Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker: Sometime Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel on the Staff of his Excellency General WashingtonMitchell, S. Weir (Silas Weir)
History
Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker: Sometime Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel on the Staff of his Excellency General Washington
Mitchell, S. Weir (Silas Weir)
Quakers -- Fiction; United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Fiction
“‘Oh, the tale is brief and brutal. I was seated on the straw one day,
with Hugh’s head in my lap, putting water on his forehead and trying
to quiet him, when the turnkey came in with an English officer. This
gentleman looked about him at the few left alive, asked carelessly who
broke the window-panes, and then suddenly seemed to notice Hugh. He
asked who was this poor devil. The turnkey said, “Name of Wynne,
sir.” Then the captain stood still a moment, staring at us, and, as if
curious, bent down, asking me what Hugh was saying. Now my poor friend
was muttering over and over, “Dorothea! Dorothea!”--some woman’s name, I
suppose, but what woman he never told me.’
“At this I saw Darthea flush, but perhaps remembering that Mr. Delaney
might know her only as Miss Peniston, which was the fact, she controlled
herself and said quickly: ‘He asked his name? Are you sure he asked his
name? Could there have been no mistake?’
“Delaney looked the surprise he no doubt felt, and replied, ‘Yes; of
that I am sure.’
“‘Do you think,’ said Darthea, ‘he knew how ill Mr. Hugh Wynne was?’
“‘Certainly; I heard the turnkey tell him that a day or two would see
Hugh in the potter’s field with the rest. The doctor had said as much.
This was true; he had told me it was useless for him to return, and
indeed I thought so too. They buried a half-dozen a day. When told that
this man Wynne had jail-fever, the captain seemed in haste to leave. At
the door lie turned and took another look at Hugh, and then went out. I
asked his name next day, but the turnkey laughed, and said it was none
of my business. I had a fancy that the inspector desired to remain
unknown. I was sure of this when, a few days after, I described the
officer to Hugh, who was then quite himself. When Hugh said at last,
“Had he a scar over the left eye!” and I said he had, Hugh cried out in
a rage that it was his cousin, and would talk of nothing else for days.
I fear there can be no doubt that the inspecting officer was Captain
Arthur Wynne.’
“‘Horrible!’ exclaimed Mistress Wynne. ‘Incredible!’
“‘Yes; it seems to me a quite inconceivable thing, but I am certain,
though the man looked a gentleman all over.’
“‘He looked a gentleman all over,’ said Darthea, with strange
deliberateness of speech.
“This while Mistress Wynne sat drawn up, her face set, and one hand
moving on the arm of the chair, just the same queer trick her brother
had. As for me, I watched Darthea. It was a merciless plot, and may have
been needed; but in truth the way of it was cruel, and my heart bled for
her I loved.
“As she spoke her tones were so strange that Mr. Delaney, who was
clearly but an innocent though sharp tool, said: ‘I beg pardon, Miss
Peniston. These sad stories are too dreadful to repeat. Miss Wynne would
have it--’
“But Darthea was now quite lost to the common ways of life. She went on
like a person questioning herself, as it sounded to me. ‘Arthur Wynne
asked his name. Is that so?’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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