The Reckoning

I held out my hand and took the written order in silence, reading it at a glance.

"It shall be done, Colonel Hamilton. When am I to leave?"

"Now. The schooner starts when you set foot aboard, Mr. Renault."

And, after a moment: "Madam goes with you?"

"To West Point."

"I trust that she finds some few comforts aboard the Wind-Flower. I could not fill all the list, Mr. Renault; but a needle will do much, and the French fabrics are pretty–"

He looked at me, smiling: "For you, sir, there are shirts and stockings and a forest dress of deerskin."

"A rifle, too?"

"The best to be had, and approved by Jack Mount. Murphy himself has sighted it. Have I done well?"

"Yes," said I grimly, and, opening the door of the kitchen, bade the landlord have our horses saddled and brought around, and asked him to send a servant to warn Elsin that we must leave within the quarter.

Presently I heard our horses at the block, stamping the sod, and a moment later Elsin came, eager, radiant, sweetly receiving Colonel Hamilton when I named him. He saluted her hand profoundly; then, as it still rested lightly on his fingers, he turned to me, almost bluntly: "Never, Mr. Renault, can we officers forgive you for denying us this privilege. I have heard, sir, that Mrs. Renault was beautiful and amiable; I never dreamed that such loveliness could be within our lines. One day you shall make amends for this selfishness to every lady and every officer on the Hudson."

At the word which named her as my wife her face crimsoned, but in her eyes the heavenly sweetness dawned like a star, dazzling me.

"Colonel Hamilton," she said, "in quieter days—when this storm passes—we hope to welcome you and those who care to wait upon a wife whose life is but a quiet study for her husband's happiness. Those whom he cares for I care for. We shall be glad to receive those he counts as friends."

"May I be one, Renault?" he said impulsively, offering both hands.

"Yes," I said, returning his clasp.

We stood silent a moment, Elsin's gloved fingers resting on my sleeve; then we moved to the door, and I lifted Elsin to the saddle and mounted, Hamilton walking at my stirrup, and directing me in a low voice how I must follow the road to the river, how find the wharf, what word to give to the man I should find there waiting. And he cautioned me to breathe no word of my errand; but when I asked him where my reports to his Excellency were to be sent, he drew a sealed paper from his coat and handed it to me, saying: "Open that on the first day of September, and on your honor, not one hour before. Then you shall hear of things undreamed of, and understand all that I may not tell you now. Be cautious, be wise and deadly. We know you; our four years' trust in you has proved your devotion. But his Excellency warns you against rashness, for it was rashness that made you useless in New York. And I now say to you most solemnly that I regard you as too unselfish, too good a soldier, too honorable a gentleman to let aught of a personal nature come between you and duty. And your duty is to hold the Iroquois, warn the Oneidas, and so conduct that Butler and his demons make no movement till you and Colonel Willett hold the checkmate in your proper hands. Am I clear, Mr. Renault?"

"Perfectly," I said.

He stepped aside, raising his cocked-hat; we passed him at a canter with precise salute, then spurred forward into the star-spangled night.

CHAPTER IX

INTO THE NORTH

Head winds, which began with a fresh breeze off King's Ferry and culminated in a three days' hurricane, knocked us about the Tappan Zee, driving us from point to cove; and for forty-eight hours I saw our gunboats, under bare poles, tossing on the gray fury of the Hudson, and a sloop of war, sprit on the rocks, buried under the sprouting spray below Dobbs Ferry. Safer had we been in the open ocean off the Narrows, where the great winds drive bellowing from the Indies to the Pole; but these yelling gales that burst from the Highlands struck us like the successive discharges of cannon, and the Wind-Flower staggered and heeled, reeling through the Tappan Zee as a great water-fowl, crippled and stung to terror, drives blindly into the spindrift, while shot on shot strikes, yet ends not the frantic struggle.

Once we were beaten back so far that, in the dark whirlwind of dawn, I saw a fire-ball go whirring aloft and spatter the eastern horizon. Then, through the shrilling of the tempest, a gun roared to starboard, and at the flash a gun to port boomed, shaking our decks. We had beaten back within range of the British lines, and the batteries on Cock Hill opened on us, and a guard-ship to the west had joined in. Southeast a red glare leaped, and died out as Fort Tryon fired a mortar, while the Wind-Flower, bulwarks awash, heeled and heeled, staggering to the shelter of Tetard's Hill. Southward we saw the beacons ablaze, marking the chevaux de frise below Fort Lee, and on the Jersey shore the patrol's torches flashing along the fort road. But we had set a bit o' rag under Tetard's Hill, and slowly we crept north again past Yonkers, struggling desperately at Phillips, but making Boar's Hill and Dobbs Ferry by mid-afternoon. And that night the wind shifted so suddenly that from Tappan to Tarrytown was but a jack-snipe's twist, and we lay snug in Haverstraw Bay, under the lee of the Heights of North Castle, scarce an hour's canoe-paddle from the wharf where we had embarked four days before.

And now delay followed delay, a gunboat holding us twenty-four hours at Dobbs Ferry—why, I never knew—and, at the Chain, two days' delay were required before they let us pass.

When at last we signaled West Point, at the close of one long, calm August afternoon, through the flaming mountain sunset, the black fortress beckoned us to anchor, nor had we any choice but to obey the silent summons from those grim heights, looming like a thunder-cloud against the cinders of the dying sun.

That night a barge put out, and an officer boarded us, subjecting us to a most rigid scrutiny. Since the great treason a savage suspicion had succeeded routine vigilance; the very guns among the rocks seemed alive, alert, listening, black jaws parted to launch a thunderous warning. A guard was placed on deck; we were not allowed to send a boat ashore; not even permitted to communicate with the fishing-smack and rowboats that hovered around us, curious as gulls around a floating plank.

And all this time—from the very instant of departure, through three days and a night of screaming winds and cataracts of water, through the delays where we rode at anchor below the Chain and Dobbs Ferry, under a vertical sun that started the pitch in every seam—Elsin Grey, radiant, transfigured, drenched to the skin, faced storm and calm in an ecstasy of reckless happiness.

Wild winds from the north, shouting among the mountains, winds of the forests, that tore the cries of exultation from our lips and scattered sound into space, winds of my own northland that poured through our veins, cleansing us of sordid care and sad regret and doubt, these were the sorcerers that changed us back to children while the dull roaring of their incantations filled the world. We two alone on earth, and the vast, veiled world spread round, outstretching to the limits of eternity, all ours to conquer, ours for our pleasure, ours to reign in till the moon cracked and the stars faded, and the sun went down forever and a day, and all was chaos save for the blazing trail of blessed souls, soaring to glory through the majesty of endless night.

In the sunlit calms, riding at our moorings, much we discussed eternity and creation. Doctrines once terrible seemed now harmless and without menace, dogmas dissolved into thinnest air, blown to the nothingness from whence they came; for, strangely, all teachings and creeds and laws of faith narrowed to the oldest of precepts; and, ponder and question as we might, citing prophet and saint and holy men inspired, all came to the same at last, expressed in that cardinal precept so safe in its simplicity—the one law embodied in one word governing heaven and commanding earth.

"Aye," said she, "but how interpret it? For a misstep means certain damnation, Carus. Once when I spelled out 'Love' for you, I stumbled and should have fallen had you not held me up."

"You held me up, sweetheart! I was closer to the brink than you."

She looked thoughtfully at the fortress; the shore was so near that, through the calm darkness, we could hear the sentinels calling from post to post and the ripple of the Hudson at the base of the rocks.

But these conferences concerning the philosophy of ethics overweighted two hearts as young as ours; and while our new love and the happiness of it at times reacted in solemn argument and the naïve searching of our souls, mostly a reckless delight in one another and in our freedom dominated; and we lived for the moment only, chary and shy of stirring slumbering embers that must one day die out or flash to a flame as fierce as that blaze that bars the gates of heaven from lost souls.

Knowing the need of haste, and having in my pocket instructions which I believed overweighed even the voiceless orders of the West Point cannon, I argued with the officer of the guard on deck, day after day, to let us go; but it was only after fifteen days' detention there at anchor that I found out that it was an order from his Excellency himself which held us there.

Then, one morning in early September, boats from the fortress put off loaded with provisions for the Wind-Flower; the guard disembarked in their barge, and an officer, in a cockle-shell, shouted: "Good luck to you! The Mouse-trap's sprung, and the Mouse is squeaking!" And with that he tossed a letter on deck. It was addressed to me:

    "Headquarters, Philadelphia,
    "September 2d, '81.

"Carus Renalt, Esq're:

"Sir—On receipt of this order you will immediately proceed from your anchorage off West Point to Albany, disembark, and travel by way of Schenectady to Johnstown, and from there to Butlersbury, where you will establish yourself in the manor-house, making it your headquarters, unless force of circumstances prevent. Fifty Tryon County Rangers, to be employed as one scout or several, are placed under your authority; the militia, and such companies of Continental troops as are now or may later be apportioned to Tryon County, will continue under the orders of Colonel Marinus Willett. Your duties you are already familiar with; your policy must emanate from your own nature and deliberate judgment concerning the situation as it is or as it threatens. Close and cordial cooperation with Colonel Willett, and with the various civil and military authorities in Tryon County, should eventually accomplish the object of your mission, which is, first, to prevent surprise from all invasion; second, to prevent a massacre of the Oneida Nation.

"Authority is herewith given you to open and read the sealed orders delivered to you by myself on your departure."

The letter was signed by Colonel Hamilton. I stared at his signature, then at the name of the city from whence the letter was dated—Philadelphia. What in Heaven's name were "Headquarters" doing in Philadelphia? Was his Excellency there? Was the army there? Impossible—the army which for months had been preparing to storm New York?—impossible!

I thrust my hand into the breast-pocket of my coat, drew out the sealed orders, tore them open, and read:

"Until further notice such reports as you are required to render to his Excellency, the Commander-in-Chief, should be sent to headquarters, near Yorktown, Virginia–"

Virginia! The army that I had seen at Dobbs Ferry, at White Plains, at North Castle, was that army on its way to Virginia? What! hurl an entire army a thousand miles southward? And had Sir Henry Clinton permitted it?

In a sort of stupor I read and reread the astonishing words: "Virginia? There was a British army in Virginia. Yorktown? Yes, that British army was at Yorktown, practically at bay, with a youth of twenty-three—my own age—harassing it—the young General Lafayette! Greene, too, was there, his chivalry cutting up the light troops of General Lord Cornwallis–"

"By Heaven!" I cried, springing to my feet, "his Excellency never meant to storm New York! The French fleet has sailed for the Chesapeake! Lafayette is there, Greene is there, Morgan, Sumter, Lee, Pickens, all are there! His Excellency has gone to catch Cornwallis in a mouse-trap, and Sir Henry is duped!"

Mad with excitement and delight, I looked up at the great fortress on the river, and knew that it was safe in its magnificent isolation—safe with its guns and ramparts and its four thousand men—knew that the key to the Hudson was ours, and would remain ours, although the army, like a gigantic dragon, had lifted its great wings and soared southward, so silently that none, not even the British spies, had dreamed its destination was other than the city of New York.

And, as I looked, the signals on the fortress changed; the guard-boats hailed us, the harmless river-craft gave us right of way, and we spread our white sails once more, drawing slowly northward, under the rocky pulpits of the heights, past shore forests yet unbroken, edged with acres of reeds and marshes, from which the water-fowl arose in clouds; past pine-crowned capes and mountains, whose bases were bathed in the great river; past lonely little islands, on, on, into the purple mystery of the silent north.

Now there remained no high sky-bastion to halt us with voiceless signal and dumb cannon, nothing beyond but Albany; and, beyond Albany, the frontier; and beyond the frontier a hellish war of murder and the torch, a ceaseless conflict of dreadful reprisals, sterile triumphs, terrible vengeance, a saturnalia of private feuds, which spared neither the infirm nor the infant—nay, the very watch-dog at the door received no quarter in the holocaust.

Elsin had begged and begged that she should not be left there at West Point, saying that Albany was safer, though I doubted the question of safety weighed in her choice; but she pleaded so reasonably, so sweetly, arms around my neck, and her lips whispering so that my cheek felt their soft flutter, that I consented. There I was foolish, for no sooner were we in sight of the Albany hills than arms and lips were persuading again, guilelessly explaining how simple it would be for her to live at Johnstown, while I, at Butlersbury, busied myself with my own affairs.

And so we stood in earnest conference, while nearer and nearer loomed the hills, with the Dutch town atop, brick houses, tiled roofs, steep streets, becoming plainer and plainer to the eye.