CHAPTER XXITHE JAIL AT ALBANY
An Indian girl—no uncommon thing in the streets of Albany in the days of the Revolution—stood patiently waiting before the entrance to the jail at Albany. She had remained in the same spot at least six hours, without moving from the stone abutment against which she leaned, or turning her eyes from the door, with its iron knobs and enormous lock, which was sunk deep into the gable-end of that old building. The hot noonday sun had beat upon her head; she drew the crimson shawl a little more over her face, but gave no signs of moving. The quaint gables threw their lacework shadows down where the sun had been; but she took no heed. It was only when some step approached near the jail, or a sound came from within, that she gave signs of the quick life burning in her bosom.
Three or four times during that day had Tahmeroo beat her hands against that cruel door, hoping madly that some one might come and let her in. But prison portals do not yield readily to human impatience, either from within or without, and the poor girl had nothing left but that long watch, where she stood motionless, though on the alert, full of fiery impatience, but of stubborn resolution too.
As she stood upon this steady watch, a horseman rode up the street, followed by a servant. Instead of galloping on, as so many had done during the day, he drew up before the jail, flung his bridle to the attendant, and going up to the door which Tahmeroo was eyeing so wistfully struck it a blow with the loaded handle of his riding-whip.
Tahmeroo sprang forward when she heard the bolts begin to move, but she was an instant too late. A dark passage within engulfed the visitor, and the door swung back to its lock again with a loud jar, which made the poor girl almost cry out, so great was the shock of her disappointment.
The servant saw the anguish in her face, and being a good-natured fellow, with nothing else to employ him at the moment, moved towards the jail, and kindly inquired what she wanted.
“I only want that door to open and let me in,” she said, casting a pitiful look at the entrance, from which she had been so cruelly excluded.
“And who is it you want to see, my purty red bird? Now, I tell you what, it’s easier getting into that door than getting out again, as many a poor feller can tell you. Who is it you are after?”
“I want to see my husband.”
“Your husband?”
“Yes, Captain Walter Butler.”
“Hallo! and you are his wife? Why, the general has just gone in to see with his own eyes if the Tory spy is as sick as he pretends.”
“Sick—is he sick, did you say?” cried Tahmeroo, turning of an ashen paleness.
“Don’t turn so pale—don’t fret about it—I’ve an idea its all sham; but the general will soon find out—it isn’t easy cheating him.”
“But he is sick—I must see him this moment—do you hear? this moment—tell me where I can carry this letter; they told me the gentleman was not here, but I will go where he is—I’ll follow on, and on, forever to find the man that has power to pass me through that door!”
“Let me look at the letter.”
Tahmeroo gave it to him, trembling with impatience to be off.
“Why this is to General Schuyler himself! All right—justwait here and give it to him as he comes out—don’t be afraid; for all his grand looks, he’s tenderhearted as a baby. Come, come; don’t get so down in the mouth; it’ll all turn out right somehow—things always do.”
“And was that the man who holds my husband in prison?” said Tahmeroo, flushing with indignation. “By what right—how dares he?”
“Hush—hush!—that talk’ll never do; soft words are better than bullets here; just let them bright tears creep into your eyes again, if you can just as easy as not; they’ll do more for you than a hull artillery of curses.”
Tahmeroo scarcely heard his advice, but stood with the letter in her hand, keenly watching the door. She placed herself directly between the restive war-horse and the entrance to the jail. At last there was a clang of bolts, a sudden swing of the ponderous door, and Tahmeroo saw in the darkness beyond two men who paused together in that gloomy arch for a moment’s conversation.
One of these men the Indian girl recognized at once, by the glitter of his uniform and the singular dignity of his countenance, which in breadth of forehead and the grave composure, which marks a well-regulated character, was not unlike that of General Washington himself.
After a moment Schuyler stepped out of the darkness. He was then forty-four years of age; a period when the impulses of youth are mellowed, but not hardened, in the bosoms of truly great men.
“Now—now!” whispered the attendant.
Tahmeroo held her breath, and went slowly forward, her bright, steady glance fastened on the general’s face, till their very intensity drew his glance that way.
“What is this?” he said, stopping short with the missionary’s letter in his hand, but perusing that young face with a penetrating glance before he opened it.“A letter from——, ha! I understand it now—and have you come all this distance to see your husband? so young, too!”
Tahmeroo could only point to the door with her trembling finger.
“My husband—he is there—oh, make them open the door. Tahmeroo has no breath to speak with till they let her in yonder.”
Schuyler smiled, turned upon his heel, and knocked again at the prison door. It was promptly opened.
“Conduct this young woman to Captain Butler’s room; she is his wife,” he said, addressing the jailer.
“See that no one treats her rudely—but this one interview must be enough; to-morrow the young man will be removed to the custody of a private family, where his health can be cared for; he frets like a caged panther here.”
Turning to Tahmeroo, before he mounted his horse, the general said in a kindly, paternal way: “Now make the best of your time, my poor girl; it is well you caught me here, for I should have been off to the camp again in less than an hour.”
Tahmeroo could not speak; she saw the door open, and casting back one brilliant glance of gratitude darted through.
Schuyler smiled quietly, muttered, “Poor thing, poor thing!” once or twice, and mounting his horse, rode away.
“My husband—Walter!”
Butler sprang to his feet, with an exclamation of delight. He was prostrate on a low camp-bed when she entered, as General Schuyler had left him, apparently exhausted by illness.
“Tahmeroo, my hawk—my pretty rattlesnake.”
“Oh, you are sick; you are dying!” cried the heart-stricken wife, losing all strength and dropping on her knees by the bed he had just left.
“Hush, hush! child—don’t make all this outcry. It isn’t sickness at all; see, I am strong enough to lift you.” And taking the young Indian in his arms, he bore her across the small room and returning again, sat down on the bed, still holding her in his embrace.
She did not speak, she did not weep; to breathe then and there was happiness enough for her.
“Ah, but you cheat Tahmeroo. Your face is white as snow; you, you——”
“I tell you I am well, never better in my life,” he whispered, hurriedly; “but my only chance of escape lay in seeming ill. I have petitioned again and again to see General Schuyler, but until to-day he never came. I have made my face white and my voice weak for him. It has done its work, Tahmeroo; to-morrow I shall be taken from this gloomy place, and confined in a private family, from which there is some chance of escape. Now, are you satisfied that I am not dying?”
Tahmeroo laughed, and clasped her hands hard to keep from clapping them, in her joy. Her eyes shone like diamonds. The whole thing fired her Indian blood, which delighted in craft almost as much as in courage.
“And I shall go with you—I shall see you every day. Oh, I remember now—that proud man said that I must only come this once—only once.”
“Don’t cry; don’t begin to tremble after this fashion. An Indian wife should be brave,” said Butler, terrified by her agitation.
She lifted her head, and shook back the hair from her temples with a gesture of queenly pride.
“Tahmeroo is brave. See, if you can find tears in her eyes.”
“That’s right; now listen. Since you have come in I have thought of something. If you only had an old dress with you, such as white people wear; but these things are too fanciful; they will never do.”
As the door opened Tahmeroo darted forward exclaiming, “My husband—Walter.”
As the door opened Tahmeroo darted forward exclaiming, “My husband—Walter.”
As the door opened Tahmeroo darted forward exclaiming, “My husband—Walter.”
“How! you want a poor dress, stained by water and faded by the sun; is that it?”
“Exactly; but this toggery can never be brought into the right condition.”
“Look; will this do?”
Tahmeroo untied a little bundle which she had carried under her shawl, and displayed the dress Mary Derwent had given her, worn and faded by a long journey on horseback; and which, notwithstanding the missionary’s advice to the contrary, she had exchanged for her own more brilliant costume, before visiting her husband.
“Do! it is just the thing. Put it up—put it up, before the jailer comes in. Now listen—thank Heaven, you can read. In this paper you will find the name of a family with which they intend to confine me. The people excused themselves from taking me to-day from want of help. Servants are not easily got in Albany these times—do you comprehend?”
“Yes,” answered Tahmeroo, taking up his thoughts quick as lightning. “I am to put on this dress, comb back my hair, look like a white girl used to work, and be a servant to these people. Then, then—some night, after all are asleep, I must watch the sentinel, give him firewater, or take the flint from his gun, and then away for the forest.”
“My brave, bright girl!”
Tahmeroo went on:
“My warriors are in the neighborhood, waiting with their horses—I have gold in my dress—I am strong, proud—it seems as if all our warriors were fighting for you, and I leading them on, this moment!”
She fell into his arms, trembling for very joy.
He held her to his heart—it was not all base when that noble creature lay against it. He kissed her warmly. There was a world of selfishness in that kiss, but Tahmeroo guessed nothing of that.
“Now go, my lark, go—search out the house they intend for my prison. To-morrow I shall find you there.”
Tahmeroo arose; she was in haste to be at work; the idea of saving her husband made her forget that he was eager to send her away. No one but the jailer saw her when she departed; but he wondered at the splendor of her beauty, which seemed to have heightened tenfold since she entered the building.
A middle-aged gentleman and lady sat in one of those quaint parlors, which occupied the gable-front of an old Dutch house, such as may be seen in Albany, as relics of a past age, even to this day. The room was neat, almost to chilliness; blue tiles ornamented the chimney-piece; blue tiles ran in a border round the oaken floor; the gentleman’s coat was of blue; his stockings were seamed with blue and his dame’s linen dress was striped with the same color. Thus they sat in this coldly-tinted apartment, after dinner, conversing together about the strange guest they had consented to receive into their house, at the urgent request of General Schuyler, who believed that close confinement had really endangered Butler’s life, and wished to be humane; while he was not willing to set a man so dangerous at perfect liberty.
While the good Dutchman and his wife were talking over the difficulties of this arrangement, which became more important from the fact that their only maid-servant had left her place, on hearing of the new claim likely to be made on her labors, a staid old man, who had been detailed to guard the prisoner when he came, entered the room and announced a country girl from across the river who wished to hire herself out.
This was a piece of good fortune which neither of the occupants of the parlor had expected—for servants were not to be had for the asking, when so much wildland lay ready for tillage, and labor was mostly applied in building up homes for the working classes.
While they were quietly congratulating themselves, the applicant came into the room. She was a plain, and rather shabbily dressed girl—singularly handsome, notwithstanding the poverty of her raiment—who entered the parlor with the free grace of a fawn, and spoke in accents which would have appeared far too pure for her humble appearance with any one to whom the English language was a native tongue.
The Dutchman, fortunately, understood very little English, and the country girl was profoundly ignorant of Dutch; so as the conversation was necessarily carried on between the soldier and the girl, the matter of reference was easily settled. In half an hour after her entrance, the maid was busy at her work in the kitchen.
The next day Butler was brought to his new prison, seeming very feeble, and scarcely strong enough to walk to the chamber, far up in the peaked roof, which had been assigned for his safe keeping. The soldier observed that he looked earnestly at the new maid-servant in passing upstairs, and that a smile quivered on his lip when he saw her. But this was not strange; older eyes than his might have kindled at the sight of that beautiful face; it almost made a fool of the tenderhearted soldier himself.
After the prisoner had been installed in his chamber, the new servant would linger there a little, after serving his meals, and once the sentinel fancied that he saw the two whispering together as she sat down the dishes; but when the rustic beauty came out she was sure to drive all suspicion from his head with an arch smile that intoxicated him more deliciously than the best corn whisky he ever drank.
On the third day what little heart the poor fellow had left after his first interview was completely gone;and when she came up at nine o’clock, and asked him, with a charming smile, to step down into the kitchen and taste a mug of hot punch with lemon in it, which she had just been brewing, it required all his patriotism to refuse; and he apologized for doing his duty, with humility, as if it had been a sin.
The new servant pouted at first, but took better thought and suffered herself to be appeased; so, as a pledge of perfect reconciliation, after the little quarrel, she proposed to run to the kitchen and bring the jug of punch up to his post, where he might drink and smoke at his leisure, while she filled the glass.
This was a charming arrangement, and the sentinel enjoyed it amazingly; he drank of the punch, and tried the Dutchman’s best pipe, which the maid brought surreptitiously from the parlor, after the master had retired to bed. Thus he drank and smoked till everything became foggy around him, and he seemed to be encompassed by half a dozen pretty girls, all serving out punch for him, to say nothing of any number of grotesque pipes that danced under his nose, and a whole stock of muskets that crowded round his own trusty shooting-iron, which rested against the door.
After this singular phenomenon, the trusty sentinel kept his post with great pertinacity—but he was sound asleep, and breathing like an engine under a double head of steam.
Then the chamber-door was softly unlocked, and the pretty maid-servant gave a signal to some one within. Directly Butler appeared, ready dressed, and, treading softly over the sentinel, followed his Indian wife down stairs, out of the house, and along the narrow streets of Albany.
A quick walk to the outskirts of the town, a low whistle, and out from a piece of woods came half a dozen mounted savages, leading two horses, forest bred, and swift as deer.
Tahmeroo leaped upon one, Butler mounted the other, and away for the Valley of Wyoming, where Butler knew that his father would soon meet him with an avenging army.