Mistress Madcap/Chapter 18
NO ONE, in the excitement of the moment, noticed Mehitable as she stood stricken motionless in the open door behind the group of angry men. Amos Williams was speaking.
"Ye deserve death for treason to your king," he snarled, his lips twisted in a kind of fanatical fury. "But we are merciful, Condit. We will give ye trial before your peers and pass judgment upon ye!"
"Merciful!" Mehitable started at the change in her father's heretofore friendly voice. "What do you know of mercy, those o' you who would take a neighbor's child and treat her as ye have in the name o' warfare? Why, most o' ye," and here his bitter, scornful glance rested upon Squire Briggs, "are only in this warfare for what money ye can make out of it!"
Squire Briggs turned an angry red and shuffled his feet.
"Why wait we here?" he snapped. "'Tis but a waste o' time!"
A low, sullen murmur came from the crowd. The girl heard someone say impatiently, "Aye, hang him now!" Instantly it was taken up by the rest. A roar went up.
"Hang the dog! Hang him for treason!"
But Amos Williams held up his hand imperatively.
"I have promised him trial!" he growled. "And trial he shall have! We are no murderers!"
At that Mehitable sprang forward to face them with flaming glance.
"But ye are worse than murderers!" she cried, pointing her finger at them. "Fifteen against one! Brave men all, are ye not! You who would murder not only a man but outrage neighborly love and old friendships. You, Eliphalet Pierson"—her relentless finger sought him out in the group—"why, I can remember when my father rode into the storm one night for the doctor when your baby lay dying! Where IS that baby to-day? Not in ye Old Burial Ground, I can tell ye that, for the doctor saved his life because my father brought him to ye in time! And you, Thomas Ogden, hiding there behind the others! What about that fifteen pounds in good money my father lent ye to buy food when your children were hungry? And you, over there, Bethuel Harris, are ye forgetting that time my father spent a winter's night trying to find your lost sheep when it snowed and sleeted and he saved them all for you? Oh, you who talk o' mercy!" Her voice broke on a sob. "All of ye—all of ye—he has helped and ye treat him thus!"
The men, who at first had been too taken aback by Mehitable's unexpected appearance to interrupt her, now began to argue among themselves. But the bitter animosity of Squire Briggs and Amos Williams prevailed upon the more lenient ones.
"Peace!" snarled Amos Williams, when Mehitable would have spoken again. "We have had enough o' thy gab, young mistress! Be thankful we do not take ye, too, for giving aid to ye enemy—I saw ye, don't lorget that!"
"I am proud of it!" blazed the girl. But Squire Condit, whose passion had left him and who had stood in broken silence since, turned to her warningly.
"It but fans ye flame, Hitty, and does no good to speak!" he said gently. And Amos Williams nodded.
"Forward with ye prisoner!" he ordered briskly.
Mistress Condit, who had been sitting in stupefied terror all this time uttered a low moan as the men surrounded her husband. She laid Charity upon the settle and stumbled to her feet to run to him.
"Oh, Samuel!" she panted. "What be they going to do with you?"
He bent his head to kiss her reassuringly.
"I know not, Mary," but the quiet self-possession of his tone restored her fainting courage. "There is but One Who knows! Yet will He care for us, my love!"
Then, though his hands were tied behind him, he walked out into the storm with such a firm tread, such a look of quiet pride upon his face that his wife threw back her head to watch him, though her love and anxiety made the tears rain down her cheeks.
Mehitable, meanwhile, was bending over her little sister.
"Not dead!" She sank sobbing to her knees all at once.
Mistress Condit, who had been straining her ears for the last sound of her husband's footsteps, turned at Mehitable's cry.
"Poor Hitty!" She came over to smooth the girl's hair with tender, motherly fingers. "Why, my dear, did ye not know 'twas but a swoon?"
"Nay!"
"The rough voices frightened her, weak as she was. Come, she must be gotten to bed!" Stooping, Mistress Condit gathered the emaciated little form into her arms. She sighed heavily. "Duties must go on!"
"Cannot Hitty and I care for Cherry?" asked Miranda, coming forward.
"Nay, Miranda, though I thank ye," answered Mistress Condit gratefully. She disappeared up the stairs.
"But where is Mistress Nancy?" asked Mehitable.
"Nay, I know not!" answered the other in surprise, looking around.
"Randy, think you she could be a Tory spy? Could she have been the one to have given warning to the Tories, think you? After all, we know naught o' her save she be Lieutenant Freeman's cousin!"
"Nay, Hitty!" Miranda shook her head. "As well think me spy!"
Mehitable looked at her friend gravely. "Miranda, ye have forever proven your loyalty to America, methinks!"
There was a little silence in the kitchen, then Mehitable moved toward the door, pulling her hood once more over her curls.
"Where art going, Hitty?" asked Miranda, quickly.
"To find where they have jailed my father," answered Mehitable. "Tell my mother—I dare not say farewell for fear she will stop me—that I go to seek him."
"But, Hitty, 'twill break your mother's heart an aught happens to you, too!" exclaimed Miranda. "Besides, the Tories have promised to give your father a fair trial!"
"Randy," Mehitable stopped short and looked at the other searchingly, "think you it will be a fair trial with your father and Amos Williams in charge o't?"
Miranda's eyes fell and she slowly shook her head.
"I—I—fear not, Hitty."
"I fear not, too," responded Mehitable grimly. "Therefore I am going."
At Master Jones's house Jemima opened the door for her.
"Nay, I know not where my father is," she said apathetically in answer to Mehitable's eager question. Jemima seemed to be living in some nightmare of her own so that she walked and talked mechanically. As Mehitable saw the change in her, remembering when Jemima Jones had been the wit and life of every gathering, before her brother's kidnapping and her mother's serious illness, she realized that war was more than deprivation, that it meant tragedy as well. All the way to Newark, after she had left the Joneses' farmhouse far behind, she seemed to see Jemima's dulled eyes, hear her hoarse voice.
When she arrived at the Hunters and the Hounds tavern, Mehitable was surprised to see the lower windows blazing with light. She opened the door full upon a crowd of men who turned amazed eyes toward her. Master Gifford soon caught sight of her and hurried to her.
"'Tis little Mistress Mehitable Condit!" Courteously he led her away from the staring eyes into an inglenook. "Now," he went on kindly, "why are ye so far from your mountain this night? Didst have some message from your father for me?"
Tears filled Mehitable's eyes. "My father has been taken by ye Tories, Master Gifford. I—I—have come for help!"
"Alack, is't true?" The other's honest face showed his concern. He turned around and spoke to the room at large. "Samuel Condit, of Newark Mountains has been taken by Tories in his neighborhood," he announced.
An excited clamor greeted this information.
"He is to be tried for treason," continued Mehitable indignantly.
"Hear ye that! Tried for treason, no less!" exclaimed Master Gifford. Mehitable, raising her glance, suddenly encountered the crafty stare of the inn servant, Sturgins, but as she gazed he disappeared.
The taproom resounded to a great buzz of conversation. Some of the men present were in favor of riding at once to Squire Condit's rescue.
"We have enough o' fighting," cried one man, however, who, hands across his fat paunch, looked as though he had never, in his life, exerted himself for right or wrong.
"What, dost thou know aught o' fighting, Joseph Grumfield?" sneered a scornful voice. And the fat man, to Mehitable's satisfaction, flushing, relapsed into angry silence.
"Nay, nay." Master Gifford was frowning down a too-rash suggestion of firing all the houses known to be Tory homes in the surrounding country. "That but calls for like measures by ye enemy." Then, as the kitchen door opened and there was a stir among those present, he turned in that direction with an air of relief. "What say you, Captain Littell?"
The alert, fine-looking man who now entered sent him an inquiring look.
"Have ye suggestion to make concerning Squire Condit's rescue from ye Tories?" exclaimed Master Gifford.
Captain Littell smiled and motioned to someone in the kitchen to come forward. "Ah, yes, we have been discussing the means to be taken. This lady has sought our help and the 'Jersey Blues' will be honored to help!"
And with that he stepped aside to disclose the slender figure of Mistress Nancy. Mehitable stared and thought with shame of her suspicions. As soon as the other caught sight of her she hurried to her side.
"Why, Hitty, did ye not guess I had come for help?" she asked.
Mehitable shook her head, while all the way home, following their escort of "Jersey Blues," she reproached herself for her unkind suspicions of Mistress Nancy.
At the Condit gate Captain Littell bade them a courteous farewell, assuring them that he would report any word from Squire Condit.
In the kitchen, when they entered, they were surprised to see John Condit sitting in quiet conversation with his mother. Mistress Condit soon retired and Mistress Nancy was about to follow when Mehitable, turning unexpectedly upon the stairs, was amazed at the long strange look the two young people were bestowing upon each other. John's was full of wistful appeal; but Mistress Nancy turned away with a curl of her lips. Mehitable wondered if she imagined the quick step John took after that dainty contemptuous figure, wondered if she heard aright his low-breathed, fervent "Nancy!" Such an agony of imploring, of love sounded in John's voice that the heart of the little eavesdropper gave a great throb of excited pity.
But without a word, without one backward glance, Mistress Nancy walked unheeding toward the stairs, her round chin lifted. Silently, with shoulders back, she ascended the stairs so swiftly that Mehitable, panic-stricken at being caught in her accidental spying, almost dropped her candle in her effort to reach their joint bedroom. She found it hard to get undressed without betraying her excitement at this discovery of romance beneath her very nose. It must be confessed, however, that she was almost angry with the girl who could spurn her wonderful, big, handsome brother.