And there, too, a martyr to the country’s cause, lay Thomas Dean. A sob
of pity rose in Jane’s throat as she thought of him, and the great
tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks. He was so young, so brave, so
fine. Why must Death have come to him when there was yet so much he
might have done? With his talent and education, with his wonderful
spirit of self-sacrifice, he might have gone far and high. Regretfully,
she recalled that he had loved her, and with kind pity in her heart she
reproached herself for not having been able to return to this fine,
clean, American youth the affection she had inspired in him.
Thomas Dean, she told herself, was the type of man she should have
loved, a man of her own people, with her own ideals, a man of her
country, her flag, and yet—
There on the floor, not a dozen feet away from her, shameful circlets
of steel girdling both his wrists and his ankles, lay the one man for
whom she knew now she cared the most in all the world, the man she had
just betrayed into Chief Fleck’s hands.
Bitterly she reproached herself for not having tried to induce Frederic
to escape. In mental anguish she pictured him—the man she
loved—standing in the prisoner’s dock in some courtroom, branded as a
spy, as a leader of spies, charged with an attempt to slaughter the
inhabitants—the women and children—of a sleeping, unprotected city.
With growing horror it came to her that in all probability she herself
would be called on to testify against him. It might even be her
evidence that would result in his being led out before a firing squad
and put to an ignominious death.
She dared not even look in his direction now. What must he be thinking
about her? He had known that she loved him. In despair and doubt she
wondered whether he could understand that she, too, had been influenced
to perform her soul-wracking task by a sense of honor, of duty to her
country equally as potent as that which had impelled him to participate
in this terrible plan to destroy New York. Why had she not informed him
that his plans were known to the United States Government’s agents?
Surely she could have convinced him that his was a hopeless mission.
The plot would have been successfully thwarted, and he would not be
lying there in shackles, but, even though forced to flee, who knew,
perhaps some day after peace had come, he might have been able to
return for her. A great sob rose from her heart, but she stifled it
back. She would be brave and true. She must be glad for those of her
people that had been saved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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