“Good heavens!” I ejaculated. “But that inculpates—”
“Quite true,” he agreed gravely. “It inculpates a British officer; a man who has been forced upon me as an aide; a man who hates and despises me as heartily as Mr. Washington does. Captain Page, if you could have seen the face of the officer, who sat before the fire last night in the boat-builder’s house, you would have seen the face of Lieutenant Charles Castner!”
XVIII
IN WHICH THE WIND KEEPS REVELS
WHEN Arnold gave me his climax by pronouncing Castner’s name, I saw at once to what conclusion he had been working all through my story of the night’s happenings. He had imagined Castner and some accomplice of his under my figuring of the two who were really Champe and myself.
It must not be set down as hypocrisy if I say that I was sorry. While it was doubtless true that Castner was doing his best to convict us of treachery, I knew that he believed Askew’s story, and that in seeking to have us apprehended he was merely doing what appeared to be—and what certainly was—his plain soldier duty. For that reason it pained me to see him involved, even in a traitor’s imaginings; but there was no help for it.
Having shown me his mind, Arnold next proceeded to lay his commands upon me; and now I saw how his good angel, if he ever had one, had deserted him entirely.
“With Sergeant Champe for your subordinate, you will constitute yourself my bodyguard from this time on until we join the army in the fleet, Captain Page,” he said, when we had thrashed out the matter of the attempt upon his liberty to the final straw. “The convoy frigate will return in two or three days at the farthest, but until I go aboard, I wish to be assured of the presence of men upon whom I can rely.”
If I bowed very low at this, it was only because I feared he might see and read the exultation in my face. Now, indeed, I thought, the Lord had delivered this traitor helpless into my hands. Alone in the house with him at night, and with the sunken boat raised and fitted for service, it would go hard with us now if we could not wring complete success out of all the foregone failures.
Conning all this over afterward, it seemed passing strange that no hint of a rising obstacle, bigger than any we had yet encountered, came to me at that time. War and its cruel necessities are frightful levelers, breaking down many ideals and brushing aside all the finer scruples. Though I was far from recognizing it at the moment, the desire to carry out the kidnapping purpose had come to be a purely brutal obsession, recking nothing of the common humanities, and completely losing sight of the fact that Arnold, by his misguided trusting of us, no less than by his many kindnesses to me, was making an unconscious appeal too strong to be disregarded. But at that moment there was nothing in me to which the appeal could address itself; nor could there be until an angel from heaven should bring me the fire to re-light the candle which the war-winds had blown so gustily into extinguishment.
When I was released and suffered to go below-stairs, I could scarcely wait to get Champe thoroughly awake before beginning to coach him in the new part he must play. But when he sensed the astounding turn things had taken, his loud guffaws made me clap a hand over his mouth.