The Loyalist Part 55

"The ride is long. They will come."

III

The last night spent by the Arnolds and the Shippen family at Mount Pleasant was a happy one. The entire family was in attendance and the Arnold silver was lavishly displayed for the occasion. American viands cooked and served in the prevailing American fashion were offered at table--hearty, simple food in great plenty washed down by quant.i.ties of Madeira and sherry and other imported beverages.

Toasts and healths were freely drunk. After the more customary ones to the "Success of the War," to the "Success of General Washington," to the "Nation" there came the usual healths to the host and the hostess, and more especially to the "Appointment of General Arnold." The ceremonies were interspersed with serious and animated conversation on the political situation and the chances of the army in the field. Throughout the entire meal a marked simplicity, a purity of manner, and frank cordiality was manifest, all indicative of the charming and unaffected homelife of the Americans.

"Miss Franks would have been pleased to be with us," announced the General as the company awaited another service.

"Could you believe it, General," said Mrs. Shippen, "not once have we heard from that girl since she moved to New York," and she set her lips firmly. "That is so unlike her; I cannot understand it."

"But you know, Mother," explained Peggy, "that the mail cannot be depended upon."

"I know, my dear, but I think that she could send a line, if it were only a line, by messenger if she thought enough of us. You know it was at our house that she met the friends with whom she is now engaged."

"Our mail system is deplorable," Mr. Shippen remarked. "Only yesterday I received a letter which apparently had been sent months ago."

"I can understand that very readily," Arnold rejoined. "Often letters are entrusted to travelers. At times these men deposit a letter at some inn at the cross-roads for the next traveler who is bound for the same place as the epistle. It often happens that such a missive remains for months upon a mantelpiece awaiting a favorable opportunity. Then again sheer neglect may be responsible for an unusual delay. I myself have experience of that."

This explanation seemed to satisfy Mrs. Shippen for she dropped the subject immediately. The mode of travel then occasioned a critical comment from her until she finally asked when they intended to leave for West Point.

"Very likely I shall leave before the week is out," replied Arnold. "It is most important that I a.s.sume command at once. We shall prepare to depart tomorrow."

They talked far into the night, the men smoking while the ladies retired to the great drawing-room. Peggy played and sang, and took her mother aside at intervals for conference upon little matters which required advice. At a late hour, after taking affectionate leaves, the families parted. Peggy and her husband now abandoned themselves to their destiny--to glorious triumph or to utter ruin.

They closed the door upon their kinsfolk and faced the situation.

Westminster Abbey or the gallows loomed before them.

IV

Late that same evening, alone before his desk, General Arnold penned the following ambiguous letter to John Anderson. West Point it was. That was settled. Still it was necessary that General Clinton be appraised immediately of the change of command together with some inkling of the military value of the new post. The business was such that he dared not employ his true name; and so he a.s.sumed a t.i.tle, referring to himself throughout the note in the third person. The meaning of the message, he knew, would be readily interpreted.

Sir:--On the 24th of last month I received a note from you without date, in answer to mine; also a letter from your house in answer to mine, with a note from B. of the 30th of June, with an extract of a letter from Mr.

J. Osborn. I have paid particular attention to the contents of the several letters. Had they arrived earlier, you should have had my answer sooner. A variety of circ.u.mstances has prevented my writing you before.

I expect to do it very fully in a few days, and to procure you an interview with Mr. M--e, when you will be able to settle your commercial plan, I hope, in a manner agreeable to all parties. Mr. M--e a.s.sures me that he is still of opinion that his first proposal is by no means unreasonable, and makes no doubt, that, when he has a conference with you, you will close with it. He expects when you meet you will be fully authorized from your House and that the risks and profits of the co-partnership may be fully and clearly understood.

A speculation might at this time be easily made to some advantage with ready money, but there is not the quant.i.ty of goods at market which your partner seems to suppose, and the number of speculators below, I think, will be against your making an immediate purchase. I apprehend goods will be in greater plenty and much cheaper in the course of the season; both dry and wet are much wanted and in demand at this juncture. Some quant.i.ties are expected in this part of the country soon.

Mr. M--e flatters himself that in the course of ten days he will have the pleasure of seeing you. He requests me to advise you that he has ordered a draught on you in favor of our mutual friend, S--y for 1300, which you will charge on account of the tobacco.

I am, in behalf of Mr. M--e and Co., Sir, Your most obedient, humble servant, Gustavus.

To Mr. John Anderson, Merchant, New York.

CHAPTER III

I

In the meantime, Marjorie was tossing restlessly, nervously in her bed, enduring hours of disconsolate remorse and lonely desolation. She could not sleep. She cried her eyes wet with tears, and wiped them dry again with her handkerchief; then stared up at the black ceiling, or gazed out through the small window at the faint glow in the world beyond. Her girlish heart, lay heavy within her, distended almost to the breaking-point with grief, a grief which had sent her early to bed to seek solitude and consolation; that solitude which alone brings relief to a heart freighted with sorrow and woe. Now that Stephen had gone, she had time to think over the meaning of it all, and she began to experience the renewed agony of those terrible moments by the water's edge. It was so awful, so frightful that her tender frame seemed to yield beneath its load, she simply had to give way to the tears.

She could not sleep, and she knew it. Scrambling out of her bed and wrapping a mantle about her, she sat beside the window and peered into the night. There was not a breeze to break the solemn silence, not a sound to distract her from her reverie. Two black and uncanny pine trees stood like armed guards near by the corner of the house to challenge the interloper from disturbing her meditation. Overhead the stars blinked and glistened through the treetops in their lace of foliage and delicate branches, and resembled for all the world an hundred diamonds set in a band of filigree work. The moon had not yet risen, and all the world seemed to be in abject despair, bristling in horrid shapes and sights,--a fit dwelling-place for Marjorie and her grief-stricken heart.

Stephen had gone away that afternoon, perhaps never to return. For this she could not reproach him, for she allowed that she had given him every reason to feel offended. But she had hurt him, and very likely hurt him to the quick. She knew his sensitive nature and she feared the consequence. It was that thought more than the real contrition over her fault which had overwhelmed her. Her return for his many acts of kindness had been one of austere repulsion.

Now she felt acutely the bitterness of it all. That she had afforded him some encouragement, that she had cooperated in the first place to make the setting of it all quite perfect, that she had lent him her a.s.surance that she was amicably disposed towards him, and that her action in regard to the miniature, while apparently innocent enough, was fraught with significance for Stephen in view of his intimate connections with the events of the past two years, that after all perhaps she had been entirely unreasonable throughout it all; these were the thoughts which excited, both in the truth of their reality and in the knowledge of the hopes they had alternately raised and blasted in Stephen, the bitter sorrow which was the cause of her mingled pain and regret.

What would he think of her now? What could he think? Plainly he must consider her a cold, austere being, devoid of all feeling and appreciation. He had given her the best that was in him and had made bold enough to appraise her of it. Sincerity was manifest in his every gesture and word, and yet she had made him feel as if his protestations had been repugnant to her. She knew his nature, his extreme diffidence in matters of this kind, his power of resolution, and she feared that once having tried and failed, he was lost to her forever.

And yet she knew that she grieved not for herself but for him. Her stern refusal had only caused him the greater pain. Stephen would, perhaps, misunderstand as he had misunderstood her in the past and it was the thought of the vast discomfiture she had occasioned in him that stung her with sorrow.

Her warm, generous heart now chided her for her apparent indifference.

There was no other name for it. What could he deduce from her behavior except that she was a cold, ungrateful, irresolute creature who did not know her own mind or the promptings of her own heart! She had flung him from her smarting and wounded, after he had summoned his entire strength to whisper to her what she would have given worlds to hear, but which had only confounded and startled her by its suddenness.

And yet she loved him. She knew it and kept repeating it over and over again to her own self. No one before or since had struck so responsive a chord from her heart strings. There had been no other ideal to which she had shaped the pictures of her mind. Stephen was her paragon of excellence and to him the faculties of her soul had turned of their own mood and temper unknown even to the workings of her intellectual consciousness, like the natural inclination of the heliotrope before the rays of the rising sun.

Laying her head in the crook of her elbow she sobbed bitterly.

The thought that he was gone from her life brought inconsolable remorse.

She knew him, knew the intimate structure of his soul, and she knew that a deep repentance would seize hold of him on account of his rash presumption. He would be true to his word: he would not breathe the subject again. Nay, more, he would ever permit her to disappear from his life as gradually as she had entered into it. This was unendurable but the consciousness that she had caused this bitter rupture was beyond all endurance still.

She lifted her head and stared into the black depths of the night. All was still except the shrill pipings of the frogs as they sounded their dissonant notes to one another in the far-off Schuylkill meadows. They, too, were filled with thoughts of love, Marjorie thought, which they had made bold enough to publish in their own discordant way, and they seemed to take eminent delight in having the whole world aware of the fact that it, too, might rejoice with them.

If it were true that she loved him, it were equally true that he ought to be apprised of it. There could be no love without a mutual understanding, for to love alone would be admiration and entirely one-sided. Let her unfold her soul to him in order that he might take joy for his portion ere his ardor had cooled into mere civility. For if it were licit to love, it were more licit to express it and this expression should be reciprocal.

She would tell him before it were too late. Her silence at the very moment when she should have acted was unfortunate. Perhaps his affection had been killed by the blow and her protestations would be falling upon barren soil. No matter! She would write and unfold her heart to him, and tell him that she really and truly cared for him more than any one else in the world, and she would beg him to return that she might whisper in his ear those very words she had been softly repeating to herself. Full repentance would take possession of her soul, and her heart would rush unrestrained to the object of its love, telling him that she was with him always, thinking of him, praying for him, and waiting for him. She would write him at once.

II

But she did not mail the letter. Hidden carefully in her room, it lay all the next day. Unworthy post-chaise to bear so precious a ma.n.u.script!

She would journey herself to its destination to safeguard it, were it at all possible. A thousand and one misgivings haunted her concerning the safety of its arrival,--Stephen might have been transferred to some distant point, the letter itself might possibly fall into awkward hands, it might lay for months in the post bag, or fall into a dark corner of some obscure tavern, the roads were infested with robbers,--horrible thoughts, too horrible to record.

She did not know just how long it had taken her to compose it. The end of the candle had burned quite out during the process, and she lay deliberating over its contents and wondering just what else might be added. Twice she was on the point of arising to a.s.sure herself on the style of her confession, but each time she changed her mind, deciding to yield to her earlier thought. The darkness seemed to envelop her in fancy, and when she again opened her eyes the darkness had disappeared before the light. It was morning and she arose for the day.

Hour by hour she waited to tell her mother. It was only right that she should know, and she proposed to tell her all, even the very episode on the river bank. She needed counsel, especially during these lonely moments, and she felt that she could obtain it only by unfolding her heart unreservedly. Mother would know; in fact, she must have suspected the gravity of the affair. But how would she begin it? She longed for an opening, but no opening presented itself.

The meaning of his addresses she saw, or she thought she saw. Stephen loved her; his words were very effective. Indeed, he had made no mention of marriage, nevertheless she sensed that his ulterior purpose had been revealed to her fully. Perhaps it was this consummation which caused her heart to stand suddenly still; perhaps it was the vision of the new life which was opening before her. She would have to go away with him as his wife, away from her home, away from her beloved father and mother. The summers would come and go and she would be far distant from her own, in far-off New York, perhaps, or some other city better adapted for the career of a young man of ability. They might live in Philadelphia, near to her home, yet not in it. That would be preferable, yet the future could lend her no a.s.surance. She would be his for life, and with him would be obliged to begin a new manner of living.

Such thoughts as these occupied her for the greater part of the day, and before she was really aware of it, her father had come home for the evening. She could not tell both at once; better to tell them in turn.

It would be more confidential and better to her liking. Once the secret was common between them, it was easy to discuss it together, and so she decided that she would put it off until the morrow. Then she would tell mother, and let her mother talk it over with her father. Both then would advise her.