XI

IT WAS the next day that I unexpectedly had my first news of Mary and Guerlac. Cap Huff and I were in a corner of the gathering-room, and Phoebe was resanding the floor and wiping off the tables and benches, while Cap Huff soothed his tongue—swollen, he said, from unaccustomed speechifying—with a quart of my mother’s small beer to which a tot of Hollands had been added to give it body. Cap was telling me in his usual violent language of the times he had been thrown for no reason at all into the Portsmouth gaol, a disgustingly verminiferous gaol, too, he declared, when two fine gentlemen rode up from the beach on horses that gleamed sleekly in the morning sun.

They came into the gathering-room, handsome, tall young men in plum-colored coats, doeskin breeches and riding boots of Spanish leather, and bowed so politely to Cap and me that we became sour and doltish, as is the custom of our New England people when they encounter manners that seem somewhat overperfumed. One of them smiled sweetly and prayed we would inform him where he might encounter Monsieur the propriétaire of the inn. Thus we knew he was French.

Cap, hunched down over his beer, waved a huge paw in my direction. The Frenchman took a letter from his pocket and handed it to me. It was signed “Sam’l Adams,” and urged the recipient to reply freely to all questions asked by the bearer, Raoul de Berniers, since such replies would promote the interests of the colonies in America.

“Sir,” I said, when I had shown the letter to Cap Huff, who stared at it amazed-like, “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, because of this letter of Sam Adams, who is the greatest man in all New England, and also because I had a friend, a Frenchman, who left me a gift I still have.”

“Truly!” said De Berniers, and smiled and bowed, having no way of knowing I spoke of the scar on my forehead.

“It may be,” I said, “you knew the gentleman—Henri Guerlac de Sabrevois, of the regiment of Béarn?”

“But certainly!” cried De Berniers. “It was our regiment, Béarn! De Sabrevois we knew well! Perhaps he will come again to this great country, so you may renew your friendship.” When De Berniers said this, I caught him looking drolly at his companion, whom he called Sharl, as if to say a friendship between De Sabrevois and this country bumpkin would be worth seeing.

“Your friend has been in France, then, these past six years?” I asked, not caring what he thought or how he looked, so I had news of Mary.

“No, poor fellow,” De Berniers said. “He was captured by the damned English, he and his sister. They were sent to Elizabeth Castle on the Island of Jersey as prisoners, they and some others, among them the good Abbé le Loutre, who was villainously treated, in spite of his holy orders.”

Now this Le Loutre was a hound of hell if ever there was one, a brutal man and a murderer, responsible for the death of hundreds of English in Acadia because of his fiendish persistence in sending Indians against them. When Cap Huff heard him called “the good Abbé” he sprang up in a rage, bawling “Good!” in violent tones of protest. Fortunately I could kick him hard on the shin, so he changed his cry to “Good God!” and sat down again, shaking his head as if in despair at the cruelty of mankind.

“I didn’t know,” I said, “that he had a sister!”

“Ah, yes!” said De Berniers, “and how Marie is beautiful, with golden hair and all the graces of an angel, but none of Henri’s coldness! Wholly charming, all white and gold: a beautiful flower, nodding and swaying in the sun; eh, Sharl?”

Sharl nodded vigorously. “A true lily of France!”

Cap, doubtless unnerved by this unexpected contact with fine gentlemen, choked on his small beer and was taken with a horrible, whooping fit of coughing, so that he lumbered hurriedly from the room. I would have liked to hug the thought of Mary, white and gold like a lily, to my breast; but something impelled me to look around. I looked straight into the face of Phoebe Marvin. She was jeering at me with her eyes so that I could have rubbed her face on the sanded floor and thought no shame of myself for doing it.

“Bring rum!” I shouted, banging the table with the flat of my hand. “French rum!”

When she brought it, Sharl smiled warmly at her, which was a surprise to me, for I would have thought her swarthy face and her thin, straight body possessed no attraction for any except the easily pleased folk who gather at our inn, and little enough for them.

De Berniers told me, over our glasses, that De Sabrevois had now been in France for three years, and that his opinion concerning the state of mind in the colonies regarding England was much sought at court. Therefore, said he, if feeling grew stronger against England, De Sabrevois might return to watch and to assist. “For,” said De Berniers, “he hates the English. The thought of them is poison to him.”

He asked me the feeling in our neighborhood toward England; and I told him as well as I could: that our people were discontented at all things, including England’s acts, and that they would not pay taxes to England, or pay the duties that England might think to collect. I told him there had been no talk of war against England; that no man in our neighborhood with good sense would think the colonies capable of fighting England’s mighty army and navy, but that there were more people without sense in our town than there were people with sense. Also that those without sense were the most reckless and daring; so that if the merchants declared against war the reckless, senseless folk might declare in favor of it to show their hatred of the merchants.

All this time Sharl was nodding and smiling at Phoebe, who stood out of my sight; and when they got up to go, Sharl, looking meaningly at Phoebe, said to me: “Sir, we have been much taken with the custom you call bundling. I regret we cannot remain here to enjoy its benefits.”

Now there may be parts of our colonies where bundling is widely practised; but it is frowned on in Arundel; so to pay Phoebe for her jeering glance, and maybe to save her the trouble of answering Sharl, I said quickly: “Sir, there’s no bundling here save with me.”

At this we all laughed understandingly, and I escorted the two Frenchmen to their horses. Cap Huff came around the corner of the house and bade them farewell in a voice so mealy that it aroused my suspicions. He expressed the hope he might some day see them at his home in Newburyport, which seemed to me strange, since he lived in Kittery.

When the Frenchmen had gone on toward Falmouth, Cap followed me into the gathering-room, saying he must be off to rejoin his Sons of Liberty. He drew a cambric handkerchief from his breeches, unknotted it, and took from it a number of gold pieces, which he pushed over to me.

“Here,” Cap said, “this is to pay for my lodging and for a little rum, now and then, for the Sons.”

I studied the coins. They were French louis, newly minted and beautiful. After a while I tossed them back.

“Now listen, Stevie,” Cap said, “these Frenchmen came over here to help us. That’s so, because Sam Adams said so in his letter. Well, ain’t it helping us if we use their money for the Sons of Liberty?”

“Where was it?”

“Clear ’way down in the bottom of their saddle bags. I only took a little out of each one. They got plenty left. They won’t miss it any more than they’ll miss this.” He reached inside his belt in back and dragged out a ruffled shirt. “I got this off of Sharl,” he added proudly.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t want their dirty money. I’ll take anything of Guerlac’s I can get, but nothing of theirs.”

Cap stared at me in disgust, then bawled hoarsely for Phoebe. She came in at once. “Look here, Phoebe,” Cap said, picking up the gold and handing it to her, “Stevie and I had an argument over this. You keep it till he’s ready to build a sloop or something; then buy into it. Then he’ll have it, only he won’t have it.”

Cap laughed his hoarse, bellowing laugh, stood up and hitched at his belt, rubbed his face briskly with his huge hands, and went swaggering out of the house, bawling his lewd song about old Benning Wentworth. We could hear him roaring it as he set off on his horse, and even until he got down into the dunes, where the southwest wind caught it and whirled it into fragments.

I felt little like looking at Phoebe when Cap was gone. After I had cleared my throat with some effort I told her I had meant nothing by what I said about bundling, but was irritated with her and Sharl, and so said the first thing that entered my noddle.

“I guess you know,” I told her, “how I feel about Mary. Some day I’ve got to find her; and my feelings being what they are, there’s times I could knock your jaw out of joint for looking at me the way you do.”

Phoebe nodded, chinking Cap’s gold pieces together. “Steven, I guess I don’t want to work here any more.”

“My land, Phoebe! I told you I didn’t mean anything!”

“I know, Steven, but it’s spring, and I don’t believe I can stand it unless I can have the sun and the water and all. Your ma’s taught me how to read and figure. I studied through the whole of the British Mariner’s Guide, Steven.”

Not knowing what she was driving at, I said my mother would miss her, as indeed I knew she would.

Phoebe chinked the gold pieces more rapidly. “Steven, I heard your ma speak about building a brig some day.” She hesitated; then shot her words at me so fast I was near graveled.

“I can sail a boat better than these thick-heads around here, Steven! I can cut a ledge closer than any fisherman on the cape. I know every bar and every reef ’twixt Porpus and the Nubble! I can learn ’em from Frenchman’s Bay to Sandy Hook in a week! I can sail circles around these people, Steven! Don’t wait for a brig! Get a sloop—and let me sail it! I’ll make it pay. I’ll make it pay so much you can get your brig twice as quick. I’ll sail it for nothing, Steven, if you’ll give me a little interest in it. If you do I’ll make money for you and myself, too. I can read and figure and navigate, Steven, and that’s a sight more than anyone around here can do, except old Coit that took a privateer out of York. If I can’t sail rings around old Coit I’ll kiss a pig! You can put in this gold of Cap’s, and I’ll watch Scammen build it, and there won’t be a sloop in Maine waters to touch it.”

Now this girl was one of the most importunate creatures I had ever encountered, but I couldn’t escape the fact that there was something in what she said. It was nigh impossible to get an able man to captain as small a vessel as a sloop, and be a trader into the bargain, and do it to show a profit, whereas Phoebe could sail a boat better than anybody I ever saw, and she was afraid of nothing and nobody. Furthermore, she could swim as well as Ranger, only faster; and as I well knew, she had a tongue in her head, which is no drawback to any person who follows the sea.

“How much of an interest,” I asked, “would you consider fitten and proper for yourself, in case I talked to my ma and we decided maybe this could be done?”

“Oh, Steven,” she said, and she stood there in front of me with her fists clenched so tight that I feared she might tear herself to pieces in case I crossed her wishes, “I don’t care! Give me what’s right. I’ll do it for anything!”

“Would you do it for a tenth?” I asked, wanting to be sure she meant what she said.

“Oh, Stevie!” she said with a sort of gasp, “you’ll do it!” She had a look as if she might hang around my neck and cry, so I went in to see my mother. The upshot was that we gave Phoebe a fifth interest in the sloop, which was a square trade for both of us, in case she fancied herself with good cause. That night my mother and I talked with Thomas Scammen in the kitchen about the building of it. Phoebe, my mother said, should have a word in the matter; but it was more of a sermon she had than a word.

She had ideas aplenty, claiming it ought to be sharp like a knife instead of round like a tub, and deep, so to let her crack on canvas. She had ideas about the cabin, vowing she had never had comfort anywhere, and was now going to have it, since there was every reason why a sloop’s cabin should be richer in comfort than any room on land. Scammen snorted at these ideas, and Phoebe grew outrageous, wagging her finger in his face and telling him how he had built vessels all his life the way every other damned fool built them, and never thought of the whys and wherefores of what he did, only whooshed like a frightened buck when somebody wanted to build a craft more sensible than any he’d ever laid adze to.

What Phoebe asked for and what we agreed on was a sloop of one hundred and twenty tons or thereabout, of fifty-eight foot keel, twenty-two foot beam, and eleven foot hull, built with all white oak above water and all good oak below water, the outboard plank not under two and one-half inches thick, and the mast and bowsprit good white pine of such dimensions as Phoebe Marvin might direct. For this we agreed to pay Thomas Scammen two pounds, thirteen shillings and fourpence for each and every ton that she should ton when built, one fifth in cash, one quarter in West India goods, and the remainder in English goods or provisions as desired, New England rum to be two shillings a gallon, molasses one shilling eightpence a gallon, cotton wool one shilling eightpence a pound, coffee one shilling fourpence a pound, chocolate one shilling sixpence a pound, pork four pounds ten shillings eightpence a barrel, and codfish seventeen shillings a quintal.

Little good it did poor Scammen to waggle his head and moan that no man had ever seen the like of the rising generation for wildness and cussedness; for Phoebe was at his shipyard the next morning, and there she stayed until the sloop was finished, peering at every knee and plank and pin that went into the hull, and whizzing around the blocks like a squirrel to watch each adze stroke, screaming at Scammen like a demoniac when displeased.

She was better off out of the house; for from the day when the Sons of Liberty were born the scenes in our gathering-room of nights took on the air of feeding time in a den of foxes, and any woman who went into it was like to be pounded to pieces; not from deviltry, but from the waving fists with which the Sons, in their excitement, emphasized their determination to be freed from slavery.

Our people fell into a veritable frenzy over the Stamp Tax and the English. Whatever happened to a man during this time—a bad harvest, say, or a torn coat or a foot cut on a clamshell, or anything at all—was blamed by our Sons of Liberty on the English and the Stamp Tax. Yet this frenzy, travelers said, was no different from that into which the people to the south of us had fallen, all the way to Boston and through Rhode Island and Connecticut and beyond.

Such was their frenzy that they were no longer content to fulminate over their rum, but must set forth in mobs to visit their wrath on officers of the crown or any man who held views opposed to their own. First there would come word from Portsmouth that the Sons of Liberty had seized on a wealthy shipowner who counseled moderation, and stuffed him into a hogshead full of ancient fish. Then there would be advices from Boston that a mob of wild men had pillaged and wrecked the grand mansion of Chief Justice Hutchinson. Then, in another month or so, there would be news from Connecticut that the stamp distributor had been whipped in effigy by the Sons of Liberty and hanged to a gallows fifty feet high. Still a little later we learned from New Haven that our friend Benedict Arnold, having discovered a man to be an informer concerning smuggled goods, had stripped him naked with his own hands, tied him to the whipping post, and given him forty lashes, while the Sons of Liberty looked on and howled for joy.

Despite these tumults, I continued to inquire of trappers and traders concerning Guerlac, thinking the unrest would soon be at an end, so I could leave my mother and sisters to conduct the affairs of the inn while I went off on my own business. Yet there was no word of him, nor was there any lessening of the riots and disorder, even though the Stamp Act was repealed while I was still in my nineteenth year.

Indeed, the unrest grew worse; for those Sons of Liberty who were without work and money—which most of them were, since they were the poorest and least responsible of our people—began to attack the homes of wealthy men for no other reason than to take possession of their belongings. Thus other wealthy men, fearing for their own persons and possessions, raised a rumpus against the Sons of Liberty, so that they were made stronger and more violent by opposition.

On top of everything, in my twentieth year, the King’s customs officers in Boston were such fools as to think they could begin to enforce duties which they had never before enforced, having theretofore been content to take bribes. With that the mobs went rampaging through the town, beating customs officers, helping shipowners to land cargoes, wrecking the houses of the King’s sympathizers, threatening those they misliked with tar and feathers, and even defying the courts and the governor of Massachusetts.

Now the Sons of Liberty had set up committees of correspondence in all the different towns, and the committee in every town would write to Sam Adams in Boston, telling him what was happening; and Sam Adams would write to the committees of correspondence in the towns, informing them of all important circumstances.

It was a cool September night, that year, when James Dunn stood up in our gathering-room and said he had a matter of interest to lay before the people. On account of the coolness, a greater number than usual had come to warm themselves with a dram. Some of them were folk who had shown no friendship toward the Sons of Liberty, though they, like myself, had taken care to say nothing against them lest they have their barns burned and their cattle scattered in the woods. All of them fell silent before the solemn, sagacious face of vacant-headed James, and he then read a letter from Sam Adams. It said the English government, on the grounds of rescuing the government of Massachusetts from the hands of a trained mob, would shortly send a regiment from Halifax and two regiments from Ireland into Boston to enforce order. Believing, said the letter, that the colonists would prefer to put their lives in their hands and cry to the Judge of all the earth rather than to be the slaves of England, it urged all well-disposed colonists to provide themselves with firearms.

Having read this letter, James Dunn sat down without further comment, which indeed he was incapable of making; and I might here add that this sort of incapacity of his was of great value in giving him his reputation for wisdom; as whenever he could find nothing to say, people were impressed with the idea that he was engaged in powerful thoughts. The other Sons of Liberty remained silent as well, staring into their tumblers, but looking as though their ears were athrob to hear how the rest of us would take it.

Now God knows I had been a peaceable citizen, deploring the violence of the Sons of Liberty; but when I heard these words out of James Dunn I knew no fat King in England could throw me an order and then send troops to jam the order down my throat, not so long as decent men like Sam Adams and John Hancock and Benedict Arnold said there was no need to obey the order. Therefore I stood up and said I was provided with enough firearms to stand off our share of English troops, and would undertake to furnish the residents of Arundel with muskets, powder, and bullet molds at their exact cost, and show them my books into the bargain so they could not accuse me of growing rich out of them, which they otherwise would be sure to do. Such a wild hurroaring and hurrooing arose at this that it cost me a small keg of French rum; and the very next day I despatched Phoebe in her sloop to Portsmouth for additional muskets, powder, and lead.

It had been a stroke of fortune for my mother and myself when we made Phoebe the master of the sloop Eunice—a name Phoebe had bespoke on the day her keel was laid. From the look in her eye I suspected she wished this name so that I would not call it the “Mary M.,” which I would not have done, though I had given some thought to calling it the “White Lily,” but decided against it for fear of what Cap Huff would say in case he saw it.

Knowing how pestilential she could be if crossed, I agreed to the name Eunice, whereat she set Thomas Scammen to work carving a seal’s head for a bow ornament. This head she herself decorated with whiskers, having me make nails at my forge so she could drive them into the side of the nose, causing the head to appear to pout and bristle, very realistic, like Eunice imploring me for fish.

She carried two hands on the sloop, selecting always the stupidest men she could find; for she said she wanted a crew that would take orders without knowing enough to try to think for her because she was a female, or to be afraid. Thus she got her men cheap; though after she had taken me out in a brisk southwesterly breeze and run me so close to the ledges, dodging in and out among them, that they would have rubbed off my finger nails had I thrust my hand over the lee-gunnel, it was in my mind that her crew would need to be wholly witless to sail under her for any amount of pay at all.

She carried our lumber and fish to Boston as fast as they could be carried, and faster than most folk said was possible. There she exchanged them for such goods as I needed in the inn, trading discreetly, and holding the high respect of those with whom she traded, even though she persisted in wearing sea boots like a man. She might, indeed, have been mistaken for a small-waisted boy save for the East India chains and necklets she was forever wearing, in especial a string of stones called cat’s eyes that she had from an East India sailor in trade for two stone hatchets and a magnifying glass which she had swapped for a gray parrot from God knows where.

The sloop’s business, however, was Phoebe’s and my mother’s. The inn kept me busy—far busier than I wished; for if ever I wanted to be an orphan child with no responsibilities to weigh me down, it was on the second occasion that Benedict Arnold’s path crossed mine.

I had been off around Cape Arundel in my flat-bottomed skiff to cut ash poles, in the spring of my twenty-second year. On returning up the river and into the creek with the rising tide, I saw a crowd of people—my mother and sisters and James Dunn and several others—standing near our front door. As I watched, a man among them made a short run and took two steps up the sheer side of the house, so that he was above their heads; then threw himself backward in a somersault, landing neatly on his feet. Instantly there flashed into my mind the memory of a man in a white blanket coat going hand over hand up a rope as easily as I could walk up a staircase; and I knew I was looking at Arnold once more.

I shouted and ran up, happy to see him, and found those about him entranced by the tricks of skill he had been performing. Even while he greeted me my sisters clamored for him to do a feat he had done for them. Nothing loath, he went to the cart on which we dragged our whale boat from the creek to the beach at low water, measured the height of the wheel with his outstretched hand; then backed away, ran lightly at it, and vaulted completely over without touching hand or foot to either wheel. Never have I seen another man who could do this, though many tried it in after years, especially when elevated by rum, and narrowly escaped breaking their necks.

Though I could see he took pleasure in the amazed head-wagging of those who watched him, as who would not, he beckoned James Dunn to give him his broadcloth coat and three-cornered hat, donned them, and clapped me on the shoulders, saying he had come from Cape Porpus to see me. As soon as we were by ourselves in the inn, he flipped the back of his fingers against my chest, lengthened his face in the smile I well remembered, and shot at me abruptly: “I’ve seen your girl!”

Now any faint suggestion of Mary was enough to constrict my heart as though a hand had closed around it. I could only gawk at Arnold and whisper, “Mary Mallinson?”

Arnold shook his head. “Marie de Sabrevois. Slender and golden-haired, with freckles across the top of her cheeks like yellow dust on a lily.”

“Mary Mallinson,” I said again, and closed my eyes to see her on her knees, holding my face between her hands.

“Marie de Sabrevois,” Arnold repeated, tapping his forefinger on the table, “sister to Henri Guerlac de Sabrevois! The only fair-haired daughter the house of Sabrevois has ever known: fair and beautiful and a Catholic!”

The kitchen door burst open. Phoebe Marvin, thin and dark and quick as a cat, whirled into the room and stood with her back against the door, dried salt spray showing white on her high sea boots and brass-studded pirate’s belt. The string of cat’s eyes glowed and dimmed on her breast from the quickness of her breathing.

“There’s hell to pay in Boston,” she cried. “The troops shot into the Sons of Liberty on King Street and killed a mess of ’em!”

Arnold jumped to his feet, upsetting everything on the table. “What did they do to the soldiers?” he shouted, his face darkening until it was well nigh the color of Malary’s, and growing strangely bulbous.

Phoebe looked at him coolly. “Nothing! The mob fired first.”

Arnold groaned. “The mob! Mob! Citizens like you and me, peacefully pursuing their lives and liberty!”

“Well,” Phoebe said calmly, “there might be two ways of looking at that. I saw it, and it was a mob, with a half-breed negro at its head; but they got no business to turn the King’s troops on ’em. It was terrible!”

“Terrible!” Arnold cried, striding to the wall and hitting it such a blow with his clenched fist that the pine sheathing split. “It’s wanton, cruel, inhuman murder! Good God! Are Americans all asleep, and tamely yielding up their liberties; or are they all turned philosophers, that they don’t take instant vengeance on such dogs?”

“To hell with that!” I said. “What about Mary?”

Arnold whirled on me. “Mary! Mary! You want to talk about a damned little baggage sniveling in a convent school when troops of a foreign tyrant tramp over stones bespattered with your countrymen’s brains! Mary! My God!”

I reached around and took hold of a stool, ready to brain him for speaking so of Mary. Arnold’s pale blue eyes widened, like a cat’s, fierce and waiting. My senses came back to me and I dropped the stool.

“Sir,” I said, “I’ll go against any English troops with any man, or alone, anywhere; but I’ve waited as many years as I can remember to have word of Mary. I’m sick of waiting!”

Arnold stared at me for another moment, then moved his thick shoulders in his blue broadcloth coat, as though to loosen them, smiling so the darkness and bulbousness passed from his face, leaving it light and gay.

“Why,” he said, “you’re all right! When the time comes they’ll find us ready for them if we can keep from each other’s throats—if we can work together instead of at cross purposes!” His face darkened again. “That’s the devil of it—cross purposes! D’ye know what happened in New Haven? A dirty informer set the English on me for evading their damned laws, and I lashed him! Gave the English a lesson in what they’d get if they didn’t let Americans alone! You’d think my own people would thank God someone had the heart to stand up to their oppressors, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you?”

He thrust his face almost into mine and eyed me furiously; then, not waiting for an answer, went on again. “Cross purposes! Cross purposes! Even my own people can’t see what’s plain to be seen! They’re so used to oppression that they won’t consent to stop being oppressed! They fined me fifty shillings and rebuked me publicly. Rebuked me, damn their cowardly ratty souls to hell! Rebuke! I’ll give ’em something to rebuke me for!” He shook the table until it clattered on the floor, drew a deep breath, held it a moment, then expelled it gustily and smiled again.

“Well,” he said, “the way of it was this: I went into the drug trade in New Haven for myself, after I brought you down from the Kennebec. Then I began to export horses to the Sugar Islands, and bring back such cargoes as all of us bring back nowadays—molasses and sugar and rum. Having learned the ropes in Quebec, I took goods there, drugs, the best of drugs; and having sold them I bought horses, which I know as well as any man, and sold the horses in the Sugar Islands. Do you remember I told your father, and a fine man he was, how easy it was to make money in Quebec?”

I nodded, wondering when in God’s name he’d get to Mary.

“I was right,” he went on. “In New Haven I have a fine home and a sweet wife and two children, as pretty as you’ll see anywhere. I own three brigs—one in Cape Porpus, that I captain myself, and two others at sea, one between New Haven and the Sugar Islands, and t’other bound home from England. On top of all this, the young bloods in New Haven elected me captain of the Governor’s Guards, who’d fight the devil in hell or the troops of that fat swine King George. It’s all one to us!”

He tilted back and looked at me contentedly, and with reason; for this man I had thought to clout with a stool was the equal in property and position of any in our colonies.

Satisfied, seemingly, with my round eyes, Captain Arnold got at his tale. “No man knows,” he said, “when special information may prove valuable; so I’ve never gone to Quebec without asking for your friend De Sabrevois. Until this trip I learned little I didn’t know already. He’d been taken by an English corvette and carried to Jersey; and on the signing of the treaty he went to France.

“At first the English planned to seize his estates—a seigneurie on the Island of Orleans and a house in the upper town; but having their silly damned ideas about pacifying the people of Canada, they decided to interfere with neither property nor religion. So De Sabrevois comes posting over to Quebec with his beautiful sister Marie and settles down among his iron stoves and fur rugs, pleasant as pie to all the English, and prodigal of his wines because of his delight, he says, at having the odors of his dear Canadian forests in his nose. Then around come the handsome English officers to look at this beautiful gold-flecked lily, Marie, his sister. Such is the intensity with which they look that the lonely brother, who has a slit in his cheek and nick in his ear as if a stoat had been chewing at him, has never a chance to see her from morning to night.”

Arnold’s eyes popped out at me; then slipped instantly back to their usual state.

“Now,” he said, “I don’t know whether De Sabrevois was displeased at this, or whether he was bitten by another reason. I know I wouldn’t be displeased if a troop of young officers crowded around my sister, whom I love dearly. At any rate, he sent the beautiful Marie to a nunnery in Montreal, saying she wished to perfect herself in astronomy.”

“Astronomy!” I said, trying to remember whether the word had to do with the study of flowers or cookery.

“So, too, said I,” Arnold declared, smiling a knowing smile. “From what I saw of the lady, the stars have little to fear from her investigations.”

“You saw her before she went to Montreal?” I asked eagerly.

“Why, no,” Arnold said, with a reckless look I was to know better before our acquaintance ended. “I heard all this from friends. Since the gentleman was so insistent that the beautiful Marie was his sister, I thought it might be to my advantage to have a shot at it to see whether it was so or otherwise. When I sailed up to Montreal I took with me four English uniforms for four of my seamen; and one night I called at the nunnery, accompanied by four red-coats, and commanded the mother superior to open in the name of the King and produce for my inspection the person of Marie de Sabrevois.” He laughed, silently and slyly, and his broad shoulders shook.

“She was produced,” he went on, “and the reports I’d received in Quebec were borne out. She was as sweet as a cluster of arbutus with the leaves peeled off: fresh and pink and delicious; and her bright hair bound around her head like a rope. She was so soft in her gray gown that if I’d taken her by the waist I’d have looked for her to hang limp across my arm, like my sister’s cashmere shawl.”

I could hear Phoebe go stumping to the door in her sea boots, but I threw her not even a glance, having no interest in knowing whether she was jeering at me, or how she felt.

“I spoke to her in English,” Arnold said, hitching forward and prodding the air before him with his forefinger. “I said I was come from her friends in Arundel. She answered in French, vowing she didn’t understand. I said, still in English, that since she wished to adopt this attitude I’d call my men and take her away, so she could be questioned at our leisure. She looked at me piteously out of round blue eyes and said in English that she had no friends in Arundel; that if any considered themselves so, she prayed I’d tell ’em to interest themselves in their own affairs and leave her in peace.”

Arnold leaned back, nursing a knee and staring at me foxily. “That gave me a hold on De Sabrevois, if ever I should need one, so I came away.”

“For God’s sake! When you had her, you fool, why didn’t you take her!”

“A little less emphatic, if you please,” Arnold said. “I have business in Montreal and Quebec. Why should I steal a young lady who might be unwilling, to thrust her on you, who might be ungrateful? There may be other and weightier business in Montreal and Quebec, before long, for all of us, and De Sabrevois might be of great assistance. Why should I sacrifice that assistance for your private affairs? You exaggerate their importance!

“I explain these things after being called a fool,” he added, his head lowered between his massive shoulders, “because you’re unbalanced by love, which is worse than the throat distemper, since it unhinges the brain.”

“Sir,” I said, “I ask your pardon again. Now I must do what I always planned—go to Quebec after Mary.”

Phoebe went to tapping on the floor with her boot. I was surprised to find her still in the room. “Your mother can’t manage this inn alone,” she said.

“Let James Dunn help her,” I replied. I had employed James to watch over the gathering-room of nights, since his dignified appearance and his position with the Sons of Liberty had a value in those troubled days.

Phoebe shook her head. “You know James Dunn as well as I do.”

Arnold pulled me down onto a seat again. “I came here for one purpose: to tell you these things before you should hear them in another way, and go galloping off to roil the waters and frighten the fish for others.”

“I’ve got to get Mary,” I protested. “I’ve waited all my life for the chance.”

“A body’d think you were tottering on the verge of the grave!” Arnold cried. “Listen to me a minute. We’re going to fight England! You people here in the backwoods may not know it, and some of the cowardly money-hoarders in the cities won’t believe it; but fight England we must!”

“How do you know?”

“It’s in the air,” Arnold whispered. “You can feel it in the crowds. You can hear it in their talk. They want to be let alone. They don’t want to be interfered with, except by their own people, and damned little by them. They’re angry: waiting to strike, like rattlesnakes.”

His voice rose and sent a stirring along my spine. “And look at England blundering along! What does she know about us? Nothing! What has she ever known about us? Nothing! What will she ever know about us? Nothing! Who does she send to govern us? Fools or knaves! Everything she’s done has been wrong! She can’t change. Everything she does will be wrong. Wrongs piled on wrong! More wrongs added to the pile! More and more and more! And then war! For God’s sake, can’t you see it, here in this inn? Can’t you hear it in the talk of nights?”

I nodded.

Arnold gathered the front of my shirt in his hand and shook me. “Wake up! You can’t go traipsing into Canada at a time like this, trying to break into nunneries, and bellowing through the streets of Quebec! You know Indians; you know the country. How many do? We’ll need everybody who knows such things. I wish to God your father was alive! You wouldn’t catch him running off to Canada at a time like this!”

I nodded again, caught in a spell by his words.

“Mind what I say,” he said. “You’re needed here. When it’s proper for you to go, I’ll tell you. You stay here until you have word from me. Don’t you move until then! I’ll take care of you! I’ll get you to Quebec some day, but you’ve got to wait!”

“All right,” I said reluctantly, “I’ll wait.”

“That’s a bargain!” Arnold said. He seized my hand and shook it: then at once made preparations to be on his way.

Phoebe offered to carry him to Cape Porpus in the sloop; but he protested he had ridden over, leaving his horse on the other side of the river. With that, being both pestilent and froward, she said she would set him across in the skiff. She swaggered ahead of him like a boy in her clumping sea boots and high brass-studded belt, her shirt open at the throat; and as they went, they laughed and jested together. When I would have followed them, it came to me suddenly that Phoebe might be making game of Mary, and so I stayed behind lest she provoke me into pushing her into the river.