The Master of Appleby Part 13

"He is a prisoner, and if he were not, they would not let him see me.

Besides, I would not let you go on such an errand. And yet--G.o.d help me, Margery! there is many an innocent life hanging on this; the lives of helpless women and little children. Have you ever a messenger to send, a man who will risk his life and can be trusted fully?"

"Yes, yes!" she cried. "Write it down for me and d.i.c.k shall have it.

Quick; for Our Lady's sake, be quick about it! _O Sancta Maria, mater.

Dei_--"

The low impa.s.sioned chant of the Roman litany was ringing in my ears as I sat down to the table to write my message to Richard Jennifer. There were quills and an ink-pot at hand, but no paper. I felt mechanically in my pocket and found, not some old letter, as I hoped, but the crumpled parchment map s.n.a.t.c.hed and hidden when Captain Stuart had winced and dropped it at the bidding of the whistling sword about his ears.

How it was they had not searched me for it, I know not; though haply the captain did not guess how he had lost it. Be that as it might, I had it safe, and d.i.c.k should have it safe, and use it, too, to some good purpose, as I fondly hoped.

You'd hardly think from the slow and clumsy spinning of this tale that I could crowd the narrative of all that I had seen and heard into a n.i.g.g.ard three-score words or less. But this I did, writing them upon the margin of the captain's map, and noting in an added line the p.r.i.c.king out of the powder convoy's route. And while my pen was looping on the flourish to my name, my eager little lady seized the pounce-box, sanded me the heavy trailings of the quill, s.n.a.t.c.hed and hid the parchment in her bosom, and was gone.

And but for this; that I heard the door-latch click behind her, and then the heavy wooden bar fall into place, I might have thought the happenings of the hour the unsubstantial fancies of a dream.

X

HOW A FORLORN HOPE CAME TO GRIEF

Although I could not hope to know the outcome of this desperate cast to speed the warning to the over-mountain settlements--could never live to know it, as I thought--I screened the candle and stood beside the open window, not to see or hear, but rather from the lack of sight or sound to gather some encouragement. For sure, I reasoned, if Margery's messenger should fail to pa.s.s the sentries there would be clamor enough to tell me of it.

So while the minutes of this safety-silence multiplied and there was s.p.a.ce for sober after-thought, I fell to casting up the chances of success. Now that Margery was gone, and with her all the fine enthusiasm that such devoted souls as hers do always radiate, it was plain enough that nothing less than a miracle could bring success. Tarleton's Legion was made up of veterans schooled well in border warfare, and though the bivouac seemed but a camp of motionless figures fast manacled in sleep--I could see them strewn like dead men round the smoldering fires--I made no doubt the sentries were alert and wakeful. How then was any messenger of Margery's to pa.s.s the lines, or, pa.s.sing them, to come at Jennifer, who by this time would be at Jennifer House, a prisoner in all but name?

Chewing such wormwood thoughts as these, I watched and listened while the measured minutes, circling slow on leaden wings, pecked at my heart in pa.s.sing, and despair, cold like a winter fog, had chilled me to the bone. For now it came to me that while I would be saving life, mayhap I had been periling it again. There was small doubt that if the messenger were taken with my letter, his life would pay the forfeit. And if the fear of death should make him tell who sent him and to whom he was sent,--I had been careful so to word the letter as to shield my correspondent,--both Margery and d.i.c.k would be involved.

'Tis worthy of remark how, building on the simplest supposition, we seldom prophesy aright. For all my fine-spun theories the manner of the thing that happened was all unlike the forecast. Suddenly, and in silence, out of the ghostly shadows of the trees and into the wan moonlight of the open s.p.a.ce beneath my window, with neither shout nor crash of sentry-gun to give me warning, came three figures riding abreast--a man in trooper trappings on either hand, and on the led horse sandwiched in between, a woman.

You may believe my heart went cold at the sight. I knew at once what she had done--this fearless maid who would be loyal to her friend at any cost. Having no messenger she could trust--she knew it well when she had promised me--she had taken the errand upon herself, braving a hazard that would have daunted many a man.

I thought the worst had surely now befallen, and wished a hundred times that I had died before it came to this. But there was worse in store.

Her captors pa.s.sed the word while yet I looked and choked with rage and grief; and then the bivouac buzzed alive, and men came running, some with arms and some with torches, these last to flash the light upon her and to jeer and laugh. At length--it seemed an age to me--an officer appeared to flog the rabble into order; then she was taken from her horse and led into the house.

Anon the windows of the great fore-room flung bands of yellow torchlight out upon the lawn, and I knew that Tarleton's court was set again. At that the pains of h.e.l.l gat hold upon me and I did pray as I had never prayed before that G.o.d would grant me this one boon--to stand beside her in this time of trial; to give me tongue of eloquence to tell them all that she was innocent; to give me breath to swear she knew not why she went, or what the message was she carried.

Yours is a skeptic age, my dears, and you have learned to scoff at things you do not understand. But, so long as I shall live, I must believe that agonizing plea was answered. While yet the anguish of it wrung my soul there came a hasty trampling in the corridor, the sentry's challenge, and then a quick unbarring of the door. I turned upon my heel to face a young ensign come with two men at his back to take me to the colonel.

They bound me well and strongly with many wrappings of stout cord before they led me down. Nor must you think me broken-spirited because I let them. In any other cause but this I hope I should have fought to die unmanacled; but now I suffered gladly this little, seeing I had made my dear lady suffer so greatly.

When we were come into the room below they let me stand beside her, as I had prayed G.o.d they might; and when I stole a glance at her I was fain to think my coming gave her courage and support. For you must know the place was fair alive with men, and flaring light with torches; and they had never offered her a chair.

The colonel stood apart, the center of a group of officers, and Falconnet was with him. Hovering on the edges of the group, as if afraid to show themselves too boldly in such a coil, were Gilbert Stair and that smooth parchment-visaged knave, his factor. The while they thrust me forth to take my place at Margery's side, the good old priest came and would have joined us; but they would not suffer him.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

So we two stood alone together as we had stood before; but now my lady's eyes were downcast, and her lips and cheeks were pale. Yet she was more beautiful than I had ever seen her--so beautiful that I would swear the sum of all the precious gifts in G.o.d's great universe might be expressed for me in this; that I might die to save her from this shame and agony.

When my guards had thrust me forward, the colonel made short work of our fresh offense.

"'Twas a dastard's trick, my Captain--this tangling of the lady in your treason," he began. "How did you get your speech with her?"

"That is none of your affair, Colonel Tarleton," I retorted boldly, thinking that with such a man the shortest word were ever the best. "Yet I may say that the lady knew not what she did, nor why. As for my getting speech with her, she was not any way to blame. I tampered with your sentry."

"By G.o.d, you lie!" was his comment on this. "She might have tampered with the guard and so got leave to keep a midnight tryst with you, but not you." And then to my poor frighted love: "Have you no shame, Mistress Margery Stair?"

Now I have said that she was changeful as any child or April sky, but never had I seen her pa.s.s from mood to mood as she did then. One moment she stood a woman tremulous and tearful as any woman caught in desperate deed; the next she became a G.o.ddess vilified, and if her look had been a dagger I think her flashing eyes had killed him where he stood.

"You've found a way to make me speak, sir, and I wish you joy of it.

'Twas I who bribed your sentry, and I did go to Captain Ireton's room."

The colonel laughed and shot a gibe sharp at my enemy.

"How is this, Sir Francis. Did I not tell you you had thrust an inch or so too high? By G.o.d, sir, I think you will come over-late, if ever you do come at all. This captain-emeritus hath forestalled you beautifully."

As more than once before in this eventful night, the air went flaming red before my eyes and helpless wrath came uppermost. I saw no way to clear her, and had there been the plainest way, dumb rage would still have held me tongue-tied. So I could only mop and mow and stammer, and, when the words were found, make shift to blunder out that such an accusation did the lady grievous wrong; that she had come attended and at my beseeching, to take a message from a dying man to one who was his friend.

For my pains I had a brutal laugh in payment; a laugh that, starting with the colonel, went the rounds in jeering grins of incredulity. And on the heels of it the colonel swore afresh, cursing me for a clumsy liar.

"A likely story, that!" he scoffed. "Next you will say she knew not what this message was."

"I said it once. She knew not what the message was, nor why I sent it."

I felt her eyes upon me as I spoke, and turned to find them full of tearful pleading. "Oh, tell the truth!" she whispered. "Don't you see?

He has the letter!"

I looked, and sure enough he held it in his hand; and then I understood the flash of irony in the sloe-black eyes of him.

"You lie clumsily, Captain Ireton, though it is a gentlemanly lie and does you honor. But we have trapped you fairly and you may as well make a clean breast of it. Your mistress knew very well what you would have her do, and since she is your mistress, went to do it."

While he was speaking I had a thought white-hot from some forge-fire of inspiration--a thought to tip an arrow of conviction and set it quivering in the mark. I would not stop to measure it; to look aside at her or any other lest one brief glance apart should send the arrow wavering from its course. So I looked the colonel boldly in the eye and drew the bow and sped the shaft.

"You think no other than a mistress would have done this, Colonel Tarleton--that it was done for love? Well, so it was; but with the love there went a duty."

"A duty, say you? How is that?"

I bowed as best I might, being so tightly bound; then fixed his eye again.

"You had forgot that honor is not wholly dead, sir. This lady is my wife."

XI

HOW A LIE WAS MADE THE VERY TRUTH