Читать книгу Rabble in Arms: A Chronicle of Arundel and the Burgoyne Invasion - Kenneth Roberts - Страница 5

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We were driven in state to our lodgings by these new acquaintances of ours; and it was settled, when they left us, that Mr. Leonard would come for us, four mornings thence, and that we would set off together on our homeward travels.

As their coach clattered away toward the dim lights of the Strand, leaving behind it the heady perfume of violets, it seemed to me that Nathaniel’s sigh was almost ecstatic. He was silent, too, climbing the stairs to our rooms; and this was unlike Nathaniel, who had something gay to say, usually, of every one we met.

At length, knowing that the sharper the break between Nathaniel and his enchantress, the sooner he would recover from his tender thoughts, I spoke my mind about her. “At Drury Lane the other night,” I reminded him, “you had no patience with the actresses who played the parts of Goneril and Regan. They were unreal, you said. No woman of position, you maintained, could be so hard.”

“Did I?” Nathaniel said indifferently.

I strove to speak mildly. “Nathaniel, you know I have your own good at heart, always; and this that I say is said for your own good. There was something about the lady we met to-night——”

The glance he shot at me was scornful. I hesitated, fumbling for words.

“So she put you in mind of Goneril and Regan?” he asked, with exaggerated politeness.

“If I’m not mistaken,” I said, “she has much in common with them.”

Nathaniel studied a picture on the wall, and laughed; and I thought best to ignore his manner of doing it.

“There’s something behind that girl’s face,” I persisted. “For all her softness and sweetness, I’ll warrant she’s hard and bitter underneath.”

Nathaniel softly whistled The World Turned Upside Down to show his lack of interest in my opinion. When I would have said more, he stopped me with an airy wave of his hand. “Never mind, Peter,” he said. “Never mind. I liked her.”

I saw, then, that he believed me to be jealous of him, and that whatever I might say would only nourish that belief. I felt myself burdened by a singular discomfort; for I longed to express myself more forcefully about Marie de Sabrevois; yet was unwilling to do so for fear the very expressing might cause a breach between Nathaniel and me.

My discomfort became even greater on the following evening. During the afternoon Nathaniel had left me at my father’s agents and strolled off on private business of his own. I returned to our lodgings, expecting to find him there; but our rooms were empty. He might, I thought, have met a friend and dined with him. Later I told myself, though with some misgivings, that he must have gone on, after dinner, to a play. But as midnight passed, and then one o’clock, my misgivings became almost a panic. I visualised him beaten by footpads; run through by one of the young English bucks who were as free with their swords and their tempers as they were with their morals and other people’s money. I saw him, in my mind’s eye, trampled into the mud of the turbulent, roaring Strand, or floating in the filthy waters of the Thames.

I must have fallen asleep around two. An hour later I wakened to see Nathaniel undoing his stock before the mirror, as unconcerned as though just back from an afternoon stroll in Hyde Park.

I lay for a while and watched him. I seemed to see, about his face, a little heaviness that was new to me. From time to time, as he laid off his garments in the candlelight, he smiled the fixed and foolish smile with which one contemplates, when alone, a pleasure more agreeable than amusing. Even before I caught from him a faint, elusive perfume of violets, I knew he had been with Marie de Sabrevois.

I coughed and moved a little beneath the bed-clothes, to let him know I was awake; but the only sign he gave of hearing me was to compose his face at once, as though the pleasant scene he contemplated was too sacred to be enjoyed before another. Seeing that he had no intention of saying anything, I coughed again and asked him mildly enough whether he had enjoyed his evening. Nathaniel, rapt, at that moment, in examining in the mirror an imaginary something on his cheek, nodded and mumbled, and I took his mumble for assent.

“I suppose,” I said, still good-naturedly, “I suppose you wouldn’t want to tell me about it.”

Nathaniel looked at me briefly over his shoulder, at that, and as briefly answered “No.”

The next night I took him to a play; but two nights later, the night before we were to depart, Nathaniel again escaped me while I superintended the packing of our specie, and again he disappeared. This time I knew with whom he was engaged; and I was in a ferment, but not at all surprised, when he was absent on this private business until four in the morning. He was flushed when he came back: a little excited; but beyond what showed in his face, he kept his feelings to himself. Not a word would he say to me.

As I lay and raged at him silently in the dark, I thanked God we were leaving; for if ever I had seen a woman who seemed to me as dangerous as she was beautiful, it was Marie de Sabrevois.

... I was glad indeed when, a few hours later, our breakfast eaten and our belongings packed, there was a noisy whipcracking and clattering outside our lodgings. Here at last, I said to myself, was Mr. Leonard, bringing the means of escape from the blue-eyed girl who, in four short days, had come to loom so ominously in our lives.

When I threw up the sash to look down into the street, my gladness was abruptly tempered; for two conveyances stood before our door. One was a dark green post-chaise which must, of course, be Mr. Leonard’s; but behind it stood an empty sedan chair that had a fluffy and feminine look about it.

It was no surprise, therefore, when Nathaniel, uttering a muffled exclamation, turned from the window and ran from the room, and when I saw, close beside the placid, olive-tinted visage of Mr. Leonard at the window of the chaise, the pretty face of Marie de Sabrevois.

When the hustle and bustle of our departure was mostly over, and the driver and postilion had lashed our heavy boxes to the rack, she emerged from the chaise, a dainty perfumed figure in blue velvet and brown fur, and bade us farewell then and there, kissing her uncle affectionately and looking up at us pathetically from under the fringe of fur around the edge of her blue velvet bonnet. Her good-byes to me were cordial enough; but there was more than cordiality in the way her little hand lingered in Nathaniel’s, and the manner in which her eyes clung to his.

“I wish you all good fortune,” she said, including both of us in her glance, though I knew she spoke for Nathaniel’s ears alone. “We shall meet again. I feel it. No doubt you’ll go bravely off to Canada to struggle against Burgoyne’s army, and it might be we’ll encounter each other on the road. My little friend—my little ward—I must make sure that she is taken to friends in Albany or New York if there should be need, and there are not many roads from Canada to Albany.” She smiled at both of us, as innocent and trustful as a kitten.

“But won’t your uncle see to that?” I asked her.

She shrugged her shoulders. “I hope so,” she said, “but Ellen is an innocent! You cannot imagine what an innocent she is! She was taken by the Indians when she was little, and so she is learning to live all over again. She is like a wild creature, and I fear she will not make the journey unless I’m there to make it with her. Her teachers, too, will be reluctant to let her go without me, for fear she might come to some harm.”

“You’re as kind as you are beautiful!” Nathaniel said huskily.

She touched his sleeve lightly. “No, no! There’s nothing kind about picking up a waif in the street and seeing she’s properly clothed and educated.”

The glances that passed between them seemed to me sickening. “We must be going,” I told Nathaniel.

“See,” she said, ignoring me and drawing an envelope from her velvet muff, “I’ve written a letter that perhaps you’ll carry with you, in case you go to Canada.” She handed it to Nathaniel, who took it fumblingly and stared at her like a fool. Then she added: “It’s a small world, and it might readily happen you could do a kindness for my little ward, somehow or somewhere. Some day I might even be in St. John’s myself—or across the river from it. I have—I have property there. And you must pass through St. John’s to reach Albany.”

“You’ll be in St. John’s!” Nathaniel whispered.

Her eyes caressed him. “I’m delaying your departure,” she said softly, “so you must see me to my chair.” Her blue eyes slid towards me, almost maliciously.

On that I clambered, growling, into the chaise and settled myself beside Mr. Leonard, expecting to find him annoyed at the delay. Yet he was not. “A fine young man, your brother,” he whispered faintly, as if half asleep.

“Yes,” I said; but what I thought was that Nathaniel would be better off for a good rope-ending to rid his mind of foolish matters, like this admiration for the English and this parting softness of his for a Frenchified lady like Marie de Sabrevois.

The sedan chair swayed past, a white handkerchief fluttering at the window. A moment later Nathaniel climbed in with us, somewhat too unconcerned and matter-of-fact; and with him came the heavy odour of violets. Mr. Leonard tapped his stick against the front of the chaise, the driver cracked his whip smartly, and we lurched towards Westminster Bridge and the Dover road.

... Three days later, in the harbour of Boulogne, we boarded the privately-owned ship-rigged sloop-of-war Beau Soleil—a fast vessel with a great cabin equipped to house six passengers in separate berths—though the word “great” could be applied to it only as a sort of French politeness.

Already there were two Frenchmen aboard, Captain Gallette and Captain La Flamme, bound for America to obtain the highest possible rank under the gentleman they called Vasington. They had taken the best berths for themselves, so that we tucked ourselves in where we could.

That evening a third Frenchman unexpectedly arrived—a colonel, a most courteous and highly-bred gentleman. Distinction and affability seemed clearly stamped all over him; and we were nearly a week, such was his surface polish, in seeing the meanness and arrogance and selfishness that lay beneath that cultured exterior. He had enough names and titles to equip the officers of an entire regiment, some of them being Chevalier Mathieu Alexis Roche-Fermoy. He had three swords and a whole trunkful of uniforms; and the best berth, of course, was conceded to be his, as by an act of God. Consequently there was no berth for M. La Flamme save the poorest of all, which, we were at once made aware, was galling to the pride of a French gentleman. In fact, Captain La Flamme said openly that Nathaniel and I, being Americans, were without birth or breeding or military ability, and so entitled to no precedence whatever. He wished, in short, to have one of our cabins.

When we did not see fit to accede to his demands, he took it for granted that we could not be so ill-bred as to take offence at the remarks he had made about us. He turned polite and amiable again, so that we found it impossible not to be friendly with him; and in no time at all we were joining him in a glass of wine and helping him to write a letter to Congress—a letter in which he spoke highly of himself and asked for the rank of brigadier general in the American army.

We found all of these Frenchmen pleasant to be with, though it seemed to me they spent a large part of their time in speaking of their honour and breeding, and at the same time boasting of their amours and planning how to take advantage of somebody—preferably of an American.

Yet we became even intimate during our long voyage, nor could it have well been otherwise, considering the smallness of the great cabin, in which we ate our meals and played piquet, and tried to be deaf to the petulant outbursts of the Frenchmen when we caught them pressing their advantages too closely, which they were prone to do.

There was a dreadful sameness to our food, and to our games as well; for though we played to help the Frenchmen pass the time, their object seemed to be to inconvenience us to the utmost, and to ruin us if possible, whether by fair means or foul. Thus there was a deal of talk in the cabin; more than a little bickering, and a vast amount of bragging from our companions, who were scornful of bragging not done by themselves. Indeed, they were scornful of all the faults of others, even when these same faults were also their own, and usually in a higher degree.

But I should not imply that the entire ship’s company of passengers thus became intimate, bickered, bragged and played cards: Mr. Leonard seemed to stand outside, like a spectator at a play, looking on sleepily and with interest, but never taking the stage himself.

A more reticent man I never met than Mr. Leonard appeared to be at this stage of my acquaintance with him. He was polite, monosyllabic, benevolent-looking and miraculously self-effacing—so much in the background that one actually forgot his presence.

There are silent people about whom one puzzles and speculates, but the silent Mr. Leonard was not of that sort. He made his shadowiness so inconsequential that he was disregarded: when he did speak, we were mildly surprised to be reminded that he indeed possessed a voice; and as his infrequent use of it was always upon the most insignificant of occasions, nobody took the bother, so far as I recall, to make the slightest response.

In a word, we forgot him, even while he was in our company; he seemed to be a piece of luggage that one had somewhere about, through habit, and not because one had any use for it.

I cannot say as much for the Frenchmen, for all their acts seemed designed to prevent us from forgetting them, and at last this even became the case with the captain of the vessel, who had set his course for Newport, but was more in danger, according to my reckoning, of running us into the Bay of Fundy. Like the other Frenchmen, he was polite when we protested mildly; but he believed nothing we said until at length, on our twenty-ninth day at sea, we sighted land—a lone rock about the size of a whale’s back, and far, far beyond it the loom of the main.

The captain hunted on his chart for a similar rock near Newport; but he could not find one, and for a good reason. The rock was Boon Island, which lies north-north-east of the Isle of Shoals and not far from Arundel. Since this showed the captain to be a hundred and thirty-six miles off his course, he was not only willing but eager to have me take the wheel and run the Beau Soleil for a port I knew well—that of Old York in Maine: a snug harbour with a narrow curving entrance, as if specially created for pirates and smugglers.

It was off York that the war, which, for all we had seen of it, might have been on another planet, suddenly came close.

We were running in fast on a brisk south-west breeze when we sighted a heavy-laden row-boat wallowing towards shore. An oar was upended in it for a mast; and on the mast was a sail made from two jackets, the oar being pushed through the sleeves. We ran past her, and saw she held nine men, five of them flat on the bottom and in no condition to take an interest in us. Of the other four, three were bailing weakly, using their shirts as sponges.

The helmsman was a man with arms so long that they were all over the boat, like the feelers of an octopus—clutching a steering-oar, trimming his makeshift sail, and pulling the faces of his unconscious crew out of the bilge-water. He seemed hardly to notice us as I brought the Beau Soleil into the wind to leeward of him, and backed her fore-topsail, though I found this to be his habit—to pay small attention, seemingly, to his immediate surroundings because of his interest in the sky, which he turned his head to watch, unceasingly.

When the boat was safe under our counter, her crew sat there, looking up at us, and we saw that the five men in the bottom were badly off from thirst, their lips being black, and the tongues of two so swollen that they protruded.

Seeing them unable to move, Nathaniel went down into the boat, and made fast a rope to the men, one by one, and we took them aboard.

Their cheeks were cracked from exposure to the sun and the salt water, and their thirst such that the croak of a crow was musical by comparison with their voices.

We greased their faces and gave them wet cloths to suck. The helmsman was David Hawley, a Connecticut privateer captain from Bridgeport, who had been captured in March by the British frigate Bellona and carried to Halifax and imprisoned. He had escaped with eight members of his crew and had been a week at sea, in which time he estimated they had rowed and sailed five hundred miles.

When we asked him whether he would go privateering again, he scanned the sky carefully and felt tenderly of the back of his neck—not because it pained him, but because this, too, was one of his habits. “No,” he said. “No. I’m done with privateering. I’m cured. ’Tisn’t enough to destroy their property. It’s them that matters.” He sucked at his wet cloth and smiled at us grimly. “It’ll take some little time,” he added, “to pay ’em back for the way they treated us at Halifax.”

We arranged with the captain of the Beau Soleil to carry all nine of them to Newport in return for Hawley’s pilotage, and knew, somehow, that in one short hour we had made a better friend in Hawley than we had made among all our French companions in a month.

Our one regret, as we prepared to go ashore in York, was that we had not become better acquainted with our silent companion, Mr. Leonard; but when we began to speak of this to him, he surprised us by saying in his unnoticeable way that he would like to accompany Nathaniel and me as far as Arundel. When he made sounds of acquiescence, he at once resumed his silent blandness—became again almost the shadow of a man.

We, thinking ourselves happy to have him with us, promptly forgot him in the bustle of departure, and were almost perplexed to find him beside us in the coach. In this forgetfulness he seemed to encourage us, so that we came to treat him as an inconsidered trifle—one which the winds of chance had blown across our paths.