"My beloved Capitaine, how is it that I find you thus?" I exclaimed as I went to within his reach and allowed that he take my two hands in his poor shackled ones and put warm kisses of greeting upon them.
And it was while I was shedding tears of pity for the imprisonment of that great man of France in that mountain hut in America, as he kissed my hands, that I raised my eyes to encounter a cold lightning as of a flash on steel, from under the black brows of my Gouverneur Faulkner of the State of Harpeth, that again froze the blood in my heart.
"You?" he asked of me in a voice that was of the same coldness and sharpness as that steel, and his beautiful mouth was set into one straight line as he flung into my face that one word.
CHAPTER XIX
ALL IS LOST
And to that word of challenge I made no answer, but I raised my head and looked into his eyes with a dignity that came to me as my right from suffering. So regarding each other, we stood for a very short minute in which the Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles, raised his head from his kisses of salutation upon my hands.
"And, _mon enfant_, is this the good Uncle to whose care you came into America?" asked that Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles, as he reached out his imprisoned hands for a greeting to my relative.
I did not make any answer to that question. My head raised itself yet higher, and I looked my Gouverneur Faulkner again full in the face while I waited to hear what he would answer of my kinship to him.
"Sir, I am the friend of General Carruthers and I am also the Governor of the State of Harpeth. I have come across the mountains to talk with you about the business of this contract for mules for your army and I have brought your young friend to a.s.sist me if I should need translating from or to you. We Americans, Captain, are poor handlers of any language not our own, and the matter is of much gravity." And as the Gouverneur Faulkner spoke those words to my Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles, with a great courtesy but also a great sternness, in which he named me not as his friend but as the friend of that Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles, I knew that I was placed by him among all women liars of the world and that to him his boy Robert of honor was of a truth dead forever.
"It is indeed of such a gravity that I have come from the English Canada to make all clear to myself," answered my beloved Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles, as he drew himself to his entire height, which was well-nigh as great as that of the Gouverneur of the State of Harpeth.
"And I have ridden a day and a night, sir, for the same purpose,"
answered my great Gouverneur Faulkner with that beautiful courtesy of business I have always observed him to use in the transaction of his affairs in his office at the Capitol of the State of Harpeth. "And as one of us must make a beginning, will you not tell me, Captain, why you are here and in this predicament?"
"In a few words I will make all clear to you, Your Excellency," made answer my Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles, with an air of courtesy equal to that of the Gouverneur Faulkner. "I sent down into your State of Harpeth one of my Commission, to whom I gave the direction that with a lack of annoying publicity he should investigate the preparedness of the State of Harpeth to deliver those five thousand of mules to the Republique of France as was being proposed. Behold, a report that all is well comes to me, but--ah, it is with sorrow and shame that such a thing could be done by a son of poor France who struggles for life!--among the sheets of that report was left by mistake the fragments of a draft of a letter to an American woman, which made a partial disclosure of an intended falseness of that statement to me. Immediately I came alone to interview that false officer and I find him gone from that small town not far from here into your Capital. I was seeking to rapidly ride alone by directions into your Capital city to prevent that he make a signature, which I had given to him the authority to write, to those papers of so great an importance. I was thus arrested by that man of great wildness, whose _patois_ I could not understand as he could not comprehend the English I make use of, and you see me thus. I beg of you to tell me if that wicked signature has been made."
"The papers have not been signed, thank G.o.d, Captain, and your very impatient lieutenant is being shown some Southern hospitality by the flower and chivalry of Old Harpeth. And I beg your pardon for allowing you to be a prisoner a minute longer than necessary," was the answer made to him by my Gouverneur Faulkner. "Untie the Captain, Jim; he"s all right. And you can bring us a little of your mountain dew while I clear this table here to use for the papers of our business." And still my Gouverneur Faulkner did not speak or look at me and in my heart I then knew that he never would.
"I will make all ready," I said as I lifted a large gun, a horn of a beast full of powder and several pipes with tobacco, from the table of rough boards that stood under the window for light.
"Ah, that is a good release! Thank you that you did not make tight enough for abrasions your cords, my good man," said my Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles, as he stretched out his arms and then bent to make a rubbing of his ankle upon which had been the chain.
"I said you warn"t no revenue. Here, drink, stranger!" answered the wild Jim as he handed a bottle of white liquid to my Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles, and also another to my Gouverneur Faulkner. "That boy can suck the drippings," he added as he looked at me with humor.
"Get cups and water, Jim," commanded my Gouverneur Faulkner with a smile. "Don"t drink it straight, Captain. It will knock you down."
"I will procure the cups and the water," I said with rapidity, for I longed to leave that room for a few moments in which to shake from my eyes some of the tears that were making a mist before them.
"Git a fresh bucket from the spring up the gulch, Bob, while I go beat the boys outen the bushes with the news that they ain"t no revenue.
They"ll want to see Bill," was the direction that wild Jim gave to me as he placed in my hand a rude bucket and pointed up the side of the hill of great steepness. After so doing he descended around the rock by the path which we had ascended.
"What is it that you shall do now, Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye?"
I wept a question to myself as I dipped that bucket into a clear pool and made ready to return to the hut. "All is lost to you.
"I do not know," I answered to myself.
And when I had made a safe return to the hut with a small portion of the water only remaining in the bucket, for the cause of many slides in the steep descent from the pool, I found my Gouverneur Faulkner and my Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles, engaged deeply in a ma.s.s of papers on the table between them and with no thanks to Roberta, the Marquise of Grez and Bye, when she served to them tin cups of the water and a liquid that I had ascertained by tasting to be of fire. I believe it to be thus that in affairs of business, in the minds of men all women are become drowned.
"Will you write this out for His Excellency, my dear Mademoiselle?"
would request my good Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles.
"Thank you," would be the reply I received from the Gouverneur Faulkner of the State of Harpeth, with never one small look into my eyes that so besought his.
And for all of the hours of that very long afternoon I sat on a low stool beside the feet of those two great gentlemen and served them in their communications while the heart in my breast was going into death by a slow, cruel torture.
The exact meaning of those papers and words of business I did not know, but once I observed my Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles, throw down his pencil and look into the face of the Gouverneur Faulkner with a great and stern astonishment.
"The work of grafters, Captain La.s.selles, with a woman as a tool. But I yet don"t see just how it was that she worked it. My Secretary of State, General Carruthers, and I have been at work for weeks and we could not catch the exact fraud," made answer my Gouverneur Faulkner with a cold sternness.
"I was warned in Paris that beautiful American women were very much interested in the placing of war contracts, Monsieur le Gouverneur. I fled upon a tug boat from the ship that I escape some for whom I had letters of introduction which I could not ignore."
"It was your Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles, whom that Madam Whitworth sought upon the ship, Roberta," I said to myself.
"I think women are alike the world over, Captain, and the discussion of them and their mental and moral processes is--fruitless," answered my Gouverneur Faulkner as he again took up his pencil.
"When it happened to me to find the fragment of the letter to the lady of America from my false lieutenant, I had a deep distress that tenderness for the sufferings of poor France should fail to be in even one American woman"s heart. And now I am in deep concern. Where am I to obtain the good strong mules by which to transport through fields heavy with mud the food to my poor boys in their trenches?"
"Right here, Captain, I feel reasonably sure. I think I see a way to give you what you want at a better figure; and from it no man shall reap more than a just wage for honest work. As the Governor of the State of Harpeth, I can give you at least that a.s.surance." And as he spoke my Gouverneur Faulkner looked the Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles, in the eyes with a fine honesty that carried with it the utmost of conviction.
"I give thanks to _le bon Dieu_," I said with words that were very soft in my throat, but at which I observed the mouth of that Gouverneur Faulkner to again become as one straight line of coldness.
"Indeed, thanks to _le bon Dieu_, Mademoiselle," made courteous answer to me my Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles. "But how will you accomplish that purpose. Monsieur le Gouverneur?"
"As soon as I"ve done with these figures I"ll have in Jim, your jailer, and then you"ll hear some things about the American mountain mule that you never heard before, I believe." As he spoke, my Gouverneur Faulkner proceeded with making figures with his pencil, a fine glow of eagerness added to that of rage in his eyes very deep under their brows. "Now, I"ll go and call in Jim," he said after a few minutes of waiting, and left the room in which I was then alone with my Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles, who came to me with outstretched hands.
"Ah, Mademoiselle Roberta," he exclaimed, "I am in a debt of grat.i.tude to you for bringing this great gentleman, your friend, to my rescue and also to the solving of this very strange situation concerning these contracts. Indeed have you accomplished the mission for which you enlisted: your "Friends for France." But before procedure I must ask you, little lady, why it was that you made a vanishment from that hotel of Ritz-Carlton in New York. I sought you. I sought out that Monsieur Peter Scudder to inquire for you. Behold, he also is in sorrow over the loss of you and had for me a strange news of a cup of tea thrown in the face of that Mr. Raines of Saint Louis by a member of your family who had departed immediately into the south of America.
I said to myself, "The beautiful child does not know that your heart is in anxiety for her," and immediately I intended to seek you in the city, to which the very fine lady, who had reported that "tea fight"
as she so spoke of it to her paper, directed me after my finding of her. It is a great ease to my unhappy heart to find you in the care of a family and friends. I make compliments on your costume of the ride.
I also observed the custom of attire masculine to be on those plains of the great West where I sought the wheat."
"It is a great joy to me, _mon Capitaine_, that you give to me your approval. Much has happened to me in these short weeks since you left me in loneliness on that great ship that I must tell to you," I said as a sob rose into my words.
"Poor little girl, it will not be many hours now before I can say to you the things that have been growing in my heart for you since that night upon the ship," he said to me in a great tenderness as he raised my hand and bent to kiss it just as entered the great Gouverneur Faulkner and the wild Jim.
I had not the courage to gaze upon the face of my Gouverneur Faulkner, but I felt its coldness strike into my body and turn it to hardness.
For a second I stood as a stone, then a sudden resolve rose in me and again that daredevil seized upon my thought. I took a piece of that white paper with caution and also a pencil, and with them slipped from the room, while that wild Jim seated himself upon my lowly stool beside the table at which again the two great men were writing.
And out in the soft light that was now slowly fading from the side of the mountain because of the retirement of the sun, I sat me down upon the step of the hut and wrote to my Gouverneur Faulkner this small letter:
"Honored Excellency, the Gouverneur Faulkner, of the State of Harpeth:
"I go from you into the trenches of France. If your humble boy Robert has done for you any small service, I beg of you in that name that my Uncle, the General Robert, and my friends never know of my dishonor of lies about my woman"s estate, but believe me to die as a soldier for France as will be the case.
Make all clear for me to my Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles.
It is that all women are not lies.
Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye."