“They tell you true, sir,” returned the captain, beginning slowly to pick his way towards the gate; “of Mrs. Priscilla, the relict of Mr. John Lechmere—a lady of a creditable descent, and I think it will not be denied that she has had honourable interment!”
“If it be the lady I suppose,” continued the stranger, “she is of an honourable descent indeed. Her maiden name was Lincoln, and she is aunt to the great Devonshire Baronet of that family.”
“How! know you the Lincolns?” exclaimed Polwarth, stopping short, and turning to examine the other with a stricter eye. Perceiving, however, that the stranger was a man of harsh and peculiarly forbidding features, in the dress already mentioned, he muttered—“you may have heard of them, friend, but I should doubt whether your intimacy could amount to such wholesome familiarities as eating and drinking.”
“Stronger intimacies than that, sir, are sometimes brought about between men who were born to very different fortunes,” returned the stranger, with a peculiarly sarcastic and ambiguous smile, which meant more than met the eye—“but all who know the Lincolns, sir, will allow their claims to distinction. If this lady was one of them, she had reason to be proud of her blood.”
“Ay, you are not tainted, I see, with these revolutionary notions, my friend,” returned Polwarth; “she was also connected with a very good sort of a family in this colony, called the Danforths—you know the Danforths?”
“Not at all, sir, I—”
“Not know the Danforths!” exclaimed Polwarth, once more stopping to bestow a freer scrutiny on his companion. After a short pause, however, he nodded his head, in approbation of his own conclusions, and added—“No, no—I am wrong—I see you could not have known much of the Danforths!”
The stranger appeared quite willing to overlook the cavalier treatment he received, for he continued to attend the difficult footsteps of the maimed soldier, with the same respectful deference as before.
“I have no knowledge of the Danforths, it is true,” he answered, “but I may boast of some intimacy with the family of Lincoln.”
“Would to God, then,” cried Polwarth, in a sort of soliloquy, which escaped him in the fullness of his heart, “you could tell us what has become of its heir!”
The stranger stopped short in his turn, and exclaimed—
“Is he not serving with the army of the king, against this rebellion! Is he not here!”
“He is here, or he is there, or he is any where; I tell you he is lost.”
“He is lost!” echoed the other.
“Lost!” repeated a humble female voice, at the very elbow of the captain—
This singular repetition of his own language, aroused Polwarth from the abstraction into which he had suffered himself to fall. In his course from the vault to the church-yard gate, he had unconsciously approached the woman before mentioned, and when he turned at the sounds of her voice, his eyes fell full upon her anxious countenance. The very first glance was enough to tell the observant captain, that in the midst of her poverty and rags, he saw the broken remains of great female beauty. Her dark and intelligent eyes, set as they were in a sallow and sunken countenance, still retained much of the brightness, if not of the softness and peace of youth. The contour of her face was also striking, though she might be said to resemble one whose loveliness had long since departed with her innocence. But the gallantry of Polwarth was proof even against the unequivocal signs of misery, if not of guilt, which were so easily to be traced in her appearance, and he too much respected even the remnants of female charms which were yet visible amid such a mass of unseemliness, to regard them with an unfriendly eye. Apparently encouraged by the kind look of the captain, the woman ventured to add—
“Did I hear aright, sir; said you that Major Lincoln was lost?”
“I am afraid, good woman,” returned the captain, leaning on the iron-shod stick, with which he was wont to protect his footsteps along the icy streets of Boston—“that this siege has, in your case, proved unusually severe. If I am not mistaken in a matter in which I profess to know much, nature is not supported as nature should be. You would ask for food, and God forbid that I should deny a fellow-creature a morsel of that which constitutes both the seed and the fruits of life. Here is money.”
The muscles of the woman worked, and, for a moment, she glanced her eyes wistfully towards his silver, but a slight flush passing quickly over her features, she answered—
“Whatever may be my wants and my suffering, I thank my God that he has not levelled me with the beggar of the streets. Before that evil day shall come, may I find a place amongst these frozen hillocks where we stand. But, I beg pardon, sir, I thought I heard you speak of Major Lincoln.”
“I did—and what of him? I said he was lost, and it is true, if that be lost which cannot be found.”
“And did Madam Lechmere take her leave before he was missing?” asked the woman, advancing a step nearer to Polwarth, in intense anxiety to be answered.
“Do you think, good woman, that a gentleman of Major Lincoln’s notion of things, would disappear after the decease of his relative, and leave a comparative stranger to fill the office of principal mourner!”
“The Lord forgive us all our sins and wickedness!” muttered the woman, drawing the shreds of her tattered cloak about her shivering form, and hastening silently away into the depths of the grave-yard. Polwarth regarded her unceremonious departure for a moment, in surprise, and then turning to his remaining companion, he remarked—
“That woman is unsettled in her reason, for the want of wholesome nutriment. It is just as impossible to retain the powers of the mind, and neglect the stomach, as it is to expect a truant boy will make a learned man.” By this time the worthy captain had forgotten whom he addressed, and he continued, in his usual philosophic strain, “children are sent to school to learn all useful inventions but that of eating; for to eat—that is to eat with judgment, is as much of an invention as any other discovery. Every mouthful a man swallows has to undergo four important operations, each of which may be called a crisis in the human constitution.”
“Suffer me to help you over this grave,” said the other, officiously offering his assistance.
“I thank you, sir, I thank you—’tis a sad commentary on my words!” returned the captain, with a melancholy smile. “The time has been when I served in the light corps, but your men in unequal quantities are good for little else but garrisons! As I was saying, there is first, the selection; second, mastication; third, deglutition; and lastly, the digestion.”
“Quite true, sir,” said the stranger, a little abruptly; “thin diet and light meals are best for the brain.”
“Thin diet and light meals sir, are good for nothing but to rear dwarfs and idiots!” returned the captain, with some heat. “I repeat to you, sir—”
He was interrupted by the stranger, who suddenly smothered a dissertation on the connexion between the material and immaterial, by asking—
“If the heir of such a family be lost, is there none to see that he is found again?”
Polwarth finding himself thus checked in the very opening of his theme, stopped again, and stared the other full in the face for a moment, without making any reply. His kind feelings, however, got the better of his displeasure, and yielding to the interest he felt in the fate of Lionel, he answered—
“I would go all lengths, and incur every hazard to do him service!”
“Then, sir, accident has brought those together who are willing to engage in the same undertaking! I, too, will do my utmost to discover him! I have heard he has friends in this province. Has he no connexion to whom we may apply for intelligence?”
“None nearer than a wife.”
“A wife!” repeated the other, in surprise—“is he married?”
A long pause ensued, during which the stranger mused deeply, and Polwarth bestowed a still more searching
scrutiny than ever on his companion. It would appear that the result was not satisfactory to the captain, for shaking his head, in no very equivocal manner, he resumed the task of picking his way among the graves, towards the gate, with renewed diligence. He was in the act of seating himself in the pung, when the stranger again stood at his elbow, and said—
“If I knew where to find his wife, I would offer my services to the lady?”
Polwarth pointed to the building of which Cecil was now the mistress, and answered, somewhat superciliously, as he drove away—
“She is there, my good friend, but your application will be useless!”
The stranger received the direction in an understanding manner, and smiled with satisfied confidence, while he took the opposite route from that by which the busy equipage of the captain had already disappeared.
Chapter XXVI
“Up Fish-street! down Saint Magnus’ corner!
Kill and knock down! Throw them into Thames!—
What noise is this I hear? Dare any be so bold to sound
Retreat or parly; when I command them kill?”
King Henry VI.
* * *
IT WAS RARELY, indeed, that the equal minded Polwarth undertook an adventure with so fell an intent, as, was the disposition with which he directed the head of the hunter to be turned towards the dock-square. He had long known the residence of Job Pray, and often in passing from his lodgings, near the common, into the more fashionable quarter of the town, the good-natured epicure had turned his head to bestow a nod and a smile on the unsophisticated admirer of his skill in the culinary art. But now, as the pung whirled out of Corn-hill into the well-known area, his eye fell on the low and gloomy walls of the warehouse with a far less amicable design.
From the time he was apprized of the disappearance of his friend, the captain had been industriously ruminating on the subject, in a vain wish to discover any probable reason that might induce a bridegroom to adopt so hasty, and apparently so unjustifiable, a step as the desertion of his bride, and that, too, under circumstances of so peculiar distress. But the more he reasoned the more he found himself involved in the labyrinth of perplexity, until he was glad to seize on the slightest clue which offered, to lead him from his obscurity. It has already been seen in what manner he received the intelligence conveyed through the gorget of M’Fuse, and it now remains for us to show with what ingenuity he improved the hint.
It had always been a matter of surprise to Polwarth, that a man like Lionel should tolerate so much of the society of the simpleton, nor had it escaped his observation that the communications between the two were a little concealed under a shade of mystery. He had overheard the foolish boast of the lad, the preceding day, relative to the death of M’Fuse, and the battered ornament, in conjunction with the place where it was found, which accorded so well with his grovelling habits, had tended to confirm its truth. The love of Polwarth for the grenadier was second only to his attachment for his earlier friend. The one had avowedly fallen, and he soon began to suspect that the other had been strangely inveigled from his duty by the agency of this ill-gifted fool. To conceive an opinion, and to become confirmed in its justice, were results, generally, produced by the same operation of the mind, with this disciple of animal philosophy. Whilst he stood near the tomb of the Lechmeres, in the important character of chief mourner, he had diligently revolved in his mind the brief arguments which he found necessary to this conclusion. The arrangement of his ideas might boast of the terseness of a syllogism. His proposition and inference were something as follows—Job murdered M’Fuse; some great evil has occurred to Lionel; and therefore Job has been its author.
It is true, there was a good deal of intermediate argument to support this deduction, at which the captain cast an extremely cursory glance, but which the reader may easily conceive, if at all gifted in the way of imagination. It would require no undue belief of the connexion between very natural effects and their causes, to show that Polwarth was not entirely unreasonable in suspecting the agency of the simpleton, nor in harbouring the deep and bitter resentment that so much mischief, even though it were sustained from the hands of a fool, was likely to awaken. Be that as it may, by the time the pung had reached the point already mentioned, its rapid motion, which accelerated the ordinarily quiet circulation of his blood, together with the scene through which he had just passed, and the recollections which had been crowding on his mind, conspired to wind up his resolution to a very obstinate pitch of determination. Of all his schemes, embracing, as they did, compulsion, confession, and punishment, Job Pray was, of course, destined to be both the subject and the victim.
The shadows of evening were already thrown upon the town, and the cold had long before driven the few dealers in meats and vegetables, who continued to find daily employment around the ill-furnished shambles, to their several homes. In their stead there was only to be seen a meager and impoverished follower of the camp, stealing along the shadows of the building, with her half-famished child, searching among the offals of the market for some neglected morsel, to eke out the scanty meal of the night. But while the common mart presented this appearance of dullness and want, the lower part of the square exhibited a very different aspect.
The warehouse was surrounded by a body of men in uniform, whose disorderly and rapid movements proclaimed at once, to the experienced eye of the captain, that they were engaged in a scene of lawless violence. Some were rushing furiously into the building, armed with such weapons as the streets first offered to their hands, while others returned, filling the air with threats and outcries. A constant current of eager soldiers was setting out of the dark passages in the neighbour-hood towards the place, and every window of the building was crowded with excited witnesses, who clung to the walls, apparently animating those within by cheers and applause.
When Polwarth bade Shearflint pull the reins, he caught the quick, half-formed sentences that burst from the rioters, and even before he was able, in the duskiness of the evening, to discover the facings of their uniform, his ear detected the well-known dialect of the Royal Irish. The whole truth now broke upon him, and throwing his obese person from the sleigh, in the best manner he was able, he hobbled into the mob, with a singular compound of feeling, which owed its birth to the opposing impulses, of a thirst for vengeance, and the lingering influence of natural kindness. Better men than the captain have, however, lost sight of their humanity, under those fierce sympathies that are awakened in a riot. By the time he had forced his person into the large, dark apartment that formed the main building, he had, in a great degree, suffered himself to be worked into a sternness of purpose which comported very ill with his intelligence and rank. He even listened, with unaccountable pleasure, to the threats and denunciations which filled the building; until, he foresaw, from their savage nature, there was great danger that one-half of his object, the discovery of Lionel, was likely to be frustrated by their fulfilment. Animated anew by this impression, he threw the rioters from him with prodigious energy, and succeeded in gaining a position where he might become a more efficient actor in the fray.
There was still light enough to discover Job Pray placed in the centre of the warehouse, on his miserable bed, in an attitude between lying and sitting. While his bodily condition seemed to require the former position, his fears induced him to attempt the latter. The large, red blotches which covered his unmeaning countenance, and his flushed eye-balls, too plainly announced that the unfortunate young man, in addition to having become the object of the wrath of a lawless mob, was a prey to the ravages of that foul disorder which had long before lighted on the town. Around this squalid subject of poverty and disease, a few of the hardiest of the rioters, chiefly the surviving grenadiers of the 18th, had gathered; while the less excited, or more timid among them, practised their means of annoyance at a greater distance from the malign atmosphere of the distemper. The bruised and bloody person of the simpleton manifested
how much he had already suffered from the hands of his tormentors, who happily possessed no very fatal weapons, or the scene would have been much earlier terminated. Notwithstanding his great bodily debility, and the pressing dangers that beset him, Job continued to face his assailants, with a stupid endurance of the pains they inflicted.
At the sight of this revolting spectacle, the heart of Polwarth began greatly to relent, and he endeavoured to make himself heard, in the clamour of fifty voices. But his presence was unheeded, for his remonstrances were uttered to ignorant men, wildly bent on vengeance.
“Pul the baist from his rags!” cried one— “’tis no a human man, but a divil’s imp, in the shape of a fellow cratur!”
“For such as him to murder the flower of the British army!” said another—“his small-pox is nothing but a foul invintion of the ould one, to save him from his daisarrevings!”
“Would any but a divil invent such a disorder at all!” interrupted a third, who, even in his anger, could not forget his humour. “Have a care, b’ys, he may give it to the whole family the naat’ral way, to save the charges of the innoculation!”
“Have done wid ye’r foolery, Terence,” returned the first; “would ye trifle about death, and his unrevenged! Put a coal into his filth, b’ys, and burren it and him in the same bonfire!”
“A coal! a coal! a brand for the divil’s burning!” echoed twenty soldiers, eagerly listening to the barbarous advice.
Polwarth again exerted himself, though unsuccessfully, to be heard; nor was it until a dozen voices proclaimed, in disappointment, that the house contained neither fire nor fuel, that the sudden commotion in the least subsided.
“Out of the way! out of the way wid ye!” roared one of gigantic mould, whose heavy nature had, like an overcharged volcano, been slowly wrought up to the eve of a fearful eruption—“Here is fire to destroy a salamander! Be he divil or be he saint, he has great need of his prayers!”
James Fenimore Cooper's Five Novels Page 84