Philip Winwood Part 14

"Oh, Bert!--What nonsense! Don't look at me so, here in the street--people will take notice."

"What do I care for people? Let the fellows all see, and envy me, if you'll give me what I ask. What say you, dearest? Speak; tell me! Nay, if you won't, I'll make you blush all the more--I love you, I love you, I love you! Now will you speak?"

"Oh, Bert, dear, at least wait till we are home!"

"If you'll promise to say yes then."

"Very well--if 'twill please you."

"Nay, it must be to please yourself too. You do love me a little, don't you?"

"Why, of course I do; and you must have known it all the time!"

But, alas, her father's "yes" was not so easily to be won. I broached the matter to him that very evening (f.a.n.n.y and I meanwhile having come to a fuller understanding in the seclusion of the garden); but he shook his head, and regarded me coldly.

"No, sir," said he. "For, however much you are to be esteemed as a young gentleman of honour and candour and fine promise, 'tis for me to consider you rather as an adherent of a government that has persecuted my country, and now makes war upon it. The day may come when you will find a more congenial home nearer the crown you have already expressed your desire to fight for. And then, if f.a.n.n.y were your wife, you would carry her off to make an Englishwoman of her, as my first daughter would have been carried by her husband, upon different motives, but for this war. Perhaps 'twere better she could have gone," he added, with a sigh, for Margaret had been his favourite child; "my loss of her could scarce have been more complete than it is. But 'tis not so with f.a.n.n.y."

"But, sir, I am not to take it that you refuse me, definitely, finally?--I beg--"

"Nay, sir, I only say that we must wait. Let us see what time shall bring to pa.s.s. I believe that you will not--and I am sure that f.a.n.n.y will not--endeavour any act without my consent, or against my wish.

Nay, I don't bid you despair, neither. Time shall determine."

I was not so confident that I would not endeavour any act without his consent; but I shared his certainty that f.a.n.n.y would not. And so, in despondency, I took the news to her.

"Well," says she, with a sigh. "We must wait, that's all."

While we were waiting, and during the Fall and Winter, we heard now and then from Philip, for communication was still possible between New York and the rebel army proceeding toward Canada. He wrote Margaret letters of which the rest of us never saw the contents; but he wrote to Mr. Faringfield and me also. His history during this time was that of his army, of which we got occasional news from other sources.

During part of September and all of October it was besieging St.

John's, which capitulated early in November. Schuyler's ill-health had left the supreme active command to Montgomery. The army pushed on, and occupied Montreal, though it failed to capture Governor Carleton; who escaped to Quebec in a boat, by ingeniously disguising himself as a countryman. At Montreal the jealousies and quarrels of officers, so summarily created such, gave Montgomery much trouble, and when he set forward for Quebec, there to join the force sent under Arnold through the Maine wilderness from the rebel main army at Cambridge, he could take with him but three hundred men--so had the patriot warriors of New York fallen off in zeal and numbers! But you may be sure it was not from Philip's letters that we got these items disadvantageous to his cause.

Our last word from him was when he was in quarters before Quebec: Cornelius was with him; and they were having a cold and snowy time of it, waiting for Quebec to fall before them. He mentioned casually that he had been raised to a captaincy: we afterward learned that this was for brave conduct upon the occasion of a sally of Scotch troops from one of the gates of Quebec to cut off a mortar battery and a body of riflemen; Philip had not only saved the battery and the riflemen, but had made prisoners of the sallying party.

Late in the Winter--that is to say, early in 1776--we learned of the dire failure of the night attack made by the combined forces of Montgomery and Arnold upon Quebec at the end of December, 1775; that Arnold had been wounded, his best officers taken prisoners, and Montgomery killed. The first reports said nothing of Winwood. When Margaret heard the news, she turned white as a sheet; and at this triumph of British arms my joy was far outweighed, Mr. Faringfield's grief multiplied, by fears lest Philip, who we knew would shirk no danger, had met a fate similar to his commander's. But subsequent news told us that he was a prisoner, though severely wounded. We comforted ourselves with considering that he was like to receive good nursing from the French nuns of Quebec. And eventually we found the name of Captain Winwood in a list of rebel prisoners who were to be exchanged; from which, as a long time had pa.s.sed, we inferred that he was now recovered of his injuries; whereupon Margaret, who had never spoken of him, or shown her solicitude other than by an occasional dispirited self-abstraction, regained all her gaiety and was soon her old, charming self again. In due course, we learned that the exchange of prisoners had been effected, and that a number of officers (among whom was Captain Winwood) had departed from Quebec, bound whither we were not informed; and after that we lost track of him for many and many a month.

Meanwhile, the war had made itself manifest in New York: at first distantly, as by the pa.s.sage of a few rebel companies from Pennsylvania and Virginia through the town on their way to Cambridge; by continued enlistments for the rebel cause; by the presence of a small rebel force of occupation; and by quiet enrolments of us loyalists for service when our time should come. But in the beginning of the warm weather of 1776, the war became apparent in its own shape.

The king's troops under Sir William Howe had at last evacuated Boston and sailed to Halifax, taking with them a host of loyalists, whose flight was held up to us New York Tories as prophetic of our own fate.

Washington now supposed, rightly, that General Howe intended presently to occupy New York; and so down upon our town, and the island on which it was, and upon Long Island, came the rebel main army from Cambridge; and brought some very bad manners with it, for all that there never was a finer gentleman in the world than was at its head, and that I am bound to own some of his officers and men to have been worthy of him in good breeding. Here the army was reinforced by regiments from the middle and Southern provinces; and for awhile we loyalists kept close mouths. Margaret, indeed, for the time, ceased altogether to be a loyalist, in consequence of the gallantry of certain officers in blue and buff, and several Virginia dragoons in blue and red, with whom she was brought into acquaintance through her father's attachment to the rebel interest. She expanded and grew brilliant in the sunshine of admiration (she had even a smile and compliment from Washington himself, at a ball in honour of the rebel declaration of independence) in which she lived during the time when New York abounded with rebel troops.

But that was a short time; for the British disembarked upon Long Island, met Washington's army there and defeated it, so that it had to slip back to New York in boats by night; then landed above the town, almost in time to cut it off as it fled Northward; fought part of it on the heights of Harlem; kept upon its heels in Westchester County; encountered it again near White Plains; and came back triumphant to winter in and about New York. And now we loyalists and the rebel sympathisers exchanged tunes; and Margaret was as much for the king again as ever--she never cared two pins for either cause, I fancy, save as it might, for the time being, serve her desire to shine.

She was radiant and joyous, and made no attempt to disguise her feelings, when it was a settled fact that the British army should occupy New York indefinitely.

"'Tis glorious!" said she, dancing up and down the parlour before Tom and me. "This will be some relief from dulness, some consolation! The town will be full of gallant generals and colonels, handsome majors, dashing captains; there are lords and baronets among 'em; they'll be quartered in all the good houses; there will be fine uniforms, regimental bands, and b.a.l.l.s and banquets! Why, I can quite endure this! War has its compensations. We'll have a merry winter of it, young gentlemen! Sure 'twill be like a glimpse of London."

"And there'll be much opportunity for vain ladies to have their heads turned!" quoth Tom, half in jest, half in disapproval.

"I know nothing of that," says she, "but I do know whose sister will be the toast of the British Army before a month is past!"

If the king's troops acquired a toast upon entering New York, the rebels had gained a volunteer upon leaving it. One day, just before Washington's army fled, Tom Faringfield came to me with a face all amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Who do you think is the latest patriot recruit?" cried he. It was our custom to give the rebels ironically their own denomination of patriots.

"Not you nor I, at any rate," said I.

"But one of the family, nevertheless."

"Why, surely--your father has not--"

"Oh, no; only my father's eldest."

"Ned?"

"n.o.body else. Fancy Ned taking the losing side! Oh, 'fore G.o.d, it's true! He came home in a kind of uniform to-day, and told father what he had done; the two had a long talk together in private after that; and though father never shows his thoughts, I believe he really has some hopes of Ned now. The rebels made a lieutenant of him, on father's account. I wonder what his game is."

"I make no doubt, to curry favour with his father."

"Maybe. But perhaps to get an excuse for leaving town, and a way of doing so. I've heard some talk--they say poor Sally Roberts's condition is his work."

"Very like. Your brother is a terrible Adonis--with ladies of a certain kind."

"Not such an Adonis neither--at least the Adonis that Venus courted in Shakespeare's poem. Rather a Jove, I should say."

We did not then suspect the depth of Mr. Ned's contrivance or duplicity. He left New York with the rebels, and 'twas some time ere we saw, or heard of, him again.

And now at last several loyalist brigades were formed as auxiliaries to the royal army, and Tom and I were soon happy in the consciousness of serving our king, and in the possession of the green uniforms that distinguished the local from the regular force. We were of Colonel Cruger's battalion, of General Oliver De Lancey's brigade, and both were so fortunate as to obtain commissions, Tom receiving that of lieutenant, doubtless by reason of his mother's relationship to General De Lancey, and I being made an ensign, on account of the excellent memory in which my father was held by the loyal party. Mr.

Faringfield, like many another father in similar circ.u.mstances, was outwardly pa.s.sive upon his son's taking service against his own cause: as a prudent man, he had doubtless seen from the first the advantage of having a son actually under arms for the king, for it gave him and his property such safety under the British occupation as even his lady's loyalist affiliations might not have sufficed to do. Therefore Tom, as a loyalist officer, was no less at home than formerly, in the house of his rebel father. I know not how many such family situations were brought about by this strange war.

CHAPTER VIII.

_I Meet an Old Friend in the Dark._

I shall not give an account of my military service, since it entered little into the history of Philip Winwood. 'Twas our duty to help man the outposts that guarded the island at whose Southern extremity New York lies, from rebel attack; especially from the hara.s.sments of the partisan troops, and irregular Whiggery, who would swoop down in raiding parties, cut off our foragers, drive back our wood-cutters, and annoy us in a thousand ways. We had such raiders of our own, too, notably Captain James De Lancey's Westchester Light Horse, Simcoe's Rangers, and the Hessian yagers, who repaid the visits of our enemies by swift forays across the neutral ground between the two armies.

But this warfare did not exist in its fulness till later, when the American army formed about us an immense segment of a circle, which began in New Jersey, ran across Westchester County in New York province, and pa.s.sed through a corner of Connecticut to Long Island Sound. On our side, we occupied Staten Island, part of the New Jersey sh.o.r.e, our own island, lower Westchester County, and that portion of Long Island nearest New York. But meanwhile, the rebel main army was in New Jersey in the Winter of 1776-77, surprising some of our Hessians at Trenton, overcoming a British force at Princeton, and going into quarters at Morristown. And in the next year, Sir William Howe having sailed to take Philadelphia with most of the king's regulars (leaving General Clinton to hold New York with some royal troops and us loyalists), the fighting was around the rebel capital, which the British, after two victories, held during the Winter of 1777-78, while Washington camped at Valley Forge.

In the Fall of 1777, we thought we might have news of Winwood, for in the Northern rebel army to which General Burgoyne then capitulated, there were not only many New York troops, but moreover several of the officers taken at Quebec, who had been exchanged when Philip had. But of him we heard nothing, and from him it was not likely that we should hear. Margaret never mentioned him now, and seemed to have forgotten that she possessed a husband. Her interest was mainly in the British officers still left in New York, and her impatience was for the return of the larger number that had gone to Philadelphia. To this impatience an end was put in the Summer of 1778, when the main army marched back to us across New Jersey, followed part way by the rebels, and fighting with them at Monmouth Court House. 'Twas upon this that the lines I have mentioned, of British outposts protecting New York, and rebel forces surrounding us on all sides but that of the sea, were established in their most complete shape; and that the reciprocal forays became most frequent.

And now, too, the British occupation of New York a.s.sumed its greatest proportions. The kinds of festivity in which Margaret so brilliantly shone, lent to the town the continual gaiety in which she so keenly delighted. The loyalist families exerted themselves to protect the king's officers from dulness, and the king's officers, in their own endeavours to the same end, helped perforce to banish dulness from the lives of their entertainers. 'Twas a gay town, indeed, for some folk, despite the vast ugly blotches wrought upon its surface by two great fires since the war had come, and despite the scarcity of provisions and the other inconveniences of a virtual state of siege. Tom and I saw much of that gaiety, for indeed at that time our duties were not as active as we wished they might be, and they left us leisure enough to spend in the town. But we were pale candles to the European officers--the rattling, swearing, insolent English, the tall and haughty Scots, the courtly Hessians and Brunswickers.

"What, sister, have we grown invisible, Bert and I?" said Tom to Margaret, as we met her in the hall one night, after we had returned from a ball in the a.s.sembly Rooms. "Three times we bowed to you this evening, and got never a glance in return."

"'Faith," says she, with a smile, "one can't see these green uniforms for the scarlet ones!"

"Ay," he retorted, with less good-humour than she had shown, "the scarlet coats blind some people's eyes, I think, to other things than green uniforms."