My Lady of the South/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
RELEASED FOR A PURPOSE
I STARED at her as at an apparition, unable at the moment to disassociate her from the vision of my daydream. I even struggled to my feet, without realizing that she actually stood there in the reality of flesh and blood. No doubt both look and action pictured my bewilderment, for her lips curved to a smile, and she spoke quickly.
"I am not a spectre, Lieutenant King."
"It needed your voice to convince me," I returned bowing, and feeling the sudden release of blood in my veins. "I had been thinking of you, failed to hear your entrance, and then suddenly saw you standing there. It certainly startled me."
"You were thinking of me?" the tone slightly curious.
"Yes, wondering if you believed me guilty; hoping you, at least, gave me the benefit of the doubt. Your appearance was like an answer to my query."
"And I come in reality, not in spirit, to make response," she returned gravely. "I have every reason to suppose you guilty which the others have, only I believe such an act would be impossible for you to commit."
"You mean my nature—"
"I mean you are what you claim to be, an officer and a gentleman. I am only a girl, Lieutenant King, with no very wide experience in life, yet I cannot be mistaken altogether in your character. I not only believe you guiltless of this crime, but I trust you otherwise, or I should not be here."
I stepped forward, bowing in acknowledgment of her words, but she remained motionless, the expression of her face holding me silent.
"Will you give me your word that I am right?"
"Before God, yes," earnestly. "I know nothing of the crime except what I told in the library."
"And I may trust you?"
"To the end of the world, Miss Denslow."
Her questioning eyes fell, the long lashes concealing their depths, but there was no change in her posture. There was a certain reserve about her manner which held me motionless and at a distance. However we might trust each other no action of hers invited to intimacy.
"Lieutenant King," her words spoken slowly, yet with sufficient clearness, "I should hardly have come here under ordinary conditions. I do not wish to be misunderstood. I am a daughter of the South loyal to the interests f the Confederacy. While I believe you guiltless of this cruel murder, yet you have entered this house as a Yankee officer, searching for one who is very dear to me, beyond all his claims upon my protection as a soldier of my country. To protect him I made you captive, and I consider you now as rightfully a prisoner of war. I have been trusted to guard you, and intend to be loyal to my trust You may feel this strange, perhaps unwomanly, but women brought up in these mountains, breathing the atmosphere of a feud from childhood, learn early to assume responsibility, and perform strange duties. I am going to tell you the truth, because I trust you. I have been left here as your jailor, with no one but negroes to help me to guard you. Miss Dunn has given way to her nerves, and locked herself in her room; Judge Dunn, as you know, is comparatively helpless. I am, therefore, practically alone."
"Alone!" mystified as to her purpose in such confession, "you mean, but for you, I could walk out of that door. What has become of Calvert Dunn and Donald?"
She stepped aside, again uplifting her eyes as as she did so.
"Yes," she said simply. "there is no strength here to prevent your escape. I merely appeal to your honor."
Breathing hard, I looked at her, scarcely knowing what to say. The expression of her face, pleading, questioning, decided me.
"That will have greater weight with me than a barred door."
The quick flash of her eyes appeared to light up her entire face.
"I believed so: your words justify my confidence. If I ask you to serve me, and yet hold yourself a prisoner, will you pledge me your word?"
I hesitated, but only for an instant, the strangeness the request bringing with it a momentary doubt, as quickly dismissed. Whatever the cause, this girl trusted me, and I would trust her.
"I pledge you my word."
"And I accept it without reserve. I give you my hand in token of the compact."
It was an impulsive, girlish action, yet as I clasped the extended fingers, no such conception came to my mind. All seemed natural enough, and the soft touch of her flesh sent a sudden thrill through me. Only the earnestness of her face held me under restraint, kept me alive to the fact that some grave necessity alone must have led her to this concession. She must have perceived the struggle depicted in my eyes.
"You think me an odd girl, no doubt," she explained quickly, yet in some embarrassment. "And perhaps I am not just like others brought up in social restraint. I have seen more of the primitive, and have always been compelled to act independently. Some time I may tell you about my childhood, and then you will understand better. When other children learn to walk, I was learning to ride and to use firearms; ay! and to distrust strangers. Perhaps that very experience has brought me self-reliance, and an unusual confidence in my own judgment. Am I over bold?"
"Far from it; yet I may be when I say you are my ideal of womanhood."
The quick flush mounted to her hair, her hands clasping.
"Oh, but I did not expect that. What a poor ideal you must have! No Northern school ever held me up at a model."
"I should imagine not, from specimens I have seen; but the colorless type grows extremely tiresome."
"Then, at least, I am not colorless?"
"Assuredly not," her very frankness disarming me, "you are as God made you."
She laughed, feeling the earnestness of the compliment.
"I must be or I should never be here talking such nonsense to a Yankee. I hardly know what spirit possesses me to make me forget the real purpose of my visit. I am sure you it was not to listen to compliments. I came in all seriousness."
"Then tell me how I can serve you!"
The slight smile awakened by our exchange of repartee deserted her lips, and she glanced uneasily at the door.
"I told you I was alone here, but for the negroes. Believing you perfectly helpless, confined here in the cellar, Colonel Donald rode away to collect some of his men who are widely scattered just now, intending to convey you under guard to-night to Johnston's headquarters. Calvert Dunn, with two of the negroes, departed even earlier, with Lieutenant Navarre's body. There was no one else to guard you but myself."
"They intend holding me then as a prisoner of war?"
She hesitated, as if doubtful of her reply, her eyes lifting suddenly to my own, then falling as quickly to the stone floor of the cellar. The light was fading, and the growing shadows already concealed the expression of her face.
"You fear to tell me the truth?"
"No, not that; but I do not feel quite certain of the final outcome. Both Calvert Dunn and his father hold you merely as an emissary of Daniels, and would treat you as they would him, if he ever fell into their hands. We have not known much about law in this region, Lieutenant King, and men have learned to wreak their own vengeance. I cannot picture to you what the bitterness of a mountain feud means." She pressed her hands to her eyes as if to shut out the memory, yet went steadily on, her soft voice trembling with emotion. "I—I have seen so much of it; from my very babyhood I have lived amid scenes of violence—burned homes, women and children suffering and destitute; men shot down from ambush; and outrages unspeakable. War is terrible, but a mountain feud turns human beings into fiends. For years no life in all this region was safe; the murderer prowled among the rocks, even crept into the home, to strike down his victim. It was a constant butchery, and every crack of a rifle brought agony."
Her words, the deep intensity of her utterance, told how clearly she recalled it all. She stopped, breathing heavily, one hand reaching out to the door for support.
"But why should it be? We know nothing of such conditions in the North. What caused all this fighting?"
"I—I heard the story," speaking now almost wearily, "but it is too silly to repeat. Way back, they say a hundred years ago, when the first settlers came, some controversy arose between the Danielses and the Donalds. Blood was shed, and, little by little, every relative was drawn into the controversy. Bitterness increased, at new causes for anger arose, until the original cause was forgotten, and children were born, taught from the cradle to hate the other faction. The Danielses were the more numerous, the more ignorant, the more vindictive. They would stoop to any crime, confident of their strength of numbers for protection. Colonel Donald saw them kill his father and burn his own home to the ground. But he was of a different nature; he realized the wickedness, the brutality, of continuing such a struggle. He sought earnestly to compromise, to make peace. The others laughed, thought him a coward, and became bolder than ever in their outrages. Finally they burned his home for the second time, twenty of them, at midnight, Bill Daniels at their head. They left him seriously wounded, and drove his wife and children into the night and storm."
She leaned back against the door, trembling from head to foot, yet went on steadily.
"His wife and one child died of the exposure. He lay for weeks in this house delirious with fever, and twice those fiends sought him even then. When he recovered he was another man—living for no other purpose than to clear this region of that scum. He was five years at it, night and day, tireless as a bloodhound. He had with him every law-abiding man between the two rivers, and it became so hot for Daniels and his gang that they began to clear out. Some were imprisoned. some shot, others left the country. Bill Daniels himself was brought into court, tried for murder, and convicted. He escaped from jail two years ago, and since then, until the war broke out, we have had peace. Now he has come back—come with the Yankee army behind him—and—and it is murder again."
"You know this to be all true?"
The cellar was almost dark now, but I could see her straighten up, her hands clasped tightly together.
"Do I know? Oh, God, yes; I have been part of it. I have seen men shot down. I have cowered in darkness and rain while flames destroyed the house I called home. All my childhood was a passion of fear."
She dropped her face into her hands, not crying, but endeavoring rather to shut out the memory.
"I am sorry to compel you to review all this," I said gently. "But I am glad to know the truth. You say Calvert Dunn and his father hold me to be one of Daniels's followers, and would deal with me accordingly. How about Colonel Donald?"
"He believes you guilty of killing Lieutenant Navarre, but merely in an effort at escape. Otherwise he thinks you have told the truth, and favors turning you over to the military authorities."
"They expect to return?"
"Yes, to-night, with a squad of Colonel Donald's men."
I stood staring at her white face, now barely visible through the growing darkness. Somehow this all seemed more like a dream than a reality, and I could not grasp the full meaning of it.
"And yet you ask me to remain, Miss Denslow, to remain here voluntarily and wait for them?" I asked in despair of comprehending. "You open the door of my prison, yet ask me to wait the return of men who are undecided whether they will hang me outright or merely fling me into a Southern prison? You really ask this?"
She took a step forward, her hands outstretched as though she would grasp mine.
"Yes, Lieutenant King, I do ask it; I ask it because I am afraid to be left here any longer alone; I ask it because I believe you are innocent, and I wish to give you an opportunity to prove it. I ask you to pledge me your word not to leave me until the others come."
"I do not understand," I said slowly, "but I will not disappoint you. I give you my word to stay. What is it you mean? How can I prove my innocence?"
She was at my side now, her lips almost at my ear.
"I believe," she whispered, "the assassin is still in the house."