After that, through three hours of stillness and silence I kept guard in the outer room, staring at the door behind which she lay; and love and pity choked me, and swelled my heart to bursting. How was she suffering! How was she doomed to suffer! What a night and a day were before her! What horror, what despair! For her father was all the world to her. He was all that she had. I could only pray that the exertions she was making, the fatigue that she was enduring, the pains of endless journeys would dull the shock when it came, and that she would not be able to feel or to suffer or to hate as at other times.
I believe that during these hours Paton kept guard outside, and warned off the curious. For no one came near us, and all the sounds of the camp seemed dull and distant and we two alone in the world, until a little before three o’clock. Then Tom returned. I had made a note that he must be kept at hand, since she would need him to go with her in my place when she knew all — as she must know all after she had seen her father.
I cautioned him as to this, but the man demurred.
“Marse, I’m feared ter do it,” he said, showing the whites of his eyes in his earnestness. “Madam’Stantia, she ordered me ter stay yer. En I’m tired, Marse. I’m en ole nigger en dis jurney’s shuk me. Fer sho’ it has.”
“But you rogue, your mistress!”
“I ‘bliged ter stay, Marse,” he repeated doggedly. “Dis nigger’s mighty tired.”
I should have insisted, but the girl had heard his voice and summoned him. She opened her door and he went into the inner room. They talked there for some minutes, while I fretted over this new difficulty. Presently the black came out but she still remained within, and did not follow him for five long minutes. When she came I saw a change in her. Her eyes were bright, and each white cheek had its scarlet patch. She looked like a person in a fever, or on the edge of delirium. What the wine had not done, something else had effected.
“Tom had better be ready to ride with us,” I said. “No,” she answered. “It will not be necessary. I wish him to stay here.”
She spoke with so much decision that I could not contest the point, and we set off towards Wilmer’s prison. All that I remember of our progress is that once we had to stand aside while a wing of the 23rd marched by; and that once we ran into a knot of blacks in front of the store. They were drunk and to my amazement refused to make way for us. My one arm did not avail much, but a couple of sergeants who were passing on the other side of the way crossed over and laying their canes about the rogues’ shoulders, sent them flying down the road. I thanked the two, they saluted the lady, and we went on.
That is all that I remember of our seven or eight minutes walk. My mind was bent on the old question — what she would do when she learned my part in the matter. Would she take Tom — doubtless with a little delay we could find him? Or would she travel alone, riding the thirty-five miles, many of them after night-fall, unaccompanied? Or — or what would she do? Then, and all the long minutes during which she was with her father in the house opposite the tavern — where a sentry at the front and back declared the importance of the prisoner — I turned this question over and over and inside and out. Webster’s quarters were at the tavern, a long low straggling building, set on a corner, with two fronts; and I might have entered and waited there. But nothing was farther from my mind. The thought of company, of the camp chatter, was abominable to me; and I paced up and down in a solitude which a glance at my face was enough to preserve.
She came out at last when my back was turned, and she reached my elbow unseen. “I am late,” she said. “We should be on horseback by this time, Major Craven. Let us lose no time, if you please.”
Surprised, I muttered assent, and I stole a look at her. Her eyes were bright, but with excitement not with tears. The patches of scarlet on her cheeks were more marked. I had expected to see her broken and pale with weeping; instead she was tense, borne up by the fever of some secret hope, more beautiful than I had ever seen her, more alive, more alert.
As for me I was now convinced that she knew all. Nay, enlightened at last, I saw that she must have known all from the start. Had she not foreseen that my coming boded ill? Had she not done all in her power to keep me at the Bluff? Had she not on that last evening strained all to detain me? Yes, she had known; and only my obtuseness, only the astonishing way in which she had placed herself in my hands and made use of me, had blinded me to the truth.
And plainly, she was content to go with me and to use me still. I might fancy if I chose, that she forgave me, but I did not dare to think so. There was a hardness in her eyes, a challenge in her voice, a reserve in her bearing as she walked beside me, silent and proud, that I misdoubted. And how could she forgive me? To her I was her father’s murderer, a monster of ingratitude, a portent of falseness. She could not forgive. Enough that she did not flinch from me, that she was ready to bear with me, that she was willing to use me a little longer.
We found the horses standing before the door at Paton’s quarters, and Tom with them. She bade the black farewell, after a few words aside with him, and ten minutes later we took the road on what I, for my part, knew to be a hopeless mission. Still it would serve, for it would help to pass these fatal hours; and afterwards she might comfort herself with the remembrance that she had done all in her power, that she had spent herself without stint or mercy in her father’s service.
My latest impression of Winsboro’, as I looked back before I settled myself in the saddle, was of Paton engaged in a last desperate argument with the Provost-Marshal. Only then did it occur to me that the unfortunate Marshal had had orders to place me under arrest and had been all day held at bay by my friend’s good offices.
CHAPTER XI
THE MAN’S PART
The High Hills of Santee are a long irregular chain of Sandhills on the left bank of the Wateree. Though directly above the noxious river the air on them is healthy and the water pure, making an oasis in the wide tract of miasma and fever in which the army had been operating.
LIFE OF GREENE.
It was not until we had left the camp a considerable distance behind us, and were clear of the neighboring roads with their stragglers and wagons and forage-parties that a word was spoken between us. Even that word turned only on the condition of the horses, the bay and grey that Paton had borrowed from the lines of the Fourteenth Dragoons. Let it be said of the British that, whatever their faults, they are magnanimous. The life of an enemy might depend — though I did not think, and hardly hoped that it would depend — on the speed of our horses. Yet the dragoons had lent us the best that they had, nor did I doubt that when the officer appeared on parade on the morrow, he would turn a blind eye on the gap in his ranks. It was I who broke the silence.
“They should carry us to the High Hills in six hours,” I said.
The girl assented by a single word, uttered with an indifference which surprised me. And that was all.
Her silence had at least this advantage, that it left me free to consider her more closely, and I dropped back a horse’s length that I might do this at my ease. As my eyes rested on her, I do not know whether my admiration or my wonder were the greater. She must have been weary to the bone and sick at heart. She must have been racked by suspense and torn by anxiety. Every nerve in her tender frame must have ached with pain, every pulse throbbed with fever. Probably, and almost certainly, she had had to face moments when hope failed her, and she saw things as they really were; when she tasted the bitterness of the coming hour and recognized that all her efforts to avert it were in vain.
Yet every line of her figure, the carriage of her head, the forward gaze of her eyes told but one tale of steadfast purpose. She was no longer a mere woman, subject to woman’s weakness; but a daughter fighting for her father’s life. She was love in action, moulded to its purest shape. To suffer the eye to dwell on the curling lock that stained the white of her neck, to give a thought to the long lashes that shaded her cheek, to eye the curve of her chin, or the slender fullness of h
er figure, seemed to be at this moment a sacrilege. Her sex had fallen from her, and she rode as safe in my company as if she had been a man. More, I reflected that if there were many like her on the rebel side — if there were others who, daughters of our race, grafted on its virtues the spirit of this new land, then, I had no doubt of the issue of the unhappy contest in which we were engaged. In that case the thirteen colonies were as safe from us and as certainly lost to His Majesty as if they were the six planets and the seven Pleiades.
Nor in anything, I reflected, was her firmness more plain than in her treatment of me. She knew what I had done. She knew that she owed her misery to me. She must hate me in her heart. And doubtless when she had used me she would cast me aside. But in the meantime and because my help was needful to her plans, she was content to use me. She was willing to speak to me, to ride beside me, to breathe the same air with me, she could bear the sound of my voice and the touch of my hand. She could constrain herself to stoop even to this, if by any means she might save the father she loved and whom I had betrayed!
But while she did this, she was as cold as a stone, she made no pretence of friendship or of amity; and the light was failing, we had ridden ten miles, passing now a picket-guard, and now a lonely vedette on a hill-top, and many a sutler’s cart on the road, before she spoke again. Then as we descended a gorge, following the winding of a mountain stream that brawled below us amid mosses and alders, and under fern-clad banks, she asked me if we should reach the ferry on the Wateree by eight.
She spoke to me over her shoulder, for she was riding pace in front of me and I had made no effort to place myself on a level with her. “I am afraid not,” I said. “If we reach the ferry by nine we shall be fortunate. Very soon it will be dark and we must go more slowly.”
“Then let us push on while we can,” she replied. And starting her horse with the spur she cantered down the uneven winding track, flinging the dirt and stones behind her, as if she had no neck and I had two arms. If she gave a thought to my drawback she must have decided that it was no time to consider it; as from her point of view it was not. Fortunately the sky was still pale and clear, the light had not quite failed, and presently without mishap we reached more level ground. Here the road, parting from the stream, wound on a level round the flank of a low hill, and for a mile or two we made fair progress. It was only when the darkness closed in on us at last that we drew rein, and trusting our horses’ instincts rather than our own eyes pushed forward, now at a trot and now at a walk.
“When does the moon rise?” she asked presently. “At eight,” I told her.
“The ferry boat runs all night?”
Now I had not thought of that. It was a much-used ferry situate at a point where the traffic from Charlestown separated, a part of the traffic using the boat and crossing to the higher and drier road on the right bank, the rest pursuing the shorter but heavier way through Camden. As a second route the ferry road was of value, and a considerable portion of our supplies came in that way. I knew that there was a half company of the 33rd posted to protect the crossing, but I remembered that the ferry house was on the farther or eastern bank. Probably the detachment also would be on that side.
I had to tell her this, and that I was not sure that the ferry ran at night. “I hope,” I added, “that we shall be able to make the men hear, if it does not. But if we fail we may be detained.”
“All night?” she asked and I thought that I read in her tone not only anxiety but contempt — contempt of my ignorance and inefficiency. “Do you mean that?”
I told her that I feared that we might be detained until day-break; and with pity I wondered how, fatigued as she was, she would be able to endure a night in the open. “Still, it is not more than two leagues,” I continued, “from the river to the hills, and when we are across the stream we should travel the remainder of the distance in an hour.”
Her only answer was a weary sigh. A minute later we passed from the darkness of the night, which has always a certain transparency, into the black depths of a pinewood. In an instant it was impossible to see a yard before us. The carpet of leaves deadened the sound of the horses’ hoofs, the air was close, and great moths flew into our faces. I pictured bats, the large bats of Carolina, swinging past our heads. The whip-poor-will warned us again and again from the depth of the forest. Still for a time the horses stepped on daintily, feeling their way and snorting at intervals. At last the grey stopped. It refused to proceed. “We must lead the horses,” I said.
“I will,” she cried quickly. “You have only one arm.” And before I could remonstrate I heard her slip from her saddle.
So she had not after all forgotten my arm.
But it was humiliating, it was depressing to follow while she led. And the way seemed to be end-less. Once I heard her stumble. She uttered a low cry and the grey shied away from her. She mastered it again, and anew she went forward, though with each moment I expected her to propose that we should halt until the moon rose. Still she persisted, bent on her purpose, and after a long stage of this strange traveling we came forth into the light again. She climbed into the saddle. The horses flung up their heads as they scented the freshness and perfume of the night, and we broke into a trot. I rode up beside her. It was then or a little later, when we had slackened our speed on rising ground that she began to talk to me.
Not freely, but with constraint and an under-note of bitterness which her story explained. At dawn on the morning after my departure from the Bluff she had started to ride to Winnsboro’ to warn her father of his danger. Unfortunately, when she and Tom had traveled a dozen miles they had fallen in with a band of straggling Tories — one of Brown’s bands from Ninety-six, she believed. These men, knowing her to be Wilmer’s daughter and having a grudge against him — and doing no worse than the other side did — had forced her and Tom to dismount and had taken their horses, telling them that they were lucky to escape with no other ill-treatment.
Thus stranded on the way, the two had walked seven miles to a friendly plantation, only to learn that there, too, the horses had been swept off by the same gang of Tories. In the end they had been forced to return to the Bluff on foot. Here there were horses indeed, but they were out on the hill and perforce she rested while they were found and brought in. Again the pair set out, but twenty-four hours had been lost, and ten miles short of the camp she learned from friends that she was too late. A man whom she had no difficulty in conjecturing to be her father had been seized, tried and sentenced on the previous day.
It was a pitiful story of effort, of strain, of failure, and she told it piece-meal, with long intervals of silence as her feelings or the condition of the road dictated. In the telling we covered a good part of the journey, now riding freely over hills clothed with low brushwood, where myrtles and dogwood and sweet herbs, crushed by the passage of our horses, filled the air with fragrance, now plodding through the gloom of oak-woods where the notes of the mocking-bird brought the English nightingale to mind; and now — this more often at the last — crossing patches of low country where masses of tall cypress, black in the moonlight, betrayed the presence of swamps, and where the voices of a thousand frogs, challenging, insistent, unceasing, bade us look to our going. We were descending quickly from the uplands to the low country of South Carolina, the home of the rice-fields and of fever; and except the High Hills of Santee, scarcely a rising ground of any size now stood between us and Charles Town neck, ninety odd miles distant.
If she could not tell her tale without agitational could not hear it without pain, and pain that grew the keener, as I saw that in the telling she was working herself into a fiercer mood. Once or twice a bitter word fell from her and betrayed the soreness she felt; and these complaints, I came to think, were uttered with intention. If I had soothed myself at any time with the thought that she did not see events as I saw them, if I had tried to believe that she accepted my help willingly, I was now convinced that I might dismiss the notion. It was no fancy of mine that she
shrank from me.
It was at the moment when she had let fall the most cruel of these gibes, that she pulled up the gray and changed the subject, asking me abruptly if we had lately passed a road on the left.
I told her — I could not answer her with spirit — that I had not observed one.
“What time is it?” was her next question.
It was nearly nine, I answered.
“We pass through a village before we reach the ferry, do we not?” she asked.
“There should be a house or two about a mile before us,” I explained.
After that she rode on in silence. But when we had traveled another half mile we came to a post set up at a corner; and there a by-way on the left did run into our road. By this time the moon was high and the sign-post stood up white and ghastly. “Here is the turning,” she said, reining in her horse. “Do you know this road?”
“Only that it is not ours,” I answered wondering what she had in her mind.
“I am not sure of that,” she replied abruptly. “There is an old ferry half a mile up the stream, and I am told that this road leads to it. Ten years ago the present ferry crossed there, but it was moved to a point lower down to shorten the road. Now do you see?”
“What?” I asked.
“That we might cross the river there. The boat is on this side, I believe. Whereas if we go to the new ferry and can make no one hear, we shall be detained until morning.”
I was considerably taken aback both by her knowledge of the district and by a proposal so unlooked for. Moreover, I had never heard of a second ferry, though there might be one. “I think if we are wise we shall keep to the high road,” I said prudently, “and go to the proper ferry. At any rate we ought to go as far as the hamlet. We can learn there if the ferry be working, and if it is not we may be able to secure a boat. We don’t know the old crossing—”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 627