Читать книгу Rabble in Arms: A Chronicle of Arundel and the Burgoyne Invasion - Kenneth Roberts - Страница 7

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My mother sat on the sofa, with Nathaniel’s hand in hers; and my father made a little small talk with Mr. Leonard, while my sisters mixed flip after their usual custom: Judith holding the pitcher of beer and stirring, Susanah adding the rum and the sugar, and Jane holding above it the red-hot poker from the kitchen stove, so to plunge it, hissing and rumbling, into the mixture.

“Look here,” I said to my father, when I had a tumbler of the flip in my hand and half of it into me, “we saw Steven Nason in Wells. He said he’d be over later. In case there’s anything we ought to know before he comes, you’d better let us hear it.”

My father nodded slowly, his eyes straying from me to Mr. Leonard, who rose to his feet at once. “Perhaps I may go to my room,” he said. “I am not as young as I once was; and this journey——”

We protested; but he was firm, in his smiling, silent way; and so my sister Jane took him to his room—the south-east room, facing down river. This was our best room, and the walls were painted with hunting scenes by a painter from the German settlement at Dresden on the Kennebec. He must have been colour-blind; for he painted a yellow sky on the hunting scenes; but we liked the yellow sky, all of us, and the room was called the yellow room, which shows that one can become accustomed to anything, no matter how strange it may be.

“It’s just as well,” my father said, when Mr. Leonard was gone. “Let him get rested up. He’s all right, of course, being such a helpful friend of yours; but we’ll all feel more comfortable with him out of sight and sound. You get in the habit of being cautious after what’s happened.”

“Happened where?” Nathaniel asked.

My father drank his flip, shivered a little, went to the window and looked both up and down the road: then resumed his seat. “I don’t know whether you heard what happened to the Bostonians that sympathised with England when the English left Boston six weeks ago.”

“We’ve heard nothing,” I said. “Nothing.”

“They had to pack themselves aboard sloops and schooners and pinks,” my father said, “men, women and children—thousands of ’em—not a stitch of extra clothes or a mite of food or furniture or anything—and put to sea in one of the worst storms of the year. Taken to Halifax, they were, and pushed ashore to live as best they could; and every last scrap of their property in Boston seized by our folks. Every last scrap!”

We stared at him.

“Over at York,” he went on, “Judge Sayward, Judge of Probate, talked too much. You ought to do things according to Constitutional forms, he said: not go against law and order the way our folks were doing. They mobbed him—manhandled him! He can’t go out of his house. He isn’t allowed to leave town. Folks won’t speak to him. Folks won’t speak to his family. He just sits and shakes for fear they’ll mob him again.”

“You mean he wasn’t allowed to say what he thought?” Nathaniel demanded.

My father smiled grimly. “Why, no! He was allowed to say what he thought, but he was encouraged not to keep on saying it.”

Nathaniel tossed his head. “Well I’ll be damned if I’d let——”

“They got close to home when they came after Adam McCulloch,” my father interrupted. All of us knew Adam McCulloch. He was another shipbuilder who lived almost within spitting distance of us. “Adam thought we could never whip such a powerful nation as England, and he said so. So the mob came down here and stood in front of his house.”

My mother held Nathaniel’s hand against her breast. “We could see them from the window,” she whispered.

“What did they do?” Nathaniel asked.

“Not much,” my father said. “They stood there and made a noise like a gale growling in the rigging of a ship. Then the leaders pounced on the front door and talked to Adam. He had to crawl. He had to crawl in writing. He had to apologise to all friends of America. He had to ask humbly for forgiveness, and promise never to do it again, and generally squirm around on his stomach.”

“But,” Nathaniel protested, “you used to think there was nothing so foolish as for us to try to fight England.”

My father ignored him and went on. “Dr. Alden over in Biddeford sent some lumber to Boston to be sold to the British troops for barracks. Cap’n John Stackpole carried it down. A mob from Biddeford and Saco and Arundel took the two of ’em before a magistrate and made ’em write out a paper saying they were sorry and wouldn’t do it again. Alden and Stackpole had to get down on their knees and ask the mob’s pardon. Down on their knees!”

“But——” Nathaniel said.

“There’s no ‘but’ about it, son! You remember Dr. Ebenezer Rice, who lived in the village? He thought the rebellion could never succeed. He thought every one who took part in it would be hung. Well, he’s gone.”

“Gone where?” I asked.

My father shook his head. “Nobody knows. Some say he went to live in the woods, where he can’t hear about the war. Some say he was——” My father stopped; then cleared his throat and repeated, “Nobody knows. It’s considered dangerous to talk about it, even.”

Nathaniel raised his eyebrows. “You said somebody opened one of my letters. Who did it? How could any one open a letter?”

“You’ve been away a long time,” my father said. “Too long. When you’re away too long, you’re apt to lose the feel of your own people, just as you lose the feel of a ship when you’re too long ashore.

“Same with us that live in big houses and have servants. We only talk with others like ourselves, who have comfortable homes and plenty to eat. We forget what poorer people think, and it’s next to impossible to make ourselves think the way they do. You’ve been away so long you’ve forgot how some people feel about England. There never was anything like it! They’re all a-boil inside. They won’t have the English back! They just won’t have ’em back! They say England wants to run this country the way a man runs a mill: wants to use it for nothing but making money for the owner: regards the people in it as no better than mill-stones, to be worn smooth for England and then thrown into the creek.”

“It’s the truth,” I said. “The English think we’re just rabble! They call us that—rabble! I’ve heard ’em!”

“What’s that got to do with my letter?” Nathaniel persisted.

“Why,” my father explained patiently, “those that hate England feel every one’s got to think the way they do. Every one’s got to. They’re watching all the time to make sure nobody thinks different. Knowing I had two sons in England, they watched me. They watched your mother and your sisters, too. When they couldn’t find out what they wanted to know, they opened letters.”

He took his spectacles from his pocket and perched them on his nose: reached into a compartment of his desk to draw out a soiled square of paper.

“Here,” he said. “They opened this one, and right away they read this that Nathaniel wrote:

“ ‘There’s no place like London, with its fine theatres and palaces, and soldiers parading in the park. It’s a city that makes you feel at home. Peter and I went down to Salisbury and saw where great-great-grandfather Merrill lived before he went to Ipswich a hundred and fifty years ago. We found Merrills living there still—relatives. Long ago their name was DeMerle. They were Huguenots who came from Auvergne—Place de Dembis—at the time of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. One of them, Sir Peter, was a captain in the English army, and was knighted in 1634.’ ”

My father folded the letter and looked at Nathaniel over his spectacles.

“What’s wrong with that!” Nathaniel demanded indignantly, “Damn ’em! Who gave ’em the right to open my letters!”

“Right or no right, they opened this one,” my father said. “Then they called me before the Committee of Safety and questioned me.”

“About what?” Nathaniel asked.

“About you and Peter.”

“What did they want to know?”

“Whether you were well disposed to the cause of Liberty, after being in England and finding there was no place like London.”

“Liberty!” Nathaniel exclaimed. He laughed. “Where’s the liberty in having your letters opened! It’s almost enough, I should think, to make you want never to see this place again!”

My mother cried “Oh, Nathaniel!”

My father shook his head. “No,” he said, “no! I’ve lived here all my life. It’s part of me. It’s in my blood. This land we’re on was granted to your great-grandfather Peter Merrill by the town of Arundel for killing an Indian. My roots are in it. I can’t leave it. The smell of the sea and marshes and meadows is sweeter here than anywhere else in the world.”

My sister Susanah put her handkerchief to her lips and went suddenly from the room.

“What did you tell the Committee?” I asked, feeling somewhat choked myself.

“I told ’em,” my father said slowly, “that you were well disposed. They didn’t believe me. They—well—the men on these committees aren’t the sort of people you’d expect to find running things. So we’ve been watched—all of us. We’ve had some trouble buying necessities. Shopkeepers don’t like to sell to folks under suspicion: they might be suspected themselves. Some of ’em will, but they expect us to accept Congress money at par, when they make change for us, even though it’s worth less than the paper it’s printed on. We can’t complain, because if we did, it would mean we were spreading reports about the currency; and instead of being ruined gradually, we’d be ruined quick. Talking against the currency’s worse than having sons in England.”

The room was silent except for the soft sound my mother’s hand made against Nathaniel’s.

My father hesitated: his next words seemed irrelevant. “There’s been a drought. The crops last year were terrible, on account of so many men being away in the army. Theodore Lyman speculated in corn last fall, and now he’s selling it at two dollars a bushel to those in the village.”

Theodore had been clerk in the store of Waldo Emerson, a rich man and a kind one, but dead almost three years.

“Two dollars a bushel!” I cried. “Why, the damned robber!”

“Yes,” my father said, “but he charges us three dollars specie, and won’t sell to us except secretly. Theodore’s smart.”

“We’ll see about that!” I said. “We’ll see about that! I’ll step over to call on Lyman after supper.”

My father shook his head. “Don’t do it! Lyman’s a rich man. In a few months he’ll be richer, because he’s marrying Waldo Emerson’s daughter.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Waldo Emerson only had one daughter. She’s a baby.”

“Not quite,” my mother said. “She’ll be fourteen years old some time this year.”

“Keep away from Lyman,” my father said. “He does favours for the Sons of Liberty. We’re under suspicion, and we haven’t got any rights. Folks can assault us or blackmail us or slander us, and we haven’t any standing in the law courts. We can’t buy land or sell it, or make a deed of gift, or make a will, even, while we’re under suspicion.”

I looked at Nathaniel, feeling as though the veins in my neck would burst the fastenings of my muslin neckcloth. Nathaniel stared moodily at his knuckles. I knew the best way to handle him was to let him alone, so I waited for him to speak first; but I told myself that if he said the wrong thing, I’d wait no longer.

Twilight was on us, and from the meadows came the sweet piping of baby frogs—a plaintive chorus that seemed to hold us, speechless, in a spell. The spell was broken by a violent thumping on the front door.

“That must be Nason,” I told Nathaniel. “If you can’t make up your mind, get upstairs. I’ll talk to him. I’ll—I’ll tell him you’re sick.”

“What do you think I am!” Nathaniel exclaimed. “My mind’s made up.”