University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

The hour was late when Goggle reached the village.
The sentries were all set, and Proctor had retired
for the night; but, aware of the value of his
intelligence, the fugitive did not scruple to disturb him.
He told his story at full, and had the satisfaction to
find that he told it to a willing ear. Proctor at once
proceeded to arm a party, and heading it himself,
prepared to surprise the rebel partisan in the quiet
dwelling to which Goggle had seen him pursuing his
way. The British colonel was the more willing to
move in this business now, than he otherwise might
have been, as he had been troubled with some doubt
whether the suspicious attitude of Colonel Walton had
not already called for his attention. He was glad of
an opportunity, therefore, of proving his alacrity in
the cause, so much of which had been intrusted to
him. We leave him, with a little troop of half a
score, getting into saddle, and about to move in the
direction of “The Oaks.” Goggle remained behind,
at the suggestion of Proctor, who needed not his assistance
farther, and saw that his fatigued condition
craved for immediate rest.

Let us now return to Singleton and his attendant.
Having reached the neighbourhood of “The Oaks,” they
took the back track leading to the river, which carried
them immediately into the rear of the dwelling-house.
There, dismounting, and carefully concealing their
horses in the brush, Singleton placed his pistols in his
belt, and leaving the boy in charge of the animals, with
instructions to watch closely, proceeded to the mansion.

Lance Frampton, proud of the trust, promised his
commander to watch well, and approve himself a
worthy sentinel. In a few moments after, the partisan
was once more treading the well-known path, covered
with those grave guardians of a century, the spreading
and moss-bearded oaks, and on his way to the presence
of those well beloved beyond all, and dearer to him
than the lifeblood at his heart. It was not many
minutes before he was at the side of the frail and attenuated
form of her, the sister and the playmate of
his boyhood; feeble to prostration, sustained by pillows,
and scarcely able to turn upon him those lovely
eyes, still bright, and brightening to the last, as if
there the reluctant soul had concentrated its heavenward
fires; and even there, clinging to mortality,
evolved some of that divine light which it was so soon
to be mingled with for ever.

“Dear, dear Emily!” he exclaimed; “sister, sweet
sister!”—and his lips were pressed to hers; and, though
he strove hard for their suppression, the tears gathered
in his large dark eyes. Hers were the only
unclouded ones in the chamber. On one side sat his
cousin Kate, while his aunt moved around the couch
of the sufferer, duly administering to her wants. They
too were in tears, and had evidently, before this, been
weeping. It was a scene for tears; in which smiles
had been irreverent, and joy an unbecoming and most
impious intruder. Yet, though the dying girl wept not
herself, and though her eye had in it that glorious effulgence
which is so peculiarly the attribute of the
victim to the deadly form of disease under which she
laboured, yet the brightness of her glance was no
rebuke to the tearfulness of theirs. It was a high and
holy brightness; a deep expression, full of divine
speech, and solemnizing even where it brightened
with an aspect not of the earth. The light might have
streamed from the altar, a halo from heaven around the
brow of its most endowed apostle.

She spoke to him of the commonest affairs of life;
yet she knew that death was busy at her heart. Whence

was this strength of mind—this confidence? Is there,
indeed, a moment before the hour of dissolution when
the mortal is vouchsafed communion, a close communion
and converse with its God. It is, it must be so.
The dim confine, the heavy earth, cannot always be
around us. The soul must sometimes employ the
wings of a divine prescience, and shaking off human
care with human feeling, forget for a while the many
pains, along with the humble pleasures, of humanity,
and be only alive to the immortality of the future.
The dark mansions of the coming time, and the huge
and high barriers which control it, must then be thrown
aside; and faith and the pure spirit, in their whitened
vestments, already on, must be suffered to take a momentary
survey of the world which is to be their own.

But the spirit had come back to earth, and now grew
conscious of its claims.

“Dear, dear Robert!” she replied, as she motioned
to be free from those caresses which he bestowed
upon her; and which, though studiously light and
gentle, were yet too much for a frame spiritualizing
so fast: “you are come, Robert, and with no ill news.
You have no harshness on your brow, and the vein is
not swollen; and by this I know you have not been
engaged in any war and violence. Is it not so?”

He did not undeceive her, and suppressed carefully
every allusion to his late adventures; spoke of indifferent
things, and encouraged in her that idea of
the national peace, which, from a hope, had already
grown into a thought of her mind.

“Oh, would that I could only hear of it, Robert,
ere I leave you! Could I know that you were safe,
all safe, before I died—you, dear aunt, and you, sister,
my more than sister—and you, Robert, who have been
to me father and brother, and all, so long; would I
could know this, and I should die happy—even with
joy! But death will have its sting, I feel, in this.
I shall go to peace—I feel that; while all the strifes,
and all the cares, the wounds, and the dangers, will be
left for you!”

Her eyes now filled, as her earthly sorrows were
renewed. Her brother strove to console her in the
usual commonplace.

“Fear not for us, dear Emily; and let not our afflictions
fill your mind. Be calm on that subject;
you have pains and sufferings enough of your own, my
dear sister, to keep you from desiring any share in
ours.”

“I have no sufferings now, Robert; I have long
ceased to have sufferings of my own. Have I not
long survived the hope of life? have I not long laboured
to sustain myself against the coming and the
fear of death? God be praised! for I think I have
succeeded. These were my afflictions once, and they
are now over. Yet I have sorrows not my own, and
they are, that I must leave you to sorrows—griefs of
an unnatural time, and horrors that come with the disease,
as it would seem, of nature. For war is her
disease—her most pestilent disease. The sharp
sword, the torturing scourage, the degrading rope, the
pining and the piercing famine—these are the horrible
accompaniments of war; and oh, brother, soldier
as you are, when I leave you to the dangers of these,
I carry with me all my human sorrows. I may die,
but my soul must bear along with it those thousand
fears which belong to my sympathies with you.”

“Ah, too considerate of us, so unworthy such consideration!”
was the exclamation of Kate beside her.
“Do not, dear Emily, oppress yourself by reflections
such as these. You leave us to no difficulties; for
though the country still be at war, yet our quarter is
free from its ravages; and though under hostile control,
it is still quiet, and not now a dangerous one. We
are all here at peace.”

“Why seek to deceive me, Kate, when but a glance
at Robert tells a different story? Look at the pistols
in his belt, and say why they are there, if war be not
around us—if there be no occasion for strife, and if
he is not exposed to its dangers? You cannot persuade
me out of my senses, though in this I am quite

willing that you should. Would that it could be so!
I would not believe these truths if I could help it.”

“And you need not, Emily, my sister; for though
there be war, and though I may be engaged in it, yet
the present prospects are, that it will soon be over, and
as we all wish it—giving us peace and freedom alike,
and securing honourable station for our country among
the nations of the earth. This last thought, my Emily,
ought to make you better satisfied with the risks our
people are compelled to run.”

“It does not, brother. I have not that vain ambition,
which, for the sake of a name, is content with the
bloodshed and the misery of mankind; and I hold the
doctrine hateful to one professing the Christian faith.
How it may be upheld, this warfare in which life is
taken as a worthless thing, and man's blood shed like
water, for any pretence, and with any object, by a
believer in the Savious, and the creed which he taught,
I can never understand.”

“You would not have us submit to wrong and injustice?”

“No; but the means employed for resistance should
be justly proportioned to the aggression. But, alas
for humanity! the glory and the glare of warfare, under
false notions of renown, are too often sufficient, not
only to conceal the bloodshed and the horror, but to
stimulate to undue vengeance, and to make resistance
premature, and turn the desire of justice into a passion
for revenge. Then, for the wrong done by one captain,
all the captains conspire to do greater wrongs; and the
blazing dwelling by midnight, the poor woman and her
naked children escaping from the flames to perish of
hunger, the gibbeted soldier on the nighest tree; and
the wanton murder of the shrieking babe, quieted in
its screams upon the bayonet of the yelling soldiers—
these are the modes by which, repairing one wrong,
war does a thousand greater. Oh, when, calling things
by their right names, shall we discover that all the
glory of the warrior is the glory of brutality?”

The picture which the enthusiastic girl had given

of the terrors of war, was too felicitously just, as it
had occurred in Carolina, to be denied by her auditors;
and as she had herself made the right distinction
between war as an absolute necessity, forced upon
a people in their defence, and pursued only so far as
adequately to obtain the mere object of justice, and
war as a means of national or individual notoriety,
there was no legitimate answer to her exhortation. A
momentary silence ensued, which was due to the exhaustion
following her effort at speech. In a little
while she again addressed her brother—

“And how long, Robert, do you stay in our neighbourhood?”

“But a few days more, Emily: I linger now somewhat
over my time; but my objects are various and
important.”

“And where then do you go?”

“Either to the Santee or the Peedee; wherever
there is a chance of finding Colonel Marion, to whose
troop I am attached.”

“And not so easy a matter,” said Kate Walton,
“if reports speak truly of your colonel. He is here,
there, and everywhere, and they say cannot often be
met with either by friend or foe, except when he himself
pleases. What is it Colonel Tarleton calls him?”

“The Swamp Fox: and a good name, for certainly he
knows more of the navigation of the thick swamps of
the Santee and Peedee, than ever seaman of the broad
ocean. In a circuit of five miles he will misguide the
whole force of Tarleton for as many days; then, while
he looks for him in one quarter, Marion will be cutting
up his forages or the tories in another. He is fearless,
too, as well as skilful, and in the union of these qualities
he is more than a match, with an equal force, for
any five of the captains they can send against him.”

As the major spoke with that warm enthusiasm of
his commander, which distinguished the men generally
of Marion, an audible sigh from his sister recalled
him to his consideration, and he turned to her with
some observation on an unimportant subject. She did

not seem to heed what he said, but, after a moment's
pause, asked, rather abruptly, if he should move first
for the Santee.

“I think so,” was his reply; “the probability is that
I shall there find my orders, if, indeed, I do not find
my commanding officers. I wait but to fulfil some
important duties, when I shall move direct in that
quarter.”

“And when, Robert, do you expect to return?” was
the farther inquiry, put with considerable earnestness
of manner.

“In three or four weeks, Emily; not before, and
probably not even then; for I may be ordered to join
the continentals, on Gates's arrival, and shall then have
a more limited range and exercise than now.”

“That will be too late, too late!” murmured the
maiden with an expression of deep regret.

“Too late for what, dear Emily?” said the major,
quickly, in reply; but when he met her glance, and
saw the mournful utterance which it looked, he needed
no answer to his question. Never did eye more explicitly
speak than then, and he turned his own away
to conceal its tears.

“Too late to see me die,” she murmured, as he
bent his head downward, concealing his face in the
folds of her encircling arms.

“Ah, Robert! I leave you, but not lonely I hope—
not altogether alone.” Her eye rested upon the face of
Kate Walton, as she uttered the hope; and though her
brother saw not the look, yet the cheeks of the conscious
Kate, so silently yet expressively appealed to,
were deeply crimsoned on the instant. She turned
away from the couch and looked through the window
opening upon the waters of the Ashley, which wound
at a little distance beyond them, stealing off, like a
creation of the fancy, under the close glance of the observer.
Her fingers played all the while with the
branches of the oak that rose immediately beside the
window.

Emily then intimated to her brother her increasing

debility, the necessity of her own repose and of his departure,
with a calmness which was perfect, and painfully
appalling to him in consequence.

“But come to me to-morrow, to-morrow night, Robert;
come early—I would speak with you; I have
much to say to you, and I feel that I have but little
time to say it in. Fail me not, unless there be hazard,
and then heed not my desire. You must risk nothing,
Robert; your life is more valuable to me, strange to
say, as my own is leaving me. I know its value, as I
am now about to be taught its loss. But go now—
and remember, to-morrow.”

His grief and his farewell were alike voiceless.
He pressed her cold cheek with his lips at parting;
then, like one who had left behind him all his consciousness,
he descended with his beautiful cousin
from that sad but sacred apartment, where life still
lingered, neutralizing decay with its latent freshness,
but where immortality already seemed to have put
on some hues of that eternal morning, whose bloom
and whose freshness speak, not only for its lasting existence,
but for its holy purity.