“I had nothing to do with it,” I said stoutly.
“Innocent!”
“That is what I am.”
“Well, you will have to persuade my lord of it,” he retorted. “And you’ll find your work prepared for you! Francis Rawdon-Hastings is in no mean rage, my lad. The sooner you placate him the better. I hope the lady has come to give evidence for you?”
I pooh-poohed this, but I took his hint and I went straight to Headquarters, leaving him mightily amused. There, the storm was not slow to break over me. My conduct was disgraceful, contumacious, subversive of all discipline, flat mutiny. I had taken advantage of my position and his lordship’s friendship, and the rest. I had collogued with convicted rebels, I had wandered over the country with suspected persons. I should be tried by Court Martial, I should find, whoever I was, that I could not do these things with impunity! D—d if I could!
When I could be heard—and Webster, generally kind and easy-going, was almost as bad as the Irishman, “But, my lord,” I said, “What had I to do with the escape? It was not I who permitted the lady to visit her father?”
That hit them between wind and water. They stared. “Then it was she?” my lord exclaimed.
“Who took in the disguise, my lord? As I have since learned—it was. And I venture to say that there is not an officer in the service in your lordship’s position, or in any other, who would punish a daughter for the attempt to save her father’s life!”
“The devil is that she did save it, sir!” he answered with vexation. But he could not regain his old fluency, and presently he asked me to tell him all I knew. I did so, feeling sure that he would be unable to withhold his admiration; and the final result as far as I was concerned was a reprimand and ten days confinement to camp—and an intolerable amount of jesting! Some wag, Paton, I am afraid, discovered that her name was Constantia and adding it to our Osgodby motto, the single word “Virtus,” scrawled a whole series of “Virtus et Constantia” over my books and papers. Perhaps in a silly way I liked it.
Certainly this was the least of my troubles. The greatest, or at any rate, that which tried me most sharply, was the fact that I could not communicate with Constantia without laying myself open to suspicion. For several months I received no news of her and had to content myself with doing all that I could to procure the release of her brother. Of me, indeed, she heard through the mysterious channels which were open to her side. But she was too thoughtful of me and too careful of my honor to approach me through them. At length there came a change laden with bitter sorrow to her. Her father fell in the engagement at Guildford Court House in a gallant but vain attempt to stem the flight of the Northern Militia. Stricken to the heart—though she had the satisfaction of knowing that he had fallen on the field of honor—she abandoned the Bluff which, exposed to incursions from both sides, was no longer a safe place for her. With Aunt Lyddy and Mammy Jacks she came down to Charles Town.