University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.

“Is he gone?” were the first, shudderingly expressed
words, which the suffering maiden addressed to Rose
Duncan, as the latter assisted her in rising from the
floor. Her eyes were red and swollen—her glance
wild, wandering, and strangely full of light—her lips
compressed with a visible effort, as if to restrain the expression
of those emotions which were still so powerfully
felt and shown. Instead of replying to the question
of Janet, Rose could not forbear an exclamation of
partial rebuke.

“I warned you—I told you not to see him, Janet.
You are now sorry for it.”

“No—no! I must have known-it, and better as it is
—better, better as it is, to know it all,—there is no second

stroke—no other that can now be felt, except—
God of Heaven! have mercy, and save me from that!'

She buried her face in the bosom of Rose, and sobbed
with convulsive sorrows, as her imagination presented
to her eye the probable result of the trial to
which her lover was to be subjected.

“He never spares, Rose—he has no mercies! From
the place of trial to the place of death, it is but a step!
So the malignant Barsfield said it, and so it will be with
such judges as Balfour and Tarleton.” And, as she
spoke, she closed her eyes, as if to shut out the dreadful
images of doom and death which were gathering thickly
before her. It was only in fitful starts of speech
that Rose could gather from her companion the truth
of her situation and the cause of her grief. It was
only by successive pictures of the dreadful events
which she anticipated, as they severally came to her
mind, and not by any effort at narration, that she was
enabled to convey to that of Rose the cruel nature of
the intelligence which Barsfield had conveyed in his
interview. The anger of Rose grew violent when she
heard it, and that of Janet immediately subsided. She
could the better perceive the futility of uttered grief,
when she perceived the inadequacy of all words to describe
her emotions. Grief, like Rapture, was born
dumb.

But if Janet suffered thus much at first hearing of this
sad intelligence, she did not suffer less when communicacating
it that evening to her lover. Could she have
suffered for him—could she have felt all the agony of her
present thoughts, assured that it lay with her alone to endure
all and let him go free, she would not have murmured—she
would have had no uttered grief. But the dreadful
task was before her of saying to her lover that the
hour of their parting, and probably their final parting,
was at hand. How much less painful to have heard it
from his lips to her, than to breathe it from her lips into

his ears. She could endure the stroke coming from him,
but she thought—and this was the thought of one who
loved unselfishly—that she shared in the cruelty—that
she became a party to the crime, and its immediate instrument,
in unfolding the dreadful intelligence to him.
“He will hate me—he will regard it as my deed,—and
oh! how can I look as I tell him this,—how can features
express such feelings—such a sorrow as is mine!”

Such were the sobbing and broken words with which
she sought her lover. She strove, however, to compose
her countenance. She even laboured—foolish endeavour!
to restrain—to subdue her emotions. But
when was the heart of woman—properly constituted
only for intense feeling, and entire dependance that
admits of no qualified love—to be restrained and subjected
by a merely human will. There was that at her
heart which would not be compelled. The feeling only
gathered itself up for a moment the better to expand.
The restraint gave it new powers of action, and, though
she appeared in the presence of Mellichampe with a
countenance in which a smile even strove for place and
existence, it was yet evident to herself that the power of
self-control was rapidly departing from her. The strife
of encountering feelings was going on within—the
earthquake toiling below, though sunshine and flowers
only were visible without.

It was with a joy so intense as to be tremulous, that
Mellichampe received her. His confinement had made
him still more a dependant upon her presence and affections.
His love for her had duly increased with its
daily exercise; and, in the absence of other and exciting
influences, it had become a regular, constant, and increasing
flame, which concentrated almost all his thoughts,
and certainly governed and linked itself with all his emotions.
He longed for her coming as the anticipative
boy longs for the hour of promised enjoyment—with
a feverish thirst no less intense, and an anxious earnestness

far more lofty and enduring. When the latch was
lifted he ran forward to receive her, caught her extended
hand in both of his own, and carried it warmly and
passionately to his lips. She could scarce effect her
release, and the blush mingled with the labouring smile
upon her lips, which it rather tended to strengthen than
displace.

“Oh, Janet—my own Janet—what an age of absence!
How long you were in coming this evening!—
what has kept you, and wherefore? Truly, I began to
fear that you were tired of your office.”

“No—no, Ernest—I cannot tire, since it is so sweet
to serve. If I sought for mere pleasure and amusement
in love, I might tire of its sameness; but the love of
my heart is its devotion, and the better feelings of our
nature, like the God from whom they come, are the
more dear to us, and the more lovely in his sight, as
they are never subject to change.”

“Beautiful sentiment!” was the involuntary exclamation
of the youth, as he looked in her face and saw,
through the gathering tears in her eyes, the high-souled
seriousness—the sanctified earnestness of heart, which
proved that she felt the truth of the thought which she
had uttered. Love was, indeed, the religion of Janet
Berkeley. It was in her to love all things in nature,
and to gather sweets from all its influences. Even the
subduing grief to which she was more than commonly
subject, brought into increased activity the love which
she felt for him who stood before her, yet awakened no
opposite feeling in her bosom against those who sought
to do him wrong.

“Beautiful sentiment!” he exclaimed, passionately,
“and worthy of your heart, my Janet. Love is its
constant occupation, and I believe, dearest, that you
could not help but love on, even if I were to forget
your devotedness and my own pledge to you. Would
you not, Janet?”

“I know not that, Ernest. I have never thought of
that, but I think I could die then;” and the last words
were uttered in his folding arms, and came to his ears
like the sweet murmur of angel voices in a dream.

“Heaven forbid, my Janet, that I should ever do you
wrong, however slight! It would pain me to think that
you could imagine the possibility of a wrong at my hands,
and through my agency. True love, dearest, is a thing
of entire confidence, and nothing seems to me so sweet
as the knowledge that you have no emotion, no feeling
or thought, which you do not give up to my keeping.
It may be, indeed, that the thoughts and feelings of
women have little comparative value, so far as the interests
of men and of nations are concerned; but, valueless
or not, they are thoughts and feelings with her—
her all—her only,—and, as such, they should be of permanent
value with him who loves her. How much that
was unimportant—nay, how much that was positive
nonsense—did we say to each other last evening—and
yet, Janet, to me it was the sweetest nonsense.”

And, smiling and folding her in his arms with the respectful
fondness of a natural affection, he poured forth
as garrulous a tale in her ears as if he had not long and
frequently before narrated to her his own experience of
heart, and demanded hers in return. But she could not
now respond to his garrulity. It was not that she felt
not with him—not that the heart had suffered change, and
the love had grown inconstant, though, beholding her
abstraction, with this he had reproached her; but, reminded
as she was of the joys which they had promised
themselves togehter in their frequent and sweet interviews,
she was now only the more forcibly taught to feel
the violent wrenching away from hope which the cunning
of Barsfield, and the bloody tyranny of Balfour and
Tarleton, were preparing for them both. She could only
throw herself upon his manly bosom, like some heart-stricken
and desponding dependant, and sob, as if, with

every convulsion, life would render up its sacred responsibility.
It is needless to say how alarmed—how
shocked was Mellichampe, as he witnessed emotions so
suddenly and strangely violent. Since he had been a
prisoner and wounded, with Janet attending upon him,
life had been to them both all couleur de rose. Insensibly
they had both forgotten the restraints and difficulties,
if not the dangers, of his situation. They had lived only
for love; they had forgotten all privations in its enjoyments;
and, as the circumstances attending Mellichampe
had made all farther concealment unnecessary of the tie
which bound them so sweetly and inseparably together,
their mutual hearts revelled in the freedom which
their release from all the old restraints necessarily
brought to them. Next to the joy of contemplating the
beloved object, is the pride with which we can challenge
it for our own; and that feeling of pride, of itself, grew
into a sentiment of pleasure in the hourly and free survey
of the object in the eye of others; as the devotee of
a new faith, who has long worshipped in secret, avails
himself of the first moment of emancipation to build a
proud temple to the God of his hidden idolatry. Thus
moved towards each other, and free, as it were, to love
securely for the first time, the two, so blessed, had forgotten
all other considerations. His wound ceased to
be a pain, and almost a care, since it was so entirely
the care of the maiden; and her tendance made the
moments precious of his confinement, and he blessed
the evils which placed him in a relationship the most desirable,
and far the most delightful, of any he had ever
known.

To the maiden, the very assumption of some of the
cares of life, in attending upon the object most beloved,
was eminently grateful, as it was the first step which she
had yet taken towards the performance of some of those
duties for which woman is peculiarly formed, and for
which her gentle regards and affectionate tendernesses

make her particularly fitted. They occupied her mind
while they interested her heart the more; and so completely
did they absorb thoughts and affections in the
brief period of his confinement and sickness, that she no
longer heeded the hourly din of the military music around
her; and the shrill note of the bugle, which heretofore sent
a thrill of dreadful apprehension to her soul whenever
its warlike summons smote upon her ear, now failed
entirely to remind her of those causes of apprehension
to which she had been before always most sensitively
alive. From this dream of pleasure, in which every
thought and feeling which might have counselled pain
or doubt had been merged and lost sight of, she had
been too suddenly aroused by the cruel communication
of Barsfield. The long train of pleasant sensations,
hopes, and joys, departed in that instant; and in their
place rose up all the accustomed forms of fierce war
and brutal outrage, with the additional horrors of that
peculiar danger to which the circumstances connected
with her lover's captivity and situation had subjected
him. As these successive images of terror rose up
before her imagination and crowded upon her mind, the
strong resolution with which she had determined upon
their mastery quite gave way, and she fell upon the neck
of her lover, yielding to all the weakness of her heart,
and refusing any longer to contend with her griefs.

Nor could he for some time obtain from her a knowledge
of her cause of sorrow. She could only sob, not
speak. Once or twice she strove earnestly to articulate,
but the words choked her in their utterance, and
they terminated in convulsive but unsyllabled sounds.
He bore her to a seat, and knelt down beside her, supporting
her head upon his shoulder. Earnestly and
fondly did he seek to sooth the paroxysm under which
she suffered, and vainly, for a long while, did he implore
her to be calm and speak forth her griefs. When at
length she so far recovered herself as to raise her head

from his shoulder and fix her eye upon his face, the
glance was instantly averted, as if with horror, and the
tears burst forth afresh. With that glance came the
thought of the hour when that noble head should be in
the grasp of the executioner—that manly, high, pure
white brow obscured by his cowling blind—and that
polished and lifted neck grasped by the polluting halter.
These were the dreadful thoughts which came crowding
to her mind on that instant; and they might have been
the thoughts and the apprehensions, at that period, of a
far more masculine mind than that of Janet Berkeley;
for, what was so common then as the certainty of execution
to the accused American?—what so sure as the
execution of death to one doomed by Balfour, Tarleton,
or Cornwallis? In these hands lay the destiny of her
lover. A few days would convey him to the place of
trial. A few hours travel through all its abridged forms,
and the hurried process of examination, misrepresenting
justice; and how brief was the sad interval allowed for
the final preparation between the doom and its execution.
These thoughts, which, to the strong and fearless
man, would have been only so many stirring apprehensions,
were a full conviction in the gentle heart
of the timid and fond Janet. She feared the worst, and,
being of no sanguine temper, she saw no hope upon
which to lean for succour. Nothing but clouds and
storms rose before her sight, and her love, undeviating
and growing warmer to the last, was the only star that
rayed out in blessing through the thickness and the
gloom.

“Oh, what, dearest Janet, is this suffering that wrings
you thus? What dream of danger,—what wild apprehension—troubles
you? Speak to me,—say what you
know. Let me relieve your sorrows, or, at least, share
them with you.”

It was thus that the youth pleaded—it was thus that
he fondly implored her to pour the griefs of her bosom

into his, and make him a partaker of those evils which
she evidently was not strong enough to bear alone. She
replied by sobs, and it was only at remote intervals that,
coupling together the broken parts of her speech, he
was enabled to gather from her that he was about to be
carried to Charleston as a prisoner. Hearing thus
much, the first thought of Mellichampe was one gratifying
to his vanity, and grateful in the extreme to his own
warm affections. He clasped her fervently to his heart
as he replied—

“And you grieve thus at our parting—at the prospect
of our separation. Ah, dearest, sweet is this additional
evidence of your sole-hearted love. But it will not be
long,—I will soon return,—I only go to be exchanged.”

“Oh, no, no, no!—never—never! You will return
no more. It is false, Ernest—false! No exchange—
no exchange! They carry you to Balfour and to Tarleton,—to
be tried—to die!—to die!”

Incoherently then, but with the utmost rapidity, she
explained to him the circumstances which Barsfield had
narrated to her. His astonishment far exceeded her
own apprehensions, and, after the first feeling of indignant
surprise was over, he calmly and confidently enough
sought to reassure her mind on the subject.

“Fear nothing, my Janet. They dare do nothing of
what you fear; and this charge against me, of being a
spy upon their camp, is too ridiculous to need any refutation,
and should occasion no concern.”

The composure of her lover failed to satisfy her.

“Alas! Ernest, no charge is too ridiculous with
them. How many have suffered from charges equally
idle in the minds of honest men!”

This was a truth well known to Mellichampe, and
fully as strong in his mind as a cause of apprehension
as it was in the mind of the maiden; but, with that
pride of character and soldierly resolve which were becoming
in the man, he did not allow his own fears to

strengthen hers. He overruled her reply, and rejected
entirely the anticipation of any danger resulting from
the prospect of a trial in the city under an allegation
which, in his case, he esteemed so idle.

“I can soon disprove the charge, my Janet,—I have
witnesses enough to show what my motives were in
coming to Piney Grove that night. For, Janet, you
yourself, dearest, could speak for me—”

“I could—I could, dear Ernest—”

“But should not,” he replied; “you should not suffer
such exposure to the rude soldiers as such a task
would call for. No, no, my love, there will be no need
of this. The scoundrel Barsfield only seeks to alarm
or to annoy you. Perhaps, too, he has some object in
it. This affair is his entirely; Tarleton and Balfour
have nothing to do with it, and Cornwallis is far off in
North Carolina.”

“Not so, Ernest. Barsfield has convinced me that
the orders are from Tarleton: for, when I doubted his
word, he showed me the letter of Tarleton, written with
his own hand.”

“Ah! then there is something in it,” was the involuntary
exclamation of the youth. Then, as he beheld
the immediate effect of his own gloomy look and
speech upon the countenance of the maiden, he proceeded
in a more cheerful manner.

“But I fear them not, my Janet—they cannot, they
dare not harm me. I can prove my innocence, even
should they proceed to the threatened trial, which I misdoubt
they never will do; and, if they do me less than
justice, my countrymen will avenge it.”

But such an assurance gave no animated hope to Janet.
Her tears burst forth afresh, and she clung to
his arm and hung upon his shoulder droopingly and despondingly.

“Hear me, Janet, dear love, and have no apprehensions.
You know not how strong is our security now

against any such crimes in future, as these tyrants
have been in the habit of committing upon the brave
men who have fallen into their hands. We have required
our commander to retaliate unsparingly, and Marion
has pledged himself to do so. When his pledge is
given, it is sacred. We have called upon him to avenge
upon a prisoner of equal grade any execution of our
officers by the British commanders; and we have freely
subscribed our names to the paper, in which we offer
our lives freely to sustain him in such a course, and
thus afford a solemn proof of our sincerity. The enemy
is not unadvised of this, and they have become cautious
since that affair of Camden. We hear of no
more executions—they know better, my love, than to
proceed in this matter to any length. They will pay
dearly for every drop which is shed of my blood.”

“Alas! Ernest—this consoles me nothing. On the
contrary, this very pledge which you have given to Marion,
calling for retaliation upon the British, and promising
to abide the consequences with your own life, will it not
make you only the more obnoxious to them? Will
they not be the more disposed to punish you for that—
and will it not prompt them to receive the most ridiculous
charge with favour, if it promises to secure them a
victim in one who has shown so much audacity? I
fear me, Ernest, that this very matter has led Tarleton
to forget his promise to me, and determines him to
make you abide the penalty for which you have pledged
yourself. Perhaps, too, it may be, that Marion, in obedience
to the pledge given to you, has executed some
British officer.”

This was a plausible suggestion, and did not tend in
the slightest degree to assure Mellichampe of the integrity
of his own opinions. It made him thoughtful
for a while, and increased the gloomy density of the
prospect before him; but he did not suffer himself to
forget for an instant that it was his business to prevent

the maiden from brooding apprehensively upon a subject
so calculated to make her miserable, and which
had already so painfully worked upon her feelings. He
strove, by alternate defiance and ridicule, to show that the
danger was not so great when it was approached—that
the British did not dare do what was threatened; and that,
however willing and desirous they might be to shed the
blood of their enemies, a discreet consideration of their
own safety would keep them in future from any wanton
execution of their prisoners.

“And should they, in their madness, attempt my life,
the vengeance which would follow the deed would be
such as would make them repent of the error to the latest
moment. Life for life would be the atoning requisition
of Marion, and of every officer pledged to retaliation
along with myself.”

But that which, in the shape of revenge, had the
power to console in part the audacious soldier, failed utterly
to produce a like effect upon the maiden. Her
tears came forth afresh at these words, and mournfully
she sobbed out the reply which most effectually silenced
all farther assurances of this nature.

“Alas! Ernest—but this vengeance, which would be
taken by your brethren in arms, would be nothing to
me. To revenge your fate would not be to restore
you; and for all my vengeance I look only to Heaven.
Speak not to me of these things, dearest Ernest—they
only make the danger seem more real, and it looks more
closely at hand when you speak thus.”

“Then hear me on another topic, Janet.”

She looked up inquiringly, and the tears began to dry
upon her cheek as she beheld a bright light and a gathering
elasticity of expression in his eyes. Her head
was thrown back as she looked up into his face, while his
extended hands grasped her arms tenderly.

“I will not risk this trial, Janet—I will escape from
this double bondage—yours and the enemy's.”

“How!” was the wondering exclamation of the
maiden.

“I have a thought, not yet fully matured in my mind,
by which I think my escape may be effected. But no
more of it now. That is the footstep of the surgeon.
Away, dearest, and have no fears. Despond not, I pray
you, but be ready with all your strength of mind to give
me your assistance, for I greatly depend on you in my
design.”

With a hurried embrace they separated as the surgeon
entered the chamber; and Janet hurried away,
with a full heart and troubled mind, to pray for her lover's
safety, and to dream of his coming danger.