Mistress Madcap/Chapter 7
CHARITY nooded speechlessly.
A long silence ensued during which the traveler who had been the more jovial bit his finger nails and cast chagrined glances at his morose companion.
"Deuce take it, Hawtree!" he exclaimed, after a while. "Don't take it so bitterly. No one was exactly to blame!"
The man named Hawtree turned around and stared angrily.
"I told you even the trees had ears these days!" he thundered fiercely. "Yet you must needs give the enemy full details of our private affairs!"
The other man relapsed into silence at that and the rest of the journey was finished in absolute speechlessness upon the part of everyone, the girls hardly daring to breathe lest they bring the ire of their unpleasant companion upon their heads. They were more than relieved when they finally rumbled into the inn yard at Trenton and the others were deposited there.
Then the coach continued upon its way, out through the town along the banks of the lovely Delaware River that even the bleakness of December could not rob of its charm. The fine estate and the mansion belonging to the girls' Cousin Eliza was situated rather upon the outskirts of Trenton, with a beautiful view up and down the river from the great garden behind the house.
"I am so glad our journey is ended. Aren't you, Hitty?" yawned Charity, as they approached the house itself. It was almost midnight, and they were tired and hungry.
"Delivered safely!" shouted Driver Dan drawing up with a flourish. And the two girls, laughing, got out and saw their Cousin Eliza upon her front steps.
"Well, little travelers!" she exclaimed, smiling "'Tis good to see your bright faces once more!"
She drew them within doors, whither two colored footmen were carrying the little cowhide trunk.
Mehitable, after greeting her cousin, stared around her in astonishment. Every sconce was lighted, there was a sound of music from the parlors, gay voices laughed and sang snatches of song, while from the dining room on the other side of the wide center hall came the sound of silver clinking against china.
"Why, are you giving a party?" she asked in innocent wonder.
Her Cousin Eliza laughed rather bitterly, then motioned to the girls to follow her. They turned obediently as she began to ascend the stairs, and mounted after her in embarrassed silence. Why had she laughed so queerly?
Not at the first landing did their hostess pause; but on they went, up to where of old the servants' quarters had been. There Cousin Eliza led the way into a little low-ceilinged room and, sitting down in a low chair, gazed at them sadly.
"A party, you asked, Mehitable?" she said sorrowfully. "I would to Heaven it were a party of my own I was giving to-night! No, girls, the party is that of my guests'"—she stressed the word "guests" scornfully—"of my guests' giving! 'Tis not I who am mistress in my own home any more!"
"Poor cousin!" Charity went to her and softly stroked the other's white arm. "But this is a nice little room—as nice as ours at home," she went on, looking around her cheerfully. "'Tis as spotless as can be!"
"Dear child!" Cousin Eliza bent to kiss her affectionately, "I, too, room up here on this same floor, crowded out of my own apartments. The servants are in quarters outside, now. But come, when you have washed some of the stains of travel away, descend, I pray you, and meet—some of my guests!"
The girls stood for a little while in silence when her slow footsteps had died away upon the stairs. Then Charity moved over to her sister.
"Think you Mother would have let us come, Hitty, had she known the Hessians were actually encamped in Cousin Eliza's own house?" she whispered.
"Nay!" Mehitable shook her head. "But now that we are here, I, for one, am going to enjoy myself!" she added with youthful relish.
Later, however, the two little maids paused in agonized bashfulness at the foot of the stairs in the big hall. But their Cousin Eliza spied them at once and hastened toward them, escorted across the shining waxed floor by a young man in a Hessian uniform.
Mehitable, glancing up at him, could scarcely repress an exclamation. Save that he had yellow hair, lightly powdered, and wore not the buff and blue, he might have been the young aide-de-camp who had stopped that day weeks ago to beg hospitality for his Chief, General Washington.
"Mehitable," said Cousin Eliza formally, "may I present Lieutenant von Garten?"
The young Hessian officer clicked his polished boots together and, bowing low in a rather foreign fashion, lifted Mehitable's little brown hand to his lips.
"Mistress Mehitable!" he smiled amiably, with not the slightest hint of recognition. And the girl, chiding herself for her too-powerful imagination, curtseyed in return. Then Charity was introduced and the young officer escorted the three ladies into the parlors.
But in spite of the brilliant gathering of Hessian officers and a few of their stout German wives and many American belles, the girls were too weary from their journey to enjoy the festivities and soon asked permission of their cousin to retire.
Then how the days flew by! The invaders of Trenton were a pleasure-loving crew who planned parties, drives, and calls galore, who filled every waking moment with some sort of good time. Mehitable, being older and really fond of every sort of outdoor sport, was in great demand. Charity, more retiring and quiet, was left more to the company of her cousin who, like many of the ladies of that time, did not relish the hardy sports of hunting and tramping that the Germans loved.
Upon the whole, despite Cousin Eliza's natural resentment, the enemy, beyond their excessive eating and drinking, were not unkind to the townspeople of Trenton. And the time passed all too quickly for Mehitable, who much preferred this present life to the quiet, work-filled one upon her father's farm, no matter how much better the latter was for her. It was Charity who sighed often in secret for her mother and father and her beloved kitten, and who would go up, unnoticed, to her little attic room and there weep a few homesick tears in private.
But Christmas afternoon found even Charity's face sparkling with smiles as she stood behind her sister, staring into the little mirror hung over the white-draped dressing table.
"Oh, Cherry, aren't we beautiful!" sighed Mehitable at last.
"You are, Hitty," murmured Charity, gazing at her sister in honest admiration.
"And you are, too!" cried Mehitable, whirling around. "Oh, wasn't it wonderful of Cousin Eliz' to give us these dresses for our Christmas gifts!"
Mehitable was truly splendid in a white satin gown with crimson satin overskirt. She looked like a gorgeous autumn leaf as she stood there playing with the big fan of crimson ostrich plumes, gazing down at her tiny crimson satin slippers. For Cousin Eliza's foot was the same size and her gifts of two dresses from her own fine wardrobe made over for the girls by her maid had been indeed complete. Charity looked like a demure garden pink in a similar costume of pink and white satin, while the aforementioned maid had dressed their hair high in the prevailing mode, lightly powdering the dark and yellow curls until they both looked alike.
"It was indeed good of Cousin Eliza to give us these dresses," returned Charity, answering her sister's excited exclamation. "But think you, Hitty, she expects us to take them home with us?"
"Of course, silly one," said Mehitable carelessly, holding her fan this way and that as she gazed at herself in the mirror. "Dost think that people take back their Christmas gifts after once bestowing them?"
"No," hesitated Charity. "But these were Cousin Eliza'a own dresses."
"But she wanted us to have them, she said, since she could buy us nothing of value for Christmas," answered Mehitable briskly. "And she had Felice cut them down to fit us, which ruins them for her wearing again, Cherry."
"But wherever shall we be able to wear them again, Hitty?" persisted Charity seriously. "To meeting?" She paused to giggle. "Imagine Parson Chapman's face an we were to walk into meeting attired thus some Sunday."
Mehitable laughed, then turned to rebuke the other. "It is not seemly, Charity, to mock our good parson when he is away in danger with the American Army!"
"I know!" Tender-hearted Charity looked self-reproachful once. "It is because I am nervous that I jest, forsooth," she confided apologetically. "You are used to parties, of course, having visited Cousin Eliza before, Hitty; but this is my first real ball, you know."
"H'm, yes," said Mehitable doubtfully. She did not think it necessary to mention the fact that her knowledge of previous balls at Cousin Eliza's had been gleaned from what she could see through the banisters, her hostess having sensibly considered her, four years before, entirely too young to be allowed to join the holiday revels.
But the two pretty figures which hesitated at the foot of the stairs that gay Christmas afternoon seemed alike in self-consciousness a little later. The young Hessian lieutenant. Von Garten, soon spied them and led them to seats in the parlor, where they were surrounded in a little while by an admiring group, and Cousin Eliza, in her corner, looked well pleased at the happiness her gifts had bestowed upon her little relatives. When the music began each girl was led out for the stately minuet.
How quaint and lovely that group would look to us, now, with their slow steps and stately curtseys and bowings. But to the two young country girls it was the height of gayety and fun, that minuet, and their eyes sparkled with pleasure.
Although it was not long after the midday Christmas feast, with broad daylight shut out of the rooms by the heavy shutters to aid the softer, more festive candlelight, numbers of Hessian officers were already gathered around the steaming punch bowl toasting themselves and their own success in their guttural language. Only the younger, more sprightly of them were dancing.
At last the music stopped, the fiddler laying down his instrument and the musician at the spinet rising with him to partake of the egg-nogg a servant was offering them. And before they had resumed playing, Mehitable had been led away by young Von Garten and Charity had been solicited for the minuet by a fat, fussy old officer who proved to be exceptionally light upon his feet.
Fortunately for them, both girls had been painstakingly and carefully taught the minuet and some of the quadrilles popular at that time by their brother John, who had learned this fol-de-rol, as his father called it, in New York. But dancing among these gay revelers with real music was far different from dancing out in the big empty hayloft with the only music supplied breathlessly by John's whistling.
"Why, how easy it is!" gasped Mehitable. She glanced up at Von Garten as he held her hand in the air for her to circle around him.
He smiled down at her. "You speak as though surprised. Why?" he asked idly.
But Mehitable, a sudden quick memory of the little girl in homespun frock hopping up and down in the big barn, of John's sharp "Don't bob when you curtsey! Go down slowly to the floor—so! And now up again slowly—so! Slowly! Slowly!" overwhelming her, merely shook her head and smiled with aching throat. Oh, to see John again! To hear once more his brief brotherly praise, "Well done, little Hitty!" The dance ended, they moved over to the single window which had been left uncovered. This window commanded a view of the driveway and of the gate and an oblique view of the Delaware River. Christmas morning had found the ground white, to everyone's pleasure, and now the rays of the setting sun slanted across the dazzling expanse of white and sent gleaming ripples dancing and scurrying across the river between the masses of floating ice.
Von Garten began the conversation.
"They say the American Army is becoming more ragged and hungry every day," he commenced, glancing slyly at her.
Mehitable did not answer.
"'Tis too bad they do not know when they are beaten," went on the young man teasingly. "What a lot of time and trouble 'twould save them an their general surrendered to Lord Cornwallis, who is waiting at New Brunswick so kindly and patiently for them to do so."
Mehitable tossed her head. "An General Washington wished, I doubt not he could turn the tables even now and capture all these Hessian boobies," she answered tartly.
A quick gleam appeared in Von Garten's eyes. He opened his mouth as though to speak, but before he could do so the girl had leaned forward and was studying two horsemen approaching through the open gate. The last flitting beams of the sun shone full in her eyes, however, and it was not until the riders were passing directly beneath the window she was staring through that she caught a good look at them. Then, in acute anazement, she stumbled back.
"Why, 'tis Squire Briggs!" she ejaculated. "And that man Hawtree!"
"You know them?" asked Von Garten curiously.
"Squire Briggs is a neighbor of ours," answered Mehitable. "And Hawtree came up in the coach from Millburn with us. I did not like him."
Von Garten studied her flushed young face.
"I wonder," murmured Mehitable absently, "I wonder what Squire Briggs is doing up here?"
Somehow the spare, furtive, rather sneaking face of her father's neighbor boded no good, she felt.
"You do not like him, either?" asked Von Garten softly.
But Mehitable glanced up suddenly, keenly. This, she all at once remembered, was an enemy to her country, and as such, no matter how frank and attractive she found him to be personally, she must be upon her guard against. So she relapsed into a silence she would not break, watching over her shoulder, uneasily, the door by which the two unpleasant visitors must enter.
At last she saw them, saw the thin, stoop-shouldered figure of Squire Briggs bend awkwardly over Cousin Eliza's hand as the man Hawtree briefly introduced him, saw them immediately look her way and, with a heart that suddenly throbbed, realized that with then hostess they were turning toward her.
"Oh," she said, under her breath, "isn't there some place I can hide?
But Von Garten laughed, thinking her joking, and when the two men had reached her and were introduced to her by Cousin Eliza, he bowed and left her alone with the other men, for their hostess had been called away at that moment.
"And now, Mehitable," said Squire Briggs, smiling unpleasantly, "we wish very much to see you alone." He paused and then added softly, "On business."
But Mehitable parried this. "I do not know of any business you could have with me. Squire Briggs," she answered coolly.
"No?" asked Squire Briggs, while Hawtree muttered impatiently. "I suppose you are not interested in that rascal brother o' yours, either?"
Mehitable's cheeks flamed, but her voice, when she answered, was steady.
"John a rascal. Squire Briggs?" she returned proudly. "Had you not better look closer to home, sir?"
A pale red now burned in the Squire's sallow cheeks. "Then I take it you are not interested in you brother's welfare?" he snarled.
The girl hesitated. This, she felt, was a plot. What its object was she could not tell, save that the two men seemed anxious to see her alone. But on the other hand, John might be in real danger and these two men sent to parley with her. Suddenly, impetuously, she made up her mind.
"There is under the stair landing a little room. We shall be alone there, an you wish."
It so happened, as they left the room, that no one noticed their departure. The hall, too, was momentarily deserted.
"And now, sirs," said Mehitable, facing the two men in the cold Httle room she had designated, "what do you wish?"
But instead of speaking at once the man named Hawtree did a strange thing. Fixing his eyes upon her—and she shuddered at those sinister eyes—he slowly drew from his pocket two long leather thongs. Then he stepped to the door and, suddenly snapping it shut, turned the key in the lock and pocketed the key, while over in the corner by the cheerless fireplace sounded Squire Briggs's cackle of laughter, taunting, unbehevably cruel.