Frances dropped her head into the lap of her sister, and wept in agony.
“Do you shed tears, sweet angel,” continued Sarah, soothingly: “then heaven is not exempt from grief. But where is Henry? He was executed, and he must be here too; but perhaps they will come together. Oh, how joyful will be the meeting!”
Frances sprang on her feet, and paced the apartment in a bitterness of sorrow that she could not controul. The eye of Sarah followed her in childish admiration of her beauty and her attire, which had been adapted to the occasion, and then pressing her hand across her forehead, once more said--
“You look like my sister; but all good and lovely spirits are alike. Tell me, were you ever married? Did you ever let another, and a stranger, steal your affections from your father, and brother, and sister, as I have done? If not, poor wretch I pity you, although you may be in heaven.”
“Sarah--peace, peace--I implore you to be silent,” shrieked Frances, again rushing to her bed, “or you will kill me at your feet.”
Another dreadful crash was heard, that shook the building to its centre. It was the falling of the roof, and the flames threw their light abroad so as to make objects visible around the cottage through the windows of the room. Frances flew to one of them, and saw the confused group that was collected on the lawn. Among them were her aunt and Isabella, pointing to the fiery edifice with distraction, and apparently urging the dragoons who were near them to enter it. It was the first time the maid comprehended their danger, and uttering a wild shriek, she flew through the passage instinctively, without consideration or object.
A dense and suffocating column of smoke opposed her progress. She paused to breathe, when a man caught her in his arms, and bore her in a state of insensibility through the falling embers and darkness, to the open air. The instant that Frances recovered her recollection, she perceived that it was to Lawton she owed her life, and throwing herself on her knees before him, she cried--
“Sarah, Sarah, Sarah! Save my sister, and may the blessing of God await you.”
Her strength failed her, and she sunk on the grass in insensibility. The trooper pointed to her figure, and motioned to Katy for assistance, and then advanced once more near to the cottage. The fire had already communicated to the woodwork of the piazzas and windows, and the whole exterior of the cottage, was covered with smoke. The only entrance was through these dangers, and even the hardy and impetuous Lawton paused to consider. It was for a moment only, and he dashed into the heat and darkness, where missing the entrance, he wandered for a minute, and precipitated himself back again into the lawn. Drawing a single breath of pure air, he renewed the effort, and was again unsuccessful; but on a third trial, he met a man staggering under the load of a human body. It was neither the place, nor was there time, to question or to make distinctions, and the trooper caught both together in his arms, and with gigantic strength, bore them through the smoke. To his astonishment, he perceived that it was the surgeon and the body of one of the Skinners that he had saved.
“Archibald!” he exclaimed, “why, in the name of justice did you bring this dead miscreant to light again? His deeds are rank to heaven!”
The operator was too much bewildered to reply instantly, but wiping the moisture from his forehead, and clearing his lungs from the vapour that he had inhaled, he said, piteously--
“Ah! it is all over. Had I been in time to have stopped the effusion from the jugular, he might have been saved; but the heat was conducive to hermorrhage; yes, life is extinct indeed. Well, are there any more wounded?”
His question was put to the air, for Frances was removed to the opposite side of the building, where her friends were collected, and Lawton once more had disappeared in the smoke.
By this time the flames had dispersed much of the suffocating vapor, so that the trooper was able to find the door, and in its very entrance he was met by a man supporting the insensible Sarah in his arms. There was but barely time to reach the lawn again before the fire broke through all the windows, and wrapped the whole building in a single sheet of flame.
“God be praised,” ejaculated the preserver of Sarah: “It would have been an awful death to have died.”
The trooper turned from gazing at the edifice, to the speaker, and, to his astonishment, instead of one of his own men, beheld the pedlar.
“Ha! the spy,” he exclaimed. “By heavens! you cross me like a spectre.”
“Capt. Lawton,” said Birch, leaning in momentary exhaustion against the fence to which they had retired from the heat, “I am again in your power, for I can neither flee nor resist.”
“The cause of America is dear to me as life,” said the trooper; “but she cannot require me to forget both gratitude and honour. Fly, unhappy man, while yet you are unseen by my men, or I cannot save you.”
“May God prosper you, and make you victorious over your enemies,” cried Birch, grasping the hand of the dragoon with an iron strength that his meagre figure did not indicate.
“Hold!” said Lawton, “but a word--are you what you seem?--can you--are you--”
“A royal spy,” interrupted Birch, averting his face, and endeavouring to release his hand.
“Then go, miserable wretch,” said the trooper, relinquishing his grasp; “either avarice or delusion has lead a noble heart astray.”
The bright light from the flames reached to a great distance around what was left of the building, but the words were hardly passed the lips of Lawton, before the gaunt form of the pedlar had glided over the visible space and plunged into the darkness beyond, which was rendered more gloomy by the contrast.
The eye of Lawton rested for a moment on the spot where he had last seen this inexplicable man, and then turning to the yet insensible Sarah, he lifted her in his arms, and bore her like a sleeping infant to the care of her friends.
CHAPTER VII.
“And now her charms are fading fast,
Her spirits now no more are gay!
Alas! that beauty cannot last!
That flowers so sweet so soon decay!
How sad appears The vale of years, How chang’d from youth’s too flattering scene!
Where are her fond admirers gone?
Alas! and shall there then be none
On whom her soul may lean?”
Cynthia’s grave
The torrent and the blast can mar the loveliest scenes in nature;--war, with his ruthless hand may rival the elements in their work of destruction--but it is passion alone that can lay waste the human heart. The whirlwind and the floor have duration in their existence, and have bounds to their fury; the earth recovers from the devastation of the conflict with a fertility that seems enriched by the blood of its victims.--But there are feelings that no human agency can limit, and mental wounds that surpass the art of man to heal.
For some years Sarah Wharton had indulged in contemplations on the person and character of Wellmere, that were natural to her sex and situation; and now, when these transient recollections were become permanent from security, and she looked forward to the moment that she was to take the most momentous step of her life, with that engrossing passion which marks a woman’s love, the discovery of his real character was a blow too heavy for her faculties to bear. It has already been seen, that her first indications of returning life, were unaccompanied by a consciousness of what had so recently occurred, nor did her friends, on receiving her from the arms of the trooper, recover more than the lovely image of her whom they had once known.
The walls of the cottage were all that was left of the building, and these, blackened by smoke and stripped of their piazzas and ornaments, served only as dreary memorials of the peaceful contentment and security that had so lately reigned within. The roof, together with the rest of the wood-work, had tumbled into the cellars, and a pale and flitting light ascending from their embers, shone faintly through the windows on objects in the lawn. The early flight of the Skinners left the dragoons at liberty to exert themselves in saving much of the furnit
ure from the flames, and this lay scattered in heaps, giving the finishing touch of desolation to the scene. Whenever a stronger ray of light than common shot upwards, the composed figures of sergeant Hollister and his associates, sitting on their horses in rigid discipline, were to be seen in the back ground of the picture, together with the beast of Mrs. Flanagan, that having slipt its bridle, was quietly grazing by the highway. Betty herself had advanced to where the sergeant was posted, and with an incredible degree of composure, witnessed the whole of the events as they occurred. More than once she suggested to her companion the probability, as the fighting seemed to be over, that the proper time for plunder was arrived, but the veteran promptly acquainted her with his orders, and remained both inflexible and immoveable; until the washerwoman noticing Lawton to come round the wing of the building with Sarah, ventured by herself amongst the warriors. The trooper, after placing Sarah on a sofa that had been hurled from the building by two of his men, refired with delicacy, that the ladies might succeed him in his care, and in order to reflect on what further was necessary to be done. Miss Peyton and her niece flew, with a rapture that was blessed with a momentary forgetfulness of all but her preservation, to receive Sarah from the trooper, but the vacant eye and flushed cheek, restored them instantly to their recollection.
“Sarah, my child, my beloved niece.” said the spinster, folding her in her arins, “you are saved, and may the blessing of God await him who has been the instrument.”
“See,” said Sarah, gently pushing her aunt aside, and pointing to the glimmering ruins, “the windows are illuminated in honour of my arrival. They always receive a bride thus--he told me so; listen, and you will hear the bells.”
“Here is no bride, no rejoicing, nothing but woe,” cried Frances, in a manner but little less frantic than that of her sister; “Oh! may heaven restore you my sister to us--to yourself.”
“Peace, foolish young woman,” said Sarah, with a smile of affected pity, “all cannot be happy at the same moment; perhaps you have no brother, or no husband to console you; you look beautiful, and will yet find one, but,” she continued, dropping her voice to a whisper, “see that he has no other wife--’tis dreadful to think what might happen should he be twice married.”
“The shock has destroyed her mind,” said Miss Peyton, shaking with apprehension, and clasping her hands in agony, “my child, my beauteous Sarah is a maniac.”
“No, no, no,” cried Frances, “it is fever-- she is light-headed----she must recover--she shall recover.”
The aunt caught joyfully at the hope conveyed in this suggestion, and despatched Katy to request the immediate aid and advice of Dr. Sitgreaves. The operator was found enquiring among the men for professional employment, and inquisitively examining every bruise and scratch that he could induce the sturdy warriors to acknowledge they had received. A summons of the sort conveyed by Katy was instantly obeyed, and not a minute elapsed before he was by the side of Miss Peyton.
“This is a melancholy termination to so joyful a commencement of the night. Madam,” he observed, with a soothing manner; “but war must bring its attendant miseries, though doubtless it often supports the cause of liberty, and improves the knowledge of surgical science.”
Miss Peyton could make no reply, but pointed to her niece in agony.
“ ’Tis fever,” answered Frances, “see how glassy is her eye, and look at her cheek, how flushed.”
The surgeon stood for a moment deeply studying the outward symptoms of his patient, and then silently took her hand into his own. It was seldom that the hard and abstracted features of the operator discovered any violent emotion; all his passions seemed schooled to the most classical dignity, and his countenance did not often betray what his heart so frequently felt. In the present instance, however, the eager gaze of the aunt and sister soon detected the emotions of Sitgreaves. After laying his fingers for a minute on the beautiful arm, which, bared to the elbow, and glittering with jewels, Sarah suffered him to retain, he dropped it with a heavy sigh, and dashing his hand over his eyes, turned sorrowfully to Miss Peyton as he said---
“Here is no fever to excite--’tis a case, my dear madam, for time and care only; these, with the blessing of God, may effect a cure.”
“And where is the wretch who has caused this ruin,” exclaimed Singleton, rejecting the support of his man, and making an effort to rise from the chair where the care of his sister had placed him. “It is in vain that we overcome our enemies, if conquered they can still inflict such wounds as this.”
“Dos’t think foolish boy,” said Lawton with a bitter smile, “that hearts can feel in a colony? What is America but a satellite of England--to move as she moves, follow where she wists, and shine that the mother country may become more splendid by her radiance. Surely you forget that it is honour enough for a colonist to receive ruin from the hand of a child of Britain.”
“I forget not that I wear a sword,” said Singleton, falling back exhausted; “but was there no willing arm ready to avenge that lovely sufferer-- to appease the wrongs of this hoary father.”
“Neither arms nor hearts are wanting, sir, in such a cause,” said the trooper fiercely; “but chance oftentimes helps the wicked. By heavens, I’d give Roanoke himself for a clear field with the miscreant.”
“Nay! captain dear, no be parting with the horse, any way,” said Betty, with a significant look; “it is no trifle that can be had by jist asking, and the baste is sure of foot and jumps like a squirrel.”
“Woman!” cried Lawton, “fifty horses, ay, the best that were ever reared on the banks of the Potomac, would be but a paltry price for one blow at such a villain.”
“Come.” said the surgeon, “the night air can do no service to George or these ladies, and it is incumbent on us to remove them where they can find surgical attendance and refreshment. Here is nothing but smoking ruins and the miasma of the swamps.”
To this rational proposition, no objection could be raised, and the necessary orders were issued by Lawton to remove the whole party to the Four Corners.
America furnished but few and very indifferent carriage makers at the period of which we write, and every vehicle that in the least aspired to the dignity of patrician notice, was the manufacture of a London mechanic. When Mr. Wharton left the city, he was one of the very few that maintained the state of a carriage in his establishment, and at the time that Miss Peyton and his daughters joined him in his retirement, they had been conveyed to the cottage in the heavy chariot that had once so imposingly rolled through the windings of Queen Street, or emerged with sombre dignity into the more spacious drive of Broadway. This vehicle stood undisturbed where it had been placed on its arrival, and the ages of the horses had alone protected the favourites of Cæsar from sequestration, by the contending forces in their neighbourhood. With a heavy heart the black, assisted by a few of the dragoons, proceeded to prepare it for the reception of the ladies. It was a cumbrous vehicle, whose faded linings and tarnished hammercloths, together with its pannels of changing colour, denoted the want of that art which had once given it lustre and beauty. The “lion couchant” of the Wharton arms, was reposing on the reviving splendour of a blazonry that told the armorial bearings of a prince of the church, and the mitre that already began to shine through its American mask, was a symbol of the rank of its original owner. The chaise which conveyed Miss Singleton was also safe, for the stables and out-buildings had entirely escaped the flames; it certainly had been no part of the plan of the marauders to leave so well appointed a stud behind them, but the suddenness of the attack by Lawton, not only disconcerted their arrangement on this point, but on many others also. A guard was left on the ground under the command of Hollister, who having discovered that his enemy was of mortal mould, took his position with admirable coolness and no little skill, to guard against surprise. He drew off his small party to such a distance from the ruins, that it was effectually concealed in the darkness, while at the same time the light continued sufficiently power
ful to discover any one, who might approach the lawn with an intent to plunder.
Satisfied with this judicious arrangement, Capt. Lawton made his dispositions for the march: Miss Peyton and her two nieces with Isabella, were placed in the chariot, while the cart of Mrs. Flanagan being amply supplied with blankets and a bed, was honoured with the persons of Capt. Singleton and his man. Dr. Sitgreaves took charge of the chaise and Mr. Wharton, and what became of the rest of the family during that eventful night is unknown; for Cæsar, alone, of the domestics, was to be found, if we except the house keeper. Having disposed of the whole party in this manner, Lawton gave the word to march. He remained himself for a few minutes alone on the lawn, secreting various pieces of plate and other valuables, that he ws fearful might tempt the cupidity of his own men; when perceiving nothing more that he conceived likely to overcome their honesty, he threw himself into the saddle, with the soldierly intention of bringing up the rear.
“Stop, stop.” cried a female voice, “will you leave me alone to be murdered; the spoon is melted I believe, and I’ll have compensation if there’s law or justice in the land.”
Lawton turned an enquiring eye in the direction of the sound, and perceived a female emerging from the ruins, loaded with an enormous bundle, that vied in size with the renowned pack of the pedlar.
“Who have we here?” said the trooper, “rising like a phœnix from the flames; oh! by the soul of Hippocrates, but it is the identical she-doctor of famous needle reputation. Well, good woman, what means this outcry?”
“Outcry!” echoed Katy, panting for breath; “is it not disparagement enough to lose a silver spoon, but I must be left alone in this dreary place to be robbed, and perhaps murdered? Harvey would not serve me so; when I lived with Harvey I was always treated with respect at least, if he was a little close with his secrets, and wasteful with his money.”
The Spy, Volume 2 Page 9