“The rebel vales, the rebel dales,
With rebel trees surrounded,
The distant woods, the hills and floods,
With rebel echoes sounded.”
THE ENORMOUS white cockade that covered nearly one side of the little hat of her present conductor, was the only symbol that told Cecil she was now committed to the care of one who held the rank of captain among those who battled for the rights of the colonies. No other part of his attire was military, though a cut-and-thrust was buckled to his form, which, from its silver guard, and formidable dimensions, had probably been borne by some of his ancestors, in the former wars of the colonies. The disposition of its present wearer was, however, far from that belligerent nature that his weapon might be thought to indicate, for he tendered the nicest care and assiduity to the movements of his prisoner.
At the foot of the hill, a wagon, returning from the field, was put in requisition by this semi-military gallant; and after a little suitable preparation, Cecil found herself seated on a rude bench by his side, in the vehicle; while her own attendants, and the two private men, occupied its bottom, in still more social affinity. At first their progress was slow and difficult, return carts, literally by hundreds, impeding the way; but when they had once passed the heavy-footed beasts who drew them, they proceeded in the direction of Roxbury, with greater rapidity. During the first mile, while they were extricating themselves from the apparently interminable line of carts, the officer directed his whole attention to this important and difficult manoeuvre; but when their uneasy vessel might be said to be fairly sailing before the wind, he did not choose to neglect those services, which, from time immemorial, beautiful women in distress have had a right to claim of men in his profession.
“Now do not spare the whip,” he said to the driver, at the moment of their deliverance; “but push on, for the credit of horse-flesh, and to the disgrace of all horned cattle. This near beast of yours should be a tory, by his gait and his reluctance to pull in the traces for the common-good—treat him as such, friend, and, in turn, you shall receive the treatment of a sound whig, when we make a halt. You have spent the winter in Boston, Madam?”
Cecil bent her head, in silent assent.
“The royal army will, doubtless, make a better figure in the eyes of a lady, than the troops of the colonies; though there are some among us who are thought not wholly wanting in military knowledge, and the certain air of a soldier,” he continued; extricating the silver-headed legacy of his grandfather from its concealment under a fold of his companion’s mantle—“you have balls and entertainments without number, I fancy, Ma’am, from the gentlemen in the king’s service.”
“I believe that few hearts are to be found amongst the females in Boston, so light as to mingle in their amusements!”
“God bless them for it! I am sure every shot we throw into the town, is like drawing blood from our own veins. I suppose the king’s officers don’t hold the colonists so cheap, since the small affair on Charlestown neck, as they did formerly?”
“None who had any interest at stake, in the events of that fatal day, will easily forget the impression it has made!”
The young American was too much struck by the melancholy pathos in the voice of Cecil, not to fancy he had, in his own honest triumph, unwittingly probed a wound which time had not yet healed. They rode many minutes after this unsuccessful effort to converse, in profound silence, nor did he again speak until the trampling of horses hoofs was borne along by the evening air, unaccompanied by the lumbering sounds of wheels. At the next turn of the road they met a small cavalcade of officers, riding at a rapid rate in the direction of the place they had so recently quitted. The leader of this party drew up when he saw the wagon, which was also stopped in deference to his obvious wish to speak with them.
There was something in the haughty, and yet easy air of the gentleman who addressed her companion, that induced Cecil to attend to his remarks with more than the interest that is usually excited by the common-place dialogues of the road. His dress was neither civil, nor wholly military, though his bearing had much of a soldier’s manner. As he drew up, three or four dogs fawned upon him, or passed with indulged impunity between the legs of his high-blooded charger, apparently indifferent to the impatient repulses that were freely bestowed on their troublesome familiarities.
“High discipline, by ——!” exclaimed this singular specimen of the colonial chieftains—“I dare presume, gentlemen, you are from the heights of Dorchester; and having walked the whole distance thither from camp, are disposed to try the virtues of a four-wheeled conveyance over the same ground, in a retreat!”
The young man rose in his place, and lifted his hat, with marked respect, as he answered—
“We are returning from the hills, sir, it is true; but we must see our enemy before we retreat!”
“A white cockade! As you hold such rank, sir, I presume you have authority for your movements! Down, Juno—down, slut.”
“This lady was landed an hour since, on the point, from the town, by a boat from a king’s ship, sir, and I am ordered to see her in safety to the general of the right wing.”
“A lady!” repeated the other, with singular emphasis, slowly passing his hand over his remarkably aquiline and prominent features, “if there be a lady in the case, ease must be indulged. Will you down, Juno!” Turning his head a little aside, to his nearest aid, he added, in a voice that was suppressed only by the action; “some trull of Howe’s, sent out as the newest specimen of loyal modesty! In such a case, sir, you are quite right to use horses—I only marvel that you did not take six instead of two. But how come we on in the trenches?—Down, you hussy, down! Thou shouldst go to court, Juno, and fawn upon his majesty’s ministers, where thy sycophancy might purchase thee a riband! How come we on in the trenches?”
“We have broken ground, sir, and as the eyes of the royal troops are drawn upon the batteries, we shall make a work of it before the day shows them our occupation.”
“Ah! we are certainly good at digging, if at no other part of our exercises! Miss Juno, thou puttest they precious life in jeopardy!—you will; then take thy fate!” As he spoke, the impatient general drew a pistol from his holster, and snapped it twice at the head of the dog, that still fawned upon him in unwitting fondness. Angry with himself, his weapon, and the animal at the same moment, he turned to his attendants, and added, with bitter deliberation—“gentlemen, if one of you will exterminate that quadruped, I promise him an honourable place in my first despatches to congress, for the service!”
A groom in attendance whistled to the spaniel, and probably saved the life of the disgraced favourite.
The officer now addressed himself to the party he had detained, with a collected and dignified air, showing he had recovered his self-possession.
“I beg pardon, sir, for this trouble,” he said—“let me not prevent you from proceeding; there may be serious work on the heights before morning, and you will doubtless wish to be there.”—He bowed with perfect ease and politeness, and the two parties were slowly passing each other, when, as if repenting of his condescension, he turned himself in his saddle, adding, with those sarcastic tones so peculiarly his own—“Captain, I beseech thee have an especial care of the lady!”*
With these words in his mouth, he clapped spurs to his horse, and galloped onward, followed by all his train, at the same impetuous rate.
Cecil had heard each syllable that fell from the lips of both in this short dialogue, and she felt a chill of disappointment gathering about her heart, as it proceeded. When they had parted, drawing a long, tremulous breath, she asked, in tones that betrayed her feelings—
“And is this Washington?”
“That!” exclaimed her companion—“No, no, Madam, he is a very different sort of man! That is the great English officer, whom congress has made a general in our army. He is thought to be as great in the field, as he is uncouth in the drawing-room—yes, I will acknowledge that much in his favour, though I never know how to understand him; he is so proud—so supercilious—and yet he is a great friend of liberty!”
Cecil permitted the officer to reconcile the seeming contradictions in the character of his superior, in his own way, feeling perfectly relieved when she understood it was not one likely to have any influence on her own destiny. The driver now appeared anxious to recover the lost time, and he urged his horses over the ground with increased rapidity. The remainder of their short drive to the vicinity of Roxbury, passed in silence. As the cannonading was still maintained with equal warmth by both parties, it was hazarding too much to place themselves in the line of the enemy’s fire. The young man, therefore, after finding a secure spot among the uneven ground of the vicinity, where he might leave his charge in safety, proceeded by himself to the point where he had reason to believe he should find the officer he was ordered to seek. During his short absence, Cecil remained in the wagon, a listener, and a partial spectator of the neighbouring contest.
The Americans had burst their only mortar of size, the preceding night, but they applied their cannon with unwearied diligence, not only in the face of the British entrenchments, but on the low land, across the estuary of the Charles; and still farther to the north, in front of the position which their enemies held on the well-known heights of Charlestown. In retaliation for this attack, the batteries along the western side of the town were in a constant blaze of fire, while those of the eastern continued to slumber, in total unconsciousness of the coming danger.
When the officer returned, he reported that his search had been successful, and that he had been commanded to conduct his charge into the presence of the American commander-in-chief. This new arrangement imposed the necessity of driving a few miles farther, and as the youth began to regard his new duty with some impatience, he was in no humour for delay. The route was circuitous and safe; the roads good; and the driver diligent. In consequence, within the hour, they passed the river, and Cecil found herself, after so long an absence, once more approaching the ancient provincial seat of learning.
The little village, though in the hands of friends, exhibited the infallible evidences of the presence of an irregular army. The buildings of the University were filled with troops, and the doors of the different inns were thronged with noisy soldiers, who were assembled for the inseparable purposes of revelry and folly. The officer drove to one of the most private of these haunts of the unthinking and idle, and declared his intentions to deposit his charge under its roof, until he could learn the pleasure of the American leader. Cecil heard his arrangements with little satisfaction, but yielding to the necessity of the case, when the vehicle had stopped, she alighted, without remonstrance. With her two attendants in her train, and preceded by the officer, she passed through the noisy crowd, not only without insult, but without molestation. The different declaimers in the throng, and they were many, even lowered their clamorous voices as she approached, the men giving way, in deference to her sex, and she entered the building without hearing but one remark applied to herself, though a low and curious buzz of voices followed her footsteps to its very threshold. That solitary remark was a sudden exclamation of admiration; and singular as it may seem, her companion thought it necessary to apologize for its rudeness, by whispering that it had proceeded from the lips of “one of the southern riflemen; a corps as distinguished for its skill and bravery as for its want of breeding!”
The inside of the inn presented a very different aspect from its exterior. The decent tradesman who kept it, had so far yielded to the emergency of the times, and perhaps, also, to a certain propensity towards gain, as temporarily to adopt the profession he followed; but by a sort of implied compact with the crowd without, while he administered to their appetite for liquor, he preserved most of the privacy of his domestic arrangements. He had, however, been compelled to relinquish one apartment entirely to the service of the public, into which Cecil and her companions were shown, as a matter of course, without the smallest apology for its condition.
There might have been a dozen people in the common room; some of whom were quietly seated before its large fire, among whom were one or two females; some walking; and others distributed on chairs, as accident or inclination placed them. A slight movement was made at the entrance of Cecil, but it soon subsided; though her mantle of fine cloth, and silken calash, did not fail to draw the eyes of the women upon her, with a ruder gaze than she had yet encountered from the other sex during the hazardous adventures of the night. She took an offered seat near the bright and cheerful blaze on the hearth, which imparted all the light the room contained, and disposed herself to wait in patience the return of her conductor, who immediately took his departure for the neighbouring quarters of the American chief.
“’Tis an awful time for women bodies to journey in!” said a middle-aged woman near her, who was busily engaged in knitting, though she also bore the marks of a traveller in her dress—“I’m sure if I had thought there’d ha’ been such contentions, I would never have crossed the Connecticut; though I have an only child in camp!”
“To a mother, the distress must be great, indeed,” said Cecil, “when she hears the report of a contest in which she knows her children are engaged.”
“Yes, Royal is engaged as a six-month’s-man, and he is partly agreed to stay ’till the king’s troops conclude to give up the town.”
“It seems to me,” said a grave looking yeoman, who occupied the opposite corner of the fire-place, “your child has an unfitting name for one who fights against the crown!”
“Ah, he was so called before the king wore his Scottish Boot! and what has once been solemnly named, in holy baptism, is not to be changed with the shift of the times! They were twins, and I called one Prince and the other Royal; for they were born the day his present majesty came to man’s estate. That, you know, was before his heart had changed, and when the people of the Bay loved him little less than they did their own flesh and blood.”
“Why, Goody,” said the yeoman, smiling good-humouredly, and rising to offer her a pinch of his real Scotch, in token of amity, while he made so free with her domestic matters—“you had then an heir to the throne in your own family! The Prince Royal they say comes next to the king, and by your tell, one of them, at least, is a worthy fellow, who is not likely to sell his heritage for a mess of pottage! If I understand you, Royal is here in service.”
“He’s at this blessed moment in one of the battering rams in front of Boston neck,” returned the woman, “and the Lord, he knows, ’tis an awful calling, to be beating down the housen of people of the same religion and blood with ourselves! but so it must be, to prevail over the wicked designs of such as would live in pomp and idleness, by the sweat and labour of their fellow-creatures.”
The honest yeoman, who was somewhat more familiar with the terms of modern warfare, than the woman, smiled at her mistake, while he pursued the conversation with a peculiar gravity, which rendered his humour doubly droll.
“’Tis to be hoped the boy will not weary at the weapon before the morning cometh. But why does Prince linger behind, in such a moment! Tarries he with his father on the homestead, being the younger born?”
“No, no,” said the woman, shaking her head, in sorrow, “he dwells, I trust, with our common Father, in heaven! Neither are you right in calling him the home-child. He was my first-born, and a comely youth he grew to be! When the cry that the reg’lars were out at Lexington, to kill and destroy, passed through the country, he shouldered his musket, and came down with the people, to know the reason the land was stained with American blood. He was young, and full of ambition to be foremost among them who were willing to fight for their birthrights; and the last I ever heard of him was in the midst of the king’s troops on Breed’s. No, no; his body never came off the hill! The neighbours sent me up the clothes he left in camp, and ’tis one of his socks that I’m now footing for his twin-brother.”
The woman delivered this simple explanation with perfect calmness, though, as she advanced in the subject, tears started from her eyes, and following each other down her cheeks, fell unheeded upon the humble garment of her dead son.
“This is the way our bravest striplings are cut off, fighting with the scum of Europe!” exclaimed the yeoman, with a warmth that showed how powerfully his feelings were touched—“I hope the boy who lives, may find occasion to revenge his brother’s death.”
“God forbid! God forbid!” exclaimed the mother—“revenge is an evil passion; and least of all would I wish a child of mine to go into the field of blood with so foul a breast. God has given us this land to dwell in, and to rear up temples and worshippers of his holy name, and in giving it, he bestowed the right to defend it against all earthly oppression. If ’twas right for Prince to come, ’twas right for Royal to follow!”
“I believe I am reproved in justice,” returned the man, looking around at the spectators, with an eye that acknowledged his error—“God bless you, good woman; and deliver you, with your remaining boy, and all of us, from the scourge which has been inflicted on the country for our sins. I go west, into the mountains, with the sun, and if I can carry any word of comfort from you to the good man at home, it will not be a hill or two that shall hinder it.”
“The same thanks to you for the offer, as if you did it, friend; my man would be right glad to see you at his settlement, but I sicken already with the noises and awful sights of warfare, and shall not tarry long after my son comes forth from the battle. I shall go down to Craigie’s-house in the morning, and look upon the blessed man whom the people have chosen from among themselves as a leader, and hurry back again; for I plainly see that this is not an abiding place for such as I!”
“You will then have to follow him into the line of danger, for I saw him, within the hour, riding with all his followers, towards the water-side; and I doubt not that this unusual waste of ammunition is intended for more than we of little wit can guess.”
“Of whom speak you?” Cecil involuntarily asked.
“Of whom should he speak, but of Washington?” returned a deep, low voice at her elbow, whose remarkable sounds instantly recalled the tones of the aged messenger of death, who had appeared at the bed-side of her grandmother. Cecil started from her chair, and recoiled several paces from the person of Ralph, who stood regarding her with a steady and searching look, heedless of the observation they attracted, as well as of the number and quality of the spectators.
“We are not strangers, young lady,” continued the old man; “and you will excuse me, if I add, that the face of an acquaintance must be grateful to one of your gentle sex, in a place so unsettled and disorderly as this.”
“An acquaintance!” repeated the unprotected bride.
“I said an acquaintance; we know each other, surely,” returned Ralph, with emphasis; “you will believe me when I add, that I have seen the two men in the guard-room, which is at hand.”
Cecil cast a glance behind her, and, with some alarm, perceived that she was separated from Meriton and the stranger. Before time was allowed for recollection, the old man approached her with courtly breeding that was rendered more striking by the coarseness, as well as negligence of his attire.
“This is not a place for the niece of an English peer,” he said; “but I have long been at home in this warlike village, and will conduct you to a residence more suited to your sex and condition.”
For an instant Cecil hesitated, but observing the wondering faces about her, and the intense curiosity with which all in the room suspended their several pursuits, to listen to each syllable, she timidly accepted his offered hand, suffering him to lead her, not only from the room, but the house, in profound silence. The door through which they left the building, was opposite to that by which she had entered, and when they found themselves in the open air, it was in a different street, and a short distance removed from the crowd of revellers already mentioned.
“I have left two attendants behind me,” she said, “without whom ’tis impossible to proceed.”
“As they are watched by armed men, you have no choice but to share their confinement, or to submit to the temporary separation,” returned the other, calmly. “Should his keepers discover the character of him who led you hither, his fate would be certain!”
“His character!” repeated Cecil, again shrinking from the touch of the old man.
“Surely my words are plain! I said his character. Is he not the deadly, obstinate enemy of liberty? And think you these countrymen of ours so dull as to suffer one like him, to go at large in their very camp!—No, no,” he muttered, with a low, but exulting laugh; “like a fool has he tempted his fate, and like a dog shall he meet it! Let us proceed; the house is but a step from this, and you may summon him to your presence if you will.”
Cecil was rather impelled by her companion, than induced to proceed, when, as he had said, they soon stopped before the door of a humble and retired building. An armed man paced along its front, while the lengthened shadow of another sentinel in the rear was every half-minute thrown far into the street, in confirmation of the watchfulness that was kept over those who dwelt within.
“Proceed,” said Ralph, throwing open the outer-door, without hesitation. Cecil complied, but started at encountering another man, trailing a musket, as he paced the narrow passage that received her. Between this sentinel and Ralph, there seemed to exist a good understanding, for the latter addressed him with perfect freedom—
“Has no order been yet received from Washington?” he asked.
“None; and I rather conclude by the delay, that nothing very favourable is to be expected.”
The old man muttered to himself, but passed on, and throwing open another door, said
“Enter.”
Again Cecil complied, the door closing on her at the instant; but before she had time to express either her wonder or her alarm, she was folded in the arms of her husband.
* It has been said, that of all the historical characters, in the book, this of Lee is the only one well touched. The author answers, that when there was character he endeavoured to delineate it, and that when there was none, he believed it wisest not to invent. [1832]