Joscelyn Cheshire Part 8

"Have we the appearance of dark conspirators?" laughed Joscelyn.

"Nay, you both look sweet and innocent enough; but somehow I'm always giving that Bible verse a twist and reading it: 'Where two or three Tories are gathered together, there is the devil in their midst.'"

"You should not twist your Scripture, Mistress Strudwick."

"Mayhap not, but sometimes it makes an uncommon good hit."

"Well, you were wrong to-day. Two Loyalists have been congregated together; but Cupid, rather than the devil, has been our co-conspirator."

"So! It was sweethearts you were discussing? Tell me now, was it your match or Mary's you were arranging? There is nothing pleases me more than a wedding."

"I thought you took no interest in matters concerning King George's subjects."

"King George has naught to do with the wooing of our maids; and love is love, whether it be Redcoat or Continental," replied the old matchmaker.

Joscelyn laughed. "I verily believe you'd like to know the courtship of Satan himself, provided he had one."

"Of course he had, my dear, and a most engaging lover he made, I'll be bound, seeing he is so apt a beguiler in other things. Oh, yes, everybody knows that Satan is a married man."

"Where got he his wife?"

The old lady threw up her hands with quizzical scouting: "'Tis not set down in the books, but it would have been just like some soft-hearted creature to creep after him when he was exiled from heaven. And she is not the only woman who has followed a man to perdition, either,--more's the pity!"

"You are seeing things awry to-day, Mistress Strudwick."

"Mayhap, mayhap," puffed the old lady. "I haven't much of a prophet's eye, but I see things of to-day plain enough, and I know that you are a pair of uncommon pretty girls, and are like to have many a beau on your string; but when marrying time comes, take an old woman's advice and choose a man who is hale and hearty, for as sure as you are born, love flies out of the heart when indigestion enters the stomach."

"Truly, Mistress Strudwick, you are better than 'Poor Richard's Almanac,'" laughed Joscelyn.

"Oh, my dear, I've seen it tried. Courtship is the finest thing in the world, but after the wedding love is largely a question of good cooking; and although you two are rank Tories, and so deserve any punishment the fates might send you, still I'd be glad, because of your comely looks, to see you escape your deserts. But here we are at my gate. I wonder what the town will say, Joscelyn, when they hear that you, Tory that you call yourself, brought a basket of wool for Continental socks from Amanda Bryce's to my door."

The girl's face flamed with a sudden heat. Then she said with that beautiful courtesy that older folks found so charming:--

"It was not for the Continentals, but for my good neighbour that I brought the basket. I am not minded to see her kill herself in so bad a cause; rather do I want her to live and repent of her mistakes, that she herself may not be the first to solve that riddle of the devil's wooing." And kissing their hands jauntily to the old woman, the two girls rode away into the purple twilight.

"Bless her bonny face and quick tongue!" the old woman cried, waving her hand after them.

That night Mary cried herself to sleep over her shattered hopes, and in the privacy of a white-curtained room, Joscelyn read aloud the letter to her whom Eustace had in mind when he thought of the welcome of shy eyes and clinging white hands. And Betty fell asleep with the letter under her cheek, and all the soft June night was filled with flitting cadences and starry dreams.

CHAPTER IX.

ON MONMOUTH PLAIN.

"Wut's words to them whose faith and truth On war's red techstone rang true metal; Who ventured life and love and youth For the great prize o' death in battle?"

--LOWELL.

And it was June-time, too, in the far-off New Jersey country across which an army, glittering with scarlet and steel, took its way. Slowly it moved; for with it went a wagon-train conveying many of the refugees from the evacuated city of Philadelphia, people who could not crowd into the transports that went by sea, but who feared to meet the incoming Americans and so sought safety in New York. Children and delicately reared women slept in army tents, or sat in their coaches all day, listening to the crunching of the wheels in the sand and looking back through the slowly increasing distance to the horizon, behind which lay the deserted city where pleasure had held high carnival during the months just pa.s.sed. And with them they carried everything that could be packed into coach or hidden in wagon; and though they went with the semblance of victory and almost of pleasure-seekers, it was a sad procession; for who could say when or upon what terms they might ever see their old homes again? Often Clinton looked back impatiently at the crawling train, for he had not liked to be so hampered, and yet had been quite as unwilling to abandon these people to the vengeance they imagined awaited them.

Almost before they had lost sight of the spires of the city, Arnold, with braying bugles, marched his column down the echoing streets, and set up the standard of the republic where late the British lion had wooed the wind.

For nearly a week that long train crept on its way, held back by its own c.u.mbersome weight and the varying roughness of the route. And ever on its flank hung the lean but resolute army of the Continentals, waiting and longing for a chance to strike. All the suffering of Valley Forge was to be avenged. Every wrong they had sustained was whispering at their ears and tugging at their memories; every dead comrade seemed calling out to them for retribution through the sunshine or the midnight silence. And it should be theirs; the utmost atonement that arms, nerved with patriotic and personal vengeance, could achieve should be claimed--if only the hour would come. But still that long train moved onward, and there came no word to fight.

Then, from out the blue sky-reaches of that June-time dawned Monmouth day.

"We are to fight at last!"

And every man in that thin, dishevelled line felt his heart throb with the exultation of action long desired and long delayed. Every man but one, and he the one on whom rested the responsibility of the attack.

"Anybody but Lee!" Dunn had said with a groan, when he heard who was to lead the attacking column. And Richard, having gone with him to report some scouting work to the council of officers, and recalling Lee's fierce opposition to any plan for battle, groaned too.

"His envy of General Washington and his imprisonment among the British have made him half Tory. He is the senior officer, it is true,--but if he had only persisted in his first refusal to lead the division and left it to La Fayette!"

But in Richard's thoughts there was no time for doubt when, in the brilliant light of the next morning, he swept with his column over the brow of the low hill and on down the narrow valley toward the scarlet line that marked Clinton's post. It was his first real battle; for compared with this the engagements under Sumter had been but skirmishes, and the frenzy of the fight was upon him. "For home and Joscelyn!" had been the war-cry he had set himself, thinking to carry into the hottest of every fray the memory-presence of the girl whom he loved. But when the test came she was forgotten, and only the menace ahead, the death he was rushing to meet, was remembered. Every musket along that steadfast scarlet line seemed levelled at him alone, and into his heart there flashed a momentary wish to turn and seek shelter in flight from the leaping fire of the deadly muzzles. But in the quick onset, the shouts, the growl of the guns, and the challenging call of the bugles, this fear was conquered; and in its place a wild, unreasoning delirium seized upon him, and the one thought of which he was conscious was to kill, kill, kill!

To those blue-clad men, burning with the memory of their sufferings and their wrongs, it seemed as if nothing could stand before them; but British regulars were trained to meet such an advance, and the red line was as a wall of adamant. Between the attack and the repulse there seemed to Richard scarcely breathing-time; for they were repulsed, and, fighting still, were driven back through that narrow defile, expecting every moment that Lee would send them succour so that they might again take up the offensive. But instead of reenforcements, there came that strange order to retreat. Retreat? Had there not been some mistake? The officers looked at each other incredulously, suspiciously, half-inclined to disobey; for the battle was hardly yet begun, and this first check was not a rout. Then full of rage and doubt they repeated to their subordinates the orders of the couriers, and the regiment fell back sullenly, clashing against other regiments who had not struck a blow, but to whom had also come that mysterious order to fall back. What was the matter, what was this paralyzing hand that had been laid upon them!

No one could tell; but men retreated looking longingly over their shoulders at the enemy. Confusion grew almost into panic as those still further away saw the retiring columns pursued by the Redcoats, and knew not the cause nor yet what dire disaster had befallen.

Then suddenly upon the field there came the Achilles of the cause, and the rout was turned.

"The general--thank G.o.d!" the officers sobbed; and the men cheered as those who are drowning cheer a saving sail.

Richard was too far off to hear the fierce protest and rebuke heaped upon Lee, but in a few minutes an aide galloped up to his regiment and cried out to Wayne:--

"General Washington says you and Ramsey are to hold the enemy in check here upon this hillside until he can re-form the rear."

And the blue line swung about and steadied, and met the English face to face; and Richard Clevering's battle-cry rang full and clear amid the yells that well-nigh drowned the roar of the musketry. About that sun-scorched knoll there fell the fiercest part of the fray. The palsy of hesitation was gone, and desperation had made the men invincible.

Again and again that red wave from the open s.p.a.ce before surged against them, broke and recoiled and gathered and came again like some strong billow of the ocean that rolls itself against a headland--fierce, blind, futile.

Then came the climax of the splendid tragedy. Upon Wayne's right was a Continental battery from which a great gun sent its deadly challenge to the foe. Again and again its whirring missives tore great gaps in the red ranks, until Clinton gave orders to silence it at any cost.

Careless of danger, unconscious of his impending doom, the gunner loaded his piece anew, and lifted the rammer to send the charge home. Behind him stood his wife, who had left the safety of the wagons to bring him water from a wayside ravine, for the sky was like copper and the dust blew in suffocating gusts. She saw what he did not, the shifting of the enemy's gun in the plain below, the turning of its deadly muzzle full upon the knoll where they stood. But there was no time for so much as a warning cry; for instantly the flame leaped out, the ground shook with a strong reverberation, and a groan went up from the Continentals as they saw the dust fly from the knoll and their own brave gunner throw up his arms, swing sidewise, and then fall dead. For one awful moment no one moved; then two men from the line sprang forward to take his place, but some one was before them--some one with the face of an avenging Nemesis.

There was the flutter of a skirt, a woman's long black hair streamed backward on the wind, and Moll Pitcher stood in her husband's place like an aroused lioness of the jungle. Fury gave her the strength of a Boadicea, and the rammer, still warm from the dead man's grasp, went home with a single thrust; the flame flashed over the pan, and with a roar that shook the heavens, the big gun sent back into the red ranks the death it had witnessed. When the smoke had lifted, the breathless men saw the woman, one hand still upon the great black gun, stoop down and kiss the dead husband she had avenged; and all down the Continental line eyes were wet and throats were cracked and dry with cheering.

All the rest of that fateful day, with the eyes of her dead love watching her staringly, Moll Pitcher held her place beside the gun, solacing her breaking heart with its flash and roar, holding back her woman's briny tears until the silent vigils of the night, when her mission was accomplished.

And in the meantime, in the rear, the voice of a single man, with its trumpet tones of inspiration, was bringing order out of chaos. Regiments were re-formed, scattered companies gathered, batteries turned, and defeat robbed of its surety. Men, who a moment before had been panic-stricken with the confused marching and counter-marching of the day, looked into the face of the commander and felt their hearts beat with an answering calm. Confidence was restored, and the routed corps were turned into attacking columns. And so when that red wave broke for the last time against Wayne's and Ramsey's divisions on the hillside, reenforcements were close at hand.

But they came too late for some of the brave men who had saved liberty and honour that day, for the red wave, receding, took as its flotsam all the men in buff and blue who, in their enthusiasm and temerity, had advanced too far beyond the ranks.

And among these prisoners went he whose battle-cry had been, "For home and Joscelyn!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "RICHARD WAS DRAGGED ALONG WITH THE BRITISH UNTIL THEIR POSITION WAS REGAINED."]