Lucy Foster Madison

“To-morrow! O, that’s sudden! Spare him,
spare him!”

—“Measure for Measure.”

Colonel Dayton met them as they reËntered the camp. His brow was wrinkled with anxiety, but it cleared as if by magic at sight of them.

“Odds life, captain!” he cried. “I feared lest something had befallen you. It is long past your usual hour for returning.”

“Something did befall, sir,” answered Clifford, who had expected questioning. “I crave pardon for the delay. We were like not to have come back at all, but through no fault of ours. In fact, sir, we were set upon by a party of miscreants in the glen beyond the five knob tree, and captured. At the place to which we were conducted was a person through whom——” He hesitated unwilling that Harriet should be connected with the affair. “In short, Colonel Dayton,” he said frankly, “I would prefer that you do not question me concerning the manner of our release. As soon as possible we came back.”

“Say no more, sir,” exclaimed Colonel Dayton. “That you did come back proves you an honorable gentleman. I might have had to mourn a prisoner, but once more hath martial faith received justification. It will give me great pleasure to report your conduct to the commander-in-chief.”

Much relieved that the matter was to be probed no further the cousins dismounted, and were preparing to retire to their respective domiciles when the voice of Colonel Dayton arrested them.

“I wonder,” he was saying, “if this doth not explain the letter that I received to-day from General Washington?”

“What letter, sir?” asked Clifford quickly. “May I inquire if it contained any further orders regarding me?”

“Certainly; and I am obliged to answer that it does contain orders. Listen, and you shall hear them, though it gives me great pain to read them. They mean a curtailment of your privileges, captain.”

Whereupon he produced the missive, and read as follows: “Sir, I am informed that Captain Williams is at the camp without a guard, and under no restraint whatever. This, if true, is certainly wrong; I wish to have the young gentleman treated with all possible tenderness consistent with his present situation, but considered a close prisoner and kept with the greatest security. It is well to be careful. There are many rumors afloat anent a rescue, which may be but idle talk. Still, when dealing with a foe every precaution should be used that there is no weakness in our defenses of which he may take advantage.”

“So end our rides, Peggy,” remarked Clifford, smiling slightly. “’Tis a preliminary to the final order.”

“I trust not, captain,” exclaimed the officer. “This merely limits you to the confines of the cantonment. I should not like the general to consider that I was negligent. It would have been the same, sir, had not your misadventure of to-day occurred.”

“I understand, colonel,” answered the youth deferentially. “I appreciate the courtesy you have ever shown me. I think, on the whole, ’tis best. And it might be worse.”

“Yes,” spoke Peggy. “It might be worse, Clifford.”

So there were no more rides; but as the weather began to be very hot, and exceedingly dry, they consoled themselves with the reflection that riding would be extremely unpleasant under such conditions. Another week glided by, in which there was no sign of Harriet, nor was there any further order from the commander-in-chief. It seemed as though they had been set down in the midst of the cantonment and forgotten. The strain began to tell upon Clifford.

“Would that it were over,” burst from him one morning as he sat with Peggy under the shade of a tree near the quarters of the Dayton family. In the distance a company was drilling, and the orders of its officer came to them faintly.

Peggy let fall the ox-eyed daisy whose petals she had been counting, and turned toward him in dismay.

“Clifford, thee don’t mean that,” she cried.

“But I do, Peggy,” he answered passionately. “The fluctuations from hope to despair, and from despondency to hope again are far more trying than a certain knowledge of death would be. It keeps me on tenter-hooks. So long as the thing is inevitable, I wish it would come.”

Peggy looked at him anxiously. His face was pale, and there were deep circles under his eyes that spoke of wakeful nights. His experience with his sister had been far more distressing than she had realized. It came to the girl with a shock just how care-worn he was.

“Would that father were here that he might comfort thee,” she cried tearfully. “Thee needs him, my cousin.”

“An he were, he would say—‘My lad, thy promise was that Peggy should not be saddened by talk of thy woes; yet here thee is dwelling upon thy sorrow both to thy detriment and hers.’”

The transition to David Owen’s manner was so abrupt that Peggy smiled through her tears.

“I did not know that thee was possessed of the art of mimicry, my cousin,” she remarked. “Harriet hath it to perfection, but thee has never shown sign of it before.”

“’Tis only one whom I know well that I can mimic,” he told her. “Sometimes, I believe that I know Cousin David better than father.”

“And thou shouldst have been my father’s son,” she cried. “Why, thee looks enough like him to be his son. Then thee would have been my brother, as thou shouldst have been.”

Clifford smiled at her warmth.

“In that case,” he said quizzically, “I should have been an American. I wonder if I should have been a Quaker, and a rebel with the rest of you? Or should I have been a Tory?”

“Oh, a rebel! A rebel!” she replied promptly, pleased that his melancholy was vanishing.

“I doubt it. I cannot imagine myself as other than loyal to my king any more than I can think of myself as a Quaker.”

“Neither can I think of thee as a Quaker,” she said. “Some way thee doesn’t fit in with the Society.”

At this Clifford laughed outright.

“That is because you know me as I am,” he observed. “Now I cannot think of you as being anything but a little Quakeress. You see, we get our ideas of persons when we first know them, and then we cannot change.”

“‘And cannot change,’” she repeated with some amusement. “Clifford Owen, thee didn’t like me at all at first.”

“No, I did not,” he responded, and laughed again. “’Twas because I did not know you aright. Peggy, see how light-hearted you have made me. Our merriment hath caused Colonel Dayton to give us unusual attention.”

Peggy glanced at the officer. He had been watching the drill, but several times had turned to look at them. As the drill ended he came slowly toward them.

“You seem quite happy this morning,” he observed. Something in his manner struck the girl with foreboding.

“Yes, colonel,” answered Clifford. “I had an attack of the blues, but my cousin hath charmed them away. We were trying to imagine me an American.”

“We should welcome you, sir,” spoke the colonel courteously. “May I speak to you a moment, captain?”

Clifford rose instantly.

“It hath come then?” he asked quietly.

“Yes,” answered the colonel huskily. “It was hard to break in upon your mirth, but I thought you would prefer to have me tell you than to hear it from another.”

“You are most kind, sir.” The youth’s voice trembled ever so little. “We were too merry, my cousin. ‘Against ill chances men are ever merry. But heaviness foreruns the good event.’” His tones were steady as he finished the quotation, and he added: “I am ready at any time.”

But at this Peggy uttered a cry.

“Now? Oh, that would be inhuman! Surely not now?”

“Nay,” said Colonel Dayton, alarmed by her paleness. “’Tis not as you think, child. He goes to the guard-house now. The sentence will not be carried out until to-morrow morning.”

“’Tis so sudden,” she protested piteously.

“Nay, Peggy, it hath been too long deferred,” demurred Clifford. “’Tis well to have the anxiety and suspense over. You must not give way.”

“But what can I do, Clifford? Thee has no one but me to do for thee. How can I comfort thee?”

“Dear little cousin,” he said softly, “you have done much already. Think what these last weeks would have been for me had you not stayed here. Be brave a little longer. The colonel will let me see you again.”

“Yes,” said Colonel Dayton briefly.

And Peggy was left alone. Alone! With wide, unseeing eyes she stared at a patch of green grass in front of her where ox-eyed daisies grew like golden stars. Alone! Harriet had not come, as Peggy had been hoping she would. And her father! Could he not get leave? Alone! Alone! What comfort could she, a mere girl, be to her cousin in this trying hour?

Far afield the milkweed nodded a soft welcome to the butterflies winging, like flying flowers, over the fields. A bumblebee droned drowsily near, humming his song to unheeding ears. Where the tall pine trees of the forest met the sky argosies of clouds spread their portly sails along the blue. In the heat of the July morning Peggy sat shaking like a leaf.

“I must be brave,” she told herself again and again. “He hath no one here but me. I must be Harriet and Cousin William both to him. I must be of comfort to him.”

Long she sat there under the tree trying to pull herself together, but after a while she rose and made her way into the house. It was well on toward the end of the afternoon when Colonel Dayton came to her.

“Your cousin wishes to see you, child,” he said pityingly. “He bears up well, but I need not say to you that he will need all his fortitude to go through with this ordeal.”

“I shall not fail him, friend,” said Peggy with quivering lips. “I am all of kith or kin that is near him. I shall not fail.”

But the maiden had need of all her resolution when she entered the guard-house where Clifford was, for he was most despondent.

“I am glad it is ended, Peggy,” he said gloomily. “The restlessness of waiting is over at last. All the feverish anxiety, the hope, the longing, are past, and the end hath come. Do you remember last year, when John Drayton, that Yankee captain, was condemned to this same sort of death, what father said? He said, ‘The vicissitudes of war are many, my son. By sad fortune you might find yourself in the same condition as this young fellow.’ And here I am, in very truth, condemned to die on the gallows. I have been thinking of it all day.”

“Clifford,” she cried in alarm, for there sounded a note of agitation in his words that made her fearful lest he lose his self-control, “thee must not talk like that. Think on something else.”

“But to die like this,” he cried. “An Owen on the gibbet! ’Tis bitter, bitter! I had planned a different death. ’Twas on the battle-field. Gloriously to fall, fighting for the king and England. I do not fear death, my cousin. It is not that. ’Tis the awfulness of the mode. I cannot help but think of that other death which I would so gladly die. I have ever loved martial music, and ’twas my thought that at my death the muffled drum would beat for a soldier’s honorable funeral.”

“Clifford! Clifford!” she cried. He was so young, so noble, and yet to die a cruel death on the scaffold! It was hard. What comfort could she give him? He was in sore need of it.

“Bear with me for just a little, Peggy,” he said. “It hath eaten into my heart—the manner of this death. I have talked bravely all these long, weary days of waiting, but oh! if they would just shoot me! The shamefulness of a gallows!”

“Don’t!” she cried suddenly. “I—I cannot bear it.”

The boy pulled himself together sharply.

“Forgive me,” he said speaking more calmly. “I’ll be good now, my cousin, but ’tis enough to make a man rave to contrast the death he would die with the one he must. I’ll think of it no more.”

“Thee must not,” she said faintly. “What—what can I do for thee, Clifford?”

“I have writ some letters,” he said picking them up from the table. “Will you see that they are sent? I need not ask. I know you will. One is for Harriet; I was too hard on her, Peggy. I see it now. One is for father, and one for your father and mother. Had I been their own son they could not have treated me with more tenderness. And, Peggy——”

“Yes, my cousin?”

“There is one for Miss Sally,” he said with slight hesitation. His face flushed and he busied himself among the papers on the table. “’Fore George,” he cried with an abrupt change of manner, “I can’t forget that look of scorn in her blue eyes! It haunts me. I writ before, you remember? She did not reply, but sent word that she had no hard feelings. ’Twas all I had a right to expect, but somehow—— I have writ again, Peggy, to tell her—— Well, you know I don’t want her to think me altogether contemptible.”

It was such a youthful outburst, and so natural that Peggy had hard work to retain her self-control. Then, like a flash, she knew the comfort she could give him. Leaning toward him with brightening eyes she said softly:

“Sally doesn’t think thee so, Clifford. She hath a high opinion of thee. She told me to tell thee something at the very last—— And that would be now, would it not?”

“Now, or never, Peggy. What did she say?” He listened eagerly.

“She said that she considered thee the finest gentleman that she ever knew.”

“She said that?” The youth caught his breath quickly.

“Just that, Clifford. The finest gentleman that she ever knew,” repeated the maiden impressively. “Was not that much to say?”

“It was, my cousin. It overwhelms me.” His eyes were misty, and in them there was wonder too. “It is the highest praise that she could have spoken. ’Tis strange that she should so speak; because, Peggy, I have always wanted to be a gentleman. Oh, I am by birth, I know. I don’t mean that. I mean just and honorable, chivalrous and gallant, performing heroic deeds, and—and all the rest of it,” he finished boyishly.

“And thee is all that, Clifford,” said Peggy gently.

“No,” he said with unwonted humility. “I would like to be, but I am, in truth, a pretty stiff, stubborn, unreasonable sort of fellow. You have had cause to know that, Peggy. And so hath Sally. If life were, by any chance, given me I should try to be all that she thinks me; but I am to die. To die——” He stopped suddenly, and his eyes began to glow. “’Fore George!” he cried, “if I cannot live I can die as she would have the ‘finest gentleman’ to die! What if it is on the scaffold, and not the battle-field? Though it be not a glorious death, it can be glorified! How could she know that that was just what I would need to put me on my mettle? How could she know?”

“Then it hath helped thee, Clifford?” spoke Peggy, marveling at the transformation in him.

“Helped me? It hath put new life into me. It hath given me courage. Why, do you know the shame of the thing had almost prostrated me? An Owen on the gallows, Peggy. I would not have minded so much if the execution had taken place right after we left Lancaster, but to have it hanging over me day after day for so long. Peggy, it hath eaten into my heart.”

“Oh, Clifford!” she cried pityingly. “I did not dream thee felt it so!”

“I did not want you to know, little cousin. I would not tell you now, but that you have brought me the cheer that I need. How good you have always been to me, Peggy. I wonder if the world holds anything sweeter than a Quaker maid! That one should so highly esteem me——” He smiled at her with sudden radiance. “I shall have pleasant thoughts to go with me now, Peggy. You will tell her?”

“Yes,” she answered, and added chokingly: “I wish father were here.”

“And so do I. I hoped that he would be with me at the end; I believe that he would be here if he could.”

“Thee shall not be alone, Clifford. I am going to be with thee.” Peggy spoke bravely enough, but her eyes grew dark at the very thought, and she began to tremble.

“Not for the world, Peggy!” he cried, horrified. “I would like to have Cousin David with me, but not you. Oh, not you! I can suffer firmly what ’twould kill you to see.”

“But to be alone, Clifford?”

“It can’t be helped, Peggy. I won’t have you there. Promise me that you won’t go.”

“I will do as thee wishes, my cousin,” she answered tremulously. “But—but I will be here at the door as thee comes out. I could not bear to have thee without a glimpse of a friend, or——” She could not finish.

“Be at the door if you wish, little cousin. I should like that, but go no further.” He arose and held out his hands. “It’s good-bye now, Peggy.”

A sense of suffocation overwhelmed Peggy, and she could not speak. He was so young, so noble, so manly in meeting his untoward fate, and yet he must suffer this ignominious death without the comfort of a friend’s face near him. As she found her way blindly out of the room a passionate prayer rose insistently through all her being:

“Oh, that father would come! That father would come!”