"You have a bitter enemy in Frank Falconnet," was his comment, when I had made an end of this recounting of my adventures. "He knows you are in hiding hereabouts, and has been scouring the neighborhood well for you--or, more belike, for both of us."
"How do you know this?" I asked.
"I have both seen and heard. This den of ours opens on the river"s edge, and, two days since, his Indians came within an ace of nabbing me. "Twas just at dusk, and I made out to dodge them by doubling past in the canoe."
"But you say you have heard, as well?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"Don"t ask me, Jack."
I said I had no right to ask more than he chose to tell; and at this he blurted out an oath and let me have the sharp-edged truth.
"Falconnet has an ally whose wit is shrewder than his. Can you guess who it is?"
"No."
""Tis this same Madge Stair you have been defending, Jack," he said, bitterly. "It seems that Falconnet made sure we had both gone to join the army, which was but natural. If she were less than the spiteful little Tory vixen that she is, she would have been content to let it rest so. But she would not let it rest so. With her own lips she a.s.sured Falconnet he still had us to reckon with; nay, more--she made a boast of it that we would never go so far away from her."
Weak and fever-shaken as I was, I yet made shift to get upon my elbow feebly fierce, denouncing it hotly for a lie.
"Who slandered her like this, d.i.c.k? Put a name to the cur, and as I live and get my strength again, I"ll hunt him down and choke him with that lie!"
"Nay," he objected soberly; "that would be my quarrel, were there ever a peg to hang a quarrel on. But it came by a sure hand, and one that is friendly enough to all concerned. An old free borderer, Ephraim Yeates by name, brought me the tale. He had been spying round at Appleby Hundred, wanting to know, for some purpose of his own, why the redcoats and Cherokees were hanging on so long; and this much he overheard one night when he was outlying under the window of the withdrawing-room. He says she was in a pretty pa.s.sion at the baronet"s slackness, stamping her foot at him and lashing him with the taunt that he was afeard of one or both of us."
I fell back on the bearskins to shut my eyes and call up all the might of love to grapple with this fresh misery. It was in this fierce conflict of faith against apparent fact that I descried the parting of the ways for the lover and the husband.
Jennifer believed this most incredible thing, and yet he loved her--would go on loving her, as he had said, in spite of all. That was the lover"s road, and I could never bear him company on it. Could I believe her so pitiless cruel as this, I made sure no husband-love could live beyond that moment of conviction.
But at this perilous pa.s.s the husband"s road ran truer than the lover"s.
Richard believed her capable of this hard-hearted thing and went on loving her blindly in spite of it. But as for me, I said I would never give belief an inch of standing-room; that had I stood in Ephraim Yeates"s shoes, having the witness of my own eyes and ears, I would still have found excuse and exculpation for her.
I stole a glance at Jennifer. He was sitting with his face in his hands, a silent figure of a strong man humbled. He had called her a Delilah, and the green withes of her binding cut sore into the flesh.
"You say you love her, d.i.c.k; can you believe her capable of this, and yet go on loving her?" I asked.
He let me see his face. It was haggard and grief-marred.
"I"d pay the devil"s own price could I say "no" to that, Jack. But I can not."
"Then I swear I love her better than you do, Richard Jennifer. She hates me well--G.o.d knows she has good cause to hate me fiercely; yet I would trust her with my life."
I looked to see him pin me down at this; and though the words had fairly shaped and said themselves, I laid fast hold of my courage and was prepared to make them good. But he would only smile and draw the bearskin cover over me, tucking me in as tenderly as a mother, and saying very gently:
"So she has bewitched you, too; and now there are two poor fools of love instead of one. But you are stronger than I, Jack. You will break the spell and put it down and live beyond it, and that I never shall--G.o.d help me!" And with that, he went to his own bed beside the fire, telling me I must lie quiet and try to sleep.
I did lie quiet, but sleep came not, nor did I woo it. For long past the time when I could hear his measured breathing, I lay awake to plan how I might draw the baronet"s man-hunt to myself, and so free my loyal Richard of the peril that by rights was mine.
XVII
SHOWING HOW LOVE TOOK TOLL OF FRIENDSHIP
For some few days after Jennifer"s narrow escape at the entrance to our hiding place, the Cherokees were hot upon our scent, quartering the forest on both banks of the river, determined, as it seemed, to hunt or starve us out.
It was in this time of siege that I came to know, as I had not known before, the depth and tenderness of my dear lad"s love for me. While the life-tide was at its ebb and I was querulous and helpless weak, he was my leech and nurse and heartening friend in one. And later, when the tide was fairly turned and I had found my soldier"s appet.i.te again, he spent many of the nights abroad and never let me guess what risks he ran to fetch me dainties from the outer world.
In this night raiding no danger was too great to hold him back from serving me. Once, when we were washing down our evening meal of meat and maize cake with plain cold water, I mourned the good wine idling in its bin at Jennifer House. At that, without a word to me, he took the whole night for a perilous adventure and fetched a dozen bottles of the Jennifer port to make me choke and strangle at the thought of what its bringing had cost in toil and hazard.
Another time I spoke of English beef, saying how it would rebuild a man at need--how it had made the English soldier what he is. Whereupon, as before, my loving forager took a hint where none was intended; was gone the night long, and slaughtered me some Tory yearling,--"twas Mr.
Gilbert Stair"s, I mistrusted, though d.i.c.k would never name the owner, and so I had a sirloin to my breakfast.
In these and many other ways he spent himself freely for love of me. If he had been a younger brother of my own blood the common parentage could not have made him tenderer.
"Twas not the mere outgushing of a nature open-armed to make a bosom friend of all the world; nor any feminine softness on his part. If I have drawn him thus my pen is but a clumsy quill, for he was manly-rough and masterful, with all the native strength and vigor of the border-born.
But on the side of love and friendship no woman ever had a truer heart, a keener eye or a lighter hand. And in a service for friend or mistress he would spend himself as recklessly as those old knights you read about who made a business of their chivalry.
With his daily offerings of unselfishness to shame me, you may be sure that I was flayed alive; self-flogged like a miserable monk, with all the woundings of the whip well salted by remorse. As you have guessed, I had not yet summoned up the courage to tell him how I had staked his chance of happiness upon a casting of the die of fate--staked and lost it. Now that it was gone, I saw how I had missed the golden opportunity; how I had weakly hesitated when delay could only make the telling harder.
By tacit consent we never spoke of Margery. Richard"s silence hung upon despair, I thought; and as for mine, since the husband"s road and the lover"s lay so far apart, I could not bring myself to speak of her. But she was always first in my thoughts in that time of convalescence, as I made sure she was in his; and at the last the hidden thing between us was brought to light.
It was on a night some three weeks or more after my fever turn. Our larder had run low again, and Jennifer had spent the earlier hours of the night abroad--to little purpose, as it chanced. "Twas midnight or thereabouts when he came swearing in to tell me that the Tories were out again to harry our side of the river afresh, and to make a refugee"s begging of a bag of meal a thing of peril.
"They"ll starve us out in shortest measure at this rate," he prophesied.
"They have trampled down all the standing corn for miles around, and this morning they burned the mill. "Tis our notice to quit, and we"d best take it. There has been fighting to the south of us--a plenty of it--at Rocky Mount and Hanging Rock, and elsewhere, and every man is needed. If you are strong enough to stand the march, we"ll run the gantlet down the river in the pirogue and cut across from the lower ford to join Major Davie or Mr. Gates."
I said I was fit enough, and would do whatever he thought best. And then I took a step upon the forbidden ground.
"Falconnet is still at Appleby Hundred?" I said.
He nodded.
"And you will join the army at the front and leave Margery to his tender mercies?"
His laugh was bitter; so bitter that I scarce knew it for Richard Jennifer"s.
"Mistress Margery Stair is well, and well content, as I told you once before. She has no wish for you or me, unless it be to see us well hanged."
"Nay, Richard; you judge her over-harshly. I fear you do not love her as her lover should."
"Say you so? Listen: to-night I got as far as the manor house, being fool enough to risk my neck for another sight of her. G.o.d help me, Jack!
I had it. They have sc.r.a.ped together all the Tory riff-raff this side of the river--Falconnet and the others--and are holding high revel at Appleby. Since it is still our true-blue borderland, they are scant enough of women of their own kidney, and I saw Madge dancing like any light o" love with every jackanapes that offered."