Milady at Arms/Chapter 6
SALLY could not be sure she had seen Master Todd, however, and, even as she stared, the space increased between ship and dock, so that, all too soon only the flaunting red of the soldiers' uniforms could be distinguished; and then even the color of the uniforms merged into the background, and Sally, sighing, turned away.
But, in spite of herself, her spirits rose as the small schooner, propelled by a friendly breeze, slipped through green water. She cried out in delight at the picture the wooded hills of Staten Island made in the clear morning light, at the lovely New Jersey shore, at the white sea gulls wheeling and circling overhead. It was enough to be young, after all, thought the girl exultantly! What matter how dreary the past, how dark and foreboding the future. Here she was with the salt tang of the sea blowing to her nostrils, a little caressing wind lifting the curls upon her neck!
Master Crane busied himself sullenly about the deck of his boat and did not come near Sally at all through the trip. When they were made fast at the Newark dock in the early afternoon, he merely nodded to her to go ashore, which she was glad enough to do. Toryism and cruelty were too closely associated in her mind for her not to have been upon her guard all morning.
Hungry and tired, she tramped slowly up the lane from the river, and sometime later she was peering in at the kitchen door of the Rising Sun Tavern.
Mistress Banks, the host's wife, was in charge of the many pots and kettles swung upon a huge crane in the great fireplace, and an odor of cooking onions and roasting meat greeted the newcomer as she paused shyly. Mistress Banks gave a nervous start at sight of the girl's shadow thrown suddenly across the sanded floor; but her face cleared at actual sight of Sally.
"Why, come ye in, my dear," she bade Sally kindly, "Mind the meat, Sam!" She turned to the little Negro boy, who bent to his task of turning the spit before the fire, after staring at Sally. "Hast but come to Newark?" went on the tavern hostess with an inquiring look. "Martha!" she lifted her voice imperatively. "Art ever returning to the kitchen? I cannot attend these pots forever!"
A buxom Negro woman came waddling in from the tap room in answer. "Ah was jes' servin' Captain Camp," she explained, giggling. "I done heah him tell some othah men dat His Excellency had give him a cannon to 'fend Newark wi' when de red-coats make their 'tack again. No mo' bein' unprepared like day befo' yestiddy! Captain Camp done told 'em a girl was carried off to New Yawk Town, too, by de red-coats. Ain't that dreadful! You, Sam, tend to yo' bizness—you heah me?—else dat meat ain't goin' tas' lak nuffin at all!" And she turned upon her son, who had been staring up at her pop-eyed, with a threatening elbow.
"Never mind Sam," bade her mistress impatiently. "Come ye here to the fire and attend to your own business, Martha! Now, Sally, let us go out and cool off!" Sighing, Mistress Banks led the way to a bench outside the kitchen door, and, seating herself there, patted it invitingly. "Sit down and tell me news o' my good friend, Molly Todd! Long hath it been since I saw her! One would think we were forty i'stead o' four miles from the Mountain! But what news o' all the settlement? Have the British raids extended inland at all? And how be Samuel Todd and little Mary and the baby?" Her torrent of questions ceasing, Mistress Banks fixed inquiring eyes upon Sally's face.
"Indeed," the girl burst out, seating herself upon the edge of the bench, "I was going to ask ye!"
The older woman stared. "What mean ye?"
"I mean that I am that girl Martha did but now tell ye of! For, the other day, when the red-coats came to Newark, they did take me back wi' them to New York Town on a trumped-up charge, where I was confined in the New Gaol and afterward sentenced to the Long Room for a few months," Sally told her, nervously bursting into tears.
"The Long Room!" echoed Mistress Banks in a horrified voice. She glanced around her uneasily, almost as though she were afraid that the red-coats might return and seize her, too. She also had heard tales of the Long Room, not too pleasant! "Heaven help ye, Sally!" she exclaimed fervently. "Nay, but do not weep, lass! Ye be safe now!"
"Aye," nodded the girl, smiling through her tears. She wiped them away with a corner of her kerchief. "I do not know why I weep, now," she confessed. "'Tis silly o' me, indeed—but—but, oh, it was most dreadful!" Sally shuddered again. "Like a bad dream. Mistress Banks! 'Twas Marshal Cunningham who sentenced me!"
"Not the one who was so cruel to that poor lad, Nathan Hale?" ejaculated the tavern hostess. "Nay, I cannot blame ye for feeling overwrought, e'en now, my dear! But tell me about it!"
"'Twas General Howe who finally ordered me set free," said Sally. But now that she had an opportunity to tell of her adventures, she found herself too tired to do so. She soon fell into silence and Mistress Banks, surmising her hunger, called to Martha to bring out some bread and cold meat.
"I was going to make ye wait for supper, which will soon be ready," said the lady, smiling, "but I fear for the consequences an I do! However, do not eat overly much, Sally, for you roast doth smell good to my nostrils."
"'Tis not lamb, is it?" asked Sally, munching.
Mistress Banks shook her head quickly. "Nay," she answered reproachfully. "Ye know the committee hath forbidden any lamb to be used—or mutton! The wool is too badly needed for our soldiers. I' truth, there be a heavy fine for any caught and convicted o' cooking lamb, e'en though the lamb be their own!"
"That is right and as it should be," answered Sally decidedly, shaking the crumbs from her lap. "For it seems not too much to ask, when our men i' the army e'en give up more than that!"
"Aye," agreed Mistress Banks, sighing. "Yet, methinks nothing can quite take the place o' roast lamb, wi' a smart mint sauce!" And the good lady sighed again.
Sally smiled. "Do ye know o' anyone returning this day to the Mountain?" she asked abruptly, changing the subject, for food, to Sally, as yet, was merely something with which one satisfied hunger and nothing to rhapsodize over.
Mistress Banks nodded briskly. "Aye," she answered. "Uzal Ball hath been i' town. I be sure he returns to the Mountain this very afternoon. He sent word by Master Banks that he would be here for supper, Sally, so ye can go home wi' him."
"I came wi' Uzal," said Sally, "but I thought he would have returned ere this!"
"He did not get through his mother's business, he said last even. Odds crow," Mistress Banks sighed enviously, "I wish I were as well fixed as the Widow Ball at the Mountain on the ridge road! Her house and her lands and her sons! Oh, well!"
"Did—did Uzal say aught concerning the prisoner he brought wi' him to the authorities here?" asked Sally in a hesitant voice.
"A young red-coat."
"Aye."
"Why, he did escape! He was to ha' been lodged here in the jail and held till the New Jersey Council o' Safety met i' Morris Town later, when he was to ha' been removed thence. But he did escape," answered Mistress Banks comfortably. "But there be Uzal Ball, now! Let us go to meet him. Hi, hi! Ooh-hoo! Uzal!" Waving her hand in friendly greeting. Mistress Banks got to her feet and went to meet the young man coming up the slight eminence the tavern was placed upon.
Sally, following more slowly, turned her face and pretended to be looking beyond the inn at the Passaic River which was visible from the Rising Sun Tavern. She was more loath to meet Uzal than she cared to admit; for, though Jerry's escape and her own kidnaping was no fault of hers, she did not know how he might regard it. Mistress Banks prepared the way, however, by pouring out Sally's recent experience in a pitying voice, so that, when the girl arrived near enough to make her curtsey, he bowed gravely and commiserated with her.
"'Tis too bad ye have had such a misadventure, Sally," he said slowly. "I was surprised, of a truth, to find ye gone when I returned to the town center the other day after chasing that—renegade!" Uzal's face darkened. There was a slight pause. "Deacon Alling saw ye taken by the red-coats and told me o't," he went on stiffly. "It seems to me," the young man looked at her half smilingly, then half accusingly, "it be ever your fortune of late—or misfortune—to be i' the midst o' any excitement offered hereabouts."
"But I be tired o't, believe me or not, Uzal," protested the girl wearily. "I long for peace! Oh, will this war ever cease!" Yet, in her heart of hearts, Sally knew that she would not want the old monotony again, having once tasted the heady excitement of life as presented by 1777.
Sally's nose, upon her first entering the inn kitchen that afternoon, had not played her false, as was attested by the excellent supper she and Uzal and the host, James Banks, enjoyed later in a corner of the big room with Mistress Banks. The latter, a droll twinkle in her eyes, kept heaping the girl's trencher with food, until Sally had to cry for mercy, and even Uzal became jovial, for him, and protested that they might as well call it a feast day and be done with it.
Soon afterward, Uzal procured a horse for her to take the place of old Dot and they set forth upon their return journey to the Mountain.
"Tell Molly Todd my latchstring hangs out for her—'tis long since she and the children were here!" called out Mistress Banks, waving a cordial farewell to them from the doorway.
Trotting up hill and down dale, through woodland and past swamp, toward the setting sun, Sally was glad enough of Uzal's company as the dusk came, with its frightening suggestion of highwaymen and lurking red-coats and Tories. When at last they reached the Todd gate, she looked up at him with grateful eyes as she slipped off her horse.
"Ye ha' been good to me, Uzal," she said, really sincere in her thanks. "Will ye not come in?"
"Aye, for a moment, to see that all goes well here," answered the young man, glancing at the pretty face beneath the straying auburn curls, for Sally had loosened her bonnet strings and allowed it to fall back upon her shoulder, to gain coolness. The girl, looking back at him, turned away self-consciously, for she was not used to admiration; and now Uzal, securing the two horses and following her up through the garden to the kitchen door, liked her all the better for the half-shy, absolute artlessness of her manner and the lovely childhood which was still Sally's greatest charm.
It was rather a shock to the young man, therefore, to enter the Todd kitchen and walk full upon a bitter scene of violent upbraidings and reproaches with which Mistress Todd, lying helpless upon the settle, was assailing the girl. Sally, who was made for love and kindness, to have to listen to this!
"Ye gallivantin' hussy—wi' me lying bound here to this settle wi' my foot and no one to care for the children! Ye shall rue this day, indeed, and"
"One moment, mistress, I prithee!" Uzal's grave voice broke unexpectedly into the dame's furious tirade. Mistress Todd, who had not seen him enter behind her little bond maid, started and then blushed. "One moment!" repeated Uzal. "Art aware that Sally, here, was kidnaped by the red-coats i' the Town by the River and taken to New York and there confined in the New Gaol?"
Sally, who had been standing silent and overwhelmed since her entrance, raised grateful eyes to his; but Uzal kept his gaze sternly upon Mistress Todd, for he had been rudely amazed by that lady's outbreak. Suddenly, however, to his terrible embarrassment, overcome by her chagrin and mortification, as well as by the real anxiety she had undergone, she burst into tears.
"Nay," she sobbed. "But—but—I d-do be aware o' the fact that—that Samuel hath been taken by a band o' Tories who came from Elizabeth Town, and that I have been lying here, helpless and alone, since last night, wi' only little Mary to care for me and the baby!"
"Is't true, indeed!"
"Master Todd taken!"
The two exclamations blended in shocked surprise. Then Sally added slowly, "It was Master Todd I saw being marched away between the red-coats upon the New York dock!"
Both Uzal and Mistress Todd turned to the girl in excitement, the latter wiping her eyes and sighing. "In New York Town!" The wife paled. "Ah, that means the Sugar House prison or worse, one o' their horrible, vile prison ships! Oh, Samuel! Samuel! I may never see thee again!" And once more she buried her face in her hands.
Uzal turned to her masterfully. "Nay, ye must not worry!" he advised. "We shall soon have Master Todd restored to our community!"
"I do hope so, Uzal!" Encouraged, Mistress Todd wiped her eyes again.
"Well, I will put the horse away i' the barn for the night and stop for him the next time I go to town," said Uzal after a silence.
"What mean ye?" Mistress Todd looked at him, astonished. "The horse?" She shifted her glance to Sally's face and found confusion registered there. "Where is old Dot?" she asked sharply.
Sally returned her gaze steadily. "Old Dot was killed by the red-coats," she answered.
Mistress Todd's mouth narrowed into a thin, bitter line. "Always," she observed in a furious, trembling voice, "ye seem to bring trouble to me! I wish I had never seen ye, wretched maid!"
There was a tense silence, during which Sally's young face whitened until Uzal was really concerned at her pallor. She remained still, however, and he was forced to admire the girl's self-control. "Good blood doth somehow run i' the maid's veins," he thought involuntarily. "No fishwife or barmaid could e'er ha' mothered or grandmothered her!" Aloud he said, with an aspect of haste: "Mistress Todd, had we not better decide what ye must do? Surely ye cannot plan to remain here upon the farm, helpless as ye are!"
Mistress Todd looked at him, diverted at once. "I do not know what to do," she admitted. "Were I sure Samuel would not long be detained"
Uzal shook his head. "'Tis better not to plan upon the event of an early release for Master Todd. Rather plan otherwise and then be happily disappointed," he interrupted. "What say ye to a visit wi' Mistress Banks at the Rising Sun Tavern i' Newark? When we left, she sent a most cordial invitation to ye by us."
"The very thing!" Mistress Todd brightened.
"I will stop, an ye wish, for ye on the morrow, then," continued Uzal. "And we can make such arrangements as ye care to about the farm, here. Mayhap run it on shares, or as ye decide—for the term o' Master Todd's absence. 'Tis a pity to waste all his good planting for lack o' care. I be sure my mother would wish David and me to help a neighbor thus."
"That would do nicely, Uzal, and thank ye, indeed. I will be ready on the morrow, also," responded Mistress Todd.
Uzal glanced questioningly at Sally. "And" He paused, embarrassed.
Mistress Todd, whose eyes had followed shrewdly his glance, spoke with instant sharpness: "Indeed, I will not bother Mistress Banks by taking Sally! The maid will have to shift for herself awhile. She seems," the lady sneered, "to be well able to do this!"
Uzal turned to Sally. "Would ye like to come and visit my mother for a while, wi' Mistress Todd's permission?" he asked simply.
Sally could not speak. She merely raised brimming eyes to his and nodded, and so the matter was settled.
The next morning, as he had promised, Uzal drew up before the Todd farmhouse with his cart and horses. In the bustle of getting the children ready and the little cowhide trunk packed, Sallyhad no time to think of herself. Many times she flew back and forth between cart and house; and at last the travelers were ready. When Uzal carried Mistress Todd out and placed her in a chair he had arranged in the back of the cart, Sally followed with the baby and, kissing him tenderly, put him in his mother's waiting arms. Then she hugged little Mary and swung her up into the straw-covered bottom of the cart.
"Good-bye, mistress," she said hesitatingly to the children's mother.
Mistress Todd nodded briefly. "Farewell to ye," she said in a cold voice.
Sally, left alone, flew about her task of "straightening up," trying to forget the little deserted feeling she had, the feeling of having been cast adrift in merciless fashion, without thought or care of her uncertain future. "The maid will have to shift for herself!" kept recurring to her, keeping miserable rhythm to the swing of her broom, to the swish of her dustcloth, to the ticking of the old clock in the corner. "How could she?" wondered Sally passionately. "Could she not ha' imagined little Mary i' my place! Oh, my mother, are ye not somewhere i' this great world? Are ye not wondering about me? Be there not somebody who cares?" And poor Sally wept some very bitter tears into the kettle she was scouring. But it did no good to weep, as Sally, glancing at the waning sunlight, discovered. It only delayed and lengthened household tasks which had to be accomplished before she, too, could depart. So she wiped her eyes determinedly and pushed back her curls and presently a thrush, singing in a lilac bush near the kitchen door, heard his song echoed inside—waveringly, at first, then with gathering courage and determined joyfulness, and at last the hurt was washed from the young girl's heart with melody.
It had been arranged that Sally was to walk to the Widow Ball's house, a distance of a mile or two beyond the Todd farm, in the direction of Millburn village. Thus it was toward the south that Sally turned her face when, leaving a house clean and sweet-smelling behind her, she stepped out and locked the kitchen door behind her, hiding the enormous key beneath a flat stone by the well—toward the south and along a lane quiet with sun-flecked shadows and fragrant from the wild honey-suckle that grew along the road edge.
Approaching the Widow Ball's place, Sally looked curiously at the old stone house which had been finished in 1743, after much time and labor spent in preparing the stone, while the owners, Timothy and Esther Ball, lived in a log cabin on adjoining property. Now the date, 1743, with the initials "T & E" over it, was inscribed upon a stone in the front chimney above the peak of the roof.
Mistress Esther Ball, a fine-looking woman a little past middle age, was seated upon the two-storied roofed porch when Sally, passing beneath the shade of the great walnut tree that stood between the road and the house, came up the sloping lawn toward her.
"Welcome, my child," she said in a full, gracious voice, rising to take the girl's heavy reticule from her and leading her into the shade of the porch. Sally was about to reply when a young man, about twenty-one years old, came strolling out the kitchen door, whereupon she turned red and shy, for she did not know David Ball as well as his brother.
"Ah, David," said his mother, smiling at the girl's ill-concealed confusion and thinking how pretty she was, with the flush in her cheeks and the thick curls framing her face. "Ye be just in time! Wilt take Sally's bag up to my chamber? Then she can sit down here wi' me on the porch and rest after her long, hot walk. I did not know," she turned kindly to the girl, "I did not know David was to be at leisure this noon, else I would have had him ride to fetch ye."
"Nay, I liked the walk," laughed Sally, more comfortable now that David's merry black eyes were gone, for she had heard of his propensities for teasing and had viewed with alarm his unexpected appearance. "What a marvelous nice place this be," ventured the girl, with shy admiration.
Mistress Ball smiled pleasedly, then sighed. "Indeed, Timothy and I thought so, when first we built upon this spot. That was long ago, when the Mountain was wild, indeed, and friendly Indians used to come to our door." She sank into her porch chair and gazed out reminiscently over the lovely scene.
"Ah, tell me!" begged Sally. And the rest of the afternoon was spent upon the wide porch, with the fingers of both hostess and young guest busy with knitting needles, while story after story was told to eager Sally—the story of pioneer life upon this distant Mountain plantation, the story of fighting against wild beasts and rigorous winters and, most exciting of all, the story of the cyclone which had swept the valley below the First Mountain on June 22, 1756.
"Twenty-one years ago!" exclaimed Sally, in an awed voice.
"Twenty-one years ago," nodded Mistress Ball, "but remembered still as the worst storm we ha' ever had. It came about four o'clock i' the afternoon—folk thought it was a thunder shower, as was to be expected wi' the heat and the season. But it was wind—coming from the southwest to leave a trail of destruction behind it. Houses and barns were flung about or carried a long distance, as though they had been chips. I mind Samuel Plerson's barn and mill house and the barn o' Justice Crane, as well as a new house built by Master Dodd and two widows named Ward—all destroyed!"
Sally, glancing out across the peaceful lawn, tried to visualize the scene of loss and horror, gave it up with a shake of her head. But after a while, glancing down the road again, she uttered an interested exclamation and leaned forward in her chair.
"Yonder come horsemen!" she said wonderingly. "Who think ye they be?"
Mistress Ball adjusted the steel spectacles upon her nose. "Nay," she answered uncertainly, "I cannot see that far. I know not who they be, unless 'tis Uzal and a friend, returning quicker than 'twould seem possible from the Town by the River."
Suddenly, Sally, who had kept her eyes glued upon the approaching riders, whirled around. "They wear uniforms!" she cried. "'Tis the buff and blue o' His Excellency's soldiers!"
But now Mistress Ball could recognize the horsemen. She rose to her feet with a gasp. "Ye speak truly, little maid!" she said, with a thrill in her voice. "It be His Excellency, himself!" And with queenlike dignity she advanced with an air of gracious welcome to the edge of the porch.
Sally, following, glanced at Mistress Ball's calm face and wondered how she could be so composed. She, herself, fairly trembled from excitement and amazement, standing there watching the tall figure of the American commander in chief dismount and advance toward them, leaving the younger, shorter man who was with him to secure their horses to the great walnut tree.
"How now, Cousin!" greeted General Washington. ("Cousin!" thought Sally with a mental gasp.) "Colonel Hamilton nor I could pass without stopping to pay our respects!" Gravely, he bent over Mistress Ball's extended hand, as she curtseyed to him.
Sally, curtseying, too, agitatedly backed toward the porch bench, found to her confusion that that was where His Excellency was about to seat himself, backed to another chair and discovered that Colonel Hamilton had selected that! Then, looking wildly around, she was about to fly into the house, overcome by confusion, when she heard Mistress Ball's sweet voice call her.
"Sally! Will ye not seat yourselves," smilingly, "and let Sally, here, bring ye some buttermilk, gentlemen."
This considerate dismissal touched the girl's heart, sore from humiliation at her own awkwardness. Seldom, indeed, had such gentleness been shown her! She shuddered to think what would have been Mistress Todd's look and manner upon like occasion! So that, when she emerged a little later, with the scarlet faded from her round cheeks and the humiliation from her heart, Sally looked at her hostess with passionate gratitude over the tray she carried and felt that she could have died to serve her—instead of merely dispensing buttermilk to her guests!
Colonel Hamilton turned eagerly to accept the silver flagon of cool liquid which Sally handed him. He rose, then, with punctilious politeness until the girl, overcome anew by such deference, retired bashfully once more to the kitchen, where she might watch the famous men in peace through the door crack.
Rachel, Mistress Ball's daughter, was studying the larder supplies with anxious eyes, planning for supper, with Sally suggesting and reassuring, when Uzal, returned from the Town by the River, entered the kitchen an hour later.
"Plan your meal to be served up in the parlor, Ray," he said, with a nod toward the short flight of stairs which led to apartments above. "We are about to bring His Excellency's horse into the kitchen for hiding so that in case of alarm he will be safe."
It was while she was crouching over the fire, then, attending to the simmering pots, that Sally heard an odd noise, a crunching, munching sort of sound. She looked up curiously, to behold His Excellency's horse impolitely chewing off mouthfuls of the Widow Ball's wooden window ledge! She stifled a laugh and said nothing, although Colonel Hamilton and David kept glancing at her merry eyes as though they longed to ask the cause and share her mirth, all through supper.
They were seated comfortably around the candlelit table when David, who had gone outside to stand guard, burst into the parlor. "Fly!" he gasped. "The Tories! They ha' heard o' His Excellency's presence here! Young Zenas Williams, who heard his brother James plot wi' the Tories, but now hath arrived. He doth say that James be leading them hither on the ridge road from the settlement!"
Swiftly General Washington bowed over the Widow Ball's hand and was gone. There was a clatter of hoofs from the kitchen below, a low command, and then a dark figure issuing from the door near the chimney leaped upon another dark form and was off.
"Not this night, James Williams, do ye capture the hope o' these United Colonies!" exclaimed David exultantly, when Colonel Hamilton, bidding them adieu, had hastily followed his chief and had galloped off toward the village of Millburn and on to Morris Town. "'Twill take more than a youth o' your ilk to do so and—and"
"Please heaven, there be no such person i' the world!" finished Sally saucily. "But lawk-a-me, how hungry His Excellency's horse was!" And she pointed out to the astonished Ball family, as they followed her curiously into the kitchen, the chewed-off window ledge!