"What is the purport of this interruption?" asked DuBois as the volume was handed to him.
"This book fell from the prisoner's jacket last night and John VanBrunt, the jailor, picked it up. This morning he noticed that it had been freshly bound, and he ripped open the leather and found this letter between the boards."
The letter was eagerly examined, but it was in cipher and nothing could be made of it. One thing, however, instantly struck Judge Matthews; it was written on paper presumably only to be obtained in the Commander-in-Chief's quarters. This discovery caused the greatest sensation, and Harry was angrily questioned as to how the letter got inside the binding of a book he was carrying.
"The book is one of my schoolbooks," said Harry. "I am a poor counter, and it is, as you see, a Ready Reckoner. I use its tables in my business calculations constantly; it was falling to pieces, and a friend offered CHAPTER VII.
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to bind it afresh for me. As for the letter, I did not put it there. I do not know who put it there. I do not know a word of its meaning. It may be an old puzzle, put there for want of a better piece of paper. That is all I can tell."
"You can tell the name of the friend who rebound your book?"
"No, I cannot."
"Will not, you mean?"
"As you say."
A recess was taken at this point of the examination, and the Judges retired to consider what ought to be done.
"The letter must, of course, be laid before General Clinton at once," said DuBois; "and as for the prisoner, there can now be no doubt of his treason. I am in favor of hanging him at sunset to-day."
"I think," answered Matthews, "we had better give the young man a day to tell us what he knows. This letter proves that there are worse traitors, and more powerful ones, behind him. It is our duty to at least try and reach them through their emissary."
"He will never tell."
"The shadow of the gallows is a great persuader. This cipher message is a most important affair. I propose to make the sentence of death to-morrow at sunset, with the promise of life if he gives us the information we want."
Matthews carried his point, and Neil Semple arrived at the court house just as the sentence in accord with this opinion was pronounced. Harry hardly appeared to notice it; his gaze was fixed upon his father. The words had transfigured, not petrified him. His soul was at his eyes, and that fiery particle went through those on whom he looked and infected them with fear or with sympathy. He had risen to his feet when his son did, and every one looked at him, rather than at the prisoner. For mental, or spiritual, stature is as real a thing as physical; and in the day of trial this large-souled man, far from shrinking, appeared to grow more imposing.
He had a look about him of a mountain among hills. The accepted son of a divine Father, he knew himself to be of celestial race, and he scorned the sentence of shameful death that had fallen from the lips of man upon his only son.
As he turned to the door he smiled bravely on Harry, and his smile was full of promise. He declined all help from both Medway and Semple, and was almost the first to leave the room. The crowd fell away from him as he passed; though he neither spoke nor moved his hands, it fell away as if he pushed it aside. Yet it was a pitiful, friendly crowd; not a man in it but would have gladly helped him to save his boy's life.
"What will he do?" asked Medway of his companion.
"I cannot tell," answered Semple. "He has some purpose, for he walks like a man who knows what he intends and is in a hurry to perform it."
"This is a very bad case. I see not how, in any ordinary way, the young man can be saved. You are a lawyer, what think you?"
"Unless there are extraordinary ways of helping him; there are no ordinary ones. He is undoubtedly a rebel spy. Any court, either police or court-martial, would consider his life justifiably forfeit."
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"Have you any influence, secret or open?"
"None whatever. If I had, we should not have been fined. Bradley may have, but I doubt it."
"I think he has. Men are not silent and observant year after year for nothing. But we must not trust to Bradley.
Can I see Miss Semple at seven o'clock this evening? I know, madame your mother is averse to Englishmen, but in this case----"
"Miss Semple will certainly see you."
Then the young men parted and Neil returned to his home, for he did not dare to intrude his presence at that hour between the distressed father and daughter. It was hard enough to have Maria to meet; and the moment she heard his step she came weeping to him.
"Tell me, Uncle Neil," she cried, "what have they done to Harry? I am sick with suspense. Are they going to kill--to hang him?"
Her voice had sunk to a terrified whisper, and he looked pitifully at her and drew her within his embrace. "My dear Maria!" then his lips refused to say more, and he suffered his silence to confirm her worst fears. After a few moments he added:
"His only hope is in Lord Medway's influence. I think Medway may do something."
"Oh!" she sobbed "if he can only save his life! I would be content never to see him again! Only ask him to save his life. If Harry is killed I shall feel like a murderer as long as I live. I shall not dare to look at myself, no one will want to look at me. I shall die of grief and shame! Uncle, pity me! pity me!"
"My dear Maria, it is not your fault."
"It is, it is! He took his life in his hand just to see me."
"He was a selfish fool to do such a thing. See what misery he has made. It is his own fault and folly."
"Every one will despise me. I cannot bear it. People will say, 'She deserves it all. Why did she meet the young man unknown to her friends? See what she has done to her grandparents and her uncle.' People like Captain DeVries will frown at me and cross the street; and their wives and children will go into their houses when I come near and peep at me through the windows, and the mothers will say, 'Look at her! look at her! She brought a fine young man to the gallows, and her friends to shame and poverty.' Uncle, how am I to bear it?"
"I think, my poor child, Lord Medway has some plan. Money unbars all doors but heaven's, and Medway has plenty of money. Besides, General Clinton is easily moved by him. I do not think Clinton will refuse Medway anything; certainly not, if Harry will tell who wrote the cipher message he was carrying."
"But Harry will not tell, will he?"
"I feel sure he will not."
"If he did, he would deserve to die. I would not shed a tear for him. As for Quentin Macpherson!--I wish that I was a man. I would cut his tongue out."
"Maria!"
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"I would, truly. Then I would flog him to death."
Neil's dark face flushed crimson; his fingers twitched; he looked with approval and admiration at the passionate girl. "One hundred years ago--in Scotland," he said, "I would have answered, 'Yes! He deserves it!
I will do it for you!'"
"It is so wretched to be a woman! You can go out, see for yourself, hear for yourself; a girl can only suffer.
Hour after hour, all night long, all day long, I have walked the floor in misery. How does Agnes bear it? She was cross, and sent me away this morning."
"She looks very ill; but she is calm, and not without hope. She has spoken to God and been comforted. Can you not do so?"
"No. I am not Agnes. I cannot pray. I want to do something. Oh, dear me! all this shame and sorrow because I had a little love-making with her brother and we did not tell the whole town about it. It is too great a punishment! It is not just nor kind. What wrong have I done? Yet how I have to suffer! No, I cannot pray, but if I can do anything, see any one, be of any earthly help or use----"
"I think Medway has some scheme, if Clinton should fail, and that this scheme requires a woman's help."
"I hope it does! I hope it does! I will run any risk."
"Medway is coming here at seven o'clock. He wishes distinctly to see you. Run what risk you choose. I am not afraid of you. Nothing will make you forget you are Maria Semple."
"Thank you, Uncle Neil. Lord Medway and I have always been good friends. He will not ask me to do anything wrong; and if he did, I would not do it."
The prospect of his visit somewhat soothed Maria. Though Medway had never said a word of love to her, she knew she was adorable in his eyes as well as she knew the fact of her own existence. Women need no formal declarations; they have considered a lover's case and decided it many a time before he comes to actual confession. In her great trouble she hoped to find this love sufficient in some way for the alleviation of Harry's desperate position. But though she really was in the greatest sorrow, she was not oblivious to her beauty. She knew if she had a favor to ask, it was the best reason she had to offer. So, as the hour approached, she bathed her face and put on the negligee of scarlet silk, which was one of her most becoming house costumes. She thought her intentional, pleasing carelessness of dress would only be noticed in its effect; but Lord Medway was much in love, and love is an occult teacher. He noticed at once the studied effort to make grief attractive--the glowing silk of her gown, the bronze slippers, the bewitching abandon of her dark, curling hair against the amber cushion of the chair on which she sat. And though he had an astonishing plan for Harry's life to propose, Maria's careful negligence gave him hope and courage. For if he had been quite indifferent to her, she would have been more indifferent to the dress she was to meet him in.
Nothing else in her surroundings spoke of love or happiness. The best parlor had been opened for his reception; but the few sticks of wood sobbed and sung wearily on the cold hearth, and the room was chill and half-lighted and full of shadows. He noticed, nothing, however, but the lovely girl who came to meet him as he entered it, and who, even in the gloom, showed signs of the violent grief which she soon ceased to restrain.
For his tenderness loosed afresh all her complaining; and he encouraged her to open her heart, and to weep with that passionate abandon youth finds comfort in. But when she was weary and had sobbed herself into silence he said:
"Miss Semple--may I call you Maria?"
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"Yes, if you will be my friend, if you will help me."
"I am your friend, and if there is help in man I will get it for you."
"I want Harry's life; he risked it for me. If they kill him, all my days I shall see that sight and feel that horror. I shall go mad, or die."
"Would you be content if I saved his life? He may be sent to prison."
"There is hope in that. I could bear it better."
"He will certainly be forbidden to come near New York, for----"
"Only let him live."
"He is without doubt a rebel."
"So am I, from this day forth."
"And a spy."
"I wish I could be one. There is nothing I would not tell."
He looked at her with the unreasoning adoration of a lover; then taking her cold hands between his own, he said in a slow, fervent voice:
"If you will promise to marry me, I will save the young man's life."
"You are taking advantage of my trouble."
"I know I am. A man who loves as I do must make all events go to further his love."
"But I love Harry Bradley."
"You think so. If you had met him under ordinary circumstances you would not have looked twice at him. It was the romance, the secrecy, the danger, the stolen minutes--all that kind of thing. There is no root in such love."
"I shall never cease to love Harry."
"I will teach you to forget him."
"No, no! How can you ask me in an hour like this? It is cruel."
"Love is cruel. Sooner or later love wounds; for love is selfish. I want you for my wife, Maria. I put aside so,"
and he swept his hand outward, "everything that comes in the way."
"You want to buy me! You say plainly, 'I will give you your lover's life for yourself.' I cannot listen to you!"
"Be sensible, Maria. This infatuation for a rebel spy is infatuation. There is nothing real to it. If the war were over, and you saw young Bradley helping his father in his shop and going about in ordinary clothes about ordinary business, you would wonder what possessed you ever to have fancied yourself in love with him."
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"Oh, but you are mistaken!"
"You would say to yourself, 'I wish I had listened to Ernest Medway. He would have taken me all over the happy, beautiful world, to every lovely land, to every splendid court. He would have surrounded me with a love that no trouble could put aside; he would have given me all that wealth can buy; he would have loved me more and more until the very last moment of my life, and followed me beyond life with longings that would soon have brought us together again.' Yes, Maria, that is how I love you."
"Harry loves me."
"Not he! If he had loved you he would not, for his own pleasure, have run any risk of giving you this trouble.
What did I say? Love is selfish, love wounds----"
"You wound me. You are selfish."
"I am. I love you. You seemed to belong to me that first hour I saw you. I will not give you up."
"If you really loved me, if you were really noble, you would save Harry without any conditions."
"Perhaps. I am not really noble. I can't trust such fine sentiments. They will lead, I know not where, only away from you. I tell you plainly, I will save the young fellow's life, if it be possible, on condition that you promise to marry me."
"I am not eighteen years old yet."
"I will wait any reasonable time."
"Till the end of the war?"
"Yes, provided it is over when you are twenty-one."
She pondered this answer, looking up covertly a moment at the handsome, determined face watching her.
Three years held innumerable possibilities. It was a period very far away. Lord Medway might have ceased to love her before it was over; he might have fallen in love with some other girl. He might die; she might die; the wide Atlantic ocean might be between them. The chances were many in her favor. She remained silent, considering them, and Medway watched with a curious devotion the expressions flitting across her face.
"Think well, Maria," he said at last, letting her hands drop gently from his own. "Remember that I shall hold you to every letter of your promise. Do not try to make yourself believe that if Bradley escapes and you come weeping and entreating to me I shall give way. I shall not. I want to be very plain with you. I insist that you understand, Harry Bradley is to be given up finally and forever. He is to have no more to do with your life. I am planning for our future; I do not think of him at all. When he leaves New York to-morrow he must be to you as if he had never been."
"Suppose I do not promise to marry you, what then?"
"Nothing. I shall go away till you want me, and send for me."
"Oh!"
"Yes."
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"And not even try to save Harry's life? Not even try?"
"Why should I? Better men than Harry Bradley have died in the same cause."
She rose and walked across the room a few times, and then, being cold, came back to the fire, knelt on the rug and warmed her hands. He watched her intently, but did not speak. She was trying to find something which should atone to her better self for such a contract. It came with the thought of Harry's father and Agnes. For their sakes, she ought to do all she could. Harry, for her sake, had taken his life in his hand and forfeited it; surely, then, it was right that she, having the power to do so, should redeem it. Better that he should live for others than die for her. Better that she should lose him in the living world than in the silent grave. Through Agnes she would hear of his comings and goings, his prosperity, and his happiness; but there would come no word to her from the dead whether at all he lived and loved, or not. With a quick, decisive motion she rose and looked at the man who was waiting in such motionless, but eager, silence.
"A life for a life!" she said simply, offering Medway her hand.
"You mean that you will be my wife?"
"Yes. I will marry you when the war is over."
"Or when you are twenty-one, even if it be not over?"
"Yes."
"Now, then," he said, "you are my betrothed;" and he drew her within his arm. "My honor, my hopes, my happiness, are in your hands."
"They are safe. Though I am only a girl, I know what my promise means. I shall keep it."
"I believe you. And you will love me? You will learn to love me, Maria?"
"I will do my best to make you happy, you ought not to ask more."
"Very well." He looked at her with a new and delightful interest. She was his own, her promise had been given. He could, indeed, tell by her eyes,--languid, but obstinately masterful--that she would not be easily won, but he did not dislike that; he would conquer her by the strength of his own love; he would make her understand what love really meant. Still, he felt that for the present it would be better to go away, so he said:
"You shall hear from me as soon as possible. Try and sleep, my dear one. You may tell yourself, 'Ernest is doing all that can be done.'" Then he took her hands and kissed them, and in a moment she was alone. Her heart was heavy as lead, and she was cold and trembling, but she was no longer in the shadow of Death.
Medway's face, turned to her in the semi-darkness of the open door, was full of hope; and there was an atmosphere of power about the man which assured her of success; but she truly felt at that hour as if it was bought with her life. She was in the dungeon of despair; there seemed nothing to hope for, nothing to desire, in all the to-morrows of the years before her. "And I may have sixty years to live," she moaned; for youth exaggerates every feeling, and would be grieved to believe that its sorrows were not immortal.
She pushed the dying fire safely together, looked mournfully round the darksome room, closed and locked the door. Then Neil came toward her and asked if Lord Medway could do anything, and she answered, "He can save Harry's life; he has promised that. I suppose he will be imprisoned, but his life is saved. What did grandmother say about Lord Medway being here?"
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"She has never been down stairs. She does not know he was here."
"Then we will not tell her. What is the use?"
"None at all. Father and mother have their own trouble. They are very anxious and almost broken-hearted at the indignity put upon our family. I heard my father crying as I passed his door and mother trying to comfort him, but crying, too. It made my heart stand still."
"It is my fault! It is my fault! Oh! what a wicked, miserable girl I am! What can I do? What can I do?"
"Try and sleep, and get a little strength for tomorrow. Within the next twenty-four hours Harry Bradley will be saved or dead."
"I think he is saved. I am sure of it."
"Then try and sleep; will you try, Maria?"
"Yes."
She said the word with a hopeless indifference, half nullifying the promise. Then, lighting her candle, she went slowly to her room. Oh, but the joy that is dead weighs heavy! Maria could hardly trail her body upstairs. Her life felt haggard and thin, as if it was in its eleventh hour; and she was too physically exhausted to stretch out her hand into the dark and find the clasp of that Unseen Hand always waiting the hour of need, strong to uphold, and ready to comfort. No, she could not pray; she had lost Harry: there was nothing else she desired. In her room there was a picture of the crucifixion, and she cast her eyes up to the Christ hanging there, forsaken in the dark, and wondered if He pitied her, but the pang of unpermitted prayer made her dumb in her lonely grief.
Alas, God Christ! along the weary lands, What lone, invisible Calvaries are set! What drooping brows with dews of anguish wet, What faint outspreading of unwilling hands Bound to a viewless cross, with viewless bands.
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CHAPTER VIII.
THE HELP OF JACOB COHEN.
On leaving Maria, Lord Medway went straight to his friend General Clinton. He had just dined, and having taken much wine, was bland and good-tempered. Medway's entrance delighted him. "I have had my orderly riding about for a couple of hours looking for you," he said. "Where have you been Ernest? My dinner wanted flavor without you."
"I have been seeing some people about this son of Bradley's that the Police Court has in its clutches.
By-the-bye, why don't you put a stop to its infamous blackmailing? As a court, it is only a part of Howe's treachery, formed for the very purpose of extortion, and of bringing His Majesty's Government into disrepute.
Abolish the whole affair, Henry. You are court sufficient, in a city under martial law."
"All you say is true, Ernest, and there is no doubt that Matthews and DuBois and the rest of them are the worst of oppressors. But I am expected to subjugate the whole South this winter, and I must leave New York in three or four weeks now."
"The Government expects miracles of you, Henry; but if military miracles are possible, you are the soldier to work them. I have found out to-day why you are not more popular; it is this Police Court, and they call it a Military Police Court, I believe; and all its tyrannies are laid to you because your predecessor instituted it.
They might as well lay Howe's love for rebels to you."
"Speaking of rebels, I hear most suspicious things of Bradley's son. In fact, he is a spy. Matthews tells me that he ought to have been hung to-day. There is something unusual about the affair and I wanted to talk to you concerning it. Bradley himself has been here and said things that have made me uncomfortable--you know how he brings the next world into this one; Smith has been here, also, asking me to pardon the fellow, because the feeling in the city about Tryon's doings in Connecticut is yet like smoldering fire in the hearts of the burghers. Powell has been here asking me to pardon, because the spy's father has a thousand bridles to make for the troops going South, and he thinks hanging the youth would kill his father, or at least incapacitate him for work, and Rivington has just left, vowing he will not answer for consequences if his newspaper does not sympathize with the Bradleys. If Bradley's son had been the arch-rebel's son, there could hardly have been more petitions for his life. I don't understand the case. What do you say?"
"That Matthews and DuBois have made a tremendous blunder in fining the Semples for disloyalty in the matter. I will warrant the Semples' loyalty with my own."
"So would I. It is indisputable."
"Yet the Elder has been fined two hundred pounds, and Mr. Neil Semple one hundred pounds, because Bradley's son tied his boat at their landing; a fact they were as ignorant of as you or I. And you get the blame and ill-will of such tyranny, Henry. It is shameful!"
"It is," answered Clinton in a tone of self-pity; "the boat, however, was full of goods, about which the young man would say nothing at all."
"Women's bits of lace and ribbons; a mended fan, and some gloves and stockings."
"There was also a Bradley saddle."
"Yes, Bradley acknowledged it."
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"Then father or son ought to have given information about it."
"It was their business; and if either you or I were brought before such an irresponsible court and such autocratic judges, I dare say we should consider silence our most practical weapon of defense. In Harry Bradley's position, I should have acted precisely as he did. The whole affair resolves itself into a lovers' tryst; the lad would not give the lady a disagreeable publicity; he would die first. You yourself would shield any good woman with your life, Henry, you know you would."
And Clinton thought of the bewitching Mrs. Badely and the lovely Miss Blundell, and answered with an amazing air of chivalry, "Indeed I would!"
"Have you ever noticed a Captain Macpherson, belonging to your own Highland regiment?"
"Who could help noticing him? He is always the most prominent figure in every room."
"He will be so no longer. He was almost hissed out of court to-day, and I was told the demonstrations on the street sent him stamping and swearing to his quarters. Well, he is the villain of this pitiful little drama. The heroine is that lovely granddaughter of Semples."
"I know her; a little darling! and as good as she is beautiful."
Then Medway, with an inimitable scornful mimicry told the story of the pebble and the note, the alarm of the Highland troops, the arrest of the Elder and his son, the subsequent proceedings in court, the sympathy of the people with the Semples, and the contempt which no one tried to conceal for the informer. Then, changing his voice and attitude, he described Bradley's speechless grief, the Semple's wounded loyalty and indignation, and finally the passionate sorrow of the mistress and sister of the doomed man.
"It is the most pitiful story of the age," he continued, "and if I were you, Henry, I would not permit civilians to usurp the power you ought to hold in your own hand. You have to bear the blame of all the crimes committed by this infamous court. Pardon the prisoner with a stroke of your pen, if only to put these fellows in their proper place."
"But there was a cipher message in his possession--here it is. It was in the binding of a book he carried in his pocket."
"He says he did not put it there. No one can read it. If you found a letter in the Babylonish speech, would you hang a man because you could not read the message he carried!"
"Special pleading, Ernest. And he ought to have told who rebound the book, and to whom he was carrying it.
The paper on which the cipher is written is my paper. Some one, not far from me, must have taken it."
"Suppose you question Smith?"
"Do you intend to say that Smith is a traitor?"
"I say, ask Smith. I have no doubt he can read the Babylonish for you--if he will."
"You alarm me. Am I surrounded by enemies?"
"I think you have many round you. I have warned you often. My advice to you at this time is to pardon young Bradley."
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"Why are you taking such an interest in young Bradley?"
"I have no secrets from you, he is my rival."
"Preposterous! How could he rival you in anything?"
"Yet he is my rival in the affections of Maria Semple."
"Then let him hang! He will be out of your way."
"No, he would be forever in my way. She would idolize him, make him a hero and a saint, and worship him in some secret shrine of memory as long as she lives. I am going to marry her, and I want no secret shrines. He is a very good-looking, ordinary young man; only the circumstances of the time lifted him out of the average and the commonplace. Let him go scot free that he may find his level which is far below the horizon of my peerless Maria."
"I don't think I can let him go 'scot free,' Ernest. I should offend many if I did, and it would be made a precedent; suppose I imprison him during the continuance of the war!"
"That is too romantic. Maria would haunt the prison and contrive some way of communication. He would still be her hero and her lover."
"And you will marry this infatuated girl?"
"Yes, a thousand times, yes! Her love for that boy is mere sentiment. I will teach her what love really means.
She has promised to marry me--if I save Harry Bradley's life."
"I never saw you taken so with any woman before."
"I never cared for a woman before. The moment I saw Maria Semple it was different. I knew that she belonged to me. Henry, you are my best friend, give me my wife; no one but you can do so."
"Ernest! Ernest! You ask a great thing."
"Not too great f