Cardigan

My candle was burning very low now. Mount laid his pipe in the candle-pan, rose, shook himself, and said good-night.

"Good-night," I said, and sat down to light another candle. This done, I did undress me, and so would have been in bed had I not chanced to open the book he left me, thinking to glance it over and forget it.

But sunrise found me poring over its pages, while the candle, a pool o' wax, hardened in the candle-stick beside me.

CHAPTER XXII

By noon we were well on our way towards Boston, I riding beside Mrs. Hamilton's carriage wheels, Jack Mount perched up on the box, and very gay in a new suit of buckskins which he bought from a squaw in the village, the woman being an Oneida half-breed and a tailoress by trade.

So gorgeous was this newly tailored suit that, though my own buckskins were also new and deeply fringed on sleeve and leg, even to the quill and wampum embroidery on the thigh, I did cut but a dingy figure beside Jack Mount. His shoulders were triple-caped with red-fox fur edges; he wore a belted hunting-shirt, with scarlet thrums; breeches cut to show his long legs' contour to the clout, also gay with scarlet thrums; and Huron moccasins, baldric, holster, and sporran, all of mole-skin, painted and beaded with those mystic scenes of the False-Face's secret rites, common to the Six Nations and to other Northern and Western clans.

Proud as a painted game-cock with silver steels was Jack. Poor gossip, how different his condition now, with a rasher o' bacon and a cup of ale under his waist-band, a belt full of money outside of it, and his scarlet thrums blowing like ribbons in the wind! A new fox-skin cap, too, with the plumy white-tipped tail bobbing to his neck, added the finish to this forest dandy. Truly it did warm me to behold him ruffling it with the best o' them; and it was a wink and a kiss for the pretty maid in the pantry, and a pinch o' snuff with mine host, and "Your servant, ma'am," to Mrs. Hamilton, with cap sweeping the dust in a salute that a Virginian might envy and mark for imitation.

The post-boys slunk past him with rueful, sidelong glances; the footman gave him wide berth, obeying the order to mount with an alacrity designed to curry favour as soon as possible, and let the painful past go bury itself.

"You had best," muttered Mount, with pretence of a fierceness he loved to assume. "Gad! I'm minded to tan your buttocks to line my saddle – ho! – come back! I'm not going to do it, simpleton! I only said I was so minded. Into your saddles, in Heaven's name. Salute! – you mannerless scullions! Do you not see your mistress coming?"

I handed Mrs. Hamilton to her chaise, and stood in attendance while she tied on her velvet sun-mask, watching me steadily through the eye-holes the while, but not speaking. Yet ever on her lips hovered that smile I knew so well; and from her hair came that fresh scent which is of itself like the perfume of Indian swale-herb, and which powder and pomatum can neither add to nor dissimulate.

Over her gown of shimmering stuff, garlanded with lilac-tints, she wore a foot-mantle, for the road was muddy from the all-night rain, and this I disposed around her ankles when she had seated herself in the chaise, and wrapped her restless little feet in a thick, well-tanned pelt.

"Merci," she said, in a whisper, with her bright eyes sparkling under her velvet mask; and I closed the carriage and mounted Warlock nimbly, impatient to be gone.

"Michael," she said from the chaise window, nose in the air to watch me ride up.

"Madam," I replied, politely.

"Let Captain Mount ride your horse, and do you come into the carriage. I have so much to tell you – "

I made what excuse I could. She tossed her chin.

"I shall die of ennui," she said.

"Count the thraves in the stubble," said I, laughing.

"And talk to my five wits of the harvest? How amusing!" she retorted, indignantly.

"Repent the past, then," I suggested, smiling.

"Ay – but 'tis one blank expanse of white innocence, with never a stain to mark for repentance. My past is spotless, Michael – spotless – like a fox-pelt, all of a colour."

Now, though we call foxes red, their ear-tips are jet black and their brushes and bellies touched with white. But she was right; your spotless fox can have no dealings with a dappled fawn.

I signalled the footman and post-boys; the chaise creaked off down the road, and I dropped behind, turning a sober face to the rain-washed brightness of the world.

So we journeyed, coming into dry roads towards noon, where no rain had fallen. And already it seemed to me my nostrils savoured that faint raw perfume of the mounting sea, which only those who have lived their whole lives inland can wind at great distances. It is not a perfume either; it is a taste that steals into the mouth and tingles far back, above the tongue. And it is strange to say so, but those who never before have tasted the scent know it for what it is by instinct, and fall into a restless reverie, searching to think where they have savoured that same enchanted ocean breath before.

At Grafton we baited at the "Weather-cock Tavern"; then on along the Charles River, with the scent o' the distant sea in every breath we drew, through Dedham, past Needham, and north into a most lovely country of rolling golden stubble and orchards all red with apples, and bridges of stone, neatly fashioned to resist the freshets. Alas, that this fair province of Massachusetts Bay should lie a-gasping amid plenty, with the hand of Britain upon the country's thrapple to choke out the life God gave it.

On the straight, well-laid high-road we passed scores of farmers' wains, piled with corn and yellow pumpkins, cabbages, squashes, barrels of apples, sacks o' flour, and thraves, all bound for Boston, where the poor were starving and the rich went hungering because the King of England had been angered to hear men prate of human rights.

Since the 1st day of June the Boston Port Bill was in full effect, and the city was sealed to commerce. Not a keel had stirred the waters of the bay save when the great bulging war-ships shifted their moorings to swing their broadsides towards the town; not a sail was bent to the shore breeze in this harbour where a thousand vessels had cleared in a single year from its busy port.

So when the city felt the punishment heavy upon her, and the poor starved and the rich suffered, and the hot sun poured down on the empty rotting wharves, the farmers of Massachusetts Bay brought their harvests by land to the famine-stricken city, and sister colonies sent generously of their best with the watchword: "Stand fast, Boston! A King's anger is a little thing, but human rights shall not perish until we perish, every one!"

It was sunset as we turned into the Roxbury road, with the salt wind blowing the marsh-reeds and ruffling the shallow waters of the harbour to the north and east. It was ebb-tide; beyond the eastern bog, far out in the yellow shallows, the harbour channel ran in a darker streak, glittering under the red blaze of sunset.

Wet marshes spread away to the north; the wind was heavy with the salty stench of mud-flats uncovered at low-water, and all alive with sea-fowl hovering. Northeast the steeples of Boston rose, blood-red in the setting sun; distant windows flashed fire; weather-vanes turned to jets of flame.

The red glow enveloped the road over which we travelled, now in company with scores of other vehicles, all bound for Boston – coaches, flies, chaises, wagons, farm wains – all moving slowly as though the head of the column had been checked by something which we could not yet see.

I rode forward to where Jack Mount was sitting on the box of the chaise, and he motioned me to his side.

"We're close to Boston Neck," he said. "Tommy Gage has been making some forts ahead of us since I last smelled the mud-flats yonder."

I rode on slowly, passing along the stalled line of vehicles, until, just ahead, I caught a glimpse of an earthwork flying the British flag. The red banner stood straight out in the sea-wind, rippling, and snapping like a whip when the breeze freshened. Under it a sentry moved, bayonet glittering as he turned, paced on, turned again, only to retrace his endless path on the brown rampart of earth.

I shall never forget that first coming to Boston, and the first glimpse of the round city, set there in the sea with only a narrow thread of land to fasten it to the continent which had made the city's cause its own. Nor shall I forget my first sight of the city's landward gate, closed by British earthworks, patrolled by British bayonets, with the red standard flying in the setting sun.

The Providence coach was standing in the road to my left, the six horses stamping restlessly, the outside passengers shivering in the harbour wind, while the red-nosed coachman muttered and complained and craned his short bull-neck to see what was blocking the highway ahead.

"It's them darned cannon," he explained to everybody who cared to listen; "they're a-haulin' some more twenty-four pounders into the right bastion. Ding it! My horses are ketchin' cold an' bots an' ring-bone while we set here in a free land waitin' his Majesty's pleasure!"

"The cannon will come handy – some day," called out a passenger from the Philadelphia coach, stalled just behind.

"You'd better get your cannon out of the south battery before you lay plans to steal these!" retorted a soldier, derisively, making his way towards the city between the tangle of wheels and horses which almost choked the road.

"We'll get 'em yet, young red-belly!" shouted a fat farmer, cracking his whip for emphasis. His horses started, and he pulled them in, shouting: "Whoa, lass! Whoa, dandy! Don't shy at a redcoat; he can't harm ye!"

"Gad!" burst out an old gentleman on the Roxbury coach, "is this rebel impudence to be endured?"

A chorus of protestations broke from the tops of neighbouring coaches, but the sturdy old gentleman shook his cane, defying every Yankee within hearing, while the protests around grew to angry shouts and cries of: "Enough! Tar the Tory! Pitch the old fool into the mud!"

In the midst of the bawling and uproar the line of vehicles ahead suddenly started, and those behind moved on, rumbling over the planked road with creaking wheels and thunder of a hundred hoofs, drowning the voices of disputing Whig and Tory.

I looked up at the passengers as the huge mail-coaches with their four, six, or eight horses rumbled past. Many of the people glanced somewhat curiously down at me, smiling to see a forest-runner mounted on so fine a horse as Warlock. And I was proud to sit the saddle under their gaze, not minding the quips and jests directed at me from above; though, when once a mealy faced post-boy shouted at me, I fetched him a cuff on the ear which nigh unseated him, and drew a roar of laughter from the people near.

The Philadelphia coach with passengers from Maryland and Virginia came swaying up, horses dancing, guard standing by the boot, and sounding his long coaching-horn – a gallant equipage, with its blue gear and claret body showing through a skin of half-dry mud.

I glanced up at the outside travellers, thinking I might know some face among them, yet not expecting it. There were no familiar faces. I wheeled my horse to watch the coach go by, glancing idly at the window where a young girl leaned out, sucking a China orange. Our eyes met for a moment; the girl dropped the orange and stared at me; I also eyed her sharply, certain that I had seen her somewhere in the world before this. The coach passed. I sat on my horse, looking after it, cudgelling my wits to remember that red-cheeked, buxom lass, who seemed to know me, too.

Then, as our chaise rattled by, with the post-boys urging the horses, and Jack Mount on the box, it came to me in a flash that the girl was the thief-taker's daughter from Fort Pitt.

I rode up beside Mount and told him in a low voice that Billy Bishop's buxom lass was ahead of us in the Philadelphia coach, and that he had best keep his wits and eyes cleared for Billy Bishop himself.

He shrugged his shoulders, not answering, but I noticed he was alert enough now, unconsciously fingering his rifle, while his quick eyes roamed restlessly as the chaise passed in between the British earthworks on the Neck.

Truly this Captain-General Thomas Gage, whom the King of England loved so well, had cut Boston from the land as neatly as his royal master had cut it from the sea.