Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “Ceremony? Oh, d — n your ceremony!” cried the first to enter. And he called for a candle that he might see what he was doing. When it was handed in I saw them. They were a grim, rough group, the man who had called for the candle the least ill-looking among them; as he was also the smallest and perhaps the most dangerous. They all wore wide-leafed hats and carried guns and were hung about with pouches and weapons. They stared down at me, and I stared steadily at them. “You’ve got to swap your bed for the road,” the leader continued in the same brutal tone. “We think you’ll be safer, where we’re going to take you, mister.”

  “And where’s that?” I asked — though I knew very well.

  “To Salisbury,” he said. But his grin gave the lie to his words.

  “I am afraid that is too long a journey, gentlemen,” I answered. “I could not go so far. I am quite helpless.”

  “Oh, you’ll be helped to make the journey,” he retorted; and they all laughed, as at a good jest. “You’ll not find it long, either,” he continued, “you can trust us for that. We’re not set on long journeys ourselves. We must go with you a piece of the way, so we’ll shorten it, depend upon it!”

  “I am Captain Wilmer’s prisoner,” I said clutching at what I knew was a straw. “He placed me here, and you will have to answer to him, gentlemen, for anything you may do.”

  “We’ll answer him,” growled one of the other men. “I don’t think you’ll be there to complain,” he added with meaning.

  I tried to calculate the chances, but there were none. I could not resist, I was crippled and unarmed. I could not escape. I was in their hands and at their mercy. “I ask you to note,” I said, “that I am a prisoner of war, duly admitted to quarter.”

  “And why not?” the last speaker retorted with a curse. “Ain’t we going to take you to Head-Quarters? And the shortest way?” with a wink at the others.

  At this there came an interruption from the outer room. “Why don’t you bring the d — d Tory out?” cried a voice that scorned disguise. “What’s the use of all this palaver, Levi? Might be a Cherokee pow-wow by the sound of it. Come! If he don’t know what to expect he’d best go and ask at Buford’s! Bring him out, confound you! Here’s his horse, and a rope and—”

  “You’ll let me dress?” I said. There was no chance, I saw, but clearly what chance there was lay in coolness and delay, if delay were possible. “With a long journey before me, a man likes to start handsomely,” I continued, addressing the smaller man whom they called Levi. “I am sure that Captain Wilmer would not wish to put me to more inconvenience than is necessary. He’s been at a good deal of trouble—”

  “A vast lot too much,” the man in the outer room struck in. “He needs a lesson, too, and we’re the lads of mettle to give it him! Here,” with a mingling of sarcasm and impatience, “pass along my lord’s vally, and his curling tongs!’Fraid we can’t stop while he powders! Now, no nonsense, damme! Where’s his clothes? Where’s that nigger? Tom! “ The nigger was passed in from one to another, getting some rough usage on the way. “If you could withdraw, gentlemen, for a minute?” I said. Alone I might think of something.

  But, “No, stranger, by your leave,” Levi replied, with a sneer. “You’re too precious! We’re not going to lose sight of you till — till the time comes. Go on with your dressing, if you don’t want to go in your shirt!”

  Perhaps it was as well that they did not go, for! I was shaky on my legs and I feared nothing so much as that I should break down through bodily weakness. Their presence braced me and gave me the less time to think. Tom’s fingers trembled so much that he was not as useful as he might have been, but with his help I got somehow into my clothes — with many a twinge and one groan that I could not check. The injured arm was already bound to my side, but by passing the other arm through the sleeve of a coat — Wilmer’s I suppose, for my uniform was not wearable — and looping the garment loosely round my neck, I was clothed after a fashion. With these men looking sombrely on, and their shadows, cast by the wavering light of the candle, rising and falling on the ceiling, and the hurry and silence, broken now and again by some, “Lord ha’ mercy” from the outer room, it was such a toilet as men make in Newgate but surely nowhere else.

  “That’ll do,” Levi cried by and by. “You’ll not catch cold.”

  “We’ll answer for that!” chimed in another. “Bring him on! He’ll be warm enough where he’s going! We’ve wasted more time than enough already!”

  My head swam for a moment. Then, thank God, the dizziness left me and I got myself in hand. I thought it right to make a last protest, however useless. “Note,” I said, raising my head, “all here that I go unwillingly. These gentlemen do not intend me to reach Salisbury, and I warn them that they will be answerable to Captain Wilmer and to the Authorities for what they do. I am well known to Lord Cornwallis—”

  “Enough of this palaver!” roared the brute in the outer room. “Are you turning soft, Levi? Why don’t you bring the man through? If he won’t catch cold, my mare will. Make an end, man!”

  It was useless to say more. “Don’t touch me,” I said. “I can walk.”

  I went out in the midst of them into the living-room which I had not yet seen with my eyes. There, in the lamplight the fourth man was standing on guard over the negro women of whom there were three or four. Apart from them, with her back to us, and looking through a window into the darkness, stood Madam Constantia. I had not heard the girl’s voice since the men had entered the house, and so far as I could judge she had carried out her threat, had uttered no protest, taken no side. She had deliberately stood aloof. Now, one does not look for protection to women. But that a woman, a girl should stand aside at such a time, should stand by, silent, unmoved, unprotesting, while her father’s guest was dragged out to death — when even the negroes about her were moved to pity — seemed to me an abominable thing, a thing so unnatural that it nerved me more than I believe anything else could have. If I were English, and she hated me for that, she should at least not despise me! If she thought so ill of the King’s officers that to her they were but milksops, she should at least find that we could meet the worst with dignity. She was abominable in her hardness and her beauty, but at least I would leave a thought to prick her, a something by which she should remember me. Better, far better to think of her in this pinch, than of home, of Osgodby, of my mother!

  There would be time to think of these in the darkness outside.

  As I entered the room — and no doubt, half-dressed as I was, I looked pale and ill — the women cried out. At that the men would have hustled me through the outer door without giving me an opportunity of speaking; but I managed to gain a moment. Mammy Jacks was blubbering — I called her to me. “My purse and what little money I have,” I said, “is under my pillow. It’s yours, my good woman. If Captain Wilmer will be good enough to let Lord Cornwallis know that Major Craven — Major Craven, can you remember — but he will know what to say. And one moment!” I hung back, as the men would have dragged me on. “There are some letters with the purse from a woman named Simms, who is about the Barracks at Charles Town. I want her to know that her husband is dead — was killed in my presence. I promised him that she should know. She should get a pass on the next Falmouth packet, and — you won’t forget — Major Craven — my address in England is in the purse.” Then, “I am ready,” I said to the men.

  I would not look again at the girl’s still figure; I went out. Half-a-dozen horses stood in the darkness before the house, watched by a fifth man. One of these was thrust forward, and from the edge of the porch I was able, though weakly and with pain, to get into the saddle. The men mounted round me. They would have started at a trot, but I told them curtly that I could not sit the horse. On that they moved away, grumbling, at a walk.

  I cast a backward glance at the long dark line of the house, and especially at the lighted window in which the girl’s figure showed as in a frame. She was watching us go, watching to the last without co
ncern or pity. Certainly she had warned me, certainly she had done her best to persuade me to go while there was time. But in the bitterness of the moment I could not remember this. I could only think of her as unfeeling, unwomanly, cruel. I had read of such women, I had never met one, I had never thought to meet one; and I would think of her no more. I knew that in leaving the house I left my last hope behind me, and that outside in the night, in the power of these men, I must face what was before me without a thought of help.

  A man dismounted to lower a sliprail, and even while I told myself that there was no hope I wondered if, crippled and weak as I was, I might still find some way to elude them. Clopety-clop, the horses went on again. The night wind rustled across the fields, crickets chirped, the squeal of some animal in its death-throe startled the ear. Clopety-clop!

  I tried to direct my thoughts to that future now so near, which all must sometime face. I tried to remove my mind from the present, so swiftly ebbing away, and to dwell on the dark leap into the unknown, into the illimitable, that lay before me. But I could not. Hurried pictures of my home, of my mother, of the way in which the news would reach Osgodby — these indeed flitted across my mind. But though I knew, though I told myself, that escape was hopeless, and that in a few minutes, in an hour, according as these ruffians pleased, I should cease to exist, hope still tormented me, still held me on its tenter-hooks, still swung my mind hither and thither, as the chance of reprieve distracts the poor wretch in the condemned cell.

  What if I broke away, one-armed as I was, and thrust my way through the men, taking my chance of obstacles? It would be useless, reason told me; and it might be the thing which they wished. It would absolve them from the last scruple, if any scruple remained. And at best I must be recaptured, for I knew neither my horse nor the country. Then — the mind at such times darts from subject to subject, unable to fix itself — I caught a word or two spoken by the riders in front.

  “We can get one at the smithy,” Levi said.

  “Confound you, you make me mad,” the other grumbled. “Why break our backs just to put him—” I missed the last word or two.

  “You’re a fool, man! We must give Wilmer no handle,” Levi replied. “Let him suspect what he pleases, he can’t prove it. If he can’t show—” his voice dropped lower, I lost the rest.

  So they were afraid of Wilmer, after all! But what was it that they were going to get at the smithy? And if we stayed there, was there any chance of help? I thought of Barter and the frightened women. Reason told me that there was no hope in them.

  We were on the road now, riding in thick darkness under trees. The pain in my shoulder was growing with the motion, and from one moment to another, it was all I could do to restrain a groan. Frogs were croaking — cold for them I thought, with that strange leap of the mind from one subject to another. The men were silent, and save for the trampling of the horses and such sounds as I have named, the night was silent. How far were we going? Why need they be at the trouble of riding, and I at the pain, when the end, soon or late, would be the same?

  Ha! there, before us was the faint glow of the smithy fire. Apparently the forge was at work tonight. It had not been lighted on the night of the King’s Mountain fight.

  As we sighted it, one of the men spoke. I caught the word “Spade.” It was that which they were going to get at the smithy, then? A spade!

  The word chilled my blood — I shivered. The glow of the smithy fire grew stronger as we advanced, the ring of a hammer on metal reached us. The men seemed to be disturbed by something and spoke low to one another. They even drew rein for a moment and conferred, but on second thoughts they moved on. “It can’t be old Barter,” said one. “But I’m mighty surprised if there was a fire when we came by. Who’s lit it?”

  “Perhaps his lad’s come back?”

  “Jake? Maybe. We’ll soon know.”

  They drew up towards the forge at a walk.

  When we were twenty yards from the doorway whence the light issued, a man strolled out of the shed, his hands in his pockets. He stood in the glow of the fire, looking towards us; doubtless he had heard the sound of the horses’ hoofs above the clink of the hammer. He had a cigar in his mouth, and as he stood watching our approach he did not remove it, nor take his hands from his pockets. He stood quietly watching us, as we came towards him.

  “Halloa!” said Levi, as we pulled up two or three paces from the stranger. “Lit the forge, have you?”

  “Cast a shoe,” the man replied. He was a small man, plainly, but, for the up-country, neatly dressed, and wearing a black leather jockey-cap. A rather elegant finical little man he seemed to me, and unarmed. Such as he was, my hopes flew to him, and rested on him, though in the way of help old Barter could scarcely have seemed less promising. “You alone?” Levi asked, looking him over. “You’ve said it,” the man replied placidly. His eyes traveled from one to another of us. He did not move.

  Levi bent his head and looked under the low eaves of the smithy. “You ride a good horse,” he said. “A d — d good horse!” he repeated in a rising voice.

  The man nodded.

  Levi glanced over his shoulder. “Fetch it,” he said to one of his followers — and I knew that he meant the spade, not the horse. Then, “What are you doing here?” he asked the stranger.

  It was on this that the first real hope awoke in me. The man’s calmness in face of this bunch of armed men — he had never removed his hands from his pockets or the cigar from his mouth — and a certain gleam in his eyes, that gave the lie to his mild manner — these two things impressed me. And his answer to Levi’s question.

  “I’m just looking round,” he said gently.

  For a moment I think that Levi was on the point of turning on his heel, and letting the man go his way. But his greed had been roused, I suppose, by a second look at the stranger’s horse; and “That’s no answer,” he said roughly. “What’s your errand here? Who are you? What are you doing? Come!” he continued more violently. “We want no strangers here and no spies! We’ve caught one already, and it’s as easy, s’help me, to find two halters as one!”

  “And there are plenty of trees,” the man answered coolly, with his eyes on me. “No lack of them either! Spy is he. He might well be English by the look of him.”

  “We’ll take care of him!” Levi retorted roughly. “Who are you? That is the point! You’re none of Shelby’s men, nor Campbell’s! Where do you live?”

  “Well, I don’t live here.”

  “Then—”

  “Do you know Wilmer? Captain Wilmer?” the stranger asked.

  “Yes, but—”

  “He knows me. Ask him.”

  I struck in before Levi could make the angry rejoinder which was on his lips. “I am Captain Wilmer’s prisoner,” I cried, thrusting my horse forward. For the moment I forgot pain and weakness. “And I take you to witness, sir, whoever you are, that I am no spy, and that these men have carried me off from Captain Wilmer’s house.”

  “D — n you, hold your tongue!” cried one of the other men, pushing forward and trying to silence me.

  “I am Major Craven of the English Army!” I persisted. “I am a wounded man, taken at King’s Mountain, and given quarter, and these men—” One of them clapped his hand on my mouth. Another seized my horse’s head and dragged it back. They closed round me. “Knock his head off!” cried Levi. “Choke him, some one!”

  “That man, Barter — the smith!” I shouted desperately — the old man had just come to the smithy entrance— “he knows! He saw me with Captain Wilmer! Ask him!”

  I could say no more. One of the men flung his arm round my neck and squeezed not only my throat but my shoulder. I screamed with pain. “Take him on! Take him on!” Levi cried furiously. “I and Margetts will deal with this fellow. Take him on!”

  “Stop!” said the little man; and more nimbly than I had ever seen it done, he whipped out a pistol, cocked it, and covered Levi, who was sitting in his saddle not three paces from him.
“Don’t take him,” he went on. “And stand still. If a man goes to draw his weapon I shoot.”

  Never was a surprise more complete. The man who had tried to choke me let his arm fall from my shoulder, the men’s mouths opened, Levi gaped. Not a hand was raised among them.

  “Wilmer’s prisoner, is he?” the little man went on; he spoke as quietly as he had spoken before. “And you were going to hang him? Mighty hurried, wasn’t it?”

  “What the h — ll is it to you?” Levi cried.

  The muzzle rose from his breast to his head. “Better tell that man of yours to be still!” the stranger said — this time he spoke rather grimly. Then to me “Taken at King’s Mountain, sir?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve a broken arm and my shoulder was crushed. I appeal to you to rescue me from these men. If you leave me in their hands—”

  The man stopped me by a nod. He took his cigar from the corner of his mouth, threw it away and substituted for it something that gleamed in the light. He whistled shrilly.

  “Better stand still!” he said, as one or two of the horses backed and sidled, “I miss sometimes, but not at three paces.” He whistled again, more loudly. “On second thoughts, you’ll be wise to take yourselves off,” he added.

  “Not before I know who you are,” Levi retorted with an oath. His mean face was livid with anger — and fear.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” the stranger answered in the tone of a man making a concession; and to my astonishment he dropped the muzzle of his pistol, cooly uncocked it, and returned it to his pocket. “I am Marion of Marion’s Rangers, Marion of the Pee Dee River. My men will be here presently and if you take my advice you will be gone before they come. There are plenty of trees about and we have ropes. I will be responsible for your prisoner,” he added sternly. “Leave him to me.”

  Levi gasped. “Colonel Marion!” he cried.

  “At your service, sir. Captain Wilmer is acting as my guide and if he finds you gentlemen here he may have something to say to this matter. Bring out my horse, my friend,” he continued, addressing the old smith.