Chapter SixteenHANGING AND WIVING
“Doyou feel afraid now we’re really here?” asked Kitty. She put her hand to Gerald Malory’s sleeve with a light, possessive touch and looked up into his face anxiously. Gerry smiled down at her.
He still wore his country clothes and a bandage round his head, but the healthy color was coming back into his face now. She had tended him for a week at the field hospital below Medford Bridge, and for a week after that he had been able to go walking with her in the sunshine every afternoon. She and Sally Rose slept at the house of Mrs. Fulton who directed the hospital. But Sally Rose was making new friends, and spent less and less time among the wounded men, even though Gerry himself was there.
“Not half so afraid as I was that night we went back to Charlestown to dig up the silver,” Gerry said.
They stood in the highroad in front of the old Royall House where Colonel Stark had his headquarters. In a few moments they would go in. Gerry would confess that he was not a New Hampshire man who had got knocked on the head at the rail fence and couldn’t remember what company hecame from. He would admit that he was Gerald Malory of the Twenty-third. But they would not go in just yet. It was a soft summer night with the fragrance of garden flowers in the air. He drew her down beside him on the low brick wall.
“What were you afraid of that night?” she asked him. “When we went to The Sign of the Sun to get a pass from the British major so we could go into town, I thought he seemed like a very kind man.”
Gerry grinned down at her. “He was kind to you, certainly. From the look in his eye, he’d have given you Boston Common and Long Wharf too, if you’d asked for them. You’ve a way with us menfolk, Kitty.”
Kitty let her long lashes fall across her cheek, then she looked up at him suddenly and smiled. “Do you know, it’s the strangest thing, I do seem to have a way with them lately. But before I knew you, I never had any way with them at all.”
He cleared his throat and looked away from her. “Yes, you’re blooming out, my girl,” he said.
Kitty sighed happily. “Oh I do hope so! For so many years nobody noticed me at all beside Sally Rose.”
“Ah, Sally Rose!” he muttered. “Honestly, I feel guilty there. How am I ever going to tell her that I—that I—have taken a fancy to you, Kitty?”
“Is a fancy all you’ve taken?”
“A deep down kind of fancy.”
“Oh!” She was silent for a moment, and then she said, “If you feel guilty about Sally Rose, how do you think I feel about Tom Trask, the New Hampshire boy? How am I going to tell him I’ve taken a fancy to you?”
He did not answer, and after a moment she repeated her earlier question. “What were you afraid of when we went to Charlestown that night? It was sad, really, but I didn’t see any reason to be afraid.”
She remembered the forlorn look of the town, its cellar holes still smoking, only a few old houses left near the millpond, the moss on the gravestones scorched away. But they had found and brought back the silverware.
“I was afraid I might be recognized and sent to rejoin my regiment. You know I don’t want that to happen to me, Kitty.”
Kitty slipped out of his encircling arm and jumped to her feet. “I know,” she said. “That’s why I coaxed you to come and tell the whole thing to Colonel Stark. If he says you can stay here and be an American, then you’ll have no more cause to be afraid.”
“Suppose he says I’m a deserter and an enemy, and ought to be hanged on Cambridge Common? He may even think I’m a spy, Kitty.”
He stood up and held out both his hands. “I don’t think he’ll do that,” said Kitty slowly. “Colonel Stark ought to understand any man who wants to be an American. You can’t go on pretending always—always being afraid.”
They heard a throat cleared sharply on the other side of the low wall.
“Don’t you young folks have any other place to do your courting?” asked Colonel Stark.
Gerry turned quickly round, and Kitty drew a deep breath.
“We—we were on our way to consult you, Colonel—about a small matter.”
Colonel Stark inclined his head. “Come inside then,” he ordered. “I trust the young woman has no complaint against you.”
“Oh no!” cried Kitty in embarrassment and alarm.
The three of them walked together up the broad graveled path between the boxwood hedges, and in at the wide front door. Kitty had heard much about Isaac Royall, the owner of the house, a rich Tory who had fled to Boston, but she wasnot prepared for the carved elegance and panelled wainscot of the great hall. She had never before seen a room like the white and gold parlor where Colonel Stark seated them. It reassured her a little to see his somewhat battered musket leaning against the rosewood desk, a cartridge box flung down on a brocade chair.
“O’erlook the disorder if you will,” he said, picking up the cartridge box. “I been at Cambridge all day, and Molly’s housemaids are forbidden to meddle with my field equipment. Well, lad,” and he turned to Gerry, his mouth severe, but a twinkle in his cold blue eye. “You say you come here to see me about some matter.”
“Yes sir,” said Gerry, clenching his fists and leaning forward. “Colonel Stark, sir, I been abed in your field hospital ever since the battle at Charlestown. I said to all that I came from New Hampshire, but since I was wounded I couldn’t remember my town or the name of my captain. I told a lie, sir. I am Gerald Malory of the Twenty-third.”
“I know it,” said Stark quietly. The twinkle in his eye deepened.
“You—you know it? How?”
“Haven’t forgotten you was our prisoner after the Ipswich Fright, have you? I won’t question you about the Fright too much. That’s water under the bridge. Might have enjoyed it myself, when I was a lad.”
Gerry hung his head, and the Colonel went on. “You was recognized by more’n a dozen men when we carted you back from the Hill.”
“Then—why?”
“Why didn’t we clap you back in gaol again? Well, maybe we should have. I decided instead to have you watched. I wanted to find out your game.”
“I haven’t any game,” said Gerry miserably.
“So it was beginning to seem,” agreed Stark. “What are you? Tired of fighting? A deserter?”
“I—I suppose so,” said Gerry. “I never meant to be a soldier. But after I got in trouble at home, it seemed the best way.”
Stark cleared his throat. “You got a father?” he asked.
“A father? Yes, sir.”
“At home in England?”
“Yes.”
“How do you think he’d feel if he knew you was behaving so?”
“I don’t believe he’d care,” said Gerry. “After my mother died, he took a young wife and has other sons. New one every year. ’Twas getting so there was no room at home for me.”
Gradually, under the Colonel’s shrewd questioning, Gerry Malory’s whole story came clear. Kitty had heard much of it before, but not all. He told about his mother, the strolling player; how after her death he had left grammar school, and ranged with a wild group of friends about the farms and the town. Then he was taken up for poaching in the squire’s woodland—caught the first unlucky time he set a bit of a rabbit snare. And the recruiting sergeant came by in the thick of the trouble, and there you were. No, he wasn’t a captain and never had been. He never thought pretending to be one was a dishonest trick, since he never gained thereby. He thought it was like taking a part in a play, and better to choose a leading part. He wasn’t even twenty years old, as he had said; wouldn’t be eighteen till next December came.
Stark pondered. “All that I can see,” he murmured. “I been a lad myself, though, thank God, none such a foolhardy one. But after the battle—what did you do with the boots you wore when they brought you in, the boots that went with your British uniform?”
“My boots?” asked Gerry. He looked down at his feet.He was wearing a pair of cowhide shoes Kitty had bought for him at a shop in Medford Square. “Why, I don’t know what became of my boots.”
“I hid them,” said Kitty defiantly. “I was afraid—if the doctors thought he was British—they’d just let him die. I pulled them off, and took them outside, and threw them down the well.”
Colonel Stark slapped his knee and laughed with a quiet, wry kind of mirth. “So I suppose from now on the water at The Sign of the Sun will taste o’ British leather,” he said. Then he turned to Gerry. “Well, a spirited lass is none so bad to have for a wife. I got one myself. Do you mean to marry her for her kindness to you—if you don’t have to hang, of course?”
“Not for her kindness,” said Gerry Malory firmly, his eyes lighting. “I mean to marry her—well, because I mean to marry her.”
“Well enough said,” agreed the colonel. “But I mentioned the other, the hanging matter. Can you think of any reason against it?”
A tragic look came over Gerry’s face, and his voice took on a deep vibrant note of pleading. It seemed to Kitty that she could see and hear his actress mother there.
“You wouldn’t hang a man for a mistake, would you, Colonel? A mistake that was made a hundred and fifty years ago?” He paused and shut his eyes dramatically.
Colonel Stark gave Kitty a slow, solemn wink, and she knew that he was thinking of the actress mother, too.
“What was the mistake, lad,” he demanded, “and who made it? You weren’t making mistakes a hundred and fifty years ago. Yours were all ahead of you then.”
“It was an old ancestor of mine, sir, who went down to the docks in Plymouth and thought to sail with the folk who came here to found your own Plymouth Colony. He thoughthe would come with them and be an American, but he changed his mind and went back to Barnstaple, and the family’s been there ever since. That was the mistake he made. If it hadn’t been for him—I might ha’ been fighting on your side in this war.”
Colonel Stark gazed sharply at the young man and saw what Kitty hoped he would see: that for all the pretentious manner, the words were true. Then he turned away for a moment and stared through the window where the moonlight was turning white flowered stalks to silver in the garden.
“My folks didn’t make that mistake,” he said abruptly. “They come here on a ship, like all the rest of us, except those who be Injun bred. Come out o’ Scotland, my folks. Had five young ones die on the voyage, and raised another five to replace ’em. Yes, your ancestor made a mistake, lad. But how do you think to right it? Peace time, you could come here like other Englishmen always did, and settle down and be one of us. But not now, now that we be at war.”
“Couldn’t I, Colonel? That was what I was hoping for. It’s not that I’m afraid of fighting. But I don’t want to fight against you. And I can’t fight against my own.”
“And what would you do, Private Malory, if I said, ‘Go to! Clear out of my camp and make your way as best you can?’”
Gerry’s face lit up, and there was no play-acting about him this time. “Why, I’d thought about that, Colonel. Do you know what I’d do? I sailed from Plymouth myself, for my regiment took ship there, so for old times’ sake, I’d take the highroad and go down to your Plymouth in Massachusetts, and see if I could make my way there and settle in, and become a Plymouth man.”
“We got a Plymouth in New Hampshire,” said Stark thoughtfully. “I don’t know whether all the land be taken there or no.” Then the lines in his face hardened.
“I got the power tonight to send you on your way,” he said. “Tomorrow, I may be plain Johnny Stark, headed back to the sawmill again. We got a new commander coming up from the South to take over the whole army. Name o’ Washington. A Virginia man. Can’t tell what he’ll do.”
On that July night the name of Washington meant nothing to Kitty Greenleaf and Gerald Malory.
“Then let me go, Colonel Stark. Let me go tonight,” Gerry pleaded.
The colonel looked down at the rich woven rug on the floor. His eyes seemed to be tracing the scrollwork pattern. Then he turned to Gerry again. “There’s only one thing still bothers me, Private Malory,” he said. “I believe you when you say you’d like to be an American, and settle down in America and make your way there, and do no harm to anyone. I commend you for it. But how do you feel toward your own people? Don’t you believe in Parliament and the King?”
“I believe in them—over there,” said Gerry slowly. “But not over here. They rule fine in England, it seems to me. But in America—the way I’ve come to see America—they don’t know what they’re doing at all.”
Stark’s grin told Kitty that he had heard the answer he wanted to hear, but he had one more word of caution. “Remember, you been knocked in the head, lad. Are you sure you know what you’re about? That you won’t wake up in a daze some morning and wish you was back with the Twenty-third?”
“No,” said Gerry. “I won’t wish myself back.”
Stark got to his feet. “Might happen,” he said mildly, “if you was to slip out of camp long about midnight, sentry would be looking the other way.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Gerry fervently.
“Thank me in ten years,” said Stark, “if you still want to then. It’s a crazy venture, and we can’t tell how it’ll turn out.But if it’s what you want, get on with it. They say hanging and wiving goes by destiny. And I guess you’re lucky in both o’ them matters, lad.”
He led them toward the front door, and as they passed by a small parlor opening off the hall, Kitty caught sight of a couple inside it. They sat on a peacock-colored sofa, locked in a deep embrace. Startled at the sound of footsteps, they drew apart. Stark shot a quick look in their direction and grinned widely. “No harm in it,” he said, “they’re a betrothed pair.” He would have kept on down the hall, but Kitty stood still, gasping.
The man on the blue sofa was Tom Trask, and the girl was a stranger to her; small and delicately formed, with a beautiful cameo face and shining red hair. Under their scrutiny Tom stood up. Some men would have been embarrassed, but not he. He scooped the girl to her feet and led her forward.
“Well,” he greeted them, “so it’s Kit herself, andPrivateMalory. I’d like you to meet Jeanie Morrison.” He looked down at the red-haired girl, and there was a tender merriment in his eye.
“I kissed with all the girls some,” he continued. “But I always knew I’d marry Jean.”
“Listen to the man!” trilled Jeanie. She gave him an enchanting smile that showed a dimple in her cheek.
“Jeanie come down from Derryfield with my wife a few days back,” explained the colonel, sensing some tension in the air he could not understand. “She came to see Tom and bring him his gun. A Brown Bess, British made, one of the best guns in the army.”
“Aye,” said Tom mockingly. “I got my own gun. You can have your blunderbuss back, Kitty. I’ll bring it to the hospital tomorrow.”
“Don’t bother,” said Kitty, but Gerry’s eyes lighted.
“Is there any way we could get it tonight?” he asked.
Kitty knew what he was thinking, and she saw the rightness of it. He meant to go to Plymouth, armed with the Plymouth blunderbuss.
Tom shrugged, “If you want it that bad,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I brought it with me. You’ll find it standing among the lilacs to the right of the front door.”
After they had retrieved the old weapon and taken their leave of Colonel Stark, they walked quietly through the streets of Medford hand in hand.
Kitty should have been relieved that she would have no painful scene with Tom, but she could not help feeling rueful at the knowledge that he had preferred red-haired Jeanie all the time.
“You’re lucky,” Gerry assured her. “I wish—I wish I could get out of it so easy with Sally Rose.”
He kissed her on the steps of the Fulton house.
“I don’t know when I’ll be back, Kitty,” he said. “It may take me a long time to make my own way. And you—now your grandmother’s dead, where will you go?”
“I think I’ll go back to her old house and wait till you come for me. You’ve never been to Newburyport, but you can find the way. You’ll be gone tomorrow, and I’m going to Cambridge and get old Timothy and take him home.”
“Will Sally Rose go with you?” he asked.
“What do you think?” said Kitty. “Look there!” She pointed to the parlor window just to the left of the front door.
Sally Rose was standing inside the parlor. She was smiling up into the eyes of a tall young captain who wore the blue and white of the Connecticut line. She let her lashes veil her eyes and opened her pretty lips. “We’ve none such handsome lads in Massachusetts—” she said.
Gerry Malory swallowed. Then he began to laugh.“Where, oh where,” he exclaimed, “have I heard those words before?”
After he had left her, Kitty slipped into the house and up to the little chamber that she shared with Sally Rose. She went to the window and stood there, looking at the still town, and the moonlit river, the campfires on Winter Hill, the lights of the warships far down the dim bay.
Less than three months back, it was, that they had all played hide-and-seek in Newburyport, but they would never play hide-and-seek again. Never again would they be that young.
Even she and Sally Rose, Gran had said, would be great-grandmothers some day. How glad she was that Gran had had that last cup of tea.
She turned from the window and began to undress, laughing as she remembered the struggle to get Sally Rose out of the stays. Never again, she thought, would they be as young as that.
She was just climbing into bed when Sally Rose opened the chamber door.
“Kitty,” she said, “there’s going to be handsome men in uniform about for ages. Captain Davenport was just telling me that he expects a long war. He says that since Bunker Hill, the word’s been in everybody’s mouth that we’re going to live free or die—and that will take a long time.”
“Live free or die? What does that mean?” asked Kitty, bewildered.
“Well, I don’t understand it myself,” said Sally Rose, taking the ribbon out of her curls, “but I have an idea of one man who might know. I think you’ll be likely to find out if you go and speak to Tom Trask.”
Kitty lay in the wide bed and watched her cousin slip out of her dainty garments and fling them carelessly across a chair. Yes, she thought, there was, after all, some sort of unconsciouswisdom about the pretty featherbrain. Hanging and wiving goes by destiny, Colonel Stark had said, and she had known that Gerry was her destiny, almost from the day she had seen him first from the door of the Bay and Beagle as he marched past with the prisoners’ cart. And she would not have it otherwise, for she loved Gerry. He would be as good an American as most others, some day. He had many virtues, and she would rejoice and be proud of them all her life, most likely. But when it came to a matter of living free, Sally Rose was right. Tom Trask was the man who would know.