Читать книгу The Carolinian - His Odyssey - Страница 4

Table of Contents

WITH compressed lips and an upright line of pain between his brows Mr. Harry Latimer sat down to write a letter. He had taken—as he was presently to express it—his first wound in the cause of Liberty, which cause he had lately embraced. This wound, deep, grievous, and apparently irreparable, had been dealt him by the communication in the sheets which hung now from his limp fingers.

It had reached him here at Savannah, where he was engaged at the time, not only on behalf of the Carolinian Sons of Liberty—of which seditious body he was an active if secret member—but on behalf of the entire colonial party, in stirring the Georgians out of their apathy and into coöperation with their Northern brethren to resist the harsh measures of King George's Government.

This letter, addressed to him at his Charles Town residence, had been forwarded thence by his factor, who was among the few whom in those days he kept informed of his rather furtive movements. It was written by the daughter of his sometime guardian Sir Andrew Carey, the lady whom it had been Mr. Latimer's most fervent hope presently to marry. Of that hope the letter made a definite end, and from its folds Mr. Latimer had withdrawn the pledge of his betrothal, the ring which once had belonged to his mother.

Myrtle Carey, those lines informed him, had become aware of the treasonable activities which were responsible for her lover's long absences from Charles Town. She was shocked and grieved beyond expression by any words at her command to discover this sudden and terrible change in his opinions. More deeply still was she shocked to learn that it was not only in heart and mind that he was guilty of disloyalty, but that he had already gone so far as to engage in acts of open rebellion. And at full length, with many plaints and upbraidings, she displayed her knowledge of one of these acts. She had learnt that the raid upon the royal armoury at Charles Town, in April last, had been undertaken at his instigation and under his personal direction, and this at a time when, in common with all save his fellow-traitors, she believed him to be in Boston engaged in the transaction of personal affairs. She deplored—and this cut him, perhaps, more keenly than all the rest—the deceit which he had employed; but it no longer had power to surprise her, since deceit and dissimulation were to be looked for as natural in one so lost to all sense of duty to his King. The letter concluded with the pained assertion that, whatever might have been her feelings for him in the past, and whatever tenderness for him might still linger in her heart, she could never bring herself to marry a man guilty of the abominable disloyalty and rebellion by which Harry Latimer had disgraced himself forever. She would pray God that he might yet be restored to sane and honourable views, and that thus he might avoid the terrible fate which the Royal Government could not fail sooner or later to visit upon him should he continue in his present perverse and wicked course.

Three times Mr. Latimer had read that letter, and long had he pondered it between readings. And if each time his pain increased, his surprise lessened. After all, it was no more than he should have expected, just as he had expected and been prepared for furious recriminations from his sometime guardian when knowledge of his defection should reach Sir Andrew. For than Sir Andrew Carey there was no more intolerant or bigoted tory in all America. Loyalty with him amounted to a religion, and just as religious feeling becomes intensified in the devout under persecution or opposition, so had the loyalty of Sir Andrew Carey burnt with a fiercer, whiter flame than ever from the moment that he perceived the signs of smouldering rebellion about him.

To Harry Latimer, when his generous, impulsive young heart had first been touched four months ago in Massachusetts by the oppression under which he found the province labouring, this uncompromising monarcholatry of Sir Andrew's had been the one consideration to give him pause, before ranging himself under the banner of freedom. He had been reared from boyhood by the baronet, and he owed him a deep debt of love and other things. That his secession from toryism would deeply wound Sir Andrew, that sooner or later it must lead to a breach between himself and the man who had been almost as a father to him, was the reflection ever present in his mind to embitter the zest with which he embraced the task thrust upon him by conscience and his sense of right.

What he does not appear to have realized, until that letter came to make it clear, was that to Myrtle, reared in an atmosphere of passionate, unquestioning devotion to the King, loyalty had become as much a religion, a sacrosanctity, as it was to the father who preached it.

At the first reading the letter had made him bitterly angry. He resented her presumption in criticizing in such terms a conduct in him that was obviously a matter of passionate conviction. Upon reflection, however, he took a more tolerant view. Compromise in such a matter was as impossible to her as it was to him. He would do much to win her. There was, he thought, no sacrifice from which he would have shrunk; for no sacrifice could have been so great as that which he was now called upon to make in relinquishing her. But the duty he had taken up, and the cause he had vowed to serve, were not things that could be set in the balance against purely personal considerations. The man who would yield up his conscience to win her would by the very act render himself unworthy of her. Lovelace had given the world a phrase that should stand for all time to serve such cases as his own: 'I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more.'

There was no choice.

He took up the quill, and wrote quickly; too quickly perhaps; for a little of the abiding bitterness crept despite him into his words:

You are intolerant, and therefore it follows that your actions are cruel and unjust. For cruelty and injustice are the only fruits ever yielded by intolerance. You will never again be able to do anything more cruel and unjust than you have now done, for never again will you find a heart as fond as mine and therefore as susceptible to pain at your hands. This pain I accept as the first wound taken in the service of the cause which I have embraced. Accept it I must, since I cannot be false to my conscience, my duty, and my sense of right, even to be true to you.

Thus he double-bolted the door which she herself had slammed. A door which was to stand as an impenetrable barrier between two loving, aching, obstinate, conscience-ridden hearts.

He folded, tied, and sealed the letter, then rang for Johnson, his valet, the tall, active young negro who shared his wanderings, and bade him see it despatched.

Awhile thereafter he sat there, lost in thought, that line of pain deeply furrowed between his brows. Then he stirred and sighed and took up from the writing-table another letter that had reached him that same morning, a letter whose seals were still unbroken. The superscription was in the familiar hand of his friend Tom Izard, whose sister was married to Lord William Campbell, the Royal Governor of the Province of South Carolina. The letter would contain news of society doings in Charles Town. But Charles Town society at the moment was without interest for Harry Latimer. He dropped the letter, still unopened, pushed back his chair and wearily rose. He paced away to the window and stood there looking out upon the sunshine with vacant eyes.

He was at the time in his twenty-fifth year and still preserved in his tall, well-knit figure something of a stripling grace. He was dressed with quiet, patrician elegance, and he wore his own hair, which was thick, lustrous, and auburn in colour. His face was of that clear, healthy pallor so often found with just such hair. It was an engaging face, lean, and very square in the chin, with a thin, rather tip-tilted nose and a firm yet humorous mouth. His eyes were full without prominence, of a brilliant blue that in certain lights was almost green. Habitually they were invested with a slightly quizzical regard; but this had now given place to the dull vacancy that accompanies acute mental suffering.

Standing there he pondered his case yet again, until at last there was a quickening of his glance. He stretched himself, with a suggestion of relief in the action. The thing is evil, indeed, out of which no good may come, which is utterly without compensation. And the compensation here was that, at least, there was an end to secrecy. The thing was out. Sir Andrew knew; and however hardly Sir Andrew might have taken it, at least the menace of discovery was at an end. This, Mr. Latimer reflected, was something gained. There was an end to his tormenting consciousness of practising by secrecy a passive deceit upon Sir Andrew.

And from the consideration of that secrecy his mind leapt suddenly to ask how came the thing discovered. That they should know vaguely and generally of his defection was not perhaps so startling. But how came they informed in such detail of the exact part he had played in that raid upon the arsenal last April? His very presence in Charles Town had been known to none except the members of the General Committee of the Provincial Congress. Then he reflected that those members were very numerous, and that a secret is rarely kept when shared by many. Some one here had been grievously indiscreet. So indiscreet, indeed, that if the Royal Governor knew that Harry Latimer was the author of the raid—a raid which fell nothing short of robbery and sedition, and amounted almost to an act of war—there was a rope round his neck and round the neck of every one of his twenty associates in that rebellious enterprise.

Here was something to engage his thoughts.

If his activities were known in Sir Andrew's household, it followed almost certainly that they would be known also in the Governor's. He was sufficiently acquainted with Sir Andrew to be sure that, in spite of everything that lay between Sir Andrew and himself, the baronet would be the first to bear the information to Lord William.

And then he realized that this was no mere indiscretion. Indiscretion might have betrayed some general circumstance, but it could never have betrayed all these details of which Myrtle was possessed; above all, it could never have betrayed so vital and dangerous a secret. He was assailed by the conviction that active, deliberate treachery was at work, and he perceived that he must communicate at once with his friends in Charles Town, to put them on their guard. He would write to Moultrie, his friend and one of the stanchest patriots in South Carolina.

Upon that thought he returned to the writing-table, and sat down. There Tom Izard's letter once more confronted him. Possibly Tom's gossip might yield some clue. He broke the seals, unfolded and spread the sheets, to find in them far more than he had expected.

My dear Harry [wrote the garrulous man of fashion]—Wherever you may be, and whatever the activities that are now engaging you, I advise you to suspend them, and to return and pay attention to your own concerns, which are urgently requiring your presence. Though on your return you should call me out for daring even to hint at the possibility of disloyalty in Myrtle, I cannot leave you in ignorance of what is happening at Fairgrove. You know, I think, that soon after the fight at Lexington last April, Captain Mandeville was sent down here by General Gage from Boston against the need to stiffen the Lieutenant-Governor into a proper performance of his duty by the King. Captain Mandeville has remained here ever since, and in these past two months has acquired such a grasp of provincial affairs in the South Carolina, that he continues as the guide and mentor of my brother-in-law Lord William, who arrived from England a fortnight since. Mandeville, who has now been appointed equerry to his lordship, is become the power behind the throne, the real ruler of South Carolina, in so far, of course, as South Carolina is still ruled by the Royal Government. In all this there may be nothing that is new to you. But it will be new I am sure that a kinship, real or pretended, exists between this fellow and your old guardian Sir Andrew Carey. That stiff-necked old tory has taken this pillar of royal authority to his broad bosom. The gallant captain is constantly at Fairgrove, whenever his duties do not keep him in Charles Town. Let me add on the score of Mandeville, who is undeniably a man of parts and finds great favour with the ladies, the following information obtained from a sure source. He is a notorious fortune-hunter, reduced in circumstances, and it is well known in England that he accepted service in the colonies with the avowed intention of making a rich marriage. His assets are not only a fine figure and the most agreeable manners, but the fact that he is next heir to his uncle, the Earl of Chalfont, from whom I understand that he is at present estranged. I do not myself imagine that a man of his aims and talents would be so very diligent at Fairgrove unless in Carey's household he saw a reasonable prospect of finding what he seeks. You will be very angry with me, I know. But I should not be your friend did I not risk your anger, and I would sooner risk that now than your reproaches later for not having given you timely warning.

There followed a post-scriptum:

If your engagements are such that it is impossible for you to return and attend to your own concerns, shall I pick a quarrel with the Captain, and have him out? I would have done so out of love for you before this, but that my brother-in-law would never forgive me and Sally would be furious. Poor Lord William would be helpless without his equerry, and he finds things devilish difficult as it is. Besides, I understand that, as commonly happens with such rascals, this Mandeville is a dead shot and plaguy nimble with a small-sword.

At another time the post-scriptum might have drawn a smile from Latimer. Now his face remained grave and his lips tight. A definite conclusion leapt at him from those pages. It was not a question of Sir Andrew's having informed the Governor of Harry Latimer's seditious practices. What had happened was the reverse of that. The information had been conveyed to Sir Andrew by this fellow Mandeville, of whom he had heard once or twice before of late. If Mandeville's intentions were at all as Tom Izard represented them, it would clearly be in the Captain's interest to effect an estrangement between Latimer and the Careys. And this was what had taken place.

But how had Mandeville obtained the information? One only answer was possible. By means of a spy placed in the very bosom of the councils of the colonial party.

Upon that Mr. Latimer took an instant decision. He would not write. He would go in person. He would set out at once for Charles Town, to discover this enemy agent who was placing in jeopardy the cause of freedom and the lives of those who served it.

His work in Georgia was of very secondary importance by comparison with that.