Philip Winwood Part 22

He is unwise to trust you so far--you have told me enough to--"

"There's no more need of secrecy. Captain Falconer's men are well on their way to Morristown. Even if you got out of our lines as easily as you got in, you could only meet our troops returning with your general."

Doubtless she conceived that by taunting him, at this safe hour, with this prevision of her success, she helped the estrangement which she felt necessary to her enjoyment of her expected rewards.

"Oho!" quoth he, with a bitter, derisive laugh. "Another attempt to seize Was.h.i.+ngton! What folly!"

"Not when we are helped by treason in your camp, as I said before.

Folly, is it? You'll sing another song to-morrow!"

She smiled with antic.i.p.ated triumph, and the smile had in it so much of the Madge of other days, that his bitterness forsook him, and admiration and love returned to sharpen his grief.

"Oh, Madge, dear, could I but win you back!" he murmured, wistfully.

"What, in that strain again!" she said, petulant at each revival of the self-reproach his sorrow caused in her.

"Ay, if I had but the chance! If I might be with you long enough, if I might reawaken the old tenderness!--But I forget; treason in our camp, you say. There is danger, then--ay, there's always the possibility.

The devil's in it, that I must tear myself from you now; that I must part with you while matters are so wrong between us; that I must leave you when I would give ten years of life for one hour to win your love back! But you will take my hand, let me kiss you once--you will do that for the sake of the old times--and then I will be gone!"

"Be gone? Where?"

"Back to camp, of course, to give warning of this expedition."

"'Tis impossible! Tis hours--"

"'Tis not impossible--I will outride them. They wouldn't have started before dark."

"You would only overtake them, at your best. Do you think they would let you pa.s.s?"

"Poh! I know every road. I can ride around them. I'll put the army in readiness for 'em, treason or no treason! For the present, good-bye--"

The look in his face--of power and resolution--gave her a sudden sense of her triumph slipping out of her grasp.

"You must not go!" she cried, quite awakened to the peril of the situation to her enterprise.

"I must! Good-bye! One kiss, I beg!"

"But you sha'n't go!" As he came close to her, she clasped him tightly with both arms. She made no attempt to avoid his kiss, and he, taking this for acquiescence, bestowed the kiss upon unresponsive lips.

"Now let me go," said he, turning to stride toward the door by which he had entered from the rear chamber.

"No, no! Stay. Time to win back my love, you said. Take the time now.

You may find me not so difficult of winning back. Nay, I have never ceased to love you, at the bottom of my heart. I love you now. You shall stay."

"I must not, I dare not. Oh, I would to G.o.d I could believe you! But whether 'tis true, or a device to keep me here, I will not stay. Let me go!"

"I will not! You will have to force me from you, first! I tell you I love you--my husband!"

"If you love me, you will let me go."

"If you love me, you will stay."

"Not a moment--though G.o.d knows how I love you! I will come to see you soon again."

"If you go now, I will never let you see me again!--Nay, you must drag me after you, then!"

He was moving toward the door despite her hold; and now he caught her wrists to force open the clasp in which she held him.

"Oh! you are crus.h.i.+ng my arms!" she cried.

"Ay, the beautiful, dear arms--G.o.d bless them! But let me go, then!"

"I won't! You will have to kill me, first! You shall not spoil my scheme!"

"Yours!"

"Yes, mine! Mine, against your commander, against your cause!" She was wrought up now to a fury, at the physical force he exerted to release himself; and for the time, swayed by her feelings only, she let policy fly to the winds. "Your cause that I hate, because it ruined my hopes before! You are a fool if you think my being your wife would have kept me from fighting your hateful cause. I became your wife that I might go to England, and when that failed I was yours no longer. Love another? Yes!--and you shall not spoil his work and mine--not unless you kill me!"

For a moment his mental anguish, his overwhelming shame for her, unnerved him, and he stared at her with a ghastly face, relaxing his pressure for freedom. But this weakness was followed by a fierce reaction. His countenance darkened, and with one effort, the first into which he had put his real strength, he tore her arms from him.

White-faced and breathing fast, with rage and fear of defeat, she ran to a front window, and flung it open.

"By heaven, I'll stop you!" she cried. "Help! A rebel--a spy! Ah, you men yonder--this way! A rebel spy!"

Philip looked over her head, out of the window. Far up the street swaggered five or six figures which, upon coming under a corner lamp whose rays yellowed a small circle of snow, showed to be those of British soldiers. Their unaltered movements evidenced that they had not heard her cry. Thereupon she shouted, with an increased voice:

"Soldiers! Help! Surround this house! A rebel--"

She got no further, for Philip dragged her away from the window, and, when she essayed to scream the louder, he placed one hand over her mouth, the other about her neck. Holding her thus, he forced her into the rear chamber, and then toward the window by which he meant to leave. At its very ledge he let her go, and made to step out to the roof of the veranda. But she grasped his clothes with the power of rage and desperation, and set up another screaming for help.

In an agony of mind at having to use such painful violence against a woman, and how much more so against the wife he still loved; and at the grievous appearance that she was willing to sacrifice him upon the British gallows rather than let him mar her purpose, he flung her away with all necessary force, so that, with a final shriek of pain and dismay, she fell to the floor exhausted.

He cast an anguished glance upon her, as she lay defeated and half-fainting; and, knowing not to what fate he might be leaving her, he moaned, "G.o.d pity her!" and stepped out upon the sloping roof. He scrambled to the edge, let himself half-way down by the trellis, leaped the rest of the distance, and ran through the back garden from the place he had so well loved.

While his wife, lying weak upon the floor of her chamber, gazed at the window through which he had disappeared, and, as if a new change had occurred within her, sobbed in consternation:

"Oh, what have I done? He is a man, indeed!--and I have lost him!"

CHAPTER XIII.

_Wherein Captain Winwood Declines a Promotion._

Philip a.s.sumed that the greatest risk would lie in departing the town by the route over which he had made his entrance, and in which he had left a trail of alarm. His best course would be in the opposite direction.

Therefore, having leaped across the fence to the alley behind the Faringfield grounds, he turned to the right and ran; for he had bethought him, while fleeing through the garden, that he might probably find a row-boat at the Faringfield wharves. He guessed that, as the port of New York was open to all but the rebel Americans and their allies the French, Mr. Faringfield would have continued his trade in the small way possible, under the British flag, that his loss by the war might be the less, and his means of secretly aiding the rebel cause might be the more. So there would still be some little s.h.i.+pping, and its accessories, at the wharves.