The Master of Appleby Part 23

"In her father's house she could not well do less," I averred, cut to the heart, as he was, and yet without his younger lover's jealousy to make me unjust.

"Or more," he added, savagely. "'Tis as I say; she lacks nothing we can give her, and we'd as well be off about our business."

I think he never had it in his heart to leave her in any threat of danger. But from his point of view there was no danger threatening her save that which she seemed willing enough to rush upon--a life of t.i.tled misery as Lady Falconnet. I saw how he would see it; saw, too, that his was the saner summing of it up. And yet--

He broke into my musings with a pointed question. "What say you, Jack?

'Tis but a little whiffet of a Tory jade who cares not the snap of her finger for either of us. The night is fine and dark. Shall we float the canoe and give them all the slip?"

This was how it came to turn upon a "yes" or "no" of mine. I hesitated, I know not why. In the little pause the fire burned low between us, and the shadows deepened in the burrow cavern until they strangled the eye as mephitic vapors scant a man of breath. The silence, too, was stifling. There was no sound to breach it save the gurgling murmur of the river, and this was subdued and intermittent like the death-rattle in the throat of the dying.

I've always made a scoff of superst.i.tion, and yet, my dears, a thousand questions in this life of ours must hang answerless to the crack of doom if you deny it standing-room. I knew no more than I have set down here of Margery's besetment; nay, I had every reason Richard Jennifer had to believe that she was well and well content, lacking nothing, save, mayhap, the freedom to marry where she chose.

And yet, out of the stifling silence there came a sudden cry for help; a cry voiceless to the outward ear, but sharp and piercing to that finer inward sense; a cry so real that I would start and listen, marveling that Jennifer made no sign of having heard it.

In the harkening instant there was a faint tw.a.n.g like the thrumming of a distant harp string, and then the grave-like silence was rent smartly by the whistling hiss of an arrow, the shaft pa.s.sing evenly between us and scattering the handful of fire where it struck.

Jennifer came alive with a start, leaping up with a malediction between his teeth upon our dallying.

"Too late, by G.o.d!" he cried. "They've trapped us like a pair of blind moles!" And with that he caught up the ancient broadsword, only to swear again when he found no room to swing it in.

Having the handier weapon, I slipped out before him, creeping on hands and knees till I could see the leafy screen at the den's mouth, and the s.h.i.+mmering reflection of the stars upon the water beyond it. There was no sight nor sound of any enemy, and the canoe lay safe as Jennifer had left it.

To make a.s.surance sure, I would have scrambled to the bank above; but at the moment Jennifer hallooed softly to me, and so I crept back into the burrow.

"See here," he said, excitedly. "What a devil will you make of this?"

He had drawn the scattered embers together, fanning them ablaze again, and had sought and found the arrow. It was a blunt-head reed and no war shaft. And around the middle of it, tightly wrapped and tied with silken threads, was a little scroll of parchment.

"'Tis the Catawba's arrow," said Jennifer, though how he knew I could not guess; and then he cut the threads to free the scroll.

Unrolled and spread at large, the parchment proved to be that map of Captain Stuart's that I had found and lost again. And on the margin of it was my note to Jennifer, written in that trying moment when the bribed sentry waited at the door and my sweet lady stood trembling beside me, murmuring her "Holy Marys."

"Read it," said I. "It explains itself. Tarleton had laid me by the heels to wait for the hangman, and I would have pa.s.sed the word about the Indian-arming on to you. But my messenger was overhauled, and--"

"Yes, yes," he broke in; "I've spelled it out. But this line added at the bottom--surely, that is never your crabbed fist. By heaven! 'tis in Madge's hand!"

He knelt to hold it closer to the flickering firelight, and we deciphered it together. It was but a line, as he had said, with neither greeting nor leave-taking, address nor signature.

"If this should come into the hands of any true-hearted gentleman"--here was a blot as if the pen had slipped from the fingers holding it; and then, in French, the very wording of the inarticulate cry that had come to me out of the darkness and silence: "_A moi! pour l'amour de Dieu!_"

We fell apart, each to his own side of the handful of embers.

"You make it out?" said I, after a moment of strained silence.

He nodded. "She has prattled the parlez-vous to me ever since we were boy and maid together."

A full minute more of the threatening silence, and at the end of it we were glaring at each other like two wild creatures crouching for the spring.

It was Jennifer who spoke first. "'Twas meant for me," he said; and his voice had the warning of a mastiff's growl in it.

"No!" said I, curtly.

"I say it was!"

"Then you say the thing which is not."

Had I been Richard Jennifer, I know not what bitter reproach I should have found to hurl at the man who had thrice owed his life to me. But he said no word of what had gone before.

"You may give me the lie, if you like, John Ireton; I shall not strike you." He said it slowly, but his face was gray with anger. Then he added, hotly: "You know well that word was meant for me!"

At this--G.o.d forgive me!--my jealous wrath broke bounds and I cursed him for a beardless c.o.xcomb who must needs think he stood alone in the eye of every woman he should meet. "She needs a man!" I raged, lost now to every sense of decent justice, "a man, I say! And to whom would she send if not to her--"

I choked upon the word. He had risen with me, and we stood face to face in that grim earth-womb, snarling fiercely at each other across the narrow firelit s.p.a.ce; two men with every tie to knit us close together, and yet--G.o.d save us all!--a pair of wild beasts strung up to the killing pitch because, forsooth, we must needs front each other across a deadline drawn by the finger of a woman!

G.o.d knows what would have come of all this had my dear lad been as fierce a fool as I. 'Twas his good common sense that saved us both, I think, for when the savage rival madness was at its height he turned away, swearing we were the very pick and choice of a world of a.s.ses to stand thus feeling for each other's throats when, mayhap, the lady needed both of us.

This brought me to my senses at a gallop, as you would guess; to them and to the lighting of the conscience fire within whereon to grill the wicked heart that but now had thirsted for a brother's blood.

"Now G.o.d have mercy on us both!" I groaned. "Forgive me, d.i.c.k, if you can; I was as mad as any Bedlamite. If I have any claim on her, 'tis not of her good will, you may be sure. You have the baronet to fear--not me."

He shook his head and pointed to the parchment--to the line in French.

"Francis Falconnet was under the same roof with her--or at least in easy call--when she wrote that, Jack. He is no longer my rival--nor yours."

His word set me thinking, and I would fall to picking out the strands that jealous wrath had woven for me into the web of happenings. Setting aside the story brought by Ephraim Yeates, there was no certain proof that she had ever favored the Englishman; nay, more, till I had come to be madly jealous of Falconnet, I had made sure that Jennifer was the favored one.

At this, as one sees a landscape struck out clear and vivid by the lightning's flash, I saw the true meaning of the word the hunter had brought--saw it and went upon my knees to grope blindly for the sword I had let fall when d.i.c.k had found the arrow.

"What is it, Jack?" he asked, gently.

"My sword!" I gasped. "We should have been half-way there by this.

Yeates was misled. 'Tis Falconnet she fears. She was at bay--hark you, at bay and fair desperate. That word of hers to the baronet was her poor pitiful defiance built on her trust in us, and we have lain here--"

He found the sword and thrust it into my hand, crying:

"Come on! You can strew the dust and ashes on me later. You said you loved her the better, and I do believe it now, Jack! You trusted her, as I did not. We'll fight as one man to cut her out of this coil, whatever it may be; and after that is done I'll make my bow and leave you a fair field."

"Nay, nay; that you shall not, d.i.c.k," I began; but he was half-way through the narrow pa.s.sage to the open, trailing the ancient broadsword and the bearskin from his bed; and I was fain to follow quickly, leaving the protest all unfinished.

XVIII

IN WHICH WE HEAR NEWS FROM THE SOUTH

As near as might be guessed, it wanted yet an hour or two of daybreak when we made a landing within the boundaries of Appleby Hundred, and beached and hid the pirogue in the bushes.