University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
GLIMPSES OF PASSION AND ITS FRUITS.

Supple Jack soon joined his commander, bringing
with him, undiminished by use or travel, all the various
budgets of intelligence which he had collected in his
scout. He had dismissed the insubordinate lieutenant
of the Black Riders on parole; not without suffering
him to hear, as a familiar on dit along the river, that
Captain Morton was about to sacrifice the troop at the
first opportunity, and fly with all his booty from the
country.

“I've know'd,” said he to himself, after Stockton took
his departure, “I've know'd a smaller spark than that
set off a barrel of gunpowder.”

To his colonel, having delivered all the intelligence
which he had gained of the movements as well of the
public as private enemy, he proceeded, as usual, to give
such counsel as the nature of his revelations seemed to
suggest. This may be summed up in brief, without
fatiguing the reader with the detailed conversation which
ensued between them in their examination of the subject.

“From what I see, colonel, Ned Conway is gone below.
It's true he did seem to take the upper route, but
Massey can't find the track after he gits to Fisher's Slue.
There, I reckon, he chopped right round, crossed the
Slue, I'm thinking, and dashed below. Well, what's he
gone below for, and what's Pete Flagg gone for across
to the Santee?—Pete, that does nothing but ship niggers

for the British officers. They all see that they're got to
go, and they're for making hay while the sun is still a-shining.
Now, I'm thinking that Ned Conway is after
your mother's niggers. He'll steal 'em and ship 'em by
Pete Flagg to the West Indies, and be the first to follow,
the moment that Rawdon gits licked by Greene. It's
cl'ar to me that you ought to go below and see about the
business.”

The arguments of the woodman were plausible enough,
and Clarence Conway felt them in their fullest force.
But he had his doubts about the course alleged to be
taken by his kinsman, and a feeling equally selfish, perhaps,
but more noble intrinsically, made him fancy that
his chief interest lay above. He was not insensible to
his mother's and his own probable loss, should the
design of Edward Conway really be such as Bannister
suggested, but a greater stake, in his estimation, lay in
the person of the fair Flora Middleton; and he could not
bring himself to believe, valuing her charms as he did
himself, that his kinsman would forego such game for
the more mercenary objects involved in the other adventure.
The tenor of the late interview between himself
and the chief of the Black Riders, had forced his mind to
brood with serious anxiety on the probable fortunes of
this lady; and his own hopes and fears becoming equally
active at the same time, the exulting threats and bold
assumptions of Edward Conway—so very different from
the sly humility of his usual deportment—awakened all
his apprehensions. He resolved to go forward to the upper
Congaree, upon the pleasant banks of which stood the
princely domains of the Middleton family; persuaded,
as he was, that the rival with whom he contended for
so great a treasure, equally wily and dishonourable, had
in contemplation some new villany, which, if not seasonably
met, would result in equal loss to himself and
misery to the maiden of his heart. Yet he did not
resolve thus, without certain misgivings and self-reproaches.
His mother was quite as dear to him as ever
mother was to the favourite son of her affections. He
knew the danger in which her property stood, and was

not heedless of the alarm which she would experience, in
her declining years and doubtful health, at the inroad of
any marauding foe. The arguments of a stronger passion,
however, prevailed above these apprehensions, and
he contented himself with a determination to make the
best of his way below, as soon as he had assured himself
of the safety and repose of every thing above. Perhaps,
too, he had a farther object in this contemplated visit to
Flora Middleton. The counsel of Bannister on a previous
occasion, which urged upon him to bring his
doubts to conviction on the subject of the course which
her feelings might be disposed to take, found a corresponding
eagerness in his own heart to arrive at a knowledge
always so desirable to a lover, and which he seeks
in fear and trembling as well as in hope.

“I will but see her,” was his unuttered determination,
“I will but see her, and see that she is safe, and hear at
once her final answer. These doubts are too painful for
endurance! Better to hear the worst at once, than live
always in apprehension of it.”

Leaving the youthful partisan to pursue his own course,
let us now turn for a while to that of Edward Morton,
and the gloomy and fierce banditti which he commanded.
He has already crossed the Wateree, traversed the country
between that river and the Congaree; and after
various small adventures, such as might be supposed
likely to occur in such a progress, but which do not
demand from us any more special notice, we find him
on the banks of the latter stream, in the immediate
neighbourhood of a spot where it receives into its embrace
the twin though warring waters of the Saluda and
the Broad—a spot, subsequently, better distinguished as
the chosen site of one of the loveliest towns of the State—
the seat of its capital, and of refinement, worth, courtesy,
and taste, which are not often equalled in any region, and
are certainly surpassed in none. Columbia, however, at the
period of our story, was not in existence; and the meeting
of its tributary waters, their striving war, incessant
rivalry, and the continual clamours of their strife, formed
the chief distinction of the spot; and conferred upon it

no small degree of picturesque vitality and loveliness.
A few miles below, on the opposite side of the stream,
stood then the flourishing town of Granby—a place of
considerable magnitude and real importance to the wants
of the contiguous country, but now fallen into decay and
utterly deserted. A garrisoned town of the British, it
had just before this period been surrendered by Colonel
Maxwell to the combined American force under Sumter
and Lee—an event which counselled the chief of the
Black Riders to an increased degree of caution as he approached
a neighbourhood so likely to be swarming with
enemies. Here we may as well communicate to the
reader such portions of the current history of the time,
as had not yet entirely reached this wily marauder.
While he was pursuing his personal and petty objects of
plunder on the Wateree, Lord Rawdon had fled from
Camden, which he left in flames; Sumter had taken
Orangeburg; Fort Motte had surrendered to Marion;
the British had been compelled to evacuate their post at
Nelson's Ferry, and the only fortified place of which
they now kept possession in the interior was that of
Ninety-Six; a station of vast importance to their interests
in the back country, and which, accordingly,
they resolved to defend to the last extremity. But
though ignorant of some of the events here brought
together, Edward Morton was by no means ignorant of
the difficulties which were accumulating around the fortunes
of the British, and which, he naturally enough concluded,
must result in these, and even worse disasters.
Of the fall of Granby he was aware; of the audacity
and number of the American parties, his scouts hourly
informed him, even if his own frequent and narrow escapes
had failed to awaken him to a sense of the prevailing
dangers. But, governed by an intense selfishness, he
had every desire to seek, in increased caution, for the
promotion of those interests and objects, without which
his patriotism might possibly have been less prudent, and
of the proper kind. He had neither wish nor motive to go
forward rashly; and, accordingly, we find him advancing
to the Saluda, with the slow, wary footsteps of one who
looks to behold his enemy starting forth, without summons
of trumpet, from the bosom of every brake along
the route.

It was noon when his troop reached the high banks of
the river, the murmur of whose falls, like the distant
mutterings of ocean upon some island-beach, were heard,
pleasantly soothing, in the sweet stillness of a forest
noon. A respite was given to the employments of the
troop. Scouts were sent out, videttes stationed, and the
rest surrendered themselves to repose, each after his own
fashion: some to slumber, some to play, while others,
like their captain, wandered off to the river banks, to
angle or to meditate, as their various moods might incline.
Morton went apart from the rest, and found a
sort of hiding-place upon a rock immediately overhanging
the river, where, surrounded by an umbrageous
forest-growth, he threw his person at length, and yielded
himself up to those brooding cares which he felt were
multiplying folds about his mind, in the entangling grasp
of which it worked slowly and without its usual ease and
elasticity. The meditations are inevitably mournful with
a spirit such as his. Guilt is a thing of isolation always,
even when most surrounded by its associates and operations.
Its very insecurity tends to its isolation as completely
as its selfishness. Edward Morton felt all this.
He had been toiling, and not in vain, for a mercenary
object. His spoils had been considerable. He had
hoarded up a secret treasure in another country, secure
from the vicissitudes which threatened every fortune in
that where he had won it; but he himself was insecure.
Treachery, he began to believe, and not a moment too
soon, was busy all around him. He had kept down fear,
and doubt, and distrust, by a life of continual action; but
it was in moments of repose like this, that he himself
found none. It was then that his fears grew busy—that
he began to distrust his fate, and to apprehend that all
that future, which he fondly fancied to pass in serenity
of fortune, if not of mind and feeling, would yet be
clouded and compassed with denial. His eye, stretching
away on either hand, beheld the two chafing rivers rushing

downward to that embrace which they seem at once
to desire and to avoid. A slight barrier of land and
shrubbery interposes to prevent their too sudden meeting.
Little islands throw themselves between, as if
striving to thwart the fury of their wild collision, but in
vain! The impetuous waters force their way against
every obstruction; and wild and angry, indeed, as if endued
with moral energies and a human feeling of hate, is
their first encounter—their recoil—their return to the
conflict, in foam and roar, and commotion, until exhaustion
terminates the strife, and they at length repose
together in the broad valleys of the Congaree below.
The turbulence of the scene alone interested the dark-bosomed
spectator whose fortunes we contemplate. He
saw neither its sublime nor its gentle features—its fair
groves—its sweet islands of rock and tufted vegetation,
upon which the warring waters, as if mutually struggling
to do honour to their benevolent interposition, fling over
their flashing, and transparent wreaths of whitish foam.
His moody thought was busy in likening the prospect
to that turbulence, the result of wild purposes and wicked
desires, which filled his own bosom. A thousand impediments,
like the numerous rocks and islands that rose to
obstruct the passage of the streams which he surveyed,
lay in his course, baffling his aim, driving him from his
path, resisting his desires, and scattering inefficiently all
his powers. Even as the wates which he beheld, complaining
in the fruitless conflict with the rude masses
from which they momently recoiled, so did he, unconsciously,
break into speech, as the difficulties in his own
future progress grew more and more obvious to his
reflections.

“There must soon be an end to this. That old fool
was right. I should be a fool to wait to see it. Once,
twice, thrice, already, have I escaped, when death seemed
certain. Let me not provoke fortune—let me not task
her too far. It will be impossible to baffle these bloodhounds
much longer! Their scent is too keen, their
numbers too great, and the spoil too encouraging. Besides,
I have done enough. I have proved my loyalty.

Loyalty indeed!—a profitable pretext—and there will
be no difficulty now in convincing Rawdon that I ought
to be the last to linger here in waiting for the end.
That end—what shall it be?—A hard fight—a bloody
field—a sharp pain and quiet! Quiet!—that were something,
too, might almost reconcile one to linger. Could
I be secure of that, at the risk of a small pain only; but
it may be worse. Captivity were something worse
than death. In their hands, alive, and no Spanish tortures
would equal mine. No! no! I must not encounter
that danger. I must keep in reserve one weapon
at least, consecrated to the one purpose. This—this!
must secure me from captivity!”

He drew from his bosom, as he spoke these words, a
small poniard of curious manufacture, which he contemplated
with an eye of deliberate study; as if the
exquisite Moorish workmanship of the handle, and the
rich and variegated enamel of the blade, served to promote
the train of gloomy speculation into which he had
fallen. A rustling of the leaves—the slight step of a
foot immediately behind him—caused him to start to
his feet;—but he resumed his place with an air of
vexation, as he beheld, in the intruder, the person of
the boy whom we have seen once before in close
attendance upon him.

“How now!” he exclaimed impatiently, “can I have
no moment to myself—why will you thus persist in
following me.”

“I have no one else to follow, was the meek reply—
the tones falling, as it were, in echo from a weak and
withered heart. “I have no one else to follow, and—
and—”

The lips faltered into silence.

“Speak out—and what?—”

“You once said to me that I should go with none
but you—oh, Edward Conway, spurn me not—drive
me not away with those harsh looks and cruel accents;
—let me linger beside you—though if you please it,
still out of your sight, for I am desolate—oh! so desolate,
when you leave me!—you, who, alone, of all the world,

I may have some right to look to for protection and for
life.”

The sex of the speaker stood revealed—in the heaving
breast—the wo-begone countenance—the heart-broken
despondency of look and gesture—the tear-swollen and
down-looking eye. She threw herself before him as
she spoke, her face buried in her hands and prone upon
the ground. Her sobs succeeded her speech and in
fact silenced it.

“No more of this, Mary Clarkson, you disturb and
vex me. Rise. I have seen, for some days past, that
you had some new tribulation—some new burden of
wo to deliver—out with it now—say what you have to
say;—and, look you, no whinings. Life is too seriously
full of real evils, dangers and difficulties, to suffer me to
bear with these imaginary afflictions.”

“Oh, God, Edward Conway, it is not imaginary with
me. It is real—it is to be seen—to be felt. I am dying
with it. It is in my pale cheek—my burning brain, in
which there is a constant fever. Oh, look not upon me
thus—thus angrily—for, in truth I am dying. I feel it!
I know that I cannot live very long;—and yet, I am so
afraid to die. It is this fear, Edward Conway, that
makes me intrude upon you now.”

“And what shall I do, and what shall I say to lessen
your fears of death? And, why should I do it—why,
yet more, should you desire it? Death is or ought to
be a very good thing for one who professes to be so
very miserable in life as yourself. You heard me as
you approached?—if you did you must have heard my
resolution to seek death, from my own weapon, under
certain circumstances. Now, it is my notion that
whenever life becomes troublesome, sooner than grumble
at it hourly, I should make use of some small instrument
like this. A finger-prick only—no greater pain—
will suffice, and put an end to life and pain in the same
instant.”

“Would it could! would it could!” exclaimed the
unfortunate victim of that perfidy which now laughed
her miseries to scorn.

“Why, so it can! Do you doubt? I tell you, that
there is no more pain, Mary, in driving this dagger into
your heart—into its most tender and vital places—than
there would be, burying it in your finger. Death will
follow, and there's the end of it.”

“Not the end, not the end—if it were, Edward Conway,
how gladly would I implore from your hand the
blessing of that lasting peace which would follow from
its blow. It is the hereafter—the awful hereafter—
which I fear to meet.”

“Pshaw! a whip of the hangman—a bugbear of the
priests, for fools and women! I'll warrant you, if you
are willing to try the experiment, perfect security from
all pain hereafter!” And the heartless wretch extended
toward her the hand which contained the glittering weapon.
She shuddered and turned away—giving him, as
she did so, such a look as even he, callous as he was,
shrunk to behold. A glance of reproach, more keen,
deep, and touching than any word of complaint which
her lips had ever ventured to utter.

“Alas! Edward Conway, has it really come to this!
To you I have yielded every thing—virtue, peace of
mind—the love of father, and of mother, and of friends
—all that's most dear—all that the heart deems most
desirable—and you offer me, in return, for these—
death, death!—the sharp, sudden poniard—the cold,
cold grave! If you offer it, Edward Conway—strike!
—the death is welcome! Even the fear of it is forgotten.
Strike, set me free;—I will vex you no longer
with my presence.”

“Why, what a peevish fool you are, Mary Clarkson!
though, to be sure, you are not very different from the
rest. There's no pleasing any of you, do as we may.
You first came to me to clamour about your distaste
of life, and by your perpetual grumblings you seek to
make it as distasteful to me as to yourself. Well, I tell
you—this is my remedy!—this sudden, sharp dagger—
whenever I shall come to regard life as a thing of so
much misery as you do, I shall end it; and I also add,
in the benevolence of my heart—`here is my medicament—I
share it with you!'—and lo! what an uproar—

what a howling. Look you, Mary, you must trouble
me no longer in this manner, and just now, in the
worst possible mood to bear with the best friend under
the sun.”

“Oh, Edward Conway, and this too!—this, after
your promise! Do you remember your promise to me,
by the Poplar Spring, that hour of my shame!—that
awful hour! Oh, what was that promise, Edward Conway?
Speak, Edward Conway! Repeat that promise
and confess I was not all guilty. No! no!—I was only
all credulous! You beguiled me with a promise—with
an oath—a solemn oath before Heaven—did you not?
—that I should be your wife. Till then, at least, I was
not guilty!”

“Did I really make such a promise to you—eh?”
he asked with a scornful affectation of indifference.

“Surely, you will not deny that you did?” she exclaimed
with an earnestness which was full of amazement.

“Well, I scarcely remember. But it matters not
much, Mary Clarkson. You were a fool for believing.
How could you suppose that I would marry you?
Ha! Is it so customary for pride and poverty to unite
on the Congaree that you should believe? Is it customary
for the eldest son of one of the wealthiest families
to wed with the child of one of the poorest? Why,
you should have known by the promise itself, that I
was amusing myself with your credulity—that my only
object was to beguile you—to win you on my own
terms—not to wear you!—I simply stooped for conquest,
Mary Clarkson, and you were willing to believe
any lie for the same object. It was your vanity that
beguiled you, Mary Clarkson, and not my words.
You wished to be a fine lady, and you are—”

“Oh, do not stop. Speak it all out. Give to my
folly and my sin its true name. I can bear to hear it
now, without shrinking, for my own thoughts have
already spoken to my heart the foul and fearful truth.
I am, indeed, loathsome to myself, and would not care
to live but that I fear to die. 'Tis not the love of life

that makes me turn in fear from the dagger which you
offer. This, Edward Morton—'tis this which brings
me to you now. I do not seek you for guidance or
for counsel—no! no!—no such folly moves me now.
I come to you for protection—for safety—for security
from sudden death—from the judge—from the avenger.
He is pursuing us—I have seen him!”—and as she
spoke these almost incoherent words, her eye looked
wildly among the thick woods around, and full of
apprehension, as if the danger she spoke of was in
reality at hand. Surprise was clearly expressed in the
features of her callous paramour.

“He! Of whom speak you, child! Who is it you
fear?” and his glance followed the wild direction of her
eyes.

“My father!—Jacob Clarkson! He is in search of
me—of you!—and oh! Edward Conway, I know him
so well, that I tell you, it will not be your high connexions
and aristocratic birth that will save you on the
Congaree from a poor man's rifle, though these may
make it a trifling thing for you to ruin a poor man's
child. He is even now in search of us—I have seen
him!—I have seen the object of his whole soul in his
eye, as I have seen it an hundred times before. He
will kill you—he will kill us both, Edward Conway,
but he will have revenge!”

“Pshaw, girl! You are very foolish. How can your
father find us out? How approach us? The thought
is folly. As an individual he can only approach us by
coming into the line of our sentinels—these disarm
him, and he then might look upon us, in each other's
arms, without being able to do us any injury.”

“Do not speak so, Edward, for God's sake—in each
each other's arms no longer—no more!”—and a sort
of shivering horror passed over her frame as she spoke
these words.

“As you please!” muttered the outlaw, with an
air and smile of scornful indifference. The girl proceeded:—

“But, even without weapons, the sight of my father

—the look of his eyes upon mine—would kill me—
would be worse than any sort of death. Oh, God! let
me never see him more. Let him never see me—the
child that has lost him, lost herself, and is bringing his
gray hairs in sorrow to the grave.”

“Mary Clarkson, who do you think to cheat with all
this hypocrisy of sentiment. Don't I know that all
those fine words and phrases are picked out of books.
This talk is too customary to be true.”

“They may be!—they were books, Edward Conway,
which you brought me, and which I loved to read
for your sake. Alas! I did not follow their lessons.”

“Enough of this stuff, and now to the common
sense of this business. You have seen your father,
you say—where?”

“On the Wateree;—the day before you came back
from your brother in the swamp!”

“Brother me no brothers!” exclaimed the outlaw
fiercely, “and look you, girl, have I not told you a
thousand times that I wish not to be called Conway.
Call me Morton, Cunningham, John Stuart, or the
devil—or any of the hundred names by which my enemies
distinguish me and denominate my deeds; but
call me not by the name of Conway. I, too, have
something filial in my nature; and if you wish not to
see the father you have offended, perhaps, it is for the
same reason that I would not hear the name of mine.
Let that dutiful reason content you—it may be that I
have others; but these we will forbear for the present.
What of Jacob Clarkson, when you saw him? Where
was he?—how employed?—and where were you, and
who with you?”

“Oh, God! I was fearfully nigh to him, and he saw
me!—He fixed his keen, cold, deathly eye upon me,
and I thought I should have sunk under it. I thought
he knew me; but how could he in such a guise as this,
and looking, as I do, pale, withered, and broken down
with sin and suffering.”

“Pshaw—where was all this?”

“At Isaac's tavern. There was none there beside

myself and Isaac. He came in and asked for a calabash
of water. He would drink nothing, though Muggs
kindly offered him, but he would not. He looked at
me only for an instant, but it seemed to me, in that
instant, that he looked through and through my soul.
He said nothing to me, and hardly any thing to Isaac—
though he asked him several questions;—and when he
drank the water, and rested for a little while, he went
away. But while he stayed I thought I should have
died. I could have buried myself in the earth to escape
his sight; and yet how I longed to throw myself at his
feet and beg for mercy. Could I have done that, I think
I should have been happy. I should have been willing
then to die. But I dared not. He hadn't a human look
—he didn't seem to feel;—and I feared that he might
kill me without hearkening to my prayer.”

“Muggs should have told me of this,” said the other
musingly.

“He must have forgot it, on account of the uproar
and great confusion afterwards.”

“That is no good reason for a cool fellow like him.
I must see into it. It was a strange omission.”

“But what will you do, Edward—where shall we
fly?”

“Fly! where should we fly—and why? Because of
your father? Have I not already told you that he cannot
approach us to do harm; and, as for discovering us,
have you not seen that he looked upon his own child
without knowing her, and I'm sure he can never recollect
me as the man who once helped him to provide for
the only undutiful child he had.”

“Spare me! Be not so cruel in your words, Edward,
for, of a truth, though I may escape the vengeance of
my father, I feel certain that I have not long—not very
long to live.”

“Nor I, Mary;—so while life lasts, let us be up and
doing!” was the cold-blooded reply, as, starting to his
feet, as if with the desire to avoid farther conference on
an annoying subject, he prepared to leave the spot
where it had taken place. Her lips moved, but she
spoke not. Her hands were clasped, but the entreaty

which they expressed, were lost equally upon his eyes
and heart; and if she meant to pray to him for a farther
hearing, her desire was unexpressed in any stronger
form. By him it remained unnoticed. Was it unnoticed
by the overlooking and observant God!—for to
him, when the other had gone from sight and hearing,
were her prayers then offered, with, seemingly, all the
sincerity of a broken and a contrite spirit.