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—”
She paused, and in the pause it flashed upon me how she had wronged my 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?”