“Speak,” he said, in a voice of earnest entreaty, “speak, Herbert—my dear son, for God’s sake, speak.”
“It is right above all things to desire his forgiveness,” thought Herbert, “and it is plain there is but one way of getting it. I am in a diabolical hobble—if I succeed in getting back to camp, what am I to expect? Imprudence is crime with our general; and after all, what good have I done the cause?—and yet—”
“Herbert,” exclaimed Isabella, and her voice thrilled through his soul, “is it possible you waver?”
He started as if he were electrified: his eye met hers, and the evil spirits of doubt and irresolution were overcome.
“Heaven forgive me!” he said, “I waver no longer.”
“Then, by all that is holy,” exclaimed Mr. Linwood, flushed with disappointment and rage, “you shall reap as you sow; it shall never be said that I sheltered a rebel, though that rebel be my son.” He rang the bell violently; “Justice shall have its course—why does not Jupe come!—you too to prove false, Isabella! I might have known it when I saw you drinking in the vapouring of that fellow Lee to-day;” again he rang the bell: “you may all desert me, but I’ll be true so long as my pulse beats.”
No one replied to him. Mrs. Linwood, sustained by Herbert’s encircling arm, wept aloud. Isabella knew the tide of her father’s passion would have its ebb as well as flow; she believed the servants were in bed, and that before he could obtain a messenger to communicate with the proper authority, which she perceived to be his present intention, his Brutus resolution would fail. She was however startled by hearing 184voices in the lower entry, and immediately Rose burst open the door, crying, “Fly, Mr. Herbert—they are after you!”
The words operated on Mr. Linwood like a gust of wind on a superincumbent cloud of smoke. His angry emotions passed off, and nature flamed up bright and irresistible. Every thought, every feeling but for Herbert’s escape and safety, vanished. “This way, my son,” he cried; “through your mother’s room—down the back stairs, and out the side gate.—God help you!” He closed the door after Herbert, locked it, and put the key in his pocket. Isabella advanced into the entry to meet her brother’s pursuers, and procure a delay of a few moments on what pretext she could. She was met by two men and an officer, sent by Colonel Robertson, the commandant. “Your pardon, Miss Linwood,” said the officer, pushing by her into the room where her father awaited him.
“How very rude!” exclaimed Mrs. Linwood, for once in her life speaking first and independently in her husband’s presence; “how very rude, sir, to come up stairs into our bedrooms without permission.” The officer smiled at this pretended deference to forms at the moment the poor mother was pale as death, and shivering with terror. “I beg your pardon, madam, and yours, Mr. Linwood—this is the last house in the city in which I should willingly have performed this duty; but you, sir, are aware, that in these times our very best and most honoured friends are sometimes involved with our foes.”
“No apologies, sir, there’s no use in them—you are in search of Mr. Herbert Linwood—proceed—my house is subject to your pleasure.”
The officer was reiterating his apologies, when a cry from the side entrance to the yard announced that the fugitive was taken. Mr. Linwood sunk into his chair; but instantly rallying, he asked whither his son was to be conducted.
185“I am sorry to say, sir, that I am directed to lodge him in the Provost.”
“In Cunningham’s hands!—the Lord have mercy on him, then!”
The officer assured him the young man should have whatever alleviation it was in his power to afford him, until Sir Henry’s further pleasure should be known. He then withdrew, and left Mr. Linwood exhausted by a rapid succession of jarring emotions.
Isabella retired with her mother, and succeeded in lulling her into a tranquility which she herself was far enough from attaining.
The person whom, as it may be remembered, Linwood met in passing down the lane to his father’s house, was an emissary of Robertson, who had been sent on a scout for Captain Lee’s attendant, and who immediately reported to the commandant his suspicions. He, anxious, if possible, not to offend the elder Linwood, had stationed men in the lane and in Broad-street, to watch for the young man’s egress. They waited till ten in the evening, and then found it expedient to proceed to the direct measures which ended in Herbert’s capture.
187CHAPTER XVI.
“Great is thy power, and great thy fame
Far kenn’d and noted is thy name!
An’ tho’ yon lowin’ heugh’s thy hame,
Thou travels far.”
—Burns.
Eliot Lee returned to his lodgings from Sir Henry’s in no very comfortable frame of mind. It was his duty, and this duty, like others, had the inconvenient property of inflexibility, to return to West Point with the despatches without attempting to extricate his friend from the shoals and quicksands amid which he had so rashly rushed. He consoled himself, however, under this necessity, by the reflection that he could in no way so efficiently serve Herbert as by being the first to communicate his imprudence and its consequences to General Washington. His anxiety to serve him was doubled by the consciousness that he should thereby serve Isabella. An acquaintance of a day with a young lady ought not, perhaps, to have given a stronger impulse to the fervours of friendship; yet the truest friend of three-and-twenty will find some apology for Eliot in his own experience, or would have found it, if, like Eliot, he had just seen the incarnation of his most poetic imaginings.
While he awaited in his room the despatches, he tried to adjust the complicated impressions of the day. He reviewed the scene in the library, and his conclusions from 188it were the result of his observations, naturally tinged by the character of the observer. Is it not impossible for any man to understand perfectly the intricate machinery of a woman’s heart, its hidden sources of hope and fear, trust and distrust; all its invisible springs and complex action? “If,” he thought, “Miss Linwood knew Meredith as I know him; if she knew what she now fears, that he had fed his vanity, his idol self, on the exhalations of homage, love, trust, and hope, from a pure heart that, like a flower, withered in giving out its sweets, she would not love him; not that it is a matter of volition to love or not to love,—but she could not. If Isabella Linwood, gifted as she is in mind and person, were less sought—if, like my poor little Bessie, she were in some obscure, shady place of life, her pre-eminence unacknowledged and unknown, like her she would be deserted for an enthroned sovereign. This she cannot know; and she is destined to be one of the ten thousand mismated men and women who have thrown away their happiness, and found it out too late. Find it out she must; for this detestable selfishness dulls a man’s perception of the rights of others, of their deserts, their wants, and their infirmities, while it makes him keenly susceptible to whatever touches self. He resembles those insects who, instead of the social senses of hearing and seeing which connect one sentient existence with another, are furnished with feelers that make their own bodies the focus of all sensation.”
Eliot was roused from his sententious revery by a whistle beneath his window. He looked out and saw by the moonlight a man squatted on the ground, and so shaded by the wooden entrance to the door as to be but dimly seen. Eliot, conjecturing who it might be, immediately descended the stairs and opened the outer door. The man leaped from the ground, seized both Eliot’s hands, and cried out in a half articulate voice—“Could not Kisel find you? hey! when the dog can’t 189find his master, nor the bean its pole, nor the flower the side the sun shines, then say Kisel can’t find you, Misser Eliot—hey!”
“My poor fellow! How in the name of wonder did you get here alone?”
“Ah, Misser Eliot, always told you you did not know what a salvation it was to pass for a fool, and all the while be just as wise as other folks. I have my own light,” he pointed upwards,—“there’s one that guides the owl as well as the eagle, and the fool better than the wise man.”
“
But how came the enemy to let you pass?”
“Let me! what for should not they? what harm could such as I do them? I told them so, and they believed me—good, hey!”
“You cannot have walked all the way?”
“Walked!—when did wit walk? No, Misser Eliot, not a step of it. Hooked a fishing canoe and poled ’long shore some,—jumped into a wagon with a blind nigger fiddler and his wife, and rode some,—then up behind a cowboy, and paid him in whistling some,—boarded market-carts some,—and musquashed some.”
“And here you are, and now I must take care of you.”
“Yes, Misser Eliot, depend on you now, pretty much like other folks—Kisel, hey! depends on Providence when he can get nothing else to depend on.”
“Thank Heaven,” thought Eliot, “I have not to draw on my extempore sagacity. Now that I have the real Dromeo, I shall get on without let or hinderance.” He re-entered the house, encountered his landlady, and, imboldened by the presence of Kisel, laughed at the unnecessary suspicion that had been excited, ordered his horses, and having received his despatches and his countersigned passports from Sir Henry, he determined to profit by the moonlight, and immediately set forth on his return.
190As they passed Mr. Linwood’s house Eliot paused for a moment, but there was no intimation from its silent walls; and hoping and believing that his friend was safe within them, and breathing a prayer for the peerless creature who seemed to him, like a celestial spirit, to sanctify the dwelling that contained her, he spurred his horse as if he would have broken the chain that bound him to the spot—the chain already linking in with his existence, and destined never to be broken till that should be dissolved.
He proceeded some twenty or five-and-twenty miles without incident, when, as he passed a narrow road that intersected the highway, five horsemen turned from it into the main road. Kisel, with the instinct of cowardice, reined his horse close to his master. The men remained in the rear, talking together earnestly in low tones. Suddenly, two of them spurred their horses and came abreast of the forward party, the one beside Kisel, the other beside Eliot. There was, at best, impertinence in the movement, and it annoyed Eliot. It might mean something worse than impertinence. He placed his hand on the loaded pistol in his holster, and calmly awaited further demonstrations from his new companions. A cursory glance assured him they were questionable characters. They wore cloth caps, resembling those used by our own winter travellers, drawn close over the eyes, and having a sort of curtain that hid the neck, ears, and chin. The mouth and nose were the only visible features; and though they were dimly seen by the starlight (the moon had set), they seemed to Eliot, with a little aid from imagination, to indicate brutal coarseness and vulgarity. They had on spencers of a dread-naught material, girded around them with a leathern strap.—“Good evening,” said the man at Eliot’s side.
Captain Lee made no reply; but his squire, eager to accept a friendly overture, and always ready on the least hint 191to speak, replied, “Good evening to you, neighbour; which way are you riding?”
“After our horses’ noses,” replied the fellow, gruffly.
“Oh, that’s the way we are travelling—so we may as well be friendly; for in these times there’s many a bird on the wing at night beside owls and bats—hey?”
“Where are you from, fellow?” asked the first speaker.
“From below.”
“Where are you going?”
“Above.”
The man, not disposed to be silenced by Kisel’s indefinite replies, repeated his first question to Eliot.
“The true answer is safest,” thought Eliot, who was determined, if possible, to avoid a contest where the odds were five to one; and he briefly communicated his destination and errand.
“Despatches!” replied the man, echoing Eliot. “Is that all you have about you? I wish you well, then, to your journey’s end—and that wish is worth something, I can tell you. Come, Pat, spur your horse—we’ve no time to be lagging here.”
“I’m thinking, captain, we had better change horses with these gentlemen, and give them our spurs to boot;” and suiting the action to the word, he seized Kisel’s bridle and ordered him to dismount. At the same instant his comrade-captain made a lunge at Eliot, as if for a corresponding seizure; but Eliot perceived the movement in time to evade it. He roused the metal of his horse with a word—the fine animal sprang forward—Eliot turned him short round, and presented his pistol to Kisel’s antagonist, who let fall the bridle and turned to defend himself.
“Now spur your horse and fear nothing, Kisel,” cried his master.
Not to fear was impossible to Kisel; but the first injunction he obeyed, even to the rowels of his spurs; and he and his 192master soon distanced their pursuers, who, now partly incited by revenge, pursued the hopeless chase for two or three miles.
Soon after losing sight of these men, Eliot reached Gurdon Coit’s. Coit was a farmer, who, on the borders of the river and on the neutral ground, kept a public house as supplemental to his farm, which, in these troubled times, was roughly handled by friends and foes. Friends and foes we say: for though Coit observed, as beseemed a man of his present calling, a strict outward neutrality, in heart he was on his country’s side; as he often testified, with considerable risk to himself, by affording facilities to secret emissaries to the city, and by receiving into his house valuable supplies, that were run up from the city (where Washington had many secret trusty friends) for the use of the army at West Point.
Eliot stopped at Coit’s, and announced his intention, received by a hurra from Kisel, of remaining there till daylight. Coit was roused from a nap in his chair by the entrance of his new guests. In reply to Eliot’s request for refreshment and lodging, he said, “You see, captain” (he recognised Eliot, who had been at his house on his way down), “my house is brimful. Cæsar, and Venus, and all the little niggers, sleep in the kitchen. My wife’s sisters are here visiting, and they’ve got the best bedroom, and my wife and the gals the other; for you know we must give the best to the women, poor creturs—so a plank here in the bar-room is the best sleeping privilege I can give you, and the barn to your man.”
“Oh, Misser Eliot, I’ve got a trembling in my limbs tonight,” interposed Kisel; “don’t send me away alone.”
Eliot explained the cause of poor Kisel’s trembling limbs; and it was agreed that he should share his master’s sleeping privilege. In answer to Eliot’s communication, Coit said, “As sure as a gun, you’ve met the skinners; and you’re a lucky man to get out of their hands alive. They’ve been harrying up and down the country like so many wolves for the last three 193weeks, doing mischief wherever ’twas to be done;—nobody has escaped them but Madam Archer.”
“Who is Madam Archer?”
“I mistrust, captain, you a’n’t much acquainted with the quality in York state, or you’d know Madam Archer of Beech-Hill; the widow lady with the blind twins. I believe the Lord has set a defence about her habitation; for there she stays, with those helpless little people, and neither harm nor the fear of it come nigh her, though she has nothing of mankind under her roof except one old slave; and them that are brought up slaves, you know, have neither sense nor pluck for difficult times.”
Kisel interrupted the landlord’s harangue to hint to his master that his fright had brought on a great appetite; and Eliot, feeling the same effect, though not from precisely the same cause, requested his host to provide him some supper, while he and his man went to look after their horses; a duty that he gratefully performed, rejoicing in the rustic education that made it light to him to perform services for which he often saw the noble animals of his more daintily-bred brother officers suffering.
“Who are these, my bed-fellows?” he asked of Coit, a few moments after, as he sat discussing some fine bacon and brown bread, and handing slice after slice to Kisel, who, squatting on the hearth, received it like a petted dog from his hand. The subjects of his inquiry were two long fellows wrapped in blankets, and their hea
ds on their knapsacks, stretched on the floor, and soundly sleeping.
“They are soldiers from above,” replied Coit in a whisper, “who have come here to receive some tea and sugar, and such kind of fancy articles, for the ladies at the Point.”
“And who is this noisy person on the settle!”
“He does snore like all natur,” replied Coit, laughing, and then continued in a lowered voice:—“I don’t know who he 194is, though I can make a pretty good guess; and if I guess right, he a’nt a person I should like to interfere with, and it’s plain he don’t choose to make himself known. He has a rough tongue, that does not seem like your born quality—he does not handle his victuals like them—but he has that solid way with him that shows he was born to command the best of you in such times as these, when, as you may say, we value a garment according to its strength, and not for the trimmings. No offence, captain?”
“None in the world to me, my good friend; I am not myself one of those you call the born quality.”
“A’n’t? I declare! then you’ve beat me—I thought I could always tell ’em.” Coit drew his chair near to Eliot, and added, in an earnest tone, “The time is coming, captain, and that’s what the country is fighting for; for we can’t say we are desperately worried with the English yoke; but the time is coming when one man that’s no better than his neighbour won’t wear stars on his coat, and another that’s no worse a collar round his neck; when one won’t be born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and another with a pewter spoon, but all will start fair, and the race will be to the best fellow.”
“Hey! Misser Eliot,” cried Kisel, in his wonted tone, when a ray of intelligence penetrated the mists that enveloped his brain.
His shrill voice awakened the sleeper on the settle, who, lifting up his shaggy head, asked what “all this cackling meant?” Then seeming to recover his self-possession, he keenly surveyed Eliot and his man, covered his face with his bandana handkerchief, and again composed himself to sleep.
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