"It is a written bondage—writ in stripes, |
Hastings turned furiously at the interruption; but the stranger, though entirely unarmed, stood his ground firmly, and looked on him with composure.
"That's a bright sword you wear," said he, "but it is scarcely a good stroke and anything but a gallant one, Master Sergeant, which you make with it. How now, is it the fashion with British soldiers to draw upon unarmed men?"
The person addressed turned upon the speaker with a scowl which seemed to promise that he would transfer some portion of his anger to the new comer. He had no time, however, to do more than look his wrath at the interruption; for among the many persons whom the noise had brought to the scene of action was the fair Bella Humphries herself. The maid of the inn—accustomed probably to quell such conflicts by her beauty and persuasions—waited not an instant to place herself between the parties, and, as if her own interest in the persons concerned gave her an especial right in the matter, she fearlessly passed under the raised weapon of Hastings, addressing him imploringly, and with an air of intimacy, which was, perhaps, the worst feature in the business. So, at least, the individual appeared to think to whose succour she had come. His brow blackened still more at her approach, and when she interfered to prevent strife, a muttered curse, half-audible, rose to his lips. Brandishing the club which he had wielded with no little readiness before, he seemed more than ever desirous of renewing the combat, though with all its disadvantages. But the parties around generally interfered to prevent the progress of the strife; and Bella, whose mind seemed perfectly assured of Hastings' invincibility, addressed her prayers only to him, and in behalf of the other.
"Now don't strike, Sergeant—don't, I pray? John is only foolish, and don't mean any harm. Strike him not, I beg you!"
"Beg for yourself, Bella Humphries—I don't want any of your begging for me. I'm no chicken, and can hold my own any day against him. So don't come between us—you in particular—you had better keep away."
The countryman spoke ferociously; and his dark eye, long black hair, and swarthy cheek, all combined to give the expression of fierce anger which his words expressed, a lively earnestness not ill-adapted to sustain them. The girl looked on him reproachfully as he spoke, though a close observer might have seen in her features a something of conscious error and injustice. It was evident that the parties had been at one period far more intimate than now; and the young stranger, about whom the coil began, saw in an instant the true situation of the twain. A smile passed over his features, but did not rest, as his eye took in at a glance the twofold expression of Bella's face, standing between her lovers, preventing the fight—scowled on furiously by the one, and most affectionately leered at by the other. Her appeal to the sergeant was so complimentary, that even were he not half-ashamed of what he had already done in commencing a contest so unequal, he must have yielded to it and forborne. Some of his moderation, too, might have arisen from his perceiving the hostile jealousy of spirit with which his rival regarded her preference of himself. His vanity was enlisted in the application of the maiden, and with a becoming fondness of expression in his glance, turning to the coquette, he gave her to understand, while thrusting his sword back into the scabbard, that he consented to mercy on the score of her application. Still, as Davis held out a show of fight, and stood snugly ensconced behind his chair, defying and even inviting assault, it was necessary that the sergeant should draw off honourably from the contest. While returning the weapon to the sheath, therefore, he spoke to his enemy in language of indulgent warning, not unmixed with the military threats common at the period— "Hark you, good fellow—you're but a small man to look out for danger, and there's too little of you, after all, for me to look after. I let you off this time; but you're on ticklish territory, and if you move but one side or the other, you're but a lost man after all. It's not a safe chance to show rebel signs on the king's highway, and you have an ugly squinting at disaffection. My eyes are on you now, and if I but see you wink, or hear you hint, treason,—ay, treason, rebellion—I see it in your eyes, I tell you,—but wink it or look it again, and you know it's short work, very short work, and a shorter journey, to the tight rope and the branching tree."
The speaker looked round significantly upon the company as he uttered a warning and threat, which, though addressed particularly to the refractory countryman, were yet evidently as much meant for the benefit of the rest. Not that the worthy sergeant had any reason for uttering language which, in all respects, seemed so gratuitous; but this was of a piece with the wantonly injudicious habit of his superiors, from whom, with the readiness of inferiority and sycophancy, he made free to borrow; and, with as little discrimination, quite as frequently employed it, not less for the gratification of his vanity than for the exercise of his power. The speech had something of its usual effect,—keeping in silence those whose love to talk might have prompted to occasional remark, though without any serious feeling in the matter; and subduing thoroughly all demonstrations of dislike on the part of the few, who, feeling things more deeply, might be disposed rather to act than to speak, when under such provocation. Whatever the persons around may have felt at the moment, they were generally prudent enough to be silent. Old Humphries alone, with uplifted hands, now somewhat touched with liquor, and seeing all danger over, came forward, and hobbling up to the sergeant, cried out, in reply—
"Why, bless us, sergeant, you talk as if you were among the enemies of his majesty, and not among his good friends and well-wishers. Now, I'm sure I can answer for all here. There's Jones and Baxter, Lyons and Tom Walker there—all for the crown,—right loyal good fellows, who drink the health of King George—God bless him!—whenever they can get a drink; and as for Jack Davis, bless us, sergeant, there's no better boy in Goose Creek, though he is cross and snappish when his fit's on, and no chicken either, as he says himself. He'll fight for his majesty any day, I know. There's no mistake in him—there's no mistake in any of the boys—I can answer for all that's here except—" and here the landlord paused in one of the longest speeches he had ever made, and his eye rested doubtfully upon the person of the stranger.
"Except me," said the latter, coming forward, looking Hastings attentively in the face as he spoke, and at the same time placing his hand with some little emphasis upon the shoulders of old Humphries,—"except me, Master Humphries, for whom you can say nothing—of whom you know nothing—but about whom you are excessively curious. You only know I am not a captain, nor yet a colonel; and as I have not satisfied your desires on these subjects, of course you cannot answer for my loyalty."
"Bless me, no; that I can't, stranger."
"But I can answer for myself and prefer to do so, Master Humphries, and that's enough for all parties; and I can say, as you have already said for these gentlemen, that my loyalty is quite as good as that of any around me, as we shall all see in due season. And now that this quarrel is ended, let me only beg of the worthy sergeant here, that he may not be so quick to draw his weapon upon the man that is unarmed. The action is by no means so creditable to the soldier, and one that he may, most probably, in time, come to be ashamed of."
The perfect coolness and self-possession of the stranger, in this brief interlude, confounded Hastings not less than it did the rest. He knew not in what character to behold him, and, but that he was rather stolid than otherwise, might have exhibited traces of that confusion which his mind certainly felt. But the air of superiority which the other manifested, annoyed him too greatly to give way to doubt or indetermination; and he was about to answer roughly, when a remark which Davis made, of a churlish nature, to the coquettish Bella Humphries, who still lingered beside the sergeant, attracted the latter's attention, and giving a glance to the speaker, he threw his collected spleen in that quarter, while addressing the girl— "See now, that's the good you get for saving him from punishment. He doesn't thank you at all for what you've done."
"No, that I don't!" cried the incorrigible Davis: "I owe her as little thanks as I owe you kindness,—and I'll pay off both some day. I can hold my own without her help; and as for her begging, I don't want it—I won't have it—and I despise it."
"What's that?" cried Hastings, with a show of returning choler.
"Nothing, sergeant, nothing; don't mind what he says; he's only foolish, and don't mean any harm. Now take your hand away from the sword, I beg you."
The girl looked so prettily, as she prayed him to be quiet, that the soldier relented. Her deferential solicitude was all-influential, and softened much of the harsh feeling that might have existed in his bosom. Taking her arm into his own, with a consequential strut, and throwing a look of contempt upon his rival as he passed, the conqueror moved away into the adjoining apartment, to which, as his business seems private at present, we shall not presume to follow him.
His departure was the signal for renovated life in several of those persons who, in the previous scene, seemed quiescent enough. They generously came forward to Davis with advice and friendly counsel to keep himself out of harm's way, and submit, most civilly, like a good Christian, to the gratuitous blow and buffet. The most eloquent among them was the landlord.
"Now, bless me," said he, "John, my dear boy, why will you be after striving with the sergeant? You know you can't stand against him, and where's the use? He's quite too tough a colt for you to manage, now, I tell you."
"So you think, Master Humphries—so you think. But I'm not so sure of it, now, by half. I can stand a thump as well as any man—and I haint lived so long in Goose Creek not to know how to give one too. But how you stand it—you, I say, Dick Humphries—I don't altogether see."
"Eh, John—how I stand it? Bless us, what do you mean, boy? He don't trouble me—he don't threaten me—I'm a good subject to his majesty." The youth laughed irreverently, and the stranger, who had been standing apart, but still within hearing, noted the incident with considerable show of interest in his countenance.
"And what do you laugh at, John? Don't, boy—I pray you, don't. Let's have a glass together, and don't trouble yourself to be laughing again; there's danger in it. Come: a glass.—Good old Jamaica! Won't you join us, stranger?"
The youth declined, and Davis proceeded—
"Why do I laugh, Master Humphries? In truth I ought not to laugh when I see"—
Here he paused, and with a praiseworthy delicacy, he whispered in the old man's ear his objections to the large degree of intimacy existing between the British sergeant and his pretty daughter.
"Oh, go, John! there's no harm, boy. You're only jealous 'cause she turned you off."
"Turned me off, indeed!" responded the other, indignantly and aloud—"turned me off! No, Master Humphries—not so bad neither. But it's no use talking—you'll know all in time, and will wish you had minded what I told you. But go your own gait, you'll grow fatter upon it;" and with this not very nice proverb the disappointed lover turned away without taking the proffered Jamaica.
This scene had not been lost on the stranger youth, though little regarded by the other personages, who had each made his speech and taken his drink and departure. There was much more spoken that we do not care to record, but which, duly noted by the one observer to whom we have made especial reference, was held not unworthy in his mind of proper consideration. He had seen a dogged disposition on the part of Davis to break and quarrel with the British sergeant; and though he clearly saw that much of this disposition arose, as old Humphries had asserted, from a jealous dislike of the intimacy between Bella and the person in question, he yet perceived that many of the phrases made use of by the countryman indicated anything but respect or good feeling for the British authority. There was a sturdy boldness in his air and manner, when the other spoke to him of treason, which said that the crime was, after all, a venial one in his mind; and this disposition, perceptible as it must have been to the sergeant, not less than to the stranger, might doubtless have prompted much of that violence on his part which had been so happily and in time arrested. Nor was there anything precipitate or uncommon in what the sergeant had done. Such exhibitions were frequent in the bitter and unscrupulous warfare of the south. The word and the blow, and usually the blow first, was the habitual mode of silencing, not treason merely, but all manner of opposition; and this was the injudicious course by which the British, regarding South Carolina as a conquered province, revolted the popular feeling from all sympathy with their authority, and provoked that spirit of determined resistance and hostility which, in a few weeks only after this event, blazed up throughout the whole colony, from one end to the other, and commenced that series of harassing operations, the partisan warfare, which, in spite of frequent defeats, cut off the foraging parties of the British army, destroyed its resources, diminished its exercise, contracted its sphere of operations daily, and in the end, drove the invader to the seaboard, and from thence to his departing vessels.
Old Humphries followed Davis to the door, and again renewed his exhortation. The landlord seemed to have a good feeling for his guest, who had probably been a crony of his own, and a favoured lover of his daughter, before the British army had made its appearance to compel a change of political sentiment in the one, or a British sergeant, in his red coat and round face, to effect as great a revolution in the bosom of the other. His object seemed to be to persuade Davis into a more cautious utterance, when speaking of the existing powers; and he warned him of the unhesitating nature of the enemy when punishing what they held rebellion, and of the severe kinds of punishment put in exercise on such occasions. But, whether it was that the youth really felt sorely, too sorely for calm reflection, the loss of his sweetheart—or whether the assault of the sergeant had opened his eyes to the doubtful tenure by which the American held his security under the rule that now prevailed throughout the land—may not well be said; but there was a reckless audacity in his replies to the friendly suggestions of the landlord, which half frightened the latter personage out of his wits.
"I'd rather eat acorns, now, Master Humphries, I tell you, and sleep in the swamps in August, than hush my tongue when I feel it's right to speak. They shan't crow over me, though I die for it; and let them look out; for I tell you now, Dick Humphries, flesh and blood can't stand their parsecutions. There's no chance for life, let 'lone property. Look how they did Frampton's wife, and she in such a way; and only three days ago they tied up Tom Raysor's little boy Ben, and gave him a matter of fifty lashes with hickories thick as my thumb, and all because the boy wouldn't tell where his father was hiding."
"But you see, John, that all came of the hiding. If Frampton and Raysor had not taken to the swamp, the old lady would have been let alone, and the boy wouldn't have been whipt. Aint they in arms now against his majesty?"
"Yes; and if his majesty goes on after this fashion there will be a few more, I can tell you. Now, you yourself, Dick Humphries, I put it to yourself, whether the thing's right, and whether we ought to stand it. Now, I know you of old, and know you're no more a loyalist than—"
"Hush! Bless us, John Davis, how you talk, boy! hush, hush!" and with an air of the greatest trepidation, looking round and perceiving that, though the stranger appeared to be reading very earnestly from the pages of the "Royal (Charleston) Gazette," he was yet within hearing, the landlord led his companion farther from the door, and the conversation, as it proceeded to its conclusion, was entirely lost to all ears but their own. It was not long before Humphries returned to the hall, and endeavoured to commence a sort of desultory dialogue with the stranger guest, whose presence had produced the previous quarrel. But this personage seemed to desire no such familiarty, for scarcely had the old man begun, when throwing down the sheet he had been reading, and thrusting upon his head the rakish cap which all the while had rested on his knee, he rose from his seat, and moving rapidly to the door of the apartment, followed the steps of Davis, whom he beheld pursuing his way along the main bridge road and towards the river. The path was clear in this quarter; not a solitary being, but themselves, was to be seen—by them at least. In the centre of the bridge—a crazy structure of ill-adjusted timber thrown over a point of the stream where it most narrowed—the pursuing stranger overtook the moodily-wandering countryman. He stopped him in his progress till he could come up with him by a friendly hail; and, freely approaching him, tendered him his open hand in a cordial salutation. The other grasped it with honest pleasure.
"Master Davis, for such I believe is your name," said the stranger, frankly, "I owe you many thanks for so readily, though I must say rashly, taking up my quarrel. I understand that your brush with that soldier-fellow was on my account; and though, like yourself, I need nobody to fight my battles, I must yet thank you for the good spirit which you have shewn in this matter."
"No thanks, stranger. I don't know what name to call you—"
"No matter; names are unnecessary, and the fewer known the better in these doubtful times. I care not to utter mine, though it has but little value. Call me what you please." The other looked surprised, but still satisfied, and replied after this fashion—
"Well, stranger, as I said, you owe me no thanks at all in this affair; for though I did take up the matter on your hook, it was because I had a little sort of hankering to take it up on my own. I have long had a grudge at that fellow, and I didn't care much on whose score it began, so it had a beginning."
"He has done you wrong?" half affirmatively, half inquiringly, said his companion.
"Reckon he has, squire, and no small wrong neither; but that's neither here nor there, seeing there's little help for it."
"How! no help for it! What may be the nature of this injury, for which a man with your limbs and spirit can find no help?"
The countryman looked at the speaker with a curious expression, in which a desire to confide, and a proper hesitancy in entrusting his secret thoughts to a stranger, were mingled equally. The other beheld the expression, and readily defining the difficulty, proceeded to remove it.
"This man has wronged you, friend Davis: you are his match—more than his match; you have better make and muscle, and manage your club quite as well as he his broadsword:—why should you not have justice, if you desire it?"
"If I desire it!" cried the other, and his black eye sparkled. "I do desire it, squire; but there's odds against me, or we'd a-been at it afore this."
"What odds?"
"Look there!" and as Davis replied, he pointed to the fortress upon the opposite hill, a few hundred yards off, where the cross of Great Britain streamed high among the pine-trees, and from the entrance of which, at that very moment, a small body of regulars were pouring out into the street, and proceeding with martial music to the market-place.
"I see," replied the other—" I see; but why should they prove odds against you in a personal affair with this sergeant? You have justice from them surely."
"Justice!—such justice as a tory captain gives when he wants your horse, and don't want to pay for it."
Davis replied truly, in his summing up of British justice at that period.
"But you do not mean to say that the people would not be protected, were complaints properly made to the officers?"
"I do; and what's worse, complaint only goes after new hickories. One man was strapped up only yesterday, because he complained that Corporal Townes kicked his wife and broke his crockery. They gave him a hundred lashes."
"And yet loyalty must have its advantages, more than equal to this usage, else"—and a smile of bitter scorn played upon the lips of the speaker as he finished the sentence—"else there would not be so many to love it so well and submit to it so patiently."
The countryman gazed earnestly at the speaker, whose eyes were full of a most searching expression, which could not be misunderstood.
"Dang it, stranger," he cried, "what do you mean—who are you?"
"A man!" answered the speaker boldly;—"one who has not asked for a British protection, nor submitted to their hickories;" and the form of the stranger was elevated duly as he spoke, and his eye was lighted up with scornful fires, as his reference was made sarcastically to the many in the neighbourhood who had done both. The face of Davis was flushed when he heard this reply; the tears gathered in his eyes, and with a bitter emphasis, though in low tones, as if he felt all the shame of his acknowledgment, he replied—
"God help me, but I did! I was one of those who took a protection. Here it is—here's the paper. Here's where I sold my country, and put myself down in black and white, to be beaten like a dog with hickories. But it's not too late; and look you, stranger, I believe you're true blue, but if you aint, why it's all the same thing—I care not—you may go tell quick as you please; but I will break the bargain."
"Ha!—speak!" and the form of the stranger was advanced and his eyes dilated, as he watched the earnest glow in every feature of his companion.
"By tearing up the paper: see,"—and, as he spoke, he tore into small bite the guaranty of British protection, which, in common with most of his neighbours, he had been persuaded to accept from the commandant for his security, and as a condition of that return, which he pledged, at the same time, to his duty and his allegiance .
"Your life is in my hands," exclaimed his companion, deliberately. "Your life is in my hands."
"Take it!" cried the countryman, and he threw himself upon his guard, and while his right hand threw up the cudgel which he carried, the fingers of his left clutched fiercely and drew forth the hunting knife which was concealed in his bosom. His small person, slight but active, thrown back, every muscle in action and ready for contest; his broad-brimmed white hat dashed from his brow; his black, glossy hair dishevelled and flying in the wind; lips closely compressed, while his deep, dark eye shot forth fires of anger, fiercely enlivening the dusky sallow of his cheek—all gave to him a most imposing expression of animated life and courage in the eye of his companion.
"Take it—take the worthless life!" he cried, in low but emphatic accents. "It is worthless, but you will hev' to fight for it."
The other regarded him with a look of admiration sobered into calm.
"Your life is in my hands, but it is safe. God forbid, Master Davis," said he, with solemnity, "God forbid that I should assail it. I am your friend, your countryman, and I rejoice in what you have done. You have done well and nobly in destroying that evidence of your dishonour; for it is dishonour to barter one's country and its liberties for dastardly security—for one's miserable life. You have done well; but be not rash. Your movements must be in quiet. Nothing rash, nothing precipitate. Every step you now take must be one of caution, for your path is along the steeps of danger. But come with me—you shall know more. First secure those scraps; they may tell tales upon you; a quick hand and close eye may put them together, and then your neck would be fit game for the halter yon sergeant warned you of. But what now—what are the troops about?"
The countryman looked, at his companion's question, and beheld the troops forming in the market-place, while the note of the bugle at intervals, and an occasional sullen tap of the drum, gathered the crowd of the village around them.
"It's a proclamation, squire. That's the market-place, where they read it first. They give us one every two or three days, sometimes about one thing, sometimes another. If the cattle's killed by the whigs, though it may be their own, there's a proclamation; but we don't mind them much, for they only tell us to be quiet and orderly, and, heaven knows, we can't be more so. They will next go to the church, where they will again read it. That's nigher, and we can get round in time to hear what it is. Shall we go, squire?" The other expressed his willingness, and leaving the bridge, they in the direction of the crowd.