Читать книгу Joscelyn Cheshire - Sara Beaumont Kennedy - Страница 11

“Heaven first taught letters for some wretch’s aid,

Some banished lover or some captive maid.”

—Pope.

For several weeks after the departure of the soldiers an expectant hush settled over Hillsboro’-town—the reaction of the mustering and drilling that had gone before. So few men were left in the town that Janet Cameron one day dressed herself in the garb of a nun, and, with the feigned humility of folded hands and downcast eyes, went calling upon her companions “of the convent town.” A ripple of merriment followed in her wake, for she made a most quaint figure. But the Reverend Hugh McAden, meeting her upon the corner, so reprimanded her for her levity that she ran home in tears and hid her gray frock and hood in the garret. Joscelyn sobered her own face and made the girl’s peace with the reverend gentleman with such explanations as at last seemed to him reasonable. But Janet went on no more masquerading tours.

With both the work and the gayety of the town interrupted, there was nothing of moment to engage attention but the news that came once in a while from the camps and battle-fields. The interest in this was shared by every one, so that all the tidings, whether by message or letter, were looked upon as public property. News that came by word of mouth was cried out from the church steps or the court-house door, for no good citizen wished to keep his knowledge to himself. Thus it fell out when it became known that a missive had come from Richard to Joscelyn, that a score or more of women gathered about her door to learn the contents. She came out to them upon the veranda, her saucy beauty enhanced by the scarlet bodice, her eyes full of laughter.

“Read you Master Clevering’s letter?—As you will, Mistress Strudwick; you may perchance find more of interest in it than I,” she answered with that sweet courtesy she showed ever to her elders. And so having enthroned Mistress Strudwick upon the wicker bench of the porch, while the others disposed themselves upon the steps and the grass of the terrace which sloped directly to the street, she unfolded her letter and cleared her throat pompously as is the manner of public speakers.

“I pray you have patience with me, good ladies,” she said, “if so I read but slowly. Master Clevering ever had trouble with his spelling; and as for the writing, ’tis as though a fly had half drowned itself in the inkhorn and then crawled upon the page.”

Then did she proceed to read them the letter from its greeting to its close, pausing now and then to laboriously spell out a word. There were accounts of the life at Valley Forge, of the drilling and the picket duty and the ceaseless watching of the enemy. Then there was an exultant description of the victory at far-off Stillwater, as it was given to him by a fellow-soldier who had been a participant.

“Said I not the Continentals would win? Would I had been there to see! Five times was one cannon captured and recaptured. How glorious the fighting was; and think of the surrender! Well, well, it consoles me somewhat to think of that coming last surrender of that archest of all the Royalists. I shall bear a part in that, for it is to me the capitulation will be made—”

“Why, dear me, is Master Clevering to be made commander-in-chief of the American forces, that his Majesty’s troops should yield arms to him?” Joscelyn broke off to ask with assumed innocence. “I heard naught of his rapid promotion.”

“Come, come, Joscelyn, leave off sneering at Richard and read us the rest.”

She laughed as she turned the page.

“Say to Mistress Strudwick that the fame of her gallant brother, Major William Shepperd, hath reached even this remote quarter, and his old friends glory in his prowess. Little Jimmy Nash has lost his wits and wants another pair—

(“A pair of wits! What can that mean? Oh, I ask your pardon, Mistress Nash; it is ‘mits,’ not ‘wits.’ Master Clevering hath so queer a handwriting.)

“—and wants another pair; let his mother know, that she may knit them and send them by the first chance.”

There were other messages and news items which the girl read, and then came the signature.

“There follows here a postscript which perchance some of you may help me to unravel,” she added; and then, with the air of a town-crier announcing his errand, she proceeded:—

“To the girl of my heart say this, that I forget not I am fighting for her, and that I look upon every Redcoat my gun can bring down as one more obstacle removed from betwixt us. I think of her always.”

She paused and puckered her brow in a perplexed frown. “Now who, I pray you, is the girl of his heart? Cannot some of you help me to guess?”

“Methinks ’twould be an easy task for you,” laughed Mistress Strudwick.

“Me?” repeated Joscelyn, still with that air of perplexed innocence. “Nay, he was ever so full of jokes and quarrels that it never came to me he had a heart.”

“Mayhap it is Dorothy Graham he means,” said a voice in the crowd.

“More like ’tis Patience Ruffin.”

“Or little Janet Cameron—he set much store by her.”

“Nay,” said a teasing voice, “Janet is going to be a nun; such messages to her would not be proper.” Whereat there was a general laugh.

“Whoever she is, ’tis a pity she should miss her love message through her lover’s obscurity and our ignorance,” said Joscelyn. “What think you, Mistress Strudwick, were it not a good plan to post this page upon the banister here that all who pass may read? In this wise we may find the maid.”

With a pin from her bodice, and using her high-heeled slipper—which she drew off for the purpose—as a hammer, she tacked the paper to the banister. But it had not fluttered twice in the wind ere Betty had snatched it down.

“Shame on you, Joscelyn, for so exposing my brother’s letter!”

“Oh, I meant not to anger you, Betty,” returned the girl, sweetly, as she took the letter again and thrust it into her bodice. “Since you like not this plan, we will have the town-crier search out the mysterious damsel and bring her here to read for herself. Let us see how the cry would run: ‘Wanted, wanted, the girl of Richard Clevering’s heart to read his greeting on Mistress Cheshire’s porch!’”

She stooped to buckle her shoe, her foot on the round of Mistress Strudwick’s chair, and so they saw not the laughter in her eyes. She knew well that Betty would not fail to write Richard of the scene, and she already fancied his anger; she could have laughed aloud. “Methinks I have paid you back a score, Master Impertinence,” she said to herself, and then fell to talking to Dorothy Graham until the company dispersed. That night Betty, running in on a message from her mother, found Joscelyn using the fragments of the ill-fated letter to curl the long hair of Gyp, the house-dog, and she went home to add an indignant postscript to the missive to her brother, over which she had spent the afternoon. But even as she wrote she knew he would not heed her advice; and sure enough, in course of time another letter came to the house on the terrace:—

“The girl of my heart is that teasing Tory, Joscelyn Cheshire, who conceals her tender nature under such show of scorning. One day her love shall strike its scarlet colours to the blue and buff of mine; and her lips, instead of mocking, will be given over to smiles and kisses, for which purpose nature made them so beautiful.

“Post this on your veranda for the town to read, an you will, sweetheart. For my part, I care not if the whole world knows that I love you.”

But Joscelyn did no such thing. Instead, she thrust the letter out of sight, and refused to read it even to Betty, who had only half forgiven her for her former offence against her brother.

As the days passed, however, Betty was full of concern for the privations Richard endured, and out of sheer force of habit she carried her plaint to Joscelyn.

“Richard drills six hours a day, rain or shine,” she said, with an expostulatory accent on the numeral.

“Dear me, is he that hard of learning? Methinks even I could master the art of shouldering a gun and turning out my toes in less time than that. It seems not so difficult a matter.”

“And even after all this,” Betty went on, taking no heed of the other’s laugh, “he may not rest at night, but must needs do picket duty or go on reconnoitring expeditions. And he hath not tasted meat in two weeks, not since he hath been in camp.”

“What a shame! A soldier such as Master Clevering should sit among the fleshpots and sleep all night in a feather bed.”

“I knew you would laugh,” Betty said with sudden heat. “You treat Richard as though he counted for naught; but the truth is, Joscelyn, you are not half good enough for him.”

And Betty flung out of the house with her chin in the air, while Joscelyn kissed her hand to her with playful courtesy, but with a genuine admiration for her spirit.

But she softened not her heart toward Richard. Because of his impatience with her opinions, and the personal nature of their disputes and oppositions, he had come to typify to her the very core and heart of the insurrection. She knew this was foolish, that he was in truth but an insignificant part of the general turmoil; and yet he was the prominent figure that always came before her when the talk turned on the Revolution, no matter in what company she was. His masterful ways of wooing and cool assumption of her preference also grated harshly upon her, and even in his absence her heart was often hot against him. She listened indifferently to his mother’s and Betty’s praise of him.

Her position in the community was rather a peculiar one; for while many of her companions disliked her tenets, they loved her for her merry ways and grace of manner, and so they refused to listen to some of the more rabid members who counselled ostracism. Her mother, too, was a strong bond between her and the public; for when the patriotic women of the town met together to sew and knit for the absent soldiers, Mistress Cheshire often went with them, and no needle was swifter than hers. It was her neighbours she was helping; the soldiers were a secondary consideration. She was not going to quarrel with Ann Clevering and Martha Strudwick because their husbands had fallen out with the king; that was his Majesty’s affair, not hers, and she did not believe in meddling in other people’s quarrels. But Joscelyn shut herself in her room on these days and read her English history; or else, being deft with her pencil, made numerous copies of the historical pictures of King George and his ministers, which were pinned up on the railing of her balcony as a new testimonial of her loyalty. But no sooner was her back turned than some passer-by tore them away, sometimes leaving instead a written threat of retaliation that made her mother’s heart cold with a nameless dread.

It was in the end of March, some six weeks after the departure of the troops, that sad news came from the south. Where the Pedee widened toward its mouth a blow had been struck for liberty, and Uncle Clevering had fallen in a charge with Sumter.

There had been a body of Tories to disperse, a wagon-train to capture, and despatches to intercept; and Sumter’s troops, knowing this, rode all the windy night through moonshine and shadow to surprise the enemy in the daffodil dawn of that March morning. Swift, silent, resistless, like spectres of the gray forest, they came upon the astonished Redcoats—and kept their tryst with Victory! The prisoners, the wagon-train, the despatches were theirs; but one of them had ridden to his rendezvous with death. The elder Clevering’s horse was led back through all the long miles to Hillsboro’ with the stirrups crossed over the saddle; and Ann Clevering sat in her house, bereft. Each day Martha Strudwick and other friends went to her with words of kindly commiseration; but it was Mistress Cheshire who did most to comfort the afflicted widow, so that these two were drawn yet closer together with that bond of sympathy that comes of a mutual loss. And in Betty’s or Mistress Clevering’s presence Joscelyn never again talked tauntingly of English prowess, since it was an English bullet that had wrought such sorrow to her friends. But even this death, shocking as it was to her, in no way shook her allegiance to the cause she held to be right.