Chapter XXVIII: An Unanswered Question

"As o'er the grass, beneath the larches there
We gayly stepped, the high noon overhead,
Then Love was born--was born so strong and fair."
--GIPSY SONG.

Although Joscelyn continued to hold herself aloof from Richard, yet she was conscious of his protecting influence in other ways besides the healing of that family quarrel that had been such a burden to her and to them all. Most of the women of her set continued to cut her outright, or to treat her with the scantest courtesy; but there were no more threats concerning her; the boys who had hooted under her window left off their insolent ways, and the merchants and tradespeople no longer gave her indifferent service. And in all this she recognized Richard's work, for he had openly espoused her cause, and had let it be known that those who offended or ill-used her should later on be answerable to him. From the day of his coming, she felt herself shadowed by an unobtrusive but persistent watchfulness that plucked many a thorn from her path; and after the stormy months that had passed, she could not but be grateful for the calm. Invalid though he was, she intuitively felt his to be the stronger will, and made no fight against what he did in her behalf. The protection for which she had longed had come to her, and she was glad to feel his strength between her and her persecutors. Never in any boastful way did he remind her of the defeat of her cause; and tacitly she acknowledged his generosity. The very perils they had shared drew them together with that subtle bond of sympathy a mutual interest creates; and so seldom was there a return to their former sparring that Mistress Strudwick protested she knew not which had the better manners.

"I declare, my dear," she said, pinching Joscelyn's cheek, "you are so beautifully behaved of late that I begin to find you a bit tiresome. Methinks I must stir up Amanda Bryce to pay you a visit and talk over the war, or else we'll all be stagnating for lack of excitement."

"Well, after these eight years of fermentation, stagnation is just now the special estate to which I aspire."

"So? Well, Richard here prefers the estate of matrimony. Is it not true, my lad?" And from the sofa Richard's eyes said yes; whereupon the old lady went on, nodding her head with mock solemnity, "And since one of you wants stagnation and one wants matrimony, I am not so sure but that you are of the same mind, for some folk find these things of a piece. And so, miss, you may have come around to Richard's way of thinking after all."

And seeing Joscelyn stiffen, Richard was sorry that the conversation had taken such a personal turn; for the two had come in to pay him a visit. That was one thing that troubled him--she never came by herself; always it was her mother or Betty or Janet Cameron she brought with her as though she feared to trust herself alone with him, wishing, perchance, to hear no more of his love-making. And even with these others she came so seldom. He could not go to her, for the hard rough journey home had racked his arm and set the fever to throbbing again in his blood, and he must remain quiet, or dire consequences were threatened.

But one February night, when she had stayed away several days, and the longing in his breast grew unbearable, he sent for her. The wind without howled like some hungry creature seeking its prey, and the white-fingered spirit of the snowstorm tapped weirdly at his window. But he gave it no heed; storm or shine, he must see her this night of all others; and so a word of entreaty was sent across the street. She came at once, a brilliant apparition in a scarlet shawl over which the snow lay powdered in shining crystals; on her lips and in her eyes the smile of which he had dreamed in the copper and crimson sunsets on the prison-ship. He gathered her cold hands into his feverish ones.

"You knew I must see you this night?"

"Yes; I felt you would send for me, for I knew we were thinking of the same things."

"A year ago to-night you and I stood in jeopardy of our lives."

She nodded; all day she had been living over those fearful hours of which this day was the anniversary.

"Yes, a year ago to-night Tarleton held us in his toils."

"We have never talked of that dreadful time; now I want you to tell me everything you can recall of it. Sit down."

As she obeyed, the wide shawl fell away and left in sight the silver brocade of her gown, and her shoulders rising white and beautiful from the lace of the low bodice. He started, and raised himself upon his elbow. Was he dreaming? No; the powder and the rose were in her hair, the saucy patch at the corner of her mouth. She had not forgotten; just so had she looked when she faced Tarleton, and risked her womanhood for his own safety. He could not speak, but his eyes did full homage to her beauty.

"I knew you would send for me, so I was ready," she said, and smiled again. So it was for him she had robed herself thus!--there was a thrill of ecstasy in his veins. And then when he still did not speak, for sheer joy of looking at her, she began to talk of that terrible day; and both of them lived over in a quick rush of memory all its hopes and fears, its uncertainties and dangers. Her fingers were icy cold, and the very tremors that had then possessed her, crept again through her veins as she went from scene to scene, and he learned for the first time all of her deceptions and trials. So absorbed was she that she did not even know he had taken her hands in his, until she felt the hot pressure at the end of her narrative. Then when there seemed nothing left to tell, and he still looked at her in a silence more eloquent than words, she grew restless and rose to go; but he caught her skirt.

"Not yet, not yet! Betty is happy with her lover in the parlour, and mother is somewhere down there acting propriety or else fast asleep. For this one evening, at least, you shall belong to me."

And then when those hot, trembling fingers had drawn her again to her seat, he went on:--

"There is one question I have wanted to ask you all these months--" And then, for very fear of her answer, he hesitated and substituted another. "Why did you not come back to me that last night? You knew I was waiting for you, longing for you with every heart-throb."

"It was so late."

"Late? What mattered an hour on the dial when I wanted you so much?"

And she flushed and hesitated, remembering she had not gone back at that unseemingly hour lest he should misunderstand her; men were so cold in their judgments. Looking at him now she was ashamed of that doubt of him.

"Was it in truth the lateness of the hour, or--or because of what Barry said to you on the stair? I opened the attic door and saw you, and I knew he was talking of his love. My God, how I envied him! Was it for that you stayed away from me?"

She turned her head aside with a gesture that hurt him like a knife-thrust. Then the question that had burnt in his thoughts, and filled his heart with cankering jealousy all these weeks, came out:--

"Joscelyn, did you love him? Tell me the truth in mercy."

Slowly her eyes came back to him, soft and blue, and kindled with a flame he had never seen before. He rose on his elbow to meet the answer, eager yet fearful; but before she could speak, Betty opened the door.

"Eustace and I are coming to sit with you awhile, Richard, for you two must be better acquainted," she said to him; and with the blindness that is a part of love, neither she nor Eustace saw that their coming was unwelcome. Before they left, Joscelyn had slipped away, carrying his question and its answer in her heart. But before she went to bed, she opened the box where she kept her treasures, and kneeling in front of her fire, laid upon the glowing embers the scarlet sash of an officer in the king's service.

"I have no right to keep you any longer," she whispered, as the silk cracked and crinkled, and passed away in a smoke-fringed flame; "no right, for now I know, I know!"

The quiet of the town was now frequently broken; for as February drew to a close, some of the soldiers began to straggle home, some on furlough, some on dismissal. Billy Bryce, hungry for the toothsome things in his mother's pantry and impatient for a sight of the yellow curls that sunned themselves on Janet's head, came first. But ten minutes spent in that young woman's company so dampened his spirits, that for days his mother's utmost efforts in culinary arts failed to tempt him. Janet knew the very hour of his arrival, and she also knew that it was two hours before he came to seek her. She could not know that his stay with his mother had been as unwilling as it was dutiful; so to complicate matters a little more she had gone out to pay some calls that might have waited a month. But he found her at last on Joscelyn's porch, her hands in her muff, her curls bobbing from under her hood to the fur-trimmed tippet below, where the winter sunshine seemed to gather itself into a focus. He waved to her from halfway down the square, but she only squinted up her eyes as in a vain effort at recognition.

"Well, I declare," she exclaimed patronizingly, as he sprang eagerly up the steps, "if it isn't Mistress Bryce's little Billy! Why, Billy, child, you must have grown quite an inch since you went away. How is your dear mother to-day?"

Her tone and manner were indescribably superior, as though she were talking to a child of six, so that the amazed and abashed boy, instead of hugging her in his long arms as he wanted to, took the tips of the little fingers she put out to him, and stammeringly and solicitously asked if she had been quite well since he saw her last. She said it was a long time to remember, but she would do the best she could, and immediately began to count off on her fingers the number of headaches and toothaches she had had in the past two years; until Joscelyn, sorry for the boy's unprovoked misery, stopped her abruptly, and finally sent Billy across the street to pour out his disappointment to Richard.

"Janet, you little barbarian, you have no heart!"

"Oh, yes I have," replied that imperturbable young woman; "I have a great big heart for a grown man, but you see I do not particularly care for children who are still dangling at their mother's apron string."

Even a lecture from Richard, to whom she was much attached, did her no good; for all the while he was speaking she sat studying the effect of her high-heeled shoe on Betty's blue footstool, and answered his peroration about Billy's broken heart with the utterly irrelevant assertion that Frederick Wyley said she had the prettiest foot in the colonies. Did Richard agree with him? So Billy's cause was not advanced any, and Richard began to advise him to think no more of this yellow-haired tormentor.

"I declare, Billy Bryce looks like a child with perpetual cramps," Mistress Strudwick exclaimed to Joscelyn one day, when the lad passed the window where the two sat; and then she glanced down the room to her medicine-box.

"But it is a course of sweets, not bitters, that he needs," laughed Joscelyn. "It's his heart and not his stomach that ails Billy."

"Half the lovesickness in the world is nothing but dyspepsia; mighty few cases of disappointed affection outlast a torpid liver."

"I never heard you make such an unsentimental remark."

"You never heard me tell such a truth. Bone-set and senna is the thing for Billy, and I'll see that he gets a bottle; if it does not cure his disappointment, it will at least kill off that particular brand of long face he is wearing. No wonder Janet turns up her nose at him."

"Yes, I begin to think she is permanently at outs with him."

Then other soldiers began to arrive. Thomas Nash got sick-leave from Washington's staff; and from the south came Master Strudwick, more anxious for a sight of home and wife than for the gold which the dissatisfied army was awaiting; and out of the north came Peter Ruffin, a weird wraith of his former self, to tell anew the horrible story of the prison-ships. The other Hillsboro' man, who had been with him had succumbed to the plague, and gone to swell the number of those at whose shallow graves the hungry sea was forever calling.

"And Dame Grant?" asked Richard, when Peter came to see him.

"She, too, fell a victim to the disease of the hulks, and sorely did we miss her. I knew you had escaped in safety, because one day she came to the ship wearing a new woollen hood, and when we twitted her about it over the rail, asking her if it was a lover's gift, she said that Dick Clevering's sweetheart had sent it to her out of gratitude from the south."

"I helped to knit it," Betty cried, while Joscelyn's eyes were not lifted from the floor. In the semi-twilight of the room, Richard reached out and touched her hand gently.

"It was like your generous heart."

"But I made it out of the reddest wool I could find, with never a touch of blue or buff," she answered, laughing; but Richard was content.

Nor did these home-coming men bring the only tidings from the outside world. Now and then letters came that set the tongues to wagging; now with news of Washington's refusal of a crown, now with a description of Mary Singleton's marriage to Edward Moore. Janet refused persistently to show her letters which came in the Halifax post, but one day Richard had one from Colborn that made him laugh with delight:--

"The miniature is set in a narrow gold frame, without jewels; for
although I won my promotion, it was only a lieutenancy. However, I
am content. It was at Guilford Court-house, in your own Carolina
country, the day Tarleton was wounded. Soon I am going home, with
my pockets full of American pebbles, to claim the original, and
bring her back here to this great country to enjoy the freedom I am
glad you won."

And when Joscelyn went home, after hearing the letter read, she again opened her box of treasures and took from it a shining gold piece, and looked at it with a startled sweetness in her eyes.