The Master of Appleby Part 64

Having no time-measure save our own impatience, it seemed a weary while before we heard the key rasping in the lock of our prison door.

"'Tis Madge," said d.i.c.k, with a true lover's gift of second sight; and 'twas he who went to help her swing the thick-slabbed oak.

What pa.s.sed between them I did not hear, nor want to hear. But when the door was swung to and locked again I knew we were not free to go abroad.

Richard came back to me in the inner vault bearing gifts; the better part of a boiled ham with bread to match, a jug of water from the well, and more candles.

"We are not to starve, but that is our best news, thus far," he said.

"Of all the houses on our side of the river, Lord Cornwallis must needs pitch upon this manor of Appleby for his rallying headquarters. Madge can not guess when he and the army will be gone, and she is frighted stiff for our sakes."

This was sober news, indeed, but we could do naught but make the best of it. As for me, I was most anxious to know if the good priest were at Appleby, and what of my chance for seeing him; but of this I could say no word to Richard.

So, when we had done full justice to my lady's bounty, we stowed the horses in the deepest of the vaults and stripped more of the bottle coverings for them. But having only the jug of water, we could do no more than swab their mouths out with a wetted kerchief in lieu of giving them a drink.

When all was done we sat ourselves down to wait as we must; and when the silence and solitude had wrought their perfect work, we fell to talking in low tones to match the place and circ.u.mstance; and I do think in those quiet hours, walled in as we were from all the disturbments of the outer world, we came closer than we had come for many months.

And while we sat and talked the long day wore on to evening and a storm came on, as we could determine, though no otherwise than by the m.u.f.fled rolling of the thunder which, since we could not see the lightning nor hear the rain, we took at first for the booming of distant cannon.

I can not tell you all we spoke of in that day-long immurement. There was some talk of the great struggle for independence, now, though we knew it not, drawing near to its close; and there was much of reminiscence, harking back to the exciting and tragic scenes in which we two had had our entrances and our exits. Also, there was a tribute paid to the memory of our true old friend and trusted comrade in arms, Ephraim Yeates, so lately gone to his own place. 'Twas at this time I learned what of the old man's gifts and peculiarities I have hereinbefore set down; for Richard had known him long and well.

From speaking of old Ephraim and his sudden taking-off we came to things more nearly present; and at length d.i.c.k would lay a finger gently upon the mystery in which he was as yet walking as one blindfolded.

"'Tis not a shameful thing; don't tell me it is that, Jack," he would say; and I gave him speedy a.s.surance upon that head.

"No,'tis never shameful; so much I may lay an oath to."

"Yet you said once--in that black night when I went mad and would have killed you--that your life lay between Madge and me."

"So it did--and does. And G.o.d will bear me witness, dear lad, that I have worn that life upon my sleeve."

"Nay," he said, very gently; "you need not go so high for a witness; have I not seen?"

We fell silent upon that, and there, in the candle-yellowed gloom of our dungeon harbor, I fought the fellest battle of my life; fought it and won it, too, my dears, once and for all. There was a cold sweat on my brow when I began in low tones to tell him the story of that fateful night in June. At rising forty 'tis no light thing to lose a friend--nay, to turn a friend's love into scorn and loathing and bitter hatred.

He heard me through without a word; and at the end, when I looked to see him spring up and bid me draw and let him have his one poor chance for satisfaction, he still sat motionless, winking and staring at the guttering candle. And when he spoke 'twas with a quivering of the lip that was not of anger.

"Dear G.o.d," said he; "'tis I who stand in the way."

"No; for she loves you, Richard, as dearly as she hates me. And 'tis not so hopeless now, else I had never screwed together the courage to tell you all this. She has at last consented to the Church's undoing of the incomplete marriage--'twas this she wrote me about when we were at the Cowpens, and 'twas her letter that set me upon going to Winnsborough to see the priest. I missed him there, as you know; but I am here now by her own appointment to meet him in her father's house."

He shook his head slowly. "You've killed the hope in me, Jack. I do think you are all at sea; 'tis you she loves--not me."

I could afford to smile at that.

"If you could see how she has ever gone about to prove that she did not love me, you would rest easy on that score, dear lad."

But he would only shake his head again.

"'Twas to save your life she rode in on us that morning under the oaks in the glade."

"'Twas a womanly horror of a duel and bloodshed, more belike," said I.

"But she has saved your life thrice since then, as you confess."

"Yes; from a strained sense of wifely duty, as she took good care to tell me."

"None the less--ah, Jack, you do not know her as I do; she would never have consented to stand before the priest with you had there not been something warmer than hatred in her heart."

"'Twas a bitter necessity, fairly forced upon her. Tell me; had there been a spark of love for me in her heart, would she have treated me as the dust beneath her feet on that long infaring from the western mountains? She never spoke a word to me, d.i.c.k, in all those weeks."

"Which may prove no more than that you said or did something to cut her to the quick. 'Twould be well in your way, Jack. She is as sensitive as she should be, and you are blunter than I--which is the worst I could say of you."

"No, no; you are far beside the mark. You forget that the breaking of the marriage is of her own proposing--at least, I should say I only hinted at it."

"There may be two sides to that, as well. Have you ever told her that you love her, Jack?"

"Surely not! I have been all kinds of a poltroon in this matter, as I have confessed, but this one thing I have not done."

"Well," said he, speaking slowly, as one who thinks the path out word by word, "what if she believes 'tis you who want your freedom? What if you have made her that bitterest thing in all the world--a woman scorned?"

I would not listen to him more.

"This is all the merest folly, Richard, as I will prove to you beyond the question of a doubt. Do you mind that little interval in the Cherokees' torture-play when they came to bind us afresh for the burning?"

"I mind no more of that horror-night than I can help."

"Well, in that hour, when death was waiting for all three of us, she wrote a little farewell note to the man she loved. 'Twas for you, d.i.c.k, but her Indian messenger blundered and gave it me."

He got upon his feet at that and began to pace slowly back and forth under the gloomy archings. But ere long he paused to grasp and wring my hand most lovingly, saying, "Who am I, Jack, to buy my happiness at such a price?"

"Nay, lad; 'tis neither you nor I who should figure greatly in the matter; 'tis our dear lady. She must e'en have what she longs for, if you, or I, or both of us, should have to go above stairs and put our necks into my Lord Cornwallis's noose."

"Now, by heaven, Jack Ireton, 'tis you who are the true lover and the gentleman; and I am naught but a selfish churl with my face in my own trencher!" he burst out, wringing my hand yet again. "'Tis as you say; yet I will not be driven from this; for aught you have told me to prove it otherwise, Madge has yet to choose between us, and she shall have that choice, fairly and squarely, and knowing that you love her, before we three go apart again."

I smiled, and tried hard to keep the heart-soreness out of my reply.

"As for that, my lad, I have had my stirrup-cup long since, and have drained it to the dregs with a wry face, as an old man must when a young man brews for him. But if the priest--"

Jennifer had resumed his pacing sentry beat, and at this juncture a most singular thing happened. Though we were sealed in, as I have said, from all the outer world with no crack nor cranny for a peephole, a blinding flash of lightning, blue and ghastly, came suddenly to fill the whole cellar with its vivid glare.

"Good Lord!" says Richard, clapping his hands to his eyes; "where did that come from?"

I was wholly at a loss for a moment. Then I remembered that there was, or had been in my boyhood days, a narrow, iron-barred window in the farther end of the wine cellar, opening beneath that other window of the great south room where I had climbed to spy upon the conspirators on the night of Captain John Stuart's visit to Appleby. So it chanced that when another flash came I was looking straight over d.i.c.k's head at the place in the farther arching of the vault where the little window should be.

The momentary glare showed me the low square of the window opening, and framed for a flitting instant therein a face of most devilish malignity peering in upon me with foxy-fierce eyes; the face, to wit, of Gilbert Stair's lawyer-factor.

In a twinkling the vision was gone, and in the s.p.a.ce between the flash and the crash there was a sound as of a wooden shutter slamming in place. d.i.c.k heard the noise without knowing the cause of it, being so far beneath the window as to see nothing but the lighting of the glare.

"What was that?" he demanded, when the thunder gave him leave.