Cardigan Part 95

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 sh.o.r.e with Revere," muttered an officer.

"The Governor might sell you a pa.s.s for ten," observed another, sneeringly. "It will cost him a penny to keep his pretty bird o'

paradise in plumes."

"If John Hanc.o.c.k were here he would get us a pa.s.s 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. 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 G.o.d! 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.

"G.o.d 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?" repeated the voice. I heard the trample of hors.e.m.e.n 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 cl.u.s.ter of hors.e.m.e.n, 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 sc.r.a.p 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-b.u.t.ts, 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, G.o.d 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 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 ta.s.selled 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.