Part 27

Lighting a lantern he pulled aside a secret door in the counter, and as he crept into the box-like place, Callum MacIlvesty heard the sound of another door opening in the flooring. The swaying light in the hand of the host began to slowly descend, and the young Highlander, following closely, bidden to slam the door of the counter behind him, found with his feet the rungs of a ladder but dimly discerned as the lantern swung. Presently, however, there was scant need of this humble illumination. A gush of red light from below revealed the long extent of the ladder, a stone floor at the bottom, the walls of a grotto of impenetrable unbroken rock, and naught besides. A projection of the rugged wall like a buttress shielded the apartment from view, while they themselves were fully visible throughout their descent. Jock Lesly barely gave the young fellow time to leap down without touching the last half dozen rungs, and lowered the ladder swiftly by means of a rope and pulley; the door which it had held open shut quickly, and if a man should seek to lift it or to descend thence, he could be picked off by a rifle from below before he could gain a glimpse of the place beneath or the group in the chamber beyond. If an intrusive foot should be placed on the ladder when in position, a mere touch from below would dislodge that structure, and the invader, falling from the great height, pay for his temerity with his life.

This was a device put into practice by those constrained to dwell among the inimical Indians in Tennessee, both before and afterward, but to Callum it was an undreamed-of expedient, and he must needs pause to admire the completeness of its features before Jock Lesly, pointing them out in detail, would permit him to turn to survey the subterranean home.

“The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rock,” the trader quoted.

A lofty but narrow chamber had its elements of comfort. Hickory logs were flaring in a great fireplace, and remembering the plan of the building above Callum realized that the flue connected with the chimney of the trading-house, and thus no smoke or light betrayed the cavern to the Indians or, if it were already known to them, this usage of it. The walls, roof, and floor, of rock of unimaginable thickness, were without a break, save that on the side next the river, in a passage like an anteroom, was a series of apertures high among the shadows and round like portholes, affording ample ventilation,--a curiosity that occurs here and there among the bluffs of this region, relics of some forgotten cataclysmal period when the outbursting waters sculptured the rocks. Beyond another arch or tunnel seemed a more limited chamber adjoining the main grotto, whence a golden glow of lamplight betokened occupation, and a wooden partition and door added to its seclusion. “A cubby hole yon where Lilias sleeps an’ keeps her bit duds, an’ rins awa’ to sulk, an’ here on this end is a passage where the gillies foregather an’ ane always is on watch to guard the door. An’ this big room is the parlor, an’ we sit here to receive our company like gentles. Hegh, callant, if we had only had sic a ha’ house on the sweet Tennessee River!”

Before the fire now Lilias sat as if she were indeed in some safely guarded and softly lined parlor. She was arrayed in a brilliant yet dainty gown of striped sarcenet, blue and white, with pink roses scattered at intervals down the white stripe. Her shining golden hair was rolled high from her forehead and a long thick curl hung to her shoulder at one side. An embroidered cape of sheer cambric made visible the white neck that it affected to shield. Her feet were cased in high-heeled red slippers, over one of which the old collie had put a restraining paw, that she might not move without his knowledge, as he lay on the rug beside her spinning wheel. She was now busy with this little flax wheel, while the supper was cooking under the ministrations of an elderly wrinkled Scotch dame, the mother of one of the gillies, who officiated in the household in many capacities,--cook, laundress, dairy woman,--and not the least valued by Jock Lesly as his adviser how to manage the fractious Lilias, whose nurse she had been.

“Gude guide us!” she would exclaim. “Maun ye always be harryin’ the bairn’s life out? Let her alane! Let her alane! or else since ye are sae cruel jus’ tak your big fist an’ knock her harns out at ance!”

Thus berated Jock Lesly would feel that he was indeed a disciplinarian and must needs moderate his severities, or Luckie Meg, as she was called, would be telling at the fort and elsewhere how he tyrannized over his household.

Here Lilias, in the unbounded wisdom of eighteen years, had elected to set up her staff, and hither had she transported the bulk of her effects. She ordered her life much as she would if yet in Charlestown, and seemed incongruously content. If the sight of her in her plain dark brown serge had been overwhelming to Everard, what would be the effect of this vision of dainty loveliness Callum wondered.

Very serious she was when she sat at the table, with a sort of absolute impervious dignity that was not even impaired when the collie stood up on his hindlegs beside her chair with his forepaws on the cloth, looking about him with eager curiosity, and betraying like an ill-bred child that there were more elaborate “vivers” for this occasion than he was in the habit of seeing. Callum could hear the rushing of the river so close outside that he thought their cavern of refuge must be lower than the surface of the water. The flames flared and roared up the chimney; the young packmen or gillies laughed and talked with muttered gibes and boyish sniggers and chuckles in their anteroom; the shadows flickered over the lofty vault; Jock Lesly was once more his old genial self, and Callum felt that the fort was so far away that it was garrisoned in another existence, that the Indians were extinct, that sorrow and pain and loss were but the untoward incidents of an old dream called life, and that he had entered into Paradise,--a bit doubtful, a bit tremulous, a bit prayerful, and very humble, for Lilias, though quite casual, though only carelessly kind, had smiled at him!

“Tam Wilson, now,” said Jock Lesly.

And all at once this grim old world of troubles and fears, of grief and gloom, had whisked back again.

“Now that chiel, Tam Wilson!” reiterated Jock Lesly.

He was amazingly comfortable, the trader, still sitting at the table thrown back in a seat, cleverly constructed to imitate a cushioned armchair, drinking Scotch whiskey till the smell of the peat of the still fires seemed to fill the room, and then a fine French brandy that but inflamed his patriotism and insular prejudice. “What’s that callant doing all this long time in the Cherokee country?”

Callum glanced down at the firelight flashing through his own glass, now like a ruby and now like a topaz. He dared not meet the eyes of Lilias. But when he looked up at last, as he needs must at a repetition of the question, she was busied with a comfit.

“I hae my ain thoughts,” he said.

Jock Lesly was beginning to nod. It had been a long hard day, and now warmth and comfort and “vivers” and brandy were telling on his powers of discrimination.

“Seems strange! Remember Callum,” he said suddenly, “how afeared o’ Moy Toy the callant was!” He laughed sleepily. “He fairly pined to get us out o’ reach o’”--He paused, nodding.

Once more Callum glanced furtively at Lilias. She sat idly toying with her spoon in the red glow, her blue and white apparel, her golden head, her glimmering neck and shoulders, half revealed by their sheer broideries, all indescribably dainty, fairy-like of effect amid these rude surroundings. Her soft and delicate countenance was calm, inexpressive, inscrutable.

“Hegh, Callum,” said Jock Lesly, seizing the subject again in a waking interval, “that captain-lieutenant--what’s his name? Everard? Aye, Everard! A-weel, Everard was saying that chiel was bein’ passed off on him for a Frenchy. Hegh! my certie! Tam Wilson a Frenchy--Johnny Crapaud”--

His head fell more definitely forward--he was gone at last; the low luxurious susurrus of his breath, almost a snore, filled the room at regular intervals.

Afterward Callum could not appraise the impulse, the instinct, that animated him. The room had dulled to a deep crimson glow; in the waning light of the fire the gray walls of the cave showed without shadows, for the light was not so strong as to duplicate an image. Luckie Meg slept on her stool by the hearth, the collie snored under the table, the gillies were silent in the antechamber; the only suggestion of the world outside was the sound of the river rushing on like life to its ultimate destination, to be lost in the tides of the sea like eternity. In the red gloom Callum was hardly aware if her face were yet so distinct, or because in his memory never a shadow could rest upon it.

He gazed directly into her eyes and beheld them dilate expectantly.

“_You_ knew that he was French, Lilias. _You_ knew it all the time!”

She replied as to an accusation. “No--not all the time--_no_--Callum!”

“And you knew how I loved you--so long--so true--never one else--never another thought! And to cast me aside for him--for _him_! A spy, an emissary, sent to spirit up the Indians against the frontier--for the hideous massacres of women and children.”

“He declared it was not for that. He said his government only sought to utilize the Indians in the same way that the English hae used them in our armies, as soldiers. He only obeyed his orders, as you do yours--being a soldier, forbye an officer.”

“An officer! O Lilias, war is one thing and this is another!”

“I think like you, Callum; though after I heard him tell his plan it didna seem the same; that is--forbye”--Lilias hesitated, sore beset--“I could see how it all had a different face to him. An’ he was na cruel to us--he keepit the Injuns aff us.”

“Because the French plans were not ripe enough for our murder then--and Lilias, you knew it! And let your father warm this serpent by his hearth--in his bosom!”

“I didna ken it at first. No, Callum,” exclaimed Lilias, eager in self-defense, her own fealty to the hamely ingle-neuk in question. “No, and not till the last,” she protested, her voice trembling as she remembered that he had offered to renounce king and country, duty and honor for her. This was not Tam Wilson, however. Tam Wilson would never have done this. And it was Tam Wilson who had been so dear!

“He told me at the last!--the last day but twa or three!--or else I couldna hae abided him!”

Callum, fingering his glass, looked off drearily into the glowing mass of red coals. He was recalling the details of that memorable journey,--those days when she declared that she had had dreams. Dreams, dear indeed, since their tenuity warranted the bitter realities of those hot despairing tears. Dreams, alas, which could not come true! Callum doubted if his persistence had won for him much of value,--the certainty that she had wept for Tam Wilson, because he was not--Tam Wilson!

Jock Lesly was beginning to stir. He snorted, yawned, stretched his arms, then sat up straight and opened his eyes. The walls of the cavern first caught his attention. “Hegh, Callum lad, this is like thae auld days fowk are sae fond o’ talkin’ about, the Feifteen an’ the Forty-five, when the attainted Jacobites hid about in caves an’ hollows, an’ limekilns an’ cellars. Remind ye o’ it?”

Callum slowly appraised the glowing dream-light, the luxurious warmth, the comfortable “vivers,” the half emptied decanters, and thought of the ditch in the moorland and the crevice in the mountain, the cold and the starvation, the loss of fortune and favor, the end in exile or on the scaffold. No--he could not just say that he was reminded of it.

And as Jock Lesly was about to demonstrate the points of similarity in the situation a sudden iterative throbbing shook the earth, and the Highlander sprang to his feet, recognizing the vibrations of the drum beating the tattoo, and saying that he would have a run for it to reach the fort, the barracks, and bed by taps.

XVI

THE detachment of Highlanders that Lieutenant Everard left to reinforce Fort Prince George proved of no great interest to the troops already stationed there pining in the weariness of long inaction. The natural expectation of the revival of zest in life incident to new companionship, fresh experiences, stories still untold, and songs as yet unsung all fell flat in the reality; for few of the newcomers could speak aught but the Gaelic, and they clung together with a pertinacity and a suspiciousness of the “Sassenach sidier,” with whom they were thus unequally yoked, that threatened faction in the little garrison. Hence, to accustom them to their new comrades and break up the clique whenever it was possible, the Highlanders were separately detailed to duty among the English, although on parade, at roll call, and at drill they were segregated and kept within their own ranks.

Callum MacIlvesty was one of the few who could speak English; but although, being a “gentleman ranker,” his lowly station involved association with his military equals, he seemed hardly likely to contribute notably to the mirth of nations. He was preoccupied, gravely brooding much of the time, and even when roused showed a temperament averse to the familiar horseplay of the jocund Britisher. Among his Scotch comrades he was little subject to the irksome constraints of his position as a common soldier. They could gauge and realize his claims to a higher station, and, more than conceding them, showed him a consideration and respect to which he had been accustomed from his earliest youth. He returned their kindness, which thus manifested a touch of the magnanimous, with earnest fellow feeling, and his relations with them were affectionate and even fraternal. To the English contingent at the fort, however, he was merely “a bare-kneed Sawney who held his head stiff and stepped high,” with no justification that they could discriminate, for he, like them, shouldered a musket for pay.

Even in this humble station it seemed to him that fortune was singularly adverse, and that his enforced absence from his regiment had cost him the signal opportunity of his life to achieve distinction or aught of value. Recovering from a wound, but yet unfit for duty, he had been granted a furlough early in the year, which he had spent at Jock Lesly’s trading-house, and afterward, at the moment of eager expectation of sailing to join the Forty-Second in the West Indies, he had been ordered with the small detachment of Highlanders in Charlestown to reinforce the commissioners’ escort because of previous familiarity with the Cherokee country. While he was engaged in this distasteful pacific duty, Moro Castle had been carried by storm and the city of Havanna had capitulated, and the Forty-Second, returning to America, was flushed with victory and elated with glory. There was to be no more fighting, it seemed, and in this tame inaction the winter at Fort Prince George was but a dreary prospect.

The inglorious return of the commissioners’ force from the Cherokee country, and the futile arrest which Everard had attempted, were matters of great moment to the garrison, lying as it did within the borders of the Cherokee possessions; but since the event had been all bloodless, the defeat had been esteemed something of a farce. The English soldiers of the escort, who could understand the fun poked at them, one of the essential constituents of mirthful ridicule, had been mercilessly guyed before their departure for Charlestown; and one memorable night the subject came up anew in the guardroom, when, in pursuance of the plan of detailing the Highlanders to duty separately among the English, Callum chanced to be one of the main-guard.

The firelight from the great stone chimney place flashed on the whitewashed walls and with a metallic glitter was reflected from the stack of arms, in the centre of the puncheon floor, ready for instant use, although the cry “Guard, turn out!” seemed many hours distant down the watches of the night, unless indeed some unforeseen chance should betide. There were several bunks against the wall, which were somewhat superfluous at this hour, for at night the guard were not permitted to seek repose thereon, although not a vigilant eye should be closed. A large door led without to the parade, and a smaller one gave upon an inner apartment which bore the huge lock common to that day and a curiosity in this. The key was evidently turned upon some wight who had found liberty joyous while it lasted, and who now and again sent forth drunken snatches of song, occasionally varied with vociferous affectations of woe, weeping and sniffing and groaning by merry turns, till a freshened joyous impulse would set the catch trolling once more.

The group about the guardroom fire took slight note of these aberrations from the regulation deportment appropriate to the rôle of melancholy prisoner. They were all used to these frequent incarcerations of their jolly comrade, and realized that the rigor of his punishment would befall him when he should be sober enough to profit by it.

A heavy rain beating tumultuously against the walls and splashing from the eaves added zest to the luxury of the great blazing logs and the talk of the group ranged around on the broad hearth of flagstones.

“An’ d’ ye mean to say, Callum,” began a leathern-visaged, weather-beaten soldier, the corporal of the guard, leaning his elbows on his knees as he sat on a great billet of wood, “that as soon as old Moy Toy sneezed three times your Lieutenant Everard give the word ‘_Double-quick while ye can! For’ard, by the rear!_’ and the whole command faced right about and footed it out of the Cherokee country?”

He winked jovially at the others as the big Highlander, half reclining on the floor at one side of the hearth, turned his head slowly and came gradually to a realization of his surroundings.

“I said naething o’ the sort, an’ ye ken it full weel,” Callum replied gruffly.

“That’s not the way to answer your s’perior officer,” the jolly corporal admonished him, with a leer.

“Ye never asked no sic a fule question as my superior officer,” Callum deigned to respond after a pause. “Ask me now if my firelock is clean an’ my cartouch box is ready, an’ I’se gie ye a ceevil answer; but my superior officer hae naught to do wi’ Moy Toy’s sneeshin’.”

“There!” exclaimed the corporal with the affectation of delighted triumph and discovery. “He have said it! He said that Moy Toy sneezed and fairly frighted Lieutenant Everard out of the Cherokee country!”

A roar of laughter rewarded this pleasantry, and hearing the gay sound, the incarcerated soldier struck up with rather a dreary quaver, “‘I’ll ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross!’”

“You will ride a wooden horse as soon as you are sober enough to mount one!” called out the corporal.

A great whining and wheezing and affectations of lamentation ensued on the other side of the door, at which all the guard laughed uproariously.

One of the English contingent, a short, stocky fellow, who had been carefully greasing a pair of feet always kept in the prime order for marching essential to the regular infantry-man, now presented those members glistening and perfect on the edge of the hearth, that the unguents might take full effect by aid of the heat of the fire. He had just been admonished by the corporal of that regulation which forbids the guard to lay aside any of their clothing or accoutrements. He first argued that stockings were neither arms nor garments, then pleaded with the corporal for a momentary respite that the grease might soak into the flesh instead of the fabric of his hose. To take full advantage of the official clemency he sought to create a diversion by resuming with animation the previous subject.

“I wonder,” he said, “if that furriner up there in the Cherokee country is French or a Spaniard. When I was stationed at Gibraltar I learned a deal o’ the lingo of that country.”

A long silence ensued. No surprise was intimated at the extent of the soldier’s service, for so often had he recounted the details of his experiences at Gibraltar and the observations he had collated from Spain that they had grown a burden and had earned for him the sobriquet of “the Señor,”--appropriately, perhaps, mispronounced “the Sinner.”

The recent hostilities between England and Spain gave additional and phenomenal interest to his prelections now.

“The Spaniards are a great people for all that’s come an’ gone,” he resumed presently. “’Twas them strengthened the fortifications at Gibraltar so they are now what they be,” he added significantly.

“They did so! An’ they done it well, begorra!” retorted a big Irishman. “An’,” with a rollicking laugh from his full red lips, “bedad, by the same token we tuk it away from ’um.”

“The Sinner” took no notice of this pertinent corollary of his proposition. He was looking reflectively at his feet, stretched out straight before him as he sat flat on the hearth. His hair stood up straight from his brow and was tied in a thin queue behind. He had small bright eyes, heavy-lidded and downcast now. His face was clear and youthful, with a large jowl, that narrowed toward the mouth, and a short blunt nose. He was a good soldier by line and rule, and of a particularly clean aspect. In fact he had so fresh, scraped, washed an appearance that with his porcine resemblance he suggested, as he sat with his plump pink and white feet and shins bare of hose to the knee, some punctual pig that had accommodatingly cleaned and scalded himself--if such a process were ever possible in the lifetime of swine.

The flames flared furiously up the chimney. Outside the roar of water that intimated the swift flow of the Keowee River could be differentiated from the sound of the rain in a fusillade on the roof and its splashing sweep from the eaves. A roll of thunder far away shook the earth, unseasonable, seemingly irrelevant to the occasion, hardly appurtenant to this steady torrent of wintry rain.

“If that furriner is one of them Dons,” said “the Sinner,” resuming his speculations, his eyes critically on the contour of his great toe, “he knows what’s what. He ain’t there among them Injuns for nothin’. They are the strategists--them Spaniards.”

“Arrah,” exclaimed the Irishman, blowing out his contempt with a cloud of strong tobacco as he smoked his little cutty pipe, “it is just as well, thin, that they have got nothin’ I want. Cubia will contint me--that is, for the presint,” he added, with a bland air of moderation.

For this was before the treaty restoring “the Havannah” to Spain.