis braw news," he chuckled. "Whilst ye were on
your back, General Greene led Lord Cornwallis a fine dance all across
the prov--the state, I mean, crooking his finger at him and saying,
'Come on, ye led-captain of a tyrant king, and when I'm ready I'll turn
and rend ye.' And by the same token, that is juist what he did the other
day at Guilford Court House."
"A victory?" I would ask.
"Well, not precisely that, maybe; they're calling it a drawn battle. But
I'm thinking 'tis Lord Cornwallis that's drawn. He's off to Wilmington,
they say, and I'm fain to hope we've seen the last o' him and his
reaving redcoats in these parts."
His words set me in a muse. I could never make out what he would be at,
telling me all this. But he had an object, well-defined, and presently
it showed its head.
"Ye're the laird o' the manor, now, Captain Ireton, with none to gainsay
ye," he went on. "So I've come to give ye an account o' my stewardship.
I made no doubt, all along, ye'd come back to your own when ye'd had
your fling wi' the Old Worldies, and so I've kept tab o' the poor bit
land for ye."
"Oh, you have?" said I, being so far out-brazened as to be incapable of
saying more.
"I have that--every plack and bawbee. 'Tis ten years come Michaelmas
since I took over the charge o' Appleby Hundred, and I'm ready to
account to ye for every season's crop--when ye'll pay down the bit
steward's fee."
"Truly," said I; "you are an honest man, Mr. Stair." Then, to humor him
to the top of his bent: "Haphazarding a guess, now; would this
accounting leave a balance in my favor, or in yours?"
He gave me a look like that of a costermonger weighing and measuring the
gullibility of his customer.