Joscelyn Cheshire Part 19

"My mother always begins by asking a stranger to have something to eat--and you have bonny blue eyes like hers," he answered, with boyish audacity, pushing back her loose sleeve and patting the fat arm.

"'Tis a good place to start," she answered, shoving him off; and would have called the boys to serve him, but he held her back.

"I wish no one but you to hear what I have to say. You may trust me--I swear it." So she opened the cupboard herself and brought out plenty of cold food. Richard ate ravenously, praising everything (for in truth it had a heavenly taste), and telling her how blue her eyes were, and how pretty her patchwork--just like what his own mother used to make.

"A bit of a quilt for a bairn just born," she said, and smoothed it with her great hands.

And Richard asked the child's name, and said it had a sweet sound, and hoped it would have blue eyes with a twinkle in them like her own. And while he ate and talked she watched him narrowly. He knew it, but he did not care. Presently she said, as one a.s.serting a fact:--

"You are from one of the prison-ships."

He nodded, smiling; and his frankness evidently pleased her, for she nodded back. "That's right; no use to lie about it. I knew I had seen your face somewhere. How did you get away?"

"That is the one thing I cannot tell you, good mother, for it would implicate the man who helped me, and not even for your favour--though G.o.d knows I want it bad enough--will I betray my friend."

"Right again; hold fast to the man who holds to you; I like to see folk grateful."

Then he told her how he wanted to go in her boat to the Jersey sh.o.r.e, and how it was he happened to know her plans. But she shook her head; the risk was too great.

"There will be no risk at all. You are so well known to the soldiers at the different posts that you will never be questioned. It would be but natural for you to take some one stronger than your boys to help you in making so long a voyage. Find me but a coat and hat, and no one will give me a thought, for I know how to hold my tongue when occasion calls."

But still she refused. Her pa.s.sport called but for three, and she was not going to run her head into a noose for all his fine speeches and petting ways--for he had squeezed her hand and patted her gray hair while he talked.

He would not listen to her refusal; if she did not take him, he was lost. And he got hold of her other hand, and in pathetic words described to her the agony he had suffered on the vessel; and then he dropped his head on the table and almost sobbed as he told her of Joscelyn and his yearning to see her.

"Oho, a sweetheart, is it?" asked the old woman, with aroused interest.

"Yes, as bonny a girl as you ever set eyes upon. And think you, good dame, of your own young days, of the time when the lads were at your beck and call,--for I warrant me those blue eyes broke many hearts,--would you not have been grateful if your lover had been in peril and some one had saved him for you?"

The dame chuckled. "Ay, ay, I had my fling with the lads, I did."

"It goes without the saying. And there was one among them whom you loved?" The brown face grew suddenly very tender as with the shadow of a memory. "Then for the sake of him save Joscelyn's sweetheart for her."

But still she shook her head, and for a minute Richard was in despair.

Then he began all over again, adding the gold piece to his argument.

Thus for half an hour the plea went on, and just as he felt that he had failed, she suddenly nodded her head decisively, that softened light again shining in her face.

"One of the boys shall bide at home, and you may go in his stead, since you are so set on it; but mind, you help with the boat, and I have the gold."

"That and Joscelyn's love shall be yours, you dear, bonny dame!" he cried rapturously, seizing her about the shoulders and kissing her heartily on either red cheek.

"Get out! Of all the lads I ever saw, you have the freest manners."

But the shove she gave him had in it no roughness. He had set her to thinking of her own youth and of a lad who had gone to sea one morning, kissing his hand to her, but had never come home again, though she had waited for him for many a day through shine of sun and wail of storm.

Through all her life a woman's first love is a touchstone to her sympathy, an open sesame to her tenderness; neither as maid, nor yet as wife, does she ever quite forget that first sweet spell upon her heart.

Dame Grant scarcely saw the man beside her, but for sake of that other lad, whom n.o.body had been able to help far back in the years that were dead, she would save this other girl's lover.

In an hour their preparations were made. From the loft of her hut the dame brought down a leather jerkin and a battered hat, and after her scissors had gone over Richard's head, he was metamorphosed so that even she herself would scarcely have recognized him.

"You'd be a fine figure of a man if those wretches on the ship had not starved the shape out of you."

"My mother always said that in the way of beauty Providence had done more for my legs than for my face," Richard laughed.

"Well, the warden hath undone the job, for thy breeches hang like a scarecrow's. Now up into the loft with you, and find some straw whereon to sleep. 'Tis close upon midnight, and we start with the sun."

But Richard was too full of joy and excitement to sleep much, and so when the dame and her boys came out the next morning, they found him sitting beside the boat, pulling on his boots after a plunge into the cold salt water. The feeling in his breast was indescribable when at last, after many injunctions to the boy who was left, they drew out of the cove into the open bay, in the pearl and purple morning, and he knew his journey was begun.

They went somewhat out of their way that Dame Grant might leave some parcels at the patrol station, their course taking them within a hundred yards of the three prison-ships rocking in the bay. At first Richard turned his eyes away with a sickening sense of pain and rage, then looked eagerly to see if he might recognize Peter on the deck. Yes, there he was, near the stern; Richard knew him from his height and from the cap he wore, and he had to hold his teeth clenched to keep from crying out to him. How dismal and condemned the three hulks looked, despite the transfiguring touch of the morning! And over there on the strand was his grave, the spot to which his mother's thoughts would make many a sorrowful pilgrimage if so the news of his death should outrun him to the Carolina hills.

At the station one of the guards remarked on the fact that the dame had a new hand aboard.

"Yes; Henry's stomach's apt to go back on him in rough weather, and at this season o' the year we are like to get into a blow any time, so I left him and brought a stronger man. It turns my blood to see Henry heaving and gagging when he ought to be shortening sail."

"Well, yon fellow hasn't much the look of a sailor," said the man, eying Richard suspiciously as he was making awkward attempts to pull in a flapping sail.

"Oh, he isn't showing off, but he suits me well enough," the dame answered, with a warning side look at Richard, who instantly gave better heed to his task. Nothing but her coolness saved him, for the guard's word, coming so suddenly, had made him go very white.

Then a paean of praise went singing itself through his heart, for the parcels were delivered, and pushing off from sh.o.r.e the boat sailed out of the bay and turned her nose to the west. Down the narrow waterway between Long Island and the city of New York they sailed all the morning, stopping here and there at signals from patrol stations to show their pa.s.sports. But at none of these places were they detained very long, for Dame Grant had looked carefully to such matters, and so noon found them in a wide bay to the south of the city. No misfortune had befallen Richard, for he had kept a still tongue at every stopping place. In the afternoon the breeze quickened, and they went racing away before it toward the ever growing sh.o.r.e-line ahead, and in the gloaming they landed at a little hamlet on the Jersey side of the bay.

High up on the beach the boat was pulled and tied to a stake, and then while the boy was gaping about him, Richard went back to the boat side and took the dame's big hand in his:--

"You have kept your contract, and the gold is yours; G.o.d bless you for a good, true woman!" he said, leaving the coin in her palm.

But she thrust it back vigorously: "Nay, I will none of it; I but put it in the bargain to test you. You have paid me twofold by your labour and your good grat.i.tude. Tell your Joscelyn that I send you to her as a gift, and bid her use you well."

Nothing could prevail upon her to touch the coin, and so at last Richard turned away.

"Hist!" she said, holding him a moment, "'tis said there is a Continental force near Brunswick; keep to the southwest."

"Thank you, and G.o.d keep you!" And the gathering shadows swallowed him up.

At that very moment, on board the prison-ship _Good Hope_, Eustace Singleton was listening to the story of his death from the obsequious warden, and wondering how he was to write it to Betty.

And far away in Hillsboro' Joscelyn and Betty were going slowly home in bitter disappointment, after seeing the post-rider distribute his few letters, and finding there was nothing for them. How many and how long had been the weeks since they wrote to Eustace; for then it was summer-time, and now the red and ochre tints of the autumn flamed in the woodlands. And still Betty cried, and still Joscelyn counselled patience.

CHAPTER XVIII.

"KISS ME QUICK AND LET ME GO."

"And to his eye There was but one beloved face on earth, And that was shining on him."

It was a windy day in late November, one of those rare days when summer, repenting of her desertion, steals softly back to comfort the earth with a parting smile. Out in the brown fields the birds pruned their wings in the sun and sang a few notes softly, as a singer who recalls fitfully and doubtfully a long forgotten tune; the golden daisies by the door still burnt like stars late fallen from the far firmament; a revivified b.u.t.terfly hovered languidly over the faded aster beds, and venturesome wasps sallied from their castles under the eaves and buzzed droningly against the window panes. It was a day of shifting shadows, of subtle changes and soft surprises.

Joscelyn and Betty sat over their embroidery frames in the latter's parlour, talking over the events of the past two months--the long wait between their letter to Eustace and his sorrowful reply; the grief that clouded the two houses for four days following, before they knew that Richard had escaped and was not dead, and the intense relief and joy his short message had brought them.