The Spy, James Fenimore Cooper [uplifting book club books TXT] 📗
- Author: James Fenimore Cooper
Book online «The Spy, James Fenimore Cooper [uplifting book club books TXT] 📗». Author James Fenimore Cooper
Abroad the wild fury of winter is lowering,
And leafless and drear is the tree;
But the vertical sun of the south appears pouring
Its fierce, killing heats upon me:
Without, all the season’s chill symptoms begin—
But the fire of passion is raging within.
Frances abandoned her whole soul to the suppressed melody of the music, though the language of the song expressed a meaning, which, united with certain events of that and the preceding day, left a sensation of uneasiness in the bosom of the warm-hearted girl, to which she had hitherto been a stranger. Isabella moved from the window as her last tones melted on the ear of her admiring listener, and, for the first time, her eye rested on the pallid face of the intruder. A glow of fire lighted the countenance of both at the same instant, and the blue eye of Frances met the brilliant black one of her guest for a single moment, and both fell in abashed confusion on the carpet; they advanced, however, until they met, and had taken each other’s hand, before either ventured again to look her companion in the face.
“This sudden change in the weather, and perhaps the situation of my brother, have united to make me melancholy, Miss Wharton,” said Isabella, in a low tone, and in a voice that trembled as she spoke.
“’Tis thought you have little to apprehend for your brother,” said Frances, in the same embarrassed manner. “Had you seen him when he was brought in by Major Dunwoodie—”
Frances paused, with a feeling of conscious shame, for which she could not account; and, in raising her eyes, she saw Isabella studying her countenance with an earnestness that again drove the blood tumultuously to her temples.
“You were speaking of Major Dunwoodie,” said Isabella, faintly.
“He was with Captain Singleton.”
“Do you know Dunwoodie? Have you seen him often?”
Once more Frances ventured to look her guest in the face, and again she met the piercing eyes bent on her, as if to search her inmost heart. “Speak, Miss Wharton; is Major Dunwoodie known to you?”
“He is my relative,” said Frances, appalled at the manner of the other.
“A relative!” echoed Miss Singleton; “in what degree?—speak, Miss
Wharton, I conjure you to speak.”
“Our parents were cousins,” faintly replied Frances.
“And he is to be your husband?” said the stranger, impetuously.
Frances felt shocked, and all her pride awakened, by this direct attack upon her feelings, and she raised her eyes from the floor to her interrogator a little proudly, when the pale cheek and quivering lip of Isabella removed her resentment in a moment.
“It is true! My conjecture is true! Speak to me, Miss Wharton; I conjure you, in mercy to my feelings, to tell me—do you love Dunwoodie?” There was a plaintive earnestness in the voice of Miss Singleton that disarmed Frances of all resentment, and the only answer she could make was to hide her burning face between her hands, as she sank back in a chair to conceal her confusion.
Isabella paced the floor in silence for several minutes, until she had succeeded in conquering the violence of her feelings, when she approached the place where Frances yet sat, endeavoring to exclude the eyes of her companion from reading the shame expressed in her countenance, and, taking the hand of the other, she spoke with an evident effort at composure.
“Pardon me, Miss Wharton, if my ungovernable feelings have led me into impropriety; the powerful motive—the cruel reason”—she hesitated. Frances now raised her face, and their eyes once more met; they fell in each other’s arms, and laid their burning cheeks together. The embrace was long—was ardent and sincere—but neither spoke; and on separating, Frances retired to her own room without further explanation.
While this extraordinary scene was acting in the room of Miss Singleton, matters of great importance were agitated in the drawing-room. The disposition of the fragments of such a dinner as the one we have recorded was a task that required no little exertion and calculation. Notwithstanding several of the small game had nestled in the pocket of Captain Lawton’s man, and even the assistant of Dr. Sitgreaves had calculated the uncertainty of his remaining long in such good quarters, still there was more left unconsumed than the prudent Miss Peyton knew how to dispose of to advantage. Caesar and his mistress had, therefore, a long and confidential communication on this important business; and the consequence was, that Colonel Wellmere was left to the hospitality of Sarah Wharton. All the ordinary topics of conversation were exhausted, when the colonel, with a little of the uneasiness that is in some degree inseparable from conscious error, touched lightly on the transactions of the preceding day.
“We little thought, Miss Wharton, when I first saw this Mr. Dunwoodie in your house in Queen Street, that he was to be the renowned warrior he has proved himself,” said Wellmere, endeavoring to smile away his chagrin.
“Renowned, when we consider the enemy he overcame,” said Sarah, with consideration for her companion’s feelings. “’Twas unfortunate, indeed, in every respect, that you met with the accident, or doubtless the royal arms would have triumphed in their usual manner.”
“And yet the pleasure of such society as this accident has introduced me to, would more than repay the pain of a mortified spirit and wounded body,” added the colonel, in a manner of peculiar softness.
“I hope the latter is but trifling,” said Sarah, stooping to hide her blushes under the pretext of biting a thread from the work on her knee.
“Trifling, indeed, compared to the former,” returned the colonel, in the same manner. “Ah! Miss Wharton, it is in such moments that we feel the full value of friendship and sympathy.”
Those who have never tried it cannot easily imagine what a rapid progress a warm-hearted female can make in love, in the short space of half an hour, particularly where there is a predisposition to the distemper. Sarah found the conversation, when it began to touch on friendship and sympathy, too interesting to venture her voice with a reply. She, however, turned her eyes on the colonel, and saw him gazing at her fine face with an admiration that was quite as manifest, and much more soothing, than any words could make it.
Their tête-à-tête was uninterrupted for an hour; and although nothing that would be called decided, by an experienced matron, was said by the gentleman, he uttered a thousand things that delighted his companion, who retired to her rest with a lighter heart than she had felt since the arrest of her brother by the Americans.
And let me the canakin clink, clink,
And let me the canakin clink.
A soldier’s a man;
A life’s but a span;
Why, then, let a soldier drink.
—Othello.
The position held by the corps of dragoons, we have already said, was a favorite place of halting with their commander. A cluster of some half dozen small and dilapidated buildings formed what, from the circumstance of two roads intersecting each other at right angles, was called the village of the Four Corners. As usual, one of the most imposing of these edifices had been termed, in the language of the day, “a house of entertainment for man and beast.” On a rough board suspended from the gallows-looking post that had supported the ancient sign, was, however, written in red chalk, “Elizabeth Flanagan, her hotel,” an ebullition of the wit of some of the idle wags of the corps. The matron, whose name had thus been exalted to an office of such unexpected dignity, ordinarily discharged the duties of a female sutler, washerwoman, and, to use the language of Katy Haynes, petticoat doctor to the troops. She was the widow of a soldier who had been killed in the service, and who, like herself, was a native of a distant island, and had early tried his fortune in the colonies of North America. She constantly migrated with the troops; and it was seldom that they became stationary for two days at a time but the little cart of the bustling woman was seen driving into the encampment loaded with such articles as she conceived would make her presence most welcome. With a celerity that seemed almost supernatural, Betty took up her ground and commenced her occupation. Sometimes the cart itself was her shop; at others the soldiers made her a rude shelter of such materials as offered; but on the present occasion she had seized on a vacant building, and, by dint of stuffing the dirty breeches and half-dried linen of the troopers into the broken windows, to exclude the cold, which had now become severe, she formed what she herself had pronounced to be “most illigant lodgings.” The men were quartered in the adjacent barns, and the officers collected in the “Hotel Flanagan,” as they facetiously called headquarters. Betty was well known to every trooper in the corps, could call each by his Christian or nickname, as best suited her fancy; and, although absolutely intolerable to all whom habit had not made familiar with her virtues, was a general favorite with these partisan warriors. Her faults were, a trifling love of liquor, excessive filthiness, and a total disregard of all the decencies of language; her virtues, an unbounded love for her adopted country, perfect honesty when dealing on certain known principles with the soldiery, and great good nature. Added to these, Betty had the merit of being the inventor of that beverage which is so well known, at the present hour, to all the patriots who make a winter’s march between the commercial and political capitals of this great state, and which is distinguished by the name of “cocktail.” Elizabeth Flanagan was peculiarly well qualified, by education and circumstances, to perfect this improvement in liquors, having been literally brought up on its principal ingredient, and having acquired from her Virginian customers the use of mint, from its flavor in a julep to its height of renown in the article in question. Such, then, was the mistress of the mansion, who, reckless of the cold northern blasts, showed her blooming face from the door of the building to welcome the arrival of her favorite, Captain Lawton, and his companion, her master in matters of surgery.
“Ah! by my hopes of promotion, my gentle Elizabeth, but you are welcome!” cried the trooper, as he threw himself from his saddle. “This villainous fresh-water gas from the Canadas has been whistling among my bones till they ache with the cold, but the sight of your fiery countenance is as cheery as a Christmas fire.”
“Now sure, Captain Jack, ye’s always full of your complimentaries,” replied the sutler, taking the bridle of her customer. “But hurry in for the life of you, darling; the fences hereabouts are not so strong as in the Highlands, and there’s that within will warm both sowl and body.”
“So you have been laying the rails under contribution, I see. Well, that may do for the body,” said the captain coolly; “but I have had a pull at a bottle of cut glass with a silver stand, and I doubt my relish for your whisky for a month to come.”
“If it’s silver or goold that ye’re thinking of, it’s but little I have, though I’ve a trifling bit of the continental,” said Betty, with a look of humor; “but there’s that within that’s fit to be put in vissils of di’monds.”
“What can she mean, Archibald?” asked Lawton. “The animal looks as if it meant more than it says!”
“’Tis probably a wandering of the reasoning powers, created by the frequency of intoxicating drafts,” observed the surgeon, as he deliberately threw his left leg over the pommel of the saddle, and slid down on the right side of his horse.
“Faith, my dear jewel of a doctor, but it was this side I was expicting you; the whole corps come down on this side but yeerself,” said Betty, winking at the trooper; “but I’ve been feeding the wounded, in yeer absence, with the fat of the land.”
“Barbarous stupidity!” cried the panic-stricken physician, “to feed men laboring under the excitement of fever with powerful nutriment. Woman, woman, you are enough to defeat the skill of Hippocrates!”
“Pooh!” said Betty, with infinite composure, “what a botheration ye make about a little whisky; there was but a gallon betwixt a good dozen of them, and I gave it to the boys to make them sleep asy; sure, jist as slumbering drops.”
Lawton and his companion now entered the building, and the first objects which met their eyes explained the hidden meaning of Betty’s comfortable declaration. A long table, made of boards torn from the side of an outbuilding, was stretched through the middle of the largest apartment, or the barroom, and on it was a very scanty display of crockery ware. The steams of cookery arose from an adjoining kitchen, but the principal attraction was in
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