“And we’ve reasons, too!” the woman retorted sharply. “I’d not lay a hand on him myself—God forbid I should—but I’ll not shelter him. Jake is out with Colonel Marion below the Forks, and father hasn’t strength to pull a trigger, and we’re a parcel of women and ’tisn’t fair to ask us! ’Tisn’t fair to ask us, and we all alone!”
Wilmer swore softly. “D—n Phil Levi!” he said. “He’s a brave fellow—before and after! But I can’t say that I saw the color of his horse’s tail to-day!” He sat forward in his saddle, undertermined, pondering.
I had borne up pretty well so far. Pride and the habit of a soldier’s life had supported me under this man’s scrutiny. I had told myself that it was the chance of war; that I was fortunate in being alive where so many—alas, so many!—who had sat at table with me a few hours before, had fallen. But, little by little, pain had sapped my fortitude. Every second in the saddle was a second of agony; every moment that my arm hung from the shoulder was a grinding pang. And on the threshold of this house, at the sound of the women’s voices, I had thought that at last the worst was over. Here I had promised myself relief, rest, an end. The disappointment was the sharper. The refusal to take me in seemed to be fiendish, heartless, cruel. At the mere thought of it, of the barbarity of it, self-pity choked me, and I could have shed tears. “Let me be,” I muttered. “I can bear no more.”
“No, I’m d—d if I do,” Wilmer answered angrily. “I had a reason for not taking you to my place, Major, but needs must when the devil drives, and it’s there you are bound to go. We must make the best of it.” He took my rein. “It’s a long way to Salem,” he continued, “but it’s the last mile. Hold up! man, and maybe you’ll see King George yet. He certainly ought to be obliged to you,” he added with a dry laugh. He kicked up his horse.
I moved away with him, biting off the prayer that rose to my lips that he would let me be. I had no other thought now but to persist, to bear, to keep the saddle; and the croak of the frogs, the plaintive notes of the mocking bird in the thicket, the change from clearing to forest and again from forest to open fields—the open fields of a considerable plantation—all passed as the scenes pass in a nightmare; now whelming me in despair, as the blackness of the trees closed about us, now lifting me to hope as lights broke out, twinkling before us. Poor Ferguson, the fight, Simms, my fall, all receded to an infinite distance; and only one thing, only one thought, one aspiration remained—the craving to rest, to lie down, to come to the end of pain. My shoulder was on fire; my arm was red-hot iron. One moment I burned with fever; the next I turned cold and faint and sick.
Only a mile! But from Newgate to Tyburn is only a mile, yet how much lies between them for the wretch condemned to suffer on the gallows.
At last I was aware that my companion had alighted—perhaps he had done so more than once—to pull down a sliprail. This time, whether it was the last, or the only time, the rattle of the timber provoked an outburst of barking, and presently, amid the baying of dogs, a nigger’s voice called out to know who was there. The alarm once given—and the hounds gave it pretty loudly—other voices joined in, in tones of alarm as well as joy. Lights glanced here and there; in a twinkling there were people about us. Black faces and white eyeballs appeared for an instant and sank into shadow. We halted before the porch of a long wooden house, that declared itself, here plainly and there dimly, as the lights fell upon it.
I could only endure. But surely the end was come now! Surely there would be rest for me here. They would come to me, they would do something for me presently.
Wilmer had gone up on the porch, and there was a woman—a woman in white with her arms about his neck. He was soothing her and she was laughing and crying at once; and about them and about me—who sat in the saddle below, in the dull lethargy of exhaustion—shone a ring of smiling, black faces. And then—here was something new, something startling and alarming—the woman was looking down at me, and speaking quickly and sharply; speaking almost as those other women had spoken at Barter’s. She was pointing at me. And the niggers were no longer laughing but staring, all staring at me. I gathered that they were frightened.
It could not be that there was no rest for me here? It could not be that they would not take me in here! Oh, it was impossible, it was inhuman, it was devilish! But I began to tremble. “Anywhere, anywhere but here!” the woman was saying. “It is madness to think of it. You know that, father! Why did you bring him here? When you knew! When you knew, father!”