Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker Part 4

To my surprise, he went on to say, "Then take off thy jacket and stand up, and no kicking."

I asked nothing better, and began to laugh. At this my foe, who was bigger and older than I, cried out that I would laugh on the other side of my mouth--a queer boy phrase of which I could never discover the meaning.

"And now, fair play," said Friend Forest. "Keep cool, Hugh, and watch his eyes."

I felt glad that he was on my side, and we fell to with no more words.

I was no match for the practised fists of my antagonist; but I was the stronger, and I kept my wits better than might have been expected.

At last I got his head under my arm with a grip on his gullet, and so mauled him with my right fist that Friend Forest pulled me away, and my man staggered back, b.l.o.o.d.y, and white too, while I was held like a dog in leash.

"He hath enough, I think. Ask him."

I cried out, "No! d.a.m.n him!" It was my first oath.

"Hush!" cried Forest. "No profane language."

"I will not speak to him," said I, "and--and--he is a beast of the pit."

Now this fine statement I had come upon in a book of Mr. William Penn's my father owned, wherein the governor had denounced one Mr. Muggleton.

Friend Forest laughed merrily. "Thou hast thy standing, lad." For Alloway walked sullenly away, not man enough to take more or to confess defeat. Jack, who was still white, said:

"It is my turn now, and which shall it be?"

"Shade of Fox!" cried Friend Forest. "The war is over. Come, boys, I must see you well out of this." And so rea.s.suring us, he went down Fourth street, and to my home.

My father was in the sitting-room, taking his long-stemmed reed pipe at his ease. He rose as we followed Friend Forest into the room.

"Well," he said, "what coil is this?" For we were b.l.o.o.d.y, and hot with fight and wrath, and our garments in very sad disorder.

Friend Forest very quietly related our story, and made much of his own share in the renewal of our battle. To my surprise, my father smiled.

"It seems plain," he said, "that the lads were not to blame. But how wilt thou answer to the Meeting, Rupert Forest?"

"To it, to thee, to any man," said the Quaker.

"It is but a month ago that thy case was before Friends because of thy having beaten Friend Wain's man. It will go ill with thee--ill, I fear."

"And who is to spread it abroad?"

"Not I," said my father.

"I knew that," returned the Friend, simply. "I am but a jack-in-the-box Quaker, John. I am in and out in a moment, and then I go back and repent."

"Let us hope so. Go to thy mother, Hugh; and as to thee, John Warder, wait until I send with thee a note to thy father. There are liquors on the table, Friend Forest."

My mother set us in order, and cried a little, and said:

"I am glad he was well beaten. Thou shouldst never fight, my son; but if thou must, let it be so that thy adversary repent of it. _Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! j'en ai peur_; the wild Welsh blood of these Wynnes! And thy poor little nose--how 't is swelled!"

Not understanding her exclamations, Jack said as much, but she answered:

"Oh, it is a fashion of speech we French have. I shall never be cured of it, I fear. This wild blood--what will come of it?" And she seemed--as Jack writes long after, being more observing than I--as if she were looking away into the distance of time, thinking of what might come to pa.s.s. She had, indeed, strange insight, and even then, as I knew later, had her fears and unspoken anxieties. And so, with a plentiful supper, ended a matter which was, I may say, a critical point in my life.

IV

After this my days went by more peacefully. The help and example of Jack a.s.sisted me greatly in my lessons, which I did little relish. I was more fond of reading, and devoured many books as I sat under our orchard trees in the spring, or nestled up to the fire on the long winter evenings, coiled on the settle, that its high back might keep off drafts. My aunt lent me an abundance of books after that famous "Travels" of Mr. Gulliver. Now and then my father looked at what she gave me, but he soon tired of this, and fell asleep in the great oak chair which Governor Penn gave my grandfather.

Many volumes, and some queer ones, I fell upon in my aunt's house, but, save once, against the naughtiness of Mrs. Aphra Behn, she never interfered. We liked greatly a book called "Peter Wilkins," by one Paltock, full of a queer folk, who had winged "graundees," a sort of crimson robe made of folds of their own skin. None read it now. My dear Jack fancied it much more than I.

I was nigh to fifteen before we read "Robinson Crusoe," but even earlier I devoured at my aunt's "Captain Jack" and "The History of the Devil."

The former book filled us with delight. Jack and I used to row over to Windmill Island, on the great Delaware, and there at the south end we built a hut, and slew bullfrogs, and found steps on the sand, I being thereafter Friday, and Jack my master. We made, too, a sail and mast for my boat, and, thus aided, sailed of Sat.u.r.days up and down the n.o.ble river, which I have always loved.

A still greater joy was to go in our chaise with my mother to the governor's woods, which extended from Broad street to the Schuylkill, and from Callowhill to South street. There we tied the horse, and under the great trees we found in spring arbutus, even beneath the snow, and later fetched thence turkey-foot ferns, and wild honeysuckle, and quaker-ladies, with jack-in-the-pulpits and fearful gray corpse-lights hid away in the darker woods. In the forest my mother seemed even younger than at home, and played with us, and told us quaint tales of her French people, or fairy stories of Giant Jack and others, which were by no means such as Friends approved.

In our house one same stern, unbending rule prevailed. I have been told by my aunt, Gainor Wynne, that when he was young my father was not always so steadfast in conduct as to satisfy Friends. When I was old enough to observe and think, he had surely become strict enough; but this severity of opinion and action increased with years, and showed in ways which made life difficult for those near to him. In fact, before I attained manhood the tinted arms and the picture of Wyncote were put away in the attic room. My mother's innocent love of ornament also became to him a serious annoyance, and these peculiarities seemed at last to deepen whenever the political horizon darkened. At such times he became silent, and yet more keen than usual to detect and denounce anything in our home life which was not to his liking.

The affairs of a young fellow between the ages of childhood and younger manhood can have but meagre interest. Our school life went on, and while we worked or played, our elders saw the ever-increasing differences between king and colonies becoming year by year more difficult of adjustment. Except when some noisy crisis arose, they had for us lads but little interest.

Most people used the city landings, or lightered their goods from ships in the stream. We, however, had a great dock built out near to the mouth of Dock Creek, and a warehouse. Hither came sloops from my father's plantation of tobacco, near Annapolis, and others from the "permitted islands," the Cape de Verde and the Madeiras. Staves for barrels, tobacco, and salt fish were the exports, and in return came Eastern goods brought to these islands, and huge tuns of Madeira wine. Rum, too, arrived from New England, and salted mackerel. What else my father imported, of French goods or tea, reached us from England, for we were not allowed to trade with the continent of Europe nor directly with India.

Once my father took me with him to Lewes, near Cape Hinlopen, on one of his ships, and to my joy we were met there by Tom, our black slave, with horses, and rode back during two days by Newcastle and Chester. As I rode ill, of course, and was sore for a week, my father thought it well that I should learn to ride, and this exercise I took to easily. Just before I was sixteen my aunt gave me a horse, and after we had separated abruptly a few times, and no harm to any, I became the master, and soon an expert rider, as was needful in a land where most long journeys were made on horseback.

It seems to me now, as I look back, that the events of life were preparing me and my friend Jack for what was to follow. Our boating made every part of the two rivers familiar. Now that I had a horse, Jack's father, who would always do for him readily what my Aunt Gainor did for me, yielded to his desire to ride; and so it was that we began, as leisure served, to extend our rides to Germantown, or even to Chestnut Hill. Thus all the outlying country became well known to both of us, and there was not a road, a brook, or a hill which we did not know.

Until this happy time I had been well pleased to follow my aunt on a pillion behind her servant, Caesar, but now I often went with her, perched on my big horse, and got from my aunt, an excellent horsewoman, some sharp lessons as to leaping, and certain refinements in riding that she had seen or known of in London.

A Captain Montresor--he who afterward, when a colonel, was Howe's engineer--used to ride with her in the spring of '69. He was a tall, stout man of middle age, and much spoken of as likely to marry my Aunt Gainor, although she was older than he, for, as fat Oliver de Lancey said years after, "There is no age to a woman's money, and guineas are always young." My aunt, Gainor Wynne, was still a fine gentlewoman, and did not look her years. As concerned this question of age, she was like a man, and so in fact she was in some other ways. She would tell any one how old she was. She once informed Mr. de Lancey that she was so much more of a man than any British officer she knew that she did not see how she could decently marry any of them.

I think it was about this time that I saw a little scene which much impressed me, and which often recurs to my memory. We--that is, Mr.

Montresor, and my Aunt Gainor and I--of a Sat.u.r.day afternoon rode over by the lower ferry and up Gray's Lane, and so to Mr. Hamilton's country-seat. "The Woodlands," as it was called, stood on a hill amid many beautiful trees and foreign shrubs and flowers. Below it ran the quiet Schuylkill, and beyond, above the governor's woods, could be seen far away Dr. Kearsley's fine spire of Christ Church. No better did Master Wren himself ever contrive, or more proportioned to the edifice beneath it.

On the porch were Mr. Hamilton and Mrs. Penn, with saucy gray eyes, and Mrs. Ferguson. A slim young girl, Rebecca Franks, was teasing a cat. She teased some one all her days, and did it merrily, and not unkindly. She was little and very pretty, with a dark skin. Did she dream she should marry a British soldier--a baronet and general--and end her days in London well on in the century yet to come?

Andrew Allen, whose father, the chief justice, took his wife, Margaret, from this house, sat on the steps near Miss Franks, and beside her little Peggy Shippen, who already gave promise of the beauty which won for her so pitiful a life. Nothing in this garden of gay women and flowers foretold the tragedy of West Point. I think of it now with sad wonder.

In one or another way these people became known in our annals. Most of them were of the more exclusive party known as the governor's set, and belonged to the Church of England. With the Galloways, Cadwaladers, Willings, Shippens, Rawles, and others, they formed a more or less distinct society, affecting London ways, dining at the extreme hour of four, loving cards, the dance, fox-hunting, and to see a main of game-c.o.c.ks. Among them--not of them--came and went certain of what were called "genteel" Quakers--Morrises, Pembertons, Whartons, and Logans.

They had races too,--that is, the governor's set,--and one of my delights was, on the way to the academy, to stop in Third street, above Chestnut, and see the race-horses in the Widow Nichols's stables at the sign of the Indian Queen.

But I have left the laughter of the last century echoing among the columns of Andrew Hamilton's home. The guests were made welcome, and had a dish of tea or a gla.s.s of punch; and those desiring no more bohea set a spoon across the cup, and fell into groups. My aunt opened the velvet bag which hung at her waist, to pay Mrs. Ferguson a small gambling debt of the night before.

"Ah, here!" she cried gaily, "Mr. Montresor, this is for you. One of Mr. Grenville's stamps; I kept two. I was lucky enough to get them from Master Hughes, the stamp officer--a great curiosity. You shall have one."

Mr. Montresor bowed. "I will keep it," he said, "until it comes into use again."

"That will be never," said Andrew Allen, turning.