The Maid-At-Arms

"That is a very pleasant view to take," observed Sir George, with a smile.

"A sensible view," suggested Campbell.

"Amiable," said Sir George, blandly.

"Oh, let us fill to the family!" broke in McDonald, impatiently. "It's dry work cursing your friends! Fill up, Campbell, and I'll forget Glencoe … while I'm drinking."

"Mr. Ormond," said Walter Butler, in a low voice, "I cannot credit ill of a man of your name. You are young and hot-blooded, and you perhaps lack as yet a capacity for reflection. I shall look for you among us when the time comes. No Ormond can desert his King."

"Let it rest so, Captain Butler," I said, soberly. "I will say this: when I rose I had not meant to say all that I said. But I believe it to be the truth, though I chose the wrong moment to express it. If I change this belief I will say so."

And so the outburst of passion sank to ashes; and if the fire was not wholly extinguished, it at least lay covered, like the heart of a Seminole council-fire after the sachems have risen and departed with covered heads.

Drinking began again. The ladies gathered in a group, whispering and laughing their relief at the turn affairs were taking–all save Dorothy, who sat serenely beside me, picking the kernels from walnut-shells and sipping a glass of port.

Sir John Johnson found a coal in the embers on the hearth, and, leaning half over the table, began to draw on the table-cloth a rude map of Tryon County.

"All know," he said, "that the province of New York is the key to the rebel strength. While they hold West Point and Albany and Stanwix, they hold Tryon County by the throat. Let them occupy Philadelphia. Who cares? We can take it when we choose. Let them hold their dirty Boston; let the rebel Washington sneak around the Jerseys. Who cares? There'll be the finer hunting for us later. Gentlemen, as you know, the invasion of New York is at hand–has already begun. And that's no secret from the rebels, either; they may turn and twist and double here in New York province, but they can't escape the trap, though they saw it long ago."

He raised his head and glanced at me.

"Here is a triangle," he said; "that triangle is New York province. Here is Albany, the objective of our three armies, the gate of Tryon County, the plague-spot we are to cleanse, and the military centre. Now mark! Burgoyne moves through the lakes, south, reducing Ticonderoga and Edward, routing the rats out of Saratoga, and approaches Albany–so. Clinton moves north along the Hudson to meet him–so–forcing the Highlands at Peekskill, taking West Point or leaving it for later punishment. Nothing can stop him; he meets Burgoyne here, at Albany."

Again he looked at me. "You see, sir, that from two angles of the triangle converging armies depart towards a common objective."

"I see," I said.

"Now," he resumed, "the third force, under Colonel Barry St. Leger–to which my regiment and the regiment of Colonel Butler have the honor to be attached–embarks from Canada, sails up the St. Lawrence, disembarks at Oswego, on Lake Erie, marches straight on Stanwix, reduces it, and joins the armies of Clinton and Burgoyne at Albany."

He stood up, casting his bit of wood-coal on the cloth before him.

"That, sir," he said to me, "is the plan of campaign, which the rebels know and cannot prevent. That means the invasion of New York, the scouring out of every plague-spot, the capture and destruction of every rebel between Albany and the Jerseys."

He turned with a cold smile to Colonel Butler. "I think my estates will not remain long in rebel hands," he said.

"Do you not understand, Mr. Ormond?" cried Captain Campbell, twitching me by the sleeve, an impertinence I passed, considering him overflushed with wine. "Do you not comprehend how hopeless is this rebellion now?"

"How hopeless?" drawled Sir George, looking over my shoulder, and, as though by accident, drawing Campbell's presumptuous hand through his own arm.

"How hopeless?" echoed Campbell. "Why, here are three armies of his Majesty's troops concentrating on the heart of Tryon County. What can the rebels do?"

"The patroons are with us, or have withdrawn from the contest," said Sir John; "the great folk, military men, and we of the landed gentry are for the King. What remains to defy his authority?"

"Of what kidney are these Tryon County men?" I asked, quietly. Sir John Johnson misunderstood me.

"Mr. Ormond," said Sir John, "Tryon County is habited by four races. First, the Scotch-Irish, many of them rebels, I admit, but many also loyal. Balance these against my Highlanders, and cross quits. Second, the Palatines–those men whose ancestors came hither to escape the armies of Louis XIV. when they devastated the Palatinate. And again I admit these to be rebels. Third, those of Dutch blood, descended from brave ancestors, like our worthy patroon here. And once more I will admit that many of these also are tainted with rebel heresies. Fourth, the English, three-quarters of whom are Tories. And now I ask you, can these separate handfuls of mixed descent unite? And, if that were possible, can they stand for one day, one hour, against the trained troops of England?"

"God knows," I said.

VI

DAWN

I had stepped from the dining-hall out to the gun-room. Clocks in the house were striking midnight. In the dining-room the company had now taken to drinking in earnest, cheering and singing loyal songs, and through the open door whirled gusts of women's laughter, and I heard the thud of guitar-strings echo the song's gay words.

All was cool and dark in the body of the house as I walked to the front door and opened it to bathe my face in the freshening night. I heard the whippoorwill in the thicket, and the drumming of the dew on the porch roof, and far away a sound like ocean stirring–the winds in the pines.

The Maker of all things has set in me a love for whatsoever He has fashioned in His handiwork, whether it be furry beast or pretty bird, or a spray of April willow, or the tiny insect-creature that pursues its dumb, blind way through this our common world. So come I by my love for the voices of the night, and the eyes of the stars, and the whisper of growing things, and the spice in the air where, unseen, a million tiny blossoms hold up white cups for dew, or for the misty-winged things that woo them for their honey.

Now, in the face of this dark, soothing truce that we call night, which is a buckler interposed between the arrows of two angry suns, I stood thinking of war and the wrong of it. And all around me in the darkness insects sang, and delicate, gauzy creatures chirked and throbbed and strummed in cadence, while the star's light faintly silvered the still trees, and distant monotones of the forest made a sustained and steady rushing sound like the settling ebb of shallow seas. That to my conscience I stood committed, I could not doubt. I must draw sword, and draw it soon, too–not for Tory or rebel, not for King or Congress, not for my estates nor for my kin, but for the ancient liberties of Englishmen, which England menaced to destroy.

That meant time lost in a return to my own home; and yet–why? Here in this county of Tryon one might stand for liberty of thought and action as stanchly as at home. Here was a people with no tie or sympathy to weld them save that common love of liberty–a scattered handful of races, without leaders, without resources, menaced by three armies, menaced, by the five nations of the great confederacy–the Iroquois.

To return to the sea islands on the Halifax and fight for my own acres was useless if through New York the British armies entered to the heart of the rebellion, splitting the thirteen colonies with a flaming wedge.

At home I had no kin to defend; my elder brother had sailed to England, my superintendent, my overseers, my clerks were all Tory; my slaves would join the Minorcans or the blacks in Georgia, and I, single-handed, could not lift a finger to restrain them.

But here, in the dire need of Tryon County, I might be of use. Here was the very forefront of battle where, beyond the horizon, invasion, uncoiling hydra folds, already raised three horrid, threatening crests.

Ugh!–the butcher's work that promised if the Iroquois were uncaged! It made me shudder, for I knew something of that kind of war, having seen a slight service against the Seminoles in my seventeenth year, and against the Chehaws and Tallassies a few months later. Also in November of 1775 I accompanied Governor Tonyn to Picolata, but when I learned that our mission was the shameful one of securing the Indians as British allies I resigned my captaincy in the Royal Rangers and returned to the Halifax to wait and watch events.

And now, thoughtful, sad, wondering a little how it all would end, I paced to and fro across the porch. The steady patter of the dew was like the long roll beating–low, incessant, imperious–and my heart leaped responsive to the summons, till I found myself standing rigid, staring into the darkness with fevered eyes.

The smothered, double drumming of a guitar from the distant revel assailed my ears, and a fresh, sweet voice, singing:

"As at my door I chanced to be
A-spinning,
Spinning,
A grenadier he winked at me
A-grinning,
Grinning!
As at my door I chanced to be
A grenadier he winked at me.
And now my song's begun, you see!

"My grenadier he said to me.
So jolly,
Jolly,
'We tax the tea, but love is free,
Sweet Molly,
Molly!'
My grenadier he said to me,
'We tax the tea, but love is free!'
And so my song it ends, you see,
In folly,
Folly!"

I listened angrily; the voice was Dorothy Varick's, and I wondered that she had the heart to sing such foolishness for men whose grip was already on her people's throats.