The partisan a tale of the revolution |
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| 12. | CHAPTER XII. |
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 | CHAPTER XII. The partisan |  |
12. CHAPTER XII.
Grow narrow, and thou hast, to save thyself,
But one resolve. Take oath with us and live.”
Colonel Walton, upon the departure of his guests,
retired to an inner apartment. His spirits, depressed
enough before, were now considerably more so. Mingled
feelings were at strife in his bosom—doubts and
fears, hopes and misgivings—a sense of degradation
—a more unpleasant consciousness of shame. The
difficulties of his situation grew and gathered before
his eyes the more he surveyed them; they called for
deliberate thought, yet they also demanded early and
seasonable determination. The time allowed him for
decision by the ruling powers was brief, and the matter
to be decided involved, in addition to the personal
risks of life and liberty, the probable forfeiture of an
immense estate, and the beggary, in consequence, of
an only and beloved daughter. To save these, in part,
from what he conceived otherwise to be inevitable
ruin, he had originally laid aside his arms. He was
now taught, in the strongest lights, the error of which
he had been guilty in yielding so readily to circumstances—placing
the power of his enemy, but in the wrong; in having
foregone that fine sense of national honour, without
which the citizen merits not the name, and has no
real claim upon the protection of his country. This
sacrifice he had made without realizing, in its place,
that very security of person and property, its pledged
equivalent, which had been the price of its surrender.
Bitterly, in that moment of self-examination, did he reproach
himself with the unmanly error. Truly did
he feel, by his present situation, that he who submits
to tyranny arms it; and by not opposing it, weakens
that power,—better principled, or with better courage
than himself,—which battles with it to the last.
The exigency grew more and more involved the
more he thought upon it. He could see but one alternative
left him,—that which he had already hinted to
Colonel Proctor, of again lifting his sword; and, if compelled
to use it, of doing so for the only cause which
he could consider legitimate—that of his country. Yet,
how hopeless, how rash and ill-advised, at that moment,
seemed the adoption of such an alternative! The
people of the colony had all submitted; so it seemed,
at least, in the absence of all opposition to the advancing
armies of the British. They scoured the country
on every side. They planted posts, the better to overawe
the disaffected and confirm their conquests, in
every conspicuous or populous region; and though
tyrannizing everywhere with reckless rule and a rod
of iron, the people seemed to prefer a lot so burdensome
and wretched, rather than exchange it for a strife
having not one solitary hope to recommend it. Such
was the condition of things in Carolina at the time of
which we write, just after the parting proclamation of
Sir Henry Clinton, when, upon transferring the southern
command to Lord Cornwallis, he adopted this mode
of strengthening his successor by the employment of
the native militia. Colonel Walton was not a coward,
but he deliberated carefully upon all adventure involving
peril in its progress. The circumstances in which
be considered; and desperate and degrading as were
the requirements of the proclamation, he saw no mode
of escape from them. What if he drew the sword?
would he not draw it alone? Where should he find
support? To what spot should he turn—where strike
—where make head against the enemy?—where, except
in the remoter colonies, where a doubtful struggle
was still maintained—doubtful in its results, and only
exposing its defenders there to the same fate he was
now about to encounter in his native soil? The prospect
grew brighter a short time after, when Sumter
came plunging down from North Carolina with the
fierce rapidity of flame; when Marion emerged from
his swamps on the Peedee and Black River, with the
subtle certainty which belongs to skill and caution
mingled with determined and fearless valour; and
when, like our hero Major Singleton, a hundred brave
young partisan leaders, starting suddenly up, with their
little squads, on every side throughout the country,
prepared to take terrible vengeance for the thousand
wantonly inflicted sufferings which their friends and
families had been made to bear at the hands of their
enemies.
Leaving his companion, Humphries, comfortably
cared for in the hall, along with Miss Barbara Walton,
the maiden sister of the colonel, Major Singleton proceeded
at once to the apartment where his uncle continued
to chafe in his many bewilderments of situation.
He found him pacing hurriedly along the room, his
strides duly increasing in length with the increasing
confusion of his thoughts. These occasionally found
their way to his lips in soliloquizing musings, and now
and then took on them a shape of passionate denunciation.
Too much absorbed for the time to notice the
approach of his nephew, he continued to mutter over
his discontents, and in this way conveyed to the major
a knowledge of his precise feelings. Familiar as he
was with his uncle's character, Major Singleton had
properly estimated the effect upon him of Clinton's
his assistance. The colonel turned as he drew nigh,
and for a moment the pleasurable emotion with which
he met the child of his sister, and one who had long
been a very great favourite with himself, drove away
many of the troublesome thoughts which had been
busy with his mind.
“Ah, Robert!—my dear boy! when did you arrive,
and how?”
“On horseback, sir. I reached Dorchester yesterday.”
“Indeed! so long—and only now a visiter of `The
Oaks?' You surely mean to lodge with us, Robert?”
“Thank you, uncle; but that I dare not do. I
should not feel myself altogether safe here.”
“Not safe in my house! What mean you, nephew?
Whence the danger—what have you to fear?”
“Nothing to fear, if I avoid the danger. You forget,
sir, that I have not the security of British favour—I
have not the talisman of Clinton's protection—and if
suspected to be Major Singleton, I should risk the rope
as a rebel.”
“True, true—but how left you things at Santee?
What are the prospects of a crop?”
“Such as the storm leaves us, good uncle. The
tories have been sowing fire in my fields, and left it to
ripen in lieu of corn and provender.”
“God bless me, my son!—how was that?”
“They suspected me, hearing that I was from home
—made free with my plate, burnt the mansion, barn,
and a few other of the buildings, drove the negroes
into the swamp, and sent their horses first, and then
the fire, into the cornfields. They have done some
business there after their usual fashion.”
The colonel strode over the floor, his hands upon his
brows, speechless for a time, but looking his deep
interest in the narrative he had heard, probably with
more earnestness, as he darkly saw the destiny of his
own fine dwelling and plantation in it. His nephew
continued the dialogue.
“Yes; it was fortunate that poor Emily came away
in season. A week later, and Heaven only knows
what might have been her sufferings at the hands of
the wretches.”
“And where is this to end, Robert? What is to be
done? Are we to have no relief from Congress?—
will Washington do nothing for us?”
“Can you do nothing for Washington? Methinks,
uncle, Hercules might give you some advice quite as
fitting as that he gave to the wagoner. There is no
helping one's neighbour to freedom. Men must make
themselves free—they must have the will for it. The
laws and the strong arm, unless they grow out of their
own will, never yet gave, and never will give, any
people their liberty. Have you not thought of this,
sir, before?”
“Why, what would you have us do?—what can we
do, hemmed in as we are, wanting arms and ammunition,
and with a superior force watching us?”
“Do!—ay, you may well ask what can you do.
What has anybody ever yet done, that set forth by asking
such a question? But come, we will to supper first;
there stands our summoner. We will try aunt Barbara's
coffee, of which I have an old memory, and
after that we will talk of what we can do in this matter.
Coffee is a good stimulant, that wonderfully helps
one's courage.”
Following the black, who had thrice summoned
them without receiving any attention, they descended
to the supper-table, spread out after the southern
fashion, with the hundred dainties of the region,—rice
waffles and johnny-cake, hominy, and those delicacies
of the pantry in the shape of sweetmeats and preserves,
which speak of a wholesome household economy,
the fashion of which is not yet gone from the
same neighbourhood. There, presiding in all the dignity
of starched coif, ruff, and wimple, sat stiffly the
antique person of Miss Barbara Walton, the maiden
turned up at the sleeves, and with hands that were not
idle, our old acquaintance, Humphries, listening patiently,
all the while, to a bitter complaint of Miss
Barbara about the diminished and daily diminishing
number of her brother's best cows, the loss of which
could only be ascribed to the tories. Beside him sat
the fair Kate Walton, amused with the efforts which
Humphries made, while equally desirous to do the supper
justice, and to appear attentive to the ancient lady.
And there, reclining on a sofa at some little distance
from the table, lay the attenuated figure of Emily Singleton—pale
as a white rose, and, as if her thoughts
were fast claiming kindred with heaven, almost as silent
as one. Major Singleton had a seat assigned him fronting
his cousin; and the little chit-chat which followed
his and his uncle's entrance was duly suspended with
the progress of the repast. To travellers who had
toiled so much during the day as Singleton and his
lieutenant, the supper was an item of importance, and
we need not say that it received full justice at their
hands. It was only when roused into consciousness
by the very absence of all speech around them, that
the soldiers looked up, in a brief pause in their progress,
and found that they only had been busy. This
fact offered no stop, however, to their continued industry—to
that of Humphries, at least.
“Them are mighty nice waffles, now, major; they'd
please you, I reckon.”
Cuffee, one of the black waiters, with the proper
instinct of a good house-servant, at once placed the
dish before the speaker himself, and his plate received
a new supply. Singleton kept him company, and the
host trifled with his coffee, in order to do the same.
Tea was anti-republican then, and only the tories
drank it. Finding that a cessation had really taken
place, Miss Barbara commenced her interrogatories,
which, with sundry others put by his cousin Kate,
Major Singleton soon answered. These matters, however,
chiefly concerned old friends and acquaintances,
the ladies usually delight to engage in. More serious
thoughts were in Colonel Walton's mind, and his questions
had reference to the public and to the country—
the war and its prospects.
“And now, Robert, your news, your news. You
look as if you had much more in your budget of far
more importance. Pray, out with it, and refresh us.
We are only half alive here, good nephew.”
“Do you live at all here, uncle, and how? How
much breath is permitted you by your masters for your
daily allowance? and, by-the-way, the next question
naturally is—how go on the confiscations? You still
keep `The Oaks,' I see; but how long—how long?”
The nephew had touched the key to a harsh note;
and bitter, indeed, was the tone and manner of Colonel
Walton, as he replied—
“Ay, how long—how long, indeed, am I to keep in
the home of my fathers—the old barony, one of the
very first in the colony? God only knows how soon
the court of sequestration will find it better suited to a
stranger rule; and I must prepare myself, I suppose,
for some such change. I cannot hope to escape very
long, when so many suffer confiscation around me.”
“Fear not for `The Oaks,' uncle, so long as you
keep cool, submit, swear freely, and subscribe humbly.
Send now and then a trim present of venison and turkey
to the captain's quarters, and occasionally volunteer
to hang a poor countryman, who loves war to
the knife better than degradation to the chain. There
can be no difficulty in keeping `The Oaks,' uncle, if
you only continue to keep your temper.”
“Nay, Robert, sarcasm is unnecessary now, and
with me: I need no reproaches of yours to make me
feel in this matter.”
“What, uncle, are you in that vein? Have your
eyes been opened to the light at last?”
“Somewhat, Robert—but a truce to this for the
present. Let us have your intelligence from Santee.
They talk here of some risings in that quarter, but we
of either party. There is also some story of approaching
continentals. Has Congress really given us an
army? and who is to command it? Speak, boy; out
with your budget.”
“Thank you, good mine uncle; but how know I
that I unfold my budget to a friend, and not to an enemy?
What security do you give me that I talk not
with a devout and loyal subject of his majesty—so
very much a lover of the divine right of kings, that he
would freely lend a hand to run up his own nephew
to a swinging bough, the better to compel the same
faith in others?”
“Pshaw! Robert, you speak idly: you mean not to
suppose me a tory?” The brow of Colonel Walton
darkened awfully as he spoke.
“I have little faith in neutrals,” was the calm reply;
“I hold to the goodly whig proverb, `He who is not
for me, is against me.' Pardon me, therefore, uncle,
if I prefer—I who am a whig—to speak to you, who
are neither whig nor Englishman, after such a fashion
as shall not make you the keeper of unnecessary secrets,
and expose a good cause to overthrow, and its
friends to injury.”
The taunt thus uttered with a most provoking and
biting dryness of phrase, operated strongly upon the
mind of the colonel, already acted upon, in no small
degree, by his own previous rebukings of conscience to
the same effect. He exclaimed, bitterly, as, rising from
the supper-table, he strode away under the momentary
impulse—
“Ay, by heaven! but your words are true. Who
should esteem the neutral, when his country is in danger,
and when her people are writhing under oppression?
True, though bitter—more bitter, as it is true.
Robert Singleton, thou hast given me a keen stroke,
boy, but I have deserved it. Thou hast spoken nothing
but the truth.”
“Now, indeed, uncle, I rejoice to see you, and in
this humour. You have felt the stroke at last, but it
is the proclamation of Sir Henry Clinton.”
The youth fixed his eye keenly, as he spoke, upon
the face of Colonel Walton, while his glance indicated
a sort of triumphant joy, finely contrasted with the disquietude
and vexing indignation strongly legible upon
the face of his uncle.
“You are right there, too, Robert. I confess not
to have thought so seriously upon this matter—not,
certainly, so much to the point—as after hearing the
contents of that dishonourable instrument of Sir Henry
Clinton—God curse him for it!”
“God bless him for it, I say, if for nothing else that
he has done,” immediately rejoined the nephew. “My
prayers have been heard in that; and this proclamation
of the tyrant is the very best thing that he could have
done for our cause and country, and the very thing that
I have most prayed for.”
“Indeed! Major Singleton, you surprise me. What
should there be so very grateful to you—so worthy of
your prayers and acknowledgment—in this proceeding
of Sir Henry Clinton?” inquired the other, with something
more of stiffness and hauteur in his manner.
“Much, Colonel Walton, very much. As a true
patriot, and a lover of his country at every hazard, I
prayed that the time might soon come, when the
oppressor should put his foot—ay, and the foot of his
menials, too—on the necks of those selfish or spiritless,
those too little wise, or too little honourable, who have
been so very ready to hug his knee, and yield up to a
base love for security their manly character and honest
independence. Verily, they meet with their reward.
Let them feel the scourge and the chain, until, beaten
and degraded, the stern necessity shall stimulate them
to the duties they have so neglected. I rejoice in their
desperation—I rejoice when I hear them groan beneath
the oppression—not only because they merit such reward
but because it makes them stronger in our cause.”
“How know you that?” quickly said the other.
“How know I that? Let me answer that question
any longer to keep the quiet security of his plantation,
to hug his grounds, save his crops, and keep his negroes
from the West Indies, without military service—
active military service, and against his countrymen
too—against his avowed principles?”
The colonel strode the room impatiently. The
other continued—
“No, no, good uncle, you have no help. Earl
Cornwallis compels you to your duty. You must
buckle on the sword—you must take up arms for, or
against, your people, and in either case at the expense
of all that comfortable quiet for which you have already
made quite too many sacrifices. I know you too well
to suppose that you can fight against our people—your
people; and I am glad therefore that you are forced
into the field. How many thousands are in your condition!
how many that look up to you, influenced by
your example! Will these not be be moved in like
manner and by like necessities? You will see—we
shall have an army of native citizens before many
days.”
“Perhaps so, Robert, and I am not too timid to
wish that such may be its effect. But is it not a dishonourable
deception that he has practised in this
movement? Did not the protections promise us immunity
in this particular?”
“No, sir—I think not. I see nothing that Clinton
has done in this so very grievous. Your protection
secured you, as a citizen, to conform to the duties of the
citizen, and to protect you as such. One of the duties
of the citizen is the performance of militia service.”
“Granted, Robert—but commutable by fine. I am
not unwilling to pay this fine; but Clinton's proclamation
insists only on the duty.”
“And I am glad of it. Uncle, uncle, do you not
see the dishonourable character of such an argument?
Your conscience forbids that you should serve against
your country, but you avoid this actual service in your
own person, by paying the money which buys a mercenary
with your own hand, but you pay another to perform
the crime. Shame! shame, I say!”
“Not so, Robert; we know not, and I believe not,
that the money is so appropriated. It becomes the
spoil of the leaders, and simply helps them to fortune.”
“Granted, and the sterner argument against you is
yet to come. You are wealthy, and avail yourself of
your good fortune to buy yourself out of a danger to
which the poor man must submit. By what right
would you escape from and evade your duties, when he,
as a citizen, having the same, must submit to their performance?
His conscience, like your own, teaches
him that to fight for his country and against her invaders
is his first duty. You evade your duty by the
help of your better fortune, and leave him, as in the
present instance, either to perish hopelessly in unequal
contest—unequal through your defection—or to take up
arms in a battle to which his principles are foreign.
Such is the effect of this most unpatriotic reservation,
which, on the score of your money, you have presumed
to make. You sacrifice your country doubly, when
you contribute to violate the conscience of its citizens.
The duties of the rich man—the leading, influential man
—are those chiefly of example. What is our safety, and
where would be the safety of any nation—its freedom
or its glory—if, when danger came, its rich citizens
made terms with the invader which sacrificed the poor?
Such is your case—such your proceeding exactly.
There is now, thank Heaven, but one alternative that
Clinton's proclamation has left you.”
“That is the sword—I know it, I feel it, Robert.”
“Touch it not, touch it not, uncle, I pray you, if
you can help it,” cried the feeble girl who lay gasping
on the sofa. Her eyes were illuminated with a holy
fire; her cheeks, pale, almost transparent, shone, white
and glittering, with a spiritual glory, from the pillow on
which her head was resting; while one of her long,
taper fingers was stretched forward with an adjuring
rest to the warm and deeply important dialogue which
had been going on. The novelty of the difficulty, for
they had not heard of the proclamation before, had kept
them dumb until that moment, when Colonel Walton,
as one having come to a settled conclusion, had referred
to the sword as a last alternative. The gentle spirit
of Emily Singleton, quick, sensitive, though frail and
fleeting, then poured forth its feeble notes, in order to
arrest the decision.
“Oh, touch not the sword, uncle, I pray you—the
keen sword, that cuts away the happy life, and murders
the blessed, and the blessing, peace—the peace of the
innocent, the peace of the young and good. Oh,
Robert, wherefore have you come with these fierce
words? Is there to be no end to strife—the bloody and
the brutal strife—the slaying of men—the trampling
of God's creatures in the dust?”
“Why, sister—dear Emily—but how can we help
it? We must fight our enemies, or they will trample
on us the more.”
“I see not that: better let them rob and plunder;
but take not life, risk not life. Life is holy. None
should take life but him who gives it, since to take
life takes away from man, not only the privilege to
breathe, but the privilege to repent of sins, to repair
injustice, to make himself fit for immortality. When
you slay your enemy, you send him not merely from one
world—you send him into another—and which? Oh,
brother, dear brother, wherefore would you engage in
this horrid war? What blessing so great will it bring
you, as to take from you the thought of the butchery you
must go through to secure it? Oh, turn not away,
Robert, but hear me! I would not vex you, nor would
I now speak of things beyond my poor ability; but can
you not avoid this fighting, this hewing down of man,
this defacing of God's image, this defiling and death
of the goodliest work of Heaven? I know, Robert,
you have a true heart, and love not such an employment—say
not avoid it?”
She sank back nearly exhausted. Her breath flickered,
and the glow which now overspread her cheek,
was, if possible, more threatening in its aspect than
the death-like paleness which habitually rested there.
Her prostration called for the quick attention of her
cousin, and as Katharine Walton bent over her, and
her brother knelt beside her, a momentary fear came
upon them both, that the effort she had made had
destroyed her. But a deep sigh indicated the returning
consciousness, and the strange, spiritual light ascended
once more into and rekindled her eyes. She saw who
were immediately beside her; and there was something
of a smile of joy, as she beheld the two, so closely
associated, whom, of all the world, she desired to see
even more immediately linked together. Katharine
understood the glance, and rising from her kneeling
position, extricated her hand, which lay partly under
that of Robert, on the back of the sofa. The movement
recalled the thoughts of Emily from the new direction
which they had taken, and she now recurred
to the unfinished topic.
“I will trust your assurance, brother, as I know your
gentleness of feeling. May you not escape this bloody
employment? for my poor thought fails to perceive
the good or the glory which can come of the distresses
of humanity.”
“It would be shame, Emily, deep shame and dishonour,
to avoid it; and, indeed, it may not be avoided.
The persecutor pursues when you fly, and he tramples
even more freely when you resist not. It is in the
nature of injustice and wrong, to grow insolent with
impunity; and the dishonour must rest on him, who,
being himself strong, looks unmoved on the sufferings
of the weak, and withholds his succour. Believe me,
dear Emily, I love not this strife; but defence of our
country is war under God's own sanction, since it
seeks to maintain free from blood and from injustice
the home which he has given to the peaceful.”
“It is painful, very painful, to think so; yet so it
must be, if you have said it. God prosper you in your
cause, Robert, and his eye be upon you!”
He could only reply by earnestly pressing his lips
upon her cold forehead, as with painful eyes he watched
her progress to her chamber, supported by the arms
of his lovely cousin.
| CHAPTER XII. The partisan | |