CHAPTER XXXIX.

MILDRED BEGINS HER JOURNEY.

The man who writes the history of woman's love will find himself employed in drawing out a tangled skein. It is a history of secret emotions and vivid contrasts, which may well go nigh to baffle his penetration and to puzzle his philosophy. There is in it a surface of timid and gentle bashfulness concealing an underflow of strong and heady passion: a seeming caprice that a breath may shake or a word alarm; yet, all the while, an earnest devotion of soul which, in its excited action, holds all danger cheap that crosses the path of its career. The sportive, changeful, and coward nature that dallies with affection as a jest, and wins admiration by its affrighted coyness; that flies and would be followed; that revolts and would be soothed, entreated, and on bended knee implored, before it is won; that same nature will undergo the ordeal of the burning ploughshare, take all the extremes of misery and distress, brave the fury of the elements and the wrath of man, and in every peril be a patient comforter, when the cause that moves her is the vindication of her love. Affection is to her what glory is to man, an impulse that inspires the most adventurous heroism.

There had been for some days past in Mildred's mind an anxious misgiving of misfortune to Butler, which was but ill concealed in a quiet and reserved demeanor. The argument of his safety seemed to have little to rest upon, and she could perceive that it was not believed by those who uttered it. There rose upon her thoughts imaginings or presentiments of ill, which she did not like to dwell upon, but which she could not banish. And now when Horse Shoe had told his tale, the incidents did not seem to warrant the levity with which he passed them by. She was afraid to express her doubts: and they brooded upon her mind, hatching pain and secret grief. It was almost an instinct, therefore, that directed her resolve, when she announced her determination to go in person in quest of Cornwallis, and to plead Butler's cause herself to the British general. Her soul rebelled at the gross calumny which had been invented to bring down vengeance upon Arthur's head; and she had no thought of thwarting the accuser's wickedness, but by an appeal to the highest power for that redress which an honorable soldier, in her opinion, could not refuse, even to an enemy. As to the personal hazard, inconvenience, or difficulty of her projected enterprise, no thought of either for a moment occupied her. She saw but her purpose before her, and did not pause to reckon on the means by which she was to promote it. She reflected not on the censure of the world; nor on its ridicule; nor on its want of sympathy for her feelings: she reflected only on her power to serve one dearer to her than a friend, upon her duty, and upon the agony of her doubts. If her father had been at hand she might have appealed to him, and, perhaps, have submitted to his counsel; but he was absent, she knew not where, and she was convinced that no time was to be lost. "Even now, whilst we debate," she said, "his life may be forfeited to the malice of the wicked men who have ensnared him."

Her conduct in this crisis is not to be weighed in the scale wherein the seemly and decorous observances of female propriety are ordinarily balanced. The times, the occasion, and the peculiar position of Mildred, take her case out of the pale of common events, and are entitled to another standard. She will be judged by the purity of her heart, the fervor of her attachment, and her sense of the importance of the service she was about to confer. And with the knowledge of these, I must leave her vindication to the generosity of my reader.

When the morning came and breakfast was over, the horses were brought to the door. Henry was active in all the preliminary arrangements for the journey, and now bestirred himself with an increased air of personal importance. Isaac, a grey-haired negro of a sedate, and, like all his tribe, of an abundantly thoughtful length of visage, appeared in a suit of livery, ready booted and spurred for his journey. A large portmanteau, containing a supply of baggage for his mistress, was duly strapped behind his saddle, whilst a pair of pistols were buckled upon the pummel. Henry's horse also had all the furniture necessary to a campaign and the young martialist himself, notwithstanding his sister's disapproval, was begirt with a sword-belt, from which depended a light sabre, with which he was in the habit of exhibiting himself in the corps of the Rangers. His bugle hung gracefully by his side, and his carbine was already provided with a strap to sling it across his back. Stephen Foster was lost in wonder at these sudden preparations, of the import of which he could gain no more intelligence from Henry than that a movement towards the army was intended, of a portentous character.

Horse Shoe sat quietly in the porch looking on with a professional unconcern, whilst his trusty Captain Peter, bearing a pair of saddle-bags, now stuffed with a plethora of provisions, slouched his head, in patient fixedness, waiting the order to move. A bevy of domestics hung around the scene of preparation, lost in conjectures as to the meaning of this strange array, and prosecuting an inquiry to satisfy themselves, with fruitless perseverance.

When Mildred appeared at the door she was habited for her journey. The housekeeper, an aged dame, stood near her.

"My travel, Mistress Morrison," she said, addressing the matron, and at the same time putting a letter into her hand, "I trust will not keep me long from home. If my father should return before I do, be careful to give him that. Mr. Foster, you will not forget your promise," she added, as she delivered the second letter, which, notwithstanding her own expedition, she had prepared for Butler, in the hope that opportunity might favor its transmission by Stephen.

"The gold," said Stephen, putting his hand in his pocket; "you will want it yourself, Miss Mildred, and I can do without it."

"Never mind that," interrupted Mildred. "Keep your promise, and I hope to be able to reward you more according to your deserts."

"Heaven and the saints protect you, Miss Mildred!" said the housekeeper, as the lady bade her farewell. "You leave us on some heavy errand. God grant that you come back with a gayer face than you take away!" Then turning up her eyes, and raising her hands, she ejaculated, "This is an awful thing, and past my understanding!"

Mildred took leave of the rest of the group around the door, and was soon in her saddle. This was a signal for the rest to mount, and as Stephen Foster delivered Henry his rifle, the latter took occasion to whisper in the hunter's ear--

"It is not unlikely, Steve, that we may meet each other again over here in Carolina; so remember to make inquiries for us as you go along, and tell the men I hope to join them before they fire one shot in spite. But mum, Steve, not a word about our route."

Stephen shook hands with his young comrade; and Henry, seeing that the rest of the party had already left the door and were some distance down the hill, called out with an elated tone of good humor--"Farewell, Mrs. Morrison, and all the rest of you!" and putting spurs to his horse galloped off to join his sister.

The route pursued by the travellers lay due south, and during the first three or four days of their journey they were still within the confines of Virginia. To travel on horseback was a customary feat, even for ladies, in those days of rough roads and scant means of locomotion: and such a cavalcade as we have described was calculated to excite no particular inquiry from the passer-by, beyond that which would now be made on the appearance of any party of pleasure upon the high-roads, in the course of a summer excursion. Mildred experienced severe fatigue in the first stages of her journey; but by degrees this wore off, and she was soon enabled to endure the long day's ride with scarcely less inconvenience than her fellow-travellers.

At that period there were but few inns in these thinly-peopled districts, and such as were already established were small and but meagrely provided. This deficiency was, in some degree, compensated by the good will with which the owners of private establishments in the country received the better class of travellers, and the ready hospitality with which they entertained them. Henry took upon himself to obtain information of the gentlemen's seats that lay near the route of his journey, and to conduct the party to them whenever his sister's comfort required better accommodation than the common inns afforded.

As our travellers had thus far kept along that range of country which lay immediately under the mountains, they were not annoyed by the intense heats which, at this season, prevailed in the lowlands. The weather, ever since their departure, had been uncommonly fine, and as is usual in this district, the month of September had brought its cool, dewy nights, whilst the early hours of the morning were even marked by a little sharpness, almost approaching to frost. The effect of this on Mildred was to recruit the weariness of travel, and better enable her to encounter the noon-tide fervors of the sun; and she had so far endured the toils of her journey with an admirable spirit. Actual trial generally results in demonstrating how much we are prone to exaggerate in advance the difficulties of any undertaking. Accordingly, Mildred's present experience strengthened her resolution to proceed, and even communicated an unexpected increase of contentment to her feelings.

On the fifth day the party crossed the river Dan, and entered the province of North Carolina. A small remnant of Gates's shattered army lay at Hillsborough, at no great distance from the frontier; and as Mildred was anxious to avoid the inquiry or molestation to be expected in passing through a military post, she resolved to travel by a lower route, and Horse Shoe, therefore, at her suggestion, directed his journey towards the little village of Tarborough.

Cornwallis, it was understood, since the battle of Camden, had removed his head-quarters into the neighborhood of the Waxhaws, some distance up the Catawba, where he was supposed to be yet stationary. The whole country in the neighborhood of either army was in a state of earnest preparation; the British commander recruiting his forces for further and immediate operations--the American endeavoring to reassemble his feeble and scattered auxiliaries for defence. At the present moment, actual hostilities between these two parties were entirely suspended, in anxious anticipation of the rapidly approaching renewal of the struggle. It was a breathing time, when the panting combatants, exhausted by battle, stood sullenly eyeing each other and making ready--the one to strike, the other to ward off another staggering blow.

The country over which Mildred was now to travel was calculated to tax her powers of endurance to the utmost. It was a dreary waste of barren wilderness, covered with an endless forest of gloomy pine, through which a heavy, sandy road crept in lurid and melancholy shade. Here and there a miserable hut occurred to view, with a few ragged inmates, surrounded by all the signs of squalid poverty. The principal population were only to be seen along the banks of the rivers which penetrated into this region, some twenty or thirty miles distant from each other. The alluvial bottoms through which these streams found a channel to the ocean, were the only tracts of land of sufficient fertility to afford support to man--all between them was a sterile and gloomy forest.

Still, these regions were not deserted. Bodies of irregular troops, ill clothed and worse armed, and generally bearing the haggard features of disease, such as mark the population of a sickly climate, were often encountered upon the road, directing their wearied march towards the head-quarters of the republican army. The rigors of the Southern summer had not yet abated; and it was with painful steps in the deep sand, amid clouds of suffocating dust, that these little detachments prosecuted their journey.

Mildred, so far from sinking under the weariness and increasing hardships of her present toils, seemed to be endued with a capacity for sustaining them much beyond anything that could have been believed of her sex. Her courage grew with the difficulties that beset her. She looked composedly upon the obstacles before her, and encountered them, not only without a murmur, but even with a cheerfulness to which she had hitherto been a stranger. The steadiness of her onward march, her unrepining patience, and the gentle solicitude with which she turned the thoughts of her companions from herself, and forbade the supposition that her powers were over-taxed, showed how deeply her feelings were engaged in her enterprise, and how maturely her mind had taken its resolution.

"One never would have guessed," said Horse Shoe, towards the close of the second day after they had entered North Carolina, "that a lady so daintily nursed as you was at home, Mistress Mildred, could have ever borne this here roughing of it through these piney woods. But I have made one observation, Miss Lindsay, that no one can tell what they are fit for till they are tried; and on the back of that I have another, that when there's a great stir that rouses up a whole country, it don't much signify whether they are man or woman, they all get roused alike. 'Pon my word, ma'am, I have seen men--who think themselves sodgers too--that would be onwilling to trust themselves at this time o' year through such a dried up piece of pine barren as we have been travelling over for two days past."

"You remember the fable of the willow and the oak, Mr. Robinson," replied Mildred, smiling; "the storm may bring down the sturdy tree, but the supple shrub will bend before it without breaking."

"I'm not much given to religious takings-on," said the sergeant, "but sometimes a notion comes into my head that looks a little that way, and that is, when God appoints a thing to be done, he gives them that's to do it all the wherewithals. Now, as Major Butler is a good man and a brave sodger--God bless him!--it does seem right that you, Mistress Lindsay,--who, I take on me to understand enough of your consarns and his'n, without offence, to say has a leaning towards the major,--I say it does seem right and natural that you should lend a hand to help him out of tribulation; and so you see the cause being a good cause, the Lord has given you both wisdom and strength to do what is right."

"We owe, sergeant, a duty to our country; and we serve God and our country both, when we strengthen the hands of its defenders."

"That's a valiant speech, young lady, and it's a noble speech," said Horse Shoe, with an earnest emphasis. "I have often told the major that the women of this country had as honest thoughts about this here war, and was as warm for our cause as the men; and some of them, perhaps, a little warmer. They could be pitted against the women of any quarter of the aqueous globe, in bearing and forbearing both, when it is for the good of the country."

"Henry is asleep on his horse," said Mildred, looking at her brother, who now, jaded and worn with the effort of travel, was nodding and dropping his head forward, and almost losing his seat. "What, Henry, brother!" she added, loud enough to rouse up the young horseman. "My trusty cavalier, are you going to fall from your horse? Where is all that boasted glorification upon which you were disposed to be so eloquent only a week ago? I thought a man on horseback was naturally proud: I fear it was only on holiday occasions you meant, Henry. Hav'n't you a word for a sunny day and a dry journey? You lag more like a miller's boy with his bag of meal, than a young soldier setting out on his adventures."

"Ah, sister," said Henry, waking up, "this is nothing but pine--pine--and sand, without end. There is no game in the woods to keep a man on the look-out, except here and there a herd of wild hogs, that snort and run from us, like a squadron of cavalry, with their bristles set up on their backs as fierce as the back fin of a sunfish. There is not even grass to look at: you might see a black snake running half a mile amongst the trees. And then there are such great patches of burnt timber, every trunk staring right at you, as black as thunder. I'm tired of it all--I want to see the green fields again."

"And, in truth, brother, so do I: but not until we can bring merry faces to look upon them. How far are we from Tarborough?"

"We should be drawing nigh to the town," replied Horse Shoe, "for you may see that we shall soon be out of these woods, by the signs of open country ahead. The last squad of sodgers that passed us, said that when we came to the farms, we shouldn't be more than five miles from the town, and the sun isn't above an hour high."

"In the hope of being soon housed, then, Mr. Robinson, I may confess to you I am somewhat weary; but a good night's rest will put me in fair condition for to-morrow's ride again."

After the lapse of an hour, the party were safely sheltered in a tolerably comfortable inn at the village: and Mildred, aided by the sedulous care of Henry, found herself well bestowed in the best chamber of the house.