Cardigan Part 80

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-c.o.c.k 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 Ma.s.sachusetts Bay should lie a-gasping amid plenty, with the hand of Britain upon the country's thrapple to choke out the life G.o.d gave it.

On the straight, well-laid high-road we pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.e 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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, pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.senger 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, la.s.s! 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 st.u.r.dy 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 pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sed. I sat on my horse, looking after it, cudgelling my wits to remember that red-cheeked, buxom la.s.s, 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 la.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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.

The Roxbury road ran through a narrow pa.s.sage between two bastions of earth, surrounded with a heavy abatis and _trous de loup_. In the left bastion I could see magazines and guard-houses, and beyond it, near the sh.o.r.e, a small square redoubt, a block-house, and a battery of six cannon. In the right bastion there was a guard-house, and beyond that a block-house on the sh.o.r.e of the mud-flats, while farther out in the shallow water lay a floating battery.

Our chaise rolled in through the earthworks and down a causeway surrounded by water. This was Boston Neck, a strip of made land not wider than a high-road, and blocked at the northern extremity by a solid military work of stone and earth, bristling with cannon.

The gate guards eyed us sullenly as we drove into the city and up a long, dusty road called Orange Street. We continued to Newbury Street, to Marlborough Street, Mount directing us, thence through Cornhill to Queen Street, where we drew up at a very elegant mansion.

Dismounting, I took Mrs. Hamilton from the carriage, and she unmasked, for the fire was dying out in the western heavens.

"If," she began slowly, "I should bid you to supper at my house, would you hurt me with refusal, Michael?"

"Is this your house?" I asked, in surprise.

"Yes--my late husband's. Will you come?"

I explained that I cared not to leave Mount, and that also we must seek a tavern as soon as might be, for we had much business on the morrow which could not wait.

She listened, with a faintly mocking air, then thanked me for my escort, thanked Mount for his share in providing me as her escort by stopping her carriage, and finally curtseyed, saying in a low voice: "Your charming Miss Warren is doubtless impatient. Pray believe me that I wish you joy of your conquest."

I thought she meant it, and it touched me. But when I stepped to her door-yard to conduct her, she turned on me like a flash, and I saw her eyes all wet and brilliant, and her teeth crushing her under-lip.

"For a charming journey in my own company, I thank you," she said; "for your conceit and your insufferable airs, I will find a remedy--remember that! My humiliation under your own roof is not forgotten, Mr. Cardigan, and it shall not be forgotten until you pay me dearly!"

Astonished at her bitterness, I found not a word to answer. A man-servant in purple livery opened the door. Mrs. Hamilton turned to me with perfect composure, returning my bow with the smile of an angel, and tripped lightly into her house.

The post-chaise had driven off into the mews when I returned to the street, but Jack Mount was waiting for me, patting Warlock, whose beautiful head had swung around to watch for my coming.

"Well, Jack?" I asked, wearily.

"The 'Wild Goose Tavern' is ours," he said--"good cheer and company to match it."

I walked out into the paved street, leading Warlock. Mount swaggered along beside me, squaring his broad shoulders whenever we pa.s.sed a soldier, and whistling l.u.s.tily "Tryon County Men," till the stony streets rang with the melody.

We now crossed into Treamount Street, pa.s.sed Valley Acre on our right into Sudbury Street, then northwest through Hilliers Lane, crossing Cambridge Street to Green Lane, and west again along Green Lane to the corner of Chambers Street, where it becomes Wiltshire Street and runs due north.

There was enough of daylight left for me to see that we were not in an aristocratic neighbourhood. Warehouses, ship-chandlers, rope-walks, and sc.r.a.p-iron shops lined the streets, interspersed with vacant, barren plots of ground, rarely surrounded by wooden fences.

The warehouses and shops were closed and all the shutters and doors fast bolted. There was not a soul abroad in the streets, not a light to be seen save from one long, low building standing midway between Chambers and Wiltshire Streets--an ancient, discoloured, rambling structure, with a weather-vane atop, and a long, pillared porch in front, from which hung a bush of sea-weed, and a red sign-board depicting a creature which doubtless was intended for a wild goose.

"Lord, Jack!" I said, "Shemuel's 'Bear and Cubs' appeared preferable to your 'Wild Goose' yonder. I'm minded to seek other quarters."

"Never trust to the looks o' things," he laughed. "G.o.d made woodchucks to live on the ground, but they climb trees, too, sometimes. Do I think on the hog-pen when I eat a crisped rasher? Nenny, lad. Come on to the cleanest tap-room in Boston town and forget that the shutters yonder need new hinges!"

I led Warlock into the mews to a clean, well-aired stable, where an ostler bedded and groomed him, and shook out as pretty a handful of grain as I had seen since I left Johnson Hall.