Part 31

“Callum took the man! It was Callum, and he maun hae the credit!” Jock Lesly jubilantly declared as he sat rubbing his hands by the fire, his snowy match-coat sending up a steam as the drifts melted from it, for he was just returned from the fort. “Captain Howard is as gleg as a grig! He hae won his majority by this bit o’ wark, I mak nae dout!”

“What will be the Frenchman’s name?” demanded Lilias, her lips dry as she stared, dismayed, startled, forlorn, into the fire.

“A-weel--a-weel--hinny, and that’s the curious part of it! It’s that Tam Wilson, the loon we nursed clear of the fever! And I misdoubts it’s misprision o’ treason, or some o’ thae unchancy crimes--only we kenned naught aboot him!” And Jock Lesly’s rich rollicking laughter filled the room.

“He helped us out o’ the kentry, an’ kep’ Moy Toy frae takin’ our scalps!” she replied reproachfully.

Jock Lesly paused to look down at her gravely, his big eyes round. “Hout, fie!” he ejaculated. “Ony French chiel protect _me_! An’ frae auld Moy Toy, that I have foregathered wi’ ever since the kentry was built! Mair likely he spirited up the chief to trouble us an’ to burn my tradin’-house an’ a’ my gear! It seems to me I jaloosed su’thin’ o’ the sort at ane time! Na, na, Lilias; if he helped us at a’, it was lest our murder hurt the French interest an’ set the British at the Injuns afore the chiels were ready for their bluidy wark.”

She gazed, deeply serious, at the fire. She too thought this more than likely, in the light of what she had known earlier, and knew more certainly now. She gave a long sigh of pity for the captive; but these were the fortunes of war that every soldier must needs risk, and with which women had no concern.

“Na, bairn, na!” her father boasted. “Auld Jock Lesly can tak care o’ his ain, an’ hae dune it this mony a day! He needna hae Tam Wilson cluttered up wi’ heed o’ him an’ his! But, lass!” he broke into a roar of jovial laughter, “to see up yon at the fort the major--hegh, sirs, it’s for luck that I suld sae miscall the captain--ter see him gloat ower Everard. He canna be quit o’ glorifying that he tuk him in sae hard a measure when Everard had him like a bird in a trap.”

“What for did Lieutenant Everard let him slip?” she asked, turning her head upward to look at her father’s face.

“A fule needs no reason, lass, for bein’ a fule, but he wadna believe Callum, because the lad could urge naething except that the man spoke French--which Callum himsel’ can do, though that wad never prove him a toad.”

“An’ how is it that this captain was sae muckle wiser?” persisted Lilias. “Lieutenant Everard is a finer lookin’ man than Captain Howard, an’ his hair curls amaist as weel as mine.”

“Oh, ho!” shouted Jock Lesly, smiting his thigh in the fervor of his relish, “that only proves he has the better thatch, not the bigger house! A-weel, now--a-weel--ilka man suld hae his due! ’Twas not till lately--an’ Lieutenant Everard was gone--that Callum learned for _sure_ that the man is French,--for you see the fallow himsel’,--and he is a fule too, for all his hair curls,--he tauld a woman that he is French and gave her his name and employ, and the woman tauld Callum! My certie, in ilka mischief there’s aye a woman at wark!” Then with a changed note, “Hegh, Lilias!” he exclaimed sharply.

For Lilias, screaming, had sprung to her feet. It was she--and she saw it now--who had delivered him bound and helpless into the hands of his enemy! She cared not for him now as Tam Wilson, but for the awful responsibility she had taken. Her habitual candor was beaten back upon her lips by the untoward effects of her recent disclosure. She restrained with difficulty the child-like impulse to reveal the mystery to her father, who was alarmed, amazed, agitated. She protested that the fire had burned her, flinging out a spark, and demanded peevishly why he must needs be always sending such crackling and splitting varieties of wood to their hearth in the cave-house. With wisps of his frowzy light hair falling over his florid face as he bent his head, he was presently stepping about to find the blazing splinter in the buffalo rug, and although he now and again desisted, with the comment “A-weel, it will no set _this_ biggin’ in a low!” he shortly, with the force of habit, commenced the search anew.

It was the custom of Lilias to avoid the trading-house, for she was more fastidious and exacting than her simple opportunities might seem to imply. But Jock Lesly was by no means poor, and it had been his delight to lavish such luxuries as in his limited apprehension he accounted desirable upon his only child, and thus she had been reared in a degree beyond her station. To-day, however, she was here, there, and everywhere, listening to the loud jocular comments of a few of the soldiers from the fort, who were now and again in the store and disposed to talk of the capture. The transition thence was obviously to gossip about the prisoner. A hearty, well-favored lad he was, so they understood from the detail that had captured him. He had given them little trouble, and they liked him well. He was a proper lad and active afoot, and bore the hardships of the march finely. They hardly knew what to do with him at the fort till he could be sent forward to Charlestown. They thought Captain Howard himself was puzzled as to the method of his disposition. Certainly,--in reply to a question from Jock Lesly,--military prisoners, that is, French officers, had been in times past kept in the hospital, and giving their parole had been permitted occasionally the freedom of the parade ground. This fellow, however, was captured out of uniform and without ostensible military employ, and would be held as a civil prisoner, though they had him now hard and fast in the guard-house. The talk of peace negotiations with France would do him no good,--the stirrer-up of savages on the frontier, just subdued by the English at so great a cost of blood and treasure, and at peace with the colonies, would never lack for a charge in Charlestown that would stick. He would be accused of murders, and of the instigation of those massacres that had already violated the peace negotiated with the Cherokees. And then one of the soldiers passed his hand across his throat with an ugly gesture, rolled up his eyes with a leer, and gave a click of the tongue inexpressibly loathsome, at which, unaccountably, they all laughed.

Lilias, hovering about among the swaying fabrics depending from the beams, turned sick and faint. She it was who had done this, in her foolish inadvertence thinking that all was now known to Callum,--she, who had the man’s secret that she had promised never to tell--nay, he had voluntarily trusted himself to her honor!

Her face was drawn and white. The chill of the day was in her heart. As one of the Indians whisked a hand mirror into which he was gazing with gurgling rapture at his hideous countenance, she caught sight of her own reflection, so wan, so appealing, so agonized, that she braced her nerves anew that her face might not betray her grief, although she felt at the end and hoped naught.

A number of the braves of the Muscogee escort who had participated in the march subsequent to the capture of the prisoner had repaired, although exhausted and half drunk, to the trading-house as inevitably as the needle to the pole, and were engaged in delightedly rummaging such of its trifles as were accessible. They were meeting with special welcome at Fort Prince George, at the officers’ quarters, the barracks, the kitchen, the trading-house being generously treated, their services having proved available in so serious an emergency. Naturally with such subjects, their instinct was to impose upon this disposition, and to magnify the obligations it betokened.

“Haud a care, Dougal,” Jock Lesly charged the under-trader. “Thae chiels covet ilka bawbee’s worth in the house, an’ Providence permittin’ I suld like fine to save the roof!”

Perhaps it was this absorption that caused him to be more oblivious of Lilias to-day than usual, though even in its midst he had a heedful notice of her. “Hegh, lass,” he stopped her once in passing, “but ye hae a’ the snaw in your face the day, an’ your bonny blue e’en are a wee dreary. I misdoots the climate here wi’ a’ its changes an’ cantrips isna suited to ye like Charlestoun. Gae doun to the fire in the ha’ house; it’s warmer there.”

When she quitted the trading-house he did not know. She was all alone, attended only by the old collie, who would not be driven back, although she childishly pinched his ears and pulled his tail and put him to all the pain she could. Her visit to the fort was a very distinct surprise to Captain Howard and contravened his impressions of her hitherto. Being a man of about forty-five years of age, and having daughters of his own far away, he entertained rather strict ideas of the becoming in maidenly conduct. It may have been her own natural dignity, or the arrogance of a girl reared beyond her station, or the indifference of one perceiving the raw material of suitors apparently inexhaustible in the garrisons of the frontier, but she had been hitherto somewhat unapproachable by the men at the post, averse to those of the ruder social level of her father’s daughter, and suspicious and cold to those above. Therefore when she cast upon Captain Howard a smile, the radiance of which might have thawed out all Fort Prince George, he was mystified and expectant.

Her first words, however, put him at ease as he sat at the table in the orderly room with an ensign opposite and two or three noncommissioned officers with their reports standing at attention.

“I’m fu’ glad to catchit you at your wark, Captain,” she said with her most dulcet intonation, swaying the half open door, and looking against the snowy expanse of the parade without like some clear fine painting on a pearly surface. “I wad like ill to harry ye out o’ your hour o’ ease, wi’ a’ thae bodies,” she glanced about at the orderlies and the sentry and a squad of men outside, “to weigh sae heavy on your mind.”

She hesitated as she stood in her puce-colored serge skirt, from which the snow dripped, a heavy red rokelay thrown around her, and one of those “screens,” half shawl, half veil, worn by women in the lowlands as well as the highlands of Scotland, brought over her head in the muffling manner usual in wintry weather. Beneath its loosened folds her golden hair, her pink and white dimpled face, her glittering teeth and red lips, showed captivatingly, and Captain Howard must have been something more than military and human had he not offered her a chair.

“I canna sit, for I hinna a moment,” she replied, but she came toward the fire, and an orderly, mindful of the blast, promptly shut the door as she relinquished her hold upon it. “I wad hae sent somebody, but thae chiels of Injuns are fair crowding out the packmen at the trading-house, and my daddy winna spare a man to leave there till the Muscogees are far awa’--twal mile or more.”

Her eyes twinkled alluringly, in ridicule of auld Jock’s thrifty bent, and Captain Howard smiled responsively.

“Sae fur the lack of a better messenger I maun e’en do my ain errand. You see, Captain,”--she leaned against the back of a chair, and he opposite, having taken a seat with the anticipation of her acceptance of his proffer, gazed at her expectantly,--“the soldiers are making much o’ Callum, an’ my daddy is looking after the Muscogees, an’ I was minded to consider that naebody is like to care much for the prisoner. So knowin’ you hinna too much beddin’ gear at the fort, an’ the weather bein’ freakish cauld, I thought I wad roll up a blanket or twa an’ some furs for the creatur’s bed.”

He was surprised for a moment, vaguely suspicious, doubtful.

“Just for a loan, ye maun understand,” she stipulated primly. “When the weather breaks I sall look to hae them a’ again.”

This thrifty afterthought was so characteristic of Jock Lesly and his household that the officer’s mind instantly cleared. He remembered previous instances of such thoughtfulness on her part, but manifested then toward the hospital. Indeed in a passing illness he had himself been the pleased recipient of wine whey, arrowroot gruel, mulled port, chocolate, and calves’ foot jelly.

He hastened to express his appreciation of the timeliness of her offering. “The usual arrangements are somewhat scant for such weather, and I have no doubt it is needed. The guard-house prison has no fire, and it must be pretty chilly there, though there is a great chimney in the next room.”

“Will ye no look at the gear?” She produced from under her cloak a bundle compactly made up, from the edges of which otter fur showed.

The officer politely waived the precaution.

“Not at all necessary.” Then somewhat wearied with these details, which the fairest face could not commend for indefinite contemplation,--at least to one having attained forty-five years,--“Will you be so good as to give them to the orderly? Nevins, take them to the guard-house.”

But Lilias, turning upon the advancing soldier, clasped her bundle in a closer clutch. “I’m no sae clear that the prisoner-body will e’er see them--an’ sall I get them a’ again? Thae bit duds are unco gude,” she added, as if loath to part from them.

The soldier reddened to the eyebrows under this imputation, and the officer, disillusioned of his admiration by this crafty, untimely, ignoble, unfounded suspiciousness, sought to rid himself of the whole affair.

“Take them yourself to the prisoner, then, and count them before leaving them, so that you may be sure of having them all returned. Baker, see to it that the sentry at the guard-house passes her.”

As she went out, “‘Aye be getting and aye be having,’” he quoted, “a chip of the old block.” He said this as if to himself, but aloud, partly to assuage the lacerated feelings of the man whom he had called Nevins, and as if her suspiciousness were not a personal flout, but merely appertained to the cautious thrift of her canny Scotch nature.

The guard had turned out upon the advance from the woods of a considerable body of Indians, who, however, proved to be only neighboring tribesmen without organization, but eager and curious concerning the excitements at the fort, of which they had heard in the adjacent Cherokee town of Keowee. They were not to be permitted to enter, as they evidently desired, but their pertinacity to this end detained the officer of the guard for a few minutes, while he sought to pacify them by giving them authentic details on those points about which they were most inquisitive. Meantime the guard, lined up, stood in a glittering rank of scarlet and steel on the snowy spaces just in front of the gate.

The guardroom was thus empty when Lilias, admitted by the sentry at the outer door of the building, made her way with hasty, disordered steps through the apartment. She hesitated at the inner door for an instant, not recognizing the beating of her own heart, which at first she mistook for some turbulent alarum outside, drumming the whole garrison to arms. The next moment she plunged into the room, and there was Tam Wilson! oh puir Tam Wilson! so pinched, so blue, so cold, sitting in this frostbound cell, with his head upon the table, and his face in his hands,--all his plans congealed in this hard freeze of fate and dead like other transient blooms of the year under the snow.

As he looked up at the sound of her step, he recognized her upon the instant. A faint wan smile quivered in his face. He was about to speak, but she laid her finger warningly upon her lips. Then with one hasty glance at the closed door behind her, she tore her bundle open and rushed at him. She had another skirt such as she herself wore--of brown serge, but little to choose between the shades--and slipped it over his head in one moment. Then as she vainly sought to make her slender waistband meet about his middle, although he too was slim, she commented in a whisper, “My certie! to be built like a cask! I’ll een pin it in the plaits, but it will no hing straight in the hem!” She doffed her red cloak to throw it about him; her screen was on his head, and realizing her intention, he could but kiss her hands as she adjusted it under his chin, muffling his face and shoulders as she had herself worn it, and taking the precaution to pin it here and there. “For ye’ll get it aff afore ye are to the woods if I dinna haud a care; an’ once in the woods by the river ye’ll find under that big crag a canoe, an’ below the seat a gude store of food an’ wine. An’ to Charlestoun, lad, straight down the Keowee River and the Savannah an’ out to sea! Some French ship will tak ye up, I mak nae doubt. The pursuit will set the other way--to the Cherokee country.”

“And you?”

“Never fear! I’ll bide here--safe--amang my friends. Walk like me if ye can; but be aff, callant, if ye luve your life!”

She sank into his chair; and mercurial though he was, he could scarcely take up the rôle with the spirit with which she had laid it down. As he opened the door into the guardroom he saw that the soldiers had not yet returned. He barely glanced at the sentry whom he passed on the outer step; and although the notice of the soldier was but the casual attention of recognition and expectation, he felt the man’s look as if it had been red-hot steel laid on a tender nerve. He walked down slowly into the snow, blessing its depth that should make any eccentricity of gait, except a long stride, seem the incident of its impeding medium. In meeting the guard halfway returning from the gate, he had but to mince modestly along, not lifting his eyes, the screen drawn quite over his face; and since Miss Lilias was an uncommonly tall woman and the Frenchman of but medium height, the difference was not immediately apparent.

A sudden swift rush behind him just before he reached the gate--that great envious portal that barred him from all his world, from safety, from life itself--and he felt that he must drop here in the snow and die, if so happy a fate as a death thus he might crave.

He had not had time to cry aloud in terror, in nervous stress, in absolute despair, when the pursuing presence whizzed past, then returning, leaped and fawned and wheezed about him with such evident blissful recognition that if Miss Lilias Lesly had no other point of identification to the eye of the sentry it would have been supplied in the jovial manner of her companion, the faithful old collie. The soldier presented arms as her semblance passed, to which extravagant compliment the figure returned a bow of marked courtesy, and then followed over the snow the frantically bounding collie, that was fairly frenzied with joy to see and recognize anew, despite his feminine frippery of attire, his friend of auld lang syne, Tam Wilson; for the instinct of the collie was not so limited an endowment as the intelligence of the sentry and the main guard.

XXI

IN her after life Lilias often reviewed her sentiments as she sat there in the blue cold, with that curious suggestion of grit in the air common to a low temperature, the repulsion to the dust of the place more pronounced and apparent to the sensitive finger-tips than if it were summer. She had wrapped herself in the otter-fur mantle that she had carried in view of the relinquishment of her red rokelay to the fugitive. Presently she put both feet on the rungs of the chair and crouched forward like some tiny animal, her golden hair barely glimpsed beneath the light brown tints of the fur. Sometimes she put her blue hands to her mouth to feel how chill they were, and blew her warm breath upon them; then again she clenched the trembling fingers and drew her mantle closer. How cold it was! How had he endured it! It might be colder still on the river, but he was speeding toward freedom, and there was genial warmth in the mere suggestion. How cruel men were to each other! And he was but obeying the behests of his government, as Captain Howard regarded as sacred every scrawl that reached him from headquarters.

Now and again the sounds from the guardroom caught her attention,--a tramp of feet with a measured swinging gait, a snatch of song, and presently a droning deep voice going on and on, as one should say for an hour or more, with but little interruption, telling a long story.