Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  He looked at me a little quizzically, a little sorrowfully. “I am afraid,” he said, “that all British officers — and all British sympathizers — are not like you. They have come here to deal with rebels.” His face grew stem. “They forget that their grandsires were rebels a hundred years ago, their great grandsires thirty years before — and rebels on much the same grounds. They think that nothing becomes them but severity. Ah, we have had bitter experiences, Major Craven, and I do not deny it, some nobles ones! Your Lord Cornwallis means well, but he has much to learn, and he has made big mistakes.”

  I evaded that. “I will write at once,” I said.

  He raised his head sharply. “No!” he replied. “I am afraid, I must put an embargo on that. I have to think of Wilmer, and—” He checked himself. “He does not want a troop of horse to pay him a visit,” he added, rather lamely.

  “Of course, I should not say where I was,” I answered, a little piqued. “Captain Wilmer may see the letter.”

  “Of necessity,” Marion rejoined dryly. “But there are circumstances” — he hesitated— “this is a peculiar case, and I can run no risks. There must be no writing, Major Craven. I will see that news of your safety is sent in to Winnsboro’.”

  “Lord Cornwallis is at Charlotte.”

  “He was,” Marion replied with a smile. “But your affair at King’s Mountain has touched him in a tender place, and yesterday he was reported to be falling back on Winnsboro’ as fast as he could. In any case, word shall be sent to his quarters wherever they are, that you are wounded, and in safe hands. That will meet your wishes?”

  “I am afraid it must,” I said grudgingly. “If you insist?”

  “I do,” he said. “It may seem harsh, but I have reasons. I have reasons. It is a peculiar case. And now, good-bye, sir. In a month I hope to travel north with you.”

  “Or rather I with you,” I said, sighing.

  “It’s the fortune of war,” he replied with a shrug, and that alert movement of the hands which sometimes betrayed his French origin. “Wilmer is going with me to-day, but he will return to-morrow or the next day. Then you will have company.”

  He took his leave then, and though he had treated me handsomely and I had reason to be grateful to him, I looked after him with envy. He was free, he was about to take the road, he had plans; the world was before him, already a reputation was his. And I lay here, useless, chained by the leg, a prisoner for the second time. I knew that I ought to be thankful; I had my life, where many had perished, and by and by, I should be grateful. But as I thought of him trailing over the flanks of the wind-swept hills, or filing through the depths of the pine-barrens, or cantering over the wide, scented savannahs, my soul pined to go with him; pined for freedom, for action, for the vast spaces with which two years had made me familiar. That I sighed for these rather than for home or friends was a token perhaps of returning strength; or it may be that the sight of this man, who within a few months had written his name so deeply on events, had roused my ambition.

  Be the cause what it might I found the day endless. It was in vain that Tom fretted me with attentions; I was useless, I was a log, any one might look down on me. To be taken twice! Could a man of spirit be taken twice? No, it was too much. It was bad enough to stand for that which was hateful, without also standing for that which was contemptible.

  It was a grey rainy day such as we have in England in July after a spell of heat; soft and perfumed, grateful to those abroad but dull to the housebound. And Wilmer was gone. I heard no voices in the house, no spinning-wheel, the business of the plantation was no longer transacted within my hearing. There was nothing to distract me, less to amuse me. I fumed and fretted. When my eyes fell on the Bible which Madam Constantia had sent me, it failed to provoke a smile. Instead, the sight chilled me. How deep must be the enmity, how stem the purpose that could foresee the night’s work, and foreseeing could still send that book!

  I asked Tom if I could get up. He answered that I might get up on the morrow. Not to-day.

  “But I am feeling much stronger,” I said.

  “Want no flust’ations,” he replied. “Marse take dose sassaf’ac tea now.”

  I swore at him and his sassafras tea. “You v’ey big man ter-day,” Mammy Jacks said.

  “And pickaninny yesterday,” I rejoined angrily.

  This time she did not answer. Instead she grinned at me.

  Presently, “Isn’t Miss Wilmer well?” I asked.

  “She sorter poorly,” Mammy Jacks said. “She skeered by dat low white trash,” with a side glance at me, to see how I took it.

  “Isn’t she afraid that they may return?” I asked.

  “Marse Marion see to dat,” the woman said, with pride. “He mighty big man. He say de wud, dey not come widin miles o’ the Bluff! You des hev de luck uv de worl’,” Mammy Jacks continued. “Dey hang nine, ten your folks day befo’ yistiddy.”

  “Oh, confound you, you black raven!” I cried, “Leave me alone.”

  It was grim news; and for a time it upset me completely. For a while the service which Marion had done me and Wilmer’s humanity were alike swept from my mind by a rush of anger. The resentment which such acts breed carried me away, as it had carried away better men before me. I cursed the rebels. I longed to strike a blow at them, I longed to crush them. I hated them. But what could I do, maimed and captive as I was? What could I do? Too soon the wave of anger passed and left behind it a depression, a despondency that the grey evening and the silent house deepened. I had escaped, I had been spared. But they, who might have been as helpless and as innocent as myself, and guilty only of owning the same allegiance, had suffered this! It was hard to think of the deed with patience, it was pain to think of it at all; and I was thankful when at last the night came, and I could turn my face to the wall and sleep.

  But no man is fit to be a soldier who cannot snatch the pleasures of the passing moment; and when the next day saw me out of doors, when I found myself established on the veranda and the view broke upon me, liquid with early sunshine, and my gaze travelled from the green slopes that fringed the farther bank of the creek to the wooded hills and so to the purple distances of the Blue Ridge — the boundary in those days of civilization — I felt that life was still worth living and worth preserving. From the house, which stood long and low on a modest bluff, a pasture, shaded by scattered catalpas, dropped down to the water, which a cattle track crossed under my eyes. On the left, in the direction of the smithy, the plantation fields lay along the slope, broken by clumps of live oaks and here and there disfigured by stumps. On the right a snake-fence, draped with branches of the grape-vine, enclosed an attempt at a garden, which a magnolia that climbed one end of the veranda and a fig tree that was splayed against the other, did something to reinforce. All under my eyes was rough and plain; the place differed from the stately mansions on the Ashley River or the Cooper, as Wilmer himself differed from the scarlet-coated, periwigged beaux of Charles Town, or as our home-farm in England differed from Osgodby itself. But a simple comfort marked the homestead, the prospect was entrancing, and what was still new and crude in the externals of the house, the beauty of a semi-tropical vegetation was hastening to veil. At a glance one saw that the Bluff was one of those up-country settlements which men of more enterprise than means were at this time pushing over the hills towards the Tennessee and the Ohio.

  That Wilmer was such a pioneer I had no doubt, though I judged that he had more behind him than a dead level of poverty. Indeed I found evidence of this on the little table that had been set for me beside my cane chair. It bore a jug of spring water, some limes, and a book in two volumes. I fell on the book eagerly. It was The Rambler, published in London in 1767. Now for a house on the distant Catawba to possess a copy of The Rambler imported some education and even some refinement.

  No one but the girl could have put the book there; and had she done this before the news of the murder of my comrades reached me I should have received the act in a diffe
rent spirit. I should have asked myself with interest in what mood she proffered the boon, and how she intended it; whether as an overture towards peace, or a mere civility, rendered perforce when it could no longer be withheld.

  But now I was too sore to find pleasure in such questions. What softer thoughts I had entertained of her, thoughts that her agitation and her remorse on the evening of the outrage had engendered in me, were gone for the time. I found her treatment of me, viewed by the light of other events, too cruel; I found it too much on a par with the acts of those who had murdered my comrades in cold blood. I forgot the story of her mother and her brother. I believed even that I did not wish to see her.

  For I had not yet seen her. As I passed through the living-room I had caught a glimpse of Miss Lyddy’s back; who, unprepared for my visit, had fled and slammed a door upon me, as if I were indeed the French. The negro women had grinned and curtsied and cried, “Lord’s sake!” and fussed about me, and been scolded by Mammy Jacks.

  But of the girl I had seen nothing as I passed through.

  Doubtless she was on the plantation taking her father’s place and managing for him. And doubtless, too, I must presently see her. For at the farther end of the veranda, where the glossy leaves of the magnolia draped the pillars and deepened the shade, was a second encampment, a chair, a table, a work-basket; and beside these a spinning-wheel and an old hound. Nor even if she shunned this spot, could she long avoid me. Though I sat remote from the doorway, no one could enter or leave the house without passing under my eyes.

  I fancied that after what had passed she would not be able to meet me without embarrassment, and for this reason, she might choose to surprise me; she might come out of the house and appear at my elbow. But two hours passed, the beauties of Johnson were losing their charm, even the prospect was beginning to pall on me, and still she did not come. Then at last I saw her on the farther side of the creek, coming down to the ford — a slender figure in white, wearing a broad hat of palmetto leaves. A black boy carrying a basket ran at her side and two or three dogs scampered about her. She was armed with a switch, and she crossed the stream by a line of stepping-stones that flanked the ford.

  I watched her with a mixture of curiosity and indignation, as she tripped from stone to stone. She had to mount the slope under my eyes, and I had time to wonder what she would do. Would she come to me and speak? Or would she pass me with a bow and enter the house? Or would she ignore me altogether?

  She did none of these things. I think that she had made up her mind to bow to me as she passed. For at one point, where she was nearer to me, she wavered ever so little, as if she were going to turn to me. Then a flood of red dyed her face, and blushing painfully, sensible I am sure of my gaze, but with her head high, she crossed the veranda and entered the house. (Pearl)

  “Well, at least she can feel!” I thought. And if I regretted anything, it was not that I had stared at her, but that she might not now choose to come to me. She would not soon forgive the humiliation of her hot cheeks.

  CHAPTER VI

  ON PAROLE

  “But who can tell what cause had that fair maid To use him so that loved her so well”?

  SPENCER.

  A moment later the girl proved that her sensibility was less or her courage higher than my estimate, for just as I had pictured a little earlier, she surprised me. I found her at my elbow, and I rose to my feet. Unluckily as I did so, I struck my injured arm against the chair, and she — winced.

  That might have disarmed me, but it did not. I remembered the nine men who had been murdered in cold blood, and I thought of my narrow escape; after all I was not a dog to be hung without ceremony and buried in a ditch! And now she was in my power, now, if ever, was the time to bring home to her what she had done. Still, she was a woman, I owed her courtesy, and I endeavored to speak with politeness. “I see that you are more merciful,” I said, bowing, “in fact than in intention, Miss Wilmer.”

  Her agitation was such — she did not try to hide it — that for a moment she could not speak. Then “If you knew all,” she said in a low voice, “you would know that I had grounds for what I did, Sir.”

  “That you had good grounds, I cannot believe,” I answered. “And for knowing all, I think I do. I know that you have suffered. I know that you have lost your mother and your brother. I know that you have grievances, sad grievances it may be against us.”

  “You don’t know all,” she repeated more firmly. “But I know enough,” I rejoined — I was not to be moved from my purpose now. “I know that I was your father’s prisoner and your guest; and that you stood aside, you did not raise a hand, not a finger to save me, Miss Wilmer. You did not speak, though a word might have availed, and I believe would have availed to preserve me! You let me go out to a cruel death, you turned your back on me—”

  “Oh, don’t! don’t!” she cried.

  “You quail at the picture,” I retorted. “I do not wonder that you do. I was your guest, I was wounded, I was in pain, alone. Has a man, when he is maimed and laid aside, no claim on a woman? No claim on her forbearance, on her pity, on her protection? For shame, Miss Wilmer!” I continued warmly, carried farther than I intended by my feelings. “Men, when their blood is hot, will plan things, and do things, God knows, that are abominable. But for a woman to consent to such, and, when it is too late, to think that by a few tears she can make up for them—”

  “Stop!” she cried — I suppose that I had gone too far, for she faced me now, hardily enough. “You understand nothing, sir! Nothing! So little that you will scarcely believe me when I say that if the thing were to do again — I would do it.”

  “I cannot believe you,” I said coldly.

  “It is true.”

  I stared at her; and she returned my look with a strange mixture of shame and defiance. “Why?” I said at last. “In heaven’s name, why, Miss Wilmer? What have I done to you? Your mother I know. But had I a hand in it? God forbid! Was I within a hundred miles of it? No. Your brother — and there again, I find that hard to forgive. Y our father had spared my life, sheltered me, brought me here; could you not believe that I was grateful? Could you not believe that I would do much to serve him and something to repay him? That all that it was in my power to do for your brother, by my exertions or my influence, I would do? But you did not tell me. You did not ask me?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked bluntly. She did not answer. “Why?” I repeated. I was at the end of my anger.

  I had said what was in my mind and said it with all the severity I could wish. And I was sure that I had made her suffer. Now I wanted to understand.

  I sought for light upon her. There was a puzzle here and I had not the clue.

  But she stood mute. Pale, forbidding, not avoiding my eyes but rather challenging them, and very handsome in her sullenness, she confronted me. At last, as I still waited, and still kept silence, she spoke. “And after I had told you?” she said. “If you had offered help, would it then have been easier to — to stand aside?”

  “And let me go to my death?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Good God!” I cried. I could not check the words, I was so deeply shocked. If she had deliberately considered that, she was indeed determined, she was indeed ruthless; and there was nothing more to be done. “I am sorry,” I said. “I had thought, Miss Wilmer, that I might say what was in my mind and then let the thing be as if it had never been.

  I wished to speak and then — to let there be peace between us. I thought that we might still come to be friends. But if we are so far apart as that, there can be nothing between us, not even forgiveness.”

  “No,” she answered — but her head sank a little and I fancied that she spoke sadly. “ There can be nothing between us. Nothing, sir. We are worlds apart.” Before I could reply Mammy Jacks came to summon her. One of the blacks wanted her, and she broke off and went into the house.

  She left me adrift on a full tide of wonder. What a
woman, I thought! Nay, what a girl, for she was not more than twenty, if she were not still in her teens! If all the women on the Colonial side were like her, I thought, if but a tithe of her spirit and will were in them, the chances of poor old England in the strife which she had provoked were small indeed! I could compare the girl only to the tragic heroines of the Bible, to Judith, or to Jael, who set her hand to the nail and her right hand to the hammer. Very, very nearly had she driven the nail into my temple! —

  And yet she had, she must have a gentler side. She had broken down on that night, when she thought that the deed was done. I could not be mistaken in that; I had seen her fling herself in a passion of remorse on her father’s breast. And then how strong, how deep was the affection which she felt for that father! With what tenderness, with what tears and smiles and caresses had she flown to his arms on his return from the field!

  She was a provoking, a puzzling, a perplexing creature; and alas, she began to fill far more of my thoughts than was her due. I was idle, and I could not thrust her from them. Because she did not come near me I dwelt on her the more. The chair at the other end of the veranda remained empty all that day and the next, and it was not until noon of the third day that I again had a word with her. Then, as she passed by me with her head high, she saw that something was lacking on the little table on which I took my meals, and she fetched it herself. I wished to bring on a discussion; and as she set the thing down,” Thank you,” I said politely. “But can I be sure that I am safe in eating this?”

  She did not fire up as I expected. “You think that I may poison you?” she said, making no attempt to evade the point.

  “Well, you told me,” I replied, somewhat taken back, “that you were prepared to do it again, you know?”