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Read Ebook: The Loyalist A Story of the American Revolution by Barrett James Francis
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Ebook has 220 lines and 10436 words, and 5 pages
"He read it?"
"There! There! I am joking. He did not read it, but I did have it in my hand, and I told him about you and that I was going back to take you with me."
Satisfied, she allowed herself to assume a more relaxed composure.
"You are going to destroy it, aren't you?"
He took it from his pocket and looked at it. She, too, glanced at it, and then at him.
"May I keep it? I treasure every word of it, you know."
"Did you but know how it was composed, you might ridicule me."
"I suppose you closed yourself behind some great veil to shut out the world from your view. Your mind toiled with thought until you were resolved upon the heroic. There was no scheme nor formula; your quill ran on and on in obedience to the flood of ideas which inspired it."
She lapsed into meditation; but she recovered herself immediately.
"No," she shook her head slowly though steadily. "At midnight with the aid of a little candle which burned itself out quite before the end."
He looked up sharply.
"That night?"
She nodded.
He put his arms around her and drew her close. She made no resistance, but allowed herself to fall into his embrace.
"Marjorie!" he whispered.
She yielded both her hands to his grasp and felt them compressed within it.
"You were not hurt at my seeming indiscretion?"
"I told you in my letter that I was not."
"Then you do love me?"
She drew back a little as if to glance at him.
"You know that I do," was the soft, reassuring answer.
"Won't you let me hear you say it?" he pleaded.
Reaching out, she put both arms about him and offered her lips to his, whispering at the same time only what he was destined to hear.
Presently the old clock began to strike the hour of five.
"Father! Father! Where are you? Arnold has betrayed! He has betrayed his country!"
Breathless, Marjorie rushed into the hallway, leaving the door ajar behind her. It was late in the afternoon of a September day. The air was soft and hazy, tempered with just the chill of evening that comes at this time of the year before sundown.
More than two months had passed, months crowded with happiness which had filled her life with fancy. Her engagement to Captain Meagher had been announced, quietly and simply; their marriage was to take place in the fall. Day after day sped by and hid themselves in the records of time until the event, anxiously awaited, yet equally dreaded, was but a bare month distant. It would be a quiet affair after all, with no ostentation or display; but that would in no wise prevent her from looking her prettiest.
And so on this September afternoon while she was visiting the shops for the purpose of discovering whatever tempting and choice bits of ware they might have to offer, she thought she heard the blast of a trumpet from the direction of the balcony of the old Governor's Mansion. Attracted by the sound, which recalled to her mind a former occasion when the news of the battle of Monmouth was brought to the city by courier and announced to the public, she quickened her steps in the direction of the venerable building. True, a man was addressing the people who had congregated beneath the balcony. Straining every faculty she caught the awful news.
Straightway she sped homewards, running as often as her panting breath would allow. She did not wait to open the door, but seemed to burst through it.
"What was that, child?" her father asked quickly as he met her in the dining-room.
"Arnold ... Arnold ..." she repeated, waiting to catch her breath.
"Has betrayed, you say?"
"West Point."
"My God! We are lost."
He threw his hands heavenwards and started across the floor.
"What is it, Marjorie?" asked the mother, who now stood in the passageway, a corner of her apron held in both hands, a look of wonder and suspicion full upon her.
"No, Father!" the girl replied, apparently heedless of her mother's presence, "West Point is saved. Arnold has gone."
"Let him go. But West Point is still ours? Thank God! He is with the British, I suppose?"
"So they say. The plot was discovered in the nick of time. His accomplice was captured and the papers found upon him."
"When did this happen?"
"Only a few days ago. The courier was dispatched at once to the members of Congress. The message was delivered today."
"And General Arnold tried to sell West Point to the British?" commented Mrs. Allison, who had listened as long as possible to the disconnected story. "A scoundrel of a man."
"Three Americans arrested a suspicious man in the neighborhood of Tarrytown. Upon searching him they discovered some papers in the handwriting of Arnold containing descriptions of the fortress. They took him for a spy."
"I thought as much," said Mrs. Allison. "Didn't I tell you that Arnold would do something like that? I knew it. I knew it."
"Thank God he is not one of us," was Mr. Allison's grave reply. "His act would only serve to fan into fury the dormant flames of Pope Day."
"This is an act of vengeance," Marjorie reflected. "He never forgot his court-martial, and evidently sought his country's ruin in revenge. Adversities he could contend with; humiliation he could not endure."
The little group presented a varied scene. The girl, young, tender, was plainly animated with a strong undercurrent of excitement which thrilled her entire frame, flushing her cheeks and sparkling in her eyes. Her tender years, her inexperience with the world, her guileless mind and frank open manner had not yet prepared her for the enormity of the crime which had of a sudden been flashed full upon her. For the moment realization had given way to wonder. She sensed only the magnitude of the tragedy without its atrocious and more insidious details. On the other hand there was the father, composed and imperturbable, to whom the disclosure of this scheme of the blackest treason was but another chapter added to the year of disasters which was just coming to a close. His more astute mind, schooled by long experience with the world and its artifices, had taught him to view the transit of events with a certain philosophy, a sort of pragmatic philosophy, with reference to the causes and the results of events and how they bore on the practical utility of all concerned; and finally the mother, who in her devout and pious way, saw only the Holy Will of God working in all things for His own praise and glory.
"And they found the dispatches in his own writing?" the father asked deliberately.
"In his stockings, beneath the soles of his feet."
Again there was silence.
"He is a prisoner?"
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