“They’ll have me whipped for speaking true;
Thoul’t have me whipped for lying;
And sometimes I’m whipped for holding my peace.
I had rather be any kind of a thing
Than a fool.”
“WHAT MEANS this outcry?” demanded the young man, arresting the arm of a laughing soldier who was inflicting the blows; “by what authority is this man thus abused?”
“By what authority dare you to lay hands on a British grenadier!” cried the fellow, turning and raising his lash against the supposed townsman. But when, as the officer stepped aside to avoid the threatened indignity, the light of the moon fell upon his glittering dress, through the opening folds of his cloak, the uplifted arm of the soldier was held suspended in air.
“Answer,” continued the young officer, his frame shaking with passion; “why is this man tormented, and of what regiment are ye?”
“We belong to the grenadiers of the brave 47th, your honour,” returned one of the bystanders, in a deprecating tone, “and we was just polishing this ’ere natural, because as he refuses to drink the health of his majesty.”
“He’s a scornful sinner, that don’t fear his Maker,” cried the man in duresse, eagerly bending his face, down which big tears were rolling, towards his protector. “Job loves the king, but Job don’t love rum!”
The officer turned away from the cruel spectacle, as he bid the men untie their prisoner. Knives and fingers were instantly put in requisition, and the man was liberated, and suffered to resume his clothes. During this operation, the tumult and bustle which had so recently distinguished the riotous scene, were succeeded by a stillness that rendered the hard breathing of the sufferer audible.
“Now sirs, you heroes of the 47th!” said the young man, when the victim of their rage was again clad, “know you this button?” The soldier to whom this question was more particularly addressed, gazed at the extended arm, and, to his discomfiture, he beheld the magical number of his own regiment reposing on the well-known white facings that decorated the scarlet of the vestment. No one presumed to answer this appeal, and after an impressive silence, he continued—
“Ye are noble supporters of the well-earned fame of ‘Wolfe’s own!’ fit successors to the gallant men who conquered under the walls of Quebec! away with ye; to-morrow it shall be looked to.”
“I hope your honour will remember he refused his majesty’s health. I’m sure, sir, that if colonel Nesbitt was here himself—”
“Dog! do you dare to hesitate! go, while you have permission to depart.”
The disconcerted soldiery, whose turbulence had thus vanished, as if by enchantment, before the frown of their superior, slunk away in a body, a few of the older men whispering to their comrades the name of the officer who had thus unexpectedly appeared in the midst of them. The angry eye of the young soldier followed their retiring forms, while a man of them was visible; after which, turning to an elderly citizen, who, supported on a crutch, had been a spectator of the scene, he asked—
“Know you the cause of the cruel treatment this poor man has received? or what in any manner has led to the violence?”
“The boy is weak,” returned the cripple; “quite an innocent, who knows but little good, but does no harm. The soldiers have been carousing in yonder dram-shop, and they often get the poor lad in with them, and sport with his infirmity. If these sorts of doings an’t checked, I fear much trouble will grow out of them! Hard laws from t’other side of the water, and tarring and feathering on this, with gentlemen like colonel Nesbitt at their head, will”—
“It is wisest for us, my friend, to pursue this subject no further,” interrupted the officer; “I belong myself to ‘Wolfe’s own,’ and will endeavour to see justice done in the matter; as you will credit, when I tell you that I am a Boston boy.* But though a native, long absence has obliterated the marks of the town from my memory; and I am at a loss to thread these crooked streets. Know you the dwelling of Mrs. Lechmere?”
“The house is well known to all in Boston,” returned the cripple, in a tone sensibly altered by the information that he was speaking to a townsman. “Job, here, does but little else than run of errands, and he will show you the way out of gratitude; wont you Job?”
The idiot, for the vacant eye and unmeaning, boyish countenance of the young man who had just been liberated, but too plainly indicated that he was to be included in that miserable class of human beings, answered with a caution and reluctance that were a little remarkable, considering the recent circumstances.
“Ma’am Lechmere’s! Oh! Job knows the way, and could go there blindfolded, if—if—”
“If what, you simpleton!” exclaimed the zealous cripple.
“Why, if ’twas daylight.”
“Blindfolded, and daylight! do but hear the silly child! come, Job, you must take this gentleman to Tremont-street, without further words. ’Tis but just sundown,† boy, and you can go there and be home and in your bed before the Old South‡ strikes eight!”
“Yes; that all depends on which way you go,” returned the reluctant youth. “Now, I know, neighbour Hopper, you couldn’t go to Ma’am Lechmere’s in an hour, if you went along Lynn-street, and so along Prince-street, and back through Snow-Hill; and especially if you should stop any time to look at the graves on Copps.”
“Pshaw! the fool is in one of his sulks now, with his Copps-Hill, and the graves!” interrupted the cripple, whose heart had warmed to his youthful townsman, and who would have volunteered to show the way himself, had his infirmities permitted the exertion. “The gentleman must call the grenadiers back, to bring the child to reason.”
“’Tis quite unneccessary to be harsh with the unfortunate lad,” said the young soldier; “my recollections will probably aid me as I advance; and should they not, I can inquire of any passenger I meet.”
“If Boston was what Boston has been, you might ask such a question of a civil inhabitant, at any corner,” said the cripple; “but it’s rare to see many of our people in the streets at this hour, since the massacre.§ Besides, it is Saturday night, you know; a fit time for these rioters to choose for their revelries! For that matter, the soldiers have grown more insolent than ever, since they have met that disappointment about the cannon down at Salem; but I needn’t tell such as you what the soldiers are when they get a little savage.”
“I know my comrades but indifferently well, if their conduct to night be any specimen of their ordinary demeanour, sir,” returned the officer; “but follow, Meriton; I apprehend no great difficulty in our path.”
The pliant valet lifted the cloak-bag from the ground, and they were about to proceed, when the natural edged himself in a sidelong, slovenly manner, nigher to the gentleman, and looked earnestly up in his face for a moment, where he seemed to be gathering confidence, to say—“Job will show the officer Ma’am Lechmere’s, if the officer wont let the grannies catch Job afore he gets off the North End ag’in.”
“Ah!” said the young man, laughing, “there is something of the cunning of a fool in that arrangement. Well, I accept the conditions; but beware how you take me to contemplate the graves by moonlight, or I shall deliver you not only to the grannies, but to the light infantry, artillery, and all.”
With this good-natured threat, the officer followed his nimble conductor, after taking a friendly leave of the obliging cripple, who continued his admonitions to the natural, not to wander from the direct route, while the sounds of his voice were audible. The progress of his guide was so rapid as to require the young officer to confine his survey of the narrow and crooked streets through which they passed, to extremely hasty and imperfect glances. No very minute observation, however, was necessary to perceive that he was led along one of the most filthy and inferior sections of the town; and where, notwithstanding his efforts, he found it impossible to recall a single feature of his native place to his remembrance. The complaints of Meriton, who followed close at the heels of his master, were loud and frequent, until the gentleman, a little doubting the sincerity of his intractable conductor, exclaimed—
“Have you nothing better than this to show a townsman, who has been absent seventeen years, on his return! Pray let us go through some better streets than this, if any there are in Boston which can be called better.”
The lad stopped short, and looked up in the face of the speaker, with an air of undisguised amazement, and then, without replying, he changed the direction of his route, and after one or two more deviations in his path, suddenly turning again, he glided up an alley, so narrow that the passenger might touch the buildings on either side of him. The officer hesitated an instant to enter this dark and crooked passage, but perceiving that his guide was already hid by a bend in the houses, he quickened his steps, and immediately regained the ground he had lost. They soon emerged from the obscurity of the place, and issued on a street of greater width.
“There!” said Job, triumphantly, when they had effected this gloomy passage, “does the king live in so crooked and narrow a street as that!”
“His majesty must yield the point in your favour,” returned the officer.
“Ma’am Lechmere is a grand lady!” continued the lad, seemingly following the current of his own fanciful conceits, “and she wouldn’t live in that alley for the world, though it is narrow, like the road to heaven, as old Nab says; I suppose they call it after the Methodies for that reason.”
“I have heard the road you mention termed narrow, certainly, but it is also called strait,” returned the officer, a little amused with the humour of the lad; “but forward, the time is slipping away, and we loiter.”
Job turned, and moving onward, he led the way, with swift steps, along another narrow and crooked path, which, however, better deserved the name of a street, under the projecting stories of the wooden buildings, which lined its sides. After following the irregular windings of their route for some distance, they entered a triangular area, of a few rods in extent, where Job, disregarding the use of the narrow walk, advanced directly into the centre of the open space. Here he stopped once more, and turning his vacant face with an air of much seriousness, towards a building which composed one side of the triangle, he said, with a voice that expressed his own deep admiration—
“There—that’s the ‘old North!’ did you ever see such a meetin’us’ afore! does the king worship God in such a temple!”
The officer did not chide the idle liberties of the fool, for in the antiquated and quaint architecture of the wooden edifice, he recognized one of those early efforts of the simple, puritan builders, whose rude tastes have been transmitted to their posterity with so many deviations in the style of the same school, but so little of improvement. Blended with these considerations, were the dawnings of revived recollections; and he smiled, as he recalled the time when he also used to look up at the building with feelings somewhat allied to the profound admiration of the idiot. Job watched his countenance narrowly, and mistaking its expression, he extended his arm toward one of the narrowest of the avenues that entered the area, where stood a few houses of more than common pretension.
“And there ag’in!” he continued, “there’s palaces for you! stingy Tommy lived in the one with the pile-axters, and the flowers hanging to their tops; and see the crowns on them too! stingy Tommy loved crowns, they say; but Province’us’ wasn’t good enough for him, and he lived here—now they say he lives in one of the king’s cupboards!”
“And who was stingy Tommy, and what right had he to dwell in Province-House, if he would?”
“What right has any governor to live in Province’us’! because its the king’s! though the people paid for it.”
“Pray, sir, excuse me,” said Meriton, from behind, “but do the Americans usually call all their governors stingy Tommies?”
The officer turned his head, at this vapid question, and perceived that he had been accompanied thus far by the aged stranger, who stood at his elbow, leaning on his staff, studying with close attention the late dwelling of Hutchinson, while the light of the moon fell, unobstructed, on the lines of his haggard face. During the first surprise of this discovery, he forgot to reply, and Job took the vindication of his language into his own hands.
“To be sure they do—they call people by their right names,” he said. “Insygn Peck is called Insygn Peck; and you call Deacon Winslow any thing but Deacon Winslow, and see what a look he’ll give you! and I am Job Pray, so called; and why shouldn’t a governor be called stingy Tommy, if he is a stingy Tommy?”
“Be careful how you speak lightly of the king’s representative,” said the young officer, raising his light cane with the affectation of correcting the lad.—“Forget you that I am a soldier?”
The idiot shrunk back a little, timidly, and then leering from under his sunken brow, he answered—
“I heard you say you were a Boston boy!”
The gentleman was about to make a playful reply, when the aged stranger passed swiftly before him, and took his stand at the side of the lad, with a manner so remarkable for its earnestness, that it entirely changed the current of his thoughts.
“The young man knows the ties of blood and country,” the stranger muttered, “and I honour him!”
It might have been the sudden recollection of the danger of those allusions, which the officer so well understood, and to which his accidental association with the singular being who uttered them, had begun to familiarize his ear, that induced the youth to resume his walk, silently, and in deep thought, along the street. By this movement, he escaped observing the cordial grasp of the hand which the old stranger bestowed on the idiot, while he muttered a few more terms of commendation. Job soon took his station in front, and the whole party moved on, again, though with less rapid strides. As the lad advanced deeper into the town, he evidently wavered once or twice in his choice of streets, and the officer began to suspect that he contemplated one of his wild circuits, to avoid the direct route to a house that he manifestly approached with great reluctance. Once or twice the young soldier looked about him, intending to inquire the direction, of the first passenger he might see; but the quiet of deep night already pervaded the place, and not an individual but those who accompanied him, appeared in the long ranges of streets they had passed. The air of the guide was becoming so dogged, and hesitating, that his follower had just determined to make an application at one of the doors, when they emerged from a dark, dirty, and gloomy street, on an open space, of much greater extent than the one they had so recently left. Passing under the walls of a blackened dwelling, Job led the way to the centre of a swinging bridge, which was thrown across an inlet from the harbour, that extended a short distance into the area, forming a shallow dock. Here he took his stand, and allowed the view of the surrounding objects to work its own effect on those he had conducted thither. The square was composed of low, gloomy, and irregular houses, most of which had the appearance of being but little used. Stretching from the end of the basin, and a little on one side, stood a long, narrow, brick edifice, ornamented with pilasters, perforated with arched windows, and surmounted by a humble cupola. The story which held the rows of silent, glistening windows, was supported on abutments and arches, through the narrow vistas of which were to be seen the shambles of the common market-place. Heavy cornices of stone were laid above and beneath the pilasters, and something more than the unskilful architecture of the dwelling houses they had passed, was affected throughout the whole structure. While the officer gazed at this building, the idiot watched his countenance, until impatient at hearing no words of pleasure or of recognition, he exclaimed—
“If you don’t know Funnel-Hall, you are no Boston boy!”
“But I do know Faneuil-Hall, and I am a Boston boy,” returned the other, amused with his guide’s shrewdness; “the place begins to freshen on my memory, and I now recall the scenes of my childhood.”
“This, then,” said the aged stranger, “is the spot where liberty has found so many bold advocates!”
“It would do the king’s heart good to hear the people talk in old Funnel, sometimes,” said Job; “I was on the cornishes, and looked into the winders, the last town-meetin’-da’, and if there was soldiers on the common, there was them in the hall that did’nt care for them!”
“All this is very amusing, no doubt,” said the officer, gravely, “but it does not advance me a foot on my way to Mrs. Lechmere’s.”
“It is also instructing,” exclaimed the stranger; “go on, child; I love to hear his simple feelings thus expressed; they indicate the state of the public mind.”
“Why,” said Job, “they were plain spoken that’s all, and it would be better for the king to come over, and hear them—it would pull down his pride, and make him pity the people, and then he wouldn’t think of shutting up Boston harbour. Suppose he should stop the water from coming in by the narrows, why we should get it by Broad Sound! and if it didn’t come by Broad Sound, it would by Nantasket! He needn’t think that the Boston folks are so dumb as to be cheated out of God’s water by acts of Parliament, while old Funnel stands in the dock square!”
“Sirrah!” exclaimed the officer, a little angrily, “we have already loitered until the clocks are striking eight.”
The idiot lost his animation, and lowered in his looks again.
“Well, I told neighbour Hopper,” he said, “there was more ways to ma’am Lechmere’s than straight forward! but every body knows Job’s business better than Job himself! now you make me forget the road; let us go in and ask old Nab, she knows the way too well!”
“Old Nab! wilful dolt! who is Nab, and what have I to do with any but yourself?”
“Every body in Boston knows Abigail Pray.”
“What of her?” asked the startling voice of the stranger; “what of Abigail Pray, boy; is she not honest?”
“Yes, as poverty can make her,” returned the natural, gloomily; “now the king has said there shall be no goods but tea sent to Boston, and the people won’t have the bohea, its easy living rent-free.—Nab keeps her huckster-stuff in the old ware’us’, and a good place it is too—Job and his mother have each a room to sleep in, and they say the king and queen haven’t more!”
While he was speaking, the eyes of his listeners were drawn by his gestures toward the singular edifice to which he alluded. Like most of the others adjacent to the square, it was low, old, dirty, and dark. Its shape was triangular, a street bounding it on each side, and its extremities were flanked by as many low hexagonal towers, which terminated, like the main building itself, in high pointed roofs, tiled, and capped with rude ornaments. Long ranges of small windows were to be seen in the dusky walls, through one of which the light of a solitary candle was glimmering, the only indication of the presence of life about the building.
“Nab knows ma’am Lechmere better than Job,” continued the idiot, after a moment’s pause, “and she will know whether ma’am Lechmere will have Job whipped for bringing company on Saturday-night;¶ though they say she’s so full of scoffery as to talk, drink tea, and laugh on that night, just the same as any other time.”
“I will pledge myself to her courteous treatment,” the officer replied, beginning to be weary of the fool’s delay.
“Let us see this Abigail Pray,” cried the aged stranger, suddenly seizing Job by the arm, and leading him, with a sort of irresistible power, toward the walls of the building, through one of the low doors of which they immediately disappeared.
Thus left on the bridge, with his valet, the young officer hesitated a single instant how to act; but yielding to the secret and powerful interest which the stranger had succeeded in throwing around all his movements and opinions, he bid Meriton await his return, and followed his guide and the old man into the cheerless habitation of the former. On passing the outer door he found himself in a spacious, but rude apartment, which, from its appearance, as well as from the few articles of heavy but valueless merchandise it now contained, would seem to have been once used as a store-house. The light drew his steps toward a room in one of the towers, where, as he approached its open door, he heard the loud, sharp tones of a woman’s voice, exclaiming—
“Where have you been, graceless, this Saturday-night! tagging at the heels of the soldiers, or gazing at the men-of-war, with their ungodly music and revelry, I dare to say! and you knew that a ship was in the bay, and that madam Lechmere had desired me to send her the first notice of its arrival. Here have I been waiting for you to go up to Tremont-street since sun-down, with the news, and you are out of call—you, that know so well who it is she expects!”
“Don’t be cross to Job, mother, for the grannies have been cutting his back with cords, till the blood runs! ma’am Lechmere! I do believe, mother, that ma’am Lechmere has moved; for I’ve been trying to find her house this hour, because there’s a gentleman who landed from the ship wanted Job to show him the way.”
“What means the ignorant boy!” exclaimed his mother.
“He alludes to me,” said the officer, entering the apartment; “I am the person, if any, expected by Mrs. Lechmere, and have just landed from the Avon, of Bristol; but your son has led me a circuitous path, indeed; at one time he spoke of visiting the graves on Copps-Hill.”
“Excuse the ignorant and witless child, sir,” said the matron, eyeing the young man keenly through her spectacles; “he knows the way as well as to his own bed, but he is wilful at times. This will be a joyful night in Tremont-street! So handsome, and so stately too! excuse me, young gentleman,” she added, raising the candle to his features with an evident unconsciousness of the act—“he has the sweet smile of the mother, and the terrible eye of his father! God forgive us all our sins, and make us happier in another world than in this place of evil and wickedness!” As she muttered the latter words, the woman set aside her candle with an air of singular agitation. Each syllable, notwithstanding her secret intention, was heard by the officer, across whose countenance there passed a sudden gloom that doubled its sad expression. He, however, said—
“You know me, and my family, then.”
“I was at your birth, young gentleman, and a joyful birth it was! but madam Lechmere waits for the news, and my unfortunate child shall speedily conduct you to her door; she will tell you all that it is proper to know. Job, you Job, where are you getting to, in that corner! take your hat, and show the gentleman to Tremont-street directly; you know, my son, you love to go to madam Lechmere’s!”
“Job would never go, if Job could help it,” muttered the boy; “and if Nab had never gone, ’twould have been better for her soul.”
“Do you dare, disrespectful viper!” exclaimed the angry quean, seizing the tongs, and threatening the head of her stubborn child.
“Woman, peace!” said a voice behind.
The weapon fell from the nerveless hand of the vixen, and the hues of her yellow and withered countenance changed to the whiteness of death. She stood motionless, for near a minute, as if riveted to the spot by a superhuman power, before she succeeded in muttering, “who speaks to me?”
“It is I,” returned the stranger, advancing from the shadow of the door into the dim light of the candle; “a man who has numbered ages, and who knows, that as God loves him, so is he bound to love the children of his loins.”
The rigid limbs of the woman lost their stability, in a tremour that shook every fibre in her body; she sunk in her chair, her eyes rolled from the face of one visiter to that of the other, while unsuccessful efforts to utter, denoted that she had temporarily lost the command of speech. Job stole to the side of the stranger, in this short interval, and looking up in his face piteously, he said—
“Don’t hurt old Nab—read that good saying to her out of the Bible, and she’ll never strike Job with the tongs ag’in; will you, mother? See her cup, where she hid it under the towel, when you came in! ma’am Lechmere gives her the p’ison tea to drink, and then Nab is never so good to Job, as Job would be to mother, if mother was half-witted, and Job was old Nab. Tea intoxicates, they say, as well as rum.”
The stranger considered the countenance of the boy, while he pleaded thus earnestly in behalf of his mother, with marked attention, and when he had done, he stroked the head of the natural compassionately.
“Poor, imbecile child!” he said, “God has denied the most precious of his gifts, and yet his spirit hovers around thee; for thou canst distinguish between austerity and kindness, and thou hast learnt to know good from evil. Young man, see you no moral in this dispensation! Nothing, which says that Providence bestows no gift in vain; while it points to the difference between the duty that is fostered by indulgence, and that which is extorted by power!”
The officer avoided the ardent looks of the stranger, and after an embarrassing pause, he expressed his readiness to depart on his way. The matron, whose eye had never ceased to dwell on the features of the old man, since her faculties were restored, arose slowly, and in a feeble voice, directed her son to show the road to Tremont-street. She had acquired, by long practice, a manner that never failed to control, when necessary, the wayward humours of her child, and on the present occasion, the solemnity imparted to her voice, by deep agitation, aided in effecting her object. Job quietly arose, and prepared himself to comply. The manners of the whole party wore a restraint which implied they had touched on feelings that it would be wiser to smother, and the separation would have been silent, though courteous, on the part of the youth, had he not perceived the passage still filled by the motionless form of the stranger.
“You will precede me, sir,” he said; “the hour grows late, and you, too, may need a guide to find your dwelling.”
“To me, the streets of Boston have long been familiar,” returned the old man. “I have noted the increase of the town as a parent notes the growing stature of his child; nor is my love for it less than paternal. It is enough that I am within its limits, where liberty is prized as the greatest good; and it matters not under what roof I lay my head—this will do as well as another.”
“This!” echoed the other, glancing his eyes over the miserable furniture, and scanning the air of poverty that pervaded the place; “why this house has even less of comfort than the ship we have left!”
“It has enough for my wants,” said the stranger, seating himself with composure, and deliberately placing his bundle by his side. “Go you to your palace, in Tremont-street: it shall be my care that we meet again.”
The officer understood the character of his companion too well to hesitate, and bending low, he quitted the apartment, leaving the other leaning his head on his cane, while the matron was gazing at her unexpected guest, with a wonder that was not unmingled with dread.
* This phrase is general for all born in Boston. [1832]
† It is scarcely necessary to tell the intelligent reader that an author is not responsible for words of local use, when used in the mouths of his characters. [1832]
‡ The Old South, in contradistinction to the Old North, and a numerous progeny of new meeting-houses, is as well known in Boston as is St. Peter’s at Rome. [1832]
§ The allusion is to a rencontre between the soldiers and citizens, in which five or six of the latter were killed. This event was of great influence in the subsequent contest. [1832]
¶ Perhaps it may be necessary to explain to the European reader, that the Puritans observed the evening of Saturday as the commencement of the sabbath. [1832]