Part 18

Now you may scoff, if you will, but this discovery, the clinching of the nail, as you may say, hurt me unspeakably for the moment. Deny it as we may, we do all live more or less upon the good opinions of our fellow creatures; and surely I had painted myself as a villain of the deepest dye for this man who was coming on with his head bowed and carrying in his heart a bitter disappointment to go with him back to his quarters in the adjoining house.

I turned away, immeasurably saddened in spite of the strange and most welcome heart-lightening; and I do think I would have given much at that moment to be able to tell Arnold that I had spared him at the final crisis. He would never know, and perhaps that was best; yet I thought it was a needless twist of the thumb-screws of fate both for him and for me that he could not know.

But there was no time for repining. I had no thought of taking the first step in an effort to secure my own safety until after I should have made sure of Beatrix’s embarkation and departure; indeed, it was this, as much as anything else, that had made me miss the chance of fighting it out with the saturnine sergeant in the boat. By every lover’s obligation it was my first duty to see Beatrix and my Cousin Ju on board the _Nancy Jane_, with the staunch little schooner plunging on its way down the bay; and after that I could make my flight--if Champe should not have turned up again to need a friend, and if all the avenues should not be closed to me.

But the more I thought of the seaward venture for the two women the less I liked it. It was a rough night, with the wind in the wrong quarter and the lower bay still cluttered with the waiting ships of Arnold’s expeditionary fleet. Again, Sprigg’s vessel might be detained; at any hour it might be boarded by the harbor patrols, and its contraband lading--the recovered tobacco--turned up to the light. In that case I knew that the military authority which had winked at the ransoming of the tobacco cargo could not, and would not, openly intervene.

Worse than all, Major Simcoe’s troop might return from its wild-goose chase on the Tarrytown road in time to claim passage rights for its twenty-man quota on the _Nancy Jane_. Perhaps the Rangers had returned already!

With that threatening possibility in mind I resolved to go at once to the barracks on a spying reconnaissance, and if I should find that Simcoe’s troop had returned, to press quickly on to the Vandeventer house to hasten the embarkation. But first I yielded to a madman’s prompting that had been fretting at me ever since Champe’s boat had disappeared in the darkness and I had realized that I was once more a free man. It was no less than a foolish notion that I should like to show myself to Beatrix at the parting moment in my true colors--the same patriot homespun I had worn when she had given me God-speed at the door of her father’s house in Virginia, and which I had exchanged so unwillingly for these cursed facings of Arnold’s Loyal Americans.

Now that I had cut loose once and for all from the tanglings of chicanery and deceit, this uniform of Arnold’s Legion was hateful--doubly hateful. To every eye that saw me in it, it told an added lie; and I was sick and nauseated with lying. Could I not slip into the tavern and find my portmanteau and make the change?

It seemed feasible enough; and a stealthy peering through the windows of the lighted tap-room showed me a measurably clear field. A Quaker in a drab long-coat and broadbrim sat at one of the tables smoking a thin-stemmed church-warden. Two Hessians of Knyphausen’s were guzzling ale at another; and the Irish barman was nodding sleeping behind his wicket.

I opened the door and entered, passing quickly to the stair and reaching it before the aproned Irishman at the bar could do more than rouse himself and say, “Och, ’tis yourself, then, is it, Captain Page?” and straightway fall to nodding again.

Coming to the barn-like room above-stairs which had apparently lain undisturbed since Champe and I had forsaken it to become fugitives two days before, I found flint, steel and tinder box, and a candle-end to flare gustily in the cold drafts of the place while I made the swift change from red and green to homespun blue. Flinging the badges of disgrace into the corner, I replaced the Scots’ rapier in its belt, thinking that I must, after all, be beholden to King George for this much of my equipment. For Champe still had my horse-saber, and I would not go on Beatrix’s business weaponless.

Being now ready to run the gauntlet of the tap-room again I sallied out and groped my way to the stair-head. A hubbub of voices was rising from the room below and when I had stepped cautiously down to the landing turn I saw that my fate had already outrun me. In the few minutes which had elapsed since my passing through it, the tap-room had filled with soldiers and a crowding throng of riff-raff from the street; and by the light of the bar candles I saw Castner. He was questioning the Irish barman sharply and the good pot-filler was trying his best to shield me.

“Arrah, now, Liftenant, dear! is it Captain Page you’d be asking for? Shure I haven’t seen the smilin’ face av him these four hours. Would he be comin’ here widout me knowin’ ut?”

At this point there was a stir in the crowd and a tail man, soaked and dripping, pushed his way rudely up to Castner’s elbow. I looked and looked again, and gasped. By all the lunatics that ever filled a Bedlam, it was John Champe!

“Don’t believe that lying Irishman, Lieutenant Castner!” he cried out hoarsely. “I tell you I saw him enter here--no longer ago than the time it took me to run and fetch you, sir!”

I saw Castner’s involuntary shrinking from the man who was thus betraying one who at least held the claim of being a fellow-countryman, a fellow-soldier, and a fellow-deserter. I confess that, at first, it seemed blankly incredible to me that Champe should be doing this. If the spy Askew’s story was to be taken as a whole, the sergeant from Major Lee’s Legion was involved no less deeply than the captain from Baylor’s Horse. But there was no mistaking his intention. There were black circles around his eyes and he was so drunk with passion that he could scarcely stand without leaning against the barman’s wicket.

My first impulse was to steal back up the stair to try a drop from one of the windows. But when I would have translated the impulse into action, another man, a small rattish man in gray clothes and with a great bunch of seals dangling at his watch-fob, thrust himself forward out of the mob of onlookers and I heard his whispered word to Castner.

“On the stair landing, Lieutenant. Look for yourself, and let the Irishman spare his lying evasions!”

Castner looked as directed, bowing gravely when he saw me.

“Come down, Captain Page, and surrender your sword,” he commanded, soberly stern; and the brabble of voices ceased and a sudden hush fell on the room. Also, I noticed when Castner spoke and all eyes were turned to my landing, Champe drew back behind the more forward ones in the crowd and I saw him no more.

Now that the suspense was ended and open war was declared, I felt better and could even lean over the stair-rail and laugh down upon these king’s bush-beaters.

“You want my sword, Lieutenant?” I retorted. “I’ll give it to you, or to any man whose need is greater than my own--always provided that you or he will take it point foremost.”

“I make the demand in the king’s name,” said Castner, refusing to be either joked or jarred out of his even-toned soberness. And then he added, out of the heart of friendliness, I do think: “I wouldn’t make it harder for you than I must, Captain Page. You should see that resistance is madness.”

“I see that you may order your men to train their muskets on me and bring me down bird-wise, Mr. Castner. I do assure you it will be far more merciful than those other designs you have on me.”

He took me at my word with a soldierly disregard for further parleyings. In a trice he had cleared the space to the stair-foot, and had given the order to five of his musketeers. When their pieces were leveled he gave me one more chance.

“Once more, and for the last time, will you come down and render yourself, Captain Page?”

“With pleasure!” I cried; and whipping the rapier from its sheath I vaulted over the stair-rail and fell upon him so heartily that he was driven fairly back among his musket men before he could bare steel and defend himself.

Lord! but there was a scattering among those gaping lookers-on! Never have I seen buyers in the eagerest market so anxious to get to the front--only their front was the rear. With an onset so vigorous and unexpected, I might have cut and thrust my way to the door, if it had not been for the cursed little gray-coated spy, James Askew. But at the charging instant he dodged to get behind me, and I knew better than to leave an enemy of his temper unaccounted for in the rear. My foining to get a side-thrust at the spy gave Castner his chance to draw; and in another breath we were at it, hammer and tongs, Castner striving manfully to press me to the wall, and Dickie Page fighting as a man fights when he knows that his hours are strictly numbered, and who asks no more of this world and his enemies therein than the chance to die while his blood is leaping battle-warm.

It was the cur Askew who ended it, after all, though not as he meant to, I’ll dare swear. In our stamping rushes and thrustings and parryings, Castner and I had him penned in a corner, and at length, in a wide flanconade, my sword’s point touched him on the outward sweep to line. With a yelp like that of a pricked dog, he darted out of his corner and made to get away, rushing blindly into the zone of whistling sword blades.

It was the end of him, as well as of the sword play. He was just in time to catch the swift following thrust with which Castner replied to my attack, and the lieutenant’s blade passed clean through him; through his heart, I think, for he dropped like a stone, and gave only a shiver before his eyes glazed and his jaw fell.

This was my fair chance to kill Lieutenant Charles Castner, of the King’s Own; but I hope we Pages are something better than assassins, even when the blood is hot and we are fighting for our lives. My point went to the floor, and I stepped back to let Castner disengage; then the musketeers flung their pieces aside and made their smothering rush, and I was done.

The lieutenant was considerably out of breath when he pulled his sword from the spy’s body and fell fiercely upon his men, who were mishandling me pretty cruelly.

“Your word that you will not try to escape, Captain Page!” he panted; but I would not give it.

“No; ‘safe bind, safe find,’ is your motto, my good friend,” I said cheerfully, holding out my wrists for the cord.

It galled him to do it, but he would not fail in any part of his duty.

“I have had too much trouble in overtaking you,” he said in extenuation, when the soldiers were tying my hands; with all the riff-raff of idlers turned back now to look on, gaping.

“What a pity you have lost your witness,” I remarked, indicating the dead spy.

“The less valuable of my witnesses,” he corrected curtly. “Unhappily for you, there is another and more credible one.”

This remark of his set me to wondering. Then I remembered the third man who had walked with Castner and the spy in the afternoon--the man whose face I could not see, but whose gait and figure had been singularly familiar. Was this the “more credible” witness? I should soon know.

We stayed no time at all in the tavern after the hand-tying. With a word to the inn people about the disposition of the body of James Askew, Castner disciplined his corporal’s guard and we took the open air for it, pointing not for Sir Henry Clinton’s house, as I supposed we should, but on past it toward Fort George.

Within the walls of the fort, we marched silently to the house of the commander, a long low structure of Dutch brick, facing the parade ground. Two rooms of it were well lighted, and when the door was opened and I was thrust in, I saw that the court-martial was sitting and waiting for me, and that I was confronting my judges.

XXI

THE DRUMHEAD COURT

SOME of the British officers gathered in the fort commandant’s room to hold the court-martial were known to me by name, but that which gave me the greatest shock was the sight of Major Simcoe, sitting stern and thoughtful behind the up-ended drum. For his presence argued the return of the Queen’s Rangers from their wild-goose chase up the Tarrytown road, and their return promised the collapse of my care-taking plot to insure the escape of Beatrix and my cousin on the _Nancy Jane_.

But they gave me little time for the anxious lover-thought, these stern gentlemen who were holding an inquest rather than a trial. With a haughty nod, to indicate my place in the prisoner’s dock, I suppose, General Phillips, who sat as judge-advocate, signed to Simcoe, and the major cleared his throat. I saw the burly Knyphausen tilting in his chair; the two Hessian captains sitting on either side of him; the commandant of the fort; a major; and a lieutenant-colonel of Sir Henry’s staff: saw, also, that neither Clinton nor Arnold was present. And then Major Simcoe began to recite the charges against me, Castner bending over to untie my hands as the reading went on.

It was evident, before the charges were half read, that I had been tried and condemned beforehand; that whatever I should say or do would in no wise modify the sentence which had already been determined on. That conviction broke the final thread of prudence in me; and when the major came to that part of his manuscript where it was set forth that I had entered the British lines as a spy and an emissary of General Washington’s, with the premeditated purpose of kidnapping General Benedict Arnold, I laughed hardily, and said I should like to be confronted with the proofs, if there were any.

“You shall be accommodated, Mr. Page,” returned Simcoe gravely. And then to Castner: “Bring in the man, James Askew, if you please, Lieutenant.”

At this I laughed again, and said, most impertinently: “Having run his sword through the body of the said James Askew a few minutes ago, Lieutenant Castner makes his apologies to the court, and--”

“Silence, sir!” thundered Phillips, frowning me down; and I held my peace while Castner explained, rather shamefacedly, how the spy had come to his end.

“Then we will take your testimony, Mr. Castner,” said Simcoe; whereupon the lieutenant told in a straightforward way how the spy Askew had first informed him of my purpose; how, when the story, second-handed on to Sir Henry Clinton, had resulted only in an order for my arrest and detention, which order had been suspended, he, Castner, had gone with Askew to meet an officer of Major Henry Lee’s Legion--one who knew the facts from the rebel side, and who, for the sake of common honor, would substantiate Askew’s story.

Much more the lieutenant said, and doubtless the court listened to him. But I did not. My senses had gone blank to all outward happenings at that mention of an officer of my own fellowship who had made an appointment with Castner and the spy to insure my undoing. Admitting that Mr. Hamilton’s secret had leaked out, what man in all the patriot army hated me cordially enough to do this despicable thing? There was but one answer to that query: I had come between Howard Seytoun and the woman of his desire. For no lighter cause would any man turn his back upon his country, his honor as a soldier, his loyalty to the brotherhood of the army.

When I listened again, Major Simcoe was saying: “Your word is sufficient, of course, Mr. Castner. But for the sake of the formalities, a statement from this officer you speak of would sit well on the records of this court.”

“I anticipated that,” said Castner promptly. “Under an assurance of safe-conduct back to his own lines, the officer has accompanied me to New York.” Then, to one of his men: “Warnock, bring the Continental captain in.”

The man went out, and when next the door was opened, I saw what I was fully expecting to see. Seytoun came in, blinking at the lights, his bloated face flushing purple, and his shifty eyes looking anywhere save in my direction.

“Will you be good enough to answer a few questions, Captain Seytoun?” said Simcoe, taking a most gentlemanly tone with this double-dyed renegade and villain. “You have offered Lieutenant Castner a corroboration of the charge against Captain Richard Page; namely, the fact set forth by the man James Askew: that Captain Page came to New York as a spy and a kidnapper. Is this true?”

“It is,” muttered my accuser in a low tone.

“Upon what grounds do you assert this, Captain Seytoun?” cut in one of Knyphausen’s aides.

“It is the common talk in our camps.”

“You lie, Captain Seytoun--like the father of lies after whom you are named,” I said coolly; for now I remembered Askew’s story of his escape from the guard house at Tappan, and could easily add two and two together.

Simcoe would have put me down with harsh bluster; but now Phillips, cold-eyed and haughty, intervened suddenly.

“Can you impeach the witness, Captain Page?” he demanded.

“I can. By his own confession, James Askew lay under sentence of death in General Washington’s camp at Tappan. He escaped by the connivance of the officer of the guard. The bribe he offered and paid was the sharing of a certain secret with that villain who stands there, and the secret was this highly incredible story upon which you have convicted me, General Phillips. This man knows nothing but that which the spy, Askew, told him, and for aught that can be proved now, the story may well have been nothing more than a tissue of falsehoods, made up for the spy’s own purpose,” I answered boldly.

Seytoun might have outfaced me in this, if he had been endowed with the right kind of brazen courage: it was but my word against his. But his face was an open confession of guilt, and I think they all saw it, though, as I say, his testimony was a mere matter of court-martial routine--my fate had been predetermined long before.

A silence fell upon the room, and it was Major Simcoe who broke it.

“Captain Page, your conviction,”--I remarked that he used the word,--“does not turn upon these preliminaries, which serve merely to show premeditation and design. Whether you came as Mr. Washington’s emissary, or upon your own initiative, matters not: the fact remains that you not only intended to kidnap General Arnold; you have actually made the attempt. Do you deny that, sir?”

I did not see what good could come of adding lies to lies, at least, in my own behalf. By this time it must be known that Champe and I were the two who had eaten our suppers in the Dutch boat-builder’s house, the two who had stolen the boat, and, quite as inevitably, the two who had broken into Arnold’s house to find the empty bed. If I hesitated, it was only because I was striving to devise some way of saving Champe.

“I do not deny it,” I said, when the pause had grown to an impossible length.

“Ah!” said the major; and the exclamation was echoed in an audible sigh of relief on all sides. Then, fixing me with a look that was not all unkindly, Simcoe went on. “Your opportunities for carrying out your desperate enterprise have been all that you could ask; you have so won upon General Arnold’s confidence that he has trusted you fully, and even now, he yields only to the incontestable facts, and would shield you if he could. You must have had more than one chance of carrying out your design.”

“I had,” I broke in. “No more than an hour ago, Mr. Arnold was walking in his garden, alone. Once he came and stood within an arm’s reach of me; and I had a boat at the river’s edge in which to make my escape.”

“Ah!” he said again, and this time the exclamation was a sharp indrawing of the breath. “You spared him; will you tell us why, Captain Page? It can make no difference for or against you, now.”

“It is easily explained,” I said, smiling to give dissimulation the proper mask. “There were two of us; and at the crucial instant one of the two could not, or rather would not, rise to his opportunity--when he found out what that opportunity really meant.”

Simcoe nodded, and I marked the swift glance of intelligence that passed from one to another of my judges. Once more I had been able to impose upon them. They were saying to themselves that at the crisis the loyal sergeant had refused to be dragged into the kidnapping--which was as I had hoped. After which, Phillips took me up.

“Add a little more to your frankness, Mr. Page, and earn the satisfaction that comes from doing a worthy deed at the last,” he said austerely. “Do you confess that you have made a tool of Sergeant Champe in all this conspiracy?”

“I confess it,” I said, striving to keep the keen joy of the success of my stratagem out of the words. “In all the twistings and turnings of the last three days, the sergeant has been merely a well terrified common soldier acting under compulsion coupled with threats to have him hanged for a spy if he refused to obey me. It was I who plotted to keep him ashore when he came as your letter carrier, Major Simcoe; and in all subsequent matters, he has straitly obeyed my orders, doing what he was told to do in the fear of death, and disobeying me only in the final critical moment I have just been telling you about.”

It was here that I was made to feel the curious prickings that come upon getting the credit for a good deed when the credit is not fairly earned.

“You know that the sergeant denounced you, and pointed out the place of your concealment to Lieutenant Castner?” queried the major of Sir Henry’s staff.

“I do, and I applaud his resolution, sir. That is the kind of loyalty I should be rejoiced to discover in my own men. He but did his duty, as he saw it.”

Then this major, whose name I have never known, rose up in his place and gripped my hand most heartily.

“You are a true man and a gentleman, Captain Richard Page, notwithstanding the fact that we shall have to hang you presently,” he said, with bluff good nature; and I thanked him gravely, with that curious prickling that I speak of tingling in my finger-ends.

After this, Major Simcoe asked if I had anything further to say before I should be remanded under guard, and I rose and said I had, if the gentlemen present would bear with me. At General Phillips’s nod, I went on.

“One thing I wish to say is this: as Lieutenant Castner has explained, the spy, James Askew, went to his long account by an accident. But Mr. Castner’s sword has merely saved your hangman an item in his day’s work. I had speech with Askew two days since, as he may or may not have confessed to Lieutenant Castner. In the course of that interview he admitted to me, inadvertently, that he was the man who sold Major André to those who took him.”

The effect of this little shot was quite what I had expected. There were deep and bitter oaths of satisfaction at Askew’s death, and more than one word of thanks to me for setting this matter, which had been in doubt, finally at rest. This emboldened me to go on, for I had a boon to ask.

“That is one thing, General Phillips,” I said, addressing the highest authority I could reach. “Another is in the nature of a condemned man’s final request. I have an unfinished engagement with Captain Howard Seytoun, an engagement entered into before I left the camp at Tappan, and I pray you to grant me a short quarter-hour with him on the fort parade or in a guarded room, under such restrictions as you may see fit to impose.”