Читать книгу Rabble in Arms: A Chronicle of Arundel and the Burgoyne Invasion - Kenneth Roberts - Страница 3

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It was Cap Huff who said that no business or profession, not even the managing of a distillery, can provide the profusion of delights to be encountered in a good war. I have not found it so; and for my part I want no more of such delights as the powder-blackened faces of the men who died beside us aboard the row-galleys on Lake Champlain, the painted masks of the greasy Indians that laid us by the heels, and the dreadful labours we endured before we stopped the British. Unfortunately I have others to consider; and it is for their sakes that I recall the burdens of those nightmare days.

In the beginning I must say that this is no book for those who swear by old wives’ fables, holding all Americans brave, all Englishmen honourable and all Frenchmen gallant. It cannot please such innocents as are convinced that men in public office always set the nation’s welfare above their own, nor those that think all soldiers patriots. It will disappoint the credulous who cherish the delusion that patriotism burns high in every breast in the hour of a country’s peril. In it there is small nourishment for romantics possessed to hear how courage and ability bring greater recognition than mediocrity and bluster, how virtue always triumphs, and how cowards meet a fitting retribution. Those who crave such poppycock must turn to fairy tales for undeveloped minds; for I am obliged to deal with facts and write what I conceive to be the truth.

... My father’s letter was delivered to me in our London lodgings, early on a March evening in 1776. When the letter arrived, my brother Nathaniel and I were on the point of setting out for Ranelagh, the occasion being a special entertainment at that resort of fashion because of somebody’s birthday: the Queen’s, it may have been, or that of one of the King’s innumerable royal relatives in Germany.

We had learned that upon such anniversaries it was usual for the King himself to visit Ranelagh, and that on this account dukes and generals and statesmen who wished to be seen in the train of royalty would be there, making a show that brought women off the street, shopkeepers hunting for new mistresses, shopkeepers’ wives looking for adventure, and young bucks out to make themselves disagreeable to as many people as possible.

We had never been to Ranelagh, Nathaniel and I; and Nathaniel was eager to go, not only because he might see famous folk, but because he could write familiarly about the place to his college classmates in Boston.

When, therefore, Nathaniel caught sight of the name “Capt. Asa Merrill” written above the red seal on the letter’s back, he said, “Put it by, Peter, until we get to Ranelagh. We’ll never be there if you wait to translate it now!”

He was impetuous, my brother was: airy and a little English in his speech from having attended Harvard College, where he had associated with the Boylstons and the Doanes and the sons of other codfish aristocrats. It was like him to speak of translating my father’s letter: a little disrespectful, certainly; yet not far from the truth; for my father was a bad speller, able to spell almost any word in several different fashions, all of them wrong.

I thrust the letter into my pocket, letting Nathaniel have his way, which I may have done too often for his own good.

The truth was that a large part of my thoughts revolved around Nathaniel—not only because he was my mother’s favourite and because he had always looked to me for help and guidance during his younger days, but because I saw in him the instrument by means of which our family might, through its shipping interests, become a power in our Province of Maine, just as had the Hancocks and the Derbys and the Bowditches in Massachusetts, and the Palmers in Connecticut.

He was not cut out for a mariner, to my way of thinking, having an aversion to loneliness and a leaning towards the society of his equals. There is as much of one, on a long cruise, as there is little of the other; and I knew from observation that if he were forced to be a seaman against his will, he would not be the first in that situation to take to the bottle.

This very sociability of his, however, fitted in with my purpose; for men as well as women took to him immediately on meeting him; and what was more important, he wore well, which is not often the case with those who seem companionable at first sight. Consequently I could ask no better agent for the handling of our freights in some likely port—Canton, say, or Malaga, where fortunes may be made quickly by a shipowner working in conjunction with an agent who has no other interests to serve. It was for this reason that I had interceded with my father to send Nathaniel to Harvard; and now that he had received a proper education, topping it off with a course under me in carrying and disposing of cargoes, I had high hopes for him and the future. My father had a knack of getting stout brigs built, and I knew how to sail them: we had our own shipyard in Arundel—and so, if Nathaniel expressed a wish to do a thing, I humoured him, after the fashion of an older brother who has built fond dreams around a younger.

We walked over to the muddy Strand; then off up the river to the gardens and rotunda of Ranelagh.

It was well we walked; for by the time we had covered two-thirds of the mile that separated these winter pleasure-grounds from the central portion of London, the coaches of the pleasure-seekers were so wedged together in the roadway that their occupants, we thought, would be hours in reaching their destination.

... I might say here that people have spoken to me, often, as though it were something astonishing for two Americans to be in London at a time when we were at war with England; but their wonderment is due only to their lack of understanding.

England considered herself not at war, but almost at peace with her American colonies, and merely annoyed and disgusted by the rebellious hypocrites with which New England, according to the belief of most Englishmen, was entirely populated.

Why it was that the English regarded us as hypocrites for refusing to submit to their tyranny, I have never exactly understood; but that was the fact of it. We were rebellious, praying hypocrites; and that belief, I fear, will never be allowed to die in stubborn Albion.

At all events, England reasoned that hypocrites would succumb more readily to force than to justice; and while she stabbed at the rebels with one hand, she held out an olive branch with the other; and on all sides there was constant expectation that the olive branch would be gratefully accepted—either through poverty or timidity.

All through London was a sprinkling of Americans—a thousand of them, maybe: wealthy and influential persons who had come to England to escape lawless English-haters in America. I had avoided them, my feelings being what they were; for I wanted no arguments with any man until I got my father’s specie safely home; but I am bound to say they were fine people except as regards their admiration for England.

There were even Englishmen who sympathised with our rebels, as I well knew from my repeated readings of Dr. Price’s book on Civil Liberty—a book that had come to seem as valuable to me as the other small volumes I carried on all my voyages: the Bible, Tristram Shandy, Don Quixote, Roderick Random and Gulliver’s Travels: books which, if read with care and fully digested, will give a man more learning than he can get from a score of colleges put together.

Dr. Price’s book had recently been published in London, and had been widely read by the English, though it maintained that England could commit no greater folly than to seek to keep our liberty from us. Consequently even a rebellious American could live peaceably in England, provided he was judicious in his speech, and kept his mouth shut when tempted to speak impulsively—which, after all, is a requisite of peace everywhere.

... The English are easily satisfied with their own belongings, I have found, and still more easily amused by matters amusing to no one else; so I was prepared to be disappointed in the Ranelagh rotunda, concerning which every Londoner is perpetually speaking, as though it were something more magnificent than anything in Egypt or Greece. But when I found myself under that great inverted bowl and looking up into it, I was amazed and full of admiration. Its airy space was so enormous that the throng of finely dressed folk who strolled slowly about its floor had the dwarfed look of ants moving aimlessly on the bottom of a vast round box. The roof was supported by a tremendous eight-sided column, hollow. Within the column a bright fire flamed and danced, so that the place had warmth.

All around the room were arcades, a table set in each one; and above the arcades were boxes, similarly equipped with tables. At one side of the main entrance was an elevated platform, and over it a sounding board; and on the platform was an orchestra of fifty pieces, all playing away for dear life. The place was filled with the gay and stirring sound, though there was nothing happening save hundreds of people walking slowly around and around, staring at each other.

It had cost us a guinea to get into this pleasure resort, which seemed to me enough to pay for a night’s entertainment; but Nathaniel, who had little regard for money, never having had to earn much of it, was of a different mind.

As we stood at the entrance, staring about us, Nathaniel plucked at my sleeve and pointed to an arcade-box done out in red brocade.

“The royal box!” he exclaimed.

He dragged me across the circular floor; and after a moment’s hesitation he walked boldly to the box beside the royal enclosure and made as though to enter. A lackey jumped up in it, his nose in the air, and said, “Resarved for Lard Germain.”

Nathaniel popped into the adjoining box, and almost before I knew what had happened he had dropped into a seat at its table and pushed me into a chair across from him.

A waiter came in and stared at us angrily. But Nathaniel, who was skilled at aping the English, turned to him haughtily and said, “What is it you want, fellow?”

On this the waiter became ill at ease, and mumbled that the box was reserved.

Nathaniel seemed pained. “I won’t be spoken to in such a way!” He looked at me with haughty astonishment. “Do you suppose the clown doesn’t know who I am! Throw five shillings on the floor for him, Sir Peter! Not another farthing, mind! And have him bring us a bit of ham, eh, Sir Peter? And a quart of rack punch, by Ged!”

The waiter, at once obsequious, took the five shillings I tossed him and darted from the box with such alacrity that he tripped over the curtains.

“Look here!” I said to Nathaniel. “You’ll get us into trouble if you call me Sir Peter; and we can’t be spending like a couple of dukes.”

Nathaniel smiled at me affectionately. When he smiled, he was difficult to resist; for his brown eyes twinkled, and his curly, close-cropped hair seemed to curl more tightly. “The ham’s a shilling a plate,” he said, “and the punch seven shillings a quart. Only two dollars, Peter, for sitting in a box beside the box that’s next to the box where sat the King of England, and having an experience your grandchildren will be bragging about a hundred years from now!”

What he said was probably true; for a king is a king, even though weak in the head. Therefore I made no further protest and we listened to the orchestra and watched the throngs parading slowly around and around, like a school of pollock following one another’s tails in and out of a cove in the Arundel River, each one goggle-eyed with brainlessness.

How the paraders could imagine they were taking pleasure was beyond me; for the entire gathering had the air of despising everything and every one. Yet for Nathaniel and myself it was as exciting as a play at Drury Lane; and as the evening went on it became more so.

Our platter of ham had arrived, and the bowl of rack punch; and the thinness of the slices of ham was something remarkable—something that proved the carver a master craftsman, both with knife and niggardliness. As soon as Nathaniel saw the ham before him, he examined it with an air of incredulity; then said, “Peter, where’s Father’s letter?”

As I fumbled in my pocket for it, I was conscious of a perfume so sweet and so arresting that I looked up suddenly, as if the scent of violets that filled the air had been a hand laid upon me to gain my attention. My eyes went beyond Nathaniel, and encountered, standing before the adjoining box, which we had been told was Lord Germain’s, a lady in a dress of pink brocade, and a tall, languid gentleman in black.

The lady was beautifully slender and rounded. A small pink turban bound her head, and from under it two half moons of golden hair curved down, lying tight upon her cheeks and concealing her ears. Her eyes were blue, the blue of a summer sea in the morning; and beneath her eyes was a faint dust of freckles that gave her the look of being too young and innocent to be in such a place as this.

Beautiful as she was, it was her companion that caught and held my eye. He was all in black satin: black coat, black knee breeches, black vest and stockings and shoes; but he wore a white wig; and at his throat was a cascade of white lace. In this white frame was set a placid, olive-tinted face: a face that seemed to slumber, because of the way in which its eyelids drooped. There was no look of weariness to him, despite these drooping lids: merely a sort of quiet relaxation: a kind of suspended animation.

Even as Nathaniel took the letter from me, I heard the girl in pink speaking to the lackey in the next box. I could not hear the words; but her voice was soft and sweet; and when the answer came, she turned a little doubtfully in our direction.

It was then that Nathaniel, having opened the letter, picked up a paper-thin slice of ham and held it before his face, so that he appeared to be reading the letter through it. Since the orchestra ceased playing at that moment, his words must have been clearly heard by the lady and her escort.

“Dated from Arundel in the Province of Maine,” Nathaniel announced. “My dear sons:—I hope while you are in England you will go to Ranelagh and learn how to cut one ham into slices so thin there’ll be a slice for every man in the army.”

I reached over and took the letter from him none too gently. He winked at me and whisked the slice of ham into his mouth. The lady’s escort raised a sleepy eyelid at my sudden movement; but the lady herself stared frankly, as if fascinated by what Nathaniel had said.

I looked at the letter, and saw Nathaniel had been joking. The words that met my eyes were not about ham, but were ominous, and so not difficult to read, despite my father’s dreadful spelling:

“The winter finds us well, and still something to eat and it is the hoap of your mother and me that these Fue lines find you the saim. I have a change of hart about your staing in England until the rebellion should be over, as it now appeers God knows when that will be. Thare is talk on all sides that America must be a sepperate country by itself. Those who are suspecktit of wishing to come to a peaceabil arraingment with England are in danger of losing thare property, thare hoams and thare verry lives. Thare are some who suspect us because you still remane in England. Tharefour if you can come saif home with the speshie, I would say come. I will leave it to Peter’s judgment. God knows we need the speshie. Thare is no money to be had anywhere, only paper money not worth mutch. Everyboddy is pore except those who become ritch out of our distress, and thare is no money to provide our army with powder or unaforms or pay. The British burnt Falmouth, leaving near 2000 women and children without rooves, cloathes or food for the winter whitch was a hard one. Steven Nason is hoam from Quebeck, where Nathianel Lord was killt, and 18 men from Arundel captivatit by the British, among them Noah Cluff, who workt in our shipyard. Steven says the men not killt or captivatit will go on fiting, even if they fite with nothing but axes....”