The sun was well above the tree-tops, and the morning was abroad for all the furred and feathered wood-folk, when I forsook1 the Indian path to make a prudent2 circle of reconnaissance around the cabin in the maple3 grove4.
Happily, there was no need for the cautionary measure. The hunting lodge5 was undiscovered as yet by any enemy; and when I showed myself my poor black vassals6 ran to do my bidding, weeping with childish joy to have me back again.
Since old Darius was still at Appleby Hundred, Tomas ranked as majordomo; and I bade him post the blacks in a loosely drawn7 sentry8 line about the cabin, this against the chance that Falconnet might stumble on the place in searching for me. For I made no doubt his Tory spies would quickly pass the word that I was not with Abram Forney's band, and hence must be in hiding.
When all was done I flung myself upon the couch of panther-skins, hoping against hope that sleep might come to help me through the hours of waiting. 'Twas a vain hope. There was never a wink10 of forgetfulness for me in all the long watches of the summer day, and I must lie wide-eyed and haggard, thinking night would never come, and making sure that fate had never before walled a man in such a dungeon11 of despair.
There was no loophole of escape with honor; The heavens were brass12, with all the horizons narrowed to a bounding wall to hem13 me in on every side. There was no sally-port in all this wall save one—the one that death had promised to open at the dawn. The promise had been broken. True, death had thrust the key within the lock, and I had heard the grating of the bolts; and yet the key had been withdrawn14 and I was left a prisoner of life.
There was no hope of other outlet15. Now there was space to view it calmly, I saw how foolish was the thought that Margery would connive16 at any breaking of the marriage bond. She would bear my name, and hate me for the giving of it; would go on hating me, I thought, to all eternity17; but she would never take her freedom back again, save at a dead man's hands.
It was thus that each fresh scanning of the prison wall that shut me in this dungeon of dishonor fetched me once and again to this one sally-port of death. And when it came to this; that I had searched in vain for other outlet, you will not think it strange that I sat down in spirit at this postern to see if I might open it with my own hands.
It was not love of life that made me hesitate. At two-score years he who has lived at all has lived his best; and if he live beyond the turning point of youthful ardor18 he must beg the grace of younger men to linger yet a little longer on the stage which once was his and now is theirs.
No, it was not any love of life for life's own sake that held me back. 'Twas rather that the Ireton blood is linked up with that thing we call a conscience, a heritage from those simple-hearted ancestors to whom the suicide was a soul accurst—a soul impenitent19, whose very outer husk of flesh and bones they used to bury at the crossing of the ways, with a sharpened stake to pinion20 it.
'Twas this ancestral conscience made me cowardly; and when the sight of my father's sword—Darius had rescued and restored it to its place upon the chimney-breast—would set me thinking of the Israelitish king, and how, when all was lost, he fell upon his blade and died, this horror of the suicide came to give me pause.
Besides, that way to right the double wrong was not so clear as it might seem. As matters stood, my living for the present was Margery's best safeguard. Till she became my widow and my heir-at-law, the mercenary baronet would play his cards to win her honorably. I doubted not he'd make hot love to her; but while she stayed a wife, and was not yet a widow, he'd keep his passion decently in bounds, if only for the better compassing of his end.
But from this horn of the dilemma21 I slipped to fall upon the other. If my living on as Margery's husband was her safety for the time, it was an offering of idol-meats upon the altar of my dear lad's friendship. What would he think of me? How could I go about to make it plain that I had robbed him for his own honor's sake?—that it was not I but fate that was to blame?
These questions came up answerless, like deep-sea plummets22 where no bottom is. I saw the way no farther on than this; that I must go straightway to Jennifer and tell him all. Beyond that point the darkness was Egyptian, and I could only hope that tricky23 fate would turn again and blot24 me out, and make it plain to Richard, and to my dear lady, that love, and not base treachery, had set me on to do as I had done.
In some such dismal25 grindings of the mill of thought the hours of waiting were outworn at length; and when the sun was dipping to the mountains in the west I rose and washed me in the brook26, and afterward27 constrained28 myself to eat what Tomas had prepared for me.
The sunset glow was fading in the upper air, and underneath29 the canopy30 of leaves the wood was darkening on to twilight31, when I made ready to be gone. Because I thought I might have need of it before the night was done, I buckled32 on the heirloom sword; and telling Tomas and the other blacks for their own safety to keep an alarm guard waking through the night, I sallied forth33 upon my errand.
I've wished a thousand times, as I sit here before the fire and jot34 these memories down in crabbed35 black on white, that I could conjure36 up for you some speaking picture of this scene primeval in which the story moves.
True, its hills and valleys are the same; the river keeps its course; and in the west the mountain sky-line is unchanged. But here similitude is at an end. You've hacked37 the virgin38 forest into shapes and fringes where once it was an ample mantle39 seamed only by the rivers, and frayed40 here and there at distant intervals41 by the settler's ax.
Beneath this mantle lay a world unlike the world you know. Plunged43 in its furtive44 depths you felt the spell of nature's mystery upon you; the mystery of the hoary45 wood, age-old, steeped in the nepenthe of the centuries. In brightest summer day, which, in these forest aisles46, became a misty47 green translucence48, the silence, the vastness, the solitude49 laid each a finger on you, bidding you go softly all the way. But in the twilight hour the real held still more aloof50, and all the shadows bristled51 with dim fantastic shapes to awe52 and affright the alien-born.
I was not alien-born. From earliest childhood I had known and loved these forest solitudes53. Yet now, as when I was a little lad, the twilight shadows awed54 me. Here it was a gnarled and twisted tree-trunk so like a crouching55 panther that I sprang aside and had the steel half out before the clearer vision came. There it was the figure of a man gliding56 stealthily from tree to tree, it seemed; keeping even pace with me as if with sinister57 intent.
I pushed on faster, drawing the sword to keep me better company, though inwardly I scoffed58 and jeered59 at this new twittering of the nerves. What threat was there for me in silent shadows in the wood? The dogs I had to fear were bred in British kennels60, and there was never any lack of clamor when they were beating up a cover.
Yet this persistent61 shadow clung upon my footsteps until from casting furtive glances sidewise I came to holding it craftily62 in the tail of my eye. 'Twas surely moving as I moved, and surely drawing nearer. I picked a time and place, measured my distance, and darting64 suddenly aside, sent home a thrust which should have pinned the phantom65 to a tree.
"Ugh! What for Captain Long-knife want kill the tree?"
The voice came from behind, and when I wheeled again my shadow was become incarnated66 in flesh and blood; a stalwart Indian, naked to the belt, standing67 so near he could have pricked68 me with his scalping knife.
It was God's mercy that by some swift intuition I knew him for the friendly Catawba. It is an ill thing to take a frighted man unawares.
"Uncanoola?" said I.
He nodded. "Where 'bouts69 Captain Long-knife going?"
I told him briefly70; whereat he shook his head.
"No find Captain Jennif' this way; find him that way," pointing back along the path.
"How does the chief know that? Has he seen him?" Though my long exile had well-nigh cost me the trick of it, I made shift to drop into the stately Indian hyperbole.
"Wah! Uncanoola has seen the Great Water: that make him have long eyes—see heap things."
"Will the Catawba tell the friend whose life he saved what he has seen?"
"Uncanoola see heap things," he repeated. "See Captain Jennif' so"—he threw himself flat upon the ground and pictured me a fugitive71 crawling snake-like through the underwood. "Bime-by, come to river and find canoe—jump in and paddle fas'; bime-by, 'gain, stop paddling and laugh and shake fist this way, and say 'God-damn.'"
By this I knew that Jennifer had escaped; nay72, more; had somehow learned of my escape and was seeking me.
"Is that all the chief saw?" I asked.
"Ugh! See heap more things: see one thing white squaw no let him tell Captain Long-knife. Maybe some time tell, anyhow."
"The white squaw?" said I. "Who is she?"
The Catawba laughed, an Indian laugh, silent and suppressed; a mere73 shaking of the ribs74.
"No can tell that, neither, too," he said. Then, with a swift dart63 aside from the subject: "Captain Long-knife care much 'bout9 ............