Chapter 35

The aide took the chair the general had vacated, and began mechanically the closing of the letters; but when that to the Governor of New Jersey was reached, he paused in the process. After a little, he took from his pocket Janice's frantic supplication, and reread it, his face displaying his response to her suffering. "And ten words would save him," he groaned. His eye sought once more the unsealed letter, and stared at it fixedly. "At worst it will be my life, and that is worth little to me and nothing to any one else!" He snatched a pen hastily, dipped it in the ink, but as he set the tip to the paper, paused, his brow clouded. "To trick him after all his generosity!" For a trice Jack hesitated. "He stands too high to be injured by it," he exclaimed. "It hurts not the cause, while 't will kill her if they hang him." Again he set pen to the paper, and wrote a postscript of four lines below Washington's name. "'T is the devil's work, or her good angel's, that I had the writing of the letters, so the penmanship agrees," he muttered, as he folded and sealed it. Gathering up the batch, he gave a reckless laugh. "I said I'd not lift finger to save him from the rope, and here I am taking his place on the gallows. Well, 't is everything to do it for her, scorn and insult me as they may, and to die with the memory that my arms have held and my lips caressed her."

LIV A GAIN AND A LOSS

It was two days of miserable doubt which Janice spent after despatching her letter to Brereton. Then something Mr. Drinker told his daughter brought some cheer to the girl.

"Friend Penrhyn informed me that Colonel Brereton rode into town this afternoon, Tabitha," he said, at the supper table; "yet, though I went to the tavern to bespeak his company here this evening, I could not get word of him. 'T is neglectful treatment, indeed, of his old friends, that three times in succession he should pass through without dropping in upon us."

"He may still come, father," suggested Tabitha; and more than she spent the evening in a state of expectancy. But bedtime arrived; and the morrow came and went without further news of him who had now become Janice's sole hope, and then she learned that he had ridden northward.

"I knew his temper was hot," she sobbed in her own room, "but never did I believe he could be so cruel as to come and go without word or sign."

From the trial, which occurred but three days after this crushing disappointment, the public were excluded, not even Mrs. Meredith and Janice being permitted to attend. The result, therefore, was first brought them by Bagby, who, though his services had been refused by Mr. Meredith, had succeeded in being present.

"The squire's lawyer," he told them, "was n't up to a trick or two that I had thought out, and which might have done something; but he made a pretty good case, if he could n't save him. Morris's charge was enough to convict, but every juryman was ready to vote 'Guilty' before the Chief Justice had so much as opened his mouth."

"Is there nothing to do?" cried Mrs. Meredith.

"I'll see the Governor, and I'll get my friends to see him," promised Bagby; "but don't you go to raising your hopes, for there is n't one chance in a hundred now."

Once again Mrs. Meredith sought interview with Livingston, but the Governor refused to even see her; and both Mr. Drinker's and Bagby's attempts succeeded little better, for they could only report that he declined to further discuss the matter, and that the execution was set for the following Friday.

Abandoning all hope, therefore, Mrs. Meredith wrote a letter, merely begging that they might spend the last night with Mr. Meredith in the jail; and when the next morning she received a call from the Governor, she only inferred that it was in relation to her plea.

"It has been far from my wish, Mrs. Meredith," Livingston said, "to bring suffering to you more than to any one else, and the position I have taken as regards your husband was only that which I deemed most for the good of the State, and most in accord with public opinion. The vipers of our own fireside require punishment; your husband had made himself one of the most conspicuous and unpopular of these by the office he held under the king, and no reason could I discover why he should not reap the punishment he fitly deserved. But this morning a potent one was furnished me, for I received a letter from General Washington, speaking in high terms of Mr. Meredith, and expressing a hope that we will not push his punishment to the extreme of the law. It is the first time his Excellency has ever ventured an opinion in a matter outside of his own concern, and I conclude that he believes stringent justice in this case will injure more than aid our cause; and as the use of his name furnishes me with an explanation that will satisfy the Assembly and people of this State, I can be less rigorous. That you should not endure one hour more of anxiety than need be, I have hurried to you, to tell you that I shall commute his sentence to imprisonment with the other political prisoners in Virginia."

The scene of gratitude and joy that ensued was not describable, and some hours passed before either mother or daughter became sufficiently composed to take thought of the future. Then, by permission of the jailer, they saw Mr. Meredith and discussed the problem before them. Neither wife nor daughter could bear the thought of again being separated from the squire, and begged so earnestly to be allowed to share the half-captivity, half-exile, that had been decreed him, that he could not deny them, the more that his own heart-strings in reality drew the same way, and only his better judgment was opposed to it.

"'T will be a hard journey, wife," he urged, "and little comfort we're like to find at the end of it. For me there can be no escape, but 't is not necessary that ye should bear it, for 't is to be hoped ye can live on at Greenwood, as ye have already."

"We should suffer more, Lambert, in being separated from thee."

"Oh, dadda, nothing could be worse than that," cried Janice, her arms about his neck.

"Have your way, then," finally acceded their lord and master.

This settled, they set about such preparations as were possible. From Mr. Drinker a loan of five thousand dollars-- equal to a hundred pounds, gold--was secured, and a bargain struck with a farmer to bring from Greenwood such supplies of clothes as Mrs. Meredith wrote to Sukey to pack and send. To most the prospect would not have been a cheering one, but after the last few days it seemed truly halcyon, and Janice was scarcely able to contain her happiness. She poured her warmest gratitude and thanks out in a letter to Washington, which would have surprised him not a little had he ever received it, but the mail in which it went was captured, and it was a British officer in New York who ultimately read it. Nor did this effusion satisfy her.

"Oh, mommy," she joyfully bubbled, as they were preparing for bed, "was there ever a greater or nobler or kinder man than General Washington?"

And though the first frost of the season was forming crystals on the panes, she knelt down in her short night-rail on a lamb's wool rug, so small that her little feet rested on the cold boards, and prayed for the general as he had probably never been prayed for,--prayed until she was shivering so that her mother interfered and ordered her to come to bed.

Her prayers were far more needed by some one else. From the commission of his wrong, Brereton made it a point to meet the post-rider as he trotted up to headquarters each afternoon, and on the third day after the action of the Governor, he found in the mail a letter which told him of the success of his trick. While he was still reading, Colonel Hamilton came to him with a message that Washington desired his presence and, squaring his shoulders and setting his mouth as if in preparation for an ordeal, Jack hastened to obey, though, as he came to the closed doorway he hesitated for a moment before he knocked, much as if his courage failed him.

Upon entrance, he found his superior striding up and down the room, a newspaper in his hand, and without preliminary word the general gave expression to his obvious anger.

"I would have you know, Colonel Brereton," sternly he began, "that I am not the man to overlook disobedience of my orders, nor pass over, without a rebuke, such disrespect as you have shown me."

"I do not deny that your Excellency has cause for complaint," replied Jack, steadily; "and in acting as I did I was fully prepared for whatever results might flow from it, even the penalty of life itself; but, believe me, sir, my chief grief will ever be the having deceived you, and my real punishment can be inflicted by no court-martial you may order, but will be in the loss of your trust and esteem."

"You speak in riddles, sir," responded Washington, halting in his walk. "Cause for anger I have richly, for, as I told my whole family, any challenge they might send General Lee would, by the public, be ascribed to persecution. But you know as well as I that your duel with him is no offence to submit to a court-martial, and that you should pretend that I have any such recourse is adding insincerity to the original fault. You have--"

"That, sir, is a charge I indignantly deny," interrupted Jack, warmly, "and I was referring--"

"No denial can justify your conduct, sir," broke in Washington, wrathfully. "You have exposed me to the criticism and misapprehension of the public. By your disregard of my orders and my wishes, you have deservedly forfeited all right to my favour or my affection."

"Your Excellency forgets--"

"I forget nothing," thundered the general. "'T is you have forgotten the respect and obedience due me from all my family and--"

"Think you an aide is but a slave," retorted Brereton, hotly, "and that he possesses no right of independent action? Nor did I conceive that your Excellency would ever judge me unheard. I did--"

"The case is too palpable for--"

"Yet misjudge me you have, for I did not challenge Lee because he had insulted you, but because he was shamefully persecuting the woman I love."

Washington, who had resumed his angry pacing of the room, once again halted. "Explain your meaning, sir."

"In your heat, your Excellency has clearly forgot the tale Miss Meredith's letter told of General Lee's conduct as regards herself and her father. With the feeling I bear for her, human nature could not brook such behaviour, and it was that for which I challenged him."

The general stood silent for a moment, then said, "I have been too hasty in my action, Brereton, and have drawn a conclusion that was not justified. I owe you an apology for my words, and trust that this acknowledgment will end the misunderstanding." He offered his hand, as he ended, to the aide.

"I thank your Excellency," answered Jack, "for your prompt reparation, but before accepting it and taking your hand, sir, it is my painful necessity to tell you that I have fully merited all the anger you have expressed. Guiltless as I am of fault as regards General Lee, I have committed a far greater offence against you,--a wrong, sir, which, done with however much deliberation, has caused me unending pain and remorse."

"Explain yourself, my boy," said Washington, kindly.

"Despite your decision, sir, I added a postscript in your letter to Governor Livingston touching upon the case of Mr. Meredith, and made you express a good opinion of him and a recommendation that he be dealt with leniently. I now hold in my hand a letter from a Trenton friend informing me that this recommendation induced the Governor to commute the death sentence into imprisonment. It is but the news I awaited before informing your Excellency of my breach of trust; and I should have made full confession to you within the hour, had you not sent for me, as I supposed, to charge me with this very treachery. And 't was this of which I was thinking when I spoke expectingly of a court-martial."

During the whole explanation, Washington had stood fixedly, his brows knit, and when the aide paused, he said nothing for a minute; then he asked:--

"Has there been aught in the past, sir, to have made me merit from you such a stab?"

"None, sir," answered Jack, gravely. "And whatever reason I can find for the action in my own heart, there is nothing I can offer in its defence to you."

Washington sat down at his desk and leaned his head on his hand. "Is it not enough," he said, "that Congress is filled with my enemies, that the generals on whom I must depend are scheming my ruin and their own advancement, but that even within my own family I cannot find those who will be faithful to me? My God! is there no one I can trust?"

"Your Excellency's every word," said Jack, with tears in his eyes, "cuts me to the heart, the more that nothing you can say can increase the blame I put upon myself. I beg of you, sir, to believe me when I say that, be your grief what it may, it can never equal mine. And I beg that if my past relations to you plead ever so little for a merciful judgment of my conduct, you will remember that my betrayal was committed from no want of affection for you, but because one there was, and but one alone, whom I loved better."

Washington rose and faced Brereton, his self-control regained. "Your lapse of duty to the cause we are engaged in, sir, and my sense of it, make it out of the question that I should ever again trust you; it is therefore impossible for me longer to retain you upon my staff. But your loyalty and past service speak loudly in your favour, and I shall not, therefore, push your public punishment further than to demand your resignation from my family, and so soon as there is a vacancy among the officers of the line you will take your place according to the date of your commission. The wrong you have done me personally is of a different nature, and ends from this moment the affection I have borne you and such friendship as has existed between us."

LV PRISONERS OF WAR

The Governor had warned the Merediths that the removal to Charlottesville must await the chance of an empty army transport, or other means of conveyance, and for more than a month they waited, not knowing at what hour the order would come.

Finally they were told to be ready the following morning; and at daybreak the three, with a guard, were packed into a hay cart, the larger part of the townsfolk collecting to view their departure. Nor did Mr. Bagby, who had made a number of calls upon them in the interval, fail to appear for a good-by.

"Just you remember, miss," he urged, "that my arguments and General Washington's was what saved your dad, and that I can still do a lot to save your property. Don't forget either that I'm going to go on rising. Only think it over well, and you'll see which side your bread is buttered on, for, if you are mighty good-looking, you 're no fool."

"Thank you, Mr. Bagby, for everything you have done or tried to do," replied the girl; and the squire, who had heard the whole speech, said nothing, though the effort to remain silent was clearly a severe one.

"Whither do we go first?" asked Mrs. Meredith of the driver, after the ferry-boat had left the Jersey shore and the spectators both behind.

"Our orders is to take you to Reading, an' hand you over to the officer in charge of the Convention snogers, pervided the last detachment hev n't left theer; if they hev, we are to lick up till we overtake them."

"What regiment is that?" questioned Janice.

"Guess ye 're a bit green on what 's goin' on," chuckled one of the guard. "Them 's poppy-cock, hifalutin, by-the-grace-of-God an' King Georgie, come-in-an'-surrender-afore-we-extirpate-yer, Johnny Burgoyne's army, as did a little capitulatin' themselves. We've kep' 'em about Boston till we've got tired of teamin' pork an' wheat to 'em, an' now we're takin' 'em to where the pigs an' wheat grows, to save us money, an' to show 'em the size of the country they calkerlated to overrun. I guess they'll write hum that that job 's a good one to sub-let, after they've hoofed it from Cambridge to Charlottesville."

The departure had been well timed, for when they drove into Reading, about five, long lines of men, garbed in green or red uniforms, were answering the roll-call as a preliminary to having quarters for the night assigned to them in the court-house, churches, and school. After much search, the officer in command was found, and the prisoner turned over to him, to his evident displeasure.

"Heavens!" he complained, "is it not bad enough to move two thousand troops, a third of whom no man can understand the gibberish of, to say nothing of General de Riedesel's wife and children, but I must have other women to look out for? I wish that Governor Livingston would pardon less and hang more!"

Unpromising as this beginning was, it proved a case of growl and not of bite, for the colonel speedily secured a night's lodging for them in a private house, and the next morning made a place for the two women beside the driver of one of the carts of the baggage train, the squire being ordered to march on foot with the column.

The journey proved a most trying one. The November rains, which wellnigh turned the roads from aids into obstacles, so impeded them that frequently they were not able to compass more than six or seven miles in a day, and it sometimes happened, therefore, that they were not able to reach the village or town on which they had been billeted, and were compelled to spend the night in the open fields, often with scanty supplies of provisions as an additional discomfort. From the inhabitants of the villages and farms, too, they met with more kicks than ha'pence. Again and again the people refused to sell anything to those whom they considered their enemies, and some even denied them the common courtesy of a drink of water. The chief amusement of the children along the route was to shout opprobrious or derisive epithets as they passed, not infrequently accompanied with stones, rotten apples, and now and then the still more objectionable egg. The squire's opinion of Whiggism went to an even lower pitch, but his womenkind bore it unflinchingly and uncomplainingly, happy merely in the escape from greater suffering.

As for Janice, she took what came with such merriness and good cheer that she was soon friends not merely with a number of their fellow-companions in misery, the British and Brunswick officers, but with the officers of their escort of Continental troops, and they were all quickly vying to do the little they could to add to the Merediths' comfort and ease. Of the miserable lodgings, whether in town or field, they were sure to be given the least poor; no matter how short were the commons, their needs were supplied; at every halting-place they received the first firewood cut; and time and again some one of the officers dismounted that Mr. Meredith might take his place in the saddle for an hour.

The girl made a yet more fortunate acquaintance on a night of especial discomfort and privation, after they had crossed the Pennsylvania boundary and were well into the semi-wilderness of the Blue Ridge Mountains. A washed away bridge so delayed their morning progress that they had advanced only a little over five miles, and were still four miles from their appointed camping ground, when the first snowstorm of the season set in, and compelled them to bivouac along the road-side. The ration issued to each prisoner on that particular afternoon consisted of only a half-pound of salt pork and a handful of beans; and as she had frequently done before, Janice set out to make a tour of the straggling farms of the neighbourhood, in the hope of purchasing milk, eggs, or other supplies to eke the scanty fare. At the first log cabin she came to she made her request, and for a moment was hopeful, for the woman replied:--

"Yes. I have eggs and milk and chickens, and vegetables in a great plenty, but--"

"And what are your prices?"

"--But not a morsel of anything do you get. You come to our land to kill us and to waste our homes. Now it is our turn to torment you. I feed no royalists."

Her second application drew forth an even sterner rebuff, for the housewife, before Janice had said half of her speech, cried, "Be off with you, you Tory! think you I would give help to such nasty dogs?"

The third attempt was equally futile, for she was told: "Not for a thousand dollars would I give you anything, and if you would all die of hunger, 't would be so much the better."

The maiden was long since too accustomed to this treatment to let it discourage her, and in her fourth essay she was more fortunate. While the woman was refusing, the farmer himself appeared upon the scene, and moved by pity, or perhaps by the youth and beauty of the petitioner, vetoed his wife's decision, and not merely filled her pail with milk, but added a small basket of eggs and apples, declining to accept the one hundred dollars in Continental bills she tendered.

Her quest had taken Janice nearly two miles away from her quarters, and in returning with this wealth she was compelled to pass the length of the encampment. This brought her presently to a large tent, from which issued the sobs of a child, intermixed with complaints in French of cold and hunger, with all of which a woman's voice was blended, seeking to comfort the weeper.

On impulse, the girl turned aside and looked through the half-closed flap. Within she saw a woman of something over thirty years of age, with a decidedly charming face, sitting on a camp-stool with a child of about three years old in her arms and two slightly older children at her feet, from one of whom came the wails.

"We do not know each other, Madame de Riedesel," Janice apologised in the best French she could frame, "but Captain Geismar and others have told me so much about you that I-- I--" There Janice came to a halt, and then in English, colouring as she spoke, she went on, "'T is mortifying, but though I thought I had become quite a rattler in French, the moment I need it, I lose courage."

"Ach!" cried Madame de Riedesel. "Nevair think. I speak ze Anglais parfaitement. Continuez."

"I was passing," explained Janice, mightily relieved, "and hearing what your little girl was saying, I made bold to intrude, in the hope that you will let me share my milk and eggs with the children." As she spoke, Janice held out to each of the three a rosy-cheeked apple, and the sobs had ended ere her explanation had.

"Ah!" cried the woman, "zees must be ze Mees Meredeez whom zay told me was weez ze waggons in ze rear, and who, zay assure me, was a saint. Zat must you be, to offer your leettle store to divide with me. Too well haf I learned how difficile it ees to get anyzing from zeese barbarians."

"They are hard, madame," explained Janice, "because they deem us foes."

"But women cannot be zare enemies, and yet ze women ze worst are. Ma foi! Weez ze army I kept through ze wilderness, ze bois, from Canada, and not one unkind or insult did I receef, till I came to where zere were zose of my own sex. Would you beleef it, in Boston ze femme zay even spat at me when I passed zem on ze street. And since from Cambridge we started, when I haf wished for anyzing, my one prayer zat it shall be a man and not a woman I must ask it has been. Ze women, I say it weez shame, are ze brutes, and ze men, zay seek to be gentle, mais, helas! zay are born of ze women!

Janice, pouring half her milk into an empty bowl that was on the table, and dividing her eggs, smiled archly as she said, "I fear, then, that my call is not a welcome one, since, helas! I am a woman."

The baroness spilled the little girl from lap to floor as she sprang to her feet and clasped the caller in her arms. "You are une ange," she cried," and I geef you my lofe, not for now, but for ze all time for efer."