Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  Only a mile! But from Newgate to Tyburn is only a mile, yet how much lies between them for the wretch condemned to suffer on the gallows.

  At last I was aware that my companion had alighted — perhaps he had done so more than once — to pull down a sliprail. This time, whether it was the last, or the only time, the rattle of the timber provoked an outburst of barking, and presently, amid the baying of dogs, a nigger’s voice called out to know who was there. The alarm once given — and the hounds gave it pretty loudly — other voices joined in, in tones of alarm as well as joy. Lights glanced here and there; in a twinkling there were people about us. Black faces and white eyeballs appeared for an instant and sank into shadow. We halted before the porch of a long wooden house, that declared itself, here plainly and there dimly, as the lights fell upon it.

  I could only endure. But surely the end was come now! Surely there would be rest for me here. They would come to me, they would do something for me presently.

  Wilmer had gone up on the porch, and there was a woman — a woman in white with, her arms about his neck. He was soothing her and she was laughing and crying at once; and about them and about me — who sat in the saddle below, in the dull lethargy of exhaustion — shone a ring of smiling, black faces. And then — here was something new, something startling and alarming — the woman was looking down at me, and speaking quickly and sharply; speaking almost as those other women had spoken at Barter’s. She was pointing at me.

  And the niggers were no longer laughing but staring, all staring at me. I gathered that they were frightened.

  It could not be that there was no rest for me here? It could not be that they would not take me in here! Oh, it was impossible, it was inhuman, it was devilish! But I began to tremble. “Anywhere, anywhere but here!” the woman was saying. “It is madness to think of it. You know that, father! Why did you bring him here? When you knew! When you knew, father!”

  “In the cabins, honey, if you like,” the man answered patiently. “But he’ll not be safe out of our sight.”

  She flared up. She poured out her anger upon him. “Safe!” she cried. “And what of you? Where will you be safe? And what is it to me if he be not safe? Don’t do it, father, don’t,” she continued, her voice sinking to a note of entreaty. “Don’t bring him here! It will end ill! You will see, it will end ill! Let him go to Barter’s.”

  “We’ve been to Barter’s—”

  “And he won’t take him! No! he’s more sense, though the risk to him is small. But you, think how the day has gone, and left you safe and well! And now, now at the end, you will spoil all!’

  “Let be, Con,” the man struck in, speaking with decision. “He must come in. There’s nothing else for it. We’re not Cherokees, nor savages. There’s nothing else that can be done. You must put up with it, and—”

  In a twinkling she was at the foot of the steps and at my rein — a girl, young, slender, dark and fiercely excited. “If you are a man,” she cried, seizing my arm, “if you are a gentleman, you’ll not come here! Do you hear, sir! There are reasons, a thousand reasons why we cannot take you in. And more—”

  On that word she stopped. A change came over her face as she looked into mine. The only answer I could give her — she had gripped my wounded arm and I could bear no more — was to faint away. As the man had said, I was in sore need of a sup of Kentucky whisky.

  CHAPTER III

  MADAM CONSTANTIA

  I see how she doth wry,

  When I begin to moan;

  I see when I come nigh,

  How fain she would be gone.

  I see — what will ye more? —

  She will me gladly kill:

  And you shall see therefore

  That she shall have her will

  ANON.

  When I came to myself I was, by comparison, in a haven of comfort. I was in a clean bed, in a clean room, I was wearing a shirt that was also clean and was certainly not my own. A negro woman with a yellow kerchief bound about her head was holding a lamp, while a colored man who was bending over me, contrived a cage to lift the coverlet clear of my shoulder and arm. The room was small, with boarded walls, and the furniture was of plain wood and roughly made, of the kind that is found in the smaller plantations of this upper country. But my eye alighted on a framed sampler hung between two prints above the bedhead; and this and one or two handsome mahogany pieces told a story of changes and journeys, which these, the cherished relics of an older house, perhaps in the Tidewater, had survived.

  I noted these things dreamily, blissfully, resting in a haven of ease. Presently the man stood back to admire his work, and the woman, turning to glance at my face, saw that my eyes were open. She set down the lamp and fetching a cup held it to my lips. I have reason to believe that it held milk-punch; but for me it held nectar, and I drank greedily and as long as she would let me. Whatever it was, the draught cleared my mind; and when the man turned to the table and began to occupy himself with rolling up a monstrous length of bandage, I saw the woman sign to him. They looked towards the door, and I became aware of the voices of two people who were talking in an outer room. The speakers were the two who had debated my fate before, while I hung, worn out, over my horse’s neck; and the question between them was apparently the same. —

  “But I can’t see it, father!” the girl was saying, repeating it as if she had said it half a dozen times before. “I can’t see it. What is he to us? Why should we do it? Think of my mother! Think of Dick! Haven’t I heard you say a hundred times—”

  “Ana a hundred to that! I admit it, Con,” the man answered, “I have. But there was something about this fellow if you’ll believe me—”

  “About him!” she retorted, blazing up. “A weakling! A milksop! A poor thing who swoons under a minute’s pain!”

  “But if you had seen him pick the man up?” he pleaded. “It was that that took me, honey. It ran right athwart of all that I had heard of his like, and had seen of some of them! It was the devil of a mellay I can tell you! Of five who made off together after Ferguson was down he was the only one who fought his way through; and we were after him whip and spur. He was all but clear of us, when there came the other man running through the bush and calling to him, calling to him to take him up for God’s sake! For God’s sake! He stopped, Con! And I can tell you that to stop with the muzzles of our Deckhards between his shoulderblades and not forty yards off—”

  “Who wouldn’t have?” she retorted scornfully. “Is there a man that wouldn’t have stopped? Is there a man who calls himself a man who could ride away—”

  “Well, I fancy,” he replied dryly, “I could put my hand on one or two, Con. I fancy I could.”

  “And because he did that,” she continued stubbornly, “because he remembered, for just that one moment, that he and the men whom he hires to fight his battles were of the same flesh and blood as himself, you do this foolish, this mad, mad thing! To bring him here, father! To bring him to the Bluff of all places! Why, if it were only that I am alone — alone here—”

  “There’s Aunt Lyddy.”

  “And what is she? — it would be reason enough against it! But to be left here,” the girl continued angrily — and it seemed to me that she was pacing the room— “alone for days together with this insolent Englishman who looks down on us, who calls us colonials and mohairs, and thinks us honored if he doesn’t plunder us — and if he plunders us, what are we but rebels? Who will hardly stoop to be civil even to the men who are risking their all and betraying Carolina in his cause! Oh! it is too much!”

  “He’s not the worst of them at any rate,” Wilmer replied with good humor. “Sit down, girl. And as to your being left with him, I don’t know any one more able to take care of herself! If that be all—”

  “But it’s not all!” she cried. “It’s not a quarter! If that were all I’d not say a word! But it’s not that, you know it is not that!”

  “I know it’s not, honey!” he said in a different tone — an
d I wondered to hear him, so gentle was his voice. “I know it’s not.”

  “If you were away altogether it would be different! If you kept away—”

  “But I can’t keep away,” he answered mildly. “I must come and go. I can’t let the plantation go to ruin. Times are bad enough and hard enough —— we may be burnt out any night. But until the worst comes I must keep things together, Con, you know that. It’s fortunate that we’re above King’s Mountain. After this Tarleton and his Greens — d — n the fellow, I wish he had been there to-day —— will spread over the south side like a swarm of wasps flocking to the honey-pot. But they’ll be shy of pushing as far north of Winsboro’ as this —— we’re too strong hereabouts. For the Englishman I’d send him to the cabins at once, but he wouldn’t be safe from our folks outside the house.”

  She spoke up suddenly.”

  “If they come for him,” she cried, “I warn you, father, I shall not raise a finger to save him!”

  “Pooh! pooh!”

  “I vow I will not! So now you know!”

  “Well, I don’t think that they’ll come,” he replied lightly. “They know me, and—”

  “To shelter a Britisher!”

  “I’ve sheltered worse men,” he responded reasonably.

  “At least you’ve had warning!” she retorted — and I heard the legs of a chair grate on the floor of the outer room. “If I have to choose, your little finger is more to me than the lives of twenty such as he!”

  “Unfortunately,” he answered dryly, “it’s not my little finger, my dear, that’s in peril! It’s my—”

  “Father!” she cried, pain in her voice. “How can you! How can you!”

  “There, there,” he said, soothing her, “a man can but die once, and how he dies does not matter much! Courage, Con, courage, girl! Many is the awkward corner I have been in, as you know, and I’ve got out of it. You may be sure I shall take all the care I can.”

  “But you don’t!” she retorted. “You don’t! Or you would never let this man—” I lost the rest in the movement of a second chair.

  For some minutes the two blacks had made hardly a pretence of attending to me. They had listened with all their ears. Once or twice when what was said had touched me nearly they had goggled their eyes at me between wonder and amazement. And I, too, wondered. I, too, saw that here was something that needed explanation. Why should this girl, scarcely out of her teens — I judged her to be no more that twenty — feel so strongly, so cruelly, so inhumanly? Why should she show herself so hard, so unnatural, where even her father betrayed the touch of nature that makes us all akin? This was a question, but it was one that I must consider to-morrow. For the present I was too comfortable, too drowsy, too weary. Sleep pressed on me irresistibly — the blessed sleep of the exhausted, of the wounded, of the broken, who are at last at rest! The room grew hazy, the light a dim halo. And yet before I slept I had a last impression of the things about me.

  The girl came to the open door and stood on the threshold, gazing down at me. She was tall, slender, dark, and very handsome. She looked at me in silence for a long time, and with such a look and such a curiosity as one might turn on a crushed thing lying beside the road. It hurt me, but not for long.

  For I slept, and dreamt of the Border and of home. I was in the small oak parlor at Osgodby. There was no fire on the hearth, it was summer and the bow-pots were full of roses. The windows were open, the garden, viewed through them, simmered in the sunshine.

  My mother was sitting on the other side of the empty hearth, fanning herself with a great yellow fan, and we were both looking at the picture of Henrietta Craven that is set in the overmantel. “Ill will come of it, ill will come of it,” my mother was repeating over and over again. And then I found that it was not my mother who was saying it but the portrait over the fireplace; and — which did not seem to surprise me at the time — it was no longer the portrait of Henrietta Craven in her yellow sacque that spoke, but a woman in white, tall and slender and dark and very handsome.

  It was noon when I awoke; not the sultry noon of Charles Town, for the rains had come and the day was grey and cool. I was alone, in the pleasant stillness, but the door into the living room was ajar, perhaps that I might be heard if I called. Pigeons were cooing without, and not far away, probably on the veranda, some one was crooning in tune to the pleasant hum of a spinning-wheel. Sleep had made another man of me. My head was clear, I was free from fever, I was hungry; such pain as I felt was confined to the shoulder and arm. Yesterday I had come near to envying those who had fallen in the fight. To-day I was myself again, glad to be alive, free to hope, ready to look forward. After all, things might be worse; our Headquarters were at Charlotte, barely thirty-five miles away, and if my Lord Cornwallis moved towards King’s Mountain, to avenge Ferguson, I might be rescued. If he did not, I must contrive to be sent, as soon as I was well enough to travel, to the rebel Headquarters in the northern colony, whence I might be exchanged. I should be safe there — I was not safe here. I must see this man Wilmer by and by and talk to him about it. He had shown a measure of humanity and some generosity, mingled with his dry and saturnine humor. And he had saved my life, I had no doubt of that. In the meantime I was famished, positively famished!

  I called, “Hi! hi!”

  The low crooning stopped, the hum of the spinning-wheel ceased. The negro woman who had held the lamp appeared in the doorway. “How you find yo’self dis mawning?” she asked. And then in a lingo which at this distance of time I do not pretend to reproduce correctly, she asked me what I would take to eat.

  “There’s nothing I could not eat,” I said.

  She showed her teeth in a wide smile. “Marse mighty big man, dis mawning,” she answered. “He sorter lam-like yistiddy. He mo’ like one er de chilluns yistiddy. W’at you gwine ter eat?”

  “Breakfast first!” I said. “Some tea, please—”

  She shook her head violently. “Hole on dar,” she said. “I ‘ear Ma’am Constantia say der ain’t no tea fer Britishers! De last drap er dat tea bin gone sunk in Cooper River!”

  “Oh!” I replied, a good deal taken aback. Confound Madam Constantia’s impudence! “Then I will have what you will give me. Only let me have it soon.”

  “Marse mighty big man dis mawning,” the woman said mischievously. “He’low he’ll eat de last mossel der is. Yis’dy he mo’ like one er de chilluns.”

  Well, I had the last morsel — without tea; while Mammy Jacks stood over me with her yellow kerchief and her good-natured grinning black face. “Who’s Madam Constantia?” I asked after a time.

  “W’at I tole you,” the woman replied with dignity, “She, Ma’am Constantia ter cullud folks. She, missie ter me.”

  “The young lady I saw yesterday, is she?”

  “Tooby sho’.”

  “She is Captain Wilmer’s daughter, I suppose?”

  “Dat’s w’at I laid out fer to tell you.”

  I did not want to seem curious or I should have asked if “Madam” was married. I refrained out of prudence. I went on eating and Mammy Jacks went on looking at me, and presently, “I speck you monst’ous bad, cruel man,” she said with unction. “I hear Ma’am Constantia say you make smart heap uv trubble fer cullud folks, en tote em to’Badoes en Antigo! She say you drefful ar’ogant insolent Englishman! You too bad ter live, I’ low.”

  “And Madam Constantia told you to tell me that?”

  The woman’s start and her look of alarm answered me. Before she could put in a protest, however, the negro who had been with her the previous evening appeared and relieved her from the difficulty. He came to attend to my arm, and did his work with a skill that would not have disgraced a passed surgeon. While he was going about the business, I was aware of a slender shadow on the threshold, the shadow of some one who listened, yet did not wish to be seen. “Confound her!” I thought. “The jade! I believe that she is there to hear me whimper!” And I set my teeth — she had called me a milksop, had she? �
�� well, she should not hear me cry again. The shadow lay on the threshold a short minute, then it vanished. But more than once on that day and the two following days I was aware of it. It was all I saw of the girl; and though I knew, and had the best of grounds for knowing her sentiments respecting me, I confess that this steady avoidance of me — lonely and in pain as I was, and her guest — hurt me more than was reasonable.

  As for Wilmer he was gone, without beat of drum, and without seeing me; and save Mammy Jacks and the nigger, Tom, no one came near me except Aunt Lyddy, and she came only once. She was a little old lady, deaf and smiling, who labored under the belief that I had met with my injuries in fighting against the French. She was quite unable to distinguish this war from the old French war; when she thought of the fighting at all, she thought of it as in progress in Canada or Louisiana, under the leadership of Braddock and Forbes and Wolfe. The taking of Quebec was to her an event of yesterday, and I might have drunk all the tea in the world, and she would not have objected. Such was Aunt Lyddy; and even, such as she was, I wondered with bitterness, that she was allowed to visit me.

  Yet when I came to think more calmly, the position surprised me less. It was in the nature of this war to create a rancour which bred cruel deeds, and these again produced reprisals. After the capture of Charles Town in May and the subsequent defeat of Gates, the country had apparently returned to its allegiance. The King’s friends had raised their heads. The waverers had declared themselves, or-

  position in the field had ceased. If one thing had seemed more certain than another it was that my Lord Cornwallis’s base in the southern province was secure, and that he might now devote himself, without a backward glance, to the conquest of North Carolina and Virginia.

  Then in a month, in a week, almost in a day had come a change. God knows whether it was the result of mismanagement on our part, or of some ill-judged severity; or, as many now think, of the lack of civil government, a lack ill-borne by a people of our race. At any rate the change came. In a week secret midnight war flamed up everywhere. In a month the whole province was on fire. Partisans came together and attacked their neighbors, rebels took loyalists by the throat, burned their houses, harried their plantations, and in turn suffered the same things. By day the King’s writ ran; at first it was the exception for these irregulars to meet us in the field. But by night-attacks, by ambuscades, by besetting every ford and every ferry, they cut our communications, starved our posts and killed our messengers. For a time the royalists showed themselves as active. They, too, came together, formed bands, burned and harried. Presently the father was in one camp, the son in the other; neighbor fought with neighbor, old feuds were revived, old friendships were broken; and this it was that gave to this blind, bloody warfare, in the woods, in the morasses, in the cane-brakes, its savage character.