Part 56 (1/2)
”The time came when you were in danger, and I, in my turn, left my father and rode hard to save you. I am not boasting, you understand, sir. I am merely stating a fact. I rendered service for service, like for like, did I not, sir?”
”You did, madam, and did it splendidly,” said I.
”Then, sir, when we meet again,” she said, and she was now speaking very clearly and sweetly, looking me full in the eyes, potent in all her beauty and queenliness, ”when we meet again, we meet on level terms.”
”Are you ready, lad?” called Master Freake.
”Coming, sir!” I cried, almost glad at heart of the escape.
”One moment, Oliver!” said Margaret. ”So anxious to be rid of me? Nay, I jest of course! I've a little present for you here, Oliver. It will, I hope, make you think of me at times.”
”It will not,” I replied, smiling. ”It will make me think oftener of you, that's all.”
She handed me the box, and we walked up to the boat.
The half-moon was bright in an unclouded sky, and it showed me tears on Margaret's cheeks, as I bent to clasp and kiss her hand. Then I said good-bye to Master Freake and Dot, and was helped into the boat.
So we parted, and I set my face toward the New World. For ten weary months there is nothing to be said that belongs of right and necessity to my story.
Except this: The first thing I did when I was alone in my cabin on the good s.h.i.+p, the ”Merchant of London,” was to open Margaret's box. It contained a full supply of books wherefrom to learn ”the only language one can love in,” and on the fly-leaf of a sumptuous ”Dante” she had written, ”From Margaret to Oliver.”
CHAPTER XXV
I SETTLE MY ACCOUNT WITH MY LORD BROCTON
Of how I fared the seas with Jonadab Kilroot, master of the stolid barque, ”Merchant of London,” I say nothing, or as good as nothing. Master Kilroot was a noisy, bulky man, with a whiff of the tar-barrel ever about him and a heart as stout as a s.h.i.+p's biscuit. He feared G.o.d always, and drubbed his men whenever it was necessary; in his estimation the office of sea-captain was the most important under heaven, and Master John Freake the greatest man on earth.
The s.h.i.+p remained at anchor in Dublin harbour while tailors and tradesmen of all sorts fitted me out, for Master Freake had given me guineas enough for a horse-load. I did very well, for Dublin is a vice-regal city, with a Parliament of its own and reasonable society, so that the modes and fas.h.i.+ons are not more than a year or so behind London, which did not matter to a man going to the Americas.
From Dublin I wrote home. I had laid one strict injunction on Margaret.
She was not to go to the Hanyards, or write there, or allow anyone else to do either. I would not suffer her to know, or to run any chance of knowing, about Jack. She was greatly troubled over the matter, but I was so decided that she consented to my demand. It cost me a world of pains to write. I wrote, rewrote, and tore up scores of letters. Finally I merely sent them word that I was going to America to wait till the trouble was blown over, and that I should be with them again as soon as possible. I gave them no address. It was cowardly, but I could not bring myself to it.
The nightmare that haunted me was my going home, home to our Kate, the sweetest sister man ever had, with her young heart wrapped for ever in widow's weeds. I used to dream that I rode up to the yard-gate on Sultan, and every time, in my dream, the Hanyards looked so desolate and woebegone, as if the very barns and byres were mourning for the dear dead lad who had played amongst them, that I pulled Sultan round and spurred him away till he flew like the wind, and I woke up in a cold sweat.
On a Wednesday morning in the middle of February the ”Merchant of London”
swung into Boston Harbour on a full tide and was moored fast by the Long Wharf. Master Kilroot hurried me ash.o.r.e to the house of the great Boston merchant, Mr. Peter Faneuil, to whom I carried a letter from Master Freake. It was enough. My friend's protecting arm reached across the Atlantic, and if it were part of my plan to tell at length of my doings in the New World, I should have much to say about this worthy merchant of Boston. He was earnest and a.s.siduous in his kindness, and so far as my exile was pleasant he made it so.
Mr. Faneuil was urgent that I should take up my abode with him, but this I gratefully declined, and he thereon recommended me to lodge with the widow of a s.h.i.+p-captain who had been drowned in his service. So I took lodging with her at her house in Brattles Street, and she made me very comfortable. She had a daughter, a pretty frolic la.s.s of nine, who promoted me uncle the first day, and one negro slave, who was the autocrat of the establishment till my coming put his nose out of joint, as we say in Staffords.h.i.+re.
Master Kilroot uns.h.i.+pped most of his inward cargo and sailed away for Carolina and Virginia to get rice and tobacco. Then he would come back here to make up his return cargo with dried fish, to be exchanged at Lisbon for wine for England. This was his ordinary round of trade, and a very profitable traffic it was.
When he had left, I settled down to make my exile profitable. By a great slice of luck there was at this time in Boston an Italian, one Signor Zandra, who gave lessons in his native tongue openly and in the art of dancing secretly. The wealth of the town was growing apace; there was a leisured cla.s.s, and, speaking generally, the Bostonians were alert of mind and desirous of knowledge above any other set of men I have ever lived among. In the near-by town of Cambridge there was a vigorous little university with more than a hundred students. Moreover, there was a rising political spirit which gave me a keen interest in the men who breathed the quick vital air of this vigorous new England. In many respects I found myself back in the times of Smite-and-spare-not Wheatman, captain of horse in the army of the Lord-General. The genuine, if somewhat narrow, piety of the Bostoneers reminded me of him, and still more their healthy critical att.i.tude towards rulers in general and kings in particular. They had the old Puritan stuff in them too, for some eight months before they had captured Louisberg from the French, a famous military exploit which the great Lord-General would have gloried in.
My days were all twins to each other. Every morning, after breakfast, I went abroad and always the same way: past the quaint Town House, down King Street, and so on to the Long Wharf to see if a s.h.i.+p had come in from England, and to ask the captain thereof if he had brought a letter for one Oliver Wheatman at Mr. Peter Faneuil's. I got no letter and no news. Then, always a little sad in heart, I strolled back, and looked in at Wilkins'
book-shop, where some of the town notables were always to be found, and where, one May morning, as I was higgling over the purchase of a fine Virgil, I made the acquaintance of a remarkable young gentleman, Mr. Sam Adams, a genius by birth, a maltster by trade, and a politician by choice.
We would discuss books together in Master Wilkins', or slip out to a retired inn called ”The Two Palaverers” and discuss politics over a gla.s.s of wine and a pipe of tobacco. I liked him so much that I was afraid to tell him I had been fighting for the Stuarts, and was content to pa.s.s in the role Mr. Faneuil had a.s.signed to me of an ingenuous young English gentleman who had come out to study colonial matters on the spot before entering Parliament. Our talk over, I went on to Signor Zandra's and worked at Italian for two hours. Most days I took him back to my lodging for dinner and read and talked Italian with him for another hour or two.
The rest of the day I gave to reading, exercising, and, thanks to the good merchant, to the best society in Boston.