Mistress Madcap/Chapter 15
BUT the sisters' joy was short-lived. Scarcely had Mehitable started forward to greet Charity when a hand fell heavily upon her shoulder and she whirled around to find herself in the grasp of a British soldier.
"What be a-doing?" asked the soldier in a growl.
For a moment her alarm showed plainly in the pulse that beat in her slender throat; but, regaining composure as she spoke, she answered him pertly.
"Has not a body a right to look where she will?" she queried coolly.
She did not dare to glance where Charity had stood, hoping against hope that the little sister had hidden herself once more before the sentry had seen her. But his next words shattered that hope.
"Not in war-times," he said, answering her audacious inquiry. Then he raised his voice. "Come out o' yon!" he bawled. "Hear me, wench?"
Mehitable's heart dropped. So he had seen Charity! Then her eyes filled with tears as the younger girl climbed forlornly over some débris and came slowly toward them through the churchyard.
Now had Mehitable had the good sense to remain silent at this point and let her and Charity's plight speak for itself, all might have gone well, for the soldier could not have helped but be touched, especially when Charity raised her great blue eyes to him in piteous, silent appeal. But no, she needs must burst forth in an elaborate explanation in which she baldly contradicted herself more than once, so that at last an open sneer appeared upon the soldier's face.
"Your father brought ye to town this morning from your farm?" he asked suspiciously. "But I thought ye just said as how your father lay ill and that was why you and your sister were in town, delivering the milk?"
"So he did! So I was!" declared Mehitable wildly. "I left my milk cart down Broad Street a pace while I and my sister walked up to see Trinity Church ruins and"
"Nay, nay!" interrupted the sentry at that point, out of patience. "I be no fool, lass! Show me y'r passports!"
"I—I—lost them," faltered Mehitable, stammering.
"Lost them, eh? That is what everyone says!" ejaculated the soldier, scornfully. He smiled in a knowing manner. "More like ye had never had any! 'Tis best we go to the Debtors' Prison and there ye can do all your explaining to Provost-Marshal Cunningham!"
So tearfully and terror-stricken by this new misfortune, the two sisters found themselves walking up Broadway.
"Dost think we shall ever see Newark Mountains again?" whispered Charity tremulously.
But with a sharp "No whispering!" their guard bade them be silent, and so they marched along, uncomfortably aware of the musket and the man behind them.
It was yet so early that the streets were quite empty, for which Mehitable was thankful. Charity, dazed by this new misfortune and still weak from her long fast and exposure, stumbled miserably along and would have fallen more than once but for her sister's quick and affectionate arm.
"Be not down-hearted, dear Cherry!" Mehitable managed to whisper half under her breath; but at sight of the speechless misery in the younger girl's eyes, her own filled with tears. She dashed them away. Not for anything would she allow the British soldier to see them!
And so they came to the "Fields." This was a stretch of land reserved as a common outdoor gathering place for the people of Colonial New York and in the days before the Revolution used as a grazing place for cattle. Immediately prior to the War of 1776, it was there that the Sons of Liberty erected their Liberty Poles as fast as the British authorities destroyed them. It was at the foot of one of these Liberty Poles that Cunningham, who was in charge at the time, received the wounds for which afterward he made every rebel prisoner unfortunate enough to come underneath his jurisdiction pay so dearly. It was to this man, noted for his brutality and cruelty thus early in the war, that the sentry marched his young prisoners now.
Crossing the "Fields" they came within sight of a nearly square, small stone building, three stories high, with the usual Colonial public-building ornament—a belfry rising from the center. This was the New Gaol, afterwards renamed the Debtors' Prison, where so many American prisoners were tortured and sent to their death by the scoundrel, Cunningham.
Even Mehitable's stout heart quailed as they passed through its great doors into a dark hall, the entrance to which was guarded by two sentries. As for Charity, her eyes were like flames set in two great black holes, so deeply were they encircled. The elder sister's heart was torn by anguish as she looked at her.
Thrusting the two girls roughly into a guardroom, opposite to which on the right hand side of the main door, were Captain Cunningham's quarters, and clanging the grated door ominously behind him, the soldier strode across the hall and pounded loudly, imperatively, upon the marshal's door.
A peevish voice bade him enter. He was not gone long. In a very few moments he reappeared in the hall, thrust violently through the door as though ejected from behind, his face red and angry. A furious torrent of oaths and abuse followed him before the door was slammed, in which the trembling listeners behind the opposite door distinguished such ejaculations as "varlet waking me thus early!" and "teach the fool military discipline" and "Numb-skull! Dunce-head! Brainless musket bearer!"
The soldier, pausing for a second to readjust his disarrayed clothing, stalked back to inform his prisoners in a gruff, sullen voice that they would have to await Captain Cunningham's pleasure. With which curt information he vanished, looking much like a ruffled turkey-cock.
Then, indeed, ensued a dreary wait. The city slowly awakened outside the barred windows of the guardroom, the sun slanted for an all too brief while in at the one window to lighten the old, dingy stone walls opposite it.
The two little maids drew silently together. Pitifully, Mehitable gathered Charity's slight figure within her embrace, as they sat huddled together on the rough bench near the grated door; but neither spoke. Their hearts were too full for that. Anxiety and fear and their surroundings them quite speechless.
At last a sharp sound penetrated through the building. There was a stir and a clanging of iron doors, the measured tramp of approaching feet, and presently a company of soldiers, a cheerful splotch of red in their bright uniforms, came marching down the dark corridor to halt before Captain Cunningham's door. This time, when the sergeant stepped forward and rapped smartly upon the door, it opened promptly and an officer in dress uniform issued across its threshold. As he returned their salute, the officer inspected his company briefly and then, giving a curt order, he stepped forward to lead his company, as it about-faced, back to a large inner hall where he held his court. This was Captain Cunningham, the much dreaded provost marshal.
Taking his place behind a wooden table, with the guard drawn up solemnly behind him, the provost marshal summoned the prisoners before him.
It would have beers laughable had it not been pathetic, to any one viewing this scene. There were the soldiers with their bristling array of firearms, there was the provost marshal in all the dignity of his office, there were the great bars and bolts and high stone walls of the cavernous hall and—there were the two, slender, shrinking little figures of Mehitable and Charity being marched into court and delivered over with all due formality by their captor to Cunningham!
He looked at them sharply as their names, ages, and home were being carefully recorded in a great book. Then he waved his hand indifferently.
"The Long Room, of course," he said, hiding a yawn and rising to dismiss the guard.
Charity gave a Httle sob as she turned, with Mehitable, to follow the guard appointed to conduct them to their new prison. The "Long Room" sounded ominous indeed to her ears.
"Oh, Hitty!" she moaned under her breath. "Think you we are to be shot?"
Mehitable tried to laugh; but it was a sorry failure, for she, too, was dubious of their future. She had to steady her trembling lips before she could attempt an answer.
"W-why should w-we be?" she stammered, then. "What have w-we done. Cherry?"
"I know not!" wept Charity. "That awful man—Hitty, he's the one—why, he's the one Ebenezer Lamson said had Nathan Hale hung as a spy—taunted him so, Ebenezer did say—and would not let poor Mr. Hale have even a Bible before he was executed! Dost not remember? He is the tyrant, too, who tore up Nathan Hale's last letter to his sweetheart before his very face and"
"Silence, wenches!" thundered the guard at this point and the two girls at once relapsed into obedient speechlessness.
The Bridewell, to which they were being conducted, which also faced the "Fields" a short distance away, had been built only the previous year, in 1775, the Debtors' Prison having proved too small to accommodate all classes of prisoners. It was, as a matter of fact, still uncompleted in many respects, as to windows, through which the winter's cold swept in upon the unfortunate war-prisoners and as to numerous other comforts, besides.
It was a small gray stone building, two stories high, with a basement. On its first floor to the right of the entrance was the "Long Room," occupied by women, the white prisoners in front, the colored ones at the rear of the apartment, a partition between.
It was into this room that Mehitable and Charity were pushed by the brutal-looking keeper to whom they had been turned over by their guard.
As they instinctively paused upon the threshold, such a burst of noise greeted them that they faltered back. A shriek of crazy laughter, someone weeping, groans and cries of every description all mingled into a bedlam of noise. It seemed not to affect the prison keeper in the least. He merely grinned as he relocked the grated door.
For a little while the two girls were too frightened to move. They cowered back sharp eyes inspected them, as rough fingers plucked at their apparel and rude voices jeeringly bade them welcome. But soon a rougher jerk than before made Mehitable draw back and repel, with flashing eyes, the prisoner who had dared to touch her mother's cardinal. Taken aback, the woman slunk away and the others, laughing at her discomfiture, turned more respectful eyes upon the two young newcomers.
"Hist!" said a hoarse voice. "I hear ye guard returning!"
Instantly, the clamor, which had died away when the guard had disappeared, was resumed. Mehitable and Charity now realized that this was the usual procedure at every fresh opening of the door into the "Long Room."
Only one prisoner had sat apart, drawing back haughtily if any one approached her, and she it was whom the keeper ordered forth to depart with him. He was rather afraid of her for all his blustering bravado, and merely spoke to her in a surly voice, not offering to touch her.
Mehitable was sorry to see her go, especially as she did not return, for the remaining prisoners were plainly the riff-raff of the city and uncouth, sordid creatures, not political prisoners, as both she and her sister and this one other lady had been.
The day passed drearily to noontime. There was no attempt made to feed them other than the few crusts of dry bread thrown at them through the grating as though they were animals. In truth, however, some of the poor things acted as though they were, diving wildly for the mouldy bread and fighting among themselves.
Mehitable tried to procure from the pewter ewer set upon the floor within the door a drink of water for Charity, whose flushed cheeks looked as though she had been stricken by fever. But in the noisy arguments which ensued around the water, from which the girl shrank back appalled, the ewer was upset and few were bettered for the water having been placed within the room.
Charity pulled feebly at Mehitable's arm.
"Nay, do not try to get any for me!" she whispered. "I—I—do not think it looked overly clear, Hitty. I do not think I want any!"
Mehitable gave a short, angry laugh and pointed at the pool of wasted water which was slowly spreading across the stone floor.
"I do not think ye will have a chance to want it, Cherry!" she returned dryly. "Methinks it may do this filthy floor a little good, however!"
Poor Charity's lips trembled, for her throat was parched and dry. She turned away, sick at heart.
But toward two o'clock there was another stir among the prisoners. Someone's keen ears had caught the approaching footsteps of the guard once more and as soon as this was verified, the howling and clamor arose as usual.
The guard threw open the door and shouted something; but it was lost in the noise until he threatened a few of the prisoners nearest to him with the butt of his musket and the excitement died away in a sullen murmur.
"Silence, in the King's name!" shouted the guard again. He looked at a paper which he held in his hand. "Mistress Mehitable and Charity Condit, step forth!"
Mehitable, who had held her breath, took a quick step forward. Then she turned and leaned over Charity, who was iying in a half stupor on the cold floor.
"Cherry, get up! We are sent for! Get up, dear!" She tried to rouse her.
Charity, muttering something, shifted her position a trifle.
"Mistress Mehitable and Mistress Charity, step forth," bawled the guard again. His voice grew impatient. "Come, be lively with ye! I cannot wait here until night comes!"
He pushed his way roughly through the curious group which had gathered around the two girls. Mehitable looked up with frightened eyes.
"I cannot waken her!" she cried, wringing her hands.
But the guard, leaning over in turn, jerked Charity to her feet in short order. Still holding her by the arm, as she stumbled along obediently beside him, he shoved his way back to the door where, calling his underling, he put the "Long Room" in his charge and departed from the Bridewell.
The cold air and sunshine seemed to revive Charity a little as she marched falteringly beside her sister, to whom the guard had relinquished her. Mehitable's arm was through hers to keep her from falling. She looked around her in bewilderment after a short distance paced in dreamlike silence.
"I—why, Hitty, I" she began.
"Nay," interrupted Mehitable tenderly, with a fleeting glance over her shoulder at the grim-faced man who was following them with his musket over his shoulder. "Nay, do not bother thee, Charity! All will yet be well."
And then, as though to verify this hopeful expression, after they had reëntered the Debtors' Prison and were once more in Provost Marshal Cunningham's presence, it seemed to the girl that things would be right, indeed. For there, beside the captain's table, with a beautiful lady standing beside him, was the smiling faced, broad-shouldered friend of her Trenton visit, Lieutenant Freeman!
The lady, a saucy smile on her red lips and a twinkle in her lov'ely eyes, was speaking to the provost marshal as they approached with their guard. Captain Cunningham was plainly carried away by her charm and sat fumbling embarrassedly among his papers on the table as he listened to her merry banter.
"I vow, Captain," the lady was laughing, "I shall strike your name from my dance list an you imprison any more of my friends in your dreadful old Bridewell. And how do you do, Hitty, my dear!" Smilingly, she turned and saluted Mehitable familiarly by her name, as though she had known her all of her life. "And Charity, too!" For a fleeting instant, grave concern showed in her face as she noted the younger girl's feverish color and the blank look in her eyes; but she was all gay flattery and jollity as she turned back to the cruel-looking man behind the table.
"La!" she went on carelessly, "will you make out the pass for my cousins or must I really treat ye as ye deserve?"
"Nay," protested the provost marshal eagerly, "do not be unkind to me! I swear I merit not such inhuman treatment! Give me but another chance and I will make amends."
A barely perceptible glance passed between the lady and Lieutenant Freeman which Captain Cunningham, busily writing the release and passports for Mehitable and Charity did not see. But she had her most coquettish smile ready for him when he rose and handed her the papers.
"And when do we meet again?" he asked imploringly.
"La, how can I tell?" the lady answered carelessly. "Perhaps to-night at Lord Howe's rout."
Turning, she motioned to Lieutenant Freeman, who at once offered his arm.
"Come, cousin, I am aweary of this dark place." She glanced back over her shoulder at the captain, who was gazing after her rather mournfully. "I should think you would feel like a great potato in the cold, dark ground in here, Captain. Ugh, 'tis a terrible hole!"
She shivered. Suddenly she seemed to remember Mehitable and Charity, who had remained passive onlookers. She stopped and glanced inquiringly at Captain Cunningham.
"They are to come with me?" she asked, though indifferently, as if, now that she had accomplished her object, she was uninterested in the result. Perhaps an acute observer might have read aright the look in her beautiful eyes, however, the trembling of her little white hand as it lay upon Lieutenant Freeman's arm.
"Aye, Mistress Nancy. They were arrested only on suspicion for loitering. There is no other charge against them. But you understand, with the city under martial law we cannot be too careful!"
"But you could throw them into that horrible place, the 'Long Room,' among pickpockets and thieves, two little innocent maids, on such a charge as that?"
For a dangerous moment all affectation of gayety forsook her voice and honest indignation was apparent in it. The captain scowled at the rebuke and the poor little prisoners' fate hung fire as he took an involuntary step forward to snatch the passports out of her hand. Then ordinary politeness made him pause and the lady snapped her fingers mischievously in his face, changing the scene magically back into the laughing farce she intended it to be. She left the captain smiling amorously after her.
"Oh, you naughty men!" she cried, as she tripped away, followed by Mehitable and Charity, with Lieutenant Freeman bringing up the rear like a bodyguard.
But outside, on the edge of the "Fields," when they had passed beyond the range of the Debtors' Prison, she became a tender, compassionate woman, all her coquetry and flippancy vanishing before her genuine pity.
"Ah, Anthony!" she cried, stooping to place her arms around poor, sick little Charity, "'Tis so pitiful, this war, when it comes to babies like this!"