I RESCUE AND AM RESCUED
So the happy childhood days sped on, a swift stream past flowered banks. Ben went off to sail the north sea in Captain Gillam"s ship.
M. Picot, the French doctor, brought a governess from Paris for Hortense, so that we saw little of our playmate, and Jack Battle continued to live like a hunted rat at the docks.
My uncle and Rebecca"s father, who were beginning to dabble in the fur trade, had jointly hired a peripatetic dominie to give us youngsters lessons in Bible history and the three R"s. At noon hour I initiated Rebecca into all the thrilling dangers of Indian warfare, and many a time have we had wild escapes from imaginary savages by scaling a rope ladder of my own making up to the high nursery window. By-and-bye, when school was in and the dominie dozed, I would lower that timid little whiffet of a Puritan maid out through the window to the turnstile. Then I would ride her round till our heads whirled. If Jack Battle came along, Rebecca would jump down primly and run in, for Jack was unknown in the meeting-house, and the meeting-house was Rebecca"s measure of the whole world.
One day Jack lingered. He was carrying something tenderly in a red cambric handkerchief.
"Where is Mistress Hortense?" he asked sheepishly.
"That silly French woman keeps her caged like a squirrel."
Little Jack began t.i.ttering and giggling.
"Why--that"s what I have here," he explained, slipping a bundle of soft fur in my hand.
"It"s tame! It"s for Hortense," said he.
"Why don"t you take it to her, Jack?"
"Take it to her?" reiterated he in a daze. "As long as she gets it, what does it matter who takes it?"
With that, he was off across the marshy commons, leaving the squirrel in my hand.
Forgetting lessons, I ran to M. Picot"s house. That governess answered the knocker.
"From Jack Battle to Mistress Hortense!"
And I proffered the squirrel.
Though she smirked a world of thanks, she would not take it. Then Hortense came dancing down the hall.
"Am I not grown tall?" she asked, mischievously shaking her curls.
"No," said I, looking down to her feet cased in those high slippers French ladies then wore, ""tis your heels!"
And we all laughed. Catching sight of the squirrel, Hortense s.n.a.t.c.hed it up with caresses against her neck, and the French governess sputtered out something of which I knew only the word "beau."
"Jack is no beau, mademoiselle," said I loftily. "Pah! He"s a wharf lad."
I had thought Hortense would die in fits.
"Mademoiselle means the squirrel, Ramsay," she said, choking, her handkerchief to her lips. "Tell Jack thanks, with my love," she called, floating back up the stairs.
And the governess set to laughing in the pleasant French way that shakes all over and has no spite. Emboldened, I asked why Hortense could not play with us any more. Hortense, she explained, was become too big to prank on the commons.
"Faith, mademoiselle," said I ruefully, "an she mayn"t play war on the commons, what may she play?"
"Beau!" teases mademoiselle, perking her lips saucily; and she shut the door in my face.
It seemed a silly answer enough, but it put a notion in a lad"s head.
I would try it on Rebecca.
When I re-entered the window, the dominie still slept. Rebecca, the demure monkey, bent over her lesson book as innocently as though there were no turnstiles.
"Rebecca," I whispered, leaning across the bench, "you are big enough to have a--what? Guess."
"Go away, Ramsay Stanhope!" snapped Rebecca, grown mighty good of a sudden, with glance fast on her white stomacher.
"O-ho! Crosspatch," thought I; and from no other motive than transgressing the forbidden, I reached across to distract the attentive goodness of the prim little baggage; but--an iron grip lifted me bodily from the bench.
It was Eli Kirke, wry-faced, tight-lipped. He had seen all! This was the secret of Mistress Rebecca"s new-found diligence. No syllable was uttered, but it was the awfullest silence that ever a lad heard. I was lifted rather than led upstairs and left a prisoner in locked room with naught to do but gnaw my conscience and gaze at the woods skirting the crests of the inland hills.
Those rats in the attic grew noisier, and presently sounds a mighty hallooing outside, with a blowing of hunting-horns and baying of hounds. What ado was this in Boston, where men were only hunters of souls and chasers of devils? The rats fell to sudden quiet, and from the yells of the rabble crowd I could make out only "King-killers!
King-killers!" These were no Puritans shouting, but the blackguard sailors and hirelings of the English squadron set loose to hunt down the refugees. The shouting became a roar. Then in burst Eli Kirke"s front door. The house was suddenly filled with swearings enough to cram his blasphemy box to the brim. There was a trampling of feet on the stairs, followed by the crashing of overturned furniture, and the rabble had rushed up with neither let nor hindrance and were searching every room.
Who had turned informer on my uncle? Was I not the only royalist in the house? Would suspicion fall on me? But questions were put to flight by a thunderous rapping on the door. It gave as it had been cardboard, and in tumbled a dozen ruffians with gold-lace doublets, c.o.c.kades and clanking swords.
Behind peered Eli Kirke, pale with fear, his eyes asking mine if I knew. True as eyes can speak, mine told him that I knew as well as he.
"Body o" me! What-a-deuce? Only a little fighting sparrow of a royalist!" cried a swaggering colt of a fellow in officer"s uniform.
"No one here, lad?" demanded a second.
And I saw Eli Kirke close his eyes as in prayer.
"Sir," said I, drawing myself up on my heels, "I don"t understand you.
I--am here."
They bellowed a laugh and were tumbling over one another in their haste up the attic stairs. Then my blood went cold with fear, for the memory of that poor old man going to the shambles of London flashed back.
A window lifted and fell in the attic gable. With a rush I had slammed the door and was craning out full length from the window-sill. Against the lattice timber-work of the plastered wall below the attic window clung a figure in Geneva cloak, with portmanteau under arm. It was the man who had supped so late with Eli Kirke.
"Sir," I whispered, fearing to startle him from perilous footing, "let me hold your portmanteau. Jump to the slant roof below."
For a second his face went ashy, but he tossed me the bag, gained the shed roof at a leap, s.n.a.t.c.hed back the case, and with a "Lord bless thee, child!" was down and away.
The spurred boots of the searchers clanked on the stairs. A blowing of horns! They were all to horse and off as fast as the hounds coursed away. The deep, far baying of the dogs, now loud, now low, as the trail ran away or the wind blew clear, told where the chase led inland.
If the fugitive but hid till the dogs pa.s.sed he was safe enough; but of a sudden came the hoa.r.s.e, furious barkings that signal hot scent.
What had happened was plain.
The poor wretch had crossed the road and given the hounds clew. The baying came nearer. He had discovered his mistake and was trying to regain the house.
Balaam stood saddled to carry Eli Kirke to the docks. "Twas a wan hope, but in a twinkling I was riding like wind for the barking behind the hill. A white-faced man broke from the brush at crazy pace.
"G.o.d ha" mercy, sir," I cried, leaping off; "to horse and away! Ride up the brook bed to throw the hounds off."
I saw him in saddle, struck Balaam"s flank a blow that set pace for a gallop, turned, and--for a second time that day was lifted from the ground.