Mistress Madcap/Chapter 1
THERE be no use talking o' holidays this year!" said Mehitable rather bitterly, the swift—a wooden apparatus for winding yarn, fastened to the edge of the table with a thumbscrew—turning rapidly as she spoke. For this was the time of the Revolution and the American soldiers must be clad.
"I suppose not," agreed Charity, looking up from her seam with a sigh as she reached over to change the cloth in the beak of her sewing bird.
It was dusk in the big kitchen, with only the firelight leaping and flaring in its great cavern of a fireplace, where Charity, who was thirteen years old, could stand erect and where the immense back-log had been dragged into its place by one of the farm horses on a certain autumn day. Now the shadows of the two girls, sitting upon their three-legged stools at each end of the old mahogany table, danced on the mud-plastered walls behind them.
"But I really do not see why we cannot think o' them," continued Charity after awhile. "One might get much pleasure that way, Hitty."
Mehitable shook her head. "It leads on to nothing," she said sagely. "And you know our mother said we were not to plan at all, with war upon us and provender growing so scarce. 'Tis now a problem to feed us," she said."
"This dreadful war!" exclaimed Charity. She dropped her sewing. "When, think you, 'twill end, Hitty?" she asked, clasping her hands.
"Indeed, I know not, Charity. No one does!" Again Mehitable shook her head gloomily. "Already it has been a weary twenty months since the British fired upon our men at Lexington."
"And almost seventeen months since we saw John!" murmured Charity. Both girls sighed at this, for their big, handsome brother's enlistment as a surgeon under General Washington had made a sorry change in their lives. No more were sly gifts of lollipops or bits of bright ribbon forthcoming from New York, where John Condit had been studying medicine up to the time of the war, with a certain famous surgeon, Doctor Carter.
"I think I be the one to miss John most," observed Mehitable, after a long silence. She glanced up at a silhouette hanging over the chimney shelf, and two bright tears shone for an instant in her black eyes.
"Nay, sister, I do!" protested Charity quickly.
"Do what?" asked a fresh voice, as the heavy outer door behind the girls was pushed open and a comely woman of forty-five entered. "Come, Hitty, help me close the door! It has commenced to pour, and ye gale be terrible!"
It needed all the strength of mother and daughter to battle against the force of that wind. With a last howl, a last flurry of wind-swept sand across the kitchen floor, a final sputtering of the fire from the unexpected draught, the great door was swung to and the heavy, hand-wrought bolt shot.
"There!" gasped Mistress Condit, standing still to recover her breath. "Such a tramp as I've had from Mistress Briggs's! The storm seemed to drive me, sheltered though I was by ye mountain! What it must be in the open places on this night!"
She paused in the act of removing her long cardinal and stood staring into space, with the look the girls had begun to dread in her eyes. They glanced at each other uneasily; then Mehitable took the dripping garment from her and led her gently to the settle beside the fire.
"There, Mother, I know ye be thinking o' John!" she exclaimed briskly. "But I'll warrant, and you could see him, he would be sitting beside just such a fire as this!"
"Mayhap!" assented her mother, gratefully relaxing upon the warm seat for the moment. "But always I have that fear he is out and in danger! Hark, see who it is, Charity, pounding so impatiently upon you door!"
Charity ran to the door and applied her eye to its peep-hole. "'Tis Father!" she cried. And amidst the ensuing bustle of admitting the big, jolly-looking man of the house, the storm without was soon forgotten.
The kitchen began to fill with appetizing odors from the iron skillets and kettles that hung by their bails from the long crane swung over the fire; Mehitable, dragging the table nearer the warmth of it, began supper preparations by spreading the red tablecloth, while Charity ran back and forth upon countless errands. Once, fetching her father's bootjack from upstairs, she came back almost weeping from the cold, her small nose like a red berry. Dropping the bootjack, she rubbed her aching hands.
"Cold, Cherry lass?" mumbled the Squire sympathetically, purple-faced as he struggled with his boot.
"Oh, Father, I do dread the thought o' bed! 'Tis bitter cold upstairs. Do you suppose there ever will be a time when people have a fireplace in every room."
Mehitable laughed loudly.
"But will there?" persisted Charity, glancing at her sister. "There be nothing funny in that, Hitty," she added with dignity.
"A fireplace in every room, indeed! Ho!"
And Mehitable redoubled her laughter. "Why, think o' the chimneys needed!"
"But in city houses there be a fireplace very often in every room," remarked Squire Condit, leaning back with a grunt of relief and sticking his stockinged feet toward the blaze.
Both girls turned to him eagerly, and Charity ran to clasp his arm, her cheeks crimsoning.
"Truly, Father." She paused for an awed moment. "Warm in every room!" she exclaimed; then, "Think o't, Hitty!"
"'Twould be heavenly!" sighed Mehitable. "And now it seems to me 'twas so at Cousin Eliza's great house at Trenton! Oh, Father, let us move to the city!"
"But what would become of the farm and the stock?" protested the Squire laughingly.
"Amos and Judd could care for them. Why not, Father?" urged Mehitable. Already, in imagination, she could see herself sweeping down narrow, winding city stairs into a warm firelit room, bright from the light of many sconces, the sheen of her satin ball gown reflecting their light. . . . She started.
"What, art dreaming again, Hitty?" smiled her father, pinching her round cheek.
"Supper!" announced Mistress Condit. And they, with the two farm men who had previously silently entered, drew up to partake of the hot soup and the Indian pudding, with healthy appetites.
"We will wait for the morrow to wash the dishes," said Mistress Condit when they had finished and Amos and Judd had vanished, "if you will promise to do them without grumbling, girls."
"Indeed, Mother," they both began and their mother nodded.
"And do let us roast apples and chestnuts, Mother," begged Charity, "while Father tells us about when he was a little lad in England."
"And warm some cider, too," continued Mehitable.
"All this for one evening!" protested Mistress Condit. "Nay, then, what about to-morrow night?"
"'Twill keep, to-morrow night will!" answered Mehitable recklessly, running to the door of the lean-to where the vegetables had been stored, while Charity, a-tiptoe, took down the candle from the high chimney shelf and lighted it from the blazing logs. "May we, Mother?"
Mistress Condit laughed helplessly. "What can I do, young mischiefs!" She surrendered, and the two girls disappeared.
As soon as they were gone, Mistress Condit walked quickly over to where her husband was puffing his pipe in placid comfort.
"Samuel, I be worried!" she began in a hasty whisper.
"What now, Mary?" He looked up at her in surprise, for all the trying last months had failed to mar her serene brow.
"Well, you know Squire Briggs be most partial to the King and, like many o' our neighbors, is in constant communication with the Caldwelltown Tories. To-night, while I was there, he came in most bitter, for it seems that a sally of Americans, being in desperate straits, helped themselves in passing to several fine porkers he had intended selling to Sir Henry Clinton's commissary chief. In his rage, he unintentionally let out the information that those farms set apart by Hessian spies and Tory sympathizers as being partial to General Washington are marked with the letter R for rebel and are to be raided by the Hessian foragers sent over to New Jersey by Sir Henry for that purpose. And, Samuel"—Mistress Condit's voice faltered—"though it stormed so as I came through our gate, I saw most plainly the letter R upon the gatepost!"
"But, and that be so, Mary, we will erase it!" ejaculated the Squire.
"'Twill do no good, I fear!" His wife shook her head. "We are doubtless marked in other ways, besides. But, hush! Not a word to the girls! They must not be worried, for life is dark enow for them, poor chicks!"
To glance at them, however, as they came giggling back into the kitchen, no one would ever think that life was gloomy for them. Mehitable's dark curls had slipped from beneath her cap as she stumbled merrily forward, her arms around a great wooden bowlful of apples and chestnuts. Charity followed more sedately with the cider jug and the candle; but her usually sober little face was gay.
"And now, Father, the story!" commanded Mehitable, when at last they were all seated before the fire, Charity upon her father's knee, her sister cross-legged at his feet to watch the chestnuts and the cider brewing beside some embers, while the mother, whose hands were never idle, knitted upon the opposite settle.
Squire Condit took several puffs at his pipe before he removed it from his mouth and held it so that its glowing contents would not spill.
"It was when I was a wee lad," he commenced obediently. And the girls exchanged delighted glances, Father, as a lad, was a most satisfying young hero!
"A rainy, windy day it was, I mind," he continued, "that the stagecoach drew up at the wharf and my mother got out of her inside seat, while I slid down from the box, and my father, already laden with some of our luggage, including Mother's precious bonnet box, stood staring at the great sailing vessel that was to carry us to our new home in America. You may well believe I was excited! Not only was I clad in my brave black satin suit and my shoes with ye silver buckles; but I, too, was carrying luggage in the way of Poll, our parrot."
"Father, are those the silver shoe buckles John wears now?" interrupted Charity.
"Aye, lass—why?" The Squire took a hasty puff at his pipe.
"Nothing—she means nothing!" exclaimed Mehitable nervously, frowning at her sister. "Do let Father go on, Cherry!"
Mistress Condit, glancing up curiously, saw that warning glance and resolved to question Mehitable later; but as events turned out, the incident was forgotten in more exciting ones.
"Well, let's see. Where was I?" The Squire puffed contemplatively.
"The parrot, Father!" prompted both girls eagerly.
"Oh yes. I verily believe you know this tale better than I!" he laughed. "Well, I had pressed forvard most anxiously after my father when 'Polly wants a cracker!' said the bird, and 'Polly wants a cracker!' imitated a pert voice behind me. I turned around indignantly to see a little girl with very red hair staring at me saucily from behind her mother's skirts."
"Oh, Samuel, not very red hair!" protested Mistress Condit with a furtive pat at the auburn curls that peeped beneath her cap.
"Oh, yes, very red hair!" insisted the Squire imperturbably; but with a mischievous side glance at his wife, who tossed her head and laughed. "I was minded to speak reproof to the saucy wench; but her mother had already done so, and with a jerk, the little red-haired girl was led up the gangplank of the very ship my father and I had been gazing at, and I knew that she, too, was to venture across the water with us.
"It was a long voyage, that one to America; but as the days passed, I grew very fond of that little girl, whose name was Mary."
"Why, that's Mother's name!" exclaimed Charity, sitting up to stare at her mother.
"So it is!" agreed Squire Condit in solemn surprise.
"Of course it is, silly!" burst out Mehitable. "And the little red-haired girl was Mother, wasn't she, Father?"
"Now, that," said the Squire judicially, "is the question. Howbeit, to finish my tale before the apples burn." He glanced significantly at the row of scorching Jonathans which Mehitable promptly turned. "One day little Mary appeared with drooping face. 'My head doth ache!' quoth she, and she coughed, though it was a clear, warm day.
"Her mother bundled her down the ship's cabin, but not before I had stolen a kiss, for by that time I loved little Mary as dearly as ten years can love eight years. Then it was announced that little Mary had the measles!"
"Oh dear!" exclaimed tender-hearted Charity. "Did she really, Father?"
"Yes," nodded father, "really, Cherry! For long days, then, I hung around the berth where lay Mary, until, one morning, I, too, woke with a headache and a cough.
"'Alas, Samuel, you have the measles! I wonder how ye caught them!' cried my mother. And so I did have them! I was a pretty sight, for measles are not beauteous! I was very ill, for the measles 'struck in,' and with them my love"—and here the Squire stole another look at his wife's curls—"for red-haired girls!"
"Oh, me!" sighed Charity, as her father stopped and puffed violently at his pipe. "What became o' the parrot, Father?"
"Why, I gave Poll to little Mary when she got well again."
"And she cherished her for years, until Poll died of old age," finished Mistress Condit, smiling and gathering up her knitting. "But come, girls!"
"Aye, 'tis late, lassies!" said the Squire.
"But our apples! We must have our apples!" And two pairs of wide-awake eyes were studying the apples calculatingly to see how long they could be made to last when through the merry chatter came a wild, long drawn out cry.
"Wolves!" Mistress Condit's hands flew to press against her heart as she gazed, terror-stricken, at her husband. Pausing, pipe in hand, he stood listening until above the crackle of the fire came again the cry. Then he shook his head.
"Nay, I think not! But we shall soon see!" And striding forward, he flung open the door.
Only the crazy howling of wind and storm came to the listeners' ears. Silence reigned except for the gale.
"Nothing there, Samuel?" queried Mistress Condit tremblingly, at last.
From behind her voluminous skirts peered the frightened faces of the girls. Strange, dark war-times these were, when they never could be sure whether it was friend or foe or wild animal approaching!
"No one there, Father?" repeated Charity's sweet voice anxiously.
"Nay, I think not!" shouted back the Squire, moving forward to the edge of the doorstep, where he stood peering through the curtain of rain and sleet that beat upon him. "No one hereStay! What is that out by yon tree!"
And without another word, unarmed, he plunged off the doorstep to disappear into the teeth of the storm!