25 For Honour’s Sake

Sprinq was in the air when Rose Carew and I walked together on the border of the little town that was to be the capital of the new State. There had been a brief period of peace among us, a rest before beginning anew the struggle in the Northwest. Not a breath of the Spanish conspiracy came to our ears. It seemed to be dead.

Mr. Carew was recovering from his wound, and his most faithful attendant next to his daughter was Jasper, who knew now all his moods, and, without fail, anticipated them.

I had been thinking of Osseo, and how he was waiting at the Ohio, but after my promise I could not go until Rose Carew sent for me, and now I had come. She seemed to me somewhat changed in these later days. I missed the humour and varying moods that marked her in our first flight through the wilderness. She was graver and paler, and yet she had passed through much to make her so.

I had heard for some days the voice of the wilderness calling in tones that would not be denied, but now as I walked with Rose Carew in this new and beautiful land just given to the uses of man, I heard another voice calling too. I was not by nature the wilderness hunter; the forest had its glory, but so had the homes of men. I was not one to scorn honours, and I loved to gaze upon the beautiful face of a woman.

The sunshine was like gold in the clear air, and the houses glittered under its rays. Slender columns of smoke rose and seemed afar like silver spires. All around us stretched the noble country. I felt the influence of such a scene, and I saw that she too was touched by it. Her lips were parted a little, and the red in her cheeks deepened.

“Yes, it is beautiful,” she said, divining my thoughts.

“Almost too beautiful for one to leave,” I answered.

“One need not leave it,” she said.

We were silent for a while, and then she continued, somewhat as if speaking to herself:

“Pride is a fine thing to have, and often it may serve to keep one’s honour clean, and again it may make its possessor stubborn, and blind his eyes to the right. I knew a man once to whom a great wrong had been done, and his heart was filled with bitterness toward those who had done him the wrong. He left his home and came to this new land. Soon he became known on the whole border for his valour in defence of the defenceless, and all loved him. When there was any great service of danger and daring to be done they sent for him, and he never refused. A girl was taken from her people and carried into the far Northwest by the savages, and this man followed to rescue her. When naught else could avail, and the Indian chief made the suggestion to him, he gave himself for her. He was rescued, but when he made that sacrifice he did not know that he would be.”

“It is a fable,” I said. “The man is a border boaster. He merely claimed to have made such a sacrifice in order that he might rise in the favour of the rescued girl.”

“It is not a fable,” she said. “He made no boast of it, but tried to keep it a secret. She learned of it from another. She did not at first know of the great injustice that had been done to this man, and when she heard the story of the charge against him, and which he did not deny to her, she felt aversion toward him. She could not help it, because she believed then that the charge was true.”

She faced me now, her eyes gazing into mine, and I felt that she was like one who had come to a confession and was resolved to make it. I would have stopped her, but I could not.

“But she continued to watch him,” she resumed, “and when she saw his deeds and the sacrifices he made for others she felt that whatever he may have done, it was in a moment of rash and heedless youth, and his was now a great nature, all the nobler because of what he had suffered.”

“It was her generous heart that made her think so,” I said. “Men often wear false faces, and because of his fancied service she saw him not as he was, but as she wished him to be.”

“Not so,” she said, “She saw him better than he saw himself. She would have him take all the rewards which other men covet, and which might be his if he would seek them. Perhaps no wish would be denied him. But his pride stands in the way, and there he wrongs himself and others.”

I had no answer then to make her. The note of the wilderness was silent at that moment, and I heard only the voice of my own kind calling to me. It was, in truth, a most beautiful land in which to live and be happy. I looked at the oak groves and the rolling hills in the tender green of young spring, and then at the tall girl with the luminous eyes, and I thought that never before had the homes of white men seemed so fair.

“You do not know how many friends you have here,” she said presently, “and I now owe you two great debts of gratitude—one for myself and one for my father. Oh, I have heard how you rescued him at the ford, and I have heard how you and Mr. Underwood saved our little army from destruction and turned the day.”

“My friends are overkind,” I said. “It was Underwood who did it all. My part was no more than that of any other.”

“Those who were with you do not say so. Kentucky is filled with your praises. None sings them louder than Mr. Underwood, who is sure to receive great honour from the State. Why should you refuse the same reward?”

Then she painted a picture which was in truth most beautiful, though I knew it, too, to be most dangerous. It was the same story that Underwood had told me, and the colours were the same, but there was something else in her voice of which he could know nothing, and it was that which I dreaded most. I asked myself how any woman could ever hold in her heart the man who does not keep his honour clean. The thought decided me, and I was about to tell her that I should depart the next day for Osseo at the Ohio, but she, seeming to divine the nature of what I would say, exclaimed:

“No, do not give me your answer now; I shall have more to say presently.”

Then she changed, and the change was so sudden that it took my breath, while I admired. She became again the piquant, elusive girl whom I had known in the forest, with all her variable moods and merry humour, speaking of one topic, and then flitting to another like a butterfly on the wing. I felt my blood leap under the influence of her gaiety, but I soon noticed that she talked most of the East, of old places and people whom I knew, touching here and there upon the things that were vital to me and which I loved most, arousing in me such a longing to see it all again, and to see it when she saw it, that I was forced to put myself in bands of iron.

Then she stopped suddenly.

“Now I must go back to my father,” she said, “and I wish to see you again to-morrow, Mr. Lee, if you will come. But first I have another promise to exact of you. Go to the inn to-night. Some one who wishes very much to see you will be there. No, don’t ask me who it is, but go.”

Of course I gave such an easy promise; and that night, shortly after sunset, I sat in a little room at the inn with a thick-set, large-faced, stern-lipped man, of whom I had heard often, but whom I now met for the first time. It was Isaac Shelby, one of the heroes of King’s Mountain, a valiant patriot and defender of the border, who by almost unanimous consent was now about to become the first Governor of Kentucky.

“We are well met, Mr. Lee,” he said. “I have long heard of you, and I have heard good only. But now to business, understanding, of course, that what we say is in the confidence always existing between gentlemen.”

I bowed. In truth, he was wasting but little time upon preliminaries, though his welcome to me was warm, and all the more grateful coming from such a man. He fixed his eyes upon me, seeming to mark every expression of mine as he spoke.

“You are a man of note in this region, Mr. Lee,” he said. “You have a long claim upon its gratitude, and your fame is extending. Your rescue of Miss Carew was a most gallant affair, and your services in that last fight across the Ohio were great. Don’t look embarrassed, man; I but speak the truth. And there is something else to your credit. I know of your visit to the school-house that night with Underwood, when you two faced the Spanish conspirators, and I know every one of them, too.”

I felt a sudden fear for Mr. Carew, and the fear was because of his daughter. He was a stern man who sat before me, and soon great power would be in his hands.

“I knew that such an affair was breeding here,” he continued, “and you need not think that it could ever have succeeded; doubtless you do not; I had some part in defeating the schemes of that wretch Wilkinson and his associates, and I could crush this, were it not dead already, with a single pressure of my thumb, for, as you know, I am about to become the first Governor of this State, which I mention merely as fact, and not through vain boasting.”

“But these men are all repentant,” I said.

“Those who have a chance to be so with one or two exceptions,” he said. “The two lawyers are too much frightened ever to raise their heads in such an affair again, and Curry, who under certain circumstances might have been the most dangerous of them all, has died for his country’s sake. Now there is Mr. Carew.”

He did not take his eyes off me, and unless I deceived myself I saw a faint twinkle in them.

“But Mr. Carew is safe,” he continued, “only he will have to be careful how he walks, despite the great credit he has received for that wound in the recent battle. When Kentucky calls upon him for service he will have to respond.”

He spoke with emphasis, and his lips shut tightly together. I saw that Mr. Carew was in truth in a trap, and I could appreciate the grim humour of it all the more because it put him in a safe place.

“His daughter need not fear for her father,” he said, and again I saw that faint twinkle in his eye—a twinkle that set me to guessing.

“And there, too, is your cousin Jasper,” he continued. “I wish I could find some proof against him, but he has been too cunning. We should only weaken ourselves by proceeding against him. He is a bad fellow, Mr. Lee, for all his cousinship.”

I was silent.

“And now for yourself,” he continued. “You were one of those who denounced this affair. There you did us a service again, and we would reward you. I am not unaware of your past. Your pardon for mentioning it, but it was a necessity. Stay with us and you shall have one of the greatest offices in the gift of the Governor. You are a swordsman and a rifle shot, and if any one speak ill of you, warn him that he does so at his peril. Here in this land you are within a hedge of friends.”

I was moved to the depths and I felt myself trembling. I would have remained then, when this offer so fair was made to me, but I was afraid of a woman’s face. With her constantly before me I could not be true to myself, and I said again under my breath that the duty rested now more heavily upon me than upon most men to keep my honour clean.

“Then you will not stay?” he said, when I had given my answer.

“No,” I replied.

“Not even if others should ask you?”

“Others have asked me, and I have given them the same answer, I do not think that I should stay.”

“It seems a pity,” he said. “We shall have troublous times here, and God knows that this community needs strong men.”

“I shall have other work to do yonder on the border.”

“Ay, that you shall, and I know that you will do it well. My good wishes attend you, Mr. Lee.”

He gave my hand a strong clasp, and I left him, to find Osseo waiting for me at my lodgings. The chief had grown impatient, and he came now from the Ohio to find me. He asked me no question, but merely waited there in silent inquiry.

“We shall go to-morrow, Osseo,” I said.

The next day in hunter’s garb and with my rifle on my shoulder I bade Miss Carew good-bye. She looked at me steadily, and her eyes were full of reproach.

“What does this departure mean, Mr. Lee?” she asked.

“I return to the place in which I belong—the forest,” I replied.

“And your promise to me back there across the Ohio that you would come to Philadelphia?” she asked.

“There are some promises which it is more honest to break than to keep,” I replied. “What right have I to go to the East? What reply could I make to those who should ask me why I came?”

“But I asked you to come,” she said. “Do not go back to the wilderness. Stay and live the larger life for which you are fit. Prove to all your enemies what you can be.”

I shook my head.

“It is too late,” I said.

“It is not too late!” she exclaimed, and her tone thrilled me in every fibre. “Won’t you come? What does something that happened long ago matter now? Of what importance is it now whether you were innocent or guilty then?”

“Does it matter to you?”

“No.”

Her eyes told me that she spoke the truth, though the crimson in her cheeks was deeper. She did not know now how much I was compelled to cast aside. The forest was calling to me in a yet louder tone of duty.

“Good-bye,” I said.

“Will you go back to the wilderness?”

“Yes, I have no choice.”

She turned and ran into the house, leaving me standing there like one dazed, and I felt to the centre of my heart that I should never see her again.

A friendly hand was put upon my shoulder, and the voice of Osseo, as low and sweet as that of a woman, said in my ear:

“The forest is calling to us, my brother.”

“Ay, Osseo, I hear it; let us go.”

We started at once, and soon were deep in the great Northwestern wilderness.

►   ▲