THE sun was high over the Short Hills when Mistress Thankful, the next day, drew up her sweating mare beside the Blossom Farm gate. She had never looked prettier, she had never felt more embarrassed, as she entered her own house. During her rapid ride she had already framed a speech of apology to Major Van Zandt, which, however, utterly fled from her lips as that officer showed himself respectfully on the threshold. Yet she permitted him to usurp the functions of the grinning Cæsar, and help her from her horse; albeit she was conscious of exhibiting the awkward timidity of a bashful rustic, until at last, with a stammering, “Thank ye,” she actually ran up stairs to hide her glowing face and far too conscious eyelids.
During the rest of that day Major Van Zandt quietly kept out of the way, without obtrusively seeming to avoid her. Yet, when they met casually in the performance of her household duties, the innocent Mistress Thankful noticed, under her downcast penitential eyelids, that the eyes of the officer followed her intently. And thereat she fell unconsciously to imitating him; and so they eyed each other furtively like cats, and rubbed themselves along the walls of rooms and passages when they met, lest they should seem designedly to come near each other, and enacted the gravest and most formal of genuflexions, courtesies, and bows, when they accidentally did meet. And just at the close of the second day, as the elegant Major Van Zandt was feeling himself fast becoming a drivelling idiot and an awkward country booby, the arrival of a courier from headquarters saved that gentleman his self-respect forever.
Mistress Thankful was in her sitting-room when he knocked at her door. She opened it in sudden, conscious trepidation.
“I ask pardon for intruding, Mistress Thankful Blossom,” he said gravely; “but I have here”—he held out a pretentious document—“a letter for you from headquarters. May I hope that it contains good news,—the release of your father.—and that it relieves you from my presence, and an espionage which I assure you cannot be more unpleasant to you than it has been to myself.”
As he entered the room, Thankful had risen to her feet with the full intention of delivering to him her little set apology; but, as he ended his speech, she looked at him blankly, and burst out crying.
Of course he was in an instant at her side, and holding her cold little hand. Then she managed to say, between her tears, that she had been wanting to make an apology to him; that she had wanted to say ever since she arrived that she had been rude, very rude, and that she knew he never could forgive her; that she had been trying to say that she never could forget his gentle forbearance: “only,” she added, suddenly raising her tear-fringed brown lids to the astonished man, “you wouldn’t ever let me!”
“Dear Mistress Thankful,” said the major, in conscience-stricken horror, “if I have made myself distant to you, believe me it was only because I feared to intrude upon your sorrow. I really—dear Mistress Thankful—I—”
“When you took all the pains to go round the hall instead of through the dining-room, lest I should ask you to forgive me,” sobbed Mistress Thankful, “I thought—you—must—hate me, and preferred to—”
“Perhaps this letter may mitigate your sorrow, Mistress Thankful,” said the officer, pointing to the letter she still held unconsciously in her hand.
With a blush at her pre-occupation, Thankful opened the letter. It was a half-official document, and ran as follows:—
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“The Commander-in-Chief is glad to inform Mistress Thankful Blossom that the charges preferred against her father have, upon fair examination, been found groundless and trivial. The Commander-in-Chief further begs to inform Mistress Blossom that the gentleman known to her under the name of the ‘Baron Pomposo’ was his Excellency Don Juan Morales, Ambassador and Envoy Extraordinary of the Court of Spain, and that the gentleman known to her as the ‘Count Ferdinand’ was Senor Godoy, Secretary to the Embassy. The Commander-in-Chief wishes to add that Mistress Thankful Blossom is relieved of any further obligation of hospitality toward these honorable gentlemen, as the Commander-in-Chief regrets to record the sudden and deeply-to-be-deplored death of his Excellency this morning by typhoid fever, and the possible speedy return of the Embassy. “In conclusion, the Commander-in-Chief wishes to bear testimony to the Truthfulness, Intuition, and Discretion of Mistress Thankful Blossom.
“By order of his Excellency, “ALEX. HAMILTON, Secretary. “To Mistress THANKFUL BLOSSOM, of Blossom Farm.” |
Thankful Blossom was silent for a few moments, and then raised her abashed eyes to Major Van Zandt. A single glance satisfied her that he knew nothing of the imposture that had been practised upon her,—knew nothing of the trap into which her vanity and self-will had led her.
“Dear Mistress Thankful,” said the major, seeing the distress in her face, “I trust the news is not ill. Surely I gathered from the sergeant that—”
“What?” said Thankful, looking at him intently.
“That in twenty-four hours at furthest your father would be free, and that I should be relieved—”
“I know that you are a-weary of your task, major,” said Thankful bitterly: “rejoice, then, to know your information is correct, and that my father is exonerated—unless—unless this is a forgery, and Gen. Washington should turn out to be somebody else, and YOU should turn out to be somebody else—” And she stopped short, and hid her wet eyes in the window-curtains.
“Poor girl!” said Major Van Zandt to himself. “This trouble has undoubtedly frenzied her. Fool that I was to lay up the insult of one that sorrow and excitement had bereft of reason and responsibility! ‘Twere better I should retire at once, and leave her to herself,” and the young man slowly retreated toward the door.
But at this moment there were alarming symptoms of distress in the window-curtain; and the major paused as a voice from its dimity depths said plaintively, “And you are going without forgiving me!”
“Forgive you, Mistress Thankful,” said the major, striding to the curtain, and seizing a little hand that was obtruded from its folds,—“forgive you? rather can you forgive me for the folly—the cruelty of mistaking—of—of”—and here the major, hitherto famous for facile compliments, utterly broke down. But the hand he held was no longer cold, but warm and intelligent; and in default of coherent speech he held fast by that as the thread of his discourse, until Mistress Thankful quietly withdrew it, thanked him for his forgiveness, and retired deeper behind the curtain.
When he had gone, she threw herself in a chair, and again gave way to a passionate flood of tears. In the last twenty-four hours her pride had been utterly humbled: the independent spirit of this self-willed little beauty had met for the first time with defeat. When she had got over her womanly shock at the news of the sham baron’s death, she had, I fear, only a selfish regard at his taking off; believing that if living he would in some way show the world—which just then consisted of the headquarters and Major Van Zandt—that he had really made love to her, and possibly did honorably love her still, and might yet give her an opportunity to reject him. And now he was dead, and she was held up to the world as the conceited plaything of a fine gentleman’s masquerading sport. That her father’s cupidity and ambition made him sanction the imposture, in her bitterness she never doubted. No! Lover, friend, father—all had been false to her, and the only kindness she had received was from the men she had wantonly insulted. Poor little Blossom! indeed, a most premature Blossom; I fear a most unthankful Blossom, sitting there shivering in the first chill wind of adversity, rocking backward and forward, with the skirt of her dimity short-gown over her shoulders, and her little buckled shoes and clocked stockings pathetically crossed before her.
But healthy youth is re-active; and in an hour or two Thankful was down at the cow-shed, with her arms around the neck of her favorite heifer, to whom she poured out much of her woes, and from whom she won an intelligent sort of slobbering sympathy. And then she sharply scolded Cæsar for nothing at all, and a moment after returned to the house with the air and face of a deeply injured angel, who had been disappointed in some celestial idea of setting this world right, but was still not above forgiveness,—a spectacle that sunk Major Van Zandt into the dark depths of remorse, and eventually sent him to smoke a pipe of Virginia with his men in the roadside camp; seeing which, Thankful went early to bed, and cried herself to sleep. And Nature possibly followed her example; for at sunset a great thaw set in, and by midnight the freed rivers and brooks were gurgling melodiously, and tree and shrub and fence were moist and dripping.
The red dawn at last struggled through the vaporous veil that hid the landscape. Then occurred one of those magical changes peculiar to the climate, yet perhaps pre-eminently notable during that historic winter and spring. By ten o’clock on that 3d of May, 1780, a fervent June-like sun had rent that vaporous veil, and poured its direct rays upon the gaunt and haggard profile of the Jersey hills. The chilled soil responded but feebly to that kiss; perhaps a few of the willows that yellowed the river-banks took on a deeper color. But the country folk were certain that spring had come at last; and even the correct and self-sustained Major Van Zandt came running in to announce to Mistress Thankful that one of his men had seen a violet in the meadow. In another moment Mistress Thankful had donned her cloak and pattens to view this firstling of the laggard summer. It was quite natural that Major Van Zandt should accompany her as she tripped on; and so, without a thought of their past differences, they ran like very children down the moist and rocky slope that led to the quaggy meadow. Such was the influence of the vernal season.
But the violets were hidden. Mistress Thankful, regardless of the wet leaves and her new gown, groped with her fingers among the withered grasses. Major Van Zandt leaned against a bowlder, and watched her with admiring eyes.
“You’ll never find flowers that way,” she said at last, looking up to him impatiently. “Go down on your knees like an honest man. There are some things in this world worth stooping for.”
The major instantly dropped on his knees beside her. But at that moment Mistress Thankful found her posies, and rose to her feet. “Stay where you are,” she said mischievously, as she stooped down, and placed a flower in the lapel of his coat. “That is to make amends for my rudeness. Now get up.”
But the major did not rise. He caught the two little hands that had seemed to flutter like birds against his breast, and, looking up into the laughing face above him, said, “Dear Mistress Thankful, dare I remind you of your own words, that ‘there be some things worth stooping for’? Think of my love, Mistress Thankful, as a flower,—mayhap not as gracious to you as your violets, but as honest and—and—and—as—”
“Ready to spring up in a single night,” laughed Thankful. “But no; get up, major! What would the fine ladies of Morristown say of your kneeling at the feet of a country girl,—the play and sport of every fine gentleman? What if Mistress Bolton should see her own cavalier, the modish Major Van Zandt, proffering his affections to the disgraced sweetheart of a perjured traitor? Leave go my hand, I pray you, major,—if you respect—”
She was free, yet she faltered a moment beside him, with tears quivering on her long brown lashes. Then she said tremulously, “Rise up, major. Let us think no more of this. I pray you forgive me, if I have again been rude.”
The major struggled to rise to his feet. But he could not. And then I regret to have to record that the fact became obvious that one of his shapely legs was in a bog-hole, and that he was perceptibly sinking out of sight. Whereat Mistress Thankful trilled out a three-syllabled laugh, looked demure and painfully concerned at his condition, and then laughed again. The major joined in her mirth, albeit his face was crimson. And then, with a little cry of alarm, she flew to his side, and put her arms around him.
“Keep away, keep away, for Heaven’s sake, Mistress Blossom,” he said quickly, “or I shall plunge you into my mishap, and make you as ridiculous as myself.”
But the quick-witted girl had already leaped to an adjacent bowlder. “Take off your sash,” she said quickly; “fasten it to your belt, and throw it to me.” He did so. She straightened herself back on the rock. “Now, all together,” she cried, with a preliminary strain on the sash; and then the cords of her well-trained muscles stood out on her rounded arms, and, with a long pull and a strong pull and a pull all together, she landed the major upon the rock. And then she laughed; and then, inconsistent as it may appear, she became grave, and at once proceeded to scrape him off, and rub him down with dried leaves, with fern-twigs, with her handkerchief, with the border of her mantle, as if he were a child, until he blushed with alternate shame and secret satisfaction.
They spoke but little on their return to the farm-house, for Mistress Thankful had again become grave. And yet the sun shone cheerily above them; the landscape was filled with the joy of resurrection and new and awakened life; the breeze whispered gentle promises of hope, and the fruition of their hopes in the summer to come. And these two fared on until they reached the porch, with a half-pleased, half-frightened consciousness that they were not the same beings who had left it a half-hour before.
Nevertheless at the porch Mistress Thankful regained something of her old audacity. As they stood together in the hall, she handed him back the sash she had kept with her. As she did so, she could not help saying, “There are some things worth stooping for, Major Van Zandt.”
But she had not calculated upon the audacity of the man; and as she turned to fly she was caught by his strong arm, and pinioned to his side. She struggled, honestly I think, and perhaps more frightened at her own feelings than at his strength; but it is to be recorded that he kissed her in a moment of comparative yielding, and then, frightened himself, released her quickly, whereat she fled to her room, and threw herself panting and troubled upon her bed. For an hour or two she lay there, with flushed cheeks and conflicting thoughts. “He must never kiss me again,” she said softly to herself, “unless”—but the interrupting thought said, “I shall die if he kiss me not again; and I never can kiss another.” And then she was roused by a footstep upon the stair, which in that brief time she had learned to know and look for, and a knock at the door. She opened it to Major Van Zandt, white and so colorless as to bring out once more the faint red line made by her riding-whip two days before, as if it had risen again in accusation. The blood dropped out of her cheeks as she gazed at him in silence.
“An escort of dragoons,” said Major Van Zandt slowly, and with military precision, “has just arrived, bringing with them one Capt. Allan Brewster, of the Connecticut Contingent, on his way to Morristown to be tried for mutiny and treason. A private note from Col. Hamilton instructs me to allow him to have a private audience with you—if you so wish it.”
With a woman’s swift and too often hopeless intuition, Thankful knew that this was not the sole contents of the letter, and that her relations with Capt. Brewster were known to the man before her. But she drew herself up a little proudly, and, turning her truthful eyes upon the major, said, “I do so wish it.”
“It shall be done as you desire, Mistress Blossom,” returned the officer with cold politeness, as he turned upon his heel.
“One moment, Major Van Zandt,” said Thankful swiftly.
The major turned quickly; but Thankful’s eyes were gazing thoughtfully forward, and scarcely glanced at him. “I would prefer,” she said timidly and hesitatingly, “that this interview should not take place under the roof where—where—where—my father lives. Half-way down the meadow there is a barn, and before it a broken part of the wall, fronting on a sycamore-tree. He will know where it is. Tell him I will see him there in half an hour.”
A smile, which the major had tried to make a careless one, curled his lip satirically as he bowed in reply. “It is the first time,” he said dryly, “that I believe I have been honored with arranging a tryst for two lovers; but believe me, Mistress Thankful, I will do my best. In half an hour I will turn my prisoner over to you.”
In half an hour the punctual Mistress Thankful, with a hood hiding her pale face, passed the officer in the hall, on the way to her rendezvous. An hour later Cæsar came with a message that Mistress Thankful would like to see him. When the major entered the sitting-room, he was shocked to find her lying pale and motionless on the sofa; but as the door closed she rose to her feet, and confronted him.
“I do not know,” she said slowly, “whether you are aware that the man I just now parted from was for a twelvemonth past my sweetheart, and that I believed I loved him, and knew I was true to him. If you have not heard it, I tell you now, for the time will come when you will hear part of it from the lips of others, and I would rather you should take the whole truth from mine. This man was false to me. He betrayed two friends of mine as spies. I could have forgiven it, had it been only foolish jealousy; but it was, I have since learned from his own lips, only that he might gratify his spite against the commander-in-chief by procuring their arrest, and making a serious difficulty in the American camp, by means of which he hoped to serve his own ends. He told me this, believing that I sympathized with him in his hatred of the commander-in-chief, and in his own wrongs and sufferings. I confess to my shame, Major Van Zandt, that two days ago I did believe him, and that I looked upon you as a mere catch-poll or bailiff of the tyrant. That I found out how I was deceived when I saw the commander-in-chief, you, major, who know him so well, need not be told. Nor was it necessary for me to tell this man that he had deceived me: for I felt that—that—was—not—the—only reason—why I could no longer return—his love.”
She paused, as the major approached her earnestly, and waved him back with her hand. “He reproached me bitterly with my want of feeling for his misfortunes,” she went on again: “he recalled my past protestations; he showed me my love-letters; and he told me that if I were still his true sweetheart I ought to help him. I told him if he would never call me by that name again; if he would give up all claim to me; if he would never speak, write to me, nor see me again; if he would hand me back my letters,—I would help him.” She stopped: the blood rushed into her pale face. “You will remember, major, that I accepted this man’s love as a young, foolish, trustful girl; but when I made him this offer—he—he accepted it.”
“The dog!” said Major Van Zandt. “But in what way could you help this double traitor?”
“I have helped him,” said Thankful quietly.
“But how?” said Major Van Zandt.
“By becoming a traitor myself,” she said, turning upon him almost fiercely. “Hear me! While you were quietly pacing these halls, while your men were laughing and talking in the road, Cæsar was saddling my white mare, the fleetest in the country. He led her to the lane below. That mare is now two miles away, with Capt. Brewster on her back. Why do you not start, major? Look at me. I am a traitor, and this is my bribe;” and she drew a package of letters from her bosom, and flung them on the table.
She had been prepared for an outbreak or exclamation from the man before her, but not for his cold silence. “Speak,” she cried at last, passionately. “Speak! Open your lips, if only to curse me! Order in your men to arrest me. I will proclaim myself guilty, and save your honor. But only speak!”
“May I ask,” said Major Van Zandt coldly, “why you have twice honored me with a blow?”
“Because I loved you; because, when I first saw you I saw the only man that was my master, and I rebelled; because, when I found I could not help but love you, I knew I never had loved before, and I would wipe out with one stroke all the past that rose in judgment against me; because I would not have you ever confronted with one endearing word of mine that was not meant for you.”
Major Van Zandt turned from the window where he had stood, and faced the girl with sad resignation. “If I have in my foolishness, Mistress Thankful, shown you how great was your power over me, when you descended to this artifice to spare my feelings by confessing your own love for me, you should have remembered that you were doing that which forever kept me from wooing or winning you. If you had really loved me your heart, as a woman’s, would have warned you against that which my heart, as a gentleman’s, has made a law of honor; when I tell you, as much for the sake of relieving your own conscience as for the sake of justifying mine, that if this man, a traitor, my prisoner, and your recognized lover, had escaped from my custody without your assistance, connivance, or even knowledge, I should have deemed it my duty to forsake you until I caught him, even if we had been standing before the altar.”
Thankful heard him, but only as a strange voice in the distance, as she stood with fixed eyes, and breathless, parted lips before him. Yet even then I fear that, womanlike, she did not comprehend his rhetoric of honor, but only caught here and there a dull, benumbing idea that he despised her, and that in her effort to win his love she had killed it, and ruined him forever.
“If you think it strange,” continued the major, “that, believing as I do, I stand here only to utter moral axioms when my duty calls me to pursue your lover, I beg you to believe that it is only for your sake. I wish to allow a reasonable time between your interview with him, and his escape, that shall save you from any suspicion of complicity. Do not think,” he added with a sad smile, as the girl made an impatient step toward him, “do not think I am running any risk. The man cannot escape. A cordon of pickets surrounds the camp for many miles. He has not the countersign, and his face and crime are known.”
“Yes,” said Thankful eagerly, “but a part of his own regiment guards the Baskingridge road.”
“How know you this?” said the major, seizing her hand.
“He told me.”
Before she could fall on her knees, and beg his forgiveness, he had darted from the room, given an order, and returned with cheeks and eyes blazing.
“Hear me,” he said rapidly, taking the girl’s two hands, “you know not what you’ve done. I forgive you. But this is no longer a matter of duty, but my personal honor. I shall pursue this man alone. I shall return with him, or not at all. Farewell. God bless you!”
But before he reached the door she caught him again. “Only say you have forgiven me once more.”
“I do.”
“Guert!”
There was something in the girl’s voice more than this first utterance of his Christian name, that made him pause.
“I told—a—lie—just—now. There is a fleeter horse in the stable than my mare; ’tis the roan filly in the second stall.”
“God bless you!”
He was gone. She waited to hear the clatter of his horse’s hoofs in the roadway. When Cæsar came in a few moments later, to tell the news of Capt. Brewster’s escape, the room was empty; but it was soon filled again by a dozen turbulent troopers.
“Of course she’s gone,” said Sergeant Tibbitts: “the jade flew with the captain.”
“Ay, ’tis plain enough. Two horses are gone from the stable besides the major’s,” said Private Hicks.
Nor was this military criticism entirely a private one. When the courier arrived at headquarters the next morning, it was to bring the report that Mistress Thankful Blossom, after assisting her lover to escape had fled with him. “The renegade is well off our hands,” said Gen. Sullivan gruffly: “he has saved us the public disgrace of a trial. But this is bad news of Major Van Zandt.”
“What news of the major?” asked Washington quickly.
“He pursued the vagabond as far as Springfield, killing his horse, and falling himself insensible before Major Merton’s quarters. Here he became speedily delirious, fever supervened, and the regimental surgeon, after a careful examination, pronounced his case one of small-pox.”
A whisper of horror and pity went around the room. “Another gallant soldier, who should have died leading a charge, laid by the heels by a beggar’s filthy distemper,” growled Sullivan. “Where will it end?”
“God knows,” said Hamilton. “Poor Van Zandt! But whither was he sent,—to the hospital?”
“No: a special permit was granted in his case; and ’tis said he was removed to the Blossom Farm,—it being remote from neighbors,—and the house placed under quarantine. Abner Blossom has prudently absented himself from the chances of infection, and the daughter has fled. The sick man is attended only by a black servant and an ancient crone; so that, if the poor major escapes with his life or without disfigurement, pretty Mistress Bolton of Morristown need not be scandalized or jealous.”