Part 17

“I would have undertaken to move Sir Henry’s army in the mass to serve you, dear,” I replied. Then I rehearsed the simple details again, so there might be no misunderstanding. “You are to make yourselves ready and stay here quietly until Captain Sprigg comes for you, no matter how late that may be. He will take you by the quieter streets to the river, and his boat will be in waiting. Once on board the schooner, you must obey the captain in everything. He may have to fight his way out of the harbor; I hope he may not, but it is possible. If he does--”

“If he does, I shall not forget that I am a Leigh, and that my lover is the handsomest, bravest soldier that ever drew sword,” she said, making me blush again. Then she passed suddenly to my affair. “But you have been talking altogether of us and our safety, Dick, and I am much more concerned for yours. I know now that you are a true man and no traitor, and the knowledge makes me shiver and cringe for every passing moment: you’ll be taken--and--I shall not be here. Oh, Dick! when will it be over? How long must you stay here under the shadow of that dreadful thing on Gallows Hill?”

“It will be over--to-night,” I prophesied, comforting her as I could.

“But you do not say that you will escape!” she returned, her quick intuition penetrating behind the masking words.

“No; I can not say that, Beatrix. The thing I am pledged to do is a most desperate thing: and the promise of success is not great. Yet, as I say, it will be over to-night.”

“Dick,” she said, coming close again, “what is this mission of yours that puts your life in jeopardy every hour, that has made you lay aside your dignity as an officer, that has been great enough to bring you here as a deserter and to take a service, every step in which must be a wretched lie? We may well be parting for the last time in our two lives, Dick, dear: don’t deny me this time.”

If she had not said that word about the parting--a word which was all too likely to be true--I think I might still have withstood her. But that one word broke down the barrier of my resolve, and so, flinging my soldier promise to Mr. Hamilton to the winds, I told her all, in tones that grew more and more the tones of shame when I realized what it meant to spread the harsh, brutal, military necessity of the kidnapping plan upon the tables of a pure woman’s mind and heart.

She heard me through without interruption, sitting, as she had sat that other night, gazing steadfastly into the heart of the embers on the hearthstone. But when I had made an end, she began to speak in a low voice, never letting her eyes meet mine.

“I do not at all understand these things, Dick: no woman ever can, I fear. We are taught at our mother’s knees that a lie is wrong; a thing to shudder at, to turn away from in loathing. We are taught that the finest things in those we love are truth and honor, and that the finest of all is the high honor’s honor that rises above the most binding necessity, or seeming necessity, that can constrain us. Yet you tell me that all this must go down at the bidding of a thing called military duty; that one must lie, cheat, steal, swear false oaths--”

“No,” I interposed. “By some curious oversight I have not yet been required to take the oath of allegiance to King George.”

She put the excuse aside with a little gesture of patient weariness.

“What does it matter whether or not you have missed the chance of saying over the formal words? By every act and word and the breath you draw, you are protesting that you are a true man in your present standing. The man you will strike down to-night has had no hint of warning; miserable traitor as he is, he still believes you are his friend--not only his captain servant, but his friend. He trusts you with his love-letters to his wife; he takes you fully into his confidence. Is it not so?”

“It is,” I confessed. And then I broke out passionately: “But my word is passed; I must not give this up, Beatrix! You must not make me give it up!”

“And I shall not try, Dick, dear,” she went on in the same low tone. “I shall merely try to fit myself into this new, this terrible scheme of things: for I must believe in you: I must believe that you are doing the right and honorable thing, though every fiber of me shudders in horror at it. Oh, Dick, dear--don’t you see what a woman’s love must be?”

God of love, but I did see! I saw that her ideal had fallen into ruins at her feet, and that she was trying to gather up the poor fragments, calling them precious, still! How swift and sure her stroke had been! How unerringly her keen unsullied sense of the higher right and wrong had set its arrow quivering in the very heart of the target! Yet in very shame I could not yield without a struggle.

“The man is the basest of traitors; he has put himself beyond the pale of mercy,” I insisted.

“I am not speaking for the man: God knows how I detest and fear him, though, for Peggy’s sake, I have tried to see only that humaner side of him she would have me see. Nor do I say one word for poor heart-broken Margaret, whom your deed will condemn to a living death. But for yourself ... for your honor’s honor: oh, Dick, dear; is it too late to save that?”

I rose and went to stand beside her chair, knowing now that the angel I spoke of a while back had indeed come with the saving heavenly fire to light my poor candle that the vindictive blast had blown out.

“No, Beatrix, love; it is not too late to stop, though it may well be too late to turn back in safety. There is another involved in this with me: a man from Major Lee’s Legion. He will be furious; but if I recant, he at least, must be saved.”

“For so generous a thing as that, Dick, your own good heart will answer; you would never leave a subordinate to pay the score, of course,” she said with the air of one who knows full well that blood and breeding have their responsibilities that may not be pushed aside.

From that I went a little deeper into the confessional pool, telling her how Seytoun had harried me, knowing that he was safe behind my promise to her, and how, if I should be happy enough ever to return alive to the Tappan camp, I should be branded from end to end of it if I should still refuse to fight Seytoun for his satisfaction.

At this she wished to know particularly the cause of quarrel and how Seytoun had offended; and when I told her that, too, and how he had cast the slur not only upon the women of my own house, but also upon hers, she bit her lip and I saw the beautiful eyes kindle.

“I would have saved his miserable life for him, Dick, if I could. That was why I made you promise--I knew you would remember his killing of your kinsman and slay him without mercy if you ever got him at your sword’s point. And now, my lover, I release you. If he pushes this quarrel on you--”

It was enough, and I took her in my arms and kissed her, saying, because it had to be said, sooner or later:

“Good-by, dearest. The parting time has come. In the larger matter I can’t promise; but I’ll do what lies in me. If I am strong enough to rise to your high plane, I’ll come to you, if I can--when I can--with clean hands. But if I am not great enough, I shall not ask you to marry the fragments.”

“But I love the fragments,” she said simply; and this was her word of leave-taking.

Once more out in the keen cold air of the December night and I was face to face with the moment of decision. Love, duty, honor, and vindictive hatred of Benedict Arnold all dragged me their several ways; but when at last I won back unhindered to the house of doom, and to the guard-room where John Champe was pacing moodily back and forth before a cold hearth, the decision was no longer trembling in the balance. As if a veil had been swept aside I saw into what depths vindictive rage and soldier patriotism had plunged me. Mr. Hamilton, himself, I felt sure, would be the first to call me back if he could know that I must sink myself neck-deep in a mire of perfidy too foul to be borne if I were to accomplish now the thing he had sent me to do.

XX

TRAITORS ALL

IT WAS still early in the evening when I reentered the ground-floor room of Arnold’s house--the room of the cold hearth--on my return from the soul-searching, but most heart-warming interview with Beatrix Leigh. Champe wheeled quickly to face me at the door-closing, and I saw that his day-long moodiness had vanished to give place to suppressed excitement.

“My God!” he said grittingly. “I thought you’d never come!--or that the provost-guard with the handcuffs would get here first. Sir Judas has played fairly into our hands at last. For a good half-hour past he has been walking in the garden--alone!”

“Ah?” said I, seeing how poignantly the matter had climaxed in my short absence, and not seeing, in the suddenness of it, what course I ought to steer. “So you think our chance has come?”

“Think?” he echoed; “think? Why, Captain Dick, isn’t it the very bone and marrow of the thing we’ve been praying for? We’ve but to go quietly and raise the boat from the river-bottom where we sank it, to make all ready, nab him, and away up-river in the darkness. The very night belongs to us--black dark, and with the wind quartering right to blow us where we wish to go. Come; we are wasting the precious minutes!” And while he was struggling into his watchcoat he kept on saying over and over again: “Good God--if he will only give us time!”

He was out and away before I could say more to him, and I followed more leisurely, turning over in my mind a dozen expedients which might serve in the last resort to make this climaxing broadside flash in the pan. For now there was no more hesitation. In the open field, or even with the poor chance that the hunted fox has, after he has heard the dogs baying at his heels, I would have flung myself upon the traitor to take him, or let him kill me as I tried. But to win his confidence, as I had, and then to steal up and garrote him like a wretched footpad was no longer among the possibilities for an officer and a gentleman--and a Virginian.

None the less, there was a thing to be done, and done quickly. Champe had no such scruples as these I had so lately admitted, and I must swiftly invent a way to stop him from putting his neck solus, as you might say, into the hangman’s halter. For I made no doubt that, lacking my help or countenance at the pinch, my dour-faced sergeant would thrust me aside, with a saber slash if no other means offered, and fling himself madly into the kidnapping breach single-handed and alone.

You are to figure these reflections flashing themselves upon the mental mirror as I stepped from the fireless guard-room into the broad entrance hall which was used as a lounging place indifferently by Arnold’s aides or Sir Henry Clinton’s. When I passed through there were three young fellows with their feet to the fire; young Hetheridge, Ensign Brewster, and an aide of General Phillips’ whose name I had heard but had promptly forgotten.

“Good evening to you, Captain Page,” said Hetheridge; “are you off after your black-faced sergeant? What ails the beggar that half the time he forgets to salute his betters in passing?”

I was about to make some indifferent rejoinder and go on to the door when the thought struck me that here was a chance to drive a small nail for Champe against the day of need.

“The sergeant is a law to himself, like one of the old Cromwell Ironsides,” I replied lightly. “He should have been born in the other century, when we should have seen him going about with a Bible in one hand and a two-edged slaughter sword in the other. I advise you young gentlemen to walk straight: otherwise he’ll be denouncing you as traitors, some fine day when you least suspect it.”

Brewster laughed.

“He looks like a man who would denounce his own blood brother if the occasion should arise. For the last half-hour he has been raging up and down in that cold guard-room muttering and cursing to himself like a madman, and I dare swear I heard your name mingled in his maledictions, Captain Page.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I agreed readily. “The sergeant has had a suspicious eye on me for some little time past. He is a grim devil of a fellow, I promise you, and no man’s good company. I begged the general’s permission to keep him by me as a soldier-servant, but lord! he’d sour the milk before the milkmaid could get it strained into her crocks.”

“Being such a devil, I wonder he didn’t stay with the other devils--saving your presence, Captain,--on the far side of the Neutral Ground,” young Hetheridge put in.

Now all this talk was a cruel wasting of most critical time, but I paused to drive the saving nail yet a little farther into the wood.

“Champe may be like some others of that devilish rank and file you speak of, Mr. Hetheridge; one who has been constrained against his will to go barefoot and empty-bellied in a cause that meant nothing to him. At any rate, you can find no fault with his present loyalty. You may believe it or not, as you please, but when he first saw me here in New York he took me for a spy, broke into my room at the tavern and all but had me choked to death before I could get the better of him.”

There was a laugh at this, and then the young fellow whose name I could not remember, said: “I wish you joy of such a soldier-servant as that; I do, indeed.” And, as I laid a hand on the door-latch; “Drink an extra posset for me, while you’re about it, Captain Page, if that’s what you are going after. My throat is as dry as a desert.”

It was well that they should think I was on my way to the tavern, and I vanished while the notion lay uppermost in their minds. Champe was waiting for me at the corner of the house, and he was fairly shaking with fierce impatience.

His greeting of me took the form of a raging oath directed at my time-killing with the young fellows at the house fire; and then: “While you were dallying I got a glimpse of him--he’s there yet, tramping up and down the walk. Hell and furies--if he’ll only give us time--time!” And again, before I could have any speech with him, he was dragging me by a roundabout way to come at the back of the garden enclosure and to the place where our sunken boat was lying.

While we were waiting for our chance to dodge the pacing sentry on the river bank, speech was still impossible, but in the interval I began to get some glimmerings of a plan which would solve the wretched tangle, and at the same time give Champe his leave to escape.

We both saw Arnold through the gap in the fence, which was still open. Once he extended his walk on the garden path to come and stand almost within touching distance of us as we lay crouching in the shadows. He seemed to be staring out over the river which the gale was lashing into yeasty foam-crests. I marveled at his indifference to danger, the more since he had not seemed at all indifferent hitherto. And now he had more cause to fear, knowing by the broken lock and the muddy foot- and finger-marks that at least one desperate attempt had been made to abduct him. But, as I have said before, cowardice in any real pinch of danger was not among his many faults.

Nothing would have been easier than for us to seize and bind and gag him there and then, leaving him so fettered and silenced to wait on the issues of our boat recovery. Champe was hot for doing this, and I had much ado to hold him back. When we had our opportunity to pass the sentry, Arnold had gone back to his tramping of the garden path and I felt that the worst of the crisis was now safely passed.

Reaching the water’s edge we groped for our mooring rock and found the boat’s painter fastened as we had left it. In the task of raising the boat, Champe worked like a demon, wading in the icy water to tug and haul, and when the little craft finally showed her nose, plunging his arms shoulder deep to remove the weighting stones. Since the pacing sentinel passed and repassed on the bank above us every five minutes or so, silence and caution were prime necessities; and again and again I had to warn my companion on the score of his reckless and frantic haste.

So working and halting, the task was accomplished at last; and when the final stone was removed and we had rocked and rolled the boat gently on the beach to free it of some of the water, Champe got in to bail while I held the gunwale and kept an ear alert for the sentry’s comings and goings.

“All ready, Captain Dick,” muttered the frenzied one when he had finished the bailing and had carefully pulled the oars from their anchorings under the thwarts. “Make fast, and hold her so until I get out.”

The time was come for striking the deadly blow, and it fell upon poor Champe without warning.

“Stay where you are, Sergeant,” I commanded in low tones. “The game is up, and we shall not do this thing which we set out to do. Take the oars and let the tide and your two arms get you safely back to Major Lee’s camp at Tappan while you have the chance.”

I could not see his face in the darkness, but my imagination could very well picture the fierce rage which was distorting it.

“What’s that you say?” he choked. “You are giving it up?--now, when the devil himself couldn’t balk us? In God’s name, what do you mean, Captain Dick?”--this last in an agonized whisper.

“I mean precisely what I say; you can not take him alone, and I shall not help you.”

“You are turning your back upon it, and you are staying here?” he muttered, as one half dazed. Then he came suddenly alive to the full meaning of my words: “You are a foul traitor, Captain Richard Page! Curse you, curse you, curse you!--that Judas and the women have won you over! I’ll see you hanged for this, if so be I have to hang with you! Out of my way, or I’ll kill you where you stand!”

He had started up, and was clambering over the thwarts to get at me, when I stooped and gave the boat a mighty shove out into the stream. The sudden lurch made him lose his balance and come down with a noisy crash among the unshipped oars. As quick as thought, the sentry on the bank above cried out his challenge of “Halt! Who goes there?” but Champe, furious as he was, was yet wary enough to lie still, letting the wind and tide carry him on. The sentry did not climb down the bank to investigate, as I made sure he would; and better still, he did not fire his piece to give the alarm. I thought surely that Arnold must have heard his shout, in which case my capture would be certain.

That the shouted challenge had been heard, I had proof presently in a wind-blown muttering of voices at the top of the bank overhead. I figured that the sentry had stopped to speak to Arnold, but I could make no move to escape. Champe’s boat had disappeared in the darkness, but I could not tell whether it had gone up or down the river or was drifting with wind and tide out toward the Jersey shore. It was enough that it had gone, as I fondly hoped, beyond the possibility of a return. Champe, I fancied, would come to his senses shortly and make his way to safety. Surely he would know that it would be nothing short of suicide for him to land again within the enemy’s lines.

When all was quiet again on the bank above I still had to wait some little time before venturing to cross the sentry’s path on my retreat. There was good hope in the interval since I neither heard nor saw more of the sergeant and was thus convinced that he was making the best of his way out of the peril. More than once, however, while I waited, I could distinguish the sound of Arnold’s footsteps on the gravel walk in the garden, so I knew that the traitor had not been frightened away by whatever talk he had had with the bank-pacing sentry.

Since boldness is often the truest kind of caution, it was in my mind that I should snatch my chance to pass the sentry and so slip through the gap in the fence to join Arnold in the garden, trusting to my wit to frame a plausible excuse for the intrusion. Though for honor’s sake I had turned my back on the purpose of betraying our chief deserter, I meant to delay my own escape long enough to make sure that Champe was safely out of the way. Try as I might, I could not rid myself of the fear that he might yet be retaken, and in that case he would sorely need a friend at court to save him from the rope. You will say that I might have cut this knot by going with him in the boat, but I confess frankly that I had no stomach for such an enterprise. Indeed, as matters stood at our parting, it was plainly evident that I should have had to kill him or let him kill me to patch up a peace between us.

It was with a mind strangely confused by the sudden turn which I had forced our fortunes to take that I climbed the bank and dodged the sentry and made my way by the roundabout route Champe and I had taken, back to the street. I went this way, not because I was afraid to carry out that purpose of going through the garden, but because, in passing the gap in the fence, I found the garden walk untenanted, and a light showing in the upper windows of the house to tell me that Arnold had gone back to his office workroom.

With my feet pressing the familiar pavements in front of the house, it came to me suddenly and with a curious little shock that I had lighted upon an entirely new world; a world in which I was at the same moment a man of rejuvenated honor and a hunted fugitive. I say it without shame that for the moment my eyes were dimmed and a rush of emotions too varied to be analyzed came swiftly over me. It is no light thing to fling one’s self, heart and soul, into the accomplishment of a certain purpose and then to turn short and take the path of renunciation at the very climax of success.

Yet I felt strangely light-hearted, and as if a huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders. Now that all was over, I could realize very clearly that neither General Washington nor Mr. Hamilton could possibly have foreseen any such wading in the pool of duplicity for me as that into which my emprise had pushed me. Also, I understood that when they should be made aware of all the circumstances they would be the first to approve this final step of withdrawal which, lacking Beatrix Leigh’s gentle promptings, I might never have taken.

So my conscience was clear at last and yet all this had little bearing upon things present and pressing. When all was said, I was to the full as likely to pay the spy’s penalty now as I should have been had I been taken red-handed in the very act of abducting Arnold. The facts of my mission were all known to Castner, and it was upon these facts, and not upon the accomplishment, that I should be tried and condemned. Why Castner had waited so long before springing his trap I could not guess. Now that he was back from wherever he had been and with the spy Askew safely in tow, a word to Sir Henry Clinton and another to Arnold were all that were needed. And, surely, Castner had had time to preach an entire sermon to either or both of them since I had seen him passing the tavern with his two companions.

I had a part answer to this puzzling question of the reason for Castner’s delay when, while I was as yet hanging upon my heel and not knowing which way to turn, I saw an officer with the shoulder-straps of a general descending Sir Henry Clinton’s steps; a man walking slowly and with his head bowed and his hands tightly locked behind him. The man was Benedict Arnold; and they had just been giving him the undeniable proof of my treachery. I knew it as well as if I had been an eavesdropper at the conference behind Sir Henry Clinton’s closed door.