CHAPTER VTHE SWAMP FOX
Giving the rein to the most intrepid gallantry and in battle exhibiting all the fire and impetuosity of youth, there never was an enemy, who yielded to his valor, who had not cause to admire and eulogize his subsequent humanity.—It would have been as easy to turn the sun from his course as Marion from the path of honor.
Garden.
Garden.
Garden.
Garden.
Wilmer rode up to us a minute later, followed by two horsemen, rough wild-looking men, who wore leather caps like their leader’s. When he saw who Marion’s companion was even his aplomb was not equal to the occasion. He stared at me open-mouthed. “What diversion is this, Major?” he cried at last. “You here? What in the name of cock-fighting are you doing here?”
“I am afraid Major Craven has considerable ground for complaint,” Marion said, a note of sternness in his voice.
“Which Colonel Marion has removed at risk to himself,” I said politely. “I am afraid that if it had not been for him I should have had no throat to complain with! A man called Levi and fourothers entered your house an hour ago, Captain Wilmer, and dragged me out, and in spite of all my remonstrances—”
“Were going to hang him,” Marion said grimly. “Fortunately they called at the forge, I was here, and Major Craven appealed to me. I interfered—”
“And they cried ‘King’s Cruse,’ I warrant you!” Wilmer struck in.
“Well, they withdrew the stakes,” Marion said with a ghost of a smile. “They were not a very gallant five. So all is well that ends well—as it has in this case, Wilmer. In this case! But—”
“But what was Con doing?” Wilmer cried turning to me. “That she let them take you out of the house?”
I fancied that the moment he had spoken he would have recalled his words; and acting on an impulse which I did not stay to examine, “She did what she could, I have no doubt,” I answered. “What could she do? Colonel Marion may think little of facing five men—”
“Five corn-stalks!” he interpolated lightly.
“But for a woman it’s another matter! A very different matter!”
“And yet,” Wilmer said—but I thought that he breathed more freely—“Con is not exactly a boarding-school miss. She’s—”
“She’s my god-daughter for one thing,” Marion said with a smile.
“I should have thought that she could manage a cur like Levi!”
“And four others?” I said. “Come, come!”
He shrugged his shoulders, but I saw that he was relieved by my words. “Well, it’s over now,” he said, “and she will tell us her own tale. I have no doubt that she did what she could. For the rest, I’ll talk to Levi, Colonel, be sure. I am with you, that we have had too much of this. But that can wait. The Major looks shaken and the sooner he’s in bed again the better. Never was a man more unlucky!”
“I am afraid that others have been still more unlucky,” Marion said gravely. And I knew that he referred to some incident unknown to me. “But you are right, let us go. I am anxious to see my god-daughter and almost as anxious to see a pair of sheets for once.”
He said good-night to the old smith and we started. Marion and Wilmer rode ahead, I followed, Marion’s two men brought up the rear. So we retraced the way that I had traveled an hour before in stress of mind and blackness and despair. The night cloaked me in solitude, stilled the fever in my blood, laid its cool touch on my heated brow;and far be it from me to deny that I hastened to render thanks where, above all, thanks were due. I had been long enough in this land of immense distances, of wide rivers and roadless forests—wherein our little army was sometimes lost, as a pitch-fork in a hay-stack—to appreciate the thousand risks that lay between us and home, and to know how little a man could command his own fate, or secure his own life.
Clop, clop, went the horses’ hoofs. The same sound, yet how different to my ears! The croak of frogs, the swish of the wind through the wild mulberries, the murmur of the little rill we crossed—how changed was the note in all! Deep gratitude, a solemn peace set me apart, and hallowed my thoughts. How delicious seemed the darkness, how sweet the night scents—no magnolia on the coast was sweeter!—how fresh the passing air!
But as water finds its level, so, soon or late, a man’s mind returns to its ordinary course. Before we reached the house, short as was the distance, other thoughts, and one in particular, took possession of me. What face would the girl put on what had happened? How would she act? How would she bear herself to them? And to me?
True, I had shielded her as far as lay in my power. I had given way to a passing impulse and had lied;partly in order that her father might not learn the full callousness of her conduct, partly because I wished to see her punished, and I felt sure that no punishment would touch her pride so sharply as the knowledge that I had been silent and had not deigned to betray her. I wanted to see her punished, but even before revenge came curiosity. How would she bear herself, whether I spoke or were silent? Would she own the truth to her father? Would she own it to Marion of whom, I suspected, she stood in greater awe? And, if she did not, how would she carry it off? How would she look me in the face, whether I spoke, or were silent?
As we drew up to the house the lighted windows still shone on the night, and a troop of dogs, roused by our approach, came barking round us, after the southern fashion. But no one appeared, no one met us; doubtless the white men had ordered the negroes to keep to their quarters. Wilmer, who was the first to reach the ground, helped me to dismount. “But keep behind us a minute,” he said. “We need not give my daughter a fright.”
I assented gladly, hugging myself; I was to see a comedy! I stood back, and Marion and Wilmer mounted the porch and opened the door. Cries of alarm greeted them, but these quickly gave place toexclamations of joy, to cries of “Missie! Missie, he come! Marse Wilmer come!”
I pressed up to the doorway to see what was passing. Mammy Jacks was pounding at the door of an inner room—doubtless her mistress’s. The other women with the vehemence of their race were kissing the Master’s hand and even his clothes. “Steady! Steady!” Wilmer was saying, “Don’t frighten her!” And he raised his voice,
“Con, it’s I!” he cried. “All is well, girl. Here’s a visitor to see you!”
She appeared. But I saw at a glance that this was not the same girl who on the night of my arrival had met Wilmer with flying skirts and cries of joy. This girl came out, pale, shrinking, frightened. True, in a breath she was in her father’s arms, she was sobbing in abandonment on his shoulder. But, believe me, in that short interval my desire for vengeance had taken flight; it had vanished at the first sight of her face. The sooner she knew that I was safe, the better! I did not understand her, she was beyond my comprehension, she was still a puzzle. But I knew that she had suffered, and was suffering still.
“There, honey, all’s well, all’s well!” Wilmer said, soothing her. I think that for the time he had completely forgotten me and my affairs. “What is it?What’s amiss, child? Here’s your god-father—a big man now! Look up, here’s Marion!”
On that I crept away. I felt that I ought not to be looking on. It seemed to be a—well, I gave it no name, but I felt that I had no right to be there, and I went down into the darkness below the veranda, and stood a dozen yards away where I could not hear what passed, or could hear only the one sharp cry that the news of my safety drew from her. Marion’s men had taken the horses round to the cabins, and I was alone. I had the puzzle to amuse me still, if I chose to work upon it; and I had leisure. But it was no longer to my taste and not many minutes passed before Wilmer summoned me.
I had no choice then, I had to go up into the room. But so changed were my feelings in regard to this girl that I loathed the necessity. I was as unwilling to face her, as unwilling to shame her, as if I had been the criminal. I would have given many guineas to be a hundred miles away.
I might have spared my scruples for she was not there, she was not to be seen. Instead, I met the men’s eyes; they glanced at me, then away again. They looked disconcerted. For my part I affected to be dazzled by the light. “It has been a little too much for my daughter,” Wilmer said. “I don’t quite understand what happened,” he continuedawkwardly, “but she seems to think, Major—she seems to have got it into her head—”
“It was a shock to Miss Wilmer,” I said. “And no wonder! I am not the steadier for it myself.”
“Just so,” he replied slowly. “Of course. But she’s got an idea that she did not do all—”
“I hope that they did not strike her,” I said.
It was a happy thought. It suggested a state of things, wholly different from that which was in their minds. Wilmer’s face lightened. “What?” he said. “Do you mean that there was any appearance of—of that?”
“A cur like that!” I said contemptuously. “A devil of a fellow in a tavern!” I looked at Marion whose silence and steady gaze embarrassed me. “Or among women!”
“Ah!”
“But you must pardon me,” I said. “I am done. I must lie down or I shall fall down. My shoulder is in Hades. For God’s sake, Wilmer, let me go to bed,” I continued peevishly—and indeed I was at the end of my strength. “You are worse than Levi and company!”
They were puzzled I think. They could not make my story tally with the words that had escaped her. But, thus adjured, they had no choice except to drop the subject, and attend to me. I washelped to bed, Tom was summoned, my shoulder was eased, I was fed. And they no doubt had other and more important things to consider than how to reconcile two accounts of a matter which was at an end and had lost its importance. I heard them talking far into the night. Their voices, subdued to the note of caution, were my lullaby, soothed me to slumber, went murmuring with me into the land of dreams. While they talked of ferries and night attacks, of Greene replacing Gage, of this man’s defection or that man’s persistence, of our weakness here and strength there, of what might be looked for from the northern province and what might be feared in Georgia, I was far away by the Coquet, listening to the music of its waters, soothed by the hum of moorland bees. The vast and troubled ocean that rolled between my home and me was forgotten. Alas, of the many thousands who crossed that ocean with me, how few were ever to return! How few were destined to see the old country again!
Late in the night I awoke and sat up, sweating and listening, my arm throbbing violently. And so it was with me until morning, fatigue imposing sleep, and jarred nerves again snatching me from it. At last I fell into a calmer state, and awoke to find the sun up and Marion standing beside me. Hisbearing was changed, he was again the leader, watchful, distant, a little punctilious.
“I make no apology for rousing you,” he said. “I have to leave. I have discussed your position with Captain Wilmer and he will be guided by my advice. I could take you north to-day and see that you were conveyed safely to our Headquarters; but you are in no condition to travel. It would be barbarous to suggest it. I propose therefore to leave you here. In a month I or some of my people will be passing, and the opportunity may then serve. In the meantime I must ask you to give me your parole not to escape, while you remain here.”
“Willingly,” I said. “From the present moment, Colonel Marion, until—it is well to be exact?”
“Until I take you into my charge,” he replied rather grimly. “Once in my hands, Major, I will give you leave to escape if you can.”
“Agreed,” I said laughing. “Have you the paper?”
He handed it to me. While he brought the ink to the bedside, I read the form and found it on all fours with what he had said. I signed it as well as I could with my left hand—the exertion was not a slight one. Then, “One moment,” I said, my hand still on the paper, “How am I to be saved from a repetition of yesterday’s outrage?”
“It will not be repeated,” he answered, his face stern. “I have taken steps to secure that.” I handed him the paper. “Very good,” he continued. “That is settled then?”
“No,” I said, “not until I have thanked you for an intervention which saved my life.”
“The good fortune was mine,” he replied courteously. And then with feeling, “Would to God,” he cried, “that I could have saved all as I saved you! There have been dreadful things done, damnable things, sir, in the last week. The things that make war—which between you and me is clean—abominable! And they are as stupid as they are cruel, whether they are done by your people or by mine! They are the things of which we shall both be ashamed some day. For my part,” he continued, “I believe that if the war had been waged on either side, with as much good sense as a Charles Town merchant, Horry or Pinkney, brings to his everyday business, the States would have been conquered or reconciled these twelve months past! Or on the other hand there would not have been one English soldier south of the St. Lawrence to-day!”
I smiled. “My commission only permits me to agree to the first of your alternatives,” I said. “But I owe you a vast deal more than agreement. I won’t say much about it, but if I can ever serveyou, I hope, Colonel Marion, that you will command me.”
“I accept the offer,” he said frankly. “Some day perhaps I shall call upon you to make it good.” And then, “You were with General Burgoyne’s force, were you not?”
“I was,” I answered. “I was on his staff, and surrendered with him at Saratoga. I have been—unlucky.”
“Confoundedly unlucky!” he rejoined with feeling. “North and South!”
“Miss Wilmer,” I began impulsively, “seemed to think—,” and then I stopped. Why had I brought in her name? What folly had led me into mentioning her?
He saw that I paused and he shrugged his shoulders. He seemed to be willing to let it pass. Then he changed his mind, and spoke. “Do you know her story?” he asked. “She lost her mother very unhappily. Mrs. Wilmer was staying for her health at Norfolk in Virginia in ’76, when your people bombarded it—an open town, my friend. The poor lady, shelterless and in such clothes as she could snatch up, died later of exposure. My god-daughter was devoted to her, as she is to her father. Women feel these things deeply. Can you wonder?”
“No,” I said gravely. “I don’t wonder. I knew nothing of this.”
“I am sorry to say that that is not all,” he went on. “Her only brother, a lad of eighteen, fell into your hands in the attack on Savannah. He was embarked, with other prisoners, for the West Indies. He has not been heard of since, and whether he is alive or dead, God knows. These things eat into the heart. Do you wonder?”
“No,” I said, earnestly, “I don’t! But in heaven’s name why did they not tell me? I am known to the Commander-in-Chief, I have some small influence. I could at least make inquiries for them. Do they suppose that after the treatment I have received at Captain Wilmer’s hands—though it be no more than the laws of war require—do they suppose that I would not do what I could?”
He looked at me a little quizzically, a little sorrowfully. “I am afraid,” he said, “that all British officers—and all British sympathizers—are not like you. They have come here to deal with rebels.” His face grew stern. “They forget that their grandsires were rebels a hundred years ago, their great grandsires thirty years before—and rebels on much the same grounds. They think that nothing becomes them but severity. Ah, we have had bitterexperiences, Major Craven, and I do not deny it, some nobles ones! Your Lord Cornwallis means well, but he has much to learn, and he has made big mistakes.”
I evaded that. “I will write at once,” I said.
He raised his head sharply. “No!” he replied. “I am afraid, I must put an embargo on that. I have to think of Wilmer, and—” He checked himself. “He does not want a troop of horse to pay him a visit,” he added, rather lamely.
“Of course, I should not say where I was,” I answered, a little piqued. “Captain Wilmer may see the letter.”
“Of necessity,” Marion rejoined dryly. “But there are circumstances”—he hesitated—“this is a peculiar case, and I can run no risks. There must be no writing, Major Craven. I will see that news of your safety is sent in to Winnsboro’.”
“Lord Cornwallis is at Charlotte.”
“He was,” Marion replied with a smile. “But your affair at King’s Mountain has touched him in a tender place, and yesterday he was reported to be falling back on Winnsboro’ as fast as he could. In any case, word shall be sent to his quarters wherever they are, that you are wounded, and in safe hands. That will meet your wishes?”
“I am afraid it must,” I said grudgingly. “If you insist?”
“I do,” he said. “It may seem harsh, but I have reasons. I have reasons. It is a peculiar case. And now, good-bye, sir. In a month I hope to travel north with you.”
“Or rather I with you,” I said, sighing.
“It’s the fortune of war,” he replied with a shrug, and that alert movement of the hands which sometimes betrayed his French origin. “Wilmer is going with me to-day, but he will return to-morrow or the next day. Then you will have company.”
He took his leave then, and though he had treated me handsomely and I had reason to be grateful to him, I looked after him with envy. He was free, he was about to take the road, he had plans; the world was before him, already a reputation was his. And I lay here, useless, chained by the leg, a prisoner for the second time. I knew that I ought to be thankful; I had my life, where many had perished, and by and by, I should be grateful. But as I thought of him trailing over the flanks of the wind-swept hills, or filing through the depths of the pine-barrens, or cantering over the wide, scented savannahs, my soul pined to go with him; pined for freedom, for action, for the vast spaces with which two years had made me familiar. That I sighed for theserather than for home or friends was a token perhaps of returning strength; or it may be that the sight of this man, who within a few months had written his name so deeply on events, had roused my ambition.
Be the cause what it might I found the day endless. It was in vain that Tom fretted me with attentions; I was useless, I was a log, any one might look down on me. To be taken twice! Could a man of spirit be taken twice? No, it was too much. It was bad enough to stand for that which was hateful, without also standing for that which was contemptible.
It was a grey rainy day such as we have in England in July after a spell of heat; soft and perfumed, grateful to those abroad but dull to the housebound. And Wilmer was gone. I heard no voices in the house, no spinning-wheel, the business of the plantation was no longer transacted within my hearing. There was nothing to distract me, less to amuse me. I fumed and fretted. When my eyes fell on the Bible which Madam Constantia had sent me, it failed to provoke a smile. Instead, the sight chilled me. How deep must be the enmity, how stern the purpose that could foresee the night’s work, and foreseeing could still send that book!
I asked Tom if I could get up. He answered that I might get up on the morrow. Not to-day.
“But I am feeling much stronger,” I said.
“Want no flust’ations,” he replied. “Marse take dose sassaf’ac tea now.”
I swore at him and his sassafras tea. “You v’ey big man ter-day,” Mammy Jacks said.
“And pickaninny yesterday,” I rejoined angrily.
This time she did not answer. Instead she grinned at me.
Presently, “Isn’t Miss Wilmer well?” I asked.
“She sorter poorly,” Mammy Jacks said. “She skeered by dat low white trash,” with a side glance at me, to see how I took it.
“Isn’t she afraid that they may return?” I asked.
“Marse Marion see to dat,” the woman said, with pride. “He mighty big man. He say de wud, dey not come widin miles o’ the Bluff! You des hev de luck uv de worl’,” Mammy Jacks continued. “Dey hang nine, ten your folks day befo’ yistiddy.”
“Oh, confound you, you black raven!” I cried, “Leave me alone.”
It was grim news; and for a time it upset me completely. For a while the service which Marion had done me and Wilmer’s humanity were alike swept from my mind by a rush of anger. The resentment which such acts breed carried me away, as it had carried away better men before me. I cursed the rebels. I longed to strike a blow at them, I longedto crush them. I hated them. But what could I do, maimed and captive as I was? What could I do? Too soon the wave of anger passed and left behind it a depression, a despondency that the grey evening and the silent house deepened. I had escaped, I had been spared. But they, who might have been as helpless and as innocent as myself, and guilty only of owning the same allegiance, had suffered this! It was hard to think of the deed with patience, it was pain to think of it at all; and I was thankful when at last the night came, and I could turn my face to the wall and sleep.
But no man is fit to be a soldier who cannot snatch the pleasures of the passing moment; and when the next day saw me out of doors, when I found myself established on the veranda and the view broke upon me, liquid with early sunshine, and my gaze travelled from the green slopes that fringed the farther bank of the creek to the wooded hills and so to the purple distances of the Blue Ridge—the boundary in those days of civilization—I felt that life was still worth living and worth preserving. From the house, which stood long and low on a modest bluff, a pasture, shaded by scattered catalpas, dropped down to the water, which a cattle track crossed under my eyes. On the left, in the direction of the smithy, the plantation fields lay along the slope, broken byclumps of live oaks and here and there disfigured by stumps. On the right a snake-fence, draped with branches of the grape-vine, enclosed an attempt at a garden, which a magnolia that climbed one end of the veranda and a fig tree that was splayed against the other, did something to reinforce. All under my eyes was rough and plain; the place differed from the stately mansions on the Ashley River or the Cooper, as Wilmer himself differed from the scarlet-coated, periwigged beaux of Charles Town, or as our home-farm in England differed from Osgodby itself. But a simple comfort marked the homestead, the prospect was entrancing, and what was still new and crude in the externals of the house, the beauty of a semi-tropical vegetation was hastening to veil. At a glance one saw that the Bluff was one of those up-country settlements which men of more enterprise than means were at this time pushing over the hills towards the Tennessee and the Ohio.
That Wilmer was such a pioneer I had no doubt, though I judged that he had more behind him than a dead level of poverty. Indeed I found evidence of this on the little table that had been set for me beside my cane chair. It bore a jug of spring water, some limes, and a book in two volumes. I fell on the book eagerly. It wasThe Rambler, published in London in 1767. Now for a house on the distant Catawbato possess a copy ofThe Ramblerimported some education and even some refinement.
No one but the girl could have put the book there; and had she done this before the news of the murder of my comrades reached me I should have received the act in a different spirit. I should have asked myself with interest in what mood she proffered the boon, and how she intended it; whether as an overture towards peace, or a mere civility, rendered perforce when it could no longer be withheld.
But now I was too sore to find pleasure in such questions. What softer thoughts I had entertained of her, thoughts that her agitation and her remorse on the evening of the outrage had engendered in me, were gone for the time. I found her treatment of me, viewed by the light of other events, too cruel; I found it too much on a par with the acts of those who had murdered my comrades in cold blood. I forgot the story of her mother and her brother. I believed even that I did not wish to see her.
For I had not yet seen her. As I passed through the living-room I had caught a glimpse of Miss Lyddy’s back; who, unprepared for my visit, had fled and slammed a door upon me, as if I were indeed the French. The negro women had grinned and curtsied and cried, “Lord’s sake!” and fussed about me, and been scolded by Mammy Jacks.But of the girl I had seen nothing as I passed through.
Doubtless she was on the plantation taking her father’s place and managing for him. And doubtless, too, I must presently see her. For at the farther end of the veranda, where the glossy leaves of the magnolia draped the pillars and deepened the shade, was a second encampment, a chair, a table, a work-basket; and beside these a spinning-wheel and an old hound. Nor even if she shunned this spot, could she long avoid me. Though I sat remote from the doorway, no one could enter or leave the house without passing under my eyes.
I fancied that after what had passed she would not be able to meet me without embarrassment, and for this reason, she might choose to surprise me; she might come out of the house and appear at my elbow. But two hours passed, the beauties of Johnson were losing their charm, even the prospect was beginning to pall on me, and still she did not come. Then at last I saw her on the farther side of the creek, coming down to the ford—a slender figure in white, wearing a broad hat of palmetto leaves. A black boy carrying a basket ran at her side and two or three dogs scampered about her. She was armed with a switch, and she crossed the stream by a line of stepping-stones that flanked the ford.
I watched her with a mixture of curiosity and indignation, as she tripped from stone to stone. She had to mount the slope under my eyes, and I had time to wonder what she would do. Would she come to me and speak? Or would she pass me with a bow and enter the house? Or would she ignore me altogether?
She did none of these things. I think that she had made up her mind to bow to me as she passed. For at one point, where she was nearer to me, she wavered ever so little, as if she were going to turn to me. Then a flood of red dyed her face, and blushing painfully, sensible I am sure of my gaze, but with her head high, she crossed the veranda and entered the house.
“Well, at least she can feel!” I thought. And if I regretted anything, it was not that I had stared at her, but that she might not now choose to come to me. She would not soon forgive the humiliation of her hot cheeks.