Mistress Madcap/Chapter 13
CHARITY had climbed silently up to the deck behind the others, followed lastly by Captain Jaffray. But now he paid for his negligence as the girl profited by it, for by the time peace was restored upon the sloop's deck and both Myles and his captain were nursing black eyes, she had vanished.
Young Cy, when he discovered such to be the case, suddenly ceased his frantic blows, delivered at random but seemingly none the less effective for that, and sat down to count his own bruises.
Charity, crouching in the rowboat into which she had dropped as it bobbed beneath the stern of the sloop fought long with the wet hemp of the towline. She could have screamed with the aggravation of that dreadful knot! She was almost certain, besides, that as soon as her flight was discovered, one of the men would be ordered into the water in pursuit. Although she could hear the noise of the fight and the groans afterward, she did not realize that if it was a short battle it was a furious one, so when she did get the towline untied she wasted no time in pulling for shore.
Captain Jaffray staggered at last to the ship's rail, but it was too late. Charity had disappeared into the darkness.
"Curse ye!" he snarled, returning to Young Cy. "'Tis well ye'll pay for this night's work. 'Tis not the Sugar House you'll be lodged in, if I have my way; but one o' our beauties on water, and the prison ship you're bound for will knock that fight out o' ye!"
Young Cy only smiled. Now that Charity had made her escape from the sloop, though she were forced to land in enemy country, he felt that he could bear whate'er might befall him.
Charity, drifting away from the sloop's stern, finally slipped her oars into the water. She found it far different from rowing in the Httle home-made boat on the pond at home. The North River, as it widened into New York Bay, looked as vast as the ocean to her, with its black water and the surge and ripple of its swells. It was no mean task for a young girl. Yet Charity, it must be remembered, although not as strong and lusty as Mehitable, was a country-bred girl, and the tide was with her. After a while, to her great joy she heard the grating of rocks beneath the prow of her boat and letting her oars fall as they pleased, she scrambled forward and leaped ashore.
In the darkness she could not tell where she had landed. Indeed, had it been daylight, it is doubtful whether she would have known. John had described the town which the Dutch had built upon an island; but he had dwelt more upon its manners and customs and citizens than anything else, so now Charity looked around her forlornly. Perceiving some distant lights inland, she climbed over the rocks toward them, hoping that her rowboat would drift off from the rocks and out to sea, so that all trace of her should be lost to Captain Jaffray when the morning came.
Afterward she never had any more than the most hazy impression of her first night's adventures in New York. She remembered reaching some farmhouses built upon the point of what is now the Battery, of tramping past them until she came to a house standing in the midst of fine grounds, a pretentious place, well lighted by many sconces visible through the windows. She discovered, by almost running into him, that a sentry guarded the gate to this mansion; but watching her chance when he was at the other end of his beat, she crept like a shadow through the gate and scuttled across the wind-swept lawns toward the rear of the building and past that to some outhouses.
There she stole through the door of one and stopped, with beating heart, to listen. The odor and the occasional stamping of hoofs soon told her that she was in a stable. She groped her way forward with outstretched hands. If only she might be able to find the ladder that led to the hayloft! And at that moment she gave a gasp of incredulous joy, for almost miraculously it would seem, she had touched first the stable wall, then the ladder to the haymow, built against it.
It did not take her long to mount into the warm, sweet-smelling loft. Nor did it take long for her to cuddle down into the hay and go fast asleep!
The next day she did not dare to leave her hiding place, nor the next night, nor even the day after that. When the stable man came up into the loft to pitch hay down to the horses below, she burrowed deeply into the stack and quite unsuspecting, the man whistled and sang at his tasks, all unconscious of his trembling, terrified little listener.
But at the end of her forty-eight hours Charity was driven forth by her dreadful hunger, though she had stolen down to drink out of the horses' watering pails quite a number of times in the dark. She felt faint and dizzy as she faltered down the ladder and through the open stable door. Then she gave a little shriek, for she walked straight into the arms of the hostler.
Fright and hunger made her reel, and for a little while she lay against him motionless, like a poor, stormdriven little bird. Perhaps her helplessness touched his heart, for the hostler carried her into the kitchen of the mansion and, after one look at her white, drawn face, bade the Negro cook fetch some food.
"Here's a lass, an I don't miss my guess, who be starvin'," he said shortly, though not ill-naturedly. "Where she comes from and where she be a-goin' to I know not; but I do know hunger when I see it!"
The cook, a fat, comfortable old negress, came over and looked down at Charity as she lay drooping upon a chair.
"Laws, yas'r, she sho' does want food!"
So, forthwith, food was set before the famished girl. But the cook was wise and allowed her only a small quantity and that mostly liquid.
"I'll gib yo some t' tote wif yo, honey," said the negress, cutting some slabs of beef and slapping them between great hunks of bread. "But doan yo eat it f'r awhile yit! Yo is likely t'die an ye do!"
Charity thanked her gratefully. She had half a mind to ask permission to tarry in that big, warm kitchen; but a strange restlessness drove her on. Besides her anxiety for Young Cy, she was afraid that the mansion might be headquarters for the British, from its size and magnificence.
The kind-hearted stableman escorted her past the sentry, unchallenged. When they separated. Charity tried to tell him of her gratitude; but he cut her short.
"I once had a daughter like you," he told her abruptly and swung upon his heel. As he did so, Charity was both amazed and made sorry to hear him utter a short, hoarse groan. But he did not wait for sympathy, and after a moment Charity hugged her bundle of sandwiches to her and trudged away, wondering if the hostler's daughter were dead or lost, as she was now lost.
"These be such strange, queer times," she murmured to herself. She drifted into a reverie, wondering mournfully if she were ever to see her father and mother and Mehitable again. But Charity was a brave little soul and after a while she blinked the tears from her eyes and looked around her.
If John had been there he could have told her at once that she was in Broadway, that long thoroughfare which stretched out and out until eventually it led to distant places, up the Hudson River through Yonkers and Tarrytown and on until it became the postroad to Albany. But here the houses were built closely together, forming a fine residential section. She came, then, to the stark ruins of Trinity Church, which had been burned almost to the ground some months before in the great New York fire when so many families had been made homeless that the town had had to erect tents to care for the sufferers. Now, just a few of the massive walls stood, a dark mass above the glimmering ghostliness of the old graveyard. As she gazed, an idea came to Charity. Why not hide behind those walls? They would act as windshields and protect her from enemy eyes! On the morrow something might turn up, she might find trace of Young Cy, but for to-night they would be just the place for her!
The cold and the darkness, to say nothing of the ghostly proximity of the gravestones, might well have appalled an even stouter heart than Charity's; but for all her gentleness and quiet, she had a certain grim tenacity in her make-up, partly inherited from her strong-willed parents, partly developed by these last war-filled months. She had made up her mind not to leave New York, not to try to escape to New Jersey until she could carry home tidings of poor Young Cy!
It was not as cold as she had dreaded inside the church ruins. Still, it was a dreary enough bed that she spread with her cape upon a great block of stone in one corner of the ruined church, and little sleep was forthcoming that night.
At last the darkness fled before the lantern of the sun and dawn found Charity stumbling stiffly to her feet.
"If only I could make neat my hair and wash my face!" thought the little girl longingly. She pushed back the hood to her cape and ran her fingers through her matted curls. Busily her thoughts ran on as she shook out her wrinkled clothing. "Oh, me, if I could only know where they have taken Young Cy!"
Now, doubtless, had Charity gone straight to the British commandant. Lord Howe would have been touched by her plight and so have seen to it that she reached Newark safely. But besides desiring to learn of her companion's whereabouts. Charity had heard such tales of British cruelty—much of which was only too true, for part of the British policy in this war was to terrify the Americans into submission—that she did not dare to venture forth openly. She was like a pathetic little field mouse carried away to the terrors of city attics—her whole instinct was to hide and creep forth only when the darkness protected her.
However, her curiosity became very great as the light increased. She had had no opportunity to see her surroundings the previous night, the few candle lanterns hanging outside every seventh residence in the city blocks not giving much light. She began to peek from the opening of one of the walls, darting her head back like a turtle at every sound; but the only thing visible being a farm wagon lumbering down Broadway with its driver asleep upon his seat, she grew bolder and bolder.
Thus it was that, as she stared down Wall Street, she saw a young girl walking aimlessly toward her. And as the other neared and looked up each uttered a wild cry of joy and amazement. For the young girl was Mehitable! And Charity, her mouth full of beef sandwich, stumbled out of her hiding place with outstretched arms, feeling that the world was right again and not such a dreary place, after all.