War Drums (Sass)/Chapter 6
LACHLAN slept late the next morning. When he had arisen and had breakfasted, he turned his back on the April sunshine which made Charles Town as fair as Eden, climbed once more to his room, and sat down at his table with quill, ink and paper before him.
For some minutes he sat idle, gazing out of the open window where a willow-oak limb swayed slightly in the breeze. Below, a negro gardener chanted a barbaric hymn as he hoed his weeds. Faint and far, from the direction of the harbour, sounded the song of sailors toiling at the halliards of the ship Sea Swallow, whose sails were set for London. These human voices supplied the undertones, but they could scarcely be heard for the music of the birds. The whole bright April air, rich with the scent of innumerable blossoms, was a-ripple with bird music—music of mockingbirds cardinals and wrens, and gorgeous blue and green and crimson nonpareils.
Lachlan heard and yet did not hear, for his thoughts were busy. But when of a sudden a black and russet oriole of that slim, graceful species which was called sanguilla in Carolina, burst into spirited song in the oak just outside the window, he seemed to waken from his dreams. A quick smile lit his face. Bending his head, he began to write.
To Mistress Jolie Stanwicke:
I must ask your pardon at the beginning for addressing you thus boldly upon an acquaintance which was due to accident. I shall risk your displeasure for a reason which you may perhaps deem sufficient—to wit, the fact that I am now engaged upon your service, and in your behalf shall this night hazard my life.
I have learned from the hunter Almayne, my old friend, of your predicament and of your quest, and we are become allies in serving your need. Thus I know that you have come to Carolina seeking that lost lover of yours, Gilbert Barradell, who has your heart and who came to Charles Town a year and a half ago. I know that he vanished in the wilderness some months after his coming here; that his brother Richard, who sails this day for London on the Sea Swallow, has engaged the services of Almayne as your best hope of finding him, and that your father, for reasons of his own, disapproves your quest. All this Almayne has told me, and he has acquainted me with all that he has done.
It may be—and I pray God so—that I can help. Almayne believes, as you are aware, that the man Captain Lance Falcon has knowledge which we need. Last night chance permitted me to confirm (I hope) this suspicion in some measure, and at the same time opened to me an opportunity of learning more.
To-night, at some risk, I shall grasp that opportunity. This letter will come to your eyes only if misfortune befalls me. If all goes well with me, I shall reclaim it unopened from Almayne, to whose safe-keeping I entrust it.
Thus far Lachlan had written smoothly, rapidly, without pause. Now he hesitated, puzzled for a moment. Something within him urged him to say more; at the least, the custom of the time called for a flowery concluding phrase. But something more potent impelled him to make an end; and suddenly he grasped his pen again, signed his name "Lachlan McDonald," and affixed the date; then, when the ink had dried, folded the paper, addressed and sealed it.
He sat, then, for a while considering what he had done.
Why had he written this letter? And why, he asked himself, was he about to venture his life for this girl whose loveliness was not for him because it was already pledged to another?
He was fully cognizant of the risk he would run. He was not unacquainted with danger. At Tallasee in the country of the Muskogees his training in wilderness warfare had begun early. Nor had his student life in Charles Town been wholly studious. There had been occasions when his skill with a gentleman's weapons had stood him in good stead—a tavern brawl or two; a bloodless but thoroughly business-like affair of honour with an officer from one of His Majesty's sloops of war; a meeting, by no means bloodless, with a bullying soldier of fortune from New York, which had ended only when he had run his man through the shoulder.
He was aware, without conceit, of his own coolness, his quickness of wit. But in the game of wits that he planned to play that night the odds would be heavily against him. If his deception were discovered, what chance would he have alone on Falcon's brig, with that crew of cutthroats? He believed himself—thanks to Mr. O'Sullivan, his Irish teacher—to be one of the best swordsmen in the New World. But one rapier could not withstand forty cutlasses.
Yet he was going. He was going, in the guise of Don Ruy Ortiz, to meet Falcon on his ship and learn from him, if he could, whether that prisoner of Chief Concha, mentioned in Montiano's letter, was Gilbert Barradell, Jolie Stanwicke's lover.
He believed that the letter afforded a definite lead towards solution of the Barradell mystery. Putting together all the facts that Almayne had made known to him and linking with these the hunter's conviction that Falcon had knowledge of Gilbert Barradell, it seemed possible—more than possible—that Montiano's letter supplied a clue. There was only one way to explore this clue, and he, Lachlan, alone was capable of the task.
So much was clear. Yet the question that he asked himself remained unanswered: the question why he, who had nothing to gain, was willing to risk so much to promote this girl's happiness.
Curiously, his thoughts turned to Almayne, to the unwillingness that the hunter had shown at the outset to tell him anything about Jolie Stanwicke or her affairs. He understood Almayne's attitude perfectly, for he had noted the same thing before this. Almayne, the elder McDonald's bosom friend, was obsessed by the fear that Lachlan would fall in love with some English girl, and the hunter saw this possibility as a threat to his old friend's hope that Lachlan would succeed him as head of the great Indian Confederacy which composed the Muskogee Empire and over which he ruled as High Chief or King.
Lachlan smiled. Almayne was one in a thousand, the best wilderness hunter in the Province, and, unlike most wilderness hunters, a man of good birth and education; but concerning women and all that had to do with women his ignorance was profound. He distrusted them all—except Sehoy McDonald, Lachlan's mother—and the greater their charm, the greater his distrust.
Lachlan's smile became a trifle rueful. Even the fact that Jolie Stanwicke was pledged to another had failed to render her harmless in Almayne's eyes. Because she was more beautiful than most, Lachlan reflected, Almayne saw her as a particularly deadly menace to his old friend's son.
Was she so beautiful—this Lady Sanguilla, as he had named her? In the dim garden, where he had seen her for the first and only time, Lachlan had not been able to distinguish her features clearly. Her hair, he had thought, was red or bronze-gold; he had been thrilled by the richness of her voice; she had moved with indescribable grace, and she was slender and of more than middle height, and there had been something about the way in which she carried her head. But as for beauty—well, Almayne, who had described her grudgingly as a miracle of loveliness, might not be a trustworthy judge. Yet, even in that dim garden
He mused for a long while at his writing table, curiously considering these and other matters. At last he arose, slipped under his belt the sealed letter addressed to "Mistress Jolie Stanwicke," and went out to find Almayne.
He spent some hours with the hunter, for there was much to be argued and discussed, and there were certain things to be done in preparation for his enterprise. He talked also with two tall young Indians, Muskogee warriors from Tallasee, who had arrived in Charles Town two days before to accompany him on the long and dangerous wilderness journey to the Muskogee capital. In the late afternoon, after dining sparingly at Marshall's inn, he returned to his room, and for a while was very busy there.
It was at ten o'clock that he was to meet Falcon on the latter's brig. Having concluded all his preparations, Lachlan wrote a short letter to his mother, to be delivered to her in case anything happened to him. Three quarters of an hour before ten o'clock, he went very softly down the stairs and into the street.