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Title: The Carolinian (1924) Author: Rafael Sabatini * A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook * eBook No.: 0800091h.html Language: English Date first posted: February 2008 Date most recently updated: February 2008 Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular paper edition. Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this file. This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html
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To
J. E. HAROLD TERRY
MY DEAR HAROLD, Some few years ago you and I, labouring jointly, delved into the romantic soil of Carolinian history for certain elements from which to construct a play of the American War of Independence. Out of these same elements I have now fashioned this book, and in dedicating it to you I do so not merely as a pledge of the warm esteem in which I hold you, but as an acknowledgment that is due, Believe me, my dear Harold, Your friend, RAFAEL SABATINI. LONDON, November, 1924.
CONTENTS PART I I. TWO LETTERS II. CHENEY III. THE GOVERNOR OF SOUTH CAROLINA IV. FAIRGROVE V. THE REBEL VI. THE DECEPTION VII. MANDEVILLE AS MACHIAVEL VIII. DEVIL'S ADVOCATE IX. TAR AND FEATHERS X. THE MAIL-BAG XI. STALEMATE XII. REVELATION XIII. DEA EX MACHINA XIV. THE SOLUTION XV. THE NUPTIALS XVI. THE CHAPLAIN OF THE "TAMAR" XVII. GROCKAT'S WHARF XVIII. THE PISTOL-SHOT PART II I. MARRIAGE II. FORT SULLIVAN III. SEVERANCE IV. GOVERNOR RUTLEDGE V. JONATHAN NEILD VI. PREVOST'S ADVANCE VII. RUTLEDGE'S NERVES VIII. THE SPY IX. THE LIE CONFIRMED X. CONCERNING TOBACCO XI. VIA CRUCIS XII. THE TEST XIII. THE STRATEGY OF RUTLEDGE XIV. THE ARREST XV. THE AWAKENING XVI. THE INQUIRY XVII. JUDGMENT XVIII. RECONCILIATION
With compressed lips and an upright line of pain between his brows, Mr. Harry Latimer sat down to write a letter. He had taken--as he was presently to express it--his first wound in the cause of Liberty, which cause he had lately embraced. This wound, deep, grievous and apparently irreparable, had been dealt him by the communication in the sheets which hung now from his limp fingers.
It had reached him here at Savannah, where he was engaged at the time, not only on behalf of the Carolinian Sons of Liberty--of which seditious body he was an active secret member--but on behalf of the entire colonial party, in stirring the Georgians out of their apathy and into co-operation with their Northern brethren to resist the harsh measures of King George's government.
This letter, addressed to him at his Charles Town residence, had been forwarded thence by his factor, who was among the few whom in those days he kept informed of his rather furtive movements. It was written by the daughter of his sometime guardian, Sir Andrew Carey, the lady whom it had been Mr. Latimer's most fervent hope presently to, marry. Of that hope the letter made a definite end, and from its folds Mr. Latimer had withdrawn the pledge of his betrothal, a ring which once had belonged to his mother.
Myrtle Carey, those lines informed him, had become aware of the treasonable activities which were responsible for her lover's long absences from Charles Town. She was shocked and grieved beyond expression by any words at her command to discover this sudden and terrible change in his opinions. More deeply still was she shocked to learn that it was not only in heart and mind that he was guilty of disloyalty, but that he had already e so far as to engage in acts of open rebellion. And at, full length with many plaints and upbraidings, she .displayed her knowledge of one of these acts. She had learnt that the raid upon the royal armoury at Charles. Town in April last had been undertaken at his instigation and under his personal direction, and this at a time when, in common with all save his fellow-traitors, she believed him to be in Boston engaged in the transaction of personal affairs. She deplored--and this cut him perhaps more keenly than all the rest--the deceit which he had employed; but it no longer had power to surprise her, since deceit and dissimulation were to be looked for as natural in one so lost to all sense of duty to his king.
The letter concluded with the pained assertion that whatever might have been her feelings for him in the past, and whatever tenderness for him might still linger in her heart, she could never king herself to marry a man guilty of the abominable disloyalty end rebellion by which Harry Latimer had disgraced himself for ever. She would pray God that he might yet be restored to sane and honourable views, and that thus he might avoid the terrible fate which the royal government could not fail sooner or later to visit upon him should he continue in his present perverse and wicked course.
Three times Mr. Latimer had read that letter, and long had he pondered it between readings. And if each time his pain increased, his surprise lessened. After all, it was no more than he should have expected, just as he had expected and been prepared for furious recriminations from his sometime guardian when knowledge of his defection should reach Sir Andrew. For than Sir Andrew Carey there was no more intolerant or bigoted tory in all America. Loyalty with him amounted, to a religion; and just as religious feeling becomes intensified in the devout under persecution or opposition, so had the loyalty of Sir Andrew Carey burnt with a fiercer, whiter flame than ever from the moment that he perceived the signs of smouldering rebellion about him.
To Harry Latimer, when his generous, impulsive young heart, had first been touched four months ego in Massachusetts by the oppression under which he found the province labouring, this uncompromising monarcholatry of Sir Andrew's had been the one consideration to give him pause before ranging himself under the banner of freedom. He had been reared from boyhood by the baronet, and he owed him a deep debt of love and other things. That his secession from toryism would deeply wound Sir Andrew, that sooner or later it must lead to a breach between himself and the man who had been almost as a father to him, was the reflection ever present in his mind to embitter the zest with which he embraced the task thrust upon him by conscience and his sense of right.
What he does not appear to have realized, until that letter came to make it clear, was that to Myrtle, reared in an atmosphere of passionate, unquestioning devotion to the King, loyalty had become as much a religion, a sacrosanctity, as it was to the father who preached it.
At the first reading the letter had made him bitterly angry. He resented her presumption in criticizing in such terms a conduct in him that was obviously a matter of passionate conviction. Upon reflection, however, he took a more tolerant view. Compromise in such a matter was as impossible to her as it was to him. He would do much to win her. There was, he thought, no sacrifice from which he would have shrunk; for no sacrifice could have been so great as that which he was now called upon to make in relinquishing her. But the duty he had taken up, and the cause he had vowed to serve, were not things that could be set in the balance against purely personal considerations. The man who would yield up his conscience to win her would by the very act render himself unworthy of her. Lovelace had given e the world a phrase that should stand for all time serve such cases as his own: "I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more."
There was no choice.
He took up the quill, and wrote quickly; too quickly, perhaps, for a little of the abiding bitterness crept despite him into his words:
"You are intolerant, and therefore it follows that your actions are cruel and unjust. For cruelty and injustice are the only fruits ever yielded by intolerance. You will never again be able to do anything more cruel and unjust than you have now done, for never again will you find a heart as fond as mine and therefore as susceptible to pain at your hands. This pain I accept as the first wound taken in the service of the cause which I have em braced. Accept it I must, since I cannot be false to my conscience, my duty and my sense of right, even to be true to you."
Thus he double-bolted the door which she herself had slammed. A door which was to stand as an impenetrable barrier between two loving, aching, obstinate, conscience-ridden hearts.
He folded, tied and sealed the letter, then rang for Johnson, his valet, the tall, active young negro who shared his wanderings, and bade him see it dispatched.
Awhile thereafter he sat there, lost in thought, that line of pain deeply furrowed between his brows. Then he stirred, and sighed and took up from the writing-table another letter that had reached him that same morning, a letter whose seals were still unbroken.. The superscription was in the familiar hand of his friend Tom Izard, whose sister was married to Lord William Campbell, the royal Governor of the Province of South Carolina. The letter would contain news of society doings in Charles Town. But Charles Town society at the moment was without interest for Harry Latimer. He dropped the letter, still unopened, pushed back his chair and wearily rose. He paced away to the window and stood there looking upon the sunshine with vacant eyes.
He was at the time in his twenty-fifth year and still preserved in his tall, well-knit figure something of a stripling grace. He was dressed with quiet, patrician elegance, and he wore his own hair, which was thick, lustrous and auburn in colour. His face was of that clear, healthy pallor so often found with lust such hair. It was an engaging face, lean and very square in the chin, with a thin, rather tip-tilted nose and a firm yet humorous mouth. His eyes were full without prominence, of a. brilliant blue that in certain lights was almost green. Habitually they were invested with a slightly quizzical regard; but this had now given place to the dull vacancy that accompanies acute mental suffering.
Standing there he pondered his case yet again, until at last there was a quickening of his glance. He stretched himself, with a suggestion of relief in the action. The thing is evil indeed out of which no good may come, which is utterly without compensation. And the compensation here was that at least there was end to secrecy. The thing was out. Sir Andrew knew; and however hardly Sir Andrew might have taken it, at least the menace of discovery was at an end. This, Mr. Latimer reflected, was something gained. There was an end to his tormenting consciousness of practising by secrecy a passive deceit upon Sir Andrew.
And from the consideration of that secrecy his mind leapt suddenly to ask how came the thing discovered. That they should know vaguely and generally of his defection was not perhaps so startling. But how came they informed in such detail of the exact part he had played in that raid upon the arsenal last April? His very presence in Charles Town had been known to none except the members of the General Committee of the Provincial Congress. Then he reflected that those members were very numerous, and that a secret is rarely kept when shared by many. Someone here had been grievously indiscreet. So indiscreet, indeed, that if the royal governor knew that Harry Latimer was the author of the raid--a raid which fell nothing short of robbery and sedition, and amounted almost to an act of war--there was a rope round his neck and round the neck of every one of his twenty associates in that rebellious enterprise,
Here was something to engage his thoughts.
If his activities were known in Sir Andrew's household; it followed almost certainly that they would be known also in the Governor's. He was sufficiently acquainted with Sir Andrew to be sure that, in spite of everything that lay between Sir Andrew and himself, the baronet would be the first to bear the information to Lord William.
And then he realized that this was no mere indiscretion. Indiscretion might have betrayed some general circumstance, but it could never have betrayed all these details of which Myrtle was possessed; above all it could never have betrayed so vital and dangerous a secret. He was assailed by the conviction that active, deliberate treachery was at work, and he perceived that he must communicate at once with his friends in Charles Town, to put them on their guard. He would write to Moultrie, his friend and one of the staunchest patriots in South Carolina. Upon that thought he returned to the writing-table, and sat down. There Tom Izard's letter once tore confronted him. Possibly Tom's gossip might yield some clue. He broke the seals, unfolded and spread the sheets, to find in them far more than he had expected.
"My Dear Harry," wrote the garrulous man of fashion,
"Wherever you may be, and whatever the activities that are now engaging you, I advise you to suspend them, and to return and pay attention to your own concerns, which are urgently requiring your presence. Though on your return you should call me out for daring even to hint at the possibility of disloyalty in Myrtle, I cannot leave you in ignorance of what is happening at Fairgrove.
"You know, I think, that soon after the fight at Lexington last April, Captain Mandeville was sent down here by General Gage from Boston against the need to stiffen the lieutenant-governor into a proper performance of his duty by the king. Captain Mandeville has remained here ever since, and in these past to months has acquired such a grasp of provincial affairs in South Carolina, that he continues as the guide and mentor of any brother-in-law, Lord William, who arrived from England a fortnight since. Mandeville, who has now been appointed equerry to his lordship, is become the power behind the throne, the real ruler of South Carolina, in so far, of course, as South Carolina is still ruled by the royal government.
"In all this there; ay be nothing that is new to you. But it will be new, I am sure, that a kinship, real or pretended, exists between this fellow and your old guardian, Sir Andrew Carey. That stiff-necked old tory has taken this pillar of royal authority to his broad bosom. The gallant captain is constantly at Fairgrove, whenever his duties do not keep him in Charles Town. Let me add on the score of. Mandeville, who is undeniably a man of parts and finds great favour with the ladies, the following information obtained from a sure source. He is a notorious fortune-hunter, reduced in circumstances, and it is well-known in England that he accepted service in the colonies with the avowed intention of making a rich marriage. His assets are not only a fine figure and the most agreeable manners, but the fact that he is next heir to his uncle, the Earl of Chalfont, from whom I understand that he is at present estranged. I do not myself imagine that a man of his aims and talents would be so very diligent at Fairgrove unless in Carey's household he saw a reasonable prospect of finding what he seeks. You will be very angry with me, I know. But I should not be your friend did I not risk your anger, and. I would sooner risk that now than your reproaches later for not having given you timely warning."
There followed a post-script=: "If your engagements are such that it is impossible for you to return and attend to your own concerns, shall I pick a quarrel with the captain, and have him out? I would have done so out of love for you before this, but that my brother-in-law would never forgive me and Sally would be furious. Poor Lord William would be helpless without his equerry, and he finds things devilish difficult as it is. Besides, I understand that, as commonly happens with such rascals, this Mandeville is a dead shot and plaguy nimble with a small-sword."
At another time the post-scriptum might have drawn a smile from Latimer. Now his face remained grave and his lips tight. A definite conclusion leapt at him from those pages. It was not a question of Sir Andrew's having informed the Governor of Harry Latimer's seditious practices. What had happened was the reverse of that. The information had been conveyed to Sir Andrew by this fellow Mandeville, of whom he had heard once r twice before of late. If Mandeville's intentions were at all as Tom Izard represented them, it would clearly be in the captain's Interest to effect an estrangement between Latimer and the Careys. And this was what had taken place.
But how had Mandeville obtained the information? One only answer was possible. By means of a spy placed in the very bosom of the councils of the colonial party.
Upon that Mr. Latimer took an instant decision. He would not write. He would go in person. He would set out at once for Charles Town, to discover this enemy agent who was placing in jeopardy the cause of freedom and the lives of those who served it.
His work in Georgia was of very secondary importance by comparison with that.
William Moultrie, of Northampton on the Cooper River--who had just been appointed Colonel of the Second Provincial Regiment of South Carolina, under a certificate issued by a Provincial Congress which was not yet sufficiently sure, of itself to grant commissions--was aroused from slumber in the early hours of a June morning by a half-dressed negro servant, who proffered him a folded slip of paper.
The Colonel reared a great night-capped head from his pillow, and displayed a broad, rugged face the bone structures of which were massive and well-defiled. From under beetling brows two small eyes, normally of a kindly expression, peered out, to screw themselves up again when smitten by the light of the candle which the negro carried.
"Wha...wha...what's o'clock?" quoth the Colonel confusedly
"Close. on five o'clock, massa."
"Fi...five o'clock!" Moultrie awakened on that, and sat up. "What the devil, Tom...?"
Tom brought the slip of paper more definitely to his master's notice. Puzzled, the Colonel took it, unfolded it, dusted his eyes with his knuckles, and read. Then he flung back the bedclothes, thrust out a hairy leg, his foot groping for the floor, and commanded Tom to give him a bedgown, draw the curtains, and bring up this visitor.
And so a few minutes later Harry Latimer was ushered into the presence of the Colonel, who stood in the pale light of early day, in bedgown, slippers and nightcap to receive him.
"Odsbud, Harry! What's this? What's brought you back?"
They shook hands firmly, like old friends, whilst the gimlet eyes of Moultrie observed the young man's dusty boots and travel-stained riding clothes as well as the haggard lines in his face.
"When you've heard, you may say I've come back to be hanged. But it's a slight risk at present, and had to be taken."
"What's that?" The Colonel's voice was very sharp.
Latimer delivered the burden of his news. "The Governor is informed of the part I played in the raid last April."
"Oons!" said Moultrie, startled. "How d'ye know?"
"Read these letters. They'll make it plain. They reached me three days ago at Savannah."
The Colonel took the papers Latimer proffered, and crossed to the window to peruse them. He was a stockily built man of middle height, twenty years older than his visitor, whom he had known from infancy. For Moultrie had been one of the closest friends of Latimer's father and his brother-in-arms in Grant's campaign against the Cherokees, in which the-elder Latimer had prematurely lost his life. And there you have the reason why. Harry sought him now in the first instance, rather than Charles Pinckney, the President of Provincial Congress, which the royal Government did not recognise, or. Henry Laurens, the President of the Committee of Safety, which the royal government recognised still less. The offices held by these two should have designated one or the other of thorn as the first recipient of this weighty confidence. But to either, Latimer had taken it upon himself to prefer the man who was in such close, personal relations with himself.
Whilst still reading, Moultrie swore softly once or twice.. When he had done, he came slowly back, hit brow rumpled in thought. Silently he handed back the papers to the waiting Latimer, who had meanwhile taken a chair near the table in mid-apartment. Then, still in silence, the Colonel took up one from a bundle of pipes on that same table, and slowly filled it with leaf from a pewter box.
"Faith," he grumbled at last, "you don't lack evidence, for your assumption. Nobody outside of the Committee so much, as suspected that you were here in April. God knows the, place is crawling with, spies, There was a fellow named. Kirkland, serving in, the militia, whom we suspect of acting as Lord William's agent with the back-country tories. We durstn't touch him until he was so imprudent as to desert, and come down to Charles Town with another rogue named Cheney. But before ever we could lay hands on him, Lord. William had put him safely aboard a man o' war oat there in the toads. Cheney was less lucky. We've got him. Though, gadslife, I don't know what we're to do with him, for unfortunately he isn't a deserter. But that he's a spy only a fool Could doubt."
"Yes, yes," Latimer was impatient. "But that kind of spy is of small account compared with this one." And he tapped the papers vehemently.
Moultrie looked at him, pausing in the act of applying to his pipe the flame of the candle which the servant had left burning. Latimer answered the inquiry of the glance.
"This man is inside our councils. He is one of us. And unless we find him and deal with him, God alone knows what havoc he may work. As it is there are some twenty of us whose lives are in jeopardy. For you cannot suppose that if he has betrayed me to the Governor he hasn't at the same time betrayed the others who were with me, whether they actually bore a hand or merely shared the responsibility."
Moultrie lighted his pipe, and pulled at it thoughtfully. He did not permit himself to share the excitement that was setting, his visitor aquiver. He came and placed a hand affectionately on Harry's shoulder.
"I'm not vastly exercised by any threat to your life, lad--at least not at present. Neither the Governor, nor his pilot, Captain Mandeville, want another Lexington here in South Carolina. And that's what would happen if they tried any hangings. But as far as the rest goes, you're right. We've to find this fellow. He's among the ninety members of the General Committee. Faith, the job'll be singularly like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay." He paused, shaking his head; then asked a question: "I suppose ye've not thought of how to go about discovering him?"
"I've thought of nothing else all, the way from Savannah here. But I haven't found the answer."
"We shall have to seek help," said Moultrie, "and after all it's your duty to Pinckney and Laurens, and one or two others, to let them know of this."
"The fewer we tell, the better."
"Of course, Of course. A half-dozen at most, and those men that are well above suspicion."
Later on in the course of that day, six gentlemen of prominence in the Colonial party repaired to Colonel Moultrie's house on Broad Street in, response to his urgent summons. In addition to Laurens and Pinckney, there was Christopher Gadsden, long and lean and tough in the blue uniform of the newly-established First Provincial Regiment, to the command of which he had just been appointed. A veteran firebrand President of the South Carolina. Sons of Liberty, he was among the very few who at this early date were prepared to go the length of demanding American Independence. With him came the elegant, accomplished William Henry Drayton, of Drayton Hall, who, like Latimer, was a recent convert to the party of Liberty, and who brought to it all the enthusiasm and intolerance commonly found in converts. His position as President of the Secret Committee entitled him to be present. The others making up this extemporaneous committee were the two delegates to Continental Congress; the Irish lawyer John Rutledge, a man of thirty-five who had been prominent in the Stamp-Act Congress ten years ago, and famous ever since, and his younger brother Edward.
Assembled about the table in Moultrie's library these six, with Moultrie himself presiding, listened attentively to the reasons/ advanced by Mr. Latimer in support of his assertion that they were being betrayed by someone within their ranks.
"Some twenty of us," he concluded, "lie already at the mercy of the royal Government. Lord William is in possession of evidence upon which to hang us if the occasion serves him. That, in itself, is grave enough. But there may be worse to follow unless we take our measures to discover and remove, by whatever means you may consider fit, this traitor from our midst."
There followed upon that a deal of talk that was little to the point. They discussed this thing; they pressed Latimer for details which he would have preferred to have withheld as to the exact channel through which this information had reached him, and they were very vehement and angry in their vituperation of the unknown traitor, very full of threats of what should be done to him when found. Several talked at once, and in the alarm and excitement the meeting degenerated for a while into a babel.
Drayton took the opportunity wrathfully to renew a demand, which had already once been rejected by the General Committee, that the Governor should be taken into custody. Moultrie answered him that the measure was not practical, and Gadsden, supporting Drayton, furiously demanded to know why the devil it should not be. Then at last John Rutledge, who hitherto had sat as silent and inscrutable as a granite sphinx coldly interposed.
"Practical or not, this is not the place to debate it, nor is it the matter under consideration." Almost contemptuously he added "Shall we keep to the point?"
It was his manner rather than his words that momentarily quieted their vapourings. His cold detachment and his obvious command of himself gave him command of others. And there was, too, something arresting and prepossessing in his appearance. He was in his way a handsome man, with good features that were softly rounded, and wide-set, slow-moving, observant eyes. There was the least suggestion of portliness about his figure, or, rather than actual portliness, the promise of it to come with advancing years. His dress, was of a scrupulous and quiet elegance, and if the grey wig he wore was clubbed to an almost excessive extent yet it was redeemed from all suspicion of foppishness by the formal severity of its set.
There was a moment's utter silence after he had spoken. Then Drayton, feeling that the rebuke had been particularly aimed at himself, gave Rutledge sneer for sneer.
"By all means, let us keep to the point. After long consideration you may reach the conclusion that it's easier to discover the treason than the traitor. And that will be profitable. As profitable as was the arrest of Cheney by a committee too timid to commit anything."
That sent them off again, on another by-path.
"Yes, by God!" burst from the leathery lungs of Gadsden who had been preaching sedition to the working-people of Charles Town for the last ten years, ever since the Stamp-Act troubles. "There's the whole truth of the matter. That's why we make no progress. The committee's just a useless and impotent debating society, and it'll go on debating until the redcoats are at our throats. We daren't even hang a rascal like Cheney, Oons! If the wretch had known us better he might have spared himself his terrors."
"His terrors?" The question came sharply from Latimer, so sharply that it stilled the general murmurs as they began to arise again. At the mention of Cheney's name, he remembered what Moultrie had said about the fellow. An idea, vague as yet, was stirring in his mind. "Do you say that this man Cheney is afraid of what may happen to him?"
Gadsden loosed a splutter of contemptuous laughter. "Afraid? Scared to death, Very near. Because he doesn't realise that the only thing we can do is talk, he already smells the tar, and feels the feathers tickling him."
Rutledge addressed himself scrupulously to the chair. "May I venture to inquire, sir, how this is relevant?"
Leaning forward now, a certain excitement in his face, Latimer impatiently brushed him aside.
"By your leave, M. Rutledge. It may be more relevant than you think." He addressed himself to Moultrie. "Tell me this, pray. What does the Committee propose to do with Cheney?"
Moultrie referred the question to the genial elderly Laurens who was President of the Committee concerned.
Laurens shrugged helplessly. "We have decided to let him go. There is no charge upon which we can prosecute."
Gadsden snorted his fierce contempt. "No charge! And the man a notorious spy!"
"A moment, Colonel." Latimer restrained him, and turned again to Laurens. "Does Cheney know--does he suspect your intentions?"
"Not yet."
Latimer sank back in his chair again, brooding. "And he's afraid, you say?"
"Terrified," Laurens assured him. "I believe he would betray anybody or anything to save his dirty skin."
That brought Latimer suddenly to his feet in some excitement. "It is what I desired to know. Sir, if your Committee's will give me this man--let me have my way with him--it is possible that through him I may be able to discover what we require."
They looked at him in wonder and some doubt. That doubt Laurens presently expressed. "But, if he doesn't know? And why should you suppose that he does?"
"Sir, I said through him, not from him. Let me have my way in this. Give me twenty-four hours. Give me until tomorrow evening at latest, and it is possible that I may have a fuller tale to tell you."
There was a long pause of indecision. Then very coldly, almost contemptuously in its lack of expression, came a question from Rutledge:
"And if you fail?"
Latimer looked at him, and the lines of his mouth grew humorous.
"Then you may try your hand, sir."
And Gadsden uttered a laugh that must have annoyed any man but Rutledge.
Of course that was not yet the end of the matter. Latimer was pressed with questions touching his intentions. But he fenced them off. He demanded their trust and confidence. And in the end they gave it, Laurens taking it upon himself in view of the urgency of the case to act for the Committee over which he presided.
The immediate sequel was that some two or three hours later Mr. Harry Latimer was ushered into the cell in the town gaol, where Cheney languished. But it was a Mr. Latimer very unlike his usual modish, elegant self. He went dressed in shabby brown coatee and breeches, with coarse woollen stockings and rough shoes, and his abundant hair hung loose about his neck.
"I am sent by the Committee of Safety," he announced to the miserable wretch who cowered on a stool in a corner and glared at him with frightened eyes. On that he paused. Then, seeing that Cheney made no shift to speak, he continued: "You can hardly be such a fool as not to know what is coming to you. You know what you've done, and you know what usually happens to your kind when they're caught."
He saw the rascally, pear-shaped face before him turn a sickly grey. The man moistened his lips, then cried out in a quavering voice:
"They can prove naught against me. Naught!"
"Where there is certain knowledge proof doesn't matter."
"It matters. It does matter!" Cheney rose. He snarled like a frightened animal. "They durstn't hurt me without cause; good cause; legal cause. And they knows it. What have they against me? What's the charge? I've been twice before the Committee. But there never were no charge: no charge they durst bring in a court."
"I know," said Latimer quietly. "And that's why I've been sent: to tell you that to-morrow morning the Committee will set you at liberty."
The coarse mouth, about which a thick stubble of beard had sprouted during the spy's detention, fell open in amazement. Breathing heavily, he leaned on the coarse deal table for support, staring at his visitor. Hoarsely at last came his voice.
"They...they'll set me at liberty!" And then his currish demeanour changed. Now that he saw deliverance assured a certain truculence invested him. He laughed, slobbering like a drunkard. "I knowed it! I knowed they durstn't hurt me. If they did they'd be hurt theirselves. They'd have to answer to the Governor for it. Ye can't hurt a man without bringing a charge and proving it."
"That," Mr. Latimer agreed suavely, "is what the Committee realizes, and that is why it is letting you go. But don't assume too much. Don't be so rash as to suppose that you're to get off scot free."
"Wha--what!" Out went the truculence. Back came the terror.
"I'll tell you. When you are released to-morrow morning; you'll find me waiting for you outside the gaol, and with me there'll be at least a hundred lads of the, town, all of them Sons of Liberty, who'll have had word of the Committee's intention and don't mean to let you go back to your dirty spying. What the Committee dare not do, they'll never boggle over. For the Governor can't prosecute a mob. You guess what'll happen?"
The grey face with its shifty eyes and open mouth was fixed in speechless terror.
"Tar and feathers," said Mr. Latimer, to remove the last doubt in that palsied mind.
"God!" shrieked the creature. His knees were loosened and he sank down again upon his stool. "God!"
"On the other hand," Mr. Latimer resumed quite placidly, "it may happen that there will be no mob; that I shall be alone to see you safely out of Charles Town. But that will depend upon yourself; upon your willingness to undo as far as you are able some of the mischief you have done."
"What d'ye mean? In God's name, what d'ye mean? Don't torture a poor devil."
"You don't know who I am," said Mr. Latimer. "I'll tell you. My name is Dick Williams, and I was sergeant to Kirkland--"
"That you never was," Cheney cried out.
Mr. Latimer smiled upon him with quiet significance. "It is necessary that you should believe it, if you are to avoid the tar and feathers. I beg you then to persuade yourself that my name is Dick Williams, and that I was sergeant to Kirkland. And you and I are going together to pay the Governor a visit to-morrow morning. There, you will do as I shall tell you. If you don't, you'll find my lads waiting for you when you leave his lordship's." He entered into further details, to which the other listened like a creature fascinated. "It is now for you to say what you will do," said. Mr. Latimer amiably in conclusion. "I do not wish to coerce you, or even to over-persuade you. I have offered you the alternatives. I leave you a free choice."
Mr. Selwyn Innes, who was Lord William Campbell's secretary during his lordship's tenure of the office of Governor of the Province of South Carolina, conducted with a lady in Oxfordshire a correspondence which on his part was as full and detailed as it was indiscreet The letters, which have fortunately survived, give so intimate a relation of the day-to-day development of certain transactions under his immediate notice that they would be worthy to rank as mémoires pour servir were it not that history must confine itself more or less to the broad outlines of movements and events, and can be concerned only with the main actors in its human drama.
In one of these garrulous letters there occurs the phrase:
"We are sitting on a volcano which at any moment may belch fire and brimstone, and my lord taking no thought for anything but the mode of dressing his hair, the set of his coat, ogling the ladies at the St. Cecilia concerts and attending every race-meeting that is held."
From that and abundant other similar indications throughout the secretary's letters, we gather that his opinion of the amiable, rather ingenuous, entirely unfortunate young nobleman whom he had the honour to serve was not very exalted. A secretary, after all, is a sort of valet, an intellectual valet; and to their valets, we know, few men can succeed in being heroes. But with the broader outlook which distance lends us, we know now that Mr. Innes did his lordship less than justice, After all, no man may bear a burden beyond his strength, and the burden imposed upon the young Colonial governor in that time of crisis by a headstrong, blundering government at home was one that he could not even lift. Therefore, like a wise man--in spite of Mr. Innes--he contemplated it with rueful humour, and temporized as best he could, whilst awaiting events that should either lessen that burden or increase his own capacity.
There is also the fact that whilst, like a dutiful servant of the crown, he was quite ready where possible to afford an obedience that should be unquestioning, it was beyond nature that this obedience should be enthusiastic. He had examined for himself the lamentable question that was agitating the empire; and the fact that he was married to a Colonial lady may have served to counteract the bias of his official position, leading him to adopt in secret the view of the majority--not merely in the Colonies, but also at home--that disaster must attend the policy of the ministry, driven by a wilful, despotic monarch who understood the cultivation of turnips better than the husbandry of an empire. He cannot have avoided the reflection that the government he served was determined to reap the crop that Grenville had sown with the Stamp Act, determined to pursue the obstinate policy which--the phrase is Pitt's, I think--must trail the ermine of the British King in the blood of British subjects. Lord William perceived--indeed, it required no very acute perception--how oppression was provoking resistance, and how resistance was accepted as provocation for further oppression. Therefore, he remained as far as possible supine, thankful perhaps in his secret heart that he was without the means to execute the harsh orders reaching him from home, and obstinately hoping that conciliatory measures might yet be adopted to restore harmony between the parent country and the children overseas whom she had irritated into insubordination.
Towards this he may have thought that he could best contribute by bearing himself with careless affability, as an appreciative guest of the colony he was sent to govern. He showed himself freely with his Colonial wife at race meetings, balls and other diversions, as Mr. Innes records, and he affected an amiable blindness to anything that bore the semblance of sedition.
In the end, as we can trace, Mr. Innes came to perceive something of this, and I suspect that he began to make the discovery on a certain Tuesday morning in June of that fateful year 1773, when Captain Mandeville, his excellency's equerry, waited upon Lord William at the early hour of eight.
Captain Mandeville, who was himself lodged in the Governor's residence in Meeting Street, came unannounced into the pleasant spacious room above-stairs that was Lord William's study. The equerry found his excellency, in a quilted bedgown of mulberry satin, reclining on a long chair, whilst his aproned alet Dumergue, was performing with comb and tongs and pomade his morning duties upon the luxuriant chestnut hair that adorned the young governor's handsome head. In mid-apartment, at a writing-table that was a superb specimen of the French art of cabinet-making, with nobly arching legs and choicely-carved ormolu incrustations, Mr. Innes was at work.
Lord William looked up languidly to greet his equerry. His lordship had been dancing at his father-in-law's--old Ralph Izard--until a late hour last night, so that the air of fatigue he wore was natural enough.
"Ah, Mandeville! Good morning. Ye're devilish early astir."
"Not without occasion." The captain's manner was grim, almost curt. It was obviously as an afterthought that he bowed and added a shade less curtly: "Good morning."
Lord William observed, him with quickened interest. He knew no man who commanded himself more completely than Robert Mandeville, who more fully conformed with that first canon of good-breeding which demanded that a gentleman should at all times, in all places and circumstances, control his person and subdue his feelings. Yet here was Mandeville, this paragon of deportment, not only excited, but actually permitting himself to betray the fact. And it was not only his voice that betrayed it. There was a touch of heightened colour in the captain's clear-cut, clear-skinned, rather arrogant countenance, whilst in his clubbed blond hair there was more than a vestige of last night's powder to advertise the fact that the captain, usually so irreproachable in these matters, had made a hurried toilet.
"Why--what is it?" quoth his lordship.
Captain Mandeville looked at Innes, disregarding the secretary's nod of greeting; then at the valet, busy with his lordship's hair.
"It will keep until Dumergue has finished." His tone was now more normal. He sauntered across to the broad window standing open to a balcony wide and deep and pillared like a loggia. It overlooked the luxuriant garden and the broad creek at the end of it, whose waters sparkling in the morning sunshine showed here and there through the great magnolias that spread a canopy above them.
His lordship's glance followed the officer's tall graceful figure in its coat of vivid scarlet With golden shoulder-knots and the sword thrust through the pocket, in compliance rather with the latest decree of fashion than with military regulations. His curiosity was aroused and with it the uneasiness that invariably pervaded him where colonial matters were concerned.
"Innes," he said, "let Captain Mandeville read Lord Hillsbrough's letter while he waits." And he added the information that it had just arrived by the war sloop Cherokee and had been brought ashore an hour ago by her captain.
Dumergue interrupted him at that point by thrusting a mirror into his lordship's hand, whilst holding up a second one behind his lordship's head.
"'Voyez, milor'," he invited. "Les boucles un peu plus series qu' à l'ordinaire..."
He waited, eyebrows raised, head on one side, his glance intensely anxious.
In the hand-glass his lordship calmly surveyed the back of his head, as reflected from the second mirror. He nodded.
"Yes. I like that better. Very good, Dumergue."
Audibly Dumergue resumed his suspended breathing. He set down his mirror and became busy with a broad ribbon of black silk.
Lord William lowered his own glass to meet the eyes of Captain Mandeville observing him across the document which the equerry had now read.
"Well, Mandeville? What do you think of it?"
"I think it is very opportune."
"Opportune! Good God, Innes He thinks it's opportune!"
Mr. Innes, a sleek young gentleman, smiled and ventured even a slight shrug. "That was to be looked for in Captain Mandeville." His voice was gentle, almost timid. "He is a consistent advocate of...of...strong measures."
His lordship sniffed.
"Strong measures are for the strong, and to do as Lord Hillsborough commands us--"
He broke off. Captain Mandeville was holding up the hand that held the letter.
"When your excellency's toilet is finished."
"Oh, very well," his lordship agreed. "Make haste, Dumergue."
Scandalized by the command, Dumergue began a protest. "Oh, milor'! Une chevelure pareille...une coiffure si belle..."
"Make haste!" His lordship was unusually peremptory.
Dumergue sighed, and cut short his ministrations. With a final touch he perfected the set of the ribbon in which the queue was confined; then he gathered towel, scissors, comb, curling-tongs and pomade into a capacious basin, made his bow, and retired with wounded dignity.
"Now, Mandeville."
His lordship sat up, swinging his legs round. They were shapely legs in pearl-grey silk. He considered them complacently. They were among the few things whose contemplation afforded his lordship unalloyed satisfaction.
But Captain Mandeville required his lordship to pay attention to very different matters.
"Lord Hillsborough is quite definite in his instructions." "It's so devilish easy for a politician to be definite in London," grumbled his lordship.
Captain Mandeville paid no heed to the comment. He lowered his eyes to the sheet he held, and read: "The Government is resolved to make an end, a speedy end, of the ungrateful and unfeeling insubordination of the American colonies, which is occasioning so much pain to his majesty's ministers."
"Oh, damn their pain!" said their South-Carolina representative.
The equerry read on. "The excessive leniency hitherto observed must now be definitely abandoned, and coercion must at once be employed to subdue these mutinous spirits.
"Therefore I desire your excellency to act without delay, seizing all arms and munitions belonging to the province, raising provincial troops if possible and making ready to receive the British regulars that will be embarked with the least possible delay."
His lordship laughed. "Not without humour, Mandeville--of the unconscious kind, that so often has a tragic flavour. I am to raise provincial troops. Gadsmylife! As if the provincial troops were not raising themselves, whilst I look on, acquiescing in the damned comedy; pretending not to know the purpose for which they are being raised; regarding them as the ordinary militia which they scarcely trouble to pretend to be. They swarm in the streets until the place looks like a garrison town. They parade, and march and drill under my very nose. Indeed, I marvel that I am not asked to sign their officers' commissions. If I were I suppose I should have to do it. And Lord Hillsborough, snugly at home in England, writes ordering me to raise provincial troops! My God!"
He rose at the end of his bitterly humorous tirade, a tall, handsome, almost boyish figure. "And you, Mandeville, think this letter opportune?"
"It is opportune with the business that brings me," said the equerry. You are forgetting the back country. Charles Town itself may be a hotbed of rebellion. But up there, beyond the Broad River, they are loyal and tory. And they'll fight."
"But who wants to fight?" Lord William was almost impatient. "I am sent out from home with orders to play a conciliatory part--which is the only part I have the means to play, the only part that I believe it is sane to play. Other orders follow. I am to coerce; I am to arm. I am to prepare to receive British troops. The latter I can do. But the rest--"
"That, too, if you have the will," said Mandeville.
"How can I have the will? Who could have the will whilst there is the faintest chance of conciliation. And why should there not be?"
"Because these people have determined otherwise. Lexington showed us that clearly enough. Up there in Massachusetts--"
"Yes, yes. But this isn't Massachusetts. The enactments which have weighed heavily on the Northern provinces haven't touched the people in South Carolina."
"They have touched their sympathies," Captain Mandeville reminded him. "And there are enough dangerous spirits here to keep those sympathies at fever-point."
"And more who are urged by self-interest to remain quiet. It's not for us to stir them up."
"Yet their Provincial Congress and its very active committees exist, the Society of the Carolinian Sons of Liberty exists. And between them, these illegal bodies rule the province. They ru'e you."
"Rule me?" Lord William stiffened. "I don't recognise their existence," he declared.
"That is not to abolish them. They exist in spite of you. They come to you with their seditious demands wrapped in constitutional language, and force their measures down your throat, making a mock of your authority."
"But they are as unwilling to come to blows as I am; and since they have the force, and I have not, it says much for their fundamental loyalty that they are as anxious for conciliation as I am. I believe that in my heart--nay, I know it. Haven't I close relatives among those you would call rebels?"
"What does your lordship call them?"
Lord William looked at him, and flushed. He was annoyed, and yet he curbed the expression of it. He recognized that Mandeville, who had already spent two months in Charles Town, was infinitely better acquainted with Carolinian affairs than himself, who had arrived there only a fortnight ago. And he was completely dependent upon Mandeville in his struggle with the constitutional Commons House of Assembly unconstitutionally transforming itself into Provincial Congress and operating through equally unlawful subordinate committees. Therefore lie suffered in the equerry certain liberties which in another would never have been tolerated.
"What else, indeed, can you call them?" Mandeville insisted after a moment, on another tone. Then his manner became more brisk. "But I've something else for your excellency this morning. Cheney is here."
The Governor looked up in sharp surprise. "Cheney?"
"He has been set at liberty."
The young face lighted suddenly. "There! You see That's a proof of their disposition."
"But no explanation is offered of his arrest. Much less regret, as he will tell you if you'll see him."
"Of course I'll see him."
"He has a friend with him, another back-country settler, an intelligent-looking fellow who was sergeant to Kirkland."
"Bring them in. Both of them."
Mandeville handed Lord Hillsborough's letter back to Innes, and left the room. The Governor paced across to the window, and stood there looking out, pensive, his chin in his hand.
The news of Cheney's release brought relief to Lord William, who had seen his authority in peril of being openly defied. It was perhaps as a result of this that his reception of the man was more than ordinarily cordial when presently Captain Mandeville ushered him in, together with his companion, Dick Williams.
"He was sergeant to Kirkland," Mandeville repeated as he presented the latter.
"And before that?" his lordship inquired, simply out of the interest inspired in him by this young man, so personable and attractive despite his shabbiness.
"A tobacco planter in a small way," said Williams. "I have some land, held by the King's bounty, between the Saluda and the Broad. Haven't I, Cheney?"
"Ay, that's a fact," said Cheney, who wore a hang-dog look.
His lordship thought that he understood the fellow's loyalty.
"And therefore you are properly grateful, sir? That is very well. I would all were as dutiful in the back country settlements. But what of you, Cheney? What grounds did the Committee give for your arrest?"
"Just that I came down with Kirkland, as did Dick here. Lucky for him though, he weren't seen in Kirkland's company."
"But they couldn't hurt you for being with Kirkland."
"They might ha' done, if I hadn't denied it. I swore their spy was mistook when he said I came as a lifeguard to Kirkland. I said Kirkland and me had met on the Indian trail beyond the town; that we did happen to come in together, but that I knew naught of him being a deserter from the provincial army. I held to that tale, though they tried plaguy hard to shake me out of it. And when they found they couldn't, why they just let me go. But I ain't safe in Charles Town, my lord."
"Why not, since they've let you go...?"
"Ay, ay, but they may find out something about me yet, and if they take me up again..." He broke off, distress on his dull face.
"What then?"
Williams answered for him. "They may tar-and-feather ," he said casually.
His lordship made a sharp gesture of abhorrence.
"Why? Because he's a king's man! That's a bugbear. Why don't they tar-and-feather me?"
There was a half-smile on the lean face of the false Dick Williams.
"Your lordship is a great man, protected by your station. We are small fry, whom no one would miss. We play this game with our lives on the board and if we're put to death," he shrugged and laughed, "no more notice will be taken of it."
Nay, there you are wrong. I should see them punished."
"That would vindicate your authority, but hardly profit us."
"They daren't do it. They daren't!" Lord William was emphatic.
They'll do it to Kirkland, if they get him. And they want him, eh, Cheney?"
"Ay, it's a fact," said Cheney. "The Committee made no secret of it. They'll put Kirkland to death if they lay hands on him, and any other spy."
"So they hold that against him, do they--that he's a spy?"
"Ay, and if they'd, had grounds enough to hold it against me I shouldn't be standing here now. If your lordship don't protect me, I'll go in fear of my life."
Lord William turned to his silent, observant equerry. "What's to be done, Mandeville?"
"Send them both to join Kirkland," said Mandeville shortly. "Ay, ay; but where's Kirkland going?" quoth Williams boldly.
"There's nothing yet decided," Lord William answered him. "Meanwhile he's safe aboard the Tamar."
From Kirkland's pretended sergeant came a frank, pleasant laugh that held a note of recklessness.
"Your lordship may send Cheney there if he's a mind to go. But I don't strike my colours yet. I've come to serve the king, and myself, too, at the same time. There's a fellow named Harry Fitzroy Latimer with whom I've an old account to settle."
At the mention of that name Captain Mandeville very obviously awoke to keener interest in Dick Williams. His eyes--dark eyes that seemed invested with a singular penetration from being set in so fair a face--levelled a very searching glance upon him.
"Latimer!" he cried sharply, and added after a breathless pause: "What is there between you and Latimer?"
Williams hesitated, as if the sharp tone had intimidated him. "Does your honour know him?
"I asked you a question," said the captain stiffly.
Williams smiled, with a touch of deprecation. "My answer might offend you, captain. Maybe he's a friend of yours."
"A friend of mine!" It was the captain's turn to laugh, and his laugh was not pleasant. "D'ye think I have friends among the rebels?"
"Oh, but this one." Williams turned to his lordship. "Mr. Latimer is one of the richest planters in the province, in all the thirteen colonies maybe, and he has a mort of friends among the tories. Why, there's Sir Andrew Carey of Fairgrove Barony as red-hot a tory as any man in America, and Latimer to marry his daughter."
Mandeville looked at him contemptuously. The fellow was not so well-informed after all.
That may have been the case. It is so no longer. Sir Andrew is my friend, my kinsman; and I have it from himself that this scoundrel Latimer shall never darken his doorway again. I'll add that I do not know him, that I have never seen him, though his deeds are well enough known to me as they are to Lord William."
"Ay," grumbled his excellency. "The fellow's a nasty thorn in our flesh. If the province were rid of him and that firebrand Gadsden, there'd be more hope of a settlement."
"So speak your mind freely about him," the equerry invited. "What is there between you?"
"Just a matter of some fifty acres the grasping scoundrel has filched from my bounty lands, by artful shifting of boundaries."
William's voice quivered with scorn. "There's a noble gentleman for you! A man as rich as Dives, and not above thieving land from a Lazarus like myself. But that's the spirit of these rebels. They're all alike. Where there's no loyalty to the king, there's no fear of God, nor virtue of any kind."
"But there's a law to which you can appeal," Lord William reminded him, shocked by this revelation of turpitude.
"A law!" Dick Williams laughed outright. "The law's dispensed by such men as Mr. Latimer in South Carolina. The province is ruled by these wealthy planters. And they'll never legislate against one another."
"We shall alter all that, Williams, when these troubles are settled."
"That's my hope, my lord, That's my faith." Enthusiasm kindled in the blue eyes, a flush crept into that lean, pale face. "And that's why I'm ready to spend my life in the king's service. So that in the end we may have justice of such nabobs as this Mr. Latimer. He keeps the state of a prince out of his plunderings. A kite-hearted scoundrel."
"You'll have justice, don't doubt it," said Captain Mandeville slowly. "The fellow is weaving a rope for his neck. Egad He's woven it already."
"Ye don't say, captain!" Williams was suddenly very eager. "Oh, but I do," Mandeville answered him, and snapped his lips together on that subject.
Williams showed a desire to pursue it. At least he hesitated now, twirling his shabby hat in hands that were none too clean. Then Lord William diverted the channel of their talk, or, rather, brought it back from that digression.
"What have you in mind to do, Williams? Where do you propose to go?"
"I? Why, back whence I came. Back beyond the Broad. So if your lordship has any messages or letters for Fletchall or the Cunninghams or the Browns, or any other of the loyal folk up yonder, I'm the man to carry them."
"Letters?" said Lord William, and he smiled. "Yet if it were known you came with Kirkland...
"No, no. Besides, I have no letters for them."
"If you had you'd find me as safe as the others that have carried for your lordship."
"For me?" His lordship looked surprised. "Nay, I have sent no letters, Who says I have?"
"It's what I'm supposing, your lordship. For how else should you correspond?
"Certainly not by letters," said his lordship, with the air of a man who knows his business.
"By word of mouth, then. There I'm your man. You'll have some message for them?"
"Why, nothing but to bid them keep the men in good order."
"But you do not yet sanction them to take up arms?"
"Not yet. Not without they have ammunition in plenty, and think they're strong enough."
The comely young face of Williams lengthened. "They're not strong enough, nor have they ammunition in plenty. That I know. Besides, Drayton has been up there preaching sedition to them, and that has thinned their ranks."
"Stale news," put in Captain Mandeville.
"Ay, I suppose it is," Williams agreed, and sighed. "If they could depend upon His Majesty's government for arms."
"Bid them be patient," Lord William answered him, "and should it become necessary--which God send it may not the arms shall presently be forthcoming."
Again the face lighted eagerly. "How, your lordship?" he asked breathlessly.
The young Governor sauntered over to the writing-table. "I could not have told you yesterday. But to-day I have a letter here from the Secretary of State." He held it up a moment, and Williams observed that his face was gloomy, his eyes sad. "His Majesty is resolved to enforce submission from one end of the continent to the other. Tell them that in the back country."
"It will rejoice their hearts, as it rejoices mine, my lord. Does your lordship mean that soldiers will be sent from England?"
"That is what I mean--here to Charles Town." There was no exultation in his voice. "Unless the rebels bend their stubborn necks, this place will shortly be a seat of war."
"Now that's good hearing, on my life!" The young man glowed with satisfaction, until. Captain Mandeville and even the silent secretary, Innes, smiled to see so much enthusiasm. Lord William alone remained grave.
"There's only one piece of news would gladden me more than that," Williams added after a moment. And that would be really to know, to be sure, that Latimer was as safe to be hanged as your honour seemed to promise. If you've those journeys of his in mind, to Boston and elsewhere, I doubt if there's much in that you can act on. He's not done as much as Drayton's been doing, and others that you know of. And if you can't proceed against those, what can you do against Latimer?"
"We've something more than that against him," said Lord William.
"If it's anything about which ye're still lacking evidence, it would be a joy for me to get it for your lordship."
"Nay," said his lordship affably. "I think the evidence is complete. Ye're a good fellow, Williams. show you something that'll make you certain of the recovery of your land, with perhaps a few of Mr. Latimer's acres added to them by way of interest; something that'll encourage you to continue to serve your king as stoutly as you have been serving him." He turned to his secretary. "Innes, give me that April list."
Mandeville moved across to his lordship's side. "Is it quite prudent?" he asked.
Lord William frowned. It seemed to him that Captain Mandeville was permitting himself a liberty greater than usual.
"Prudent? And where is the imprudence? What do I betray that may not be published in Charles Town?"
Mandeville pursed his lips. "Provided that the source of the information is not divulged. That is too precious to be risked in any way."
"Your talent, Mandeville, is for pointing out the obvious."
"That is because the obvious sometimes eludes your lordship," Mandeville answered him with that quiet smiling insolence that he was rather prone to use.
"Be damned to you for your good opinion of me! Let it quiet your timid heart that the obvious does not escape me now." He took the document that Innes proffered and unfolded it. He held it out so that Williams could read it. "What name do you find there at the very top?"
Dick Williams was studying the document as if with effort. "I...I do not read easily," he said.
Mandeville's dark eyes flashed upon him with a sudden look of suspicion. "Yet your speech, sir," he said, "is hardly of one who does not read."
"Oh, I read," said Williams, no whit perturbed. "I read printed books. Indeed, I am a great reader of printed books. But I have no great experience of handwriting." All the while his eyes were on that written sheet. "And this is a cursedly crabbed hand. Whatever rogue writ that should be sent back to school to learn his pothooks. Ah, I have it at last! Egad, I should have guessed it. Why, the name is Harry Latimer."
"Harry Latimer it is," said his lordship, refolding the document and restoring it to his secretary. "It's at the head of the list; and the list is that of the men who were concerned in the raid on the King's armoury here two months ago, in Lieutenant-Governor Bull's time. Latimer was the ring-leader. Robbery and high-treason both in one. That will be the indictment he will have to answer one of these fine days."
Dick Williams was staring at his lordship, a bewildered look in his eyes.
"But I thought he was away in Boston then?"
"So did a good many others. But he wasn't. He was here in Charles Town for three days. And that was one of the things he did."
Dick Williams looked gravely at his lordship.
"The man who wrote that list will testify, of course?"
"When the time comes."
"Then why don't you arrest Latimer?"
"Arrest him?"
"He's here in Charles Town," said Williams, whereupon Captain Mandeville interjected with unusual violence the question:
"How do you know?"
"We saw him this morning in Broad Street as we were on our way here, didn't we, Cheney?"
Cheney woke with a start from the uneasy dejection in which he had been standing.
"It's a fact," he stolidly attested.
Mandeville mused aloud as it seemed: "So he's come back, has he?"
"He has. This is your chance since you can bring forward your witness."
Lord William laughed, a little bitterly. "My good fellow, even if the sheriff's officers would execute my warrant, which I doubt, to bring forward my witness is not yet desirable. The matter must wait. But it will lose nothing by waiting. Be sure of that."
"I see," said Williams. "To disclose the witness would be to lose the services of your spy in the enemy's camp. I understand." He fetched a sigh. "Ah, well, I'll be patient, my lord and meanwhile we may pile up the score against our gentleman." His Manner became brisk. "I'll bear your messages to the back-country. I shall be setting out at once. There's nothing to be gained by stopping in Charles Town. If your lordship has any further word--"
"No. I think not. If you'll bear those I have given you, and report to me when you are next here, I shall be obliged. And now there's still to settle about you, Cheney."
"May it please your lordship," said Cheney.
But the mercurial Dick Williams settled it for him breezily.
"You come back with me, Cheney. You'll be safe enough beyond the Broad. And it's as easy to get out of Charles Town that way as by way of the wharves. Beside, up there with a musket in your hands you'll be more use to your king than stowed away aboard a man-of-war."
"Faith, I don't much care where I goes, so long as I doesn't stay in Charles Town."
"You ride with me, my lad."
"Ay, ay! We'd best be going," said Cheney, who seemed to have no mind of his own.
"Indeed, I think that's best," agreed his lordship. He turned to his secretary. "Innes, let them have ten guineas apiece."
But Williams recoiled. "My lord!" There was deep injury in his tone.
"Why, what the devil!" His lordship stared at him.
"I'm a spy, my lord. I don't mince words. I'm a spy; and I glory in it. But I don't take money for it. I do it as a duty and for the sake of the entertainment it affords me."
Looking into those humorous, dare-devil blue eyes of his, Lord William found no difficulty in believing the preposterous statement.
"Egad, Mr. Williams," said Captain Mandeville, "ye've an odd sense of humour."
"I have. Haven't I, Cheney?"
"It's a fact," said Cheney, who was opening a receptive palm to the gold Mr. Inns poured into it.
Thereupon they took their leave, and Lord William wearily resumed his place on the couch. "An interesting, attractive fellow that," he said, feeling for his snuff-box. "It's the first time I've found it possible to talk to a spy without feeling nauseated. But then he's not really a spy. He had very little to tell us, after all."
"He was very interesting on the subject of Harry Latimer,". said Mandeville, who was brooding by the window.
"Interesting, perhaps. But hardly useful. If he had been before the Committee instead of that oaf Cheney we might have WA something from him."
"Perhaps you might have had something out of Cheney if you'd questioned him."
His lordship yawned. "I forgot," he said. "And that fellow Williams talked so much. No matter. What use is information when you can't act upon it? And I thank God I can't. That way lies hope." He took snuff gloomily.
In an upper room of his handsome house on the Bay, Mr. Harry Latimer was at his toilet with the assistance of Johnson. He was exchanging the clothes and the grime proper to Dick Williams for garments more suited to his real station. But when Johnson respectfully asked his honour what he would wear, his honour bade him lay out a riding-suit, and meanwhile give him a bed-gown. Wrapped in this, he sat there listless and dejected before his toilet table what time his valet busied himself with the clothes Mr. Latimer was presently to don.
When all was ready, instead of proceeding to dress, he dismissed the valet, and continued sunk in thought. Thus Julius, the butler, found him when he came a quarter of an hour later with a silver chocolate service which he set down at his master's elbow. Julius, a short, slight, elderly negro, in a sky-blue livery, and with a head of crisply-curling white hair that looked like a wig, poured a cup of the steaming brew, and then, in obedience to a curt dismissal, withdrew again.
Mr. Latimer sat on, alone with his thoughts. He had succeeded in his aims that morning beyond anything that you may yet suspect. Once he had seen that list which Lord William had shown him, there had been no need for any further questions. He had learnt all that he sought to know. And yet his success, far from bringing him elation, had plunged him into a dejection deeper than any he had yet experienced. For that list was in a hand that he knew as well as he knew his own. It was the hand of a man of his own age, a man named Gabriel Featherstone, who was the son of Sir Andrew Carey's factor at Fairgrove. This factor had been in Sir Andrew's service for thirty years, and not only himself but also his son were held by Sir Andrew in warm affection. So much had this been the case, that at one time when, as a boy, Latimer had been given a tutor, Gabriel Featherstone had been sent to share his lessons. For two years--until Latimer had gone to England to complete his studies--Gabriel and he had worked side by side at their school-books, and for some time afterwards they had corresponded. It was, no wonder, then, that he knew the hand so well.
The discovery that it was Gabriel Featherstone who had supplied that list to Lord William and who was, therefore, the traitor in their ranks, had led Latimer straight to certain very definite and irresistible conclusions. And he was left wondering now at his own dullness in never having suspected these things which were suddenly rendered so appallingly clear.
From the moment that Gabriel Featherstone joined the Carolinian Sons of Liberty and procured his election to the General Committee of Provincial Congress, Latimer should have considered the possibility of some such purpose as he now perceived. Perhaps his own sudden conversion to the Cause had made him take the conversion of Featherstone too much for granted. Yet he should have known that self-interest must have restrained a man who, through his own father, was largely dependent upon Sir Andrew. He should have known that Sir Andrew's bigotry would have dictated the instant dismissal of a man who was the father of a rebel. Since this had not happened, it followed that he was a party to what had taken place. Possibly--indeed probably--it was at Sir Andrew's own instigation that Gabriel had been sent to act as a spy upon the doings of Provincial Congress.
And now Latimer found himself face to face with the clear duty to announce his discovery. The extemporaneous secret committee by which he had been empowered to make his investigation was to assemble again that evening at six o'clock at the house of Henry Laurens to receive his report. Make it he must, at whatever cost. Of that there was no doubt in his mind. But the cost was heavy indeed.
It was not that he pitied or sympathized with Featherstone. Whatever tenderness he might have had for him was eclipsed by the fact that in spite of the past Featherstone had never hesitated to place a rope round Latimer's neck. The fellow was revealed to him for a venal scoundrel upon whom only a fool would waste his pity. But there was Sir Andrew, There was the breach already existing between himself and the man who had been his guardian and dearest friend, and who was Myrtle's lather. That breach, the hope of healing which had been strong until this moment, must now be rendered utterly irreparable. For if he denounced Featherstone, there could be no doubt of what must follow. Whatever the feelings and hesitations of the others, Gadsden would see to it that the man be dealt with by mob-law. And if through Latimer's denunciation Featherstone should lose his life as a punishment for activities in which Sir Andrew himself had engaged him, it would be idle for Harry Latimer to hope that his adoptive father would ever forgive him. Myrtle would then, indeed, be lost to him irrevocably.
Yet denounce Featherstone he must.
There you have the two horns of the terrible dilemma upon which, as a result of his success, Mr. Latimer now found himself. And it was a long time before there dawned upon him the possibility of a middle course, which, by removing Featherstone and thus putting a term to his espionage, might yet spare his life.
A man of quick decisions and of rather sanguine temperament, he decided to act at once upon the idea. Indeed, if it was to be acted upon at all there was no time to lose. He rose at last, and rang for his valet. When the man came, he bade him send a messenger to ask Mr. Izard to step round to see him, and then return to assist him to dress.
Now at just about the time that Mr. Latimer was beginning to make his toilet--which would be somewhere in the neighbourhood of noon--Captain Mandeville was setting out from Meeting Street, with intent to ride to Fairgrove, the imposing seat of Sir Andrew Carey on the Back River.
Seen on his tall black horse, in his scarlet gold-laced coat, white buckskins and lacquered riding-boots, the captain was a figure calculated to gladden the eyes of any maid that might happen to peep through one or another of the green jalousies veiling the windows under which he passed.
Charles Town had been planned by Culpepper a hundred years ago, at a time and in a place that admitted of generous spaces and regular lines such as were not to be found in the old world. Meeting Street in the European eyes of the governor's equerry was a pleasant avenue, fringed with elms, and deriving a sense of width front the garden spaces between the houses on either side. Some of these, and mainly the more recent ones, of mellowing red brick, clothed in vine and honeysuckle, jasmine and glossy cherokee, were half concealed amid the luxuriance of their gardens; others, of wood, but very solidly built, mainly of the timber of the black cypress, stood sideways to the thoroughfare, presenting to it no more than a gabled end, whilst the long fronts with their wide deep piazzas faced inwards upon the gardens, which were enclosed behind high brick walls. The scent of late flowering bulbs, which early Dutch settlers had procured from Holland, mingled with the heavier perfume of jasmine and honeysuckle and the pungent fragrance which the sun was drawing from the pines.
The captain turned off into Broad Street, and rode past the Church of St. Michael with its lofty steeple, so reminiscent of the work of Wren and so greatly resembling St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. lie crossed the open space at the Corner presided over by the statue of Pitt, which had been enthusiastically erected there five years ago to mark the province's appreciation of the Great Commoner who had championed the cause of the Colonies in the Stamp Act troubles.
And here the bustle of life and traffic was such that the captain found it in the main impossible to proceed at more than a walking pace. There were groups of seafaring men of all degrees from the ships in the harbour, standing to gape upon the sights of the town. Now it was a party of negro field servants in brightly-coloured cottons, shepherded by a swarthy overseer, that claimed their attention; now it was a file of three Catawba Indians, leather-crowned and mantled in gaudy blankets, each leading a pack-horse laden with the merchandise against which they had traded the pelts from their distant settlements beyond Camden. More than once Captain Mandeville was compelled to draw rein altogether to give passage to the lumbering mahogany coach of some wealthy planter, the tall phaeton driven by a young colonial macaroni, with his liveried negro groom sitting like a statue of I bronze behind; or the sedan chair slung between its black porters bearing a lady of fashion on her shopping excursions.
For of all the towns in North America, this was the one in which the luxury and refinements of the Old World were combined in the highest degree with the wealth and abundance of he New. And, as was natural, their sybaritism governed their politics. There were, of course, firebrands, republican extremists such as Christopher Gadsden and this new convert to republicanism Mr. Harry Latimer, and there was an unruly mob of mechanics and artisans and the like, who with little to stake were ready enough for adventure; but in the main the wealthy oligarchy of planters and merchants which had so long held undisputed sway in South Carolina, whilst sympathizing with the grievances of the North and the opposers of the oppressive royal rule, was restrained from overt action by self-interest. The security of person and property which they now enjoyed might be lost to them in an upheaval. And the same incubus of passivity sat upon the spirit of the avowed tones. In their ranks, too, there were extremists, like Sir Andrew Carey and the Fletchalls, who left everything but a fanatical duty to the king out of their calculations. But in the main they were as anxious as those on the other side to avoid an open rupture.
Thus it was the destiny of the Carolinians to follow, since follow they must, but never to lead, in this conflict with authority.
News of the skirmish at Lexington last April had rudely shaken them. But things had settled down again. Congress had met to frame a petition to the King, and the hope that all would yet be adjusted and that a reconciliation would be effected was held as stoutly as men hold the hopes of things they desperately desire.
Captain Mandeville's views on colonial matters were pessimistic, and it also happened that he loved antitheses as well as any man with a sense of irony. Therefore it was with mildly amused detachment that he returned the salutes of some of these ubiquitous blue-coated officers of the provincial militia--a body more or less constitutionally brought together against the need for unconstitutional emergencies--who doffed their black-cockaded hats to him as he rode by. He reflected that despite their superficial friendliness, they regarded his scarlet coat much as a bull might regard it, and that notwithstanding their friendly smiles of greeting--for many of them were men with whom he gamed and hunted and laid wagers on a main of cocks or a horse race--they might very possibly be cutting his throat before the week was out.
To Mandeville, it was all in the day's work. He had come out to the colonies in the service of his king, like the "poor devil of a younger son" as he was wont, more affectedly than accurately, to describe himself. He was, in reality, the younger son of a younger son. He had run through the considerable fortune inherited from his mother--his father having married a wealthy heiress, in accordance with the best traditions of the younger sons of noble houses--and he was now in the position of dependency upon the State peculiar to British cadets, with the possible expectations that commonly delude them.
His uncle, the present Earl of Chalfont, had no issue, and Captain Mandeville was next in the succession. But as his uncle, now in his fifty-fifth year, was of a rudely vigorous constitution, and the Mandevilles were a long-lived race, the captain was not disposed to build upon expectations which might not be realized until his own youth was spent. Therefore, in coming out to the colonies to, serve his king, Captain Mandeville had it also in mind to serve himself in the manner not unusual among his kind, the manner of which his own father had set him the example, and the manner in which Lord William Campbell--also a younger son--had served himself when he married Sally Izard and a dowry of fifty thousand pounds. The colonies offered a fruitful hunting-ground, and colonial heiresses afforded covetable prizes for younger sons who knew how to make the best of family glamour.
Apart from this, however, Captain Mandeville came out persuaded that in his own case the hunt need not be carried very far afield. Sir Andrew Carey, that wealthy and influential South Carolina tory, descended on the distaff side from that Mandeville who had been one of the original Lords Proprietors, was a remote kinsman of the captain's, and so passionately proud of his descent from so ancient and distinguished a stock as to be disposed to regard the kinship as much closer than it actually was. And Sir Andrew had a daughter, an only child. What, then, more natural than that this widower, with no son of his own to succeed him, should perceive in Mandeville the son-in-law of his dreams?
The only thing omitted from the captain's shrewd calculations was the existence of Mr. Henry Fitzroy Latimer of Santee Broads and of the Latimer Barony on the Saluda. And this omission might entirely have wrecked those same calculations but for the dispensation of Providence by which Latimer was guided into the paths of rebellion.
The outraged Sir Andrew let it be understood that he saw repeated between himself and Latimer the fable of the woodman and the snake, and he swore that he would play out the woodman's part.
When Captain Mandeville's eyes, which missed few things, observed thereafter the disappearance from Myrtle's finger of a certain brilliant-studded hoop of gold, he accounted the battle almost over. Nor did he permit himself to be unduly concerned by the pallid listlessness that descended upon Myrtle in those spring days.
If he curbed himself, using a masterly restraint at present, while her grief endured, yet he envisaged the future confidently. He. knew his world, and he knew humanity. He knew that there is no wound of the heart which time cannot heal. It was for him to contain himself until he was sure that the healing process should be well-advanced. The rest should follow naturally and easily.
There was no coxcombry in his persuasion. That he was agreeable to Myrtle she rendered evident. And in the quest for sympathy and affection which is natural to those who have been hurt as she had been, it was inevitable that her relations with her kinsman Mandeville should be strengthened in their intimacy. Add to, this that he had now the assurance of Sir Andrew's entire favour and support. Sir Andrew had done more than hint it to him. There was an end to any thought of marriage between his child and the renegade Latimer, this ungrateful scoundrel to whom his house was closed, which the captain assumed--and not without justification--to mean that the way to his own suit lay open. That suit he now cautiously pursued, and it was in the pursuit of it that he was riding to Fair-grove, bearing a choice item of news which the interview that morning with Dick Williams had supplied him.
He turned up King Street, where the traffic was less brisk, and pushed on at a better pace towards the Town Gate. On a sandy waste beyond the unfinished fortification works, undertaken some twenty years before, but subsequently abandoned, he saw a considerable party of militia at drill. It was composed largely of young men of the working classes, the least responsible, and therefore the most inflammable material in the province. The sight of Mandeville's red coat provoked certain ribaldries, which they shouted after him, but more or less in a spirit of good-humour.
Paying little heed to them, he rode amain along the old Indian trail across the pine barrens, a desolate landscape of shallow dunes unrelieved by any vegetation beyond the clumps of pine trees that reared themselves black and fragrant in the sunshine. Anon as he drew nearer to the Back River, that branch of the Cooper on which Fairgrove had been built by the present Carey's grandfather, the road led across a swamp, at the end of which at last the country assumed a more fertile aspect.
It would be something after two o'clock in the afternoon when Mandeville brought his now foam-flecked horse to the tall, wrought-iron gates of Fairgrove, and the broad avenue bordered with live oaks, nearly a mile long, which clove the parklands about the stately home of Andrew Carey.
This house of Fairgrove was a noble four-square mansion of Queen-Anne design, with very tall, white-sashed windows equipped with white-slatted jalousies. It had been built fifty years or so ago, of brick, now mellowed by age and weather, brought out as ballast by the ships from England. Emerging from the avenue on to a wide semi-circular sweep of gravel, you might have conceived yourself confronting an English country house of Kent or Surrey. Wide lawns were spread on either hand, under the shade of massive cedars, whilst a flight of terraces on the northern side broke the harsh slope by which the land fell away sharply to the river.
A negro groom led away the captain's horse. Remus, the negro butler, ushered him into the house, and into the long, cool dining-room, where Sir Andrew, who had just come in from the plantation, was refreshing himself with a morning punch. He was in riding-boots, and his gloves and long silver-mounted switch lay on the table where he had flung them a moment since. His daughter was ministering to him, but mechanically and listlessly. She had that morning received Harry's letter from Savannah, and so different was it from what she had hoped and expected that it left her with a feeling that life was at an end.
Sir Andrew, a big bluff man, looking in his grey riding-frock and buckskins like a typical English squire, heaved himself up to greet his visitor.
"Robert, my boy, we're favoured. Remus, a punch for Captain Mandeville."
The words were naught. The cordiality of the welcome lay in the ringing voice, the beaming countenance, the outstretched hand.
And Myrtle, slim, tall and ethereal in a hooped gown of lilac, a dark curl coiling on her milk-white neck, gave him as he bowed to kiss her finger-tips a greeting that was as frank and friendly as her listlessness permitted, whereafter she sought to busy herself with Remus at the great mahogany sideboard in the preparation of the captain's punch.
"Time hangs on your hands," Sir Andrew rallied him, "and it's plain the governor and his council don't overwork you."
"They may be doing so before long, Sir Andrew. And, faith, the sooner the better." He paused to receive the punch, which old Remus proffered on a salver, and gracefully to thank Miss Carey for her part in its preparation.
"Confusion to all rebels," he said lightly, as he raised the glass to his lips.
"Amen to that! Amen!" boomed solemnly the voice of Sir Andrew, whilst Myrtle looked on with a face that was white and drawn.
They sat down, the captain and his host facing each other across the dark, glossy board on which glass and silver seemed to float, reflected as in a pool, Myrtle on a window'-seat, perhaps instinctively placing her back to the light that her troubled countenance might escape notice.
Sir Andrew filled himself a long pipe from a silver box, and Remus attended him with a lighted taper.
"No use to offer you a pipe, I know," the baronet mumbled, the stem between his teeth. And the fastidious Mandeville, who loathed the stench of tobacco-smoke, smilingly agreed.
"You miss a deal, Bob. You do so. And this is fine leaf, of that scoundrel Latimer's own growing." His face was momentarily darkened. He fetched a sigh. The fellow learnt the trick of curing it in Virginia. But he kept the secret to himself. A secretive dog in that ass in other things. "You should try a pipe, man. It's a great soother." But the captain merely smiled again, and shook his head. "And what's the news in Charles Town? We're out of the world up here. You'd be at old Izard's ball last night. I'd ha' been there myself, but Myrtle wouldn't go. Moping over the black ingratitude of a damned scoundrel who isn't worth a thought."
"You must bring her to Mrs. Brewton's ball on thought Thursday."
"Ay, to be sure."
"I don't think--" Myrtle was beginning in hesitation, when the captain, gently interrupted her.
"Nay, now, my dear Myrtle. It is a duty, no less. The ball is being given in the governor's honour. It becomes an official function. In these sad times Lord William requires the support of every loyal man and woman. Indeed, Sir Andrew, he desires me to say that he deplores your absence from Charles Town just now and that he would be the better for your presence."
Sir Andrew swore roundly and emphatically that in that case he would return to town at once, however much the stench of treason in it might turn his stomach.
It was not, indeed, usual for him to be on his plantation at this time of year, and he would certainly not have remained there since Lord William's coming but for the circumstances of his last departure from Charles Town and the oath he had then sworn that he would not return until the vile place was purged of its rebellious spirit.
He had fled from it in a rage in the middle of last February, on the day following that 17th, appointed by Provincial Congress to be a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer before Almighty God, devoutly to petition him to inspire the King with true wisdom to defend the people of North America in their just title to freedom, and avert the calamities of civil war.
To Sir Andrew it seemed impossible that anything more blasphemous than this lay within the possibility of human utterance. But when he heard tell that every place of in Charles Town was crowded with wicked fools who went to offer up that seditious prayer, when with his own eyes be beheld the members of the Provincial Congress going in solemn procession to St. Philip's, with Lowndes the Speaker of the Commons House at their head in his purple robes and full-bottomed wig, the silver mace borne in state before him, Sir Andrew's indignation forbade him to remain in a place upon which he hourly expected some such visitation as that which overtook Sodom and Gomorrah.
He raged in impotent loyalty, and raged the more because there was little else that he could do to signify his execration of the event. That little, however, he performed. He made his protest, and it took the shape of closing his residence in Tradd Street, and shaking the rebellious dust of that place of treason from his loyal feet.
On his plantation he had since remained, and there he would have continued but for this viceregal summons, which he pronounced it his sacred duty unquestionably to obey.
"We'll be there by to-morrow, Bob, dead or alive, to swell the muster of the king's friends." Dismissing the matter upon that, he craved for news.
He received from Mandeville, whose face was grave to the point of sadness, an account of the morning's interview with Cheney and Dick Williams, and the latter's accusation against Latimer of turpitude in his dealings with less powerful neighbours.
Sir Andrew's brows were scowling. But he thrust out a doubting nether lip. "That is not like Harry Latimer," he said slowly. And Myrtle rose abruptly from her window-seat.
"It isn't true," she said with heat.
"I scarcely could believe it myself," Mandeville agreed smoothly. "Men are not often dishonest without motive, and what motive could there be for such petty pilferings on the part of the wealthy Mr. Latimer? And yet..." He paused a moment, a man hesitating between thoughts. "And yet, when a man practises the dishonesty of being false to his duty to his king..." He left it there.
"Ay, ay," assented Sir Andrew on a deep growl.
"Oh, you are wrong. Wrong!" his daughter insisted. "There is all the world between the two deeds. Whatever Harry may be, he is not a thief, and no one will make me believe it."
Captain Mandeville deplored to observe that time had not yet begun to do the work which he had been content to leave to it.
"No one could have made you believe him a traitor," her father answered her. "No one could have made you believe him secretive and furtive--a fellow that comes and goes by stealth like a thief in the night."
"Which reminds me," said Captain Mandeville, "that he is in Charles Town at present."
Their startled glances questioned him.
"I had it from this same fellow Williams. He told me he had seen him this morning."
"Then why in God's name don't you arrest him?"
"Don't, father!" Myrtle laid a restraining hand upon his shoulder.
"Pshaw, my girl The fellow's no longer anything to you." Captain Mandeville wished he could share the opinion. Meanwhile he answered Sir Andrew's fierce question.
"Lord William would have signed the warrant already, but that--" He checked.
"Well But that what?"
"I persuaded him not to do so."
"You persuaded him?" Sir Andrew showed Ms amazement. "'Why?"
"For one thing, it would not be politic. We want to avoid strife and any act that may lead to strife. Mr. Latimer is something of a hero with the mob; and we do not wish to provoke the mob into acts that might call for reprisals."
"It's what they need, by God!"
"Maybe. And yet it has its dangers. Lord William saw that. Also, Sir Andrew, I had other reasons. This Mr. Latimer, after all, in spite of what he has done, has thrust certain roots into your heart."
"I've torn them out," Sir Andrew protested vehemently.
"And then, there is Myrtle," the captain sighed.
"How good you are!" Myrtle rewarded him, her eyes shining moistily.
"Good!" growled the baronet. "Good, to neglect his clear duty!"
"I doubt if I should ever do my duty at the cost of hurting either of you, however slightly. You have become so very dear to me in the months I have been in this exile that I could never leave your feelings out of consideration in anything I did."
And then, before either of them could find the right words in which to answer that pledge of affection, Remus opened the door to make the dramatic announcement:
"Massa Harry, Sir Andrew."
It had never occurred to the old butler that there could be any doubt of admitting Master Harry, and so he had conducted him straight to the dining-room where Sir Andrew sat.
Mr. Harry Latimer, stepping briskly, his three-cornered hat and a heavy riding crop tucked under his arm, and drawing off his gloves as he came, advanced with a composure which Sir Andrew afterwards described as impudent.
Remus closed the heavy mahogany door, and silence reigned thereafter for some moments in that room.
Sir Andrew, Captain Mandeville and Miss Carey remained at gaze, three petrified figures, the two men seated, the girl, her breathing quickened, standing just behind her father's chair, her right hand resting upon the summit of its tall back.
You conceive perhaps the various emotions conflicting in the mind of each, and you certainly conceive that for the moment these emotions were dominated by sheer amazement. Deep as it was in all three, it was deepest in Captain Mandeville. He was not merely amazed. He was bewildered. For the tall, slim young gentleman who had entered, and who was standing now by the head of the table, was no stranger to him. He had seen and talked with him somewhere before, and the captain raked his wits to discover when and where that might have been. But only for a moment. Gradually the eyes of his mind metamorphosed the figure which the eyes of his body were devouring. The well-fitting, modish, long riding-coat of bottle-green gave place to a shabby brown coatee; the fine delicate hand, that was being withdrawn from its glove, became soiled and grimy; the rippling bronze hair, so neatly queued in its moire ribbon, hung loose and unkempt about that lean, pale face with its keen blue eyes and humorous mouth.
The captain's fist crashed down upon the mahogany, so that glass and silver rattled; he half rose from his chair, momentarily moved out of his self-control in a manner foreign to him even at t lines of greatest provocation.
"Dick Williams!" he cried, and added: "By God!"
Mr. Latimer bowed to him, his smile ironical.
"Captain Mandeville, your humble obedient. I can understand your feelings."
Mandeville made him no answer. His thoughts were racing over the ground covered that morning by the interview between Dick Williams and the governor. He sought to recall how much had been disclosed to this audacious spy, who, thanks to the assistance of Cheney--whose unaccountable treachery was now also made clear--had so completely bubbled them.
Meanwhile Sir Andrew, too obsessed by his own feelings to give heed to the unintelligible exchange of words between Mandeville and this unwelcome visitor, was raging furiously.
"My God! Have you the, impudence to show your face here, now that the mask is off it? Now that we know you for what you are?"
"You do not know me, sir, for anything of which I am ashamed."
"Because you're shameless," Sir Andrew choked, impatiently shaking off the trembling hand that Myrtle set on his shoulder to restrain him.
Mr. Latimer looked at him wistfully. "Sir Andrew," he said very gently, "must there be war between us because we do not see eye to eye on matters of policy and justice? There is no man in all this world whom I love more deeply than yourself--"
"You may spare me that," the baronet broke in. "When I find a more ungrateful, treacherous scoundrel than you are, I may hate him more. But I don't believe that such a man lives."
Latimer's pallor deepened. Shadows formed themselves under his brilliant eyes.
"In what am I ungrateful?" he quietly asked.
"Must you be told? Could any father have done more for you than I have done? For years, whilst you were a boy, whilst you were away in England on your education, I husbanded your estates, watched over them to the neglect of my own. Your father left you wealthy. But under my care your wealth has been trebled until to-day you are the richest man in Carolina, perhaps the richest man in America. And you squander the wealth I raised for you in attempting to pull down everything that I hold good and sacred, the very altars at which I worship."
"And if I could prove to you that those altars enshrine false gods?"
"False gods You abominable--"
"Sir Andrew!" Latimer held out a hand in appeal. "Give me leave at least to justify myself."
"Justify yourself? What justification can there be for what you have done, for what you are doing?"
He would have added more. But Myrtle came to Latimer's assistance.
"Father, it is or y just to hear him." Her plea sprang from a desire, deep down in her heart, to hear him herself. She hoped to find in his words something to mitigate the judgment she had passed upon him in a letter which had failed so miserably of its true aim--to recall him from his rebellious course.
Mandeville, inwardly alarmed at the memory of all that had been said that morning in the governor's study, and quite undecided as to how to bear himself now, so that he might reconcile and serve conflicting interests, sat still and watchful, a player who waits until opportunity shall show him what line of play to follow.
"Sir Andrew," Latimer was saying, "you who live sheltered here in a province upon which the hand of the royal government rests lightly, can have no more conception than I had until I went there four months ago of what is happening in the North."
But Sir Andrew did not mean to listen to a political harangue.
"Can I not?" Contemptuous laughter brought the words out in a croak. "Can I not? There's treason happening in the North. That's what's happening. And that's what you've borne a hand in; plotting God knows what devilries against your king."
"That," said Mr. Latimer, "is hardly true."
"D'ye think your seditious actions have not been reported to us?"
"Reported?" Latimer almost smiled as his keen eyes wandered to Captain Mandeville. He bowed a little to the captain. "I become important, it seems. I am honoured, sir, to be the subject of your reports."
"As equerry to his excellency the governor, certain duties devolve upon me," Mandeville answered smoothly. "Perhaps, Mr. Latimer, no." are overlooking that."
"Oh, no." There was a gleam of that sedate amusement so natural to Latimer, and as irritating now to Captain Mandeville as it had been to many another who imagined himself to be the object of Mr. Latimer's covert mirth. "I gratified this morning my curiosity on the score of your activities." The captain flushed despite himself. "But your reports--or, at least, the inferences you have drawn from them--have not been quite accurate. Inference, I believe, is not the strength of the official mind."
He turned again to Sir Andrew who was containing himself with difficulty, and who only half understood what was passing between Latimer and the equerry. "I have been plotting, perhaps. But certainly nothing against the king. By which I mean that I am not of those extremists who already utter the word Independence. On the contrary, I am of those who are labouring to preserve the peace in spite of every provocation to support constitutionalism against all the endeavours to cast it aside for coercive violence."
The baronet restrained himself to sneer.
"It was out of your concern for peace, I suppose, that you planned the raid on the armoury last April?"
Latimer's eyes flashed upon Mandeville again.
"Your reports have been very full, Captain Mandeville." This time the captain gave him back gibe for gibe.
"Inference, you see, Mr. Latimer, is not always the weakness of the official mind."
But Latimer's counter whipped the weapon from his hand.
"That was not inference, captain. It was information. It is one of the things I ascertained this morning; one of the things I went to ascertain. For the rest"--and without giving the captain time to answer him, he swung again to Sir Andrew--"we desired to avoid here what was done in Boston: British subjects shot down by British troops. Si vis pacem, para bellum. It's sound philosophy. Since England, or rather England's king, acting through a too pliant ministry, chooses to treat this Britain overseas as enemy country, what choice is left us? We prepare for war that we may avert it; that we may prevail upon a ministry at home to receive our petitions, consider our grievances, and redress our wrongs, instead of brutally compelling us by force to submit ourselves to injustice."
"My God! You're mad! That's it! Mad!"
Captain Mandeville interpolated gently: "Did not Boston bring down upon itself this trouble by its insubordination?"
"Ay! Answer that!" Sir Andrew challenged.
"Insubordination?" Mr. Latimer shrugged a little. "To what should Boston have been subordinated? The subjection of a free people to the executive authority of government is no more than a compliance with the laws they have themselves enacted."
"You are quoting Dr. Franklin, I suppose," said the captain with the least suspicion of a sneer.
"I am quoting from one of the letters of Junius, Captain Mandeville, one of the letters addressed to a king and a ministry who are so reckless as to threaten the liberties of Englishmen in England as well as in the colonies."
Sir Andrew's indignation blazed.
"Is that a thing to say of his gracious majesty?"
"That there should be occasion to say it is deplorable. But the occasion itself is not to be denied."
"Not to be denied!" Sir Andrew almost barked. "I deny it for one, as I deny every word of your trumped-up pretexts of rebellion! The damnable gospel of these Sons of Liberty. Sons of Liberty!" He snorted. "Sons of riff-raff!"
The tone stung Latimer to a momentary resentment.
"It was an Englishman, a member of the House of Commons, who gave us that name at which you sneer, speaking in admiring terms of our stand for liberty."
"I nothing doubt it. There are rebels in England, just as there are loyal men in America."
"Yes, and as time goes on there may be more of the former and fewer of the latter. For this, sir, I say again is no quarrel between England and America. That independency by which the North American colonies may be lost to Britain, desired at present by so few of us, may yet come to be the only issue. If it should come to pass, it will be the achievement of a besotted king who, although he glories in the name of Britain--"
But he got no further.
Sir Andrew on his feet, livid with passion, furiously interrupted him: "You infamous traitor! My God! You d utter such words in my house, would you? You heard, Robert? You have a duty, surely!"
Captain Mandeville, too, had risen, and was obviously ill at ease.
"Robert!" It was a cry from Myrtle. In her distress--for she well understood her father's invitation to him--the ceremonious term of 'cousin' was omitted. Both Mandeville mid Latimer remarked it, intent though they might be upon a graver issue, and both were thrilled, though each after a different fashion.
"Pray have no fear, dear Myrtle," the captain reassured her. And lie swung to Latimer who was watching him.
"Here, under Sir Andrew's roof, I cannot take heed of the words you have used."
The tilt of Mr. Latimer's nose seemed to become more marked.
"If you imply regret, sir, of that circumstance, I shall be happy to repeat my words in any place and time your convenience would prefer."
Again Myrtle distractedly intervened, yet never beginning to suspect that she herself, rather than any political consideration, was disposing these two in such ready hostility.
"Harry, are you mad? Robert, please, please Don't heed what he says."
"I do not," said Mandeville. He bowed a little to Latimer, his manner entirely disarming. "I do not wish you to misapprehend me, sir. All I offer is an explanation of conduct in one who wears his majesty's uniform."
"It did not occur to me, sir, that you would offer more."
Sir Andrew turned upon him, his face now as purple as a mulberry.
"Leave my house, sir! At once! I had never thought to see you here again but that you should come to offend my ears with your abominable doctrines of rebellion--"
Latimer interrupted him. "That, sir, was not my intent. I came solely that I might do you a service."
"I desire no service of you! Go! Or I will have you thrown out."
Myrtle stood behind Sir Andrew, white and distressed, passionately impelled to intervene, to seek yet to make the peace between her father and her lover--for that he was her lover still, her heart was telling her--and yet not daring to attempt to curb a passion so sweeping as that which now controlled the baronet.
"The matter that brought me," said Latimer, coolly fronting that wrath, "concerns the life of Gabriel Featherstone."
His ear caught the sharp intake of breath from Sir Andrew, and he saw the sudden movement of Captain Mandeville. But not even so much was necessary to announce how deeply he had startled them. Their countenances abundantly betrayed it. He paused a moment, looking squarely into the baronet's glowering eyes. "You would do well to bid your factor get his son out of Charles Town and out of the province before evening."
For the second time there was something akin to an explosion from that normally very self-possessed Captain Mandeville.
Mr. Latimer smiled a little. "Captain Mandeville, you see, realizes the occasion."
"What do you mean?" Sir Andrew controlled himself to demand. But Latimer observed that he was trembling.
"I mean that if Gabriel Featherstone is not beyond the reach of the Sons of Liberty by evening, he will very certainly be hanged, and probably tarred-and-feathered first."
"Gabriel Featherstone?" The baronet's cheeks had grown actually pale.
"I see," said Latimer, "that you are acquainted with his activities, Sir Andrew; with the particular form of service to the royal government in which he had been employed by Captain Mandeville."
"By me, sir?" Mandeville demanded.
Latimer's ironic smile was momentarily turned upon him.
"Lord William Campbell," he said, "is hardly the most discreet of men. He is rather too easily drawn. And that without the lure of personal gain that dulled your own wits, captain. There are times when self-interest becomes a bandage to the eyes of caution. That, I think, was your own case this morning.
"You infernal spy!" said Mandeville with cold rage.
Latimer shrugged airily. "A thief to catch a thief."
"Will you tell me what it means?" demanded Sir Andrew. "What has this to do with Featherstone?"
"I'll tell you, sir," cried Mandeville. But Latimer stayed him. He dominated now, by the fear for Featherstone which he had inspired.
"I think it will come better from me, perhaps. Gabriel Featherstone is a member of the General Committee of the Provincial Congress, and a member also of more than one of its sub-committees. He has abused his position to keep the King's Council informed of our secret measures, and he has already woven a rope for the necks of several of us. The moment isn't opportune for hanging us. But should it come, as the king's government confidently believes it will, Featherstone will be brought forward as a witness to swear away our lives. I gather that the royal council will be content with hanging me, the ringleader, as a warning and an example. It's a bugbear that does not greatly alarm me. Anyhow, I am prepared to take the risk, sooner than give you occasion, Sir Andrew, to mourn a valued servant, the son of one still more valued. But you can't expect the others concerned to be equally complacent. To remove the risk, they will remove Featherstone. And the manner of it will be as I have said."
Sir Andrew stared at him, his jaw fallen, the anger, which seethed abundantly within him, momentarily held in leash by dismay. And then at last Mandeville spoke.
"It's false," he said. "False! A silly trap to catch the name of the real denouncer. Featherstone is not the man. It was not Featherstone who supplied Lord William with his list."
"In that case it is odd that the list should be in Featherstone's handwriting," Mr. Latimer mocked him. "You'll remember that I saw it, Captain."
Mandeville remembered not only that he had seen it but that he had very closely inspected it.
"When did you see it? How did you see it?" Sir Andrew demanded.
And it was Mandeville who answered him, and who, by his answer which related the whole of that morning's interview at the governor's, explained to him several obscurities in what Latimer had just said.
"So that you're no better than a dirty spy!" cried Sir Andrew in disgust and fury. "A dirty spy! You and your friend Cheney."
"A spy, if you will. But the rest I disavow. Cheney's no friend of mine.'
"And you've denounced Gabriel to your fellow-rebels?" Sir Andrew asked him.
Mr. Latimer shook his head. "If I had already done that, should I be here to warn you to get him removed? The moment after I denounce him he will certainly be apprehended, and then--" Mr. Latimer shrugged eloquently. "I trust, Sir Andrew, that you will place this at least to my credit: that out of my anxiety to spare you unnecessary pain--the pain of one who may feel himself in part responsible for the dreadful fate that overtakes another--I have been less than faithful to my duty."
Sir Andrew made him no answer. He looked heavily at Mandeville, as if for guidance. Mandeville's face, now a mask of complete composure, dissembled the activity of his mind. The dismay and anger at the prospect of losing so very valuable a spy--for whether Featherstone escaped or were hanged, he would be lost to Mandeville as a channel of information--was being dissipated by the knowledge that Latimer had not yet denounced him. In that case all might yet be well.
"And of course," he said acidly, "your regard for Sir Andrew will hardly go so far as to cause you to refrain from denouncing Featherstone."
Latimer did not conceal his rather scornful amusement.
"Such guilelessness, captain! Oh, the official mind! But I make you a present of the knowledge you seek. I shall go before the Committee at six o'clock to-day with the information you were good enough to give me this morning."
"You really think you will?" said Mandeville unpleasantly.
"I know I will. Which is why I must be taking, my leave. Meanwhile, Sir Andrew, you are warned, and in good time to pass the warning on to Featherstone."
Sir Andrew, standing stiff and scowling, made him no answer. Mr. Latimer bowed gracefully, and turned to depart.
But he found that Mandeville had got between him and the door. The captain spoke, his voice cold and level but full of menace.
"Sir Andrew, this man must not be allowed to leave."
Sir Andrew roused himself at that summons. He reached out a hand to arm himself with the riding-whip that lay across the board.
Mr. Latimer, midway between the baronet and the equerry, although arrested by the latter's words and clear purpose, did not appear to suffer any distress.
"You think to detain me by force?" he asked, and smiled.
The captain found himself admiring the young man's composure. And he was something of an arbiter in matters of deportment. He belonged to an age in which artificiality, the suppression of emotion, the histrionic affectation of nonchalance in all circumstances, was accepted as the outward mark of the man of quality. In England, where between Westminster and Oxford he had spent some six years, Mr. Latimer had readily acquired this art of genteel conduct which, for the rest, sat easily enough upon a spirit that was naturally calm, detached and critical.
"You must see, Mr. Latimer, that in the circumstances we cannot possibly suffer you to depart."
"Not only do I see it. I foresaw it. It was part of the risk I took."
"Lay hold of him, Robert," cried Sir Andrew. He sprang forward as he spoke, and Captain Mandeville did the like from Latimer's other side.
To avoid them, Latimer backed swiftly to the sideboard, and at the same time lugged from the pocket of his bottle-green riding coat a heavy, ugly-looking pistol.
"Not so fast, gentlemen!" he begged them, displaying that intimidating weapon.
It brought them up sharply in their advance, and Myrtle cried out at the same moment.
"You didn't understand me, I think," said Latimer. "I told you that I foresaw something of this kind. Praemonitus, praemunitis." And he wagged the pistol. "It is the motto of my house. As Sir Andrew can tell you, I come of a singularly prudent family, Captain Mandeville. And now that you realize you are at a disadvantage, perhaps you will permit me to depart without doing violence to the proprieties."
"My God, you graceless blackguard," Sir Andrew railed at him. "D'ye dare threaten me? D'ye dare draw a pistol on me? On me?"
"Nay, Sir Andrew. It is you who threaten. I do no more than protect myself. Self-preservation is the first law of Nature."
Thus his cursed irony, which he could not repress, dug wider than ever the breach between himself and the man he loved, the man who because his erstwhile affection for Harry was now turned to gall, would, he knew, show him no mercy.
Sir Andrew measured him with eyes of unspeakable hate, the hate born of anger that is baffled and mocked.
"Let the dog go, Robert," he growled.
Mandeville had no intention of doing anything of the kind. He would risk being shot rather than lose the services of Featherstone. But because he preferred--self-preservation being the first law of nature with him, too--that Latimer should first empty his pistol into somebody else, he made a pretence of acquiescence.
He bowed a little, shrugged, and stepped aside.
"You win the trick, Mr. Latimer," he said lightly. "But it is only the first in the game."
"Observe though that I've trumped-the knave," Mr. Latimer smiled back at him. He pocketed his pistol, but took the precaution of keeping his hand on the butt. As if perceiving this, and as if ostentatiously to show him that his way to the door was clear, Captain Mandeville turned aside and crossed the room to the mantelpiece at the other end.
Latimer paused a moment looking at Sir Andrew, and his eyes clouded with regret. He appeared on the point of speaking. Then, as if realizing that here words must be wasted, he bowed again and walked to the door. Even as his fingers closed upon its crystal knob, Captain Mandeville's seized the bell-rope by which he had gone to stand. Once, twice, thrice he tore at it, sounding in the servants' quarters a tocsin of alarm that must bring every lackey in the place at the double to intercept Latimer before he could leave the house.
But, out of the corner of his eye, Mr. Latimer caught the violent pumping action of Mandeville's raised arm. He paused, his hand upon the knob.
"I ought to shoot you for that," he told the captain. "But it isn't necessary." He locked the door, withdrew the key, and crossed the room again, under their wondering eyes. "I shall have to follow the example of King Charles, and leave by the window." He unfastened the long glass door that gave egress to the lawn.
"It's an omen," Carey raged at him. "You go to the same fate."
"But in a better cause," said Latimer, as he pulled open the wing of the door.
"I warn you, sir," Carey flung after him, as he was stepping out, "that if any harm comes to Featherstone, I'll see you hanged for it. I will so, by God I though it cost me life and fortune. You graceless, treacherous hound!"
Mr. Latimer was gone. Mandeville sprang to the window, and stepped out, to see him racing across the lawn to the gravelled drive, where his negro groom was waiting with the horses. At the same moment came clattering steps across the hall outside, alarmed beatings on the door and alarmed, plaintive, liquid accents of the black servants calling to their master.
Sir Andrew bade them cease and begone with a roughness such as he rarely employed towards those who served him. They departed chattering and wondering. To increase their wonder Mr. Latimer from beyond the porch, already mounted, was calling Remus. He tossed the abstracted key to the old butler, then wheeled his horse about and rode off with his groom.
He was half way down the avenue before there surged out of the pain seething in his mind under the mask of nonchalance he had worn, the recollection of another matter with which he had hoped to deal whilst here at Fairgrove. And it was not until he had reached the gates that he conquered the anger that was driving him headlong away despite that recollection.
It had been his hope to make a very different impression, to earn some consideration in return for the service he went to do at some risk to himself. And he had also hoped from this to be given an opportunity to explain himself to Myrtle, to reason her into a gentler frame of mind, and to persuade her that because he loved his country was no sufficient reason why she should refuse to marry him.
It was. Mandeville's presence at Fairgrove which had made shipwreck of his hopes, sweeping the interview into a course so different from all that he desired.
He drew rein, undetermined. He could not depart thus, leaving the situation between Myrtle and himself a hundredfold worse than before he came.
He paused, considering. From the distance came a plaintive chant, the singing of the negro slaves in the rice fields by the river, and the sound inspired him. He would write a note to her, begging her to come to him out here. A friendly slave--and he was well known to them all--should be his messenger.
He flung down from his horse, gave his reins to the groom, and ordered him to ride on for a half-mile or so, and there await him. Then he left the avenue, and plunged away through the live oaks and the tangle of vines in the direction of the chanting voices. But progress through the undergrowth of that leafy wilderness became more difficult the farther he penetrated. And at last he was forced to pause, and, in pausing, reconsidered. Better for his purpose than a plantation slave would be one of the house servants; and if he waited, some one of these would surely pass along the avenue before very long. They were all his friends, and any one of them would do his errand secretly.
So he retraced in part his steps until the flat stump of an oak that had been felled offered him a seat at a point whence he could, himself unseen, command a view of the avenue, dappled with sunshine and shadow. He sat down, and from an inner pocket he produced a notebook and a pencil, and hurriedly scrawled a brief but very earnest appeal to Myrtle. He tore out the leaf, folded it, and settled down to wait until chance should send him the messenger he needed.
And meanwhile up there at the house Sir Andrew was still storming, and Mandeville and Myrtle between them were engaged in soothing him, a task which brought them into a close alliance very pleasant and consoling to the captain. He felt that he had not conducted himself very well that morning. At first he had practised a praiseworthy restraint in the face of many difficulties and temptations. He had held aloof from all contention, refraining from the obvious quips and sneers at Mr. Latimer's expense to which the young apostle of liberty rendered himself vulnerable. A less subtle man would never have missed those opportunities of displaying his own wit and consequence. But Mandeville knew too much of human nature. He had perceived that under Myrtle's indignation with Harry lay a real and deep, if momentarily numbed, affection for him. And he knew that avowedly to range himself on the side of Latimer's enemies, to harass and vex him with manifestations of hostility, might only serve to arouse that affection of Myrtle's into activity and provoke her indignation against himself.
Therefore, even at the cost of having his courage put in question, Mandeville had clung to the role of the unwilling and pained witness of a painful scene, until the circumstances had cruelly forced him to become an actor. The bad impression he feared thereby to have created he was now anxious to efface. And it was a relief to him to find Myrtle, in her ready understanding of the necessities, unresentful of the part he had played.
He was not the man to cry over spilled milk of however precious a quality. Latimer had got away, and therefore the utility of Featherstone as a spy was at an end. It still remained to save his l