They saluted us and walked rapidly down Green Lane, wrapped to the eyes in their riding-cloaks.
“If Shemuel is at the ‘Wild Goose,’” I said, “perhaps he has news for me.”
We entered the inn and found it deserted by all save a servant, who recognized us and bade us welcome.
“The Grenadiers are out to-night, sir,” he said to me. “All our company has gone to join the Alarm Men at Lexington and Concord. There is not a soul here, sir, except me.”
“Where is Shemuel?” I asked.
“He is watching the Province House, sir; General Gage entertains to-night. It is all a ruse to quiet suspicion, sir. But we know what is on foot, Mr. Cardigan!”
Mount had dropped into a chair; the rain dripped from the red thrums of his buckskins; his fox-skin cap was soaked. There was blood on his hands; the servant brought a basin and towel.
“God knows what will happen at Concord,” he said; “Mr. Hancock has gone there; Mr. Revere is to ride through Middlesex to raise the farmers. Have you seen the dragoons, sir? They do be riding and capering about town, stopping all mounted travellers. They stopped the Providence coach an hour since, and there was a fight with the towns-people in Beacon Street. The tents of the marines are down on the Mall; some say the storm tore them down.”
So gossiping, the lad served us with bread, cheese, pickled beef, and a noggin of punch, and we listened, tearing at our food, and gulping it like famished beasts o’ the woods.
He brought me my clothes of buckskin, and I tore my rotten prison rags from me — alas! the shreds of that same silver-velvet suit which I had put on six months since, to wed with Silver Heels.
We stripped to the buff; the lad soused us well with steaming water and again with water like ice.
Mount encased his huge frame in his spare buckskins. I once more dressed in my forest dress, refreshed and fortified by food and water which seemed truly to wash away the prison taint from our skins as the hot bowl of spirits washed the stale prison cheer from within.
The lad brought us our arms, and I could have shouted aloud my joy as I belted in my knife, hatchet, and bullet-pouch, and flung my rifle across my shoulder.
“Where is my horse?” I asked. “Have you looked to him, lad? By Heaven, if aught of mischance has come to him—”
“The great black horse Warlock, sir?” cried the lad. “He is stabled in the mews, sir. Mr. Rolfe has had him cared for like a baby; the head groom takes him out every day, Mr. Cardigan, and the horse is all satin and steel springs, sir.”
“Where is he? Get a lanthorn,” I said, huskily.
A moment later, in the mews, I heard a shrill whinny, and the tattoo of shod hoofs dancing.
“Warlock!” I cried.
The next instant my arms were around his neck.
CHAPTER XXVI
It was nearly ten o’clock; a freezing rain still swept the black Boston streets, with now and again a volley of hail, rattling on closed shutters and swinging shop-signs.
In the dark mews behind the “Wild Goose Tavern” had gathered a shadowy company of horsemen, unfortunate patriots who had not been quick enough to leave the city before the troops shut its landward gates.
Caught by the Governor’s malignant move, separated from their companies of Minute Men, these half-score gentlemen had met at the “Wild Goose” to consult how best they might leave the city and join their comrades at Lexington and Concord.
Some were for riding to the Neck and making a dash across the causeway; some wanted boats, among the latter, Jack Mount, who naturally desired to rid the town of his person as speedily as might be.
“There’s a hempen neck-cloth to fit my pipes in Queen Street,” he said, plaintively, “and I desire it not, having no mind for flummery. Let us find a flat-boat, in God’s name, and get us to Charlestown with our horses while the rain endures.”
“Ay,” replied an officer of Roxbury Minute Men, “but what if our horses neigh in mid-stream?”
“The Somerset ran out her deck-guns at sunset,” added another. “What if she turned her swivel on us?”
“And how if they swept us off the causeway with a chain-shot?” asked Mount.
“What think you, Mr. Cardigan?” demanded an officer of Sudbury militia, leaning forward in his wet saddle to pat the dripping neck of his roan.
“I only know that I shall ride this night to Lexington,” 438 I said, impatiently, “and I am at your service, gentlemen, by land or sea. Pray you, decide quickly while the rain favours us.”
“Is there a man among us dare demand a pass of the Governor?” asked the Sudbury officer, abruptly. “By Heaven, gentlemen, it is death by land or by sea if we make to force the lines this night!”
“And it is death to me if I stay here cackling,” muttered Mount, as we caught the distant gallop of dragoons through stony Wiltshire Street.
We sat moodily in our saddles, huddled together in the darkness and rain, listening to the sound of the horses’ feet on the pavement.
“I’d give a thousand guineas if I were on the Charlestown shore with Revere,” muttered an officer.
“The Governor might sell you a pass for ten,” observed another, sneeringly. “It will cost him a penny to keep his pretty bird o’ paradise in plumes.”
“If John Hancock were here he would get us a pass from Mrs. Hamilton,” remarked the Sudbury officer.
There was a silence, then one or two men laughed.
“Is Mrs. Hamilton at Province House?” I asked, not understanding the careless handling of her name among these gentlemen.
Again came laughter.
“It is easy to see that you have been in prison,” observed the Sudbury officer. “Mrs. Hamilton rules at Province House, and leads Tommy Gage by the nose—”
“By the left hand,” interrupted another, maliciously.
“You mean that Mrs. Hamilton is — is—” I began.
“Town scandal,” said the officer.
“It may be a lie,” observed a young man mounted on a powerful gray.
“It is a lie,” I said, with an ugly emphasis.
“Is that remark addressed to me, sir?” demanded the Sudbury officer, sharply.
“And to company, also,” I replied.
“Gentlemen!” cried the Roxbury officer, “are we to have quarrels among us at such a time?”
“Certainly,” said I, “if you or your company affront me. 439 Tattle is dirty work for a gentleman’s tongue, and the sooner that tongue is stopped with honest mud the better.”
“I’ve called a gentleman out for less than that,” said an old officer, dryly.
“I am at your service,” I replied, disgusted.
“And I’m with you, lad,” said Mount, walking up to my stirrup. “I have no stomach for those who wink at a woman’s name.”
“I also,” said the young man on the gray, gravely.
A constrained silence followed, broken by the Sudbury officer.
“Hats off to the beautiful Mrs. Hamilton, gentlemen! Cardigan is right, by God! If we stand not for our women, who will?”
And he stretched out his hand in the rain. I took it; others offered me their hands.
“I ride to Province House,” I said, briefly. “Jack, fetch a cloak to hide your buckskins and wait me here. Gentlemen, I wish you fortune in your journey.”
As I rode out into Cambridge Street, thunder boomed in the east, and I saw the forked lightning racing through inky heavens, veining the storm with jewelled signs.
“God writes on heaven’s wall!” I said, aloud.
A strange exultation stirred me; the dark world lay free and wide before me, and I would ride it, now, from end to end, till Silver Heels was mine and Butler’s soul had dropped back into that pit from whence it had crawled to hide within his demon’s body.
In Hillier’s Lane I put Warlock to a gallop, but drew bridle in muddy Sudbury Street, where, from the darkness, a strident voice called on me to halt.
“Who comes there?” repea
ted the voice. I heard the trample of horsemen and the clink of sabres striking stirrups.
“Coureur-de-bois for Province House!” I answered, calmly. A chafing temper began to heat my blood; I gathered my bridle and dropped one hand on my hatchet.
“On whose affairs ride you?” demanded the spectral dragoon, laying his horse broadside across mine.
“On my own affairs!” I cried, angrily; “pull out there! — do you hear me, fellow?”
A lanthorn was lifted to my face.
“Let the forest wild-cat go,” muttered an officer, riding back to the picket as I crowded my horse against the dragoon who had hailed me.
Without giving them a glance I pushed through the cluster of horsemen, and heard them cursing my insolence as I wheeled into School Street and cantered along Governor’s Alley.
There were torches lighted in the mews; an hostler took Warlock; I swung out of the saddle and stepped back to a shelter from the storm.
Through the rain, up Marlborough Street, down School Street, and along Cornhill, drove the coaches and carriages of the Tory quality, all stopping at the brilliantly lighted mansion, where, as an hostler informed me, the Governor was giving a play and a supper to the wealthy Tory families of Boston and to all the officers of the British regiments quartered in the city. I knew the latter statement was false.
I stood for a while in the rain among the throng of poor who had come to wait there, in patience, on the chance of a scrap from the servants’ quarters after the servants had picked the bones their surfeited masters would scarcely deign to lick.
At first, as the coaches dashed up and the chairs jogged into the gateway, a few squalid watchers in the crowd fought to open the carriage-doors, hoping for a coin flung to them for their pains; but the sentinels soon put a finish to this, driving the ragged rabble savagely, with thrusts of their musket-butts, out into Marlborough Street. Under the gate-lanthorn’s smeared reflections I saw the poor things huddled in a half-circle, pinched and chattering and white with hunger, soaked to the bone with the icy rain, yet lingering, God knows why, for a brief glimpse of My Lady in pink silk and powder, picking her way from her carriage across the puddles, while My Lord minced at her side and the footman ran behind to cover them both with a glistening umbrella.
The stony street echoed with the clatter of shod horses, the rattle of wheels, the shouts of footmen, and the bawling of chair-bearers.
Once, when the wind sharpened, shifted, and blew the 441 slanting rain from the north, a warm odour of roasted butcher’s meats came to us, and I could hear a hollow sound rising from the throng, which was like a groan.
In the Province House fiddlers were fiddling; it was chill enough in the street, but it was doubtless over-hot within, for servants came and threw open the windows and we could hear the fiddles plainly and the sweet confusion of voices and a young girl’s laughter.
A hoarse cry broke out, wrung from the very vitals of the wretches around me.
“Silence!” shouted the officer of the gate-guard, striding out in his long rain-cloak and glaring about him, with tasselled stick upraised. The rain powdered his gilded French hat and laced vest, and he stepped back hastily under shelter.
There was perfect quiet for an instant, then a movement near me, a mutter, a quick surging of people, a cry: “Give room! Back there! Bear him up!”
A voice broke out, “He is starving; the smell o’ meat sickens him!”
Two men staggered past, supporting a mere lad, whose deathly face hung on his rain-soaked cotton shirt.
“He has the spotted sickness!” muttered a chair-bearer near me; “it’s death to take his breath! Let me pass!”
“The pest!” cried another, shrinking back, and stumbling away in a panic.
The officer watched the scene for a moment, then his heavy, inflamed face darkened.
“Back there! Be off, I say!” he bawled. “Ye stinking beggars, d’ye mean to poison us all with the pest? Turn out the gate-guard! Drive those filthy whelps up Cornhill!” he shouted to the corporal of the guard.
The soldiers came tumbling out of the gate-lodge, but before they could move on the throng another officer hurried up, and I heard him sharply recalling the soldiers and rebuking the officer who had given the order.
“No, no, that will not do,” he said. “The town would flame if you drive the citizens from their own streets. Let them stand there. What harm are they doing?”
“The lout yonder fell down with the spotted pest,” remonstrated 442 the first officer. “Faugh! The rabble’s rotten with scurvy or some filthy abomination—”
“They’ll harm no one but themselves,” replied the other in a sad voice, which sounded strangely familiar to me, so familiar that I involuntarily stepped out into the lighted space under the gate and peered at him through the rain, shielding my eyes with my hands.
The officer was Mr. Bevan.
Should I speak to him? Should I count on his friendship for me to get me an audience with the Governor? Here was a chance; he could vouch for me; so could Mrs. Hamilton.
As I hesitated somebody beside me clutched my elbow, and I swung around instantly, one hand on my hunting-knife.
The next moment Saul Shemuel almost rolled at my feet in an ecstasy of humble delight, sniffling, writhing, breathing hard, and clawing at my sleeve in his transports at sight of me.
I seized his arm, drew him along the wall, and into the dusky mews.
Impatient, yet touched, I suffered his mauling, demanding what news he might have, and he, beside himself with joy and excitement, could scarce find breath to pant out the news which concerned me. “I haf seen Foxcroft,” he gasped. “Mr. Foxcroft he hass come to-day on dot Pomona frigate to Scarlet’s Wharf, twelve weeks from Queenstown, sir. It wass printed in dot Efening Gazette, all apout Foxcroft how he iss come from Sir Peter Warren to make some troubles for Sir John Johnson mit dot money he took from Miss Warren, sir!”
“Foxcroft! Here?” I stammered.
“Yess, sir; I ran mit my legs to Queen Street, und I told him how you wass in dot prison come, und he run mit his legs to Province House, but too late, for we hear dot bell ring und dose guns shooting. Und I said, ‘Gott of Isaac, I bet you Jack Mount he hass run avay!’ Und Mr. Foxcroft he sees some dragoon soldiers come into Cornhill, calling out: ‘Dose highwaymens is gone! Vatch ’em by dot Mall!’ So Mr. Foxcroft he comes to Province House mit me, sir, und he iss gone in to make some troubles mit Governor Gage apout Sir John Johnson und dot money of Miss Warren! Ach, here iss Mr. Foxcroft, now, sir—”
I turned to confront a stout, florid gentleman, swathed in a riding-cloak, whose little, angry eyes snapped as he cried: “Governor Gage is a meddling ass! I care not who listens to me, and, I repeat, he is a meddlesome ass! Sir Peter Warren shall hear of this, damme! Am I a free agent, damme? I take it that I am a free agent, yet I may not leave this town to-night for lack of a pass. But I’ll go! They shall not stop me! No, damme if they shall!”
The hostlers were all staring at him; I stepped towards him, eagerly, but the peppery and inflamed barrister waved me off.
“Damme, sir!” he bawled; “who the devil are you, sir? Take your hands from me, sir! I wish to go to my client in Lexington, and this Tory peacock will give me no pass! I will not suffer this outrage; I will appeal to—”
I gave him a jerk that shook the breath from his body, whispering in his ear: “Be silent, in Heaven’s name, sir! I am Michael Cardigan!”
At first, in his passion, astonishment, and incredulity, he found no voice to answer me; but as Shemuel eagerly vouched for me, Mr. Foxcroft’s fury and suspicion subsided.
“You? Cardigan?” he repeated. “Well, where the devil have you been, sir, and what the devil have you been about, sir? Eh? Answer me that, now!”
“I’ve been in prison, under sentence of death,” I replied. “Where have you been, sir, to leave your client, Miss Warren, at the mercy of Walter Butler?”
At that he took fire, and, with trembling fi
st quivering towards heaven, he justified his absence in warm terms.
“I’ve been in England, sir, that’s where I’ve been!” he cried. “I’ve been there to find out why your blackguard of a kinsman, Sir John Johnson, should rob my client of her property. And I’ve found out that your blackguard Sir John has not only robbed her of her means, but of the very name she has a right to! That’s what I’ve done, sir. And if it does not please you, you may go to the devil!”
His impudence and oaths I scarcely noted, such a fierce happiness was surging through me to the very bones. I could have hugged the choleric barrister as he stood there, affronting me at every breath; I fairly beamed upon him 444 when he bade me go to the devil, and, to his amazement, I seized his fat hands and thanked him so gratefully that the defiance died on his lips and he stared at me open-mouthed.
“My dear sir, my dear, dear friend,” I cried, “I will get you your pass to clear the Neck to-night, and we will go together to find my cousin, Miss Warren. Wait me here, sir; I will leave Boston this night or my name is not Cardigan!”
Then bidding Shemuel keep an eye on Warlock, I hurried around to the gate-house, where the rabble still slunk, watching the lighted windows with famished eyes.
The clouds in mid-heaven had caked into snowy jets of fleece, and now the full moon of April flooded the soaked pavements with pools of silver.
The sentry halted me as I entered the court-yard, but when I asked for Mr. Bevan, he called to a comrade to take my message. The next moment Bevan stepped out into the moonlight.
“What is it, my man? Can I serve you?” he said, pleasantly, peering at me.
“Do you not know me, Mr. Bevan?” I asked.
“Cardigan!” he stammered, “is that you, Cardigan—”
He was close to me at a stride, both hands on my shoulders, his kindly, troubled eyes full of wonder and pity. Perhaps I appeared to him somewhat haggard and careworn, and then the rain had chilled and pinched me.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 128