War Drums (Sass)/Chapter 10
THE next morning—a Sunday—dawned clear and warm. Lachlan had crawled into bed not more than two hours before sunrise; yet before the sun was an hour high he opened his eyes and was instantly wide awake. For a while he lay thinking—thinking chiefly of two things. He had learned that Gilbert Barradell was alive, had learned where he was. That much of the problem was solved. But that was only the beginning. There remained the task of bringing him back to Charles Town where Jolie Stanwicke awaited him.
Yet it was not with that task that Lachlan's thoughts chiefly concerned themselves. His interview with Lance Falcon had disposed of one mystery, but it had revealed two other mysteries. What was the power that Falcon possessed over Edward Stanwicke of Stanwicke Hall, Jolie's father? And what was that mysterious "affair of Chief Concha's daughter," concerning which Falcon had so eagerly sought news?
For many minutes Lachlan studied these two problems to little purpose. Then he rose, dressed quickly and walked to the inn where he usually breakfasted. A half-hour later he knocked on Almayne's door, at the house where the hunter lodged.
A gruff voice bade him "Come" and, finding the door unbolted, he entered.
"Plague on you!" growled the hunter from under his sheet. "I had thought to sleep till noon to make up for last night's frolic and you wake me at cockcrow. What want you?"
"My letter," said Lachlan briskly. "The letter that you were to deliver to Mistress Jolie Stanwicke in case I came to harm on Falcon's ship."
Almayne jerked his head towards a rough closet built into a corner of the room. Lachlan crossed the floor, found the letter and thrust it beneath his coat.
"That's finished," he said. "Fortunately I'll not need your services as letter-carrier. I can make my report to the lady in person."
Almayne chewed the end of his white moustache.
"You mean?" he asked, "that you will call on Mistress Jolie Stanwicke?"
Lachlan nodded. Almayne, sitting up in bed, seemed to consider.
"That's fair enough," he said presently. "It was you that discovered Barradell's whereabouts. It's only right that you should give her the news. Wait till I've eaten and I'll take you to her."
"Thanks," replied Lachlan dryly, "but I'll not trouble you. Much as I enjoy your company, I prefer to see the lady alone."
He moved towards the door, but paused on the threshold.
"Almayne," he said thoughtfully, "I shall return here later and we can plan what's to be done next. We must move swiftly."
For some minutes after the door had closed Almayne sat motionless in the bed, frowning and chewing his moustache. Slowly the frown faded.
"By Zooks!" he muttered, swinging his long legs out of the bed, "the young cock partridge is in fine feather now! He's taken command, and Almayne's a private in the ranks."
Lachlan McDonald had not the honour to be included among the friends of Edward Stanwicke of Stanwicke Hall. Hitherto he had not counted this a misfortune. Old Stanwicke—Lord Stanwicke, as he was often called—was a power in the Prevince, a great landholder, the bearer of a title in that strange system of Colonial nobility established by the Lords Proprietors of Carolina and not yet wholly obsolete. Yet, because of his evil temper and his avarice, which were notorious in the Colony, few sought his favour or his company. Lachlan was not of those few, and now for the first time he half regretted it.
He wished to see Jolie Stanwicke, to talk with her at some length, to tell her of what he had learned and of what he now planned to do in the matter of Gilbert Barradell. Because he wished to see her alone, he had declined Almayne's offer to accompany him to Stanwicke's town house. He was turning over in his mind the problem of how to gain entrance there when something plucked lightly at his sleeve.
He half turned and saw a small negro boy wearing the Stanwicke livery. For an instant the round black face grinned up at him, white teeth gleaming. Then the thick lips framed the word "Come," and the boy passed on ahead of him, walking rapidly.
A few townspeople were abroad, citizens with their wives and children on the way to church. So quickly had the black boy delivered his message that Lachlan was sure the incident had passed unnoticed. He quickened his pace slightly, nodding or bowing now and then to someone that he knew, following his diminutive guide at a distance of about a hundred paces; and his heart beat faster when presently he made sure that the boy was leading him by a somewhat roundabout way towards the Stanwicke house.
It was not the house itself, however, that they finally approached, but the spacious wooded garden, the black boy leading the way at a brisk pace along the narrow lane fronting the garden wall.
Lachlan's thoughts sped back to the moment two evenings before when he had stopped in that lane and listened to a woman singing; but he had little leisure now for meditation. The black boy slackened his pace, halted, motioned to Lachlan to hurry. There was none to see them. The lane was little used and was now empty.
"Ober de wall, master," said the boy. "Me fust."
Lachlan cupped his hands and the little negro mounted and scrambled upward. For a moment he sat on the top of the wall, peering this way and that; then, evidently satisfied, he nodded to Lachlan and immediately dropped out of sight within the garden.
Lachlan waited, listening intently. There flickered in his mind for an instant a doubt as to where this adventure would lead. Who had sent the black boy, and why? Who was waiting there in the shrubbery of the walled garden? It was perhaps a subtle forewarning of peril. Yet he crouched, sprang upward with outstretched hands, and in a moment was perched on the wall's summit.
He saw her instantly. She was seated en a cane bench in a little recess in the shrubbery, a book in her lap. She wore white with a green shawl about her shoulders. Lachlan knew now what he had only vaguely guessed at their first meeting in the dusk of evening—that her hair was of a most wonderful red gold in which the entangled sunlight worked miracles. He knew now also that her eyes were not gray but gray-green with yellow-tawny lights and very large, and that, in spite of those eyes and that hair, she was not fair-skinned but richly dark.
At that first meeting in the dusk he had been thrilled by her voice, by the grace of her slender form, by the poise of her head. But he had not really seen the brilliant beauty of her, beauty that could shine with its full radiance only when there was light to glorify her hair and reveal the sparkling depths of her eyes. Now, for the first time, he saw her.
It was not strange, perhaps, that he was unaware of the signal that her eyes flashed to him—that he sat motionless, absorbed, until he was roused by a sudden imperious movement of her head which more plainly than words bade him descend.
He did so, with something less than his usual agility, since as he leaped downward a vine caught his foot and nearly threw him. He stumbled, then turned to find that she had risen and was moving towards him.
"I will read your thoughts, sir," she said in low, clear tones, full of a mock humility. "You are thinking what a monstrous unmaidenly thing it is that I have done in bringing you here over a back wall to a meeting with me in this secret place."
Lachlan smiled.
"It happened," he replied, "that when the black boy plucked my sleeve, I had been searching my brain to find a way in which I might come to you, and I had already decided to try the garden wall. It had served me once and might serve again."
She flushed. Perhaps the answer displeased her. It seemed to Lachlan that her tone was colder as she bade him take seat beside her.
"I brought you here," she said, "to offer my apologies, to make amends for my ungracious conduct on that occasion when you so gallantly came to my assistance, thinking me in distress. Believe me, sir, my scant courtesy then has troubled me ever since. I could not rest until I had spoken these words to you in person, and I knew no other way to accomplish it save this."
"It was nothing, Mam'selle," Lachlan said quickly. "I interfered in what did not concern me and you sent me about my business. It is I that owe you thanks, since your intercession saved me, an unarmed man, from Captain Falcon's sword."
He hesitated, then continued, smiling: "It may interest you to know that since then I have squared my account with that gentleman."
She caught her breath.
"You mean?" she asked.
"It is a long story," said Lachlan, "and there is something else that I would tell you first, something of much importance to you. I think you are not the kind to swoon with excess of joy, so I come to the point quickly. Gilbert Barradell is alive, and within the week Almayne and I will go to him."
She rose with a stifled cry, her hand at her forehead, her bosom heaving. Cheeks aflame, eyes big with amazement, she stood before him, swaying slightly. She opened her lips to speak, but no words came; and suddenly her eyes, wider than ever now and wildly staring, were full of terror.
Those eyes looked past Lachlan and over his head where he sat on the bench leaning forward a little and looking eagerly up into her face. Suddenly his own eyes narrowed. Perhaps it was wholly the fear in her face that warned him; perhaps his keen ears had caught some slight sound behind him.
He gained his feet, but only for an instant. There was a crash, the world went black, he was falling, falling, falling an interminable distance.