“Granted,” I said cordially. “But the misfortune is that you are not all of a pattern.”
“No, nor you,” he riposted sharply. “There are good and bad, fine and mean in every country, sir, and some day we shall understand that, and shall cease to set down the faults of the few to the account of the many. War is tolerable, Major; war between you and me! It is the abuse of war that is intolerable. But I must go, or may be you will be making me a prisoner. My compliments to Tarleton when you see him — a good man but over sharp; over sharp, Major! Tell him that the Swamp Fox will give him many a run yet, and will not be the first to go to ground if I can help it.”
We had walked a little way from the mill, and while we talked a couple of men had led out the horses. I had a glimpse of them as they vanished round the corner of the building. Marion held out his hand.
“If we meet again, Major,” he said, “we will shoot at one another in all good fellowship — all soldiers of the right sort are comrades in arms. Meantime I wish you good-fortune. And if, when the war s over — I expect that by that time you will be once more a prisoner on parole — you have a fancy for a little duck-shooting, there is none better than on the Marion Plantation in St. John’s Parish.”
I could not resist his good humor and, depressed as I was, I returned his grasp with spirit. It was impossible not to admire what I had heard of him and equally impossible not to like what I had seen of him. There was in him a sparkle and a gaiety as well as an indomitable spirit that explained the hold he had over his men, a hold that was firmest in the darkest days and when the Swamp Fox’s life was not more easy than his. “Certainly,” I said, “I will remember the duck-shooting, General. And if I can procure leave for you to reside on your plantation, of which I have no doubt we shall still be in possession, we may have the pleasure of shooting the ducks in company.”
“Bah!” he cried laughing. “Long live the Thirteen States!”
“Long live King George!” I answered. “A clement and—”
“A very stupid sovereign!” he retorted gaily. He waved his hat, and I waved mine. I understood that he did not wish me to learn the strength of his party, or who were with him; and I made no attempt to follow him. The sun was shining through the mist as he went round the house and disappeared in the direction of the river.
Alas, the passing gaiety with which his good temper had infected me went with him. For days I had lived upon excitement. The exhilaration of movement, of effort, of danger, had borne me on. Above all the presence of the girl, whose nearness set my pulses bounding, had filled my thoughts and buoyed me up. Now in a twinkling I stood stripped of all, and shivering. Excitement, exhilaration, danger, Constantia, all were gone and I stood alone, by this cursed morass. I faced a future as flat and dreary as the prospect before my eyes; and in the rebound, I could almost have found it in my heart to pitch myself into one of the pale channels which the sunlight revealed running this way and that across the moss. The gaunt house beside me was not more lonely than I felt; and ungrateful as we too often are to Providence — before whom I bow in reverence as I write — the thought that I had just escaped from a violent death went for little in my thoughts.
I was digging a hole in the mud with my heel and thinking of this when I heard footsteps behind me. I turned sharply; who can measure the swiftness with which hope leaps up in the heart? But the steps were only Marion’s. He had appeared again at the corner of the house.
He did not approach me but called to me from a distance. “Have you any message for my goddaughter,” he asked, “before I go?”
She has sent him back, I thought, to cover her retreat. Something, she feels, is due to me; and this kind of left-handed message saves her face. I felt it, I felt it sorely, but I pulled myself together — was I to remind her of her debt? “To be sure,” I said as cooly as I could. “Be good enough to congratulate her. Say how glad I am to have been of use to her — along with others.”
“I’ll tell her,” he called out. “Very good!” And he laughed. “Good-bye, then, till better times. And don’t forget the duck-shooting!”
I made him some reply. He waved his hat. He disappeared.
So it was all over. That was all that she had to say to me.
For a little while, for a few minutes, anger warmed me. Then that, too, died down and left me chilled and miserable. I ground my heel farther into the mud. The water welled up and mechanically I went on working at, and enlarging, the hole.
I was paying dearly for a few hours of happiness; very dearly for the belief which had lasted no more than a few hours, that she loved me. I wondered now on what I had founded it. On the fact that she had drawn back when it had come to hazarding my life? On that moment when she had turned to me for help? On that other when she had clung to me? On a blush, a look? Oh, fool! These were nothings, I saw now; things imponderable, intangible, evasive as the air, fugitive as the wind. She had not loved me. She had only made her market of me. She had only made use of me. She had drawn me into her plans with others, with Tom, with Levi, with her god-father, with Rawdon, with Paton! She had made her market of us all — and saved her father’s life.
Well, I was glad she had! I would not for the world have had it otherwise. If my love for her held anything that was good and honest and unselfish — and I thought it did — I must rejoice with her, and I would. She owed me nothing, while I owed her father my life. And so at worst we were quits.
By this time the sun had drunk up the last of the fog, and showed the flats in all their ugliness. Well, I would be going. There was no more to be done here. It was all over.
I went into the mill and stood staring at the troop-horses. I saw that with only one arm I should find it no easy matter to saddle them, but it had to be done. First, however, I went upstairs to get my cloak, and I found not mine only — on a box beside the expiring fire lay hers. So she had left it as lightly as she had left me! Beside it, cast heedlessly on the floor lay the pistol that had done so much for us. She had not given a second thought to that either. I took it, and hid it in my breast. It had lain in hers when she had been unhappy, when the heart, against which it had pressed, had throbbed to bursting with the pain of fear and of suspense. I would never part with it.
I went down, carrying the cloaks, and began to deal with the horses. With some difficulty I saddled and bridled the one I had ridden, but the gray proved to be a rogue. As often as I forced the bit between its teeth it flung up its head and got rid of it before I could secure the cheekstrap. Thrice I tried and thrice the brute baffled me and once hit me heavily on the chin. A fourth time I tried and failing gave over with an oath, and laid my face against the saddle. It was her saddle, and heaven knows whether it was that which overcame me, or my helplessness, or the feeling that they had left me to do this, but —
“You must let me help you with that.”
I started. The rush of joy was so over-powering, the shock of hearing her voice so unexpected, that it dazzled me as if a flame had passed before my eyes. On that instant of rapture followed another — of unreasoning and unreasonable shame. How long had she been there? What had she seen — she who had once called me a milksop? “I was tightening a girth,” I mumbled, keeping my head lowered.
“Yes,” she said, “but it has slipped again, I think.”
I groped for it — it was indeed hanging under the horse’s barrel. I murmured that the stable was so dark that it was almost impossible —
“You must let me help you.”
“You shall in a moment,” I answered. “I will just fix this.” And then— “I thought that you had gone,” I muttered.
“Gone?” she cried.
“With General Marion.”
“Gone without thanking you?” she exclaimed. “Oh, impossible! You could not think that of me! Gone without—”
“It was some mistake,” I said.
“It was a very great mistake,” she answered. “Will you allow me to pass you?”
I made way for her t
o pass to the horse’s head. The stable was dark, I have said, but as she went by, something prompted her to turn, and look me in the face. “The brute hit me on the chin,” I said hurriedly.
She did not speak. I pulled down the gray’s head, and she thrust the bit between its teeth. Then she proceeded to fasten the cheekstrap, but she was so long about it that I saw that her fingers were trembling and that her breath came as short and quick as if she had been running. “My fingers are all thumbs this morning,” she said with a queer laugh. “With joy, I suppose. But there, it’s done, Major Craven. Now I must get my cloak,” she added, and she slipped quickly by me as if she were in a Hurry.
“I have it,” I said.
“And my pistol?”
“I have that too,” I said.
“Then I suppose that we had better be going,” she answered. “But perhaps I ought to explain,” she continued, as she stood in the doorway with her back to the light. “General Marion could not take me with him. He is making for the Pee Dee and the great marshes, and hopes to be on the other side of Lynch’s creek by night. He took Tom but he said that I should embarrass him.”
“I see.”
“He thought that you would perhaps escort me as far as Camden,” she continued soberly. “I have friends there who will receive me for the night and send me home to-morrow by Rocky Mount and the fords of the Catawba. He fancied that I had better avoid Winnsboro’.”
“I agree with him,” I said.
“I might be arrested, he fancied?”
“It is not impossible,” I assented dryly. I felt that something was closing in on me and stopping all the sources of speech. This ordered plan, this business-like arrangement — I was to be of use to the end it seemed. Just of use! I strove desperately to resist the thought and yet I could not.
“Then if there is nothing else,” she said slowly, “we might — be going, I suppose?”
“I suppose so,” I answered heavily. And I turned the horses round.
“Or — do you think,” she suggested uncertainly, “that we had better eat something before we start?”
“Let us eat it outside, then!” I replied. “I cannot breathe in this place.”
“Yet you were ready enough to enter it!” she retorted. And then before I could answer, “I must see what they’ve left!” she exclaimed. “There must be something up-stairs.”
She went nimbly up the ladder, leaving me staring after her. I turned the horses round and secured them. Then, in a brown study, I went out and for the first time I passed round the building, and saw the wide river gliding by, and beyond it across the marshes the long low ridge that goes by the name of the High Hills of Santee. The sun was shining on the distant ridge, and on the water, and compared with the prospect from the other side of the mill the view was cheerful and even gay. I spread her cloak on a pile of lumber that littered the wharf, and then I went back to fetch her.
She had found some corn-bread and molasses, and some cold cooked rice; Even with the help of whisky of which there was more than of anything else, it was a poor feast and she spread it in silence while I looked on — thinking and thinking. From here to Camden was so many hours, two or three or four. So long I should have her company. Then we should part. As I rode away I should look back and see her framed in a doorway; or I should stand myself and see her grow small as she receded, until she turned some corner and was gone. And I should know that this was the end. So many hours, two or three or four! And heavy on me all the time the knowledge that I should spoil them by my unhappy temper, or my dullness, or that strange feeling that benumbed my tongue and took from me the power of speech.
She looked up. “It is quite ready,” she said. And then, lowering her tone to a whisper, “Let us remember the last time we ate,” she said reverently, “and be thankful.”
“Amen,” I said. “I thank God for your sake.”
“And I thank too,” she answered in a voice that shook a little, “all who helped me.”
“Tom?”
“Ah, dear brave Tom!” she cried, tears in her voice.
We were eating by this time, and to lighten the talk, “I am not sure,” I said, “that General Marion approved of the manner in which you thanked him.”
“Thanked Tom? Because I kissed his hand? I believe I did,” she added ingenuously. “Oh, it was a small thing! Surely it was a small thing to do for him who had risked his life for me!”
Our eyes met. For a moment the red flamed in her cheeks but she met my look bravely. “I am not ashamed,” she said. “I would do the same again in the same case.”
The eyes that fell were mine. I was tongue-tied. Here was an opening but how could I say that I was in the same case. How could I claim that the risk I had run was to be compared with that which Tom had run. Or how could I claim at all as a debt — what I wanted. Perish the thought! So I went on eating, silent and stupid, thinking of the few, few hours that separated us from Camden, thinking of the long, long time that would follow. She said one or two things disjointedly; that her father would free Tom, of course; that he was a very clever negro, and wonderful as a bone-setter.
“I should know that,” I said.
“Yes,” she assented; and I stole a glance at her. She had found means to plait up her hair and arrange her dress. She was another creature now from the desperate, driven, tragical girl who had clung to me that morning, whose heart had beaten for an instant against mine, whose pistol at this moment lay hard and cold on my breast. My courage sank lower and lower. Of that girl I had had hopes, on her I had had a claim. But this one was a stranger.
Presently we had finished, and she rose and went down to the river to wash her hands.
When she had done this she turned and came up the bank again, swinging her hat in her hand, and softly crooning some song of praise. The sun flamed from the water behind her, and out of that light she came towards me, tall and slender and gracious, and with such a glory of thanksgiving in her face, that my pride, or whatever it was, that stood between her and me, and kept me silent, gave way and broke! What matter what she thought? What matter if she trod me under foot, held me cheap, disdained me? What matter? I went to meet her.
“You did that for Tom,” I said. “Have you nothing for me? For me, too?”
Her grave eyes met mine. She was nearly of a height with me. “For you,” she said, “I have all that you choose to ask.”
“Yourself?” I cried.
“If it be your pleasure.”
And that, it may be thought, should have satisfied me, who an instant before had despaired. But so presumptuous is success I was already jealous, already exigent. “Ah, not as a debt?” I cried. “If you cannot give me your love, Con?”
“I cannot,” she answered with smiling eyes. “It has been given to you this month past.” Then as she hung back from me, blushing divinely, “They have touched Tom’s black hands,” she said.
“God bless them for it!” I answered.
Later she told me that she had loved me from the hour I had kept silence as to her part in the outrage at the Bluff. “I was ashamed, oh, I was horribly ashamed of it,” she said. “I knew that neither my father nor my god-father would have done that! Yet, I am not sure that it was not earlier than that? I think it was your mention of the soldier’s wife when you were yourself in — in danger — that clung to my memory, and would not be shaken off, and—”
“Poor Simms!” I said. “And I once envied him!”
At Camden the Wateree becomes the Catawba, and happiness becomes memory or anticipation, according as you gaze up or down the stream. For there, in a tiny parlor in a white frame house looking on a poplar wood, I parted from Constantia, and left her with the friends who were to see her as far as Rocky Mount on her homeward journey. I fear ‘that they were rebels. But there are things which it is wise to leave sub silentio; the dog that has found a bone does not bark. And my position was delicate.
I felt that position grow more delicate in proportion as, with my fac
e turned towards Winnsboro’, I approached the camp. I was not sad; the future held that which would make amends for present evils. But I knew that I had an unpleasant passage before me, and my conscience was not quite clear. At any rate I had misgivings, and taking care to reach the camp at sunset, and as the guard was changing, I made my way to Paton’s quarters without beat of drum. I was lucky enough to find him before the Provost-Marshal found me.
He shook with laughter when he saw me. “Upon my honor, Major,” he said. “We are all vastly obliged to you! You are a whole company of players in yourself. As the hero-errant who relieves the Distressed Damsel and releases the Beleaguered Knight you fill the stage. The camp is agog with you. The latest about you is that the rebels have hung you from the roof of a remote house in the marshes. And, lo, we are all lamenting you, when in you walk as coolly as if the Dragon at Headquarters, robbed of his prey, were not breathing Court Martials and Firing Parties and the worst threats against you.”
“I had nothing to do with it,” I said stoutly.
“Innocent!”
“That is what I am.”
“Well, you will have to persuade my lord of it,” he retorted. “And you’ll find your work prepared for you! Francis Rawdon-Hastings is in no mean rage, my lad. The sooner you placate him the better. I hope the lady has come to give evidence for you?”
I pooh-poohed this, but I took his hint and I went straight to Headquarters, leaving him mightily amused. There, the storm was not slow to break over me. My conduct was disgraceful, contumacious, subversive of all discipline, flat mutiny. I had taken advantage of my position and his lordship’s friendship, and the rest. I had collogued with convicted rebels, I had wandered over the country with suspected persons. I should be tried by Court Martial, I should find, whoever I was, that I could not do these things with impunity! D — d if I could!
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 631
