The Linwoods

by Catharine Maria Sedgwick

  The sounds in the adjoining apartment after a while subsided, and with them Rose’s ire. She seated herself to await the latest hour when she could retire from the prison, and elude the suspicion of the sentinel, the only person whose vigilance she had to encounter.

  The footsteps had ceased from the passages, and sleep seemed, like rain, to have fallen on the just and the unjust—the keepers and their prisoners. Cunningham, seeing Rose preparing to take her departure, begged her, in the most abject manner, before she went, to release him from his frightful position.

  “No, no,” she obstinately replied to his supplications, “ye shall hang in iffigy, to be seen and scorned by your own people; but one marcy I’ll do you; if you’ll hold your tongue, I’ll not let out, while the war lasts—while the war lasts, remember, that you were strung up there by a ‘d—n nigger’—a nigger woman!”

  It appeared that Cunningham was glad to accept this very small mercy, by the report that afterward prevailed, that he had only escaped a fitting end through the forbearance of Mr. Herbert Linwood.

  Rose passed unmolested through the passage and the outer door, which, being locked on the inside, and the key in the wards, opposed no obstacle to her retreat. The sentinel in the yard saw and recognised her; but not being the same who was on guard when the first Dromeo passed, he merely inferred that Rose had been permitted to remain longer than 411usual; and kindly opening the gate, he responded civilly to her civil “good-night.”

  Rose went home, not however to enjoy the quiet sleep which should have followed so good a piece of work as she had achieved, but to suffer, and see others suffer, the most distressful apprehensions.

  413CHAPTER XXXVIII.

  “Let the great gods,

  That keep this dreadful pother o’er our heads,

  Find out their enemies now.”

  Isabella and Lady Anne, cloaked and hooded, repaired to Dame Bengin’s some half hour, as may be remembered, before the time appointed for their meeting with Linwood. This forerunning of the hour was to allow them to take advantage of Rose’s escort. It did not pass without a censure from their wary coadjutor. “You lack discretion, young ladies,” she said; “and I lacked it too when I let you in partners in this business. My father used to say, ‘if you want to go safe over a tottering plank, always go alone.’ However, we must make the best of it now: so just take this box of ribands, and stand at the farther end of the counter, and seem to be finding a match. It is nothing strange for ladies to be tedious at that.”

  The young ladies obeyed, but Lady Anne fretted in an under voice at the delay; and Isabella ventured a remonstrance, to which Dame Bengin, an autocrat in her own domain, replied, “She must go her own way; that full twenty minutes were left to the time appointed for the meeting at Smith’s house, and time was money to her.”

  “I wish to Heaven I could wring that parrot’s neck,” whispered Lady Anne; “I do believe the people answer to its call.” The parrot kept up a continuous scream of “Come 414in!—come in!” that might have tormented nerves less excitable than our friend’s were at this moment.

  “I surmise we are going to have a storm,” said an old woman, who had stepped in for a penny-worth of cochinia for her grandchildren; “its always a sign of a storm when Sylvy keeps up such a chattering at night-fall.” Lizzy Bengin went to the door, and looked anxiously at the gathering clouds.

  “Come in!—come in!” cried Sylvy; and, as if obedient to her summons, trotted in, one after another, half a dozen urchins. One wanted “a skein of sky-blue silk for aunt Polly: not too light, nor too dark; considerable fine, and very strong; not too slack nor too hard twisted.” Lizzy Bengin looked over half a dozen papers before she could meet the order of her customer.

  “Pray send the whole to aunt Polly,” cried Lady Anne; “I will pay you, Bengin.” The boy stared, the dame seemed not to hear her, and bade the boy run home and tell aunt Polly she hoped the skein would suit.

  “Twopence worth of button-moulds—just this size, ma’am.” The indefatigable Mrs. Bengin explored the button-mould box.

  “Mammy wants a nail of silk, a shade lighter than the sample.” Mrs. Bengin looked over her pile of silks.

  “Come in!—come in!” still cried Sylvy, certainly not the silent partner of the house.

  “Aunty wants a dust of snuff, and she’ll pay you tomorrow.”

  “How much is a drawing of your best bohea, Mrs. Bengin?”

  “Mrs. Lizzy, uncle John wants to know if you’ve got any shoes about little Johnny’s size?”

  While Mrs. Bengin, who was quite in the habit of securing the mint, anise, and cummin of her little trade, was with the utmost composure satisfying these multifarious demands, 415the minutes seemed ages to our impatient friends; Isabella took out her watch. The dame perceived the movement, and seemed to receive an impulse from it, for she was dismissing the shoe inquirer with a simple negative, when in came a black girl, with a demand for “spirits of camphire.”

  “What’s the matter, Phillis?”

  “Madam Meredith has got the hystrikes.”

  “Then she has my note,” whispered Lady Anne.

  While the camphire was pouring out, a sturdy sailor-boy entered. “Ah, is that you, Tom Smith? A hand of tobacco you’re wanting? Well, first come first served—just be taking in Sylvy, while I’m getting a cork to suit the vial.” Mrs. Bengin seemed suddenly fluttered by a look from Tom, and she bade the servant run home sans cork. The moment Phillis had passed the threshold, Lizzy said, “Speak out, Tom, there are none but friends here!”

  “It’s too late, Lizzy Bengin, you’re lost!”

  The inquiries and replies that followed were rapid. The amount of Tom’s intelligence was, that some combustibles had been discovered near the magazine, and that as strange persons had recently been observed going to and coming from Lizzy’s shop, it was believed that a plot had been there contrived; the commandant had issued an order for her apprehension, and men were by this time on their way to seize her.

  Lizzy Bengin had so often been suspected, and threatened, and eluded detection, that she did not now believe her good fortune had deserted her. She heard Tom through, and then said, “My boat is ready and I’ll dodge them yet.”

  Isabella ventured to ask, with scarcely a ray of hope, “if they might still go with her?”

  “Yes, if you’re not afeared, and will be prudent. Shut the shutters, Tom—lock the door after us, and keep them out as long as possible, that we may gain time. Throw my books 416into the loft—don’t let ’em rummage and muss my things, and look to Sylvy.” Her voice was slightly tremulous as she added, “If any thing happens to me, Tom, be kind to Sylvy!”

  By this time her cloak and hood were on, and they sallied forth. Dame Lizzy’s valour was too well tempered by discretion to have permitted her to consent to the attendance of the young ladies, if she had not, after calculating the chances, been quite sure that no danger would be thereby incurred. She believed that her pursuers, after being kept at bay by her faithful ally Tom, would be at a loss where next to seek her. The place appointed for meeting Linwood was a little untenanted dwelling, near the water’s edge, called “Smith’s house.” There he was to doff his disguise, and there, should there be any uproar in the streets, the young ladies could remain till all was quiet. Isabella and Lady Anne were in no temper to consider risks and chances. Life, to the latter, seemed to be set on the die of seeing Herbert once more. Isabella felt a full sympathy with this most natural desire, and an intense eagerness to be immediately assured of her brother’s escape; so, clinging close to their sturdy friend, they hastened forward.

  The old woman’s interpretation of Sylvy’s cries proved a true one. A storm was gathering rapidly. Large drops of rain pattered on the pavement, and the lightning flashed at intervals. But the distance to the boat, lying in a nook just above Whitehall, was short, and the moon, some seven nights old, was still unclouded. They soon reached “Smith’s house,” and heard the joyful signal-whistle previou
sly agreed on.

  “He is here!” exclaimed Isabella.

  Lady Anne’s fluttering heart was on her lips, but she did not speak. Herbert joined them.

  “Now kiss and part,” cried Lizzy Bengin. The first command was superfluous; the second it seemed impossible to obey. It was no time for words, and few did they mingle with 417the choking sighs of parting, but these few were of the marvellous coinage of the heart, and the heart was stamped upon them. The storm increased, and the darkness thickened. “Come, come; this won’t do, young folks,” cried their impatient leader; “we must be off—we’ve foul weather to cross the river, and then to pass the enemy’s stations before daylight—the hounds may be on our heels too—we must go.”

  All felt the propriety, the necessity of this movement. Lady Anne only begged that they might go to the water’s edge, and see the boat off. Dame Bengin interposed no objection; that would only have caused fresh entreaties and longer delay, and they set forward. The distance to the boat was not above a hundred yards; they had reached the shore, Mrs. Bengin was already in the boat, and Herbert speaking his last word, when they heard the voices of pursuers, and the next flash of lightning revealed a file of soldiers rushing towards them. Lady Anne shrieked; Lizzy Bengin screamed, “Jump in, sir, or I’ll push off without you.”

  “Go,” cried Isabella, “dear Herbert, go.”

  “I will not—I cannot, and leave you in the hands of these wretches.”

  “Oh, no! do not—do not, Herbert,” entreated Lady Anne, “take me with you.” This was enough and irresistible. Herbert clasped his arm around her, and leaped into the boat.

  “Come with us, Isabella,” screamed Lady Anne.

  “For God’s sake, come, Belle,” shouted Herbert. Isabella wavered for an instant. Another glare of lightning showed the soldiers within a few feet of her, looking, in that lurid light, fierce and terrible beyond expression; Isabella obeyed the impulse of her worst fears and leaped into the boat; and Lizzy, who stood with her oar fixed, instantly pushed from the shore. Curses burst from the lips of their balked pursuers.

  “We’ll have them yet,” exclaimed their leader. “To the Whitehall dock, boys, and get out a boat!”

  418Our boat’s company was silent. Herbert, amid a host of other anxieties, was, as he felt Lady Anne’s tremulous grasp, bitterly repenting this last act of a rashness which he flattered himself experience had cured, and Isabella was thinking of the beating hearts at home.

  Dame Bengin, composed, and alone wholly intent on the present necessity, was the first to speak. “Don’t be scared, little lady,” she said; “sit down quiet—don’t touch his arm—he’ll need all its strength. Do you take the tiller, Miss Linwood—mind exactly what I tell you—I know every turn in the current—don’t lay out so much strength on your oars, Captain Linwood—keep time to the dip of mine—that will do!”

  Dame Bengin, with good reason, plumed herself on her nautical skill. Her father had been a pilot, and Lizzy being his only child, he had repaired, as far as possible, what he considered the calamity of her sex, by giving her the habits of a boy. Her childhood was spent on the water, and nature and early training had endowed her with the masculine spirit and skill that now did her such good service. The courage and cowardice of impulse are too much the result of physical condition to be the occasion of either pride or shame.

  The wind was rising, the lightning becoming more vivid and continuous, and the pelting cold rain driving in the faces of our poor fugitives. The lightning gloriously lit up a wild scene; the bay, a “phosphoric sea;” the little islands, that seemed in the hurly-burly to be dancing on the crested waves; and the shores, that looked like the pale regions of some ghostly land. Still the little boat leaped the waves cheeringly, and still no sound of fear was heard within it. There is something in the sublime manifestations of power in the battling elements, that either stimulates the mind of man, “stirs the feeling infinite,” and exalts it above a consciousness of the mortality that invests it, or crushes it under a sense of its own impotence. 419Our little boat’s company were a group for a painter, if a painter could kindle his picture with electric light. Lizzy Bengin, her short muscular arms bared, and every nerve of body and mind strained, plied her oars, at each stroke giving a new order to her unskilled but most obedient coadjutors. Isabella’s head was bare, her dark hair hanging in masses on each side her face, her poetic eye turning from “heaven to earth and earth to heaven,” her face in the lurid light as pale as marble, and like that marble on which the sculptor has expressed his own divine imaginings in the soft forms of feminine beauty. Lady Anne sat at Herbert’s feet, her eye fixed on his face, passively and quietly awaiting her fate, not doubting that fate would be to go to the bottom, but feeling that such a destiny would be far more tolerable with her lover, than any other without him. This dependance, “love overcoming the fear of death,” inspired Herbert with preternatural strength. His fine frank face beamed with hope and resolution, and his eye, as ever and anon it fell on the loving creature at his feet, was suffused with a mother’s tenderness.

  In the intervals of darkness they guided the boat by the lights on the shores, and towards a light that, kindled by a confederate of Lizzy Bengin’s for Herbert’s benefit, blazed steadily, in spite of the rain, a mile below Powles Hook.

  They were making fair headway, when they perceived a sail-boat put off from Whitehall. They were pursued, and their hearts sunk within them; but Lizzy Bengin soon rallied, and her inspiring voice was heard, calculating the chances of escape. “The storm,” she said, “is in our favour—no prudent sailor would spread a sail in such a gusty night. The wind is flawy too, and we can manage our boat, running first for one point and then for another, so as to puzzle them, and in some of their turns, if they have not more skill than any man has shown since my father’s day, they’ll capsize their boat.”

  420We dare not attempt to describe the chase that followed; the dexterous manœuvring of the little boat, now setting towards Long Island, now back to the city, now for Governor’s Island, now up, and then down the river. We dare not attempt it. Heaven seems to have endowed a single genius of our land with a chartered right to all the water privileges for the species of manufacture in which we are engaged, and his power but serves to set in desperate relief the weakness of his inferiors. The water is not our element, and we should be sure to show an “alacrity in sinking.”

  Suffice it to say, it seemed that the efforts of our little boat’s crew must prove unavailing; that after Dame Bengin’s sturdy spirit had yielded to her woman’s nature, and she had dropped her oars, and given the common signals of her sex’s weakness in streaming tears and wringing hands, Herbert continued laboriously to row, till Lady Anne, fainting, dropped her head on his knee, and Isabella entreated him to submit at once to their inevitable fate. Nothing indeed now remained but to run the boat ashore, to surrender themselves to their pursuers, to obtain aid for Lady Anne, and secure protection to her and Isabella. The resolution taken, the boat was suddenly turned; the sail-boat turned also, but too suddenly; the wind struck and capsized it. The bay was in a blaze of light when the sail dipped to the water—intense darkness followed—no shriek was heard.

  After the first exclamations burst from the lips of our friends, not a sound proceeded from them, not a breath of exultation at a deliverance that involved their fellow-beings in destruction. The stroke of Herbert’s oars ceased, and the fugitives awaited breathlessly the next flash of lightning, to enable them to extend their aid, if aid could be given. The lightning came and was repeated, but nothing was to be seen but the boat drifting away at the mercy of the waves.

  421A few moments more brought them to land, where, beside their beacon-light, stood an untenanted fisherman’s hut, in which they found awaiting them a comfortable fire and substantial food. These “creature comforts,” with rest and rekindled hope, soon did their work of restoration. And the clouds clearing away, and the stars shining out cheerily, Lizzy Bengin, aware that her prese
nce rather encumbered and endangered the companions of her flight than benefited them, bade them a kind good-night, and sought refuge among some of her Jersey acquaintance, true-hearted to her, and to all their country’s friends.

  423CHAPTER XXXIX.

  “Good to begin well, better to end well.”

  What was next to be done was as puzzling to our friends as the passage of that classic trio, the fox, the goose, and the corn, was to our childish ingenuity. Duty and safety were involved in Linwood’s return to the American camp with all possible expedition. General Washington was at Morristown, and the American army was going into winter quarters in its immediate vicinity. Thither Linwood must go, and so thought Lady Anne must she. “Fate,” she said, “had seconded her inclinations, and to contend against their united force was impossible; why should she not give her hand to Herbert at once and be happy, instead of returning to vex and be vexed by her disappointed aunt? After they had made sure of happiness and Heaven’s favour, for Heaven would smile on the union of true and loving hearts, let the world gossip to its heart’s content about Linwood running off with an heiress; he who was so far above a motive so degrading and soul-sacrificing, could afford the imputation of it, and would soon outlive it.” There was both nature and truth in her reasoning, and it met with her lover’s full and irrepressible sympathy; with Isabella’s too, but not with her acquiescence.

  Poor Isabella! it was hard for one who had her keen participation in the happiness of others to oppose it, and to hazard by delay the loss of its richest materials. There was an earnest seconding of their entreaties, too, from a voice in the 424secret depths of her heart, which whispered that Eliot Lee was at Morristown; but what of that? ay, Isabella, what of that? Once at Morristown, her return to the city might be indefinitely delayed; innumerable obstacles might interpose, and to return to her father was an imperative and undeferable duty. To permit Lady Anne to proceed without her would be to expose her to gossip and calumny. Isabella’s was the ruling spirit; and after arguments, entreaties, and many tears on the lady’s part, the lovers deferred to the laws of propriety as expounded by her; and it was agreed that Linwood should escort the ladies to the outskirts of the Dutch village of Bergen, which could not be more than two or three miles distant; that there they should part, and thence the means of returning to the city without an hour’s delay might easily be compassed.