Janice Meredith Part 58

"'T is simple enough when one knows the undercurrents.

Germaine was against appointing the Howes, and has always hated them. So he schemes this silly side movement of Burgoyne's from Canada, and plans that the army at New York shall be but an a.s.sistant to that enterprise, with no share in its glory. Sir William, however, sloth though he be, saw through it, and, declining to be made a cat's-paw, he gets aboard ship, to seek laurels for himself, leaving Burgoyne to march and fight through his wilderness alone. Mark me, the British may capture Philadelphia, but if we can but keep them busy till it is too late to succour Burgoyne, the winter will see them the losers and not the gainers by the campaign. But there," he added, "I forget that all this can have but small interest to you."

"Oh," cried Janice, "you would n't say that if you knew how good it is just to hear a friend's voice." And then she poured out the tale of her mother's illness and of her own ordeal.

"Would that I could tarry here and serve and save you!"

groaned Brereton, when she had ended; "but perhaps luck will attend us, and I may be able to hurry back. Have you money in plenty?"

The girl faltered, for in truth there had been little cash at Greenwood when they were called upon to come away, and much of that little was already parted with for lodgings and medicines. Yet she managed to nod her head.

Her pretence did not deceive Jack, and in an instant his purse was being forced into her unwilling fingers. "The fall in our paper money gives a leftenant-colonel a lean scrip in these days, but what little I have is yours," he said.

"I can't take it," protested Janice, trying to return the wallet.

Brereton was at the door ere her hand was outstretched.

"Thy father's letters to me are in the purse, so thou must keep it," he urged. "It's a toss whether I ever need money again, but if I weather this campaign, we'll consider it but a loan, and if I don't, 't is the use of all others to which I should wish it put." This he said seriously, and then more lightly went on: "And besides, Miss Janice, I owe you far more than I can ever pay. We Whigs may forcibly impress, but at least we tender what we can in payment. Keep it, then, as a beggar's poor thanks for the two happiest moments of his life."

The aide pa.s.sed through the doorway, and the next moment a horse's feet clattered in the street.

Janice stood listening till the sound had died out of hearing, then, overcome by this first kindness after such long weeks of harshness and trial, she kissed the purse. And if Brereton could have seen the flush of emotion that swept over her face with the impulsive act, it is likely that something else would have been kissed as well.

x.x.xIX SHORT COMMONS

The moment's cheer that the brief dialogue with Brereton brought Janice was added to by the reading of the two letters from her father to him, which reaffirmed and amplified the little the aide had told her, and ended that source of misery. And, as if his advent in fact marked the turn of the tide, the doctor announced the next day that Mrs. Meredith's typhoid had pa.s.sed its crisis, and only good nursing was now needed to insure a safe recovery. The girl's prayers suddenly changed from ones of supplication to ones of thanksgiving; and she found herself breaking into song even when at her mother's bedside, quite forgetful of the need for quiet. This she was especially p.r.o.ne to do while she helped the long hours of watching pa.s.s by knitting on a silken purse of the most complicated pattern.

The materials for this trifle were purchased on the afternoon following the march of the Continental army, and for some days the progress was very rapid. Public events then interfered and checked both song and purse. On September 11 the low boom of guns was heard, and that very evening word came that the Continental army had been defeated at Brandywine.

The moment the news reached Philadelphia an exodus of the timid began, which swelled in volume as the probability of the capture of the city grew. The streets were filled with waggons carting away the possessions of the people; the Continental Congress, which had been urging Washington to fight at all hazard, took to its heels and fled to Lancaster; and all others who had made themselves prominent in the Whig cause deserted the city. Among those who thought it necessary to go was the lodging-house keeper; for, her husband being an officer of one of the row galleys in the river, she looked for nothing less than instant death at the hands of the British.

With a plea to Janice, therefore, that she would care for the house and do what she could to save it from British plundering, the woman and her daughter departed. Her example was followed by the doctor, not from motives of fear, but from a purpose to join Washington's army as a volunteer. This threw upon the girl's shoulders the entire charge of her mother, and the cooking and providing as well; the latter by far the most difficult of all, for the farmers about Philadelphia were as much panic-stricken as the townspeople, and for a time suspended all attempts to bring their produce to market.

The two weeks of this chaos were succeeded by a third of unwonted calm, and then one morning as she opened the front door on her way to make her daily purchases, Janice's ears were greeted with the sound of military music. Turning up Second Street, curiosity hastening her steps, she became part of the crowd of women and children running toward the market, and arrived there just in time to see Harcourt's dragoons, followed by six battalions of grenadiers, march past to the tune of "G.o.d Save the King." Following these came Lord Cornwallis, and then four batteries of heavy artillery; and the crowd cheered the conquerors as enthusiastically and joyfully as they had Washington's ragged regiments so short a time before.

The advent of the British did not lessen the difficulties of Janice, as they not only promptly seized all the provisions of the town, but their main army, camped outside the city at Germantown, intercepted the few fresh supplies which the farmers successfully smuggled through Washington's lines above the city. Fresh beef rose to nine shillings the pound, bread to six shillings the quartern loaf and everything else in like ratio. Though Brereton's loan furnished her with the where-withal for the moment, each day's purchases made such inroads into it that the girl could not but worry over the future.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The despatch"]

The stress she had foreseen came far sooner than even she had feared, or had reason to expect. Without warning, the tradespeople united in refusing to sell for Continental money; and Janice, when she went to make her usual purchases one day, found that she could buy nothing, and had but stinted and pinched herself only to husband what in a moment had become valueless.

At first the girl's distress was so great that she could think of no means of relief; but after hours of miserable and tearful worrying over her helplessness, her face suddenly brightened, and the cause of the change was revealed by her thrusting her hand into her neckerchief, to draw out the miniature of herself.

With her knitting needle she pried up the gla.s.s and, removing the slip of ivory, laid it carefully in her housewife, heaving, let it be confessed, a little sigh, for it was hard to part with the one trinket she had ever owned. Unconscious of how many hours she had been dwelling on her troubles, she caught up her calash, and with the miniature frame in her hand, hurried to the front door; but the moment she had opened it, she was reminded that it was long after the closing of the markets, and so postponed whatever she had in mind for another day.

On the following morning she sallied forth, so engrossed in her difficulties, or her project, that she paid no heed to the distant sound of cannon, nor to the groups of townspeople who stood about on corners or stoops, evidently discussing something of interest; and it was only when she turned into the market-place, and found it empty alike of buyers and sellers that she was made to realise that something unusual was occurring.

"Why are all the stands closed this morning?" she asked of an urchin.

"'Cause nawthing 's come ter town along of the fightin'."

"Fighting?"

"Guess you 're a deefy," contemptuously suggested the youngster. "Don't you hear them guns? The grenadiers went out lickety split this mornin' and folks says they've got Washington surrounded, an'll have him captured by night.

All the other boys hez gone out on the Germantown road ter see the fun, but daddy said he'd lick me if I went, so I did n't dare," he added dejectedly. "Hurrah! There come some more wounded!" he cried, with sudden cheerfulness and breaking into a run as an army van came in sight down Second Street.

The girl turned away and went into one of the few shops which had opened its shutters.

"You would not take Continental money yesterday," she said to the proprietor; "but perhaps you--you will--I thought--I have no other kind of money, but perhaps you will accept this in payment?" Janice, with a flushed, anxious face, unwrapped from her handkerchief and laid down on the counter the miniature frame.

The man took it up and eyed it for a moment, then raised it to his mouth and pressed his teeth on the edge; satisfied by the experiment, he scrutinised the brilliants. "How d' ye come by this?" he demanded suspiciously.

"Oh, indeed, sir," explained Janice, growing yet redder, "it is mine, I a.s.sure you, given me by--that is, he said I might keep it."

"'Tain't for me to say it ain't yourn," responded the shop-keeper; "but the times is bad times and there 's roguery of all sorts going on in the city." He looked it over again, and demanded, "Who does 'W. H. J. B.' mean?"

"I don't--I never knew," faltered Janice.

"Then where 's the picture that was in it?"

"I--I took it out," explained the girl, "not wishing to part with that."

"That's just what ye would have done if ye'd not come by it by rights, "replied the man.

"Then I'll put it back," hastily offered Janice, very much alarmed and fl.u.s.tered. "I--I never dreamed that--that the picture would make it worth any more."

"'T would have made it look more regular. How much d' ye want for it?"

"I thought--Would five pounds be too much?"

The shop-keeper laid the frame down on the counter and shoved it toward Janice. "No, I don't want it," he said.

"Would three pounds--?"

"I don't want it at no such price," interrupted the man.

"Oh," bewailed the girl, "what am I to do? The doctor said she was to have nourishing food; and I have nothing but a little corn meal left. Would you give me one pound for it?"

"I tell ye, I won't buy it at any price. And I don't even want it in the shop, so take it away. And if you want to keep out of jail, I would n't be offering it about; I've most a mind to call the watch myself, as 't is."

The threat was enough to make Janice catch up the bijou and leave the shop almost at a run; nor did her pace lessen as she hurried homeward, and, safely there, she fast bolted the door. This done, with hands which trembled not a little, she replaced her portrait in the frame, hoping dimly from what the shopkeeper had said, that this would help to prove her ownership. Yet all that day and the succeeding one she stayed within doors, dreading what might come; and any unusual noise outside set her heart beating with fear that it might portend the approach of a danger all the more terrible that it was indefinite. As if her suffering were not great enough, an added horror was the army vans loaded with groaning wounded, which rumbled by her door during the sleepless night she spent.

As time lessened her fright, her necessities grew more pressing, and finally became so desperate, that, braving everything, she went boldly to headquarters, and asked for Lord Cornwallis.

She was referred by the sentry at the stoop to a room on the ground floor, her entrance being accompanied by the man shouting down the hallway: "Here 's wan more av thim townsfolks, sir." Entering, Janice discovered two men seated at a table, each with a little pile of money at his elbow, pa.s.sing the time with cards.

"Well," growled the one with his back to the door, "I suppose 't is the usual tale: No bread, no meat, no firewood; sick wife, sick baby, sick mother, sick anything that can be whined about. Body o' me, must we not merely die by bullets or starvation, but suffer a thousand deaths meantime with endless whimpering!

"Slowly, slowly, Mobray," advised he who faced Janice.

"This is no nasal-voiced and putty-faced cowardly old Quaker.

'T is a d.a.m.ned pretty maid, with eyes and a waist and an ankle fit to be a toast. Ay, and she can mantle divinely, when she's admired!"

"Ye don't foist that take-in on me, John Andre! I score six to my suit, and a quint is twenty-one, and a card played is twenty-two.--Well, graycoat, say your say, and don't stand behind me as a kill-joy."