Perhaps it was as well that they did not go, for I was shaky on my legs and I feared nothing so much as that I should break down through bodily weakness. Their presence braced me and gave me the less time to think. Tom’s fingers trembled so much that he was not as useful as he might have been, but with his help I got somehow into my clothes—with many a twinge and one groan that I could not check. The injured arm was already bound to my side, but by passing the other arm through the sleeve of a coat—Wilmer’s I suppose, for my uniform was not wearable—and looping the garment loosely round my neck, I was clothed after a fashion. With these men looking sombrely on, and their shadows, cast by the wavering light of the candle, rising and falling on the ceiling, and the hurry and silence, broken now and again by some, “Lord ha’ mercy” from the outer room, it was such a toilet as men make in Newgate but surely nowhere else.
“That’ll do,” Levi cried by and by. “You’ll not catch cold.”
“We’ll answer for that!” chimed in another. “Bring him on! He’ll be warm enough where he’s going! We’ve wasted more time than enough already!”
My head swam for a moment. Then, thank God, the dizziness left me and I got myself in hand. I thought it right to make a last protest, however useless. “Note,” I said, raising my head, “all here that I go unwillingly. These gentlemen do not intend me to reach Salisbury, and I warn them that they will be answerable to Captain Wilmer and to the Authorities for what they do. I am well known to Lord Cornwallis—”
“Enough of this palaver!” roared the brute in the outer room. “Are you turning soft, Levi? Why don’t you bring the man through? If he won’t catch cold, my mare will. Make an end, man!”
It was useless to say more. “Don’t touch me,” I said. “I can walk.”
I went out in the midst of them into the living-room which I had not yet seen with my eyes. There, in the lamplight the fourth man was standing on guard over the negro women of whom there were three or four. Apart from them, with her back to us, and looking through a window into the darkness, stood Madam Constantia. I had not heard the girl’s voice since the men had entered the house, and so far as I could judge she had carried out her threat, had uttered no protest, taken no side. She had deliberately stood aloof. Now, one does not look for protection to women. But that a woman, a girl should stand aside at such a time, should stand by, silent, unmoved, unprotesting, while her father’s guest was dragged out to death—when even the negroes about her were moved to pity—seemed to me an abominable thing, a thing so unnatural that it nerved me more than I believe anything else could have. If I were English, and she hated me for that, she should at least not despise me! If she thought so ill of the King’s officers that to her they were but milksops, she should at least find that we could meet the worst with dignity. She was abominable in her hardness and her beauty, but at least I would leave a thought to prick her, a something by which she should remember me. Better, far better to think of her in this pinch, than of home, of Osgodby, of my mother!
There would be time to think of these in the darkness outside.
As I entered the room—and no doubt, half-dressed as I was, I looked pale and ill—the women cried out. At that the men would have hustled me through the outer door without giving me an opportunity of speaking; but I managed to gain a moment. Mammy Jacks was blubbering—I called her to me. “My purse and what little money I have,” I said, “is under my pillow. It’s yours, my good woman. If Captain Wilmer will be good enough to let Lord Cornwallis know that Major Craven—Major Craven, can you remember—but he will know what to say. And one moment!” I hung back, as the men would have dragged me on. “There are some letters with the purse from a woman named Simms, who is about the Barracks at Charles Town. I want her to know that her husband is dead—was killed in my presence. I promised him that she should know. She should get a pass on the next Falmouth packet, and—you won’t forget—Major Craven—my address in England is in the purse.” Then, “I am ready,” I said to the men.
I would not look again at the girl’s still figure; I went out. Half a dozen horses stood in the darkness before the house, watched by a fifth man. One of these was thrust forward, and from the edge of the porch I was able, though weakly and with pain, to get into the saddle. The men mounted round me. They would have started at a trot, but I told them curtly that I could not sit the horse. On that they moved away, grumbling, at a walk.