Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker Part 7

"I think it was he who saved the wreck of the king's army under Mr.

Braddock," said my aunt. "I can remember how they all looked. Not a wig among them. The lodges must have been full of them, but their legs saved their scalps."

"Is it for this they call them wigwams?" cries naughty Miss Chew.

"Fie! fie!" says her mamma, while my aunt laughed merrily.

"A mere Potomac planter," said Etherington, "'pon my soul--and with such airs, as if they were gentlemen of the line."

"Perhaps," said my aunt, "they had not had your opportunities of knowing all grades of the service."

The major flushed. "I have served the king as well as I know how, and I trust, madam, I shall have the pleasure to aid in the punishment of some of these insolent rebels."

"May you be there to see, Hugh," said my aunt, laughing.

Willing to make a diversion, Mrs. Chew said, "Let us defeat these Tories at the card-table, Gainor."

"With all my heart," said my aunt, glad of this turn in the talk.

"Come and give me luck, Hugh," said Mrs. Ferguson. "What a big fellow you are! Your aunt must find you ruffles soon, and a steenkirk."

With this I sat down beside her, and wondered to see how eager and interested they all became, and how the guineas and gold half-joes pa.s.sed from one to another, while the gay Mrs. Ferguson, who was at the table with Mrs. Penn, Captain Wallace, and my aunt, gave me my first lesson in this form of industry.

A little later there was tea, chocolate, and rusks, with punch for the men; and Dr. Shippen came in, and the great Dr. Rush, with his delicate, clean-cut face under a full wig. Dr. Shippen was full of talk about some fine game-c.o.c.ks, and others were busy with the spring races in Centre Square.

You may be sure I kept my ears open to hear what all these great men said. I chanced to hear Dr. Rush deep in talk behind the punch-table with a handsome young man, Dr. Morgan, newly come from London.

Dr. Rush said, "I have news to-day, in a letter from Mr. Adams, of things being unendurable. He is bold enough to talk of separation from England; but that is going far, too far."

"I think so, indeed," said Morgan. "I saw Dr. Franklin in London. He advises conciliation, and not to act with rash haste. These gentlemen yonder make it difficult."

"Yes; there is no insolence like that of the soldier." And this was all I heard or remember, for my aunt bade me run home and thank my mother, telling me to come again and soon.

The plot was indeed thickening, and even a lad as young as I could scent peril in the air. At home I heard nothing of it. No doubt my father read at his warehouse the "Pennsylvania Journal," or more likely Galloway's gazette, the "Chronicle," which was rank Tory, and was suppressed in 1773. But outside of the house I learned the news readily. Mr. Warder took papers on both sides, and also the Boston "Packet," so that Jack and I were well informed, and used to take the gazettes when his father had read them, and devour them safely in our boat, when by rare chance I had a holiday.

And so pa.s.sed the years 1770, 1771, and 1772, when Lord North precipitated the crisis by attempting to control the judges in Ma.s.sachusetts, who were in future to be paid by the crown, and would thus pa.s.s under its control. Adams now suggested committees of correspondence, and thus the first step toward united action was taken.

These years, up to the autumn of 1772, were not without influence on my own life for both good and evil. I was, of course, kept sedulously at work at our business, and, though liking it even less than farriery, learned it well enough. It was not without its pleasures. Certainly it was an agreeable thing to know the old merchant captains, and to talk to their men or themselves. The sea had not lost its romance. Men could remember Kidd and Blackbeard. In the low-lying dens below Dock Creek and on King street, were many, it is to be feared, who had seen the black flag flying, and who knew too well the keys and shoals of the West Indies. The captain who put to sea with such sailors had need to be resolute and ready. Ships went armed, and I was amazed to see, in the holds of our own ships, carronades, which out on the ocean were hoisted up and set in place on deck; also cutla.s.ses and muskets in the cabin, and good store of pikes. I ventured once to ask my father if this were consistent with non-resistance. He replied that pirates were like to wild beasts, and that I had better attend to my business; after which I said no more, having food for thought.

These captains got thus a n.o.ble training, were splendid seamen, and not unused to arms and danger, as proved fortunate in days to come. Once I would have gone to the Madeiras with Captain Biddle, but unluckily my mother prevailed with my father to forbid it. It had been better for me had it been decided otherwise, because I was fast getting an education which did me no good.

"Indeed," says Jack later on in his diary, "I was much troubled in those seventies" (he means up to '74, when we were full twenty-one) "about my friend Hugh. The town was full of officers of all grades, who came and went, and brought with them much licence and contempt for colonists in general, and a silly way of parading their own sentiments on all occasions. Gambling, hard drinking, and all manner of worse things became common and more openly indulged in. Neither here nor in Boston could young women walk about unattended, a new and strange thing in our quiet town.

"Mistress Gainor's house was full of these gentlemen, whom she entertained with a freedom only equalled by that with which she spoke her good Whig mind. The air was full of excitement. Business fell off, and Hugh and I had ample leisure to do much as we liked.

"I must honestly declare that I deserve no praise for having escaped the temptations which beset Hugh. I hated all excess, and suffered in body if I drank or ate more than was wise. As regards worse things than wine and cards, I think Miss Wynne was right when she described me as a girl-boy; for the least rudeness or laxity of talk in women I disliked, and as to the mere modesties of the person, I have always been like some well-nurtured maid.

"Thus it was that when Hugh, encouraged by his aunt, fell into the company of these loose, swaggering captains and cornets, I had either to give up him, who was unable to resist them, or to share in their vicious ways myself. It was my personal disgust at drunkenness or loose society which saved me, not any moral or religious safeguards, although. I trust I was not altogether without these helps. I have seen now and then that to be refined in tastes and feelings is a great aid to a virtuous life.

Also I have known some who would have been drunkards but for their heads and stomachs, which so behaved as to be good subst.i.tutes for conscience.

It is sometimes the body which saves the soul. Both of these helps I had, but my dear Hugh had neither. He was a great, strong, masculine fellow, and if I may seem to have said that he wanted refined feelings, that is not so, and to him, who will never read these lines, and to myself, I must apologise."

I did come to see these pages, as you know. I think he meant, that with the wine of youth and at times of other vintages, in my veins, the strong paternal blood, which in my father only a true, if hard, religion kept in order, was too much for me. If I state this awkwardly it is because all excuses are awkward. Looking back, I wonder that I was not worse, and that I did not go to the uttermost devil. I was vigorous, and had the stomach of a temperate ox, and a head which made no complaints.

The morning after some mad revel I could rise at five, and go out in my boat and overboard, and then home in a glow, with a fine appet.i.te for breakfast; and I was so big and tall that I was thought to be many years older than I was.

I should have been less able unwatched to go down this easy descent, had it not been for a train of circ.u.mstances which not only left me freer than I ought to have been, but, in the matter of money, made it only too possible for me to hold my own amid evil or lavish company. My aunt had lived in London, and in a society which had all the charm of breeding, and all the vices of a period more coa.r.s.e than ours. She detested my father's notions, and if she meant to win me to her own she took an ill way to do it. I was presented to the English officers, and freely supplied with money, to which I had been quite unused, so long as my father was the only source of supply. We were out late when I was presumed to be at my Aunt Gainor's; and to drink and bet, or to see a race or c.o.c.k-fight, or to pull off knockers, or to bother the ancient watchmen, were now some of my most reputable amus.e.m.e.nts. I began to be talked about as a bit of a rake, and my Aunt Gainor was not too greatly displeased; she would hear of our exploits and say "Fie! fie!" and then give me more guineas. Worse than all, my father was deep in his business, lessening his ventures, and thus leaving me more time to sow the seed of idleness. Everything, as I now see it, combined to make easy for me the downward path. I went along it without the company of Jack Warder, and so we drew apart; he would none of it.

When my father began to withdraw his capital my mother was highly pleased, and more than once in my presence said to him: "Why, John, dost thou strive for more and more money? Hast thou not enough? Let us give up all this care and go to our great farm at Merion, and live as peaceful as our cattle." She did not reckon upon the force with which the habits of a life bound my father to his business.

I remember that it was far on in April, 1773, when my Aunt Gainer appeared one day in my father's counting-house. Hers was a well-known figure on King street, and even in the unpleasant region alongsh.o.r.e to the south of Dock street. She would dismount, leave her horse to the groom, and, with a heavily mounted, silver-topped whip in hand, and her riding-petticoat gathered up, would march along, picking her way through mud and filth. Here she contrived to find the queer china things she desired, or in some mysterious way she secured cordials and such liquors as no one else could get.

Once she took my mother with her, and loaded her with G.o.ds of the Orient and fine China pongee silks.

"But, Hugh," said the dear lady, "_il n'est pas possible de vous la decrire. Mon Dieu!_ she can say terrible words, and I have seen a man who ventured some rudeness to me--no, no, mon cher, nothing to anger you; il avait peur de cette femme. He was afraid of her--her and her whip. He was so alarmed that he let her have a great china mandarin for a mere nothing. I think he was glad to see her well out of his low tavern."

"But the man," I urged; "what did he say to thee, mother?"

"N'importe, mon fils. I did want the mandarin. He nodded this way--this way. He wagged his head as a dog wags his tail, like Thomas Scattergood in the Meeting. Comme ca." She became that man in a moment, turning up the edge of her silk shawl, and nodding solemnly. I screamed with laughter. Ever since I was a child, despite my father's dislikes, she had taught me French, and when alone with me liked me to chatter in her mother language. In fact, I learned it well.

On the occasion of which I began just now to speak, my Aunt Gainor entered, with a graver face than common, and I rising to leave her with my father, she put her whip across my breast as I turned, and said, "No; I want you to hear what I have to say."

"What is it, Gainor?"

"This business of the ship 'Gaspee' the Rhode Island men burned is making trouble in the East. The chief justice of Rhode Island, Hopkins, has refused to honour the order to arrest these Rhode-Islanders."

"Pirates!" said my father.

"Pirates, if you like. We shall all be pirates before long."

"Well, Gainor, is that all? It does not concern me."

"No; I have letters from London which inform me that the Lord North is but a puppet, and as the king pulls the wires he will dance to whatever tune the king likes. He was a nice, amiable young fellow when I stayed at his father's, my Lord Guilford's, and not without learning and judgment. But for the Exchequer--a queer choice, I must say."

"It is to be presumed that the king knows how to choose his ministers.

Thou knowest what I think, Gainor. We have but to obey those whom the Lord has set over us. We are told to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to go our ways in peace."

"The question is, What are Caesar's?" said my aunt. "Shall Caesar judge always? I came to tell you that it is understood in London, although not public, that it is meant to tax our tea. Now we do not buy; we smuggle it from Holland; but if the India Company should get a drawback on tea, we shall be forced to take it for its cheapness, even with the duty on it of threepence a pound."

"It were but a silly scheme, Gainor. I cannot credit it."

"Who could, John? and yet it is to be tried, and all for a matter of a few hundred pounds a year. It will be tried not now or soon, but next fall when the tea-ships come from China."

"And if it is to be as thou art informed, what of it?"

"A storm--a tempest in a teapot," said she.

My father stood still, deep in thought. He had a profound respect for the commercial sagacity of this clear-headed woman. Moreover, he was sure, as usual, to be asked to act in Philadelphia as a consignee of the India Company.

She seemed to see through her brother, as one sees through gla.s.s. "You got into trouble when the stamps came."