Peggy Owen and Liberty Part 43

But at this Peggy uttered a cry.

"Now? Oh, that would be inhuman! Surely not now?"

"Nay," said Colonel Dayton, alarmed by her paleness. "'Tis not as you think, child. He goes to the guard-house now. The sentence will not be carried out until to-morrow morning."

"'Tis so sudden," she protested piteously.

"Nay, Peggy, it hath been too long deferred," demurred Clifford. "'Tis well to have the anxiety and suspense over. You must not give way."

"But what can I do, Clifford? Thee has no one but me to do for thee.

How can I comfort thee?"

"Dear little cousin," he said softly, "you have done much already.

Think what these last weeks would have been for me had you not stayed here. Be brave a little longer. The colonel will let me see you again."

"Yes," said Colonel Dayton briefly.

And Peggy was left alone. Alone! With wide, unseeing eyes she stared at a patch of green gra.s.s in front of her where ox-eyed daisies grew like golden stars. Alone! Harriet had not come, as Peggy had been hoping she would. And her father! Could he not get leave? Alone!

Alone! What comfort could she, a mere girl, be to her cousin in this trying hour?

Far afield the milkweed nodded a soft welcome to the b.u.t.terflies winging, like flying flowers, over the fields. A b.u.mblebee droned drowsily near, humming his song to unheeding ears. Where the tall pine trees of the forest met the sky argosies of clouds spread their portly sails along the blue. In the heat of the July morning Peggy sat shaking like a leaf.

"I must be brave," she told herself again and again. "He hath no one here but me. I must be Harriet and Cousin William both to him. I must be of comfort to him."

Long she sat there under the tree trying to pull herself together, but after a while she rose and made her way into the house. It was well on toward the end of the afternoon when Colonel Dayton came to her.

"Your cousin wishes to see you, child," he said pityingly. "He bears up well, but I need not say to you that he will need all his fort.i.tude to go through with this ordeal."

"I shall not fail him, friend," said Peggy with quivering lips. "I am all of kith or kin that is near him. I shall not fail."

But the maiden had need of all her resolution when she entered the guard-house where Clifford was, for he was most despondent.

"I am glad it is ended, Peggy," he said gloomily. "The restlessness of waiting is over at last. All the feverish anxiety, the hope, the longing, are past, and the end hath come. Do you remember last year, when John Drayton, that Yankee captain, was condemned to this same sort of death, what father said? He said, 'The vicissitudes of war are many, my son. By sad fortune you might find yourself in the same condition as this young fellow.' And here I am, in very truth, condemned to die on the gallows. I have been thinking of it all day."

"Clifford," she cried in alarm, for there sounded a note of agitation in his words that made her fearful lest he lose his self-control, "thee must not talk like that. Think on something else."

"But to die like this," he cried. "An Owen on the gibbet! 'Tis bitter, bitter! I had planned a different death. 'Twas on the battle-field.

Gloriously to fall, fighting for the king and England. I do not fear death, my cousin. It is not that. 'Tis the awfulness of the mode. I cannot help but think of that other death which I would so gladly die.

I have ever loved martial music, and 'twas my thought that at my death the m.u.f.fled drum would beat for a soldier's honorable funeral."

"Clifford! Clifford!" she cried. He was so young, so n.o.ble, and yet to die a cruel death on the scaffold! It was hard. What comfort could she give him? He was in sore need of it.

"Bear with me for just a little, Peggy," he said. "It hath eaten into my heart--the manner of this death. I have talked bravely all these long, weary days of waiting, but oh! if they would just shoot me! The shamefulness of a gallows!"

"Don't!" she cried suddenly. "I--I cannot bear it."

The boy pulled himself together sharply.

"Forgive me," he said speaking more calmly. "I'll be good now, my cousin, but 'tis enough to make a man rave to contrast the death he would die with the one he must. I'll think of it no more."

"Thee must not," she said faintly. "What--what can I do for thee, Clifford?"

"I have writ some letters," he said picking them up from the table.

"Will you see that they are sent? I need not ask. I know you will. One is for Harriet; I was too hard on her, Peggy. I see it now. One is for father, and one for your father and mother. Had I been their own son they could not have treated me with more tenderness. And, Peggy----"

"Yes, my cousin?"

"There is one for Miss Sally," he said with slight hesitation. His face flushed and he busied himself among the papers on the table.

"'Fore George," he cried with an abrupt change of manner, "I can't forget that look of scorn in her blue eyes! It haunts me. I writ before, you remember? She did not reply, but sent word that she had no hard feelings. 'Twas all I had a right to expect, but somehow---- I have writ again, Peggy, to tell her---- Well, you know I don't want her to think me altogether contemptible."

It was such a youthful outburst, and so natural that Peggy had hard work to retain her self-control. Then, like a flash, she knew the comfort she could give him. Leaning toward him with brightening eyes she said softly:

"Sally doesn't think thee so, Clifford. She hath a high opinion of thee. She told me to tell thee something at the very last---- And that would be now, would it not?"

"Now, or never, Peggy. What did she say?" He listened eagerly.

"She said that she considered thee the finest gentleman that she ever knew."

"She said that?" The youth caught his breath quickly.

"Just that, Clifford. The finest gentleman that she ever knew,"

repeated the maiden impressively. "Was not that much to say?"

"It was, my cousin. It overwhelms me." His eyes were misty, and in them there was wonder too. "It is the highest praise that she could have spoken. 'Tis strange that she should so speak; because, Peggy, I have always wanted to be a gentleman. Oh, I am by birth, I know. I don't mean that. I mean just and honorable, chivalrous and gallant, performing heroic deeds, and--and all the rest of it," he finished boyishly.

"And thee is all that, Clifford," said Peggy gently.

"No," he said with unwonted humility. "I would like to be, but I am, in truth, a pretty stiff, stubborn, unreasonable sort of fellow. You have had cause to know that, Peggy. And so hath Sally. If life were, by any chance, given me I should try to be all that she thinks me; but I am to die. To die----" He stopped suddenly, and his eyes began to glow. "'Fore George!" he cried, "if I cannot live I can die as she would have the 'finest gentleman' to die! What if it is on the scaffold, and not the battle-field? Though it be not a glorious death, it can be glorified! How could she know that that was just what I would need to put me on my mettle? How could she know?"

"Then it hath helped thee, Clifford?" spoke Peggy, marveling at the transformation in him.

"Helped me? It hath put new life into me. It hath given me courage.

Why, do you know the shame of the thing had almost prostrated me? An Owen on the gallows, Peggy. I would not have minded so much if the execution had taken place right after we left Lancaster, but to have it hanging over me day after day for so long. Peggy, it hath eaten into my heart."

"Oh, Clifford!" she cried pityingly. "I did not dream thee felt it so!"

"I did not want you to know, little cousin. I would not tell you now, but that you have brought me the cheer that I need. How good you have always been to me, Peggy. I wonder if the world holds anything sweeter than a Quaker maid! That one should so highly esteem me----" He smiled at her with sudden radiance. "I shall have pleasant thoughts to go with me now, Peggy. You will tell her?"

"Yes," she answered, and added chokingly: "I wish father were here."

"And so do I. I hoped that he would be with me at the end; I believe that he would be here if he could."

"Thee shall not be alone, Clifford. I am going to be with thee." Peggy spoke bravely enough, but her eyes grew dark at the very thought, and she began to tremble.

"Not for the world, Peggy!" he cried, horrified. "I would like to have Cousin David with me, but not you. Oh, not you! I can suffer firmly what 'twould kill you to see."

"But to be alone, Clifford?"

"It can't be helped, Peggy. I won't have you there. Promise me that you won't go."