XXITHE DRUMHEAD COURT
SOME of the British officers gathered in the fort commandant’s room to hold the court-martial were known to me by name, but that which gave me the greatest shock was the sight of Major Simcoe, sitting stern and thoughtful behind the up-ended drum. For his presence argued the return of the Queen’s Rangers from their wild-goose chase up the Tarrytown road, and their return promised the collapse of my care-taking plot to insure the escape of Beatrix and my cousin on theNancy Jane.
But they gave me little time for the anxious lover-thought, these stern gentlemen who were holding an inquest rather than a trial. With a haughty nod, to indicate my place in the prisoner’s dock, I suppose, General Phillips, who sat as judge-advocate, signed to Simcoe, and the major cleared his throat. I saw the burly Knyphausen tilting in his chair; the two Hessian captains sitting on either side of him; the commandant of the fort; a major; and a lieutenant-colonel of Sir Henry’s staff: saw, also, that neither Clinton nor Arnold was present. And then Major Simcoe began to recite the charges against me, Castner bending over to untie my hands as the reading went on.
It was evident, before the charges were half read, that I had been tried and condemned beforehand; that whatever I should say or do would in no wise modify the sentence which had already been determined on. That conviction broke the final thread of prudence in me; and when the major came to that part of his manuscript where it was set forth that I had entered the British lines as a spy and an emissary of General Washington’s, with the premeditated purpose of kidnapping General Benedict Arnold, I laughed hardily, and said I should like to be confronted with the proofs, if there were any.
“You shall be accommodated, Mr. Page,” returned Simcoe gravely. And then to Castner: “Bring in the man, James Askew, if you please, Lieutenant.”
At this I laughed again, and said, most impertinently: “Having run his sword through the body of the said James Askew a few minutes ago, Lieutenant Castner makes his apologies to the court, and—”
“Silence, sir!” thundered Phillips, frowning me down; and I held my peace while Castner explained, rather shamefacedly, how the spy had come to his end.
“Then we will take your testimony, Mr. Castner,” said Simcoe; whereupon the lieutenant told in a straightforward way how the spy Askew had first informed him of my purpose; how, when the story, second-handed on to Sir Henry Clinton, had resulted only in an order for my arrest and detention, which order had been suspended, he, Castner, had gone with Askew to meet an officer of Major Henry Lee’s Legion—one who knew the facts from the rebel side, and who, forthe sake of common honor, would substantiate Askew’s story.
Much more the lieutenant said, and doubtless the court listened to him. But I did not. My senses had gone blank to all outward happenings at that mention of an officer of my own fellowship who had made an appointment with Castner and the spy to insure my undoing. Admitting that Mr. Hamilton’s secret had leaked out, what man in all the patriot army hated me cordially enough to do this despicable thing? There was but one answer to that query: I had come between Howard Seytoun and the woman of his desire. For no lighter cause would any man turn his back upon his country, his honor as a soldier, his loyalty to the brotherhood of the army.
When I listened again, Major Simcoe was saying: “Your word is sufficient, of course, Mr. Castner. But for the sake of the formalities, a statement from this officer you speak of would sit well on the records of this court.”
“I anticipated that,” said Castner promptly. “Under an assurance of safe-conduct back to his own lines, the officer has accompanied me to New York.” Then, to one of his men: “Warnock, bring the Continental captain in.”
The man went out, and when next the door was opened, I saw what I was fully expecting to see. Seytoun came in, blinking at the lights, his bloated face flushing purple, and his shifty eyes looking anywhere save in my direction.
“Will you be good enough to answer a few questions,Captain Seytoun?” said Simcoe, taking a most gentlemanly tone with this double-dyed renegade and villain. “You have offered Lieutenant Castner a corroboration of the charge against Captain Richard Page; namely, the fact set forth by the man James Askew: that Captain Page came to New York as a spy and a kidnapper. Is this true?”
“It is,” muttered my accuser in a low tone.
“Upon what grounds do you assert this, Captain Seytoun?” cut in one of Knyphausen’s aides.
“It is the common talk in our camps.”
“You lie, Captain Seytoun—like the father of lies after whom you are named,” I said coolly; for now I remembered Askew’s story of his escape from the guard house at Tappan, and could easily add two and two together.
Simcoe would have put me down with harsh bluster; but now Phillips, cold-eyed and haughty, intervened suddenly.
“Can you impeach the witness, Captain Page?” he demanded.
“I can. By his own confession, James Askew lay under sentence of death in General Washington’s camp at Tappan. He escaped by the connivance of the officer of the guard. The bribe he offered and paid was the sharing of a certain secret with that villain who stands there, and the secret was this highly incredible story upon which you have convicted me, General Phillips. This man knows nothing but that which the spy, Askew, told him, and for aught that can be proved now, the story may well have been nothing more thana tissue of falsehoods, made up for the spy’s own purpose,” I answered boldly.
Seytoun might have outfaced me in this, if he had been endowed with the right kind of brazen courage: it was but my word against his. But his face was an open confession of guilt, and I think they all saw it, though, as I say, his testimony was a mere matter of court-martial routine—my fate had been predetermined long before.
A silence fell upon the room, and it was Major Simcoe who broke it.
“Captain Page, your conviction,”—I remarked that he used the word,—“does not turn upon these preliminaries, which serve merely to show premeditation and design. Whether you came as Mr. Washington’s emissary, or upon your own initiative, matters not: the fact remains that you not only intended to kidnap General Arnold; you have actually made the attempt. Do you deny that, sir?”
I did not see what good could come of adding lies to lies, at least, in my own behalf. By this time it must be known that Champe and I were the two who had eaten our suppers in the Dutch boat-builder’s house, the two who had stolen the boat, and, quite as inevitably, the two who had broken into Arnold’s house to find the empty bed. If I hesitated, it was only because I was striving to devise some way of saving Champe.
“I do not deny it,” I said, when the pause had grown to an impossible length.
“Ah!” said the major; and the exclamation was echoed in an audible sigh of relief on all sides. Then,fixing me with a look that was not all unkindly, Simcoe went on. “Your opportunities for carrying out your desperate enterprise have been all that you could ask; you have so won upon General Arnold’s confidence that he has trusted you fully, and even now, he yields only to the incontestable facts, and would shield you if he could. You must have had more than one chance of carrying out your design.”
“I had,” I broke in. “No more than an hour ago, Mr. Arnold was walking in his garden, alone. Once he came and stood within an arm’s reach of me; and I had a boat at the river’s edge in which to make my escape.”
“Ah!” he said again, and this time the exclamation was a sharp indrawing of the breath. “You spared him; will you tell us why, Captain Page? It can make no difference for or against you, now.”
“It is easily explained,” I said, smiling to give dissimulation the proper mask. “There were two of us; and at the crucial instant one of the two could not, or rather would not, rise to his opportunity—when he found out what that opportunity really meant.”
Simcoe nodded, and I marked the swift glance of intelligence that passed from one to another of my judges. Once more I had been able to impose upon them. They were saying to themselves that at the crisis the loyal sergeant had refused to be dragged into the kidnapping—which was as I had hoped. After which, Phillips took me up.
“Add a little more to your frankness, Mr. Page, and earn the satisfaction that comes from doing aworthy deed at the last,” he said austerely. “Do you confess that you have made a tool of Sergeant Champe in all this conspiracy?”
“I confess it,” I said, striving to keep the keen joy of the success of my stratagem out of the words. “In all the twistings and turnings of the last three days, the sergeant has been merely a well terrified common soldier acting under compulsion coupled with threats to have him hanged for a spy if he refused to obey me. It was I who plotted to keep him ashore when he came as your letter carrier, Major Simcoe; and in all subsequent matters, he has straitly obeyed my orders, doing what he was told to do in the fear of death, and disobeying me only in the final critical moment I have just been telling you about.”
It was here that I was made to feel the curious prickings that come upon getting the credit for a good deed when the credit is not fairly earned.
“You know that the sergeant denounced you, and pointed out the place of your concealment to Lieutenant Castner?” queried the major of Sir Henry’s staff.
“I do, and I applaud his resolution, sir. That is the kind of loyalty I should be rejoiced to discover in my own men. He but did his duty, as he saw it.”
Then this major, whose name I have never known, rose up in his place and gripped my hand most heartily.
“You are a true man and a gentleman, Captain Richard Page, notwithstanding the fact that we shall have to hang you presently,” he said, with bluff good nature; and I thanked him gravely, with that curious prickling that I speak of tingling in my finger-ends.
After this, Major Simcoe asked if I had anything further to say before I should be remanded under guard, and I rose and said I had, if the gentlemen present would bear with me. At General Phillips’s nod, I went on.
“One thing I wish to say is this: as Lieutenant Castner has explained, the spy, James Askew, went to his long account by an accident. But Mr. Castner’s sword has merely saved your hangman an item in his day’s work. I had speech with Askew two days since, as he may or may not have confessed to Lieutenant Castner. In the course of that interview he admitted to me, inadvertently, that he was the man who sold Major André to those who took him.”
The effect of this little shot was quite what I had expected. There were deep and bitter oaths of satisfaction at Askew’s death, and more than one word of thanks to me for setting this matter, which had been in doubt, finally at rest. This emboldened me to go on, for I had a boon to ask.
“That is one thing, General Phillips,” I said, addressing the highest authority I could reach. “Another is in the nature of a condemned man’s final request. I have an unfinished engagement with Captain Howard Seytoun, an engagement entered into before I left the camp at Tappan, and I pray you to grant me a short quarter-hour with him on the fort parade or in a guarded room, under such restrictions as you may see fit to impose.”
I don’t know what might have come of this request if Seytoun had held his peace. The British officers ofSir Henry Clinton’s military family were great sticklers for the point of honor, notwithstanding the well-known opposition of the knight himself to the common practise of dueling. But Seytoun must needs draw himself up scornfully and say that he had no cause of quarrel sufficient to make him wish to give satisfaction to a condemned spy.
At this, I went rage-mad, of course, like a hot-headed fool, and sprang across the intervening space and struck him; after which I was hustled off under guard, as I deserved to be for so greatly offending the dignity of the court; hustled out, and across the parade ground, and into a cold, bare barracks room, where Castner came to find me a few minutes later.
“Well?” I said, rightly guessing that he was the bearer of news.
“Your sentence has been passed, Captain Page, and now that I know you better, I am truly sorry to be General Phillips’s messenger. You are to be confined in a cell under the battlements of the fort until midnight, at which hour you will be taken to Gallows Hill and hanged. It is a terrible short road for you, Captain, and I begged them to make it a little longer, but—”
He choked, and could say no more; and truly, I think I may say without boasting that I was sorrier for this clean-hearted, noble young fellow than I was for myself, just at the moment. But that sorrow, and my own, and all things else were quickly swept out of my mind by a most miserable anxiety for Beatrix. Had Simcoe’s troopers been ordered to the ships? There was one chance in a thousand that Castnermight know, and I put the question to him as he was turning me over to the fort prison guard.
“Tell me, Lieutenant,” I said hurriedly; “do you chance to know if the Queen’s Rangers have been given their embarking orders yet? You will betray no trust in telling a dead man.”
He answered without hesitation.
“They have been embarking this evening since supper,” he said, little thinking what a stone he rolled upon my soul in these few words. And then: “Is there anything else, Captain Page?”
“Yes. From what was said in the court room yonder you doubtless gathered how much, or rather how little, Sergeant Champe has been to blame in all that he was made to bear a part in. Because you are a soldier and a gentleman, Lieutenant Castner, I know you have small respect for Benedict Arnold; but for the same reason I am sure you will say a word to him for this poor fellow who, after all, was your best means of bringing me to book. Will you say that word?”
But now Castner swore savagely and said he would not—to Arnold, though if any move were made to question Champe he would come between as he could.
“That is all I ask,” I interposed. “Champe is but an unlettered fellow, and if you were to put him upon the rack, he would be helpless. I shall hang the easier if you promise that he will be spared.”
“Champe will be sent to the fleet to-night to rejoin his legion: I’ll see it done, myself,” was Castner’s promise, and that promise, which was carried out some hours later, did, indeed save Champe from the hangman’shalter, though it sent him with Arnold’s legion to the Virginia ravaging and was, besides, the father to all of the poor sergeant’s wanderings and perils through the weary weeks and months which were to intervene before he could make good his escape and rejoin our army, a ragged, half-starved fugitive, in far-away Georgia.