Joscelyn Cheshire Part 2

In vain her mother urged, and in vain Richard called from the foot of the stair; she neither answered nor appeared in sight.

"Tell her, Aunt Cheshire, that I never thought to find her hiding in her covert; a soldier who believes in his cause hesitates not to meet his adversary in open field; it is the doubtful in courage or confidence who run to cover." And he went down the step with his head up angrily and his sword clanging behind him.

In the upper hall Joscelyn held her hands tightly over her mouth to force back the stinging retort. Then, with a derisive smile, she went downstairs and sat in the hall window, in plain view of the street and the house across the way.

That afternoon his company marched afield. The town was full of noise and excitement, and the mingled sound of sobbing and of forced laughter, as the line was formed in the market-place and moved with martial step down the long, unpaved street, the rolling drums and clear-toned bugles stirring the blood to a frenzy of enthusiasm. The sidewalks were lined with spectators, the patriots shouting, the luke-warm looking on silently. Every house along the route through the town was hung with wind-swung wreaths of evergreen or streamers of the bonny buff and blue--every one until they reached the Cheshire dwelling. There the shutters were close drawn as though some grief brooded within, and upon the outside of the closed door hung a picture of King George framed in countless loops of scarlet ribbon that flamed out like a sun-blown poppy by contrast with the soberer tints of the Continentals. Here was a challenge that none might misunderstand. The sight was as the red rag in the toreador's hand to the bull in the arena; and, like an infuriated animal, the crowd surged and swayed and rent the air with an angry roar.

The marching line came suddenly to a full stop without a word of command, and the roar was interspersed with hisses. Then there was a rush forward, and twenty hands tore at the pictured face and flaunting ribbons, and brought them out to be trampled under foot in the dust of the road, while a voice cried out of the crowd:--

"Down with the Royalists! Fire!"

And there was a rattle and a flash of steel down the martial line as muskets went to shoulders. But Richard Clevering, pale with fear, sprang to the steps between the deadly muzzles and the door and lifted a hand to either upright, while his voice rang like a trumpet down the line:--

"Stay! There are no men here. This is but a girl's mad prank. Men, men, turn not your guns against two lonely women; save your weapons for rightful game! Shoulder arms! Forward! March!"

There was a moment's hesitation, a muttering down the ranks; then the guns were shouldered and the column fell once more into step with the drums, while the crowd shouted its approval. But above the last echoes of that shout a woman's jeering laugh rang out upon the air; and, lifting eyes, the crowd beheld Joscelyn Cheshire, clad in a scarlet satin bodice, lean out of her opened cas.e.m.e.nt and knot a bunch of that same bright-hued ribbon upon the shutter. With the throng in such volcanic temper it was a perilous thing to do; and yet so insidious was her daring, so great her beauty, that not so much as a stone was cast at this new signal of loyalty, and not a voice was lifted in anger.

And this was the last vision that Richard had of her--the vivid, glowing picture he carried in his heart through the long campaigns, whether it was as he rushed through the smoke-swirls of battle or bivouacked under the cold, white stars.

CHAPTER III.

ONWARD TO VALLEY FORGE.

"He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, And all are slaves besides."

--COWPER.

The colony of North Carolina had long been ready for rebellion against kingly authority. Governor Tryon had sown the seeds of discontent by his unpopular measures, and the taxes levied upon the people that he might build his "palace" at New Berne. This discontent had culminated in the insurrection of the Regulators and the battle of Alamance, where was made the first armed stand against England. But Tryon was victorious, and the captured leaders of the insurrection were hanged on Regulators'

hill in Hillsboro'-town. But from that field of Alamance, the defeated people carried to their homes the same persistent, haunting dream of liberty which was to rise incarnate when the tocsin of the Revolution blew through the land.

That tocsin waked many an echo among the hills that surrounded the town upon the Eno. At the first call to arms, the older men had gone to the field, some marching away to the north, others serving under the partisan leaders throughout their own section. Now the younger ones--those who had been but boys when the cannon at Lexington made the pulse of the people first to quicken and throb--were going out to bear their share in the fray.

For the past year the company of which Richard Clevering was a member had done service in the militia at home, keeping the Tories in a semblance of subjection, and now and then going to Sumter's aid when he made one of those electrical sallies which were like lightning flashes amid the general storm. In this hard school Richard had learned his first lessons in soldiering; but graver and sterner military work was now ahead, for the company was marching northward to aid in recruiting Washington's regular army, reduced and discouraged by the terrible winter at Valley Forge.

When they started, the willows that fringed the Eno, that fierce little river that winds about Hillsboro', had already lost their winter grayness, and, with the rising of the sap, had taken on that wonderful golden brown which is the aureole of the coming springtime. The bluebirds had not yet come back to the fence corners, but the earth was soggy with the thaw, and from under the whirls of last year's dead leaves, crocuses were holding up green signals to the sun. But as the troop held their steady way to the north the spring signs disappeared, and h.o.a.r frost and bleak winds told that winter's reign was not yet over.

It was a long tramp up through the Virginia woods and along the salt marshes of the coast, and down and up the desolate streams hunting a ford. But youth and enthusiasm lighten many a burden, and to Richard the greatest hardship was lack of news from Joscelyn. The thought of her tugged at his heart, and if his step ever lagged in the line, it was because the memory of her face drew him back with that sickening sense of longing that youth finds so hard to resist. At every chance he sent her a missive.

"Not that she will care, but just to show her _I_ do," he said, trying to convince himself there was no bitterness in the thought.

Peter Ruffin, marching beside him, often looked at the knit brows and compressed lips and smiled, guessing something of the cause; he said to himself that it was safer to leave a wife behind than a sweetheart, since one was sure to find the wife waiting his return, while a sweetheart might be gone with a fresher fancy. But little Billy Bryce, who could never have kept up with the line had it not been for Richard's aid now and then, could not fathom the meaning of that dark look in his benefactor's face, and so was silent and sorry.

The March winds tore at them, and the storms pelted them as they tramped the rugged roads or slept in their thin tents, and the bullets that they had intended for the enemy, often went to provide game for their daily sustenance. The Tories of the districts through which they pa.s.sed sometimes rallied to oppose them, so that they had to fight their way through ambuscades, or, when the enemy greatly outnumbered them, slip away under cover of night or by circuitous paths through the forest and swamps.

And so, at last, toward the end of March, they reached their goal--the encampment at Valley Forge, and shuddered at the desolation they witnessed. As the little band marched down the streets of the military village, gaunt men who had survived the horrors of the winter came out to meet them with huzzas, and the drums beat a long welcome. Their coming was as a thrill that runs through a half-numb body, a sign of revivification and awakened hope. But under it all was a sense of unspeakable sadness that filled the hearts of the newcomers with a strange wistfulness of pity and admiration.

The succeeding weeks were given up literally to camp work, to ceaseless mustering and drilling under the vigilant eye of Baron Steuben, until the newcomers lost the air of recruits and bore themselves with the semblance of veterans.

"We had hoped to fight under Morgan," Richard wrote his mother, "but, doubtless for excellent reasons, we are to be a.s.signed to General Wayne's command, which just now sorely needs strengthening. Save that Morgan is from our part of the country, the change matters not to me, since both men are fearless leaders. What I want is a fray, and with either of these men I am like to get my fill."

Here there was a long blot on the page, as though the back of his quill had been drawn along a line. In truth it had, for he had started to send a message to Joscelyn, and then with a sudden accession of determination had erased it, lest she come to think he had never anything in mind save herself. But he fondled the letter as he folded it, knowing that her fingers would doubtless hold each page and her eyes travel along each line, for his mother would share her news of him with her neighbours over the way.

CHAPTER IV.

THE COMPANY ON THE VERANDA.

"Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid, Some banished lover or some captive maid."

--POPE.

For several weeks after the departure of the soldiers an expectant hush settled over Hillsboro'-town--the reaction of the mustering and drilling that had gone before. So few men were left in the town that Janet Cameron one day dressed herself in the garb of a nun, and, with the feigned humility of folded hands and downcast eyes, went calling upon her companions "of the convent town." A ripple of merriment followed in her wake, for she made a most quaint figure. But the Reverend Hugh McAden, meeting her upon the corner, so reprimanded her for her levity that she ran home in tears and hid her gray frock and hood in the garret. Joscelyn sobered her own face and made the girl's peace with the reverend gentleman with such explanations as at last seemed to him reasonable. But Janet went on no more masquerading tours.

With both the work and the gayety of the town interrupted, there was nothing of moment to engage attention but the news that came once in a while from the camps and battle-fields. The interest in this was shared by every one, so that all the tidings, whether by message or letter, were looked upon as public property. News that came by word of mouth was cried out from the church steps or the court-house door, for no good citizen wished to keep his knowledge to himself. Thus it fell out when it became known that a missive had come from Richard to Joscelyn, that a score or more of women gathered about her door to learn the contents.

She came out to them upon the veranda, her saucy beauty enhanced by the scarlet bodice, her eyes full of laughter.

"Read you Master Clevering's letter?--As you will, Mistress Strudwick; you may perchance find more of interest in it than I," she answered with that sweet courtesy she showed ever to her elders. And so having enthroned Mistress Strudwick upon the wicker bench of the porch, while the others disposed themselves upon the steps and the gra.s.s of the terrace which sloped directly to the street, she unfolded her letter and cleared her throat pompously as is the manner of public speakers.

"I pray you have patience with me, good ladies," she said, "if so I read but slowly. Master Clevering ever had trouble with his spelling; and as for the writing, 'tis as though a fly had half drowned itself in the inkhorn and then crawled upon the page."

Then did she proceed to read them the letter from its greeting to its close, pausing now and then to laboriously spell out a word. There were accounts of the life at Valley Forge, of the drilling and the picket duty and the ceaseless watching of the enemy. Then there was an exultant description of the victory at far-off Stillwater, as it was given to him by a fellow-soldier who had been a partic.i.p.ant.

"Said I not the Continentals would win? Would I had been there to see! Five times was one cannon captured and recaptured. How glorious the fighting was; and think of the surrender! Well, well, it consoles me somewhat to think of that coming last surrender of that archest of all the Royalists. I shall bear a part in that, for it is to me the capitulation will be made--"

"Why, dear me, is Master Clevering to be made commander-in-chief of the American forces, that his Majesty's troops should yield arms to him?"

Joscelyn broke off to ask with a.s.sumed innocence. "I heard naught of his rapid promotion."

"Come, come, Joscelyn, leave off sneering at Richard and read us the rest."

She laughed as she turned the page.

"Say to Mistress Strudwick that the fame of her gallant brother, Major William Shepperd, hath reached even this remote quarter, and his old friends glory in his prowess. Little Jimmy Nash has lost his wits and wants another pair--

("A pair of wits! What can that mean? Oh, I ask your pardon, Mistress Nash; it is 'mits,' not 'wits.' Master Clevering hath so queer a handwriting.)

"--and wants another pair; let his mother know, that she may knit them and send them by the first chance."

There were other messages and news items which the girl read, and then came the signature.

"There follows here a postscript which perchance some of you may help me to unravel," she added; and then, with the air of a town-crier announcing his errand, she proceeded:--

"To the girl of my heart say this, that I forget not I am fighting for her, and that I look upon every Redcoat my gun can bring down as one more obstacle removed from betwixt us. I think of her always."

She paused and puckered her brow in a perplexed frown. "Now who, I pray you, is the girl of his heart? Cannot some of you help me to guess?"