Tom gave a sarcastic grunt. His manifestations regarding Margaret"s behaviour were the only exception to the kind, cheerful conduct of his whole life. A younger brother is not ordinarily so watchful of a sister"s demeanour; he has the doings of other young ladies to concern himself with. Tom did not lack these, but he was none the less keenly sensitive upon the point of Margaret"s propriety and good name. "Twas the extraordinary love and pride he had centred upon her, that made him so observant and so touchy in the case. He brooded upon her actions, worried himself with conjectures, underwent such torments as jealous lovers know, such pangs as Hamlet felt in his uncertainty regarding the integrity of his mother.
Within a week after the Morris ball, it came to pa.s.s that Captain Falconer was quartered, by regular orders, in the house of Mr.
Faringfield. Tom and I, though we only looked our thoughts, saw more than accident in this. The officer occupied the large parlour, which he divided by curtains into two apartments, sitting-room and sleeping-chamber. By his courtesy and vivacity, he speedily won the regard of the family, even of Mr. Faringfield and the Rev. Mr.
Cornelius.
"d.a.m.n the fellow!" said Tom to me. "I can"t help liking him."
"Nor I, either," was my reply; but I also d.a.m.ned him in my turn.
CHAPTER X.
_A Fine Project._
Were it my own history that I am here undertaking, I should give at this place an account of my first duel, which was fought with swords, in Bayard"s Woods, my opponent being an English lieutenant of foot, from whom I had suffered a display of that superciliousness which our provincial troops had so resented in the British regulars in the old French War. By good luck I disarmed the man without our receiving more than a small scratch apiece; and subsequently brought him to the humbleness of a fawning spaniel, by a mien and tone of half-threatening superiority which never fail of reducing such high-talking sparks to abject meekness. "Twas a trick of pretended bullying, which we long-suffering Americans were driven to adopt in self-defence against certain derisive, contemptuous praters that came to our sh.o.r.es from Europe. But "tis more to my purpose, as the biographer of Philip Winwood, to continue upon the subject of Captain Falconer.
He was the mirror of elegance, with none of the exaggerations of a fop. He brought with him to the Queen Street house the atmosphere of Bond Street and Pall Mall, the perfume of Almack"s and the a.s.sembly rooms, the air of White"s and the clubs, the odour of the chocolate houses and the fashionable taverns. "Twas all that he represented, I fancy, rather than what the man himself was, and conquering as he was, that caught Margaret"s eye. He typified the world before which she had hoped to shine, and from which she had been debarred--cruelly debarred, it may have seemed to her. I did not see this then; "twas another, one of a broader way of viewing things, one of a less partial imagination--"twas Philip Winwood--that found this excuse for her.
Captain Falconer had the perception soon to gauge correctly us who were of American rearing, and the tact to cast aside the lofty manner by which so many of his stupid comrades estranged us. He treated Tom and me with an easy but always courteous familiarity that surprised, flattered, and won us. He would play cards with us, in his sitting-room, as if rather for the sake of our company than for the pleasure of the game. Indeed, as he often frankly confessed, gambling was no pa.s.sion with him; and this was remarkable at a time when "twas the only pa.s.sion most fine young gentlemen would acknowledge as genuine in them, and when those who did not feel that pa.s.sion affected it. We admired this fine disdain on his part for the common fashionable occupation of the age (for the pursuit of women was pretended to be followed as a necessary pastime, but without much real heart) as evidence of a superior mind. Yet he played with us, losing at first, but eventually winning until I had to withdraw. Tom, having more money to lose, held out longer.
"Why now," said the captain once, regarding his winnings with a face of perfect ruefulness, ""tis proven that what we seek eludes us, and what we don"t value comes to us! Here am I, the last man in the world to court success this way, and here am I more winner than if I had played with care and attention."
Tom once mentioned, to another officer, Captain Falconer"s luck at cards as an instance of fortune befriending one who despised her favours in that way.
"Blood, sir!" exclaimed the officer. "Jack Falconer may have a mind and taste above gaming as a pleasure, for aught I know. But I would I had his skill with the cards. "Tis no pastime with him, but a livelihood. Don"t you know the man is as poor as a church-mouse, but for what he gets upon the green table?"
This revelation a little dampened our esteem for the captain"s elevation of intellect, but I"ll take my oath of it, he was really above gaming as a way of entertaining his mind, however he resorted to it as a means of filling his purse.
Of course Tom"s friendly a.s.sociation with him was before there was sure cause to suspect his intentions regarding Margaret. His manner toward her was the model of proper civility. He was a hundred times more amiable and jocular with f.a.n.n.y, whom he treated with the half-familiar pleasantry of an elderly man for a child; petting her with such delicacy as precluded displeasure on either her part or mine. He pretended great dejection upon learning that her heart was already engaged; and declared that his only consolation lay in the fact that the happy possessor of the prize was myself: for which we both liked him exceedingly. Toward Mrs. Faringfield, too, he used a chivalrous gallantry as complimentary to her husband as to the lady.
Only between him and Margaret was there the distance of unvaried formality.
And yet we ought to have seen how matters stood. For now Margaret, though she had so little apparent cordiality for the captain, had ceased to value the admiration of the other officers, and had subst.i.tuted a serene indifference for the animated interest she had formerly shown toward the gaieties of the town. And the captain, too, we learned, had the reputation of an inveterate conqueror of women; yet he had exhibited a singular callousness to the charms of the ladies of New York. He had been three months in the town, and his name had not been coupled with that of any woman there. We might have surmised from this a concealed preoccupation. And, moreover, there was my first reading of his countenance, the night of the Morris ball; this I had not forgotten, yet I ignored it, or else I shut my eyes to my inevitable inferences, because I could see no propriety in any possible interference from me.
One evening in December there was a drum at Colonel Philipse"s town house, which Margaret did not attend. She had mentioned, as reason for absenting herself, a cold caught a few nights previously, through her bare throat being exposed to a chill wind by the accidental falling of her cloak as she walked to the coach after Mrs. Colden"s rout. As the evening progressed toward hilarity, I observed that Tom Faringfield became restless and gloomy. At last he approached me, with a face strangely white, and whispered:
"Do you see?--Captain Falconer is not here!"
"Well, what of that?" quoth I. "Ten to one, he finds these companies plaguey tiresome."
"Or finds other company more agreeable," replied Tom, with a very dark look in his eyes.
He left me, with no more words upon the subject. When it was time to go home, and Mrs. Faringfield and f.a.n.n.y and I sought about the rooms for him, we found he had already taken his leave. So we three had the chariot to ourselves, and as we rode I kept my own thoughts upon Tom"s previous departure, and my own vague dread of what might happen.
But when Noah let us in, all seemed well in the Faringfield house.
Margaret was in the parlour, reading; and she laid down her book to ask us pleasantly what kind of an evening we had had. She was the only one of the family up to receive us, Mr. Faringfield having retired hours ago, and Tom having come in and gone to bed without an explanation. The absence of light in Captain Falconer"s windows signified that he too had sought his couch, for had he been still out, his servant would have kept candles lighted for him.
The next day, as we rode out Northward to our posts, Tom suddenly broke the silence:
"Curse it!" said he. "There are more mysteries than one. Do you know what I found when I got home last night?"
"I can"t imagine."
"Well, I first looked into the parlour, but no one was there. Instead of going on to the library, I went up-stairs and knocked at Margaret"s door. I--I wanted to see her a moment. It happened to be unlatched, and as I knocked rather hard, it swung open. No one was in that room, either, but I thought she might be in the bedchamber beyond, and so I crossed to knock at that. But I chanced to look at her writing-table as I pa.s.sed; there was a candle burning on it, and devil take me if I didn"t see a letter in a big schoolboy"s hand that I couldn"t help knowing at a glance--the hand of my brother Ned!"
"Then I"ll engage the letter wasn"t to Margaret. You know how much love is lost between those two."
"But it was to her, though! "Dear M.," it began--there"s no one else whose name begins with M in the family. And the writing was fresh--not the least faded. I saw that much before I thought of what I was doing.
But when I remembered "twasn"t my letter, I looked no more."
"But how could he send a letter from the rebel camp to her in New York?"[5]
"Why, that"s not the strangest part of it. There"s no doubt Washington has spies in the town, and ways of communicating with the rebel sympathisers here; I"ve sometimes thought my father--but no matter for that. The fact is, there the letter was, as certainly from Ned as I"m looking at you; and we know he"s in the rebel army. But the wonder, the incredible thing, is that he should write to Margaret."
""Tis a mystery, in truth."
"Well, "tis none of ours, after all, and of course this will go no further--but let me tell you, the devil"s in it when those two are in correspondence. There"s crookedness of some kind afoot, when such haters combine together!"
"You didn"t ask her, of course?"
"No. But I knocked at her chamber door, and getting no answer I went down-stairs again. This time she was in the parlour. She had been in the library before, it seemed; "twas warmer there."
But, as I narrowly watched the poor lad, I questioned whether he was really convinced that she had been in the library before. He had said nothing of Captain Falconer"s sitting-room, of which the door was that of the transformed large parlour, and was directly across the hall from the Faringfields" ordinary parlour, wherein Tom had first sought and eventually found her.
"Twas our practice thus to ride back to our posts when we had been off duty, although our rank did not allow us to go mounted in the service.
For despite the needs of the army, the Faringfields and I contrived to retain our horses for private use. All of that family were good riders, particularly Margaret. She often rode out for a morning"s canter, going alone because it was her will thereto, which was not opposed, for she had so accustomed us to her aloofness that solitary excursions seemed in place with her. One day, a little later in that same December, Tom and I had taken the road by way of General De Lancey"s country mansion at Bloomingdale, rather than our usual course, which lay past the Murray house of Incledon. As I rode Northward at a slow walk, some distance ahead of my comrade, I distinctly heard through a thicket that veiled the road from a little glade at the right, the voice of Captain Falconer, saying playfully:
"Nay, how can you doubt me? Would not grat.i.tude alone, for the reparation of my fortunes, bind me as your slave, if you had not chains more powerful?"
And then I caught this answer, in a voice that gave me a start, and sent the blood into my face--the voice of Margaret:
"But will those chains hold, if this design upon your grat.i.tude fail?"
She spoke as in jest, but with a perceptible undercurrent of earnestness. This was a new att.i.tude for her, and what a revelation to me! In a flash I saw her infatuation for this fine fellow, some fear of losing him, a pursuit of some plan by which she might repair his fortunes and so bind him by obligation. Had Margaret, the invincible, the disdainful, fallen to so abject a posture? And how long had these secret meetings been going on?
There was new-fallen snow upon the road, and this had deadened the sound of our horses" feet to those beyond the thicket. Tom was not yet so near as to have heard their voices. I saw the desirability of his remaining in ignorance for the present, so I uttered a loud "chuck,"
and gave a pull at my reins, as if urging my horse to a better gait, my purpose being to warn the speakers of unseen pa.s.sers-by ere Tom should come up. I had not let my horse come to a stop, nor had I otherwise betrayed my discovery.
But, to my dread, I presently heard Tom cry sharply, "Whoa!" and, looking back, saw he had halted at the place where I had heard the voices. My warning must have failed to hush the speakers. Never shall I forget the look of startled horror, shame, and anger upon his face.
For a moment he sat motionless; then he turned his horse back to an opening in the thicket, and rode into the glade. I galloped after him, to prevent, if possible, some fearful scene.
When I entered the glade, I saw Margaret and Captain Falconer seated upon their horses, looking with still fresh astonishment and discomfiture upon the intruder. Their faces were toward me. Tom had stopped his horse, and he sat regarding them with what expression I could not see, being behind him. Apparently no one of the three had yet spoken.
Tom glanced at me as I joined the group, and then, in a singularly restrained voice, he said:
"Captain Falconer, may I beg leave to be alone with my sister a few moments? I have something to ask her. If you would ride a little way off, with Mr. Russell--"