She turned her head aside with a gesture that hurt him like a knife-thrust. Then the question that had burnt in his thoughts, and filled his heart with cankering jealousy all these weeks, came out:--
"Joscelyn, did you love him? Tell me the truth in mercy."
Slowly her eyes came back to him, soft and blue, and kindled with a flame he had never seen before. He rose on his elbow to meet the answer, eager yet fearful; but before she could speak, Betty opened the door.
"Eustace and I are coming to sit with you awhile, Richard, for you two must be better acquainted," she said to him; and with the blindness that is a part of love, neither she nor Eustace saw that their coming was unwelcome. Before they left, Joscelyn had slipped away, carrying his question and its answer in her heart. But before she went to bed, she opened the box where she kept her treasures, and kneeling in front of her fire, laid upon the glowing embers the scarlet sash of an officer in the king"s service.
"I have no right to keep you any longer," she whispered, as the silk cracked and crinkled, and pa.s.sed away in a smoke-fringed flame; "no right, for now I know, I know!"
The quiet of the town was now frequently broken; for as February drew to a close, some of the soldiers began to straggle home, some on furlough, some on dismissal. Billy Bryce, hungry for the toothsome things in his mother"s pantry and impatient for a sight of the yellow curls that sunned themselves on Janet"s head, came first. But ten minutes spent in that young woman"s company so dampened his spirits, that for days his mother"s utmost efforts in culinary arts failed to tempt him. Janet knew the very hour of his arrival, and she also knew that it was two hours before he came to seek her. She could not know that his stay with his mother had been as unwilling as it was dutiful; so to complicate matters a little more she had gone out to pay some calls that might have waited a month. But he found her at last on Joscelyn"s porch, her hands in her m.u.f.f, her curls bobbing from under her hood to the fur-trimmed tippet below, where the winter sunshine seemed to gather itself into a focus.
He waved to her from halfway down the square, but she only squinted up her eyes as in a vain effort at recognition.
"Well, I declare," she exclaimed patronizingly, as he sprang eagerly up the steps, "if it isn"t Mistress Bryce"s little Billy! Why, Billy, child, you must have grown quite an inch since you went away. How is your dear mother to-day?"
Her tone and manner were indescribably superior, as though she were talking to a child of six, so that the amazed and abashed boy, instead of hugging her in his long arms as he wanted to, took the tips of the little fingers she put out to him, and stammeringly and solicitously asked if she had been quite well since he saw her last. She said it was a long time to remember, but she would do the best she could, and immediately began to count off on her fingers the number of headaches and toothaches she had had in the past two years; until Joscelyn, sorry for the boy"s unprovoked misery, stopped her abruptly, and finally sent Billy across the street to pour out his disappointment to Richard.
"Janet, you little barbarian, you have no heart!"
"Oh, yes I have," replied that imperturbable young woman; "I have a great big heart for a grown man, but you see I do not particularly care for children who are still dangling at their mother"s ap.r.o.n string."
Even a lecture from Richard, to whom she was much attached, did her no good; for all the while he was speaking she sat studying the effect of her high-heeled shoe on Betty"s blue footstool, and answered his peroration about Billy"s broken heart with the utterly irrelevant a.s.sertion that Frederick Wyley said she had the prettiest foot in the colonies. Did Richard agree with him? So Billy"s cause was not advanced any, and Richard began to advise him to think no more of this yellow-haired tormentor.
"I declare, Billy Bryce looks like a child with perpetual cramps,"
Mistress Strudwick exclaimed to Joscelyn one day, when the lad pa.s.sed the window where the two sat; and then she glanced down the room to her medicine-box.
"But it is a course of sweets, not bitters, that he needs," laughed Joscelyn. "It"s his heart and not his stomach that ails Billy."
"Half the lovesickness in the world is nothing but dyspepsia; mighty few cases of disappointed affection outlast a torpid liver."
"I never heard you make such an unsentimental remark."
"You never heard me tell such a truth. Bone-set and senna is the thing for Billy, and I"ll see that he gets a bottle; if it does not cure his disappointment, it will at least kill off that particular brand of long face he is wearing. No wonder Janet turns up her nose at him."
"Yes, I begin to think she is permanently at outs with him."
Then other soldiers began to arrive. Thomas Nash got sick-leave from Washington"s staff; and from the south came Master Strudwick, more anxious for a sight of home and wife than for the gold which the dissatisfied army was awaiting; and out of the north came Peter Ruffin, a weird wraith of his former self, to tell anew the horrible story of the prison-ships. The other Hillsboro" man, who had been with him had succ.u.mbed to the plague, and gone to swell the number of those at whose shallow graves the hungry sea was forever calling.
"And Dame Grant?" asked Richard, when Peter came to see him.
"She, too, fell a victim to the disease of the hulks, and sorely did we miss her. I knew you had escaped in safety, because one day she came to the ship wearing a new woollen hood, and when we twitted her about it over the rail, asking her if it was a lover"s gift, she said that d.i.c.k Clevering"s sweetheart had sent it to her out of grat.i.tude from the south."
"I helped to knit it," Betty cried, while Joscelyn"s eyes were not lifted from the floor. In the semi-twilight of the room, Richard reached out and touched her hand gently.
"It was like your generous heart."
"But I made it out of the reddest wool I could find, with never a touch of blue or buff," she answered, laughing; but Richard was content.
Nor did these home-coming men bring the only tidings from the outside world. Now and then letters came that set the tongues to wagging; now with news of Washington"s refusal of a crown, now with a description of Mary Singleton"s marriage to Edward Moore. Janet refused persistently to show her letters which came in the Halifax post, but one day Richard had one from Colborn that made him laugh with delight:--
"The miniature is set in a narrow gold frame, without jewels; for although I won my promotion, it was only a lieutenancy. However, I am content. It was at Guilford Court-house, in your own Carolina country, the day Tarleton was wounded. Soon I am going home, with my pockets full of American pebbles, to claim the original, and bring her back here to this great country to enjoy the freedom I am glad you won."
And when Joscelyn went home, after hearing the letter read, she again opened her box of treasures and took from it a shining gold piece, and looked at it with a startled sweetness in her eyes.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""MY HEART"S PRISONER FOR TIME AND ETERNITY.""]
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE END OF THE THREAD.
"Does not all the blood within me Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee, As the spring to meet the sunshine!"
--"Hiawatha."
After a few weeks Richard was able to leave his couch and move about a little, still hampered, however, by splints and bandages; for in his fevered tossings he had hurt his arm anew, and the setting had to be gone over again. The doctor"s face was very grave as he warned him against another accident.
One afternoon, being lonely and having no better way to pa.s.s the time, he went with Betty to her sewing society. There he protested he wished to make himself useful, and was quite willing to snip threads and tie knots. But his offer was received with scoffs, and instead he was forthwith enthroned in the best chair, served with coffee by one girl, and with cake by another, and petted and praised like a prince.
"And now," said Janet Cameron, taking the stool at his feet and preparing to look very busy, "while we sew, you shall tell us a story of your camp life,--something that will make our blood curdle and tingle like it used to do when the war messengers rode into town, and we knew not what tidings they brought."
"Yes, tell us a story, Master Clevering," they all cried, and settled themselves to listen.
"Let it be about a real hero, Richard; and make him as tall as Goliath and as strong as Samson. We"ll credit anything you say," laughed Janet, biting off a length of thread.
"And if you wish to keep Janet"s attention to the end, give him jet black hair and call him Frederick," cried Dorothy Graham. Whereat there was a general laugh, and for which personality the speaker got a p.r.i.c.k from Janet"s needle.
"One need not draw on his imagination for heroes in these stirring times, Janet. The land is full of them," Richard answered, catching one of her shining curls and twisting it about his finger, "though of course jet black hair and the name of Frederick is a combination to inspire any story-teller."
And then he told them of Monmouth day,--of its exultant beginning, its strange changes and chances, its palsying despair, its victory s.n.a.t.c.hed from defeat. And while the story was nearing its climax and the needles were idlest, who should pa.s.s along the opposite sidewalk but Mistress Joscelyn Cheshire, her skirts held daintily out of the slush and snow, while a riotous March wind set her throat ribbons in a flutter, and kissed her cheeks to a glow a lover might have envied. A more charming vision it was hard to conjure up, and the story-teller"s narrative faltered, and his words trailed off into silence as he gazed. But immediately the slumbering ill-will of the sempsters began to show itself in sundry nods and head tossings.
"There goes the Tory beauty," said one sneering voice, "parading herself before us out of very defiance, no doubt."
"She has been but to old Polly Little"s to carry her some soup," Betty said hotly.
"And there was no other afternoon for her to go, and no other path to take but the one by this door where we might see her! You and Richard are foolish to be always defending her; she showed you small grat.i.tude last winter, telling the secrets of your house."
"Yes; and we know she sent and received spying letters about us to the British commander. I never speak to her, Tory ingrate that she is!"
And then while Betty fell to crying and Janet scolded back, declaring Joscelyn was better than all of them, the criticisms grew so harsh, and so incisive were the shrugs and lifted brows, that Richard forgot his wound, forgot the pledge of secrecy upon him, forgot everything but his anger, and rising up, cried out:--
"Listen; I will tell you another story, not of a hero, but of a heroine, a slip of a girl whose courage equalled anything I ever saw upon the bloodiest battle-field, in whose presence the bravest of the brave must uncover in reverence."
And then he told them the whole story of his hiding and escape while Cornwallis held the town the winter gone. Told it forcibly, graphically as he knew how, putting Joscelyn in such a heroic light that her maligners held down their heads in shame and confusion, feeling themselves to be all unworthy in comparison; and Dorothy was crying upon her sewing, and Janet"s arm was about his neck in an unconscious, breathless grat.i.tude for Joscelyn.
And those letters which had excited their wrath?--there was nothing of treason or espionage in them; they were but love notes from a British officer whose chivalric homage had been an honour to any woman. He knew, for he had put her answers into the breastpocket of the young officer the day they buried him from the battle-field on the banks of the river that flows forever to the sea.
So he finished; and thus did Joscelyn stand before them at last in her true colours.