Chapter II: Part 2

I closed my eyes the better to remember what had befallen, and when I opened them again was fain to wonder if the moment of back-reaching stood not for some longer time. In the deep bay of the window was a great chair of Indian wickerwork, and I could have sworn it had but now been empty. Yet when I looked again a woman sat in it.

Now of a truth I had seen this woman's face but twice; and once it wore a smile of teasing mockery and once was full of terror; but I thought I should live long and suffer much before the winsome challenging beauty of it would let me be as I had been before I had looked upon it.

She knew not that I was awake and slaking the thirst of my eyes upon the sweetness of her, and so I saw her then as few ever saw her, I think, with the womanly barriers of defense all down. 'Tis a hard test, and one that makes a blank at rest of many a face beautiful enough in action; but though this lady's face was to the full as changeful as any April sky, it was never less than triumphantly beautiful.

I had said her eyes were blue, but now they were deep wells reflecting the soft gray of the clouded sky beyond the window-panes. I had made sure that her lips lent themselves most readily to mocking smiles scornful of any wit less trenchant than her own; but now these mocking lips were pensive, and with the rounded cheek and chin gave her the look of a sweet child wanting to be kissed. I had said her hair was bright in the sunlight, and so, indeed, it was; but lacking the sun it still held the dull luster of burnished copper in its masses, and her simple, care-free dressing of it at a time when _les grandes dames_ were frizzing and powdering and adding art to art to mar the woman's crown of glory, gave her yet more the look of a child.

Lastly, I had called her small, and certainly her figure was girlish beside those grenadier dames of Maria Theresa's court to whom my old field-marshal had once presented me. But when she rose and went to stand in the window-bay I marked this; that not any duchess or margravine of them all had a more queenly bearing, or, with all their stays and furbelows, could match her supple grace and lissom figure.

What with the blood-lettings and the wound fever, coupled with the subtle witchery of her presence thus in my sick room, it is little to be wondered at that a curious madness came over me, or that I forgot for the moment the loyalty due to my dear lad. Could I have stood before her and, reading but half consent in the deep-welled eyes, have clipt her in my arms and laid my lips to hers, I would have run to pay the price, in earth or heaven or hell, I thought, deeming the fierce joy of it well worth any penalty.

At this I should have stirred, I suppose, for she came quickly and stood beside me.

"You have slept long and well, Captain Ireton," she said; and in all the thrilling joy of her nearer presence I found space to mark that her voice had in it that sweet quality of sympathy which is all womanly. "They say I am good only to fetch and carry--may I fetch you anything?"

I fear the madness of the moment must still have been upon me, for I said: "Since you are here yourself, dear lady, I need naught else."

At a flash I had my whipping in a low dipped curtsy and a mocking smile like that she had flung to Falconnet.

"_Merci! mon Capitaine_," she said; and for all my wincings under the sharp lash of her sarcasm I was moved to wonder how she had the French of it. And then she added: "Is it the custom for Her Apostolic Majesty's officers to come out of a death-swound only to pay pretty compliments?"

"'Twas no compliment," I denied; and, indeed, I meant it. Then I asked where I was, and to whom indebted, though I had long since guessed the answer to both questions.

In a trice the mocking mood was gone and she became my lady hostess, steeped to her finger-tips in gracious dignity.

"You are at Appleby Hundred, sir. 'Twas here they fetched you because there was no other house so near, and you were sorely hurt. Richard Jennifer and my black boy made a litter of the saddle-cloths, and with Sir Francis and Mr. Tybee to help--"

I think she must have seen that this thrust was sharper than that of the German long-sword, for she stopped in mid-sentence and looked away from me. And, surely, I thought it was the very irony of fate that I should thus be brought half dead to the house that was my father's, with my enemy and his second to share the burden of me.

"But your father?" I queried, when the silence had grown over-long.

"My father is away at Queensborough, so you must e'en trust yourself to my tender mercies, Captain Ireton. Are you strong enough to have your wound dressed?"

She asked, but waited for no answer of mine. Summoning a black boy to hold the basin of water, she fell to upon the wound-dressing with as little ado as if she had been a surgeon's apprentice on a battle-field, and I a bloodless ancient too old to thrill at the touch of a woman's hands.

"Dear heart! 'tis a monstrous ugly hurt," she declared, replacing the wrappings with deft fingers. "How came you to go about picking a quarrel with Sir Francis?"

"'Twas not of my seeking," I returned, and then I could have cursed my foolish tongue.

"Is that generous, Captain Ireton? We hear something of the talk of the town, and that says--"

"That says I struck him without sufficient cause. I am content to let it stand so."

"Nay, but you should not be content. Is there not strife enough in this unhappy land without these causeless bickerings?"

Here was my lady turned preacher all in a breath and I with no words to answer her. But I could not let it go thus.

"I knew Sir Francis Falconnet in England," said I, hoping by this to turn her safe aside.

"Ah; then there was a cause. Tell it me."

"Nay, that I may not."

Though she was hurting me sorely in the wound-dressing, and knew it, she laughed.

"'Tis most ungallant to deny a lady, sir. But I shall know without the telling; 'twas about a woman. Tell me, Captain Ireton, is she fair?"

Seeing that her mood had changed again, I tried to give her quip for jest; but what with the pain of the sword-thrust and the sweet agony of her touches I could only set my teeth against a groan. She went on drawing the bandagings, little heedful how she racked me, I thought; and yet when all was done she stood beside me all of a tremble, as any tender-hearted woman might.

"There," she said; "'tis over for a time, and I make no doubt you are glad enough. Now you have nothing to do save to lie quiet till it heals."

"And how long will that be, think you?"

"We shall see; a long time, I hope. You shall be punished properly for your hot temper, I promise you, Captain Ireton."

With that she left me and went to stand in the window-bay; and from lying mouse-still and watching her over-steadily I fell asleep again. When I awoke the day was in its gloaming and she was gone.

After this I saw her no more for six full circlings of the clock-hands, and grew fair famished for a sight of her sweet face. But to atone, she, or some messenger of Richard Jennifer's, brought me my faithful Darius, and he it was who fetched me my food and drink and dressed my wound. From him I gleaned that the master of Appleby Hundred had returned from Queensborough, and that there were officers in red coats continually going back and forth, always with a hearty welcome from Gilbert Stair.

Now, though the master of my stolen heritage had little cause to love me, I thought he had still less to fear me; so it seemed passing strange that he came not once to my bedchamber to pass the time of day with his unbidden guest, or to ask how he fared. But in this, as in many other things, I reckoned without my enemy, though I might have known that Sir Francis would be oftenest among the red-coated officers coming and going.

But stranger than this, or than my lady's continued avoidance of me, was the lack of a visit from Richard Jennifer. Knowing well my dear lad's loyalty to the patriot cause, I could only conjecture that he had finally broken Margery's enforced truce to go and join Mr. Rutherford's militia, which, as Darius told me, was rallying to attack a Tory stronghold at Ramsour's Mill.

With this surmise I was striving to content myself on that evening of the third day, when Mistress Margery burst in upon me, bright-eyed and with her cheeks aflame.

"Captain Ireton, I will know the true cause of this quarrel which, failing in yourself, you pass on to Richard Jennifer!" she cried. "Was it not enough that you should get yourself half slain, without sending this headstrong boy to his death?"

Now in all my surmisings I had not thought of this, and truly if she had sought far and wide for a whip to scourge me with she could have found no thong to cut so deep.

"God help me!" I groaned. "Has this fiend incarnate killed my poor lad?"

"No, he is not dead," she confessed, relenting a little. "But he has the baronet's bullet through his sword-arm for the sake of your over-seas disagreement with Sir Francis."

I could not tell her that though my quarrel with this villain was but the avenging of poor Dick Coverdale's wrongs, Richard Jennifer's was for the baronet's affront to her. So I bore the blame in silence, glad enough to be assured that my dear lad was only wounded.

"Why don't you speak, sir?" she snapped, flying out at me in a passion for my lack of words.

"What should I say? I have not forgot that once you called me ungenerous."

"You should defend yourself, if you can. And you should ask my pardon for calling my father's guest hard names."

"The last I will do right heartily. 'Twas but the simple truth, but it was ill-spoken in your presence, Mistress Stair."

At this she laughed merrily; and in all my world-wanderings I had never heard a sound so gladsome as this sweet laugh of hers when she would be on the forgiving hand.

"Surely any one would know you are a soldier, Captain Ireton. No other could make an apology and renew the offense so innocently in the same breath." Then her mood changed again in the dropping of an eyelid, and she sighed and said: "Poor Dick!"

As ever when she was with me, my eyes were devouring her; and at the sigh and the trembling of the sweet lips in sympathy I found that curious love-madness coming upon me again. Then I saw that I must straightway dig some chasm impassable between this woman and me, as I should hope to be loyal to my friend. So I said: "He loves you well, Mistress Margery."

She glanced up quickly with a smile which might have been mocking or loving; I could not tell which it was.

"Did he make you his deputy to tell me so, Captain Ireton?"

Now I might have known that she was only luring me on to some pitfall of mockery, but I did not, and must needs burst out in some clumsy disclaimer meant to shield my dear lad. And in the midst of it she laughed again.

"Oh, you do amuse me mightily, _mon Capitaine_," she cried. "I do protest I shall come to see you oftener. Tis as good as any play!"

"Saw you ever a play in this backwoods wilderness?" I asked, glad of any excuse to change the talk and keep her by me.

"No, indeed. But you are not to think that no one has seen the great world save only yourself, Captain Ireton. What would you say if I should tell you that I, too, have seen your London, and even your Paris?"

Here I must blunder again and say that I had been wondering how else she came by the Parisian French; but at this her jesting mood vanished suddenly and she spoke softly.

"I had it of my mother, who came of the Huguenots. She spoke it always to me. But my father speaks it not, and now I am losing it for want of practice."

How is it that love transforms the once contemptible into a thing most highly to be prized? My eight years of campaigning on the Continent had given me the French speech, or so much of it as the clumsy tongue of me could master, and I had always held it in hearty English scorn. Yet now I was eager enough to speak it with her, and to take as my very own the little cry of joy wherewith she welcomed my hesitant mouthing of it.

From that we fell to talking in her mother's tongue of the hardships of those same Huguenot _émigrés_; and when I looked not at her I could speak in terms dispassionate and cool of this or aught else; and when I looked upon her my heart beat faster and my blood leaped quickly, and I knew not always what it was I said.

After a time--'twas when Darius fetched me my supper and the candles--she went away; and so ended a day which saw the beginning of a struggle fiercer than any the turbaned Turk had ever given me. For when I had eaten, and was alone with time to think, I knew well that I loved this woman and should always love her; this in spite of honor, or loyalty to Richard Jennifer, or any other thing in heaven or earth.

V

HOW I LOST WHAT I HAD NEVER GAINED

Though I dared not hope she would keep her promise and was sometimes so sorely beset as to tremble at her coming, Margery looked in upon me oftener, and soon there grew up between us a comradeship the like of which, I think, had never been between a woman loved and a man who, loving her, was yet constrained to play the part of her true lover's friend.

If I played this part but stumblingly; if at times the madness of my passion would not be denied the look or word or hand-clasp not of poor cool friendship; I have this to comfort me: that in after time, when my dear lad came to know, he forgave me freely--nay, held me altogether blameless, as I was not.

Of what these looks and words and hand-clasps meant to Margery I had no hint. But in my hours of sanity, when I would pass these slippings in review, I could recall no answering flash of hers to salt the woundings of the conscience-whip. So far from it, it seemed, as this sweet comradeship budded and blossomed on the stock of a better acquaintance, she came to hold me more as if I were some cross between a father or an elder brother, and some closer confidant of her own sex.

You are not to understand that she was always thus, nor over-often. More frequently that side of her which I soon came to call the mother's was turned to me, and I was made to stand a target for her wit and raillery. But she was ever changeful as a child, and in the midst of some light jesting mood would sober instantly and give my age its due.

In some of these, her soberer times, I felt her lean upon me as my sister might, had I had one; at others she would frankly set me in her father's place, declaring I must tell her what to say or do in this or that entanglement. Again, and this came oftener as our friendship grew, she would talk to me as surely woman never talked to any but a kinsman, telling me naïvely of her conquests, and sparing no gallant of them all save only Richard Jennifer.

And of Dick and his devotion she spoke now and then, as well, though never mockingly, as of the others. Nay, once when I pressed her on this point, asking her plainly if my dear lad had not good cause to hope, she would only smile and turn her face away, and say that of all the men she knew the hopeful ones pleased her best. So I was thus assured that if it were a scale for love to tip, my lady's heart would fall to Richard.

Now I took this to be a hopeful sign, that she would tell me freely of these her little heart affairs; and seeing her so safe upon the side of friendship, held the looser rein upon my own unchartered passion. So long as I could keep my love well masked and hidden what harm could come to her or any if I should give it leave to live in prison? None, I thought; and yet at times was made a very coward by the thought. For love, like other living things, will grow by what it feeds upon, and once full-grown, may haply come to laugh at bonds, however strong or cunningly devised.

With such a fever in my veins it was little wonder that my wound healed slowly. As time passed by, with never a word of news from the world without--if Margery knew aught of the fighting she would never lisp a syllable to me--and with Gilbert Stair still keeping churlishly beyond the sight or sound of me, I fretted sorely and would be gone.

Yet this was but a passing mood. When Margery was with me I was not ill-content to eat the bread of sufferance in her father's house, and angry pride had scanty footing. But when she was away this same pride took sharp revenges, getting me out of bed to bully Darius into dressing me that I might foot it up and down the room while I was still unfit for any useful thing.

One morning in the summer third of June my lady came early and surprised me at this business of pacing back and forth. Whereat she scolded me as was her wont when I grew restive.

"What weighty thing have you to do that you should be so fierce to be about it, Monsieur Impetuous?" she cried. "_Fi donc!_ you'd try the patience of a saint!"

"Which you are not," I ventured. "But truly, Margery, I am growing stronger now, and the bed does irk me desperately, if you must know. Besides--"

"Well, what is there else besides? Do I not pamper you enough?"

I laughed. "I'll say whatever you would have me say--so it be not the truth."

"I'll have you say nothing until you sit down."

She pushed the great chair of Indian wickerwork into place before the window-bay, and when I was at rest she drew up a low hassock and sat at my feet.

"Now you may go on," she said.

"You have not told me what you would have me say."

"The truth," she commanded.

"'"What is truth," said jesting Pilate,'" I quoted. "Why do you suppose my Lord Bacon thought the Roman procurator jested at such a time and place?"

"You are quibbling, Monsieur John. I want to know why you are so impatient to be gone."

"Saw you ever a man worthy the name who could be content to bide inactive when duty calls?"

"That is not the whole truth," she said, half absently. "You think you are unwelcome here."

"'Twas you said that; not I. But I must needs know your father will be relieved when he is safely quit of me."

"'Twas you said that, not I, Monsieur John," she retorted, giving me back my own words. "Has ever word been brought you that he would speed your parting?"

"Surely not, since I am still here. But you must know that I have never seen his face, as yet."

"And is that strange? You must not forget that he is Gilbert Stair, and you are Roger Ireton's son."

"I am not likely to forget it. But still a word of welcome to the unbidden guest would not have come amiss. And it was none of my seeking--this asylum in his house."

"True; but that has naught to do with any coolness of my father's."

"What is it, then?--besides the fact that I am Roger Ireton's son?"

"I think 'twas what you said to Mr. Pengarvin."

"That little smirking wretch? What has he to say or do in this?"

She looked away from me and said: "He is my father's factor and man of affairs."

"Ah, I have always to be craving your pardon, Margery. But I said naught to this parchment-faced--to this Mr. Pengarvin, that might offend your father, or any."

"How, then, will you explain this, that you swore to drive my father from Appleby Hundred as soon as ever you had raised a following among the rebels?"

"'Tis easily explained: this thrice-accursed--oh, pardon me again, I pray you; I will not name him any name at all. What I meant to say was that he lied. I made no threats to him; to tell the plain truth, I was too fiercely mad to bandy words with him."

"What made you mad, Monsieur John?"

"'Twas his threat to me--to taint me with my father's outlawry. Do you greatly blame me, Margery?"

"No."

Thereat a silence came and sat between us, and I fell to loving her the more because of it; but when she spoke I always loved her more for speaking.

"My father has had little peace since coming here," she said, at length. "He is old and none too well; and as for king and Congress, asks nothing but his right to hold aloof. And this they will not give him."

Remembering what Jennifer had told me of Gilbert Stair's trimming, I smiled within.

"That is the way of all the world in war-time, _ma petite_. A partizan may suffer once for all, but both sides hold a neutral lawful prey."

'Twas as the spark to tinder; my word the spark and in her eyes the answering flash.

"I tell him so!" she cried. "I tell him always that the king will have his own again. But still he halts and hesitates; and when these rebels come and quarter on us--"

I fear she must have seen my inward smile this time, for she broke off in the midst, and I made haste to forestall her flying out at me.

"Oh, come, my dear; you should not be so fierce with him when you yourself have brought a rebel to his house to nurse alive."

She looked me fairly in the eye. "You should be the last to remind me of my treason, Monsieur John."

"Then you are free to call it treason, are you, Margery?" I said.

She looked away from me again. "How can it well be less than treason?" Then suddenly she turned and clasped her hands upon my knee. "You must not be too hard upon me, Monsieur John. I've tried to do my duty as I saw it, and I have asked no questions. And yet I know much more than you have told me."

"What do you know?"

"I know your wound has been your safety. If you should leave this room and house to-day you would never wear the buff and blue again, Captain Ireton."

"You mean they would hang me for a spy. Will you believe me, Margery, if I say I have not yet worn the buff and blue at all?"

"_Oh_!" The little exclamation was of pure delight. "Then they were all mistaken? You are no rebel, after all?"

Was ever man so tempted since the fall of Adam? As I have writ it down for you in measured words, I was no more than half a patriot at this time. And love has made more traitors than its opposites of lust or greed. In no uncertain sense I was a man without a country; and this fair maiden on the hassock at my feet was all the world to me. I saw in briefer time than any clock hands ever measured how much a yielding word might do for me; and then I thought of Richard Jennifer and was myself again.

"Nay, little one," I said; "there has been no mistake. For their own purposes my enemies have passed the word that I am here as the Baron de Kalb's paid spy. That is no mistake; 'tis a lie cut out of whole cloth. I came here straight from New Berne, and back of that from London and the Continent, and scarcely know the buff and blue by sight. But I am Carolina born, dear lady; and this King George's governor hanged my father. So, when God gives me strength to mount and ride--"

"Now who is fierce?" she cried. And then, like lightning: "Will you raise a band of rebels and come and take your own again?"

"You know I will not," I protested, so gravely that she laughed again, though now there were tears, from what well-spring of emotion I knew not, in her eyes.

"Oh, mercy me! Have you never one little grain of imagination, Monsieur John? You are too monstrous literal for our poor jesting age." Then she sobered quickly and added this: "And yet I fear that this is what my father fears."

I did not tell her that he might have feared it once with reason, or that now the houseless dog she petted should have life of me though mine enemy should sick him on. But I did say her father had no present cause to dread me.

"He thinks he has. And surely there is cause enough," she added.

I smiled, and, loving her the more for her fairness, must smile again.

"Nay, you have changed all that, dear lady. Truly, I did at first fly out at him and all concerned for what has made me a poor pensioner in my father's house--or rather in the house that was my father's. But that was while the hurt was new. I have been a soldier of fortune too long to think overmuch of the loss of Appleby Hundred. 'Twas my father's, certainly; but 'twas never mine."

"And yet--and yet it should be yours, John Ireton." She said it bravely, with uplifted face and eloquent eyes that one who ran might read.

"'Tis good and true of you to say so, little one; but there be two sides to that, as well. So my father's acres come at last to you and Richard Jennifer, I shall be well content, I do assure you, Margery."

She sprang up from her low seat and went to stand in the window-bay. After a time she turned and faced me once again, and the warm blood was in cheek and neck, and there was a soft light in her eyes to make them shine like stars.

"Then you would have me marry Richard Jennifer?" she asked.

'Twas but a little word that honor bade me say, and yet it choked me and I could not say it.

"Dick would have you, Margery; and Dick is my dear friend--as I am his."

"But you?" she queried. "Were you my friend, as well, is this as you would have it?"

My look went past her through the lead-rimmed window-panes to the great oaks and hickories on the lawn; to these and to the white road winding in and out among them. While yet I sought for words in which to give her unreservedly to my dear lad, two horsemen trotted into view. One of them was a king's man; the other a civilian in sober black. The redcoat rode as English troopers do, with a firm seat, as if the man were master of his mount; but the smaller man in black seemed little to the manner born, and daylight shuttled in and out beneath him, keeping time to the jog-trot of his beast.

I thought it passing strange that with all good will to answer her, these coming horsemen seemed to hold me silent. And, indeed, I did not speak until they came so near that I could make them out.

"I am your friend, Margery mine; as good a friend as you will let me be. And as between Richard Jennifer and another, I should be a sorry friend to Dick did I not--"

She heard the clink of horseshoes on the gravel and turned, signing to me for silence while she looked below. The window overhung the entrance on that side, and through the opened air-casement I heard some babblement of voices, though not the words.

"I must go down," she said. "'Tis company come, and my father is away."

She passed behind my chair, and, hearing her hand upon the latch, I had thought her gone--gone down to welcome my enemy and his riding mate, the factor. But while I was cursing my unready tongue and repenting that I had not given her some small word of warning, she spoke again.

"You say 'Richard Jennifer or another.' What know you of any other, Monsieur John?"

"Nay, I know nothing save what you have told me; and from that I have been hoping there was no other."

"But if I say there may be?"

My heart went sick at that. True, I had thought to give her generously to Dick, whose right was paramount; but to another--

"Margery, come hither where I may see you." And when she stood before me like a bidden child: "Tell me, little comrade, who is that other?"

But now her mood was changed again, and from standing sweet and pensive she fell a-laughing.

"What impudence!" she cried. "_Ma foi_! You should borrow Père Matthieu's cassock and breviary; then, mayhap, I might confess to you. But not before."

But still I pressed her.

"Tell me, Margery."

She tossed her head and would not look at me. "Dick Jennifer is but a boy; suppose this other were a man full-grown."

"Yes?"

"And a soldier."

The sickness in my heart became a fire.

"O Margery! Don't tell me it is this fiend who came just now!"

All in a flash the jesting mood was gone, but that which took its place was strange to me. Tears came; her bosom heaved. And then she would have passed me but I caught her hands and held them fast.

"Margery, one moment: for your own sweet sake, if not for Dick's or mine, have naught to do with this devil's emissary of a man. If you only knew--if I dared tell you--"

But for once, it seemed, I had stretched my privilege beyond the limit. She whipped her hands from my hold and faced me coldly.

"Sir Francis says you are a brave gentleman, Captain Ireton, and though he knows well what you would be about, he has not sent a file of men to put you in arrest. And in return you call him names behind his back. I shall not stay to listen, sir."

With that she passed again behind my chair, and once again I heard her hand upon the latch. But I would say my say.

"Forgive me, Margery, I pray you; 'twas only what you said that made me mad. 'Tis less than naught if you'll deny it."

I waited long and patiently, and thought she must have gone before her answer came. And this is what she said:

"If I must tell you then;'tis now two weeks and more since Sir Francis Falconnet asked me to marry him. I--I hope you do feel better, Captain Ireton."

And with these bitterest of all words to her leave-taking, she left me to endure as best I might the hell of torment they had lighted for me.

VI

SHOWING HOW RED WRATH MAY HEAL A WOUND

It was full two days after the coming of the baronet and the factor-lawyer Pengarvin before I saw my lady's face near-hand again, and sometimes I was glad for Richard Jennifer's sake, but oftener would curse and swear because I was bound hand and foot and could not balk my enemy.

I knew Sir Francis and the lawyer still lingered on at Appleby Hundred--indeed, I saw them daily from my window--and Darius would be telling me that they waited upon the coming of some courier from the south. But this I disbelieved. Some such-like lie the baronet might have told, I thought; but when I saw him walk abroad with Margery on his arm, pacing back and forth beneath the oaks and bending low to catch her lightest word with grave and courtly deference that none knew better how to feign, I knew wherefore he stayed--knew and raged afresh at my own impotence, and for the thought that Margery was wholly at the mercy of this devil.

Yours is a colder century than was ours, my dears. Your art has tempered love and passion into sentiment, and hate you have learned to call aversion or dislike. But we of that simple-hearted elder time were more downright; and I have writ the word I mean in saying that my love was at the mercy of this fiend.

I know not how it is or why, but there are men who have this gift--some winning way to turn a woman's head or touch her heart; and I knew well this gift was his. 'Twas not his face, for that was something less than handsome, to my fancy; nor yet his figure, though that was big and soldierly enough. It was rather in some subtlety of manner, some power of simulation whereby in any womanly heart he seemed to stand at will for that which he was not.

As I have said, I knew him well enough; knew him incapable of love apart from passion, and that to him there was no sacredness in maiden chastity or wifely vows. So he but gained his end he cared no whit what followed after; ruin, broken hearts, lost souls, a man slain now and then to keep the scale from tipping--all were as one to him, or to the Francis Falconnet I knew.

And touching marriage, with Margery or any other, I feared that love would have no word to say. Passion there might be, and that fierce desire to have and wear which burns like any miser's fever in the blood; but never love as lovers measure it. Why, then, had he proposed to Margery? The answer did not tarry. Since he was now but a gentleman volunteer it was plain that he had squandered his estate, and so might brook the marriage chain if it were linked up with my father's acres.

It was a bait to lure such a gamester strongly. As matters stood with us in that wan summer of exhaustion and defeat, the king's cause waxed and grew more hopeful day by day. And in event of final victory a landless baronet, marrying Margery's dower of Appleby Hundred, might snap his fingers at the Jews who, haply, had driven him forth from England.

And as for Margery? Truly, she had told me, or as good as told me, that her maiden love had pledged itself a pawn for Jennifer's redeeming. But there be other things than love to sway a woman's will. This volunteer captain with the winning way was of the _haute noblesse_, and he could make her Lady Falconnet. Moreover, he was with her day by day; and you may mark this as you will; that a present suitor hath ever the trump cards to play against the absent lover.

So, brooding over this, I wore out two most dismal days--the first in many I had had to pass alone. But on the morning of the third the sky was lightened, though then the light was but a flash and darkness followed quickly after. She came again and brought me a visitor; it was this same Father Matthieu with whom she had jestingly compared me, and lest I should take my punishment too lightly, stayed but to make the good priest known to me.

Now I was born and bred an heretic, by any papist's reckoning, but I have ever held it witless in that man who lets a creed obstruct a friendship. Moreover, this sweet-faced cleric was the friendliest of men; friendly, and yet the wiliest Jesuit of them all, since he read me at a glance and fell straightway to praising Margery.

"A truly sweet young demoiselle," he said, by way of foreword, no sooner was the door closed behind her, and while he preached a sermon on this text I grew to know and love him.

He was a little man, as bone and muscle go, with deep-set eyes, and features kind and mild and fine as any woman's; some such face as Leonardo gave St. John, could that have been less youthful. I could not tell his order, though from his well-worn cassock girded at the waist with a frayed bit of hempen cord he might have been a Little Brother of the Poor. But this I noted; that he was not tonsured, and his white hair, soft and fine as Margery's, was like an aureole to the finely chiseled features. As missionary men of any creed are apt, he looked far older than he really was; and when he came to tell me of his life among the Indians, it was patent how the years had multiplied upon him.

I listened, well enough content to learn him better by his own report.

"But you must find it thankless work; this gospeling in the wilderness," I ventured, when all was said. "'Tis but a hermit's life for any man of parts; and after all, when you have done your utmost, your converts are but savages, as they were."

At this he smiled and shook his head. _"Non, Monsieur_, not so. You are a soldier and can not see beyond your point of sword. _Mais, mon ami_, they have souls to save, these poor children of the forest, and they are far more sinned against than sinning. I find them kind and true and faithful; and some of them are noble, in their way."

I laughed. "I've read about those noble ones," I said. "'Twas in a book called 'Hakluyt's Voyages.' Truly, I know them not as you do, for in my youth I knew them most in war. We called them brave but cruel then; and when I was a boy I could have shown you where, within a mile of this, they burned poor Davie Davidson at the stake."

"Ah, yes; there has been much of that," he sighed. "But you must confess, Captain Ireton, that you English carry fire and sword among them, too."

From that he would have told me more about the savages, but I was interested nearer home. As I have said, I was like any prisoner in a dungeon for lack of news, and so by degrees I fetched him round to telling me of what was going on beyond my window-sight of lawn and forest.

Brave deeds were to the fore, it seemed. At Ramsour's Mill, a few miles north and west, some little handful of determined patriots had bested thrice their number of the king's partizans, and that without a leader bigger than a county colonel. Lord Rawdon, in command of Lord Cornwallis's van, had come as far as Waxhaw Creek, but, being unsupported, had withdrawn to Hanging Rock. Our Mr. Rutherford was on his way to the Forks of Yadkin to engage the Tories gathering under Colonel Bryan. As yet, it seemed, we had no force of any consequence to take the field against Cornwallis, though there were flying rumors of an army marching from Virginia, with a new-appointed general at its head.

On the whole it was the king's cause that prospered, and the rising wave of invasion bade fair to inundate the land. So thought my kindly gossip; and, having naught to gain or lose in the great war, or rather having naught to lose and everything to gain, whichever way these worldly cards might run, he was a fair, impartial witness.

As you may well suppose, this news awoke in me the lust of battle, and I must chafe the more for having it. And while my visitor talked on, and I was listening with the outward ear, my brain was busy putting two and two together. How came it that the British outpost still remained at Queensborough, with my Lord Rawdon withdrawn and the patriot home guard well down upon its rear? Some urgent reason for the stay there must be; and at that I remembered what Darius had told me of its captain's waiting for some messenger from the south.

I scored this matter with a question mark, putting it aside to think on more when I should be alone. And when the priest had told me all the news at large, we came again to speak of Margery.

"I go and come through all this borderland," he said, when I had asked him how and why he came to Appleby Hundred, "but it was mam'selle's message brought me here. She is my one ewe lamb in all this region, and I would journey far to see her."

I wondered pointedly at this, for in that day the West was fiercely Protestant and the Mother Church had scanty footing in the borderland.

"But Mistress Margery is not a Catholic!" said I.

His look forgave the protest in the words.

"Indeed, she is, my son. Has she not told you?"

Now truly she had not told me so in any measured word or phrase; and yet I might have guessed it, since she had often spoken lovingly of this same Father Matthieu. And yet it was incredible to me.

"But how--I do not understand how that can be," I stammered. "Surely, she told me she was of Huguenot blood on the mother's side, and that is--"

The missionary's smile was lenient still, but full of meaning.

"Not all who wander from the Catholic fold are lost forever, Captain Ireton. The mother of this demoiselle lived all her life a Protestant, I think, but when she came to die she sent for me. And that is how her child was sent to France and grew up convent-bred. Monsieur Stair gave his promise at the mother's death-bed, and though he liked it not, he kept it."

"Aha, I see. And for this single lamb of your scant fold you brave the terrors of our heretic backwoods? It does you credit, Father Matthieu. The war fills all horizons now, mayhap, but I have seen the time in Mecklenburg when your cassock would have been a challenge to the mob."

His smile was quite devoid of bitterness. "The time has not yet passed," he said, gently. "I have been six weeks on the way from Maryland hither, hiding in the forest by day and faring on at night. Indeed, I was in hiding on a neighboring plantation when our demoiselle's messenger found me."

This put me keen upon remembering what had gone before; how he had said at first that she had sent for him. I thought it strange, knowing how perilous the time and place must be for such as he. But not until he rose and, bidding me good day, left me to myself, did I so much as guess the thing his coming meant. When I had guessed it; when I put this to that--her telling me Sir Francis had proposed for her, and this her sending for the priest--the madness of my love for her was as naught compared to that anger which seized and racked me.

I know not how the hours of this black day were made to come and go, grinding me to dust and ashes in their passage, yet leaving me alive and keen to suffer at the end.

A thousand times that day I lived in torment through the scene in which the priest had doubtless come to play his part of joiner. The stage for it would be the great room fronting south; the room my father used to call our castle hall. For guests I thought there would be space enough and some to spare, for, as you know, our Mecklenburg was patriot to the core. But as to this, the bridegroom's troopers might fill out the tale, and in my heated fancy I could see them grouped beneath the candle-sconces with belts and baldrics fresh pipe-clayed, and shakos doffed, and _sabretaches_ well in front. "A man full-grown--a soldier," she had said; and trooper-guests were fitting in such case.

From serving in a Catholic land I knew the customs of the Mother Church. So I could see the priest in cassock, alb and stole as he would stand before some makeshift altar lit with candles. And as he stands they come to kneel before him; my winsome Margery in all her royal beauty, a child to love, and yet an empress peerless in her woman's realm; and at her side, with his knee touching hers, this man who was a devil!

What wonder if I cursed and choked and cursed again when the maddening thought of what all this should mean for my poor wounded Richard--and later on, for Margery herself--possessed me? In which of these hot fever-gusts of rage the thought of interference came, I know not. But that it came at length--a thought and plan full-grown at birth--I do know.

The pointing of the plan was desperate and simple. It was neither more nor less than this: I knew the house and every turn and passage in it, and when the hour should strike I said I should go down and skulk among the guests, and at the crucial moment find or seize a weapon and fling myself upon this bridegroom as he should kneel before the altar.

With strength to bend him back and strike one blow, I saw not why it might not win. And as for strength, I have learned this in war: that so the rage be hot enough 'twill nerve a dying man to hack and hew and stab as with the strength of ten.

Although it was most terribly over-long in coming, the end of that black day did come at last, and with it Darius to fetch my supper and the candles. You may be sure I questioned him, and, if you know the blacks, you'll smile and say I had my labor for my pains--the which I had. His place was at the quarters, and of what went on within the house he knew no more than I. But this he told me; that company surely was expected, and that some air of mystery was abroad.

When he was gone I ate a soldier's portion, knowing of old how ill a thing it is to take an empty stomach into battle. For the same cause I drank a second cup of wine,--'twas old madeira of my father's laying-in,--and would have drunk a third but that the bottle would not yield it.

It was fully dark when I had finished, and, thinking ever on my plan, would strive afresh to weld its weakest link. This was the hazard of the weapon-getting. With full-blood health and strength I might have gone bare-handed; but as it was, I feared to take the chance. So with a candle I went a-prowling in the deep drawers of the old oaken clothes-press and in the escritoire which once had been my mother's, and found no weapon bigger than a hairpin.

It was no great disappointment, for I had looked before with daylight in the room. Besides, the wine was mounting, and when the search was done the hazard seemed the less. So I could rush upon him unawares and put my knee against his back, I thought the Lord of Battles would give me strength to break his neck across it.

At that I capped the candles, and, taking post in the deep bay of the window, set myself to watch for the lighting of the great room at the front. This had two windows on my side, and while I could not see them, I knew that I should see the sheen of light upon the lawn.

The night was clear but moonless, and the thick-leafed masses of the oaks and hickories rose a wall of black to curtain half the hemisphere of starry sky. As always in our forest land, the hour was shrilly vocal, though to me the chirping din of frogs and insects hath ever stood for silence. Somewhere beyond the thicket-wall an owl was calling mournfully, and I bethought me of that superstition--old as man, for aught I know--of how the hooting of an owl betokens death. And then I laughed, for surely death would come to one or more of those beneath my father's roof within the compass of the night.

Behind the close-drawn curtain, though I could see it not, the virgin forest darkened all the land; and from afar within its secret depths I heard, or thought I heard, the dismal howling of the timber wolves. Below, the house was silent as the grave, and this seemed strange to me. For in the time of my youth a wedding was a joyous thing. Yet I would remember that these present times were perilous; and also that my bridegroom captained but a little band of troopers in a land but now become fiercely debatable.

It must have been an hour or more before the sound of distance-muffled hoofbeats on the road broke in upon the chirping silence of the night. I looked and listened, straining eye and ear, hearing but little and seeing less until three shadowy horsemen issued from the curtain-wall of black beneath my window.

It was plain that others watched as well as I, for at their coming a sheen of light burst from the opened door below, at which there were sword-clankings as of armed men dismounting, and then a few low-voiced words of welcome. Followed quickly the closing of the door and silence; and when my eyes grew once again accustomed to the gloom, I saw below the horses standing head to head, and in the midst a man to hold them.

"So!" I thought; "but three in all, and one of them a servant. 'Twill be a scantly guested wedding." And then I raged within again to think of how my love should be thus dishonored in a corner when she should have the world to clap its hands and praise her beauty.

At that, and while I looked, the lawn was banded farther on by two broad beams of light; and then I knew my time was come.

Feeling my way across the darkened chamber I softly tried the door-latch. It yielded at the touch, but not the door. I pulled and braced myself and pulled again. 'Twas but a waste of strength. The door was fast with that contrivance wherewith my father used to bar me in what time I was a boy and would go raccooning with our negro hunters. My enemy was no fool. He had been shrewd enough to lock me in against the chance of interruption.

I wish you might conceive the helpless horror grappling with me there behind that fastened door; but this, indeed, you may not, having felt it not. For one dazed moment I was sick as death with fear and frenzy and I know not what besides, and all the blackness of the night swam sudden red before my eyes. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the madness left me cool and sane, as if the fit had been the travail-pain of some new birth of soul. And after that, as I remember, I knew not rage nor haste nor weakness--knew no other thing save this; that I had set myself a task to do and I would do it.

My window was in shape like half a cell of honeycomb, and close beside it on the outer wall there grew an ancient ivy-vine which more than once had held my weight when I was younger and would evade my father's vigilance.

I swung the casement noiselessly and clambered out, with hand and foot in proper hold as if those youthful flittings of my boyhood days had been but yesternight. A breathless minute later I was down and afoot on solid ground; and then a thing chanced which I would had not. The man whom I had called a servant turned and saw me.

"Halt! Who goes there?" he cried.