Richard pushed his plate back with a grimace of disgust.
"Let us be at it, then. Another grapple with this pig-bait will finish me outright."
A half-hour later we were tethering our cobs at the already crowded hitching-rail in front of a goodly mansion some mile or more beyond the camp limits on the northward road; a rambling manor house to the full as large as Appleby Hundred, with a shaven lawn in front, and within, lights and music and sounds of revelry.
"By the Lord Harry! but this Master Harndon would seem to be a man of substance," says d.i.c.k. And then: "Can you pick out a good horse in the dark, Jack? It may come to a race for our necks, by and by, and these cobs of ours are too broad-backed for speed."
I said I could, and so we went deeper into the cavalcade at the hitch-rail and marked out two clean-limbed chargers, a gray and a sorrel; this before we gave the final touches to our plan of action and pa.s.sed up the broad avenue to the manor house.
XLVI
HOW OUR PIECE MISSED FIRE AT HARNDON ACRES
For a doorkeeper some one or another of the officer guests had set a sergeant on guard; but though the night was yet young the man pa.s.sed us into the great entrance hall with a hiccough and a wink that spoke thus early of an open house and freely flowing good cheer.
As we had hoped to find it, this rout at Master Harndon"s was a stifling jam, and a good half of the guests were in civilian plain clothes, neither Paris nor London having as yet reached so far into the Carolina plantations to proscribe homespun and to prescribe the gay toggeries of the courts. This for the men, I hasten to add; for then, as now, our American dames and maids would put a year"s cropping of a plantation on their backs, thinking nothing of it; and there was no lack of shimmering silks and stiff brocades, of high-piled _coiffures_, paint, patches and powder at this merrymaking at Harndon Acres.
Lacking an introducer, and wanting, moreover, nothing save the leave to have standing-room in the throng as lookers-on, we gave Mr. Marmaduke Harndon, a sleek, rotund little gentleman, smirking and bowing and tapping the lid of his silver snuff-box, a wide berth; and with an agreement to meet later for the comparing of notes, Jennifer and I went apart at the door of the ball-room, each to lose himself in the a.s.sembled company as an otter slips into a pool, namely, without ruffling it.
"Twas easily done. Winnsborough had by this time become a refuge camp for all the loyalists in the region roundabout, and there were many in the present company who were strangers one to another, uneasy, shifting figures in the gay throng, beneath the notice alike of haughty dames and prinking dandy officers. Beneath the notice, I say; yet I would qualify this, for more than one of the epauletted macaronis trod upon my toes or bustled me rudely in the crush till I trembled, not for my own self-control, but for Richard"s, making sure that the lad was having no more gentlemanly welcome than I.
"Twas with some notion of finding ampler room for my feet that I edged away through the fringing wall-crowd in the dancing-room toward a curtained archway at the back. As yet I had overheard naught save the silly persiflage of the belles and beaux--a word here and another there--and I was beginning to fear that this was as poor a place to look for information as was the pothouse, when a thing befell to set me a-quiver with all the thrillings the human heart-strings can thrum to in one and the same instant of time.
I had shouldered my way out of the ball-room medley and into the less crowded room at the back. This proved to be a rear withdrawing-room serving for the nonce as a refectory. There were little groups and knots of chatterers standing about; fair maids, each with her ring of redcoated courtiers, laughing and jesting or picking daintily at the viands on the great oaken table in the midst.
Rounding the promontory of the table"s-end to come to anchor in some quiet eddy where I could listen unnoticed for the word I was thirsting for, I must needs entangle the b.u.t.ton of my coat-cuff in the delicate lace of a lady"s sleeve in pa.s.sing.
The wearer of the sleeve had her back to me, and I saw the white shoulders go up in a little shrug of petulance whilst I sought to disentangle the b.u.t.ton. Then she turned to face me and the words of apology froze on my lips. "Twas Mistress Margery, standing at ease with--good heavens! with Richard Jennifer and Colonel Banastre Tarleton for her company!
Here was a halter, with a double snaffle at the end of it, was the thought that flashed upon me; and I was gathering my wits to brazen it out in some such manner as to leave Jennifer unattainted, when my lady give a little start and a shriek.
"La, Mr. Septimus; how you startled me!" she cried. Then, without a tremor of the lip or a pause for breath-taking, she presented me: "Colonel Tarleton; Mr. Septimus Ireton, of Iretondene in Virginia." And next to d.i.c.k: "Mr. Richard; my very good friend, Mr. Ireton."
"Twas done so cleverly and with such an air that even d.i.c.k, who had known her from childhood, was struck dumb with admiration, as his face sufficiently advertised. And, indeed, I had much ado to play my own part with any decent self-possession, though I did make shift to bow stiffly, and to say: "I see I should have brought the Iretondene t.i.tle deeds with me to make you sure that I am not my rebel cousin John, Mistress Margery. Your servant, Colonel Tarleton; and yours, Mr. Richard."
d.i.c.k"s bow was an elaborate hiding of his tell-tale face; but the colonel"s was the slightest of nods, and I could feel the sloe-black eyes of him boring into my very soul.
Had my lady given him but a moment"s time I make no doubt he would have come instantly at the truth and the little farce would have been turned into a tragedy on the spot. But she gave him no time. The spinet in the ball-room alcove was tinkling out the overture to a minuet, and she laid the tips of her dainty fingers on the colonel"s arm.
"This will be ours to walk through, will it not, Colonel Tarleton?" she said, playing the sprightly minx to the very climax of perfection. Then she dipped us a curtsy. "_Au revoir_, gentlemen. "Tis a thousand pities you had not joined sooner and so had the red coat and small-sword to grace you here."
When they were gone, d.i.c.k laughed sardonically.
"Saw you ever such a cool-blood little jade in all your life? "Twas with me as it was with you; I, too, stumbled upon them, and the colonel bustled me and set his heel on my foot. I daresay I should have had myself in irons in another moment but for Madge. She slipped in between and introduced us as sweetly as you please."
"Nevertheless," said I, "the colonel recognized us both."
"No! Think you so?"
""Tis certain enough to play upon. What we do now must be done quickly or not at all. What have you overheard?"
He swore softly. "Never a cursed word; less than nothing of any interest to Dan Morgan."
"We must try again. "Twill surely be talked of here if the army is about to move. Do you take a turn in the anteroom and meet me in a quarter of an hour at the outer door."
At the word, d.i.c.k promptly lost himself in the throng whilst I made a slow circuit of the refreshment table. Once I thought I had the clue when a girl hanging on the arm of an infantry lieutenant said: "Will it be true that you will presently go out to hunt the rebels down, Mr.
Thornicroft?" But the prudent lieutenant smiled and put her off cleverly, leaving his fair questioner--and me--none the wiser.
I went on, drifting aimlessly from group to group and dallying of set purpose. If I had read Colonel Tarleton"s glance aright, the moments were growing diamond-precious; but as yet neither half of my errand was done. Come what might, I must see Margery again and have her tell me where and how to find the priest; and "twas borne in upon me that she would come back to seek me as soon as she could be free of her partner in the dance.
The forecast as to my lady had its fulfilment while yet the spinetter was striking out the final chords of the minuet. A lady dropped her kerchief, and I was before her swain in stooping to pick it up. As I bowed low in returning the bit of lace to its owner, a voice that I had learned to know and love whispered in my ear.
"Make your way to the clock landing of the stair; I must have speech with you," it said; and for a wonder I was cool enough to obey with no more than a sidelong glance at my lady pa.s.sing on the arm of another epauletted dangler.
She was before me at the meeting place, and there was no laughing welcome in the deep-welled eyes. Instead, they flashed me a look that made me wince.
"What folly is this, sir?" she demanded. "Will you never have done taking my honor and your own life into your reckless hands?"
I bowed my head to the storm. With the dagger of my miserable errand sticking in my heart there was no fight in me.
"I am but come to do your bidding," I said, slowly, for the words cost me sorely in the coin of anguish. "I had your letter, and if you will say how I may find Father Matthieu--"
She broke me in the midst. "_Mon Dieu!_" she cried. "Could I guess that you would come here, into the very noose of the gallows? Oh, how you do heap scorn on scorn upon me! Once you made me give silent consent to a falsehood you told; twice, nay, thrice, you have made me disloyal to the king; and now you come again to make me look the world in the face and tell a smiling lie to shield you! O Holy Mother, pity me!" And with this she put her face in her hands and began to sob.
Now we were only measurably isolated on the stair, and some sense of the hazard we took--a hazard involving her as well as Richard and myself--steadied me with a sudden shock.
"Control yourself," I whispered. "What is done, is done; and the misery is not all yours to suffer. Tell me how I may find the priest, and I will do my errand and begone."
"You can not stay to find him now--you must not," she insisted, coming out of the fit of despair with a rebound. "He is in the town--indeed, I know not where he is just now. Can you not endure it a little longer, Captain Ireton?"
"No," said I, sullenly. "I have been living a lie all these months to the friend I love best, and I will not do it more."
Could I be mistaken? Surely there was a flash not of anger in the eyes that were lifted to mine, and a tremulous note of eagerness in the voice that said: "Then d.i.c.k does not know?--you have not told him?"
"No; I have told no one."
"Poor d.i.c.k!" she said softly. "I thought he knew, and I--"
She paused, and in the pause it flashed upon me how she had wronged my dear lad; how she had thought he would make brazen love to her knowing she was the wife of another. I thanked G.o.d in my heart that I had been able to right him thus far.
After a time she said: "Why did you make me marry you, Monsieur John?
Oh, I have racked my brain so for the answer to that question. I know you said it was to save my honor. But surely we have paid a heavier penalty than any that could have been laid upon me had you left me as I was."
"I was but a short-sighted fool, and no prophet," I rejoined, striving hard to keep the bitterness of soul out of my words. "At the moment it seemed the only way out of the pit of doubt into which my word to Colonel Tarleton had plunged you. But there was another motive. You saw the paper I signed that night, with Lieutenant Tybee and your father"s factor for the witnesses?"