Читать книгу Joscelyn Cheshire - Sara Beaumont Kennedy - Страница 8

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“He is the freeman whom the truth makes free,

And all are slaves besides.”

—Cowper.

The colony of North Carolina had long been ready for rebellion against kingly authority. Governor Tryon had sown the seeds of discontent by his unpopular measures, and the taxes levied upon the people that he might build his “palace” at New Berne. This discontent had culminated in the insurrection of the Regulators and the battle of Alamance, where was made the first armed stand against England. But Tryon was victorious, and the captured leaders of the insurrection were hanged on Regulators’ hill in Hillsboro’-town. But from that field of Alamance, the defeated people carried to their homes the same persistent, haunting dream of liberty which was to rise incarnate when the tocsin of the Revolution blew through the land.

That tocsin waked many an echo among the hills that surrounded the town upon the Eno. At the first call to arms, the older men had gone to the field, some marching away to the north, others serving under the partisan leaders throughout their own section. Now the younger ones—those who had been but boys when the cannon at Lexington made the pulse of the people first to quicken and throb—were going out to bear their share in the fray.

For the past year the company of which Richard Clevering was a member had done service in the militia at home, keeping the Tories in a semblance of subjection, and now and then going to Sumter’s aid when he made one of those electrical sallies which were like lightning flashes amid the general storm. In this hard school Richard had learned his first lessons in soldiering; but graver and sterner military work was now ahead, for the company was marching northward to aid in recruiting Washington’s regular army, reduced and discouraged by the terrible winter at Valley Forge.

When they started, the willows that fringed the Eno, that fierce little river that winds about Hillsboro’, had already lost their winter grayness, and, with the rising of the sap, had taken on that wonderful golden brown which is the aureole of the coming springtime. The bluebirds had not yet come back to the fence corners, but the earth was soggy with the thaw, and from under the whirls of last year’s dead leaves, crocuses were holding up green signals to the sun. But as the troop held their steady way to the north the spring signs disappeared, and hoar frost and bleak winds told that winter’s reign was not yet over.

It was a long tramp up through the Virginia woods and along the salt marshes of the coast, and down and up the desolate streams hunting a ford. But youth and enthusiasm lighten many a burden, and to Richard the greatest hardship was lack of news from Joscelyn. The thought of her tugged at his heart, and if his step ever lagged in the line, it was because the memory of her face drew him back with that sickening sense of longing that youth finds so hard to resist. At every chance he sent her a missive.

“Not that she will care, but just to show her I do,” he said, trying to convince himself there was no bitterness in the thought.

Peter Ruffin, marching beside him, often looked at the knit brows and compressed lips and smiled, guessing something of the cause; he said to himself that it was safer to leave a wife behind than a sweetheart, since one was sure to find the wife waiting his return, while a sweetheart might be gone with a fresher fancy. But little Billy Bryce, who could never have kept up with the line had it not been for Richard’s aid now and then, could not fathom the meaning of that dark look in his benefactor’s face, and so was silent and sorry.

The March winds tore at them, and the storms pelted them as they tramped the rugged roads or slept in their thin tents, and the bullets that they had intended for the enemy, often went to provide game for their daily sustenance. The Tories of the districts through which they passed sometimes rallied to oppose them, so that they had to fight their way through ambuscades, or, when the enemy greatly outnumbered them, slip away under cover of night or by circuitous paths through the forest and swamps.

And so, at last, toward the end of March, they reached their goal—the encampment at Valley Forge, and shuddered at the desolation they witnessed. As the little band marched down the streets of the military village, gaunt men who had survived the horrors of the winter came out to meet them with huzzas, and the drums beat a long welcome. Their coming was as a thrill that runs through a half-numb body, a sign of revivification and awakened hope. But under it all was a sense of unspeakable sadness that filled the hearts of the newcomers with a strange wistfulness of pity and admiration.

The succeeding weeks were given up literally to camp work, to ceaseless mustering and drilling under the vigilant eye of Baron Steuben, until the newcomers lost the air of recruits and bore themselves with the semblance of veterans.

“We had hoped to fight under Morgan,” Richard wrote his mother, “but, doubtless for excellent reasons, we are to be assigned to General Wayne’s command, which just now sorely needs strengthening. Save that Morgan is from our part of the country, the change matters not to me, since both men are fearless leaders. What I want is a fray, and with either of these men I am like to get my fill.”

Here there was a long blot on the page, as though the back of his quill had been drawn along a line. In truth it had, for he had started to send a message to Joscelyn, and then with a sudden accession of determination had erased it, lest she come to think he had never anything in mind save herself. But he fondled the letter as he folded it, knowing that her fingers would doubtless hold each page and her eyes travel along each line, for his mother would share her news of him with her neighbours over the way.