II
WHICH KNITS UP SOME BROKEN ENDS
It was in the autumn of the year '64, as I was coming of age, that myfather made ready to send me to England. Himself a conscience exile fromEpiscopal Virginia, and a descendant of those Nottingham Iretons whosebest-known son fought stoutly against Church and King under OliverCromwell, he was yet willing to humor my bent and to use the interest ofmy mother's family to enter me in the king's service.
Accordingly, I took ship at Norfolk for "home," as we called it in thosedays; and, after a stormy passage and overmuch waiting as my cousins'guest in Lincolnshire, had my pair of colors in the Scots Blues, latelyhome from garrison duty in the Canadas.
Of the life in barracks of a young ensign with little wit and lesswisdom, and with more guineas in his purse than was good for him, theless said the better. But of this you may like to know that, what with agood father's example, and some small heritage of Puritan decency comedown to me from the sound-hearted old Roundhead stock, I won out ofthat devil's sponging-house, an army in the time of peace, with somewhatless to my score than others had to theirs.
It was in this barrack life that I came to know Richard Coverdale andhis evil genius, the man Francis Falconnet. Coverdale was an ensign inmy own regiment, and we were sworn friends from the first. His was aclean soul and a brave; and it was to him that I owed escape from manyof the grosser chargings on that score above-named.
As for Falconnet, he was even then a ruffler and a bully, though he wasnot of the army. He was a younger son, and at that time there were twolives between him and the baronetcy; but with a mother's bequeathings topurchase idleness and to gild his iniquities, he was a fair example ofthe _jeunesse doree_ of that England; a libertine, a gamester, arakehell; brave as the tiger is brave, and to the full as pitiless. Hewas a boon companion of the officers' mess; and for a time--andpurpose--posed as Coverdale's friend, and mine.
Since I would not tell my poor Dick's story to Richard Jennifer, I maynot set it down in cold words here for you. It was the age-old tragiccomedy of a false friend's treachery and a woman's weakness; a duel, andthe wrong man slain. And you may know this; that Falconnet's mostmerciful role in it was the part he played one chill November morningwhen he put Richard Coverdale to the wall and ran him through.
As you have guessed, I was Coverdale's next friend and second in thisaffair, and but for the upsetting news of the Tryon tyranny inCarolina,--news which reached me on the very day of the meeting,--Ishould there and then have called the slayer to his account.
How my father who, Presbyterian and Ireton though he was, had alwaysbeen of the king's side, came to espouse the cause of the "Regulators,"as they called themselves, I know not. In my youthful memories of him hefigures as the feudal lord of his own domain, more absolute than many ofthe petty kinglings I came afterward to know in the German marches. Butthis, too, I remember; that while his rule at Appleby Hundred was sternand despotic enough, he was ever ready to lend a willing ear to any taleof oppression. And if what men say of the tyrant Tryon's tax-gatherersand law-court robbers be no more than half truth, there was need for anyhonest gentleman to oppose them.
What that opposition came to in '71 is now a tale twice told. Taken inarms against the governor's authority, and with an estate well worthreceiving, my father had little justice and less mercy accorded him.With many others he was outlawed; his estates were declared forfeit; anda few days later he, with Benjamin Merrill and four more captivated atthe Alamance, was given some farce of a trial and hanged.
When the news of this came to me you may well suppose that I had noheart to continue in the service of the king who could sanction andreward such villainies as these of the butcher William Tryon. So I threwup my lieutenant's commission in the Blues, took ship for the Continent,and, after wearing some half-dozen different uniforms in Germany, waslucky enough to come at length to serviceable blows under my oldfield-marshal on the Turkish frontier.
To you of a younger generation, born in the day of swift mail-coachesand well-kept post-roads, the slowness with which our laggard newstraveled in that elder time must needs seem past belief. It was early inthe year '79 before I began to hear more than vague camp-fire tales ofthe struggle going on between the colonies and the mother country; andfrom that to setting foot once more upon the soil of my native Carolinawas still another year.
What I found upon landing at New Berne and saw while riding a jog-trotthence to the Catawba was a province rent and torn by partizan warfare.Though I came not once upon the partizans themselves in all that longfaring, there were trampled fields and pillaged houses enough to serveas mile-stones; and in my native Mecklenburg a mine full charged, withslow-match well alight for its firing.
Charleston had fallen, and Colonel Tarleton's outposts were alreadywidespread on the upper waters of the Broad and the Catawba. Thus it wasthat the first sight which greeted my eyes when I rode intoQueensborough was the familiar trappings of my old service, and I wasmade to know that in spite of Mr. Jefferson's boldly written Declarationof Independence, and that earlier casting of the king's yoke by thepatriotic Mecklenburgers themselves, my boyhood home was for the momentby sword-right a part of his Majesty's province of North Carolina.
You are not to suppose that these things moved me greatly. As yet I waschiefly concerned with my own affair and anxious to learn at first handsthe cost to me of my father's connection with the Regulators.
Touching this, I was not long kept in ignorance. Of all the vast demesneof Appleby Hundred there was no roof to shelter the son of the outlawedRoger Ireton save that of this poor hunting lodge in the mighty forestof the Catawba, overlooked, with the few runaway blacks inhabiting it,in the intaking of an estate so large that I think not even my fatherknew all the metes and bounds of it.
I shall not soon forget the interview with the lawyer in which I wastold the inhospitable truth. Nor shall I forget his truculent leer whenhe hinted that I had best be gone out of these parts, since it was notyet too late to bring down the sentence of outlawry from the father tothe son.
It was well for him that I knew not at the time that he was GilbertStair's factor. For I was mad enough to have throttled him where he satat his writing table, matching his long fingers and smirking at me withhis evil smile. But of this man more in his time and place. His name wasOwen Pengarvin. I would have you remember it.
For a week and a day I lingered on at Queensborough, for what I knewnot, save that all the world seemed suddenly to have grown stale andprofitless, and my life a thing of small account. One day I would beminded to go back to my old field-marshal and the keeping of the Turkishborder; the next I would ride over some part of my stolen heritage andswear a great oath to bide till I should come to my own again. And onthese alternating days the storm of black rage filled my horizons and Ibecame a derelict to drive on any rock or shoal in this uncharted sea ofwrath.
On one of these gallops farthest afield I chanced upon the bridle-paththat led to our old hunting lodge in the forest depths. Tracing the pathto its end among the maples I found the cabin, so lightly touched bytime that the mere sight of it carried me swiftly back to those happydays when my father and I had stalked the white-tailed deer in the hillglades beyond, with this log-built cabin for a rest-camp. I spurred upunder the low-hanging trees. The door stood wide, and a thin wreath ofblue smoke curled upward from the mouth of the wattled chimney.
Then and there I had my first welcome home. Old black Darius--old when Ihad last seen him at Appleby Hundred, and a very grandsire of ancientsnow--was one of the runaways who made the forest lodge a refuge. He hadbeen my father's body-servant, and, notwithstanding all the years thatlay between, he knew me at once.
Thereupon, as you would guess, I came immediately into some smallportion of my kingdom. Though Darius was the patriarch, the other blackswere also fugitives from Appleby Hundred; and for the son of RogerIreton there was instant vassalage and loyal service. But best of all,on my first evening before the handful of fire in the great fire-pla
ce,Darius brought me a package swathed in many wrappings of Indian-tanneddeerskin. It contained my father's sword, and, more precious than this,a message from the dead. My father's farewell was written upon a leaftorn from his journal, and was but a hasty scrawl. I here transcribe it.
_My Son:_
_I know not if this will ever come into your hands, but it and my sword shall be left in trust with the faithful Darius. We have made our ill-timed cast for liberty and it has failed, and to-morrow I and five others are to die at the rope's end. I bequeath you my sword--'tis all the tyrant hath left me to devise--and my blessing to go with it when you, or another Ireton, shall once more bare the true old blade in the sacred cause of liberty._
_Thy father,_ _Roger Ireton._
The Master of Appleby Page 3