XVI
HOW JENNIFER THREW A MAIN WITH DEATH
'Tis a sure mark of healthful sleep that it never makes account of time.No odds how long the night, 'tis but a moment from the lapse ofconsciousness to its recovery in the morning. But this deep sleep thatcrept upon me as I lay in the pirogue, listening to the tinkling dripfrom Jennifer's paddle, was not of healthful weariness; and when I cameawake from it there was a dim and troubled vista of vague and brokendreams to measure off the longest night I could ever remember.
The place of this awakening was a burrow in the earth. My bed ofbearskins over fragrant pine-tufts was spread upon the ground, and bythe flickering light of a handful of fire I could see the earth walls ofthe burrow, which were worn smooth as if the place had been thewell-used den of some wild creature. But overhead there was the mark ofhuman occupancy, since the earth-arch was sooted and blackened with thereek of many fires.
When I stirred there was another stir beyond the handful of fire, andJennifer came to kneel beside me, taking my hand and chafing it as atender-hearted woman might, and asking if I knew him.
"Know you? Why should I not?" I said, wondering why the words took somany breaths between.
"O Jack!" was all I had in answer; but when he had found a tongue tobabble out his joy, I learned the why and wherefore. Once more grimdeath had reached for me, lying await in the twirled tomahawk that setme dreaming of my mother's lap and lullaby. For a week I had lain hereupon the bed of pine-tufts, poised upon the brink of the death pit withonly my dear lad to hold and draw me back.
"A week?" I queried, when he had named the interval. "And you have beenhere all the time?"
"I've never left you, save to forage for the pot," he admitted. "I darednot leave you, Jack."
"But where are we?" I would ask.
"In a den on the river's edge, a mile or more above your sacked cabin.'Tis some dodge-hole hollowed out by the Catawbas long ago and sharedsince by them and the bears, judging from the stinking reek of it.Uncanoola steered me hither the night of the raid."
"Then the chief came off safely?" I said, falling into a dumb andimpotent rage that the saying of two words should scant me so ofstrength to say a third.
"Right as a trivet--scalps and all," laughed Jennifer. "He'll be theenvy of every warrior in the tribe when he vaunts himself at theCatawbas' council fire."
I let it rest a while at that, casting about for words to shape ahungrier question.
"Have you no news?" I asked, at length.
"Little or none," he answered shortly.
"But you have had some word--some news--from Appleby Hundred?" Istammered feebly.
"Nothing you'd care to hear," he rejoined, evasively, I thought. "'Tisas you left it, save that Tarleton whipped away to the south again assuddenly as he came, and our cursing baronet has made the manor househis headquarters in fact, lodging himself and all his troop on Mr.Stair. From his lying quiet and keeping the Cherokees in tow, there willbe some deviltry afoot, I'll warrant."
I knew that Falconnet was waiting for the powder cargo, but anothermatter crowded this aside.
"But--but Margery?" I queried, on sharpest tenter-hooks to know how muchor little he had heard.
I thought his brow darkened at the question, but mayhap it was only ashadow cast by the flickering fire. At any rate, he laughed hardily.
"She is well--and well content, I dare swear. 'Twas only yesterday I sawher taking the air on the river road, with Falconnet for an escort. Youtold me once he had a sure hand with the women and it made me mad; but,truly, I have come to think you drew it mild, Jack."
Now though I could ply a decent ready blade, or keep a firing line fromlurching at a pinch, I had not learned to put a snaffle on a blunderingtongue, as I have said before.
"Damn him as you please, Dick, and he'll warrant it. But you must notjudge the lady over harshly, nor always by appearances. She may haveflouted you as a boyish lover, and yet I think--"
I stopped in sheer bewilderment, shot through and through with keenestagonies of remorseful recollection. For at the moment I had clean forgotthe gulf impassable I had set between these two. So I would have lapsedinto shamed silence, but Jennifer would not suffer it.
"Well, what is it that you think?" he demanded.
"I think--nay, I may say I know that she thinks well of you, Dick," Iblundered on, seeing no way to put him off.
He gripped my hand, and in his eyes there was the light of the old lovereawakening.
"Don't lift me up to fling me down again, Jack! How can you know whatshe thinks of me?" he broke in, eagerly.
I should have told him then all there was to tell. He had been thrice mysavior, and his heart was soft and malleable on the side of friendship.I knew it--knew that the pregnant moment for full confession hadarrived; and yet I could not force my tongue to shape the words. Indeed,I saw more clearly than before that never any word of mine could makehim understand that I was not a faithless traitor in intention. So Ipaltered with the truth, like any wretched coward of them all.
"You forget that I have come to know her well," I said. "I was a monthor more under the same roof with her, and in that time she told me manythings."
Now, this witless speech was no better than a whip to flog him on.
"What things?" he questioned, promptly.
"Oh, many things. She spoke often of you."
"What did she say of me, Jack? Tell me what she said," he begged. "Itcan make no difference now; she is less than nothing to me--nay,'tiseven worse than that, since she would play Delilah if she could. But oh,Jack, I love her!--I should love her if I stood on the gallows and shestood by to spring the drop and turn me off!"
Truly, if the lash of remorse had lacked its keenest thong, thispassionate outburst of his would have added it. None the less, I mustneeds be weaker than water and fall back another step and put him off.
"Another time, Richard. I am strangely unnerved and dizzy-headed now. Byand by, when I am stronger, I will tell you all."
Taking a reproach where none was meant, he sprang up with a self-aimedmalison upon his lack of care for me, stirred the fire alive and brewedme a most delicious-smelling cup of broth. And afterward, when I haddrunk the broth with some small beckonings of returning appetite, hespread his coat to screen me from the fire light and would have drivenme to sleep again.
"At any rate, you shall not talk," he promised. "If you are wakeful Iwill talk to you and tell you what little I have gleaned about thefighting."
His news was chiefly a later repetition of Father Matthieu's and CaptainAbram Forney's, but there was this to add: the Congress had appointedthe Englishman, Horatio Gates, chief of the army in the South, and thisnew leader was on his way to take command.
De Kalb, with the Maryland and Delaware lines and Colonel Armand'slegion, was encamped on Deep River, waiting for the newly-appointedgeneral; and Caswell and Griffith Rutherford, with the militia, werealready pressing forward to some handgrips with my Lord Cornwallis inthe South.
Nearer at hand, the partizan war-fire flamed afresh wherever a Torycompany met a patriot, and there were wicked doings, more like savagemassacres than fair-fought battles of the soldier sort.
When he had made an end of his small war budget, I set him on to tell mehow he came to be at hand to help me so in the nick of time on the nightof the cabin sack.
"'Twas partly chance," he said. "A redcoat troop had me in durance atJennifer House, and while they affected to hold me at parole, I nevergave consent to that, and so was kept a prisoner. They shut me in thewine-bin with a guard, and when the fellow was well soaked and silly, Ibound and gagged him and broke jail. I took the river for it, meaning tooutlie until the hue and cry was over; and just at dusk Uncanooladropped upon me and told me of your need. From that to helping him cutyou out of your raffle with the Cherokees was but a hand's turn in theday's work."
"A lucky turn for me," I said; and then at second thought I would denythe saying, though not for him to hear. But this was dangerou
s groundagain, and I clawed off from it like a desperate mariner tempest-drivenon a lee shore; asking him how he had learned the broadsword play, andwhere he got the antique claymore.
He laughed heartily, and more like my care-free Dick, this time.
"Thereby hangs a tale. I told you how I was out with the Minute Men in'76 at Moore's Creek, where we fought the Scotchmen. It was our firstpitched battle, and I opine it smelled somewhat of severity on bothsides--no quarter was asked, and the Tory MacDonalds fought like fiendsfor King George, small cause as they had to love the House of Hanover."
"How was that?" I would ask, being as little familiar with the lowcountry settlements as any native-born Carolinian could be.
"They were expatriates for the Pretender's sake, many of them. MistressFlora's husband was one of the prisoners we took. But, as I was saying,they were Tories to a man, and they fought wickedly. When it was over,the prisoners would have fared hardly but for a woman. In the thick ofthe fight, Mistress Mary Slocumb, of Dobbs, whose husband was with us,came storming down upon the field, having rode a-gallop some forty-oddmiles because she dreamed her goodman was killed. She begged for theprisoners, and so Caswell hanged only those who were blood guilty--theseand the house burners. A raw-boned piper named M'Gillicuddy fell to mylot, and he is now my majordomo at Jennifer House; as honest a fellow asever skirled a pibroch."
"That was like you," I said; "to make a friend and retainer out of yourprisoner. And so this Highland piper has been your fencing master, hashe?"
"'Twas he taught me what little I know of the claymore play; and thisstout old blade is his. 'Tis as good as a woodman's ax when you have theknack of swinging it."
"Truly," said I. "Also, you seemed to have the knack, and the strengthas well, in spite of the crippled arm you were carrying in a sling thenight before when they haled you into Colonel Tarleton's court atAppleby."
"A little ruse of war," he said, laughing and making a fist to show mehis arm was strong and sound again. "'Twas M'Gillicuddy put me up to it,saying they would be like to deal the gentler with a wounded man. Buthow came you to know?"
Here was another chance to tell him what he should be told, but thewords would not say themselves.
"I stood within arm's reach of you that night," said I; and from that Ihastened swiftly through the story of my trial as a spy and what it cameto in the morning, and never mentioned Margery's part in it at all.
"You have a bitter enemy in Frank Falconnet," was his comment, when Ihad made an end of this recounting of my adventures. "He knows you arein hiding hereabouts, and has been scouring the neighborhood well foryou--or, more belike, for both of us."
"How do you know this?" I asked.
"I have both seen and heard. This den of ours opens on the river's edge,and, two days since, his Indians came within an ace of nabbing me. 'Twasjust at dusk, and I made out to dodge them by doubling past in thecanoe."
"But you say you have heard, as well?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"Don't ask me, Jack."
I said I had no right to ask more than he chose to tell; and at this heblurted out an oath and let me have the sharp-edged truth.
"Falconnet has an ally whose wit is shrewder than his. Can you guess whoit is?"
"No."
"'Tis this same Madge Stair you have been defending, Jack," he said,bitterly. "It seems that Falconnet made sure we had both gone to jointhe army, which was but natural. If she were less than the spitefullittle Tory vixen that she is, she would have been content to let itrest so. But she would not let it rest so. With her own lips she assuredFalconnet he still had us to reckon with; nay, more--she made a boast ofit that we would never go so far away from her."
Weak and fever-shaken as I was, I yet made shift to get upon my elbowfeebly fierce, denouncing it hotly for a lie.
"Who slandered her like this, Dick? Put a name to the cur, and as I liveand get my strength again, I'll hunt him down and choke him with thatlie!"
"Nay," he objected soberly; "that would be my quarrel, were there ever apeg to hang a quarrel on. But it came by a sure hand, and one that isfriendly enough to all concerned. An old free borderer, Ephraim Yeatesby name, brought me the tale. He had been spying round at ApplebyHundred, wanting to know, for some purpose of his own, why the redcoatsand Cherokees were hanging on so long; and this much he overheard onenight when he was outlying under the window of the withdrawing-room. Hesays she was in a pretty passion at the baronet's slackness, stampingher foot at him and lashing him with the taunt that he was afeard of oneor both of us."
I fell back on the bearskins to shut my eyes and call up all the mightof love to grapple with this fresh misery. It was in this fierceconflict of faith against apparent fact that I descried the parting ofthe ways for the lover and the husband.
Jennifer believed this most incredible thing, and yet he lovedher--would go on loving her, as he had said, in spite of all. That wasthe lover's road, and I could never bear him company on it. Could Ibelieve her so pitiless cruel as this, I made sure no husband-love couldlive beyond that moment of conviction.
But at this perilous pass the husband's road ran truer than the lover's.Richard believed her capable of this hard-hearted thing and went onloving her blindly in spite of it. But as for me, I said I would nevergive belief an inch of standing-room; that had I stood in EphraimYeates's shoes, having the witness of my own eyes and ears, I wouldstill have found excuse and exculpation for her.
I stole a glance at Jennifer. He was sitting with his face in his hands,a silent figure of a strong man humbled. He had called her a Delilah,and the green withes of her binding cut sore into the flesh.
"You say you love her, Dick; can you believe her capable of this, andyet go on loving her?" I asked.
He let me see his face. It was haggard and grief-marred.
"I'd pay the devil's own price could I say 'no' to that, Jack. But I cannot."
"Then I swear I love her better than you do, Richard Jennifer. She hatesme well--God knows she has good cause to hate me fiercely; yet I wouldtrust her with my life."
I looked to see him pin me down at this; and though the words hadfairly shaped and said themselves, I laid fast hold of my courage andwas prepared to make them good. But he would only smile and draw thebearskin cover over me, tucking me in as tenderly as a mother, andsaying very gently:
"So she has bewitched you, too; and now there are two poor fools of loveinstead of one. But you are stronger than I, Jack. You will break thespell and put it down and live beyond it, and that I never shall--Godhelp me!" And with that, he went to his own bed beside the fire, tellingme I must lie quiet and try to sleep.
I did lie quiet, but sleep came not, nor did I woo it. For long past thetime when I could hear his measured breathing, I lay awake to plan how Imight draw the baronet's man-hunt to myself, and so free my loyalRichard of the peril that by rights was mine.
The Master of Appleby Page 18