Kitabı oku: «The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5», sayfa 6
ELIZABETH.1
A ROMANCE OF COLONIAL DAYS
By Frances C. Sparhawk, Author of "A Lazy Man's Work."
CHAPTER XXIV
A CASE OF CONSCIENCE
The stars had not begun to pale in the morning twilight when Elizabeth awakened. The dim outlines of houses and trees could be seen through the window as she looked out against the sky. Within the room the furniture, large and heavy, looked still larger in the darkness. She fixed her eyes upon some point, and followed back the lines that flowed from it until they were lost in the dimness, and this assured her that she was awake. Her writing-table was in part sharply outlined against the window, and part of it was lost in the shadow of the draperies. The bureau seemed only a dark mass among the shadows in force in the corners of the room.
These and the tops of the heavy chairs, as she looked at one and another of them, helped to calm her and give her a sense of reality. But they in no way accounted for the startling suggestion, that whether dream or waking thought had first filled her with fear and then set her heart beating hard as she lay wide awake breathing unevenly and striving to learn if she were still under the influence of a dream, or if the unconscious conviction which had come upon her was the result of dwelling upon what she knew. She could not recall her dreams, but they seemed to her to have had no connection with the sudden sense of danger that had startled her awake. She tried to throw it off, but it was like the objects in the room that had seemed almost invisible at first, but that grew every moment more distinct to her as she watched them. She felt more and more sure that the danger was real, however the knowledge of it had come; a terrible danger, but not to herself. It seemed strange now that she had been blind so long, and yet, how could she have suspected such a horror? Lord Bulchester felt it, too, only that he would not allow himself to believe it. But it was he who had brought conviction home; it would never have come, she thought, if she had not seen him yesterday. But it had come, and it remained. It held her like a vise, drawing her back toward it whenever she tried to escape, driving off sleep forcibly when more than once that seemed about to seize her. What was she to do with it? Plainly, something. It and rest could never dwell together. But what? And how could she do it? A conviction which pressed upon herself with the force of a certainty, and yet had no proofs by which to establish itself, was not an easy thing to make felt by another mind. And when it was a conviction of danger, and that other had by nature and training a contempt of danger, the difficulties were increased. Added to this were other difficulties which Elizabeth felt keenly; but the fear was stronger than them all. The longer she studied the matter the more she saw that the only thing for her to do was the one thing that she shrank from most. All the freedom left her was to find out the best way of doing it.
When the dimness of starlight began to grow into the dawn, she arose. But she delayed at her toilet, standing so long in thought with her brush in her hand, and her dark hair sweeping over her shoulders, that it was six o'clock before she crossed the hall and knocked at her father's door.
There was no answer. She knocked again, with the same result, and then opening the door, found the room empty. Mr. Royal had gone down stairs. But it was too early for Mrs. Eveleigh, and Elizabeth might still have her talk with him without interruption. With a mixture of relief and dread she went down the broad, low stairs and crossed the hall into the library.
It had always been her favorite room. She had spent so many happy hours here with the books, that the room with its handsome old furniture and sunny windows was full of the memories and day dreams that her reading had conjured up. But not only this; it was here that she had seen most of her father; they had spent hours together here, while Mrs. Eveleigh attended to her household duties, or amused herself with her friends, or retired for her nap. And whether father and daughter talked, or sat, he with his paper or his writing, she with her book, each felt a companionship in the other. Elizabeth often spoke her thoughts freely to any one who happened to be within hearing when the mood for speech came over her; but as to her feelings, her father understood those best. This was partly on account of his quickness of comprehension, which supplied much that she did not utter, and partly because there came to her times when her father seemed like a second self, and silence grew unnatural.
But that morning speech, evidently, was not easy to her. For, although she had gone to him as a matter of course, her perplexity seemed to grow greater as she sat down by the desk at which he was making up some accounts. It seemed to her that her life was no longer free and simple; a dreadful force had come into contact with it and, as she felt, made it more unworthy. Had a mere jest ever before brought such a train of miseries? Her fingers laid restless folds in a piece of paper she took up, and her father after his greeting went on with the accounts. It was his habit to give people time, and he had found that doing it gave him the best opportunity to take his own bearings. His judgments were usually so accurate, and his decisions so wise that a good many people would have been thankful to find the scales by which he weighed the anxiety or the satisfaction that came under his observation. On that morning the rapid pen travelled several times up and down columns of figures and noted down the results before Elizabeth began:
"Father." It was a small beginning, and followed by silence. But the tone made Mr. Royal push his work aside, and look full into his daughter's face. "Father," she repeated, "I want you to advise me."
"Am I not always ready for that?" returned Mr. Royal, his smile fading before the gravity of her expression.
"There is something so hard to be done," she answered.
"Then, must it be done?"
"Oh, yes, that's the only thing about it I am quite sure of. It must be done, and directly, too. It may be too late now, but we must try. What troubles me is how it can be done so that we may be certain."
"Certain of what?"
"Certain that it reaches him," answered Elizabeth. Then she looked at her father, and remembered that he could not understand her. "I must tell you," she said. "It is like a nightmare. It oppresses me to think of it. I feel guilty to believe it, and yet I don't dare to deny it to myself, for fear of the consequences. It's about Mr. Edmonson, father."
"Oh!" said her listener in a tone far from pleased.
"And Mr. Archdale, added Elizabeth. Not that who the people are makes any difference. Our duties would be just the same knowing the,—knowing what I do." Her father sat watching her in silence with his keenest gaze. "There is no love lost between the two men, as you know," she went on. "Mr. Archdale is lofty, and wouldn't condescend to anything more than a dislike that he hasn't tried to conceal, since Mr. Edmonson ceased being his guest. But with Mr. Edmonson it's different; when he feels, he acts; and once in a while there is an unrestraint about him which is frightful; it makes me think of lava breaking through the crust of a volcano. I believe there is something volcanic in his nature; you can't go deep into it without danger. And there is danger now. Father, there is danger now." As Elizabeth repeated her statement she leaned forward a little and looked at her father, her eyes full of earnestness and dread.
"In what way, and to whom?" asked Mr. Royal.
"To Mr. Archdale," she answered.
It was not Mr. Royal's way to protest or deny; he liked to get in his evidence first of all. "What makes you think so?" he asked.
"A good many little things that have come back to me in confirmation, but especially a speech of Mr. Edmonson's that I overheard one day at Seascape. Stray shots," he said, "have taken off more superfluous kings and men than the world has any idea of. I did not know at the time whom he had been speaking about, and I forgot the speech; it seemed to me to have no object. But now it does, and now I remember a word or two besides that showed me that he had turned the conversation upon Mr. Archdale."
"When was this?"
"One morning when I was coming up from the beach, I didn't feel like talking to anyone, and when I heard voices the other side of the great boulder—you remember it?—I waited a moment, to see if they would pass on, so that I need not go back to the house by the longest way; and it was then that he said it. He was with Lord Bulchester. He was speaking of other things first, and then I missed a few words, and then he said this."
"So far as he was concerned," answered Mr. Royal, "that might be as innocent a speech as ever was uttered. Indeed, don't you see that a man who meditated mischief wouldn't make such a speech at all?"
"If the man were Mr. Edmonson he might, and to Lord Bulchester who, he knows, never would do anything against him. But Lord Bulchester is uncomfortable. I saw it yesterday; and perhaps wondering over that was what made me put everything together. I don't know how it was, but I awoke in the night and saw it all. And now they have gone where the will and the opportunity are sure to meet. Mr. Archdale must be warned."
"But, Elizabeth," said her father, "why should he want to do it? He succeeded in his designs upon the Archdale property. What malice can he have?" As he spoke, he looked earnestly at his daughter. He had not been blind to things going on about him, and especially things concerning his daughter, but in a case like this no suppositions of his own were to take the place of evidence.
Elizabeth met his eyes for a moment, then her own drooped and she grew pale. It was not that her father's eyes told her his thoughts, it was at the humiliation of her own position in being the object of mercenary scheming. "He has not enough money," she said at last distinctly, "and he wants more. That's what it means. And he dares to think—." She stopped short, and for a moment it seemed as if it would be impossible for her to go on; a hot flush came to her face and an angry light into her eyes. Then her courage returned, and although she uttered the words with visible effort she went resolutely on. "I know it," she said, "he dares to think someone else,—Mr. Archdale,—is somewhat like himself, and that he will come to want more money too. He cares for nobody, he would stop at nothing, and he thinks that I refused him because,—he does not understand how I feel towards him. Oh, don't you know that sometimes you know all about a thing, know it perfectly, and cannot make it seem so to another? Don't let it be so with you, father. Only listen to me." Mr. Royal did listen attentively as she went over the points of her story again. Had she been talking of some matter of business, her inexperience and a something about her that people were apt to call unpracticalness, might have decided him against giving any unusual weight to a speech like Edmonson's. But here the weight of her character, and of impressions stronger than she could put into words told. He saw, too, that she was looking at the matter with the accuracy and judgment that it usually takes years of training to learn. This, added to her own intensity, gave a convincing force to her words. He admitted to himself that the affair had an ugly look.
At last Elizabeth paused. She drew a little nearer her father, and laid her hand upon the table beside him. "I want you to advise me;" she said; then, "What must I do?"
In the impossibility of any answer he felt a sudden rebound from the force of her words. "I don't see that there is anything for you to do, or for anybody," he said. "How can you act upon a thing that is purely an assumption, and not only that, but a thing so wicked that it is a cruelty to a man to imagine it about him? I can't believe that it's necessary to do anything, for I can't bring myself to feel as you do. Are you very sure that you have not fancied a part of this?"
"Father!" cried Elizabeth, "I wish I had, But look at it." And she went again over the grounds of her suspicions, giving with a clearness that he was proud of, the indications that she had seen of the bent of Edmonson's will and the evidences of his headstrong character, linking one trifling act or word to another, until she had welded a chain so strong that Mr. Royal felt a thrill run through him as he listened, for she awoke in him her own belief and something of her own anxiety to be doing. So that when she had finished, instead of repeating that it was not necessary to do anything, he asked whom she had thought of as the person to give the warning to Archdale.
She was about to speak, then checked herself, hesitated, and at last said, "I want you to advise me."
"Um!" said Mr. Royal, and was silent. He was somewhat disappointed that she, so powerful in statement, should have no suggestion to offer in a matter that puzzled him the more, the more he thought of it. Such a warning would not be easy to give under the most favorable circumstances. It would not be a pleasant task to tell a man that another man had designs upon his life, and when such assertion had only the proof of strong conviction and of evidence, trivial in its details, strong only as a whole, it would be even hazardous to whisper a warning to the person himself, liable to lead to complications and sure to be met by incredulity and either ridicule or resentment. But here, where no personal communication was to be had, the difficulties were a hundred times greater. Circumstances made it especially awkward for either Elizabeth or himself to put these suspicions into words. But to put them upon paper with all the cumulative evidence needed to carry conviction,—if conviction could indeed be conveyed without the reiteration of words and the persuasiveness of the voice,—to do this and send the paper adrift, to fall into Archdale's hands or not as the fortunes of war should determine, perhaps to fall into other hands,—it was impossible, for Elizabeth's sake it was impossible. "I don't see how we can reach him," he said at last. "A letter wouldn't answer."
"No," she said, "he might never get it." Mr. Royal looked at her more closely as she fixed her eyes upon him, flushing a little as she spoke with the earnestness of her purpose.
"Well," he said musingly, "we certainly can't get at him in any other way, and that one is uncertain and dangerous. Even the dispatches are subject to the fortunes of war. I don't see what we can do, Elizabeth. Do you?"
But even as he spoke, he refrained from what he was about to add, turning his assertion into a question. For a change was coming over his daughter; the power within her to rise to great occasions was in force now. The conventionalities that were holding him in check were unfelt by her; she had risen above them to that high ground where the intricacies of life are resolved into absolute questions of right and wrong, and where perfect simplicity of intention becomes a divine guide.
"Father, do you remember," she cried, "what I have cost him and Katie? I must not be silent, and let them be separated more, a great deal, than my foolish speech once seemed to do. He has gone where stray shots are of everyday occurence, and nobody ever inquires into them. Apart from this obligation, if we do nothing we shall be murderers." She locked her fingers together as she spoke, not in nervous indecision, for her look was full of resolution, but as if the necessity that she was facing disturbed her. Mr. Royal suddenly perceived that his daughter had not finished, that behind that expression there was, not a suggestion, indeed, but a decision. She had come to him, not for advice, but for approval; she knew what to do. Her plan would scarcely be one to meet the approval of people like Mrs. Eveleigh. But he recognized that the soul that was looking out from Elizabeth's fearless eyes had a high law of its own. And when his daughter spoke in this mood, Mr. Royal was reverent enough to listen.
CHAPTER XXV
DUTY
"How strange it seems here," said Nancy Foster leaning forward toward Elizabeth, as they sat in the sunshine on the deck of the schooner; and as she spoke she glanced along the horizon.
Elizabeth before answering turned her head in the direction in which the land, had it been in sight, would have appeared; but no vision of shore broke the wide circuit of ocean and sky. Then her eyes came back to the little vessel as if to assure herself that she was not alone in this waste of water. Her father sat on the opposite side reading. With a word of reply to Nancy, she fell into silence again. Only, instead of the vague wonder how she should meet the future, her thoughts now turned to the past. It was nine mornings since that consultation with her father in the library, and they had been only one night at sea. It had taken a week to get off. From the first she had counted upon Mrs. Eveleigh's remonstrances and vehement reproaches of Mr. Royal's wrong-doing in taking his daughter into such danger. They were only a little more vehement than she had expected. But Mrs. Eveleigh did not know the errand; if she had, that would have made a difference, or, as Elizabeth reflected, she thought that this would have been treated as the strangest part of the affair. But she had kept her own counsel, saying only that her father and she thought it right. Mrs. Eveleigh had been so exasperated by being kept in the dark that she had retained her anger to the very last day. Then she had drowned her resentment in a flood of tears, and declared between her sobs that, frightful as it all was, for she dreaded the very sight of a gun, she would rather go with Elizabeth than have the dear girl set off without any companion. Elizabeth's reminder that her father and Nancy were to accompany her only called forth the assertion that a maid was no companion, and a man was nothing at such a time. Elizabeth thought that at the time of sieges and battles a man might be considered of some little consequence. But she never argued with Mrs. Eveleigh, and she had quitted her thankful for the good lady's affection, and glad that Mrs. Eveleigh was to be left behind on such an expedition.
"You'll never come back," Mrs. Eveleigh sobbed. "The French ships of war will be sure to gobble up you and your father, too. I know just how it will be. You are a crazy girl, and I don't know what is the matter with you," she had added irrelevantly; "and as to your father, you must have bewitched him; he used to have plenty of common sense."
The matter with Mr. Royal was, that he knew his daughter well enough to be sure that if Archdale was killed during the siege she would feel always that her silence might have given the opportunity for his death. And he knew that to bring upon Elizabeth the miseries of an uneasy conscience would be to kill her by slow torture. Besides, he himself believed in the danger, his own conscience was aroused, and that was not easily put to sleep. But if he had heard the verdict of Mrs. Eveleigh, who knew nothing of the matter, he would not have blamed her so much.
He had hired this little schooner in which they now were at a ruinous rate, and had not been able to do even that until he had pledged himself to pay all damages in case of loss. Governor Shirley had seized the opportunity to send dispatches several days earlier than he had intended. Mr. Royal went with a picked crew, men both honest and skilful. He knew the dangers of French vessels as well as Mrs. Eveleigh did, but his daughter's persistent assertion: "We shall be murderers," had overborne every objection.
Elizabeth sitting on deck that morning, was thinking of these things, and tracing in this danger which she was trying to avert, one of the consequences of her frolic on the river that summer evening. Then she remembered that but for that she would perhaps have been Edmonson's wife, and she said to herself that the Lord had been very merciful to her, and that she would try not to shrink from her duty.
"How fast we are going," said Nancy again. It was true that the little vessel before a fair wind was flying over the water at a rate that, if kept up, and in the same direction, would soon bring its passengers to their destination. Elizabeth was glad of speed, already it might be too late. And besides, the sooner her errand was done, the sooner she should return with a mind at rest. She began to reckon how long before she should be at home again. In a week, in less time if they were fortunate, they should reach Louisburg. She should not want more than five minutes' talk with Mr. Archdale. Then it would be home again immediately. Her father had hired the schooner for the very reason that it should not be detailed for any other service, but should bring them back at once. How strange it was, she thought, to spend fourteen days for only five minutes' conversation, and that, too, with one who was no especial friend except through his engagement to Katie. But for all the weariness she was thankful to do it, and grateful to her father. She hoped that she should not catch even a glimpse of Edmonson, and it seemed improbable that she would. After the siege was over he would probably go to England again. How she wished he were there now, and she quietly at home, where in that case she might have been now.
The next day there was a head wind, and the day following no wind at all. As time went on, it grew evident that it would be more than a week from their starting before they could drop anchor in Cabanus Bay. Dread lest they should be too late began to harass Elizabeth. But she showed no impatience. Her silence was what Nancy noticed most. But, then, Nancy liked talking, and did not enjoy the books which her Mistress had brought with her and read most persistently, or sometimes tried to read, unsuccessfully. Even then they served as a protection against the maid's talk when she was in too anxious a mood to endure it.
On the morning of the seventeenth they caught sight of the "Little Gibraltar," but the wind was against them, and it was the afternoon of the next day before the Captain of the schooner could run into the Bay, and go ashore with his dispatches and Mistress Royal's message to the General.
Elizabeth looked about her with breathless interest, realizing that here she was to find war. It happened that on her arrival there was a lull in the cannonading. Both sides had paused to draw breath, but the lull was far from perfect silence, and to her inexperience this occasional thunder of bursting shells seemed sharp conflict. She said so to the Captain as they drew toward shore.
"Bless yer!" he answered with a laugh. "This ain' t no thin' at all, this is nothin' but child's play. Wait till yer see it hot and heavy. I s'pose we shall go back to-morrow, though. I'd like to have yer see some good stout work first."
"Ain't we in danger here?" inquired Nancy.
The skipper rolled his quid of tobacco in his cheek reflectively a moment. "Well, no," he said, "I guess nothin' to speak of. They're too busy answering the batteries; it's only the stray shot that comes our way. There's a thousand chances to one agin' its hitting us, and I guess we can stand the one." He looked at Nancy closely to guage the amount of her courage.
"I guess we can," she answered coolly. This reply seemed to please him. He had before considered Nancy "a nice lookin' girl;" and now, as he put down "grit" in his mental catalogue of her fascinations, he smiled to himself, and thought of a neat little home on the Salem shore where his mother now presided, and where it was not impossible that some day Nancy might be persuaded to reign. But the demands of the hour recalled him from this dream to his usual brisk attention to realities, and as soon as he had cast anchor, he left the ship in charge of the mate, and went in search of the General.
General Pepperell was in his tent, resting after a hard day's work. Not only had he been through the camp cheering the soldiers, by imparting to them something of his own indomitable resolution and by seeing personally that everything possible was done for the sufferers in the hospital, but he had also been for hours superintending the arrangements on the new battery that was to do such execution upon the granite walls of Louisburg. Now everything was in readiness and he had ordered two hours of rest before the firing from it should begin. Nearly an hour of that had gone by before he entered his tent for the rest he needed, when almost immediately the messenger reached him.
"Mr. Royal and his daughter here!" he cried. "And Mr. Royal requests to see Captain Archdale? I don't understand. But I shall hear why from them." He dispatched an orderly for Stephen who was still at the battery, and then went with the skipper to the little vessel that had brought the unexpected guests. Elizabeth never forgot the kindness of his greeting. In the midst of the strange scene and of preparations for work in which women had no part, the friendliness of his face and tones, and his cordial grasp of her hand made her feel almost at home. She had been sure of courtesy, but she had not dared to look for this, and her eyes grew dim for an instant.
"I suppose that we shall return this evening," she said after the greetings and inquiries were over and Mr. Royal had explained that in a few minutes all that he had come for could be said to Mr. Archdale. Although after thinking the matter over carefully he had decided that it was Elizabeth, filled with the spirit of her warning, who should herself give her message to Archdale yet he spoke to Pepperell as if she had accompanied him. And when the General said that he had already sent for the young man, Mr. Royal told him that his daughter had that in her pocket for him which, if he knew, it would lend wings to his feet.
"A letter from our charming Mistress Katie," pronounced Pepperell, smiling at Elizabeth.
"Yes," she said, and after a little repeated her question of their returning that evening.
"Yes, I know," said the General. He waited a moment, and then added. "But if you come among soldiers, you will feel the exactions of war. There are those dispatches, you remember, not even read yet" and he touched the breast of his coat, "because I was in such haste to pay my respects to you. Now, I should like to send an answer to these, and I am afraid I shall not have it ready before to-morrow morning; the Commodore will probably write me to-night and I want to include whatever news he may have. Will to-morrow do?"
"Oh, yes, I shall be glad to help the cause, even so little as that," she answered. Pepperell thanked her for her words, and ignored the look of disappointment that he had seen flit across her face before she spoke.
"We have been putting up a fascine battery within two hundred and fifteen yards of the west gate," he said, "It will open fire in an hour, and then you will see a cannonade! We have two forty-two pounders there, it will be no child's play." Nothing had then hinted at the Titanic scale of modern war engines. Elizabeth's eyes dilated, but she said nothing. The General sat beside her, and asked how things were going on in Boston, asked about his friends, and many trifling details that neither dispatches nor letters would give him, and that she wondered that he had heart for in the scenes going on about him. Then he told them many particulars of the siege and especially of the terrible labor of dragging the heavy guns from the shore into position, interspersing all this narrative of the life-and-death struggles with amusing anecdotes and bright comments, until she was amazed, and in listening found that she had gained a better knowledge of him than in years of ordinary acquaintance. For she could not have realized by that how many-sided the man was, how full of resources, and how indomitable. She noticed how sympathetically he spoke of the brave fellows he was leading. When he said that the hardships of the campaign and the cold of a severer climate than they had been accustomed to had prostrated numbers of them. Elizabeth saw that it was not only soldiers that he felt he was losing when they died, but men from his own home and neighborhood and in whom he had a personal interest. Then as he sat there, she begged him not to think of her if others needed him but to go.
"This time is at my own disposal," he answered, adding with a smile. "If the struggle had come, Mistress Royal, I should think of you, no doubt, but I should not give you a moment's attention. The pointing of the smallest cannon would at the moment be of more importance than all your affairs. A besieging army can have no cry of 'Place aux dames;' therefore I shall not invite you to stay after to-morrow. I shall even send you home. Or, lest I should hurt your feelings too much, I will put it this way; I shall send your father home, and he will take you with him."
Elizabeth laughed; and the conversation went on with its interest increasing, when all at once Pepperell rose, and held out his hand to her in farewell. "I may not see you again until we meet in Boston." he said, "but if I can, I will come for a moment in the morning."
She was surprised at his going away so soon after his assurance of being at leisure but as after speaking to her father he stepped over the side of the vessel, she perceived the reason for his sudden departure. His trained eye had caught what the distance had hidden from her, the figure of a man coming rapidly toward the shore.
When the General landed, the keel of the little boat he was in grated on the beach at Stephen Archdale's feet. With a salute to his commander, the latter sprang into it, and before Elizabeth had recovered her breath, was coming over the ship's side.
The General walked on without turning his head toward the schooner. Nevertheless, it is true that once he said to himself distinctly. "The Yankee in me does clamor to know what they want of that fellow."
