Mistress Madcap/Chapter 19
JOHN! John!"
John Condit sat up in bed and looked bewilderedly around his little low-ceilinged room under the eaves. Again came the voice and this time he recognized it as Mehitable's.
"Why, enter, Hitty!" he called out. "The latch be not drawn!"
In answer to this the rough-hewn door was suddenly flung open and Mehitable, crimson-faced from pushing against it, bounced in.
"It be not drawn, 'tis true!" she ejaculated drolly. "'Tis not needed, with a door that sticks like that!"
She came over to gaze down at her brother who had snuggled down shiveringly beneath his coverlet upon the narrow pallet again.
"Nay, you must be out and on your way this afternoon, John!" she told him half falteringly. Ever was it hard to have her brother leave on the dangerous and uncertain missions of war! She held out an official-looking paper to him. "Here be your summons from His Excellency which but now came by messenger. You must go back to Morristown!"
John took the message and read it eagerly. "Aye!" He nodded his head. Then he looked at his sister, who seemed Inclined to linger. "An ye give me a chance, Hitty," he told her impatiently, "I will dress and join ye at breakfast presently."
Mehitable giggled irrepressibly and fled down the steep, narrow stairs to her mother's kitchen.
"See that ye do not linger overly long primping and fussing, John," she flung back with sisterly impudence. "Mistress Nancy will be too sleepy to notice your attire this early in the morn!"
Jonn Condit grinned to himself as he leaped from his bed. Ten minutes later, however, his usual immaculate self, he came down to the roaring kitchen fire and kissed his mother. Mistress Nancy, upon her way to the table with a loaf of bread, bestowed a cold smile upon him.
"Breakfast be served," she announced a moment later. And the others, with the exception of Charity, who, still an invalid, did not come down as early as this, drew up their chairs.
Mistress Condit opened the conversation with a sigh.
"I vow, John, though I shall miss ye sadly, I am glad ye are summoned back to Morristown. Every time a horseman passes upon the road my heart is in my mouth for fear he be Tory!"
"Nay, Mother, I can care for myself! But I do dislike leaving ye here with the burden of the farm upon ye and my father away," answered her son gravely.
"Why dost not ask General Washington for leave o' absence to search for our father?" asked Mehitable curiously, her mouth full of porridge.
John Condit smiled grimly. "Nay, Hitty, think you His Excellency can make exception of me? Our family affairs loom small against those of the country!"
Mistress Nancy, coming down the stairs an hour later with Charity's breakfast tray in her hands, looked around the kitchen in obvious dismay.
"What, art alone, Hitty?" she asked, her face falling.
Mehitable, busily washing dishes, loked up with a naughty grin.
"Why, John is out in the woodshed polishing his boots, an that is what ye mean," she answered coolly. "He has not yet departed."
Setting the tray down with a Httle slam, Mistress Nancy bit her lips.
"Indeed, I asked not for information concerning your—your—brother!" she retorted, the color flooding her face.
Mehitable polished a pewter trencher; then, placing It upon the table, she turned and came over to her with an air of determination.
"Nancy," she said, her honest eyes looking straight into the older girl's, "I could not help seeing you and John last night. Why do you treat my brother thus? I guessed, of course, that you had met before—perhaps in New York."
Mistress Nancy drew herself up proudly. "I know not who gave you thus charge o' my affairs, Hitty. Ye know nothing about them. But come"—her face changed and coming close to Mehitable she held out a three-cornered note—"knowst aught o' this, my child?"
Mehitable, feeling snubbed, took the note silently; but spreading it open and reading it she glanced up in surprise.
"Why, it purports to be" she commenced.
"Exactly. It purports to be one I have written; but which I swear I never saw until your mother drew it out of my reticule, which hung in my closet. Had Mistress Condit been of suspicious nature it might have made matters vastly unpleasant. I had asked your mother to hand me my kerchief, which was in the reticule. Do not think she was prying."
Mehitable read the note aloud.
Dear Captain:
This is to let ye know that Squire Condit has also been taken by our men. I will advise ye farther when matters progress. Signed
N. L.
"But when one looks closely it is not your handwriting, Nancy," went on Mehitable. "Why it looks more like"
She stopped abruptly, but Mistress Nancy had not heard her, having moved over to look out of the window. Rain was falling again, the freezing winter weather having suddenly melted into the warmth of spring. It was all grayness and drabness, even the fire seeming to have lost its cheeriness as it sputtered and scolded upon the hearth. Mehitable joined the other and stared out at the rain, too.
But as she gazed she beheld an ominous sight. Around a turn in Second Road, trotting biiskly from the north, was just such a party of men as had come for Squire Condit. Indeed, in the van were two figures, the sight of which sent a spasm of fear through Mehitable.
"Squire Briggs and that man Hawtree!" she gasped. She raised her voice in a frantic cry. "John! John! The Tories!"
In hasty answer, John Condit appeared in the woodshed door. "Where is Mother?" he asked.
"Gone to the Briggs's," answered Mehitable. She pointed wildly. "But fly! The Tories have come for ye!"
Mistress Nancy, who had been standing as though frozen, now spoke.
"Cannot he go through the buttery and escape by the rear?" she asked, tremulously.
"Nay!" Mehitable shook her head despairingly. "They will at once surround the house!"
Running forward Mistress Nancy seized John by the arm. "Ye must hide, John! Quick!"
"But," John Condit shook his head stubbornly, "I be no one to run!"
"There is a chance—they might not search the house," she urged desperately. Mehitable, watching the man outside approach warily, added her pleas, so that at last John yielded. Scarcely had he and Mistress Nancy disappeared upstairs and Mehitable seated herself before her spinning wheel and set it to rotating furiously, as though she had been working there for hours, when the door was flung open and fifteen or more dripping men entered. Some came sullenly, some defiantly, but all were determined, like the usual mob which has been swayed to violence by a bitter tongue. Hawtree approached her roughly.
"Where be thy brother?" he shouted above the whirr of the wheel.
Mehitable stopped her spinning long enough to answer. "John?" she inquired. "Oh, he has been gone since early morn."
She started her spinning wheel again; but Hawtree caught the spokes of it with brutal hand and stared down at her, his face working with hatred and passion.
"Ye lie!" he said then.
Mehitable leaped to her feet. Anger leaped to meet anger. Her eyes were fully as vindictive as Hawtree's when she snatched up a glove left upon a near by table by Mistress Nancy and, reaching a-tiptoe, slapped the cruel, malicious face before her.
Hawtree staggered back with a smothered cry. Then Mehitable felt her arm wrenched in a grip of steel and there was no telling what might have happened had not one of the men muttered protest.
"Be we here to fight petticoats?" he grumbled. And Squire Briggs's hurried voice broke in.
"Be not a fool again, Hawtree!" he snapped. "The girl be young and ye angered her. Now, look you, Hitty"—he turned to Mehitable—"we know that John is here hidden, so bid him come forth!"
"I tell ye he be gone," insisted Mehitable stonily, scarcely knowing why she was keeping up the farce, since capture seemed inevitable.
"Where be your mother?" asked Squire Briggs shortly.
Mehitable looked at him. Her mother had gone to care for Mistress Briggs, who was ill. The irony of it struck her.
"My mother!" Her voice shook with anger. "Ye dare to ask for my"
Her voice died away into speechlessness. For at that moment the stair-door opened and Mistress Condit, attired in her long, red cardinal, with its hood drawn low over her face, entered.
Now Mehitable had seen her mother depart early that morning, she had been in the kitchen constantly since then and no one had passed through from the outside door, while the stair door was to be reached only by going through the kitchen. Mehitable blinked at the mystery and subsided upon a chair.
Advancing directly to the fire, paying no attention to the company beyond a brief, hurried curtsey, Mistress Condit knelt upon the hearth and poked briskly at the fire. Then, as the men watched her embarrassedly, she spoke in a husky whisper, keeping her back to them.
"Pardon me, gentlemen, I have such a touch of bronchitis as has robbed me o' my voice." She poked busily at the blazing logs.
"Madam," said one of the men, "we would search your house an ye give us permission!"
"But, sir," began Mistress Condit hoarsely.
"Then we search it without your permission!" exclaimed Hawtree rudely.
And he swept most of the men toward the stairs, up which they disappeared noisily. The few remaining in the kitchen soon departed. Plainly, making war upon women was not to their liking. Mehitable saw them mount and ride away. Finally only Squire Briggs was left in the kitchen.
Mistress Condit now rose quietly, and taking a basket from the dresser she placed some food in it. Then she crossed to the outside door.
"I be going to your poor wife, Squire Briggs," she whispered. From beneath the shadows of her hood she cast an oblique glance at him. Mehitable, watching silently, saw a shamed patch of red leap to the little man's face.
"Nay, Mistress Condit, I" he stammered awkwardly. But Mistress Condit had already slipped out of the door and was gone.
Mehitable, at the window, then saw a strange sight. She saw her mother at the gate select an unguarded horse—for now the men were all in the house, the others having ridden away—and then Mehitable gasped. Her mother, for whom a chair had to be fetched every time she mounted painfully to a pillion on a horse's back leaped into the empty saddle and galloped away!
Squire Briggs was brooding by the fire when Hawtree and his followers came down the stairs.
"You were dreaming when you said the man we seek was here!" snapped Hawtree ill-naturedly
"The maid spoke the truth!" growled one of the men stamping out the door. The rest followed him in angry silence.
"How, suppose ye, our bird flew away?" muttered Squire Briggs.
"In sooth, I know not!" retorted Hawtree. "Was he ever here?"
Mehitable, smiling to herself, said nothing. But she paled when a man rushed in.
"One—one o' the horses be gone!" he announced excitedly.
Hawtree, however, looked at him indifferently. "Some boobie forgot to tie him. Doubtless he strayed!" he said sharply. And the fellow, red-faced, backed out of the room. With shrugs and grimaces of disappointment the other two soon followed.
"But, Nancy," cried Mehitable, a little later, when the two girls sat before the fire laughing and crying together, "how did ye ever think o't?"
"In truth, I scarcely know." Mistress Nancy looked into the fire with dreaming eyes. "Love will ever find a way, I think. I saw your mother's red cardinal upon her closet hook and at once the plan came to me. Enveloped in such a cloak and with pretense of cold to help him, I was sure John could escape. Did he not make a splendid woman, Hitty!"
"Aye, wonderful!" agreed the little sister.
"But I think," went on Mistress Nancy softly, "I like him better as a man!"
They were silent for a happy moment. Then Mehitable began to laugh. Mistress Nancy turned sympathetic eyes upon her.
"What be laughing at?" she asked smilingly.
"I was wondering what Squire Briggs would think—I should like to see his face!—when he reaches home and sees the green coat my mother really wore to his house to-day!" And Mehitable went off into such a gale of laughter that Charity was heard calling from upstairs demanding to know the joke.