The Master of Appleby Part 56

A skilled soldier, with a good promise of strenuous patience, was my summing up of him, and d.i.c.k saw him as I did, though with a more prophetic eye.

"He will make his mark, Jack, look you; not in stubborn in-fighting at the barrier, mayhap, like Dan Morgan, nor in a brilliant dash, like our colonel, but in his own anchor-smith's way--a heat at a time, and a blow at a time," said Jennifer; and I nodded.

Stirrup to stirrup with the new commander as he pa.s.sed down the line rode Daniel Morgan, big, strong, masterful, handsome, the very pick and choice of leaders for his rough and ready riflemen. Like most of his men, he scorned to wear a uniform, appearing on parade, as in the field, in a neat-fitting hunting-s.h.i.+rt of Indian-tanned buckskin with fringings of the same--a costume that set off his gigantic figure as no tailor-fine coat could have set it off.

When he pulled his horse down to make it keep step with the sedater pacings of the general's, we could hear him declaring, with an oath, that his Eleventh Virginia alone would give a good account of all the Tories between the Catawba and the Broad; and when the cavalcade pa.s.sed the rifle corps, the men flung their hats and cheered their leader in open defiance of all discipline.

Ah me! they tell me that in after years this stout Daniel, the "Lion-bearder," as we used to dub him, became a doddering old man, even as thy old tale-teller is now; that he put off all his roistering ways and might be found any Lord's Day shouting, not curses, as of yore, but psalm tunes, in the church whereof he was a pillar! But 'twas the other Daniel we knew; the bluff, hearty man of his two hands, who could pummel the best boxer in his own regiment of fisticuffers; who could out-curse, out-buffet and out-drink the hardiest frontiersman on the border.

Next conspicuous in the general's suite was our colonel, the pink of light-horse commanders, with only Harry Lee in all the patriot rank and file for his peer. 'Tis a thousand pities that William Was.h.i.+ngton, "the Marcellus of the army," has had to suffer the eclipse which must dim the l.u.s.ter of all who walk in the shadow of a greater of the same name. For surely there never was a finer gentleman, a truer friend, a n.o.bler patriot, or, according to his opportunities, an abler officer than was our beloved colonel of the light dragoons.

But this is all beside the mark, you will say; and you will be chafing restively to know how d.i.c.k and I had come together in this troop of Colonel Was.h.i.+ngton's; to know this in a word and to pa.s.s on at a gallop to the happenings which followed. Nay, in fancy's eye I can see you turning the page impatiently, wondering where and when and how this tiresome old word-spinner will make an end.

As Margery had promised, I pa.s.sed out of my garret prison and out of door on that memorable evening of October fourteenth to find the British gone from Charlotte and the town jubilant with patriotic joy.

Having nothing to detain me, and being bound in honor by the wish of my dear lady not to follow and give myself up to the retreating British general, I took horse and rode to Salisbury, where I had the great good fortune to find d.i.c.k, already breveted a captain in Colonel Was.h.i.+ngton's command, hurrying his troop southward to whip on the British withdrawal.

Here was my chance to drown heartburnings in an onsweeping tide of action, and then and there I became a gentleman volunteer in d.i.c.k's company, asking nothing of my dear lad save that I might ride at his stirrup and share his hazards.

Touching the hazards, there were plenty of them in the seven weeks preceding and the month or more following our new general's coming to take the field, as you may know in detail if you care to follow the gallopings of Colonel Was.h.i.+ngton's light-horse troop through the pages of the histories. But these have little or naught to do with my tale, and I pa.s.s them by with the word you will antic.i.p.ate; that in all the dashes and forays and brushes with the enemy's foraging parties and outposts, no British or Tory bullet could find its billet in the man who was enamored of death.

As for my most miserable entanglement, the lapse of time made it neither better nor worse, nor greatly different; and there was little in all the skirmis.h.i.+ngs and gallopings to beat off the bandog of conscience, or that other and still fiercer wild beast of starved love, that gnawed at me day and night.

Though the hope for some eas.e.m.e.nt would now and then lift its head, I was reminded daily that hope itself was hopeless; and when the days lengthened into weeks and the weeks into months, bringing no salving for the double hurt, I knew that time could only make me love Margery the more; that there be wounds that heal, and others that open afresh at each remembrance of the hand that gave them.

One grain of comfort I had in all these dreary weeks. 'Twas whilst we were quartering in Charlotte, and I had chanced to fall upon the half-blood Scipio who had been left by Gilbert Stair to be the caretaker of the deserted town house.

As you will remember, 'twas he who had brought me the drugged tea, and the word I had from him made me hot with shame for the cruel imputation I had put upon my dear lady. "Yas, sar; gib um sleep-drop to make buckra ma.s.sa hol' still twell we could tote 'im froo de window an' 'roun' de house an' up de sta'r. Soljah gyards watch um mighty close dat night; yes, sar!" And thus this nightmare thought of mine was turned into another thorn to p.r.i.c.k me on the self-accusing side. 'Twas her keen woman's wit, and no cold-blooded plan to cheat the gallows, that made her give me the sleeping draft. Having the object-lesson of my late surrender before her, she had no mind to let me mar the rescue by waking to forbid it. And when I taxed her, 'twas natural pride that drove her to let me go on thinking the unworthy thought, if so I would.

I did penance for my disloyalty as a despairing lover might, and I do think it made me tenderer of d.i.c.k, whose bearing to me through all these tempestuous weeks was most n.o.bly generous and forgiving. I say forgiving because I was often but the curstest of companions, as you would guess.

For when I was not bent upon finding that wicket gate of death which would let me from the path of these two, I was in a wicked tertian of the mind whose chill was of despair, and whose fever was a hot desire to look once more into the eyes of my dear lady before the wicket gate should open for me.

'Twas this desire that finally drew me to her--the desire and another thing which shall have mention in its place. The new year was now come, and the Southern Army, as yet too weak to cope with the enemy, was cut into two wings of observation; one under General Greene himself at Cheraw Hill, the other and lesser in the knoll forests of the Broad with Daniel Morgan for its chief; both watching hawk-like the down-sitting of my Lord Cornwallis, who seemed to have taken root at Winnsborough.

As you will know, Was.h.i.+ngton's light-horse was with Morgan; and we ate, drank and well-nigh slept in the saddle. But for all our scoutings and outridings, and all Dan Morgan's hearty cursings at the ill success of them, we could come by no sure inkling of Lord Cornwallis's designs. As I have said, the British commander seemed to have taken root and was now waiting to sprout and grow.

It was at this lack-knowledge crisis that I volunteered to go to the British camp at Winnsborough in my old quality of spy; did this and had my leave and orders before d.i.c.k learned of it.

Left to my own devices, I fear I should have slipped away without telling Jennifer. But, as so many times before, fate intervened to drive me where I had not meant to go. On the morning set for my departure I woke to find a letter pinned to the ground beside me with an Indian scalping-knife thrust through it.

d.i.c.k was sitting by the newly-kindled fire, nursing his knees and most palpably waiting for me to wake and find my missive.

"What is it?" I asked, eying the ominous thing distrustfully.

"'Tis a letter, as you see. Uncanoola left it." Then, most surlily: "'Tis from Madge, and to you. There is your name on the back of it."

At this I must needs read the letter, with the lad looking on as if he would eat me. 'Twas dated at Winnsborough, and was brief and to the point.

_Monsieur:

"When last we met you said the Church might undo what the Church had done. I have spoken to the good Pere Matthieu, and he has consented to write to the Holy Father at Rome. But it is necessary that he should have your declaration. Since the matter is of your own seeking, mayhap you can devise a way to communicate with Pere Matthieu, who is at present with us under our borrowed roof here."_

That was all, and it was signed only with her initial. I read it through twice and then again to gain time. For d.i.c.k was waiting.

"'Tis a mere formal matter of business," said I, when I could put him off no longer.

"Business?" he queried, the red light of suspicion coming and going in his eye. "What business can you have with Mistress Madge Stair, pray?"

"'Tis about--it touches the t.i.tle to Appleby Hundred," said I, equivocating as clumsily as a schoolboy caught in a fault. "Of course you know that the confiscation act of the North Carolina Congress re-established my right and t.i.tle to the estate?"

"No," said he; "you never told me." Then: "She writes you about this?"

"About a matter touching it, as I say."

"As you did not say," he growled; after which a silence came and sat between us, I holding the open letter in my hand and he staring gloomily at the back of it.

When the silence grew portentous I told him of my design to go a-spying.

He looked me in the eye and his smile was not pleasant to see.

"You are lying most clumsily, Jack; or at best you are telling me but half the truth. You are going to see Mistress Margery."

"That is altogether as it may happen," I retorted, striving hard to keep down the flame of insensate rivalry which his accusings always kindled in me.

"It is not. Winnsborough is neither London nor yet Philadelphia, that you may miss her in the crowd. And you do not mean to miss her."

"Well? And if I do chance to see her--what then?"

"Don't mad me, Jack. You should know by this what a fool she has made of me."

"'Tis your own folly," I rejoined hotly. "You should blame neither the lady nor the man to whom she has given nothing save--"

"Save what?" he broke in savagely.

I recoiled on the brink as I had so many times before. The months of waiting for the death I craved had hardened me.

"Save a thing you would value lightly enough without her love. Let us have done with this bickering; find the colonel and ask his leave to go with me, if you like. Then you may do the love-making whilst I do the spying."

"No," said he; "not while you stand it upon such a leg as that."

I reached across and gripped his hand and wrung it. "Shall we never have the better of these senseless vaporings?" I cried. "'Tis as you say; I can neither live sane nor die mad without another sight of her, d.i.c.k, and that is the plain truth. And yet, mark me, this next seeing of her will surely set a thing in train that will make her yours and not mine.

Get your leave and come with me on your own terms. Mayhap she will show you how little she cares for me, and how much she cares for you."

So this is how it came about that we two, garbed as decent planters and mounted upon the sleekest cobs the regiment afforded, took the road for Winnsborough together on a certain summer-fine morning in January in the year of battles, seventeen hundred and eighty-one.

XLV