Francis Lynde - The Master of Appleby

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THE MASTER OF APPLEBY

A Novel Tale Concerning Itself in Part with
the Great Struggle in the Two Carolinas; but
Chiefly with the Adventures Therein of Two
Gentlemen Who Loved One and the Same Lady

by

FRANCIS LYNDE

Illustrations by T. de Thulstrup

New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Copyright 1902
The Bowen-Merrill Company
October

TO
Mr. Edward G. Richmond
OF CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE,
WHOSE KINDNESS AND ENCOURAGEMENT
MUST ALWAYS BE HELD IN LIVELY
REMEMBRANCE BY THE AUTHOR
THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY
INSCRIBED

[Illustration: But now I was fronting death and could be as firm as
she]

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I I WHET MY FATHER'S SWORD 1

II KNITS UP SOME BROKEN ENDS 15

III MY ENEMY SCORES FIRST 25

IV MAY BE PASSED OVER LIGHTLY 36

V I LOST WHAT I HAD NEVER GAINED 47

VI RED WRATH MAY HEAL A WOUND 60

VII MY LADY HATH NO PART 75

VIII I TASTE THE QUALITY OF MERCY 88

IX A GOLDEN KEY UNLOCKED A DOOR 98

X A FORLORN HOPE CAME TO GRIEF 107

XI A LIE WAS MADE THE VERY TRUTH 114

XII THE NEWS CAME TO UNWELCOME EARS 129

XIII A PILGRIMAGE BEGINS 141

XIV THE BARONET PLAYED ROUGE-ET-NOIR 150

XV A HATCHET SINGS A MAN TO SLEEP 164

XVI JENNIFER THREW A MAIN WITH DEATH 171

XVII LOVE TOOK TOLL OF FRIENDSHIP 183

XVIII WE HEAR NEWS FROM THE SOUTH 194

XIX A STUMBLING HORSE BROUGHT TIDINGS 207

XX WE STRIVE AS MEN TO RUN A RACE 217

XXI WE KEPT LENTEN VIGILS IN TRINITYTIDE 228

XXII THE FATES GAVE LARGESS OF DESPAIR 235

XXIII WE KEPT THE FEAST OF BITTER HERBS 251

XXIV WE FOUND THE SUNKEN VALLEY 259

XXV UNCANOOLA TRAPPED THE GREAT BEAR 269

XXVI THE CHARRED STICK FOR A GUIDE 279

XXVII A KING'S TROOPER BECAME A WASTREL 287

XXVIII I SADDLE THE BLACK MARE 296

XXIX HAVING DANCED, WE PAY THE PIPER 309

XXX EPHRAIM YATES PRAYED FOR HIS ENEMIES 324

XXXI WE MAKE A FORCED MARCH 336

XXXII I AM BEDDED IN A GARRET 351

XXXIII I HEAR CHANCEFUL TIDINGS 361

XXXIV I MET A GREAT LORD AS MAN TO MAN 369

XXXV I FIGHT THE DEVIL WITH FIRE 376

XXXVI I RODE POST ON THE KING'S BUSINESS 382

XXXVII WHAT BEFELL AT KING'S CREEK 395

XXXVIII WE FIND THE GUN-MAKER 412

XXXIX THE THUNDER OF THE CAPTAINS 418

XL VAE VICTIS 432

XLI I PLAYED THE HOST AT MY OWN FIRESIDE 446

XLII MY LORD HAS HIS MARCHING ORDERS 454

XLIII I DRINK A DISH OF TEA 460

XLIV WE COME TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END 470

XLV WE FIND WHAT WE NEVER SOUGHT 480

XLVI OUR PIECE MISSED FIRE AT HARNDON ACRES 488

XLVII ARMS AND THE MAN 505

XLVIII WE KEPT TRYST AT APPLEBY 517

XLIX A LAWYER HATH HIS FEE 531

L RICHARD COVERDALE'S DEBT WAS PAID 549

LI THE GOOD CAUSE GAINS A CONVERT 562

LII BRINGS US TO THE JOURNEY'S END 573

CHAPTER I

IN WHICH I WHET MY FATHER'S SWORD

The summer day was all but spent when Richard Jennifer, riding express,
brought me Captain Falconnet's challenge.

'Twas a dayfall to be marked with a white stone, even in our Carolina
calendar. The sun, reaching down to the mountain-girt horizon in the
west, filled all the upper air with the glory of its departing, and the
higher leaf plumes of the great maples before my cabin door wrought
lustrous patterns in gilded green upon a zenith background of turquoise
shot with crimson, like the figurings of some rich old tapestries I had
once seen in my field-marshal's castle in the Mark of Moravia.

Beyond the maples a brook tinkled and plashed over the stones on its way
to the near-by Catawba; and its peaceful brawling, and the evensong of a
pair of clear-throated warblers poised on the topmost twigs of one of
the trees, should have been sweet music in the ears of a returned
exile. But on that matchless bride's-month evening of dainty sunset
arabesques and brook and bird songs, I was in little humor for
rejoicing.

The road made for the river lower down and followed its windings up the
valley; but Jennifer came by the Indian trace through the forest. I can
see him now as he rode beneath the maples, bending to the saddle horn
where the branches hung lowest; a pretty figure of a handsome young
provincial, clad in fashions three years behind those I had seen in
London the winter last past. He rode gentleman-wise, in small-clothes of
rough gray woolen and with stout leggings over his hose; but he wore his
cocked hat atilt like a trooper's, and the sword on his thigh was a good
service blade, and no mere hilt and scabbard for show such as our
courtier macaronis were just then beginning to affect.

Now I had known this handsome youngster when he was but a little lad;
had taught him how to bend the Indian bow and loose the reed-shaft arrow
in those happier days before the tyrant Governor Tryon turned hangman,
and the battle of the Great Alamance had left me fatherless. Moreover, I
had drunk a cup of wine with him at the Mecklenburg Arms no longer ago
than yesterweek--this to a renewal of our early friendship. Hence, I
must needs be somewhat taken aback when he drew rein at my door-stone,
doffed his hat with a sweeping bow worthy a courtier of the great Louis,
and said, after the best manner of Sir Charles Grandison:

"I have the honor of addressing Captain John Ireton, sometime of his
Majesty's Royal Scots Blues, and late of her Apostolic Majesty's
Twenty-ninth Regiment of Hussars?"

It was but an euphuism of the time, this formal preamble, declaring that
his errand had to do with the preliminaries of a private quarrel between
gentlemen. Yet I could scarce restrain a smile. For these upcroppings of
courtier etiquette have ever seemed to march but mincingly with the free
stride of our western backwoods. None the less, you are to suppose that
I made shift to match his bow in some fashion, and to say: "At your
service, sir."

Whereupon he bowed again, clapped hat to head and tendered me a sealed
packet.

"From Sir Francis Falconnet, Knight Bachelor of Beaumaris, volunteer
captain in his Majesty's German Legion," he announced, with stern
dignity.

Having no second to refer him to, I broke the seal of the cartel myself.
Since my enemy had seen fit to come thus far on the way to his end in
some gentlemanly manner, it was not for me to find difficulties among
the formalities. In good truth, I was overjoyed to be thus assured that
he would fight me fair; that he would not compel me to kill him as one
kills a wild beast at bay. For certainly I should have killed him in any
event: so much I had promised my poor Dick Coverdale on that dismal
November morning when he had choked out his life in my arms, the victim
first of this man's treachery, and, at the last, of his sword. So, as I
say, I was nothing loath, and yet I would not seem too eager.

"I might say that I have no unsettled quarrel with Captain Falconnet," I
demurred, when I had read the challenge. "He spoke slightingly of a
lady, and I did but--"

"Your answer, Captain Ireton!" quoth my youngster, curtly. "I am not
empowered to give or take in the matter of accommodations."

"Not so fast, if you please," I rejoined. "I have no wish to disappoint
your principal, or his master, the devil. Let it be to-morrow morning at
sunrise in the oak grove which was once my father's wood field, each man
with his own blade. And I give you fair warning, Master Jennifer; I
shall kill your bullyragging captain of light-horse as I would a vermin
of any other breed."

At this Jennifer flung himself from his saddle with a great laugh.

"If you can," he qualified. "But enough of these 'by your leave, sirs.'
I am near famished, and as dry as King David's bottle in the smoke. Will
you give me bite and sup before I mount and ride again? 'Tis a long
gallop back to town on an empty stomach, and with a gullet as dry as Mr.
Gilbert Stair's wit."

Here was my fresh-hearted Dick Jennifer back again all in a breath; and
I made haste to shout for Darius, and for Tomas to take his horse, and
otherwise to bestir myself to do the honors of my poor forest fastness
as well as I might.

Luckily, my haphazard larder was not quite empty, and there were
presently a bit of cold deer's to eat and some cakes of maize bread
baked in the ashes to set before the guest. Also there was a cup of
sweet wine, home-pressed from the berries the Indian scuppernong, to
wash them down. And afterward, though the evening was no more than
mountain-breeze cool, we had a handful of fire on the hearth for the
cheer of it while we smoked our reed-stemmed pipes.

It was over the pipes that Jennifer unburdened himself of the gossip of
the day in Queensborough.

"Have you heard the newest? But I know you haven't, since the
post-riders came only this morning. The war has shifted from the North
in good earnest at last, and we are like to have a taste of the
harryings the Jerseymen have had since '76. My Lord Cornwallis is come
as far as Camden, they say; and Colonel Tarleton has crossed the
Catawba."

"So? Then Mr. Rutherford is like to have his work cut out for him, I
take it."

Jennifer eyed me curiously. "Grif Rutherford is a stout Indian fighter;
no West Carolinian will gainsay that. But he is never the man to match
Cornwallis. We'll have help from the North."

"De Kalb?" I suggested.

Again the curious eyeshot. "Nay, John Ireton, you need not fear me,
though I am just now this redcoat captain's next friend. You know more
about the Baron de Kalb's doings than anybody else in Mecklenburg."

"I? What should I know?"

"You know a deal--or else the gossips lie most recklessly."

"They do lie if they connect me with the Baron de Kalb, or with any
other of the patriot side. What are they saying?"

"That you come straight from the baron's camp in Virginia--to see what
you can see."

"A spy, eh? 'Tis cut out of whole cloth, Dick, my lad. I've never took
the oath on either side."

He looked vastly disappointed. "But you will, Jack? Surely, you have not
to think twice in such a cause?"

"As between King and Congress, you mean? 'Tis no quarrel of mine."

"Now God Save us, John Ireton!" he burst out in a fine fervor of
youthful enthusiasm that made him all the handsomer, "I had never
thought to hear your father's son say the like!"

I shrugged.

"And why not, pray? The king's minion, Tryon, hanged my father and gave
his estate to his minion's minion, Gilbert Stair. So, in spite of your
declarations and your confiscations and your laws against alien
landholders, I come back to find myself still the son of the outlawed
Roger Ireton, and this same Gilbert Stair firmly lodged in my father's
seat."

Jennifer shrugged in his turn.

"Gilbert Stair--for sweet Madge's sake I'm loath to say it--Gilbert
Stair blows hot or cold as the wind sets fair or stormy. And I will say
this for him: no other Tryon legatee of them all has steered so fine a
course through these last five upsetting years. How he trims so
skilfully no man knows. A short month since, he had General Rutherford
and Colonel Sumter as guests at Appleby Hundred; now it is Sir Francis
Falconnet and the British light-horse officers who are honored. But let
him rest: the cause of independence is bigger than any man, or any man's
private quarrel, friend John; and I had hoped--"

I laid a hand on his knee. "Spare yourself, Dick. My business in
Queensborough was to learn how best I might reach Mr. Rutherford's
rendezvous."

For a moment he sat, pipe in air, staring at me as if to make sure that
he had heard aright. Then he clipt my hand and wrung it, babbling out
some boyish brava that I made haste to put an end to.

"Softly, my lad," I said; "'tis no great thing the Congress will gain by
my adhesion. But you, Richard; how comes it that I find you taking your
ease at Jennifer House and hobnobbing with his Majesty's officers when
the cause you love is still in such desperate straits?"

He blushed like a girl at that, and for a little space only puffed the
harder at his pipe.

"I did go out with the Minute Men in '76, if you must know, and smelt
powder at Moore's Creek. When my time was done I would have 'listed
again; but just at that my father died and the Jennifer acres were like
to go to the dogs, lacking oversight. So I came home and--and--"

He stopped in some embarrassment, and I thought to help him on.

"Nay, out with it, Dick. If I am not thy father, I am near old enough to
stand in his stead. 'Twas more than husbandry that rusted the sword in
its scabbard, I'll be bound."

"You are right, Jack; 'twas both more and less," he confessed,
shamefacedly. "'Twas this same Margery Stair. As I have said, her father
blows hot or cold as the wind sets, but not she. She is the fiercest
little Tory in the two Carolinas, bar none. When I had got Jennifer in
order and began to talk of 'listing again, she flew into a pretty rage
and stamped her foot and all but swore that Dick Jennifer in buff and
blue should never look upon her face again with her good will."

I had a glimpse of Jennifer the lover as he spoke, and the sight went
somewhat on the way toward casting out the devil of sullen rage that had
possessed me since first I had set returning foot in this my native
homeland. 'Twas a life lacking naught of hardness, but much of human
mellowing, that lay behind the home-coming; and my one sweet friend in
all that barren life was dead. What wonder, then, if I set this
frank-faced Richard in the other Richard's stead, wishing him all the
happiness that poor Dick Coverdale had missed? I needed little: would
need still less, I thought, before the war should end; and through this
love-match my lost estate would come at length to Richard Jennifer. It
was a meliorating thought, and while it held I could be less revengeful.

"Dost love her, Dick?" I asked.

"Aye, and have ever since she was in pinafores, and I a hobbledehoy in
Master Wytheby's school."

"So long? I thought Mr. Stair was a later comer in Mecklenburg."

"He came eight years ago, as one of Tryon's underlings. Madge was even
then motherless; the same little wilful prat-a-pace she has ever been. I
would you knew her, Jack. 'Twould make this shiftiness of mine seem less
the thing it is."

"So you have stayed at home a-courting while others fought to give you
leisure," said I, thinking to rally him. But he took it harder than I
meant.

"'Tis just that, Jack; and I am fair ashamed. While the fighting kept to
the North it did not grind so keen; but now, with the redcoats at our
doors, and the Tories sacking and burning in every settlement, 'tis
enough to flay an honest man alive. God-a-mercy, Jack! I'll go; I've got
to go, or die of shame!"

He sat silent after that, and as there seemed nothing that a curst old
campaigner could say at such a pass, I bore him company.

By and by he harked back to the matter of his errand, making some
apology for his coming to me as the baronet's second.

"'Twas none of my free offering, you may be sure," he added. "But it so
happened that Captain Falconnet once did me a like turn. I had chanced
to run afoul of that captain of Hessian pigs, Lauswoulter, at cards, and
Falconnet stood my friend--though now I bethink me, he did seem
over-anxious that one or the other of us should be killed."

"As how?" I inquired.

"When Lauswoulter slipped and I might have spitted him, and didn't,
Falconnet was for having us make the duel _a outrance_. But that's
beside the mark. Having served me then, he makes the point that I shall
serve him now."

"'Tis a common courtesy, and you could not well refuse. I love you none
the less for paying your debts; even to such a villain as this volunteer
captain."

"True, 'tis a debt, as you say; but I like little enough the manner of
its paying. How came you to quarrel with him, Jack?"

Now even so blunt a soldier as I have ever been may have some prickings
of delicacy where the truth might breed gossip--gossip about a tale
which I had said should die with Richard Coverdale and be buried in his
grave. So I evaded the question, clumsily enough, as has ever been my
hap in fencing with words.

"The cause was not wanting. If any ask, you may say he trod upon my foot
in passing."

Jennifer laughed.

"And for that you struck him? Heavens, man! you hold your life
carelessly. Do you happen to know that this volunteer captain of
light-horse is accounted the best blade in the troop?"

"Who should know that better than--" I was fairly on the brink of
betraying the true cause of quarrel, but drew rein in time. "I care not
if he were the best in the army. I have crossed steel before--and with a
good swordsman now and then."

"Anan?" said Jennifer, as one who makes no doubt. And then: "But this
toe-pinching story is but a dry crust to offer a friend. You spoke of a
lady; who was she? Or was that only another way of telling me to mind my
own affairs?"

"Oh, as to that; the lady was real enough, and Falconnet did grossly
asperse her. But I know not who she is, nor aught about her, save that
she is sweet and fair and good to look upon."

"Young?"

"Aye."

"And you say you do not know her? Let me see her through your eyes and
mayhap I can name her for you."

"That I can not. Mr. Peale's best skill would be none too great for the
painting of any picture that should do her justice. But she is small,
with the airs and graces of a lady of the quality; also, she has
witching blue eyes, and hair that has the glint of summer sunshine in
it. Also, she sits a horse as if bred to the saddle."

To my amazement, Jennifer leaped up with an oath and flung his pipe into
the fire.

"Curse him!" he cried. "And he dared lay a foul tongue to her, you say?
Tell me what he said! I have a good right to know!"

I shook my head. "Nay, Richard; I may not repeat it to you, since you
are the man's second. Truly, there is more than this at the back of our
quarrel; but of itself it was enough, and more than enough, inasmuch as
the lady had just done him the honor to recognize him."

"His words--his very words, Jack, if you love me!"

"No; the quarrel is mine."

"By God! it is not yours!" he stormed, raging back and forth before the
fire. "What is Margery Stair to you, Jack Ireton?"

I smiled, beginning now to see some peephole in this millstone of
mystery.

"Margery Stair? She is no more than a name to me, I do assure you; the
daughter of the man who sits in my father's seat at Appleby Hundred."

"But you are going to fight for her!" he retorted.

"Am I? I pledge you my word I did not know it. But in any case I should
fight Sir Francis Falconnet; aye, and do my best to kill him, too. Sit
you down and fill another pipe. Whatever the quarrel, it is mine."

"Mayhap; but it is mine, too," he broke in, angrily. "At all events,
I'll see this king's volunteer well hanged before I second him in such a
cause."

"That as you choose. But you are bound in honor, are you not?"

"No." He filled a fresh pipe, lighted it with a coal from the hearth,
and puffed away in silence for a time. When he spoke again it was not as
Falconnet's next friend.

"What you have told me puts a new face on the matter, Jack. Sir Francis
may find him another second where he can. If he has aught to say, I
shall tell him plain he lied to me about the quarrel, as he did. Now who
is there to see fair play on your side, John Ireton?"

At the question an overwhelming sense of my own sorry case grappled me.
Fifteen years before, I had left Appleby Hundred and my native province
as well befriended as the son of Roger Ireton was sure to be. And now--

"Dick, my lad, I am like to fight alone," said I.

He swore again at that; and here, lest I should draw my loyal Richard as
he was not, let me say, once for all, that his oaths were but the
outgushings of a warm and impulsive heart, rarely bitter, and never, as
I believe, backed by surly rancor or conscious irreverence.

"That you shall not, Jack," he asserted, stoutly. "I must be a-gallop
now to tell this king's captain to look elsewhere for his next friend;
but to-morrow morning I'll meet you in the road between this and the
Stair outlands, and we'll fare on together."

After this he would brook no more delay; and when Tomas had fetched his
horse I saw him mount and ride away under the low-hanging
maples--watched him fairly out of sight in the green and gold twilight
of the great forest before turning back to my lonely hearth and its
somber reminders.

I stirred the dying embers, throwing on a pine knot for better light.
Then I took down my father's sword from its deer-horn brackets over the
chimney-piece, and set myself to fine its edge and point with a bit of
Scotch whinstone. It was a good blade; a true old Andrea Ferara got in
battle in the seventeenth century by one of the Nottingham Iretons.

I whetted it well and carefully. It was not that I feared my enemy's
strength of wrist or tricks of fence; but fighting had been my trade,
and he is but a poor craftsman who looks not well to see that his tools
are in order against their time of using.

II

WHICH KNITS UP SOME BROKEN ENDS

It was in the autumn of the year '64, as I was coming of age, that my
father made ready to send me to England. Himself a conscience exile from
Episcopal Virginia, and a descendant of those Nottingham Iretons whose
best-known son fought stoutly against Church and King under Oliver
Cromwell, he was yet willing to humor my bent and to use the interest of
my mother's family to enter me in the king's service.

Accordingly, I took ship at Norfolk for "home," as we called it in those
days; and, after a stormy passage and overmuch waiting as my cousins'
guest in Lincolnshire, had my pair of colors in the Scots Blues, lately
home from garrison duty in the Canadas.

Of the life in barracks of a young ensign with little wit and less
wisdom, and with more guineas in his purse than was good for him, the
less said the better. But of this you may like to know that, what with a
good father's example, and some small heritage of Puritan decency come
down to me from the sound-hearted old Roundhead stock, I won out of
that devil's sponging-house, an army in the time of peace, with somewhat
less to my score than others had to theirs.

It was in this barrack life that I came to know Richard Coverdale and
his evil genius, the man Francis Falconnet. Coverdale was an ensign in
my own regiment, and we were sworn friends from the first. His was a
clean soul and a brave; and it was to him that I owed escape from many
of the grosser chargings on that score above-named.

As for Falconnet, he was even then a ruffler and a bully, though he was
not of the army. He was a younger son, and at that time there were two
lives between him and the baronetcy; but with a mother's bequeathings to
purchase idleness and to gild his iniquities, he was a fair example of
the _jeunesse doree_ of that England; a libertine, a gamester, a
rakehell; brave as the tiger is brave, and to the full as pitiless. He
was a boon companion of the officers' mess; and for a time--and
purpose--posed as Coverdale's friend, and mine.

Since I would not tell my poor Dick's story to Richard Jennifer, I may
not set it down in cold words here for you. It was the age-old tragic
comedy of a false friend's treachery and a woman's weakness; a duel, and
the wrong man slain. And you may know this; that Falconnet's most
merciful role in it was the part he played one chill November morning
when he put Richard Coverdale to the wall and ran him through.

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