I said that his sentiment did him honor; adding that I had once had the pleasure of meeting Mistress Arnold while she was yet Mistress Margaret Shippen in Philadelphia.
“A dear lady, with a heart of pure gold,” he said half musingly. And then more pointedly to me: “She remembers you, Captain—which is the chief reason why I am going to let you be the bearer of this farewell note of mine. You can find the house again?”
“Surely,” I replied; and for the instant I forgot my sworn purpose in sudden gratitude to him for putting me so easily and naturally on the way to a fulfilment of my own desires.
“She will see you—as she might not wish to see another,” he continued. “Tell her only cheerful things, Captain Page. Though she does not know our destination or our purposes, she is weighed down with a presentiment of evil to come. That is why I am writing and sending you. There are limits to the sternest fortitude, and I—”
He broke off abruptly, and I could have sworn there were honest tears in his eyes. But by this time I was clinging blindly to the kidnapping purpose that was my only reason for the present hazards, telling myself if that should fail I should see another side of him soon enough, when he should be leading his ravages against my home land. At twenty-two I had yet to learn that no man, however despicable he may be, is all villain; that there will be some meliorating drop of blood in the worst criminal that was ever righteously hanged for his sins.
Notwithstanding, some inkling of this was beginning to dawn on me, and like a voice out of the air Colonel Hamilton’s words came back to me “—But to go as you must go, and use guile and subterfuge ... truly, Captain Page, you must sort this out for yourself; to determine how far in such a cause an officer and a man of honor may go. I lay no commands upon you.” I was thinking hard, trying to do as Mr. Hamilton had given me leave to do: to determine how far a decent sense of honor would let me go, when Arnold’s voice broke into my reverie.
“You will go with the letter, and take your own time—so much time as she shall require of you,” he directed, giving me the sealed packet. “If you should not find me on your return, Lieutenant Castner will meet you at the shipping wharf and assign you to your vessel.”
This was my dismissal, and I took it gladly for more than one reason. I hoped I should never see this man again until I could more honestly hate him as he deserved—another wish for which I was to pray God’s forgiveness in the time to come.
The streets were quiet as I took my solitary way through them, and over the fort the sky was reddened as if a bonfire were burning on the parade ground. Passing the green I saw the pedestal upon which the lead-gilt equestrian statue of King George had stood, the statue that the men of ’76 had pulled down in their jubilation over the promulgation of the Declaration of Independence, and which had afterward been melted into bullets to be fired at this same Third George’s soldiery.
My way also led past the gloomy sugar-house prison where, in the frightful summer of ’77, so many patriots were confined that not a third of them could get breathing space at the deep port-hole windows; where our brave fellows stayed and rotted and died a dozen in the day rather than purchase their freedom by enrolling themselves in the king’s army, as they were given leave to do.