The Lively Lady

by Kenneth Lewis Roberts

  “Drink this,” she said to me, “so you won’t catch cold from loss of blood.” She held out the other to Sir Arthur. “It would never do,” she told him, “for you to go back to England without tasting the great New England drink that made it possible for us to win our freedom from England.”

  Sir Arthur thanked her and tasted it. “Ow!” he exclaimed. “It’s a trifle greasy, isn’t it!” He tasted it again: then looked coolly at my mother. “I can’t for the life of me see how Britain lost to such a rabble as your people must have been. Scarcely an officer in all your armies, I’ve heard it said, was trained to the profession of arms.”

  My mother looked up at the ceiling, as if trying to recall something about the war.

  “I remember,” she said, “that one of our officers before Quebec was a barber.”

  “Think of it!” Sir Arthur marvelled. He drank heartily of his buttered rum. “You were handsomely beaten at Quebec, I recall.”

  My mother nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, the English were unexpectedly helped by the French at Quebec, so they gave a tolerable account of themselves. The tale might have been different if we’d had food and clothes and dry powder.”

  Sir Arthur took another drink and eyed my mother warily.

  “It was later at Saratoga,” she added, “when we’d been able to get another barber or two, that we put an end to the nonsense and captured the entire British army, including your Hessian friends.”

  My mother sighed gently. Sir Arthur stared morosely into his glass, which was empty.

  At length my mother took it from him. “I’ll get you one more before supper.”

  Sir Arthur roused himself. “It’s greasy,” he admitted, “but not a bad drink.”

  “You seem almost like a New Englander,” my mother said, “you’re so quick to fall in with our ways of eating and drinking, and so hearty with your approval.”

  “Ow!” Sir Arthur said, somewhat uncertainly.

  “We only learn these things about each other,” my mother added, “as we become more intimate. When I know you understand our feelings, I realize you may at heart be as excitable and sentimental as we, in spite of your imperturbable exterior. About my shawl, for example. If you feel as strongly about my shawl as I do, it may be I’ve made a mistake in refusing to sell it to you. Of course, we have no great need of money, but we might be able to find some ground for exchange.”

  Sir Arthur almost glowed. “By all means!” he exclaimed immediately. “To be quite frank with you, my wife took a liking to your shawl when she first saw it. I’m sure we’ve a number of things in our boxes you’d be happy to possess—Ow! a great number of things.”

  My mother seemed surprised. “Oh,” she said, “so it wasn’t for yourself you wanted the shawl!”

  “No, no!” Sir Arthur replied. “It’s for my wife.”

  “I see!” my mother said, as though a new aspect of the situation had dawned on her. She looked down at the glass in her hand. “I must fill this,” she added. She glanced up at me suddenly, “Don’t stand there gawking!” she cried. “Go along upstairs; get a clean bandage on your head and make yourself proper for supper!”

  I said to myself, as I climbed the steep stairs to my easterly room, that if I were fifty years old and the captain of a thousand-ton ship, there’d be times when my mother would still think of me as a small, stupid boy, and speak to me as if I were that, and make me feel so into the bargain.

  When I came down again I found my mother had been up to her old tricks, she having been master of her own sloop for years, trading in Boston and Portsmouth and Portland, where a trader needs smartness if he hopes to come out of a trade without losing his breeches.

  Beside her on the sofa sat Lady Ransome, wrapped tight in my Spanish shawl. Across my mother’s lap was the finest fowling piece I had ever seen—a beautiful gun with two barrels and a raised ridge between them to permit of a sight being taken, and locks and hammers so delicate that the first discharge, it almost seemed, would break them. Also she had around her neck, in place of her cat’s-eyes, a string of carved green stones, and on her shoes two new buckles set with brilliants. I knew nothing about the necklace and the buckles: but I had trafficked a little in guns, and knew a fowling piece such as my mother held was worth four times what I had paid for the shawl.

  The mellowness of the buttered rum, I saw, had done its work on Sir Arthur; for when he addressed my mother, he was all loquaciousness and spoke as though his mouth were half filled with hot mush.

  “You prob’ly don’t know what you got in that gun,” he told her. “You never saw one like it, I’ll venture to say. There ain’t a gunsmith in Belgium nor Spain nor Italy nor this whole America of yours that can make a gun like that fowling piece. A Joseph Manton, that gun is! Deadliest li’l’ thing y’ever saw! Load her up with slugs and she’ll kill a stag at a hundred paces!”

  “Foxes too?” my mother asked.

  “Fockshes!” Sir Arthur exclaimed, his face a horrified mask. “Shoot fockshes!” Then he laughed. “Thought you meant it! ’Pon my word, one must watch you Americans every moment to find out whether you mean a thing. You’re very shavage here, but you wouldn’t shoot fockshes! You’re wigging me, eh?”

  I could see my mother had an answer on the tip of her tongue, and I suspected she wished to say that fox hunting was not much sport: that we only shot them when there were no Englishmen to shoot. She kept silent, however, so I felt Sir Arthur was so easy for her that she took no further pleasure in baiting him.

  “You’re wigging me!” Sir Arthur repeated thickly. “Talking about war and shooting fockshes! War, indeed! Fancy you making war on England!”

  “Well, there’s this about it,” my mother told him. “People who deal in ships belong to a brotherhood and have ways of knowing things. I’ll say this much to you and no more: get your young wife down to Boston or New York as soon as you can, and take her home with no loss of time.”

  Sir Arthur stared hazily at my mother. “I think it’s nothing but moonshine!” he said at length. “The thing’s absurd on the face of it! Why, your country’s helpless! Your army ain’t worth mentioning; and where’s your navy, hey? You ain’t got one!”

  “You’re right,” I said, though I disliked siding with anybody against my mother. “We have no ships to fight England, and no desire, either! I’ve no reason for fighting England, and I won’t do it. Neither will any man in this town. Our living comes from the seal Why should we let ourselves be driven off the ocean because a lot of fools in Washington who never smelled salt water say we must fight?”

  Sir Arthur nodded. “You’ve more sense than I thought,” he said. “We’ve a hundred ships, and more too, for every one of yours, and our soldiers are the finest in the world, able to whip the strongest nations of Europe. What could you do against our ships and our armies?” He laughed shrilly. “Did you ever hear of Dartmoor Prison, where we’ve shut up thousands and thousands of Frenchmen since they set out to fight us? It’s the stoutest prison ever built; and within a month after you declared war on us, your cockleshells would be blown to pieces and your men behind the walls of Dartmoor.”

  My mother, slender and small and straight, rose suddenly to walk across the room and back. This, I had learned, she only did when boiling with words and fearful of exploding with the press of them inside her. She stood behind her chair, picked it up and thumped it down again.

  “I believe it’s the custom for a mother to be older than her son,” she said. “In my time, too, I’ve done a fair amount of sailing, so maybe I can tell you things neither you nor my son would otherwise hear. You English are a great people, good sailors and brave fighters; but you’ve done things in certain ways for too many years. You’re slow to realize other methods may be better than your own. I know the best ships on the seas, once, were English; but that’s past. The best and fastest ships to-day are built by French and Americans, who’ve been driven by necessity to build better than you. I know there was a time when English mari
ners were the ablest of all the world’s seamen, but that time has gone, too. To-day the greatest seamen in the world are Americans.”

  Sir Arthur threw back his head and crowed.

  “I know how you feel,” my mother told him. “The Englishmen who came over here during our revolution were scornful of our manner of fighting; and even when they found themselves disarmed and made prisoners, they thought it was all a terrible mistake. I’ll say that for your countrymen: they’re obstinate, especially about admitting defeats.”

  “Not at all! Not at all!” Sir Arthur protested.

  “Well, I’m glad they’ve changed,” my mother told him, “because soon they may have opportunity to admit another defeat. What you don’t know, and what may mean nothing to you if you do know it, is that there’s no house in this town—not one house—that hasn’t a seaman living in it. There are more master mariners along our river road and the Saco road than there are Frenchmen in your English town of Quebec. In some houses you’ll find five and six and seven sons, all captains. What’s more, they’re deep-water captains, born with salt in their noses and the feel of the sea in their bones; and you can believe it or not, but it’s the truth: there’s something about these New Englanders that makes it possible for them to sail their craft into places where the captains of other nations won’t go. All up and down our coast it’s the same—in Wiscasset and Damariscotta and Portland and York and Portsmouth and Newburyport and Salem and Boston and New Bedford, and in the little towns between; all the length of Cape Cod, and farther south, along the Connecticut and Rhode Island shore, and in New York and New Jersey and in every creek on Chesapeake Bay and in a hundred other places: everywhere you’ll find master mariners who can handle craft as they’ve seldom been handled before, and seamen who are wild and rampageous.”

  Sir Arthur made as though to speak, but my mother thumped her chair on the floor again and wouldn’t hear him. “I’ve seen our people go out like hornets against the French and Indians,” she told him. “I’ve seen ’em drop their hoes and plows to pour out in rivers against your great Burgoyne, when he and his fine army proposed to batter the last of our resistance from us. You may think you can crush us with your hundreds of great ships; that we’ll let ourselves be swallowed up without a struggle by this dark monster of a Dartmoor you talk about; but I tell you these New England mariners aren’t easy to crush! They’ll sting you and outrun you and sting you and outrun you until you’re as fuddled as a horse with a foot through a beehive.”

  Even then she would listen to no reply from Sir Arthur, but suddenly declared Lady Ransome was half dead with sleepiness, and so hurried the two of them upstairs.

  “Remember what I tell you,” I heard her saying to Sir Arthur. “Get yourself over to New York and on your way to England.”

  Sir Arthur assured her, in his reediest voice, that he’d make every effort to do so, not because he feared a war but because he feared to hear further talk of it.

  * * *

  When my mother returned, she closed the door carefully and took a letter from the front of her dress. “I’d have told you sooner,” she said, “but I wanted you all together and these English people out of the way. This letter is from Captain Callender in Boston. It came by express this afternoon. Here’s what he says:

  “‘We have to-day received advices from Washington that Congress will immediately pass an act of embargo for ninety days. This will become a law on the 4th April, after which date no vessel will be allowed to clear from an American port. This is in anticipation of war with England and is designed to prevent American ships and seamen from falling into the hands of the enemy, as well as to prevent the carriage of necessary supplies to the British armies in Spain.

  “‘It is my duty to inform you that the shipowners of this section are nearly unanimous in refusing to submit to this embargo, the feeling being that supplies furnished to the British armies in Spain will not materially affect any military operations which may take place in America. Kindly feel free to pass on this information to any interested parties’”

  My mother folded the letter and tapped it on the table. “Well,” she said, looking from one to the other of us, “there it is! Pretty advice, I must say! The shipowners of Boston setting up to know more than the government of their own country! Advising us to dodge out ahead of the embargo so the embargo can’t do what it’s intended to do!”

  “It’s intended to ruin us!” I reminded her.

  “It’s intended to keep food from the British!” my mother protested.

  “Nonsense!” I said. “If they don’t get it from us, they’ll get it somewhere else! I’ll set out for Portland to-night, and be off for Spain as quick as you could skin an eel.”

  “I say No!” my mother cried, shaking the table to emphasize her words. “If we’re going to fight ’em, let’s fight ’em: not trade with ’em!”

  “Let those fight ’em who declare war,” I said. “I won’t fight Englishmen, who’ve done nothing to me, just because some damned old landlubber from South Carolina votes to have me do it! Why should I? Didn’t my grandfather buy French rum from the French while we were fighting the French?”

  My mother turned to Nathan. “You’ll stand by me, won’t you?”

  “It appears to me,” Nathan said, moving his fingers clumsily, “it would be a sin if we let every other shipowner beat the embargo and just laid and rotted in harbor ourselves.”

  My sister Sarah squirmed in her chair. “Me too,” she cried. “Bring me a shawl when you come back from Spain, will you, Richard?”

  My mother stared at the table before her for a time. At length she looked up at me. “Is there anything you need, Richard?”

  Since there wasn’t, I left it to her to send my dunnage by Jeddy and Tommy Bickford on the morning stagecoach, after which I said good-bye to her and Sarah and aunt Cynthy and set out to walk the twenty-six miles to Portland, Nathan going with me for company, and Pinky sticking his nose in every stump along the road and fluttering his tail with delight at being off once more.

  VI

  THERE was never anything seen, on the Portland docks, to equal the happenings of the next four days; and word reached us that the self-same things went on in Philadelphia and Alexandria and Baltimore and New York and Boston and every other port in America.

  When we came up Fore Street in the early morning, the docks lay quiet, smelling of tarred rope and lumber and sacking and fish, no different from any other morning. By mid-afternoon, when news of the embargo had spread through the city, every dock was alive with men, howling and sweating, and hauling at flour barrels, grain bags, salted beef, bread boxes and God knows what. Drays were backing up to all the docks, laden with provisions, and clattering empty to the warehouses for fresh supplies. Men came out from stores and counting houses, eager to have a hand in forestalling the embargo, and worked, adrip with perspiration, alongside stevedores and wharf rats and seamen and teamsters and farmers.

  Never since ships were built did supplies tumble into holds with such speed. The work went on after darkness fell, by the light of smoking torches that gave the workmen, wrestling at their piles of provisions, the appearance of demons clambering over the lava heaps of hell. It continued until the pinkness of dawn came into the sky over Peak’s Island, and on through the day and around through the night again. There was a sort of madness among the people against the embargo and against a war—such a frenzy to defy the government that a stranger might have thought us engaged in a revolution.

  There was free rum for the workers, and free food; and whenever a vessel left her dock and set her sails, there was as much hullabalooing and cheering as though a victory had been won.

  Only for one departure was there no cheering, that being in the case of the brig Riddle, said to be bound for Nova Scotia with food for the British in Canada. Because of this the captain, Eli Bagley, a Portsmouth man, had fought five fights in Fore Street taverns, there being a feeling that there was something wrong in dealing with the
British on our own continent.

  Eli Bagley was an opinionated man with a thin face and great prominent jaw bones. His whiskers grew like a hairy frill underneath his clean-shaved chin, and extended from ear to ear. This is a style of whisker I mislike, since all those on whom I have seen it have been sanctimonious men, tyrannical and churlish, always able to consider themselves right and everyone else wrong. Those who knew him said he was a vain man, fond of fighting but not good at it, since he couldn’t keep his head when he fought, and so shipped only smallish, timid men on the Riddle, in order to indulge his fancy for fighting with no danger to himself.

  Eli was opinionated enough, God knows, in this matter, declaring it was no worse to sell in Canada than in Spain, which seemed unreasonable on the face of it, and I, being bound for Spain, felt obliged to give him a black eye in return for his belief.

  When the Riddle moved out into the harbor along toward dusk of the second day, a sort of snarling growl followed her from every dock; and showers of rocks and bolts flew toward her, bouncing harmlessly from her sides.

  Thanks to a good agent and a good crew, all from Arundel, and thanks, also, to my early knowledge of the embargo, we were loaded and set off late on the third of April, a bright, cloudless day with the wind still in the northwest and blowing great guns, as it often does off our Maine coast in the spring of the year.

  When I packed away my good blue coat in my chest that night I did a thing I had been in two minds about doing since Jeddy and Tommy Bickford had brought my dunnage from Arundel. In this dunnage was my good blue coat, which I had last worn when I walked with Lady Ransome in the pines by the marsh; and when I took it out there was a thin disk, something like a silver dollar, caught in the lining. In the bottom of the pocket was a slit that looked to me to have been cut with scissors. I worked my fingers through the slit and fished out the disk. It was a plaque of ivory surrounded by a band of gold in which brilliants and colored stones were countersunk, and the plaque was painted clear and beautiful with a miniature of Lady Ransome—a portrait so delicate and fine that I could almost count each strand of her copper-colored hair and the black lashes that seemed to shade a little the smoky color of her eyes. The lips were so fresh and warmly red in appearance that I feared to touch them, lest the paint be as new and wet as it seemed.