Mistress Madcap/Chapter 4
THE next morning the two girls, feeling stiff and lame, took their share of corn bread outside the hut to eat. Charity perched herself upon a great rock that stood outside the door; but Mehitable strode back and forth briskly as she ate.
"Better walk, too, Cherry," she said. "Best to get the blood a-going!"
"Nay, I feel warm enough in this thick cape. But I am so thirsty, Hitty! And I would like to wash my hands and face."
"Your wish will soon be granted. Daughter," said the Squire's voice, as he joined them. "Judd has gone to Rock Spring for water."
His keen glance swept the underbrush around them as he spoke. Suddenly he started and bent forward to scrutinize the ground more closely.
"It grew warmer in the night; the frost has melted from the ground and here are tracks—Indian tracks!" he exclaimed.
He straightened up and at that moment Charity spoke, as though to herself.
"Then it wasn't a dream!"
Squire Condit and Mehitable turned to look at her.
"What wasn't a dream, Charity?" asked Mehitable curiously.
"The Indian!" answered Charity, her eyes upon the tell-tale tracks. "You were all asleep, Father," she hurried on before the Squire could speak. "I saw the door pushed open and—and—that Indian whose life you saved in the last storm—he stepped in. But he only stayed a moment and did no harm"
"Did no harm!" echoed the Squire. "But, gadzooks, girl, he might have come back with some of ye drunken Hessians and done us harm as we slept!"
"Oh, no, Father!" interrupted Charity with a little shake of her head. "He isn't that sort at all, I'm sure. He is a good Indian!"
"There are no good Indians," said the Squire shortly, exactly as his wife had said. He, too, could tell of Indian raids upon white men's outposts, tales of barbaric cruelty.
Mistress Condit, who had appeared in the doorway in time to hear them conversing, nodded her head at her husband's last remark.
"'Tis true, Samuel," she said. Then her face paled. "Think you he will return to-night?" she asked.
Squire Condit looked grave, but shook his head.
"'Tis doubtful," he answered, "knowing that we are warned. But Amos shall build us a stout bar for the door to-night."
"Then we can have no fire to-night?" inquired Mehitable dismally, who foresaw a series of cold meals stretching drearily away into the future.
"'Twere better not," returned her father. "An Indian—not counting this one who knows our whereabouts—scents wood smoke where a white man notices nothing, and our fire might attract some British runner."
"Oh, suz!" sighed Mehitable. "That means horrid old cold corn bread again!"
Her parents laughed, for Mehitable's healthy young appetite was ever a source of amusement to them.
"'Twill not hurt you, this cold, plain fare," said her mother sensibly. "Perhaps ye will not grumble at hot porridge upon our return, Hitty."
But their alarm was for nothing, for the Indian did not return that night, nor any following nights, and on the third day Young Cy's cheerful face beamed at them from behind the great rock as he approached them up the narrow path.
"The Hessians have departed," he announced. "My parents have already started for home from the Heddens' farm, where they had fled—over in Pleasant Valley, you know, Squire. But, alas, such a mess as they made of things, the dirty Hessian pigs! And nothing left of stores at all!"
Mistress Condit groaned. "All of my preserves, doubtless!" she said in dismay. "I had meant to send them on to our men at headquarters, denying ourselves for that purpose!"
"I fear 'tis in vain you saved them, mistress," answered Young Cy sympathetically, "if your storeroom has fared as my mother's. I peeped in to make sure no tardy Hessian had lingered behind, and it is an empty cupboard and store closet my poor mother will confront shortly."
The tears stood in Mistress Condit's eyes.
"Ah, Samuel," she exclaimed piteously, turning to her husband, "if they are all gone! I have been denying you and the poor girls everything, hoping to get these supplies to John's company and perchance to General Washington himself!"
"Ah, well, Mary, do not cross bridges until they are reached," answered the Squire consolingly.
"Perhaps the Hessians did not reach our place," offered Charity, whose tender little heart was wrung at sight of her mother's agitation.
"If only I had stayed and—and—rawhided the brutes!" exploded Mehitable, doubling her fists, her cheeks turning scarlet.
Young Cy paused to chuckle at her warlike attitude. Then he turned to Mistress Condit.
"'Tis useless to hope the Hessians did not reach your house," he said, pity in his manly young voice. "I passed there on my way up here."
"And how was it?" asked the Squire eagerly.
"Wait and see. I cannot do more than warn ye," answered Young Cy evasively, plainly fearing tears upon the part of Mistress Condit.
So they hurriedly packed the cart, and with Charity and her mother again riding and Mehitable once more astride Dulcie, with the others mounted as before, they descended from their mountain retreat.
Desolate silence reigned as they involuntarily stopped when their home first came into sight. Then Charity hid her face in her mother's shoulder and commenced to weep quietly.
The house was indeed a sorry sight. Precious windowpanes had been wantonly smashed, every door hung dubiously ajar or was entirely wrenched away from its hinges, even the very stepping stones which had led through the orderly garden and around to the kitchen door had been torn up and strewn in wild abandon.
"Those—those" stammered Mehitable.
after a while. She was too angry to be coherent and her furious words died away in a sputter.
"Well," said the Squire, after a silence during which they had all stared forlornly at their once neat, well-kept home, "better get in and set to work. Sooner started sooner mended."
His sorry little attempt at jocularity deceived no one. It was in utter spiritlessness that his family and servants followed at his heels into the erstwhile clean, bright kitchen. Now it seemed to greet them sadly, a monument of reproach to the uncouth enemy who had recently inhabited it.
Mehitable soon uttered an exclamation.
"Oh, Mother, they must have found the silver!" She pointed to the trapdoor which stood open in the center of the kitchen floor.
"Ah!" Mistress Condit drew a sharp breath and, running over to the hole, peered into its depths.
"The ladder, Amos!" she ordered.
But the men, leaving the kitchen to the womenfolk, had tramped off to the stock barns, although they had turned the stock loose before their flight. They were eager to see what damage the enemy had wrought there. It was Mehitable who presently came, dragging the stout little ladder in from its hiding place outdoors.
Mistress Condit hastily descended the ladder; but at its foot the girls could hear her exclaim in a low voice, and soon she had climbed up with a puzzled face.
"Everything seems intact; but the beasts have emptied the dye pot down there," she announced. Her gaze flew to the fireside corner where the dye pot, that necessary adjunct to colonial life, had been wont to stand. But the corner was empty. "Everything is covered with dye—the feather beds and the big Bible—alack, I doubt we shall ever be able to read from it again!"
Mehitable, who had climbed down into the cellar as soon as her mother was out of the way, now returned carrying the big book.
"'Tis true, Mother," she cried, holding out the Bible, still damp from the dye. "But I think the inside pages have escaped! 'Tis my belief the Hessians became angry at not finding more valuable articles and thought to make these things we had hidden, which they were doubtless too lazy to carry up, useless to us by emptying the dye pot's contents upon them."
"And all that good dye wasted!" mourned Mistress Condit. "But mind, not a word to your father of this to-day! Poor man, he has enough to worry over now!"
Thus bravely did the good wives and daughters of that time endure the fortunes and ravages of their war-stricken country.
When Squire Condit returned, however, he was not as cast down as might have been expected.
"The stock barns were untouched," he said in answer to his wife's anxious question. "The Hessians seemed to wreak their wantoness solely upon the house. Most of the stock is safe, too, having wandered away, fortunately for us, toward the woods. Amos and Judd are rounding them up, now."
"If only I had moved our vegetables and preserves to the cellar when you advised me thus, Samuel," said Mistress Condit sorrowfully when she returned from her empty storeroom. "Everything is gone!"
"Ah, well, we will manage somehow Be thankful our lives are spared, Mary, and the roof over our heads is still intact," returned the Squire. His great bams safe, the rest of the havoc the marauders had created seemed not so irremediable. "'Twill not take Amos and me long to mend the house."
"Well, I am glad that we had that pie for Thanksgiving, anyway," remarked Mistress Condit, satisfaction in her voice. "And that the silver is safe," she added.
Squire Condit kept his word, even sending Amos across the s'vamps to Newark to get new window glass to replace that broken by the raiders. Upon his return Amos reported that no serious damage beyond theft and petty wrecking had been done the countryside by the Hessians.
"Though every cupboard do be as bare as our'n," he added ruefully, "and stores, now, are as skerce as they say they are in New York Town."
"Ah," sighed Mistress Condit, "how long will this wretched warfare last! If only General Washington could have bottled up the enemy in New York and starved them out!"
But General Washington was already commencing his dreary retreat through New Jersey. And one exciting day Mehitable burst into her mother's kitchen, which now stood as clean and neat as ever.
"Mother! Charity!" she called hysterically. "Yonder comes riding up the road General Washington and his stafF!"
Charity came tumbling down the stairs from the loft bedroom, and the mother, pale faced, appeared in the doorway of the lean-to.
"Oh, Hitty, how do you know?" squealed Charity.
"One of the officers—a fine-looking man—came riding ahead," stammered Mehitable. And as if in verification, a tall young man in buff-and-blue uniform appeared that moment in the doorway behind her'
He smiled a little at the expressions upon the faces before him—Mehitable's triumph, Charity's awe, their mother's surprise—before he swept off his tri-cornered hat and made a low bow.
"General Washington's compliments," he said ceremoniously, "and he desires to know if he and his staff may rest here awhile, with perchance a bite to eat?"
"My compliments to General Washington," returned Mistress Condit, in such a stately manner that her daughters' gaze flew, amazed, to her. "And I shall be most honored to entertain him and his staff in my home."
The young officer smilingly bowed again and withdrew.
"But weren't you frighted at all, Mother?" whispered Mehitable, as she hurried to "blaze" the fire and start dinner preparations.
"Why should I be?" returned her mother composedly. "Go you to the barn, Charity," she directed calmly, "and acquaint your father with this unexpected honor. Also tell him to have Judd bring in the rib chops from that porker he slew. I fear we can only give them fried pork and the cabbage which is on boiling. If only the Hessians had not taken all our fowls!" she added regretfully.
Then she turned with a start to curtsey deeply as the heavy door swung open and a group of officers in buff and blue, led by a tall, noble figure, entered her kitchen.
They were handsome men who stopped there that day, but inevitably the gaze was caught and held by the stem majestic face of the commander-in-chief, so that the others' countenances faded into mediocrity.
"I assure you we are indeed grateful, madam," said General Washington, removing his hat with a flourish and returning his hostess's curtsey with a bow.
He then walked toward the fireside settle. "May I be seated? We have been riding since this mom across swamps from Cranetown."
He sank down upon the settle with a weary sigh at his hostess's quickly bestowed permission; but he soon smiled at Mehitable, who was watching him across the table she was laying.
"Come here, little maid," he said, for he ever loved young folk, "and tell me your name."
Mehitable, with a frightened glance at her mother who, assisted by a group of laughing officers, was preparing the usual corn-meal bread from meal they had been forced to buy from Squire Briggs, moved over to stand before the great man.
"My—my—name is—Mehitable," she stammered huskily.
Her voice came only with an effort.
"Mehitable," repeated His Excellency. "A strong, sensible name."
"But I hate it!" said Mehitable unexpectedly. She spoke in a fierce little whisper. "Why couldn't my mother have named me Angeline or Janice or even P-Polly!" Then she stopped in confusion. Oh, what would her mother say to her speaking thus to a stranger and such a famous stranger! Whatever had possessed her to blurt out that which she had never breathed before, even to Charity—her secret dislike of her "strong, sensible name."
She stood silent, then, with downcast eyes, while the scarlet flooded her cheeks, waiting for the words which, in all justice, should rebuke her. But instead, there was a pause, and at last she raised her eyes.
"Ah, my child," said General Washington, then, and his eyes twinkled above his grave mouth, "lean forward while I whisper thee a secret!"
Mehitable obediently turned her pink ear toward him.
"I do dislike my name, too!" whispered His Excellency, chuckling.
She started back in surprise; but General Washington shook his head.
"'Tis a secret between you and me," he said gently.
"A secret!" said a laughing voice behind them, and one of the young officers stood smiling there. "May not the rest of us share this amusing secret with Your Excellency and the young lady?"
"Nay, 'tis only for little Mistress Mehitable and me!" protested the General, also smiling, now, and the young man surrendered at once with a quick, polite little bow.
Mehitable, in after years, loved to tell of her mother's famous dinner, of how the men gathered eagerly about the long, hospitable board, of how they enjoyed each and every appetizing dish placed before them, of how at last the gallant company had mounted their horses to ride away with doffed hats and waving hands.
General Washington had not offered to pay for the sincere hospitality; but had accepted it with the graciousness of the truly great-hearted. A few days later, however, a soldier galloped up the the Condits' gatepost and hailed Charity, who was chasing a kitten around the winter-blasted garden.
"Squire Condit's?" he inquired. And upon Charity's replying in the affirmative, he dismounted and handed her three packages—a bulky one addressed to Mistress Condit, a smaller one for Charity herself, and one for Mehitable.
She ran excitedly indoors with them.
"And what is yours, Charity?" asked Mistress Condit, when she had opened her gift and rejoiced over the welcome additions to the food she had been lately forced to purchase.
"A bit of bright ribbon for my cap, perhaps from Lady Washington's own store. Who knows!" said Charity happily.
"And mine is a silver chain! Is not lovely!" exulted Mehitable. She held the dainty piece of jewelry out for her mother's and sister's admiring inspection. But she did not show the little note which had accompanied it, for that was a secret. Written upon the white card was, "For the little maid who would be named Angeline!"