Janice Meredith Part 88

"I am glad if I--if you are happy," responded the girl, as she let him press her fingers. Then, regardless of the sentry, she laid her free hand on Phil's arm impulsively and imploringly, as she added, "Oh, Philemon, please--whatever else you are, please don't be hard and cruel to me."

"I'll try my best not to be, though 't is difficult for a soldier to be otherwise; but, come what may, I'll never pain or deny you knowingly, Janice."

"'T is all I beg. But be kind and generous, and I'll love you in time."

Rub-a-dub went the drums, sounding tattoo, and the beating brought several officers scurrying out of the house. Philemon kissed the girl's hand, and hurried away to his squadron.

Two days the army remained encamped at the Fork, then by easy marches it followed the river down to Richmond, where a rest was taken. Once again getting in motion, it fell back on Williamsburg and halted, for it was now the height of summer, and the heat so intense that the troops were easily exhausted. Finally, the British retired across the James River, and took up a position at Portsmouth.

In the month thus spent, not once was Major Hennion able to get a word with Janice, for Lafayette followed closely upon the heels of the invaders until they were safe over the James, and there was constant skirmis.h.i.+ng between the van and rear and two sharp encounters, which kept Tarleton's and Simcoe's cavalry, when they had rejoined, fully occupied in covering the retreat, while the Merediths and other loyalists who had joined the army travelled with the baggage in the advance.

The occupation of Portsmouth was brief, for upon the engineers reporting that the site was not one which could be fortified, the British general put his troops on board of such s.h.i.+pping as he could gather and transferred them bodily to Yorktown. Here he set the army, and the three thousand negroes who had followed them, leisurely to laying out lines of earthworks, that he might hold the post with the reduced number which would be left him after he detached the reinforcements needed at New York, and despatched a sloop-of-war to Clinton, with word that he but awaited the arrival of transports to send him whatever regiments he should direct.

If Hennion, by his constant service at the front, was helpless to a.s.sist his friends, Clowes, who was always with the baggage train, was unending in his favours. He secured them a stock of clothing, and a.s.signed to them two admirable servants from the horde of runaway slaves; he promptly procured for them a more comfortable travelling carriage, and he made their lodgings a matter of daily concern, so that they always fared with the best, while his gifts of wine and other delicacies were almost embarra.s.singly frequent. At Yorktown, too, where the village of about sixty houses supplied but the poorest and scantiest accommodations for both man and beast, he managed to have the custom-house a.s.signed for his own use, and then placed all the rooms the Merediths needed at their disposal. If Janice's preferences had been spoken and regarded, everything he did in their behalf would have been declined; but her mother's real need of the comforts of life, and her father's love of them, were arguments too strong for her own wishes, and by placing them under constant obligation to the baron made it impossible for her not to treat him with outward courtesy whenever he sought their company, which was with every opportunity. Yet it was in vain that the commissary plied her with his old-time arts of manner and tongue.

Even the slow mind of the squire took note that he gained no ground with his daughter.

"'T is a tougher task ye've undertaken even than ye counted upon," he said, one evening over the wine, as Janice left the table at the earliest possible instant.

"Tut! give me time. I'll bring her around yet."

"I warned ye the maid had ye deep in her bad books."

"What 's a month? If a woman yields in that time, a man may save himself the parson's fee, and it please him."

"Still, though she is a good la.s.s in most things, I must own to ye that she bath a strange vein of obstinacy in her, which she comes by from her mother."

"Then I'll use that same obstinacy to win her. Dost not know that every quality in a female is but a means by which to ensnare her? Let me once know a woman's virtues and frailties, and I'll make each one of them serve my suit."

"'T is more than a month ye've been striving to win her regard."

"Ay; but for some reason, in Philadelphia I could ne'er keep my head when with her, and as often went back as forward, curse it! 'Better slip with foot than with tongue,'

runs the old saying, and I did both with her. I've learned my lesson now, and once give me a clear field and ye shall see how 't will be."

The squire shook his head. "She's promised to Major Hennion, and after much folly and womanishness at last she's found her mind, and tells me she will cheerfully wed him."

"And how will the lot of ye live, man?" asked Clowes, crossly. "Hast not had word that Jersey has enacted a general act of forfeiture and escheatage 'gainst all Royalists?"

"That I'd not," answered the squire, pulling a long face.

"I suppose that has taken Greenwood from us?"

"Ay, for I saw the very advertis.e.m.e.nt of the sale, and have not told ye before merely to spare you distress. And 't will strip Hennion of his acres as well, I take it. Wilt deliberately marry her to a penniless man?"

"Boxely never was his, and I doubt not his scamp of a father will find some way to save it to him. I'll not tarry longer, for 't is ill news ye have just broke to me, and I must carry it to Matilda. It gives us but a black future to which to look forward."

Mr. Meredith gone from the room, the commissary took from his pocket a copy of Gaines' "New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury," which had come to him but that morning, and re-read an account it contained, taken from the "New Jersey Gazette," of the sale of Greenwood to Esquire Hennion.

"'T is my devil's ill luck that he, of all men, should buy it," he muttered. "However, if I can but get them to New York, away from this das.h.i.+ng dragoon, and then persuade them to cross the Atlantic, 't will matter not who owns it."

He rose, stretched himself, and as he did so, he repeated the words:--

"I and chance, against any two; Time and I against chance and you."

LIX TRAITORS IN THE REAR

On a broiling August day in the year 1781, an officer rode along the Raritan between Middle-Brook and Brunswick. As he approached the entrance of Greenwood, he slowed his horse, and after a moment's apparent hesitation, finally turned him through the gateway.

Once at the porch he drew rein and looked for a time at the paintless clap-boards, broken window-panes, and tangle of vines and weeds, all of which told so plainly the story of neglect and desertion. Starting his steed, he pa.s.sed around to the kitchen door, and rapped thrice with the b.u.t.t of a pistol without gaining any reply. Wheeling about, he was returning to the road when an idea seemed to come to him, for, altering direction, he pulled on his bridle, and turned his horse into the garden, now one dense overgrowth. Guiding him along one of the scarcely discernible paths, he checked him at a garden seat, and leaning in his saddle plucked half a dozen sprays of honeysuckle from the vine which surmounted it. He touched them to his lips, and gave his horse the spur.

He held the sprays in his hand as he rode, occasionally raising them to his face until he was on the edge of Brunswick village, then he slipped them into his sword sash.

Giving his horse into the hands of the publican at the tavern, he crossed the green to the parsonage and knocked.

"Is Parson McClave within?" he inquired of the hired girl.

"Come in, come in, Colonel Brereton," called a voice from the sitting-room; "and all the more welcome are you that I did not know you were in these parts."

"My regiment was ordered across the river to Chatham last week, to build ovens for the coming attack on New York, and I took a few hours off to look up old friends," Brereton answered in a loud voice. "Where can we safely talk?" he whispered.

"I'll leave my sermon even as it is," said the presbyter, "and it being hot here, let us into the meeting-house yard, where we'll get what breeze comes up the river. Eager I am to learn of what the army is about."

Once they were seated among the gravestones, the colonel said "I need not tell you that five times in the last two months the continental post-riders have been waylaid 'twixt Brunswick and Princeton by scoundrels in the pay of the British. Only once, fortunately, was there information of the slightest importance, but 't is something that must be stopped; and General Was.h.i.+ngton, knowing of my familiarity with this neighbourhood, directed me to discover and bring the wretches to punishment.

Because I can trust you, I come to ask if you have any information or even inkling that can be of service?"

"Surely, man, you do not suspect any one in my parish?"

replied the clergyman.

Brereton smiled slightly. "There is little doubt that the secret Tories of Monmouth County are concerned; but there is some confederate in Brunswick, who, whether he takes an active share, supplies them with information concerning the routes, days, and hours of the posts. I see, however, you have no light to shed on the matter."

"'T is all news to me," answered the minister, shaking his head.

"I knew that there was some illicit trading with New York, but that we had real traitors amongst us I never dreamed."

"Trap them I will, before many weeks," a.s.serted the officer. "If in no other way, I'll--"

The sentence was interrupted by the clang of the church bell above them.

"Bless me!" cried McClave, springing to his feet. "Your call has made me forget the auction, which, as justice of the peace, I must attend."

"What auction?"

"For the sale of Greenwood under the statute."

The officer frowned. "I feared it when I read of the pa.s.sing of a general act of forfeiture and escheatage," he muttered, "though I still hoped 't would not extend to them."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Have I won?"]

Together the two men crossed the green to the town hall, where now a crowd, consisting of almost every inhabitant of the village and of the outlying farms, was a.s.sembled. The officer, a scowl on his face, paused in the doorway and glanced about, then threaded his way to where two negresses stood weeping, and began talking to them. Meanwhile, the clergyman, pus.h.i.+ng on through the throng, joined Esquire Hennion and Bagby, who for some reason were suspiciously eying each other on the platform.

"I intend to bid on the property, McClave," announced the Honourable Joseph, "so 't is best that the squire takes charge of the sale."

"Thet 'ere is jes what I'm a-calkerlatin' ter do, likewise,"

responded Hennion, with an ugly glance at Joe, "so I guess yer'll hev ter a.s.soom the runnin' of the perseedins yerself, paason."

There was a moment's consultation, and then Justice McClave stepped forward and read in succession the text of an act of the New Jersey a.s.sembly, a proclamation of the Governor, and an advertis.e.m.e.nt from the "New Jersey Gazette" by which doc.u.ments, and by innumerable whereases and therefores, it was set forth that a state of war existed with Great Britain; that sundry inhabitants of the State, forgetful of their just duty and allegiance, had aided and abetted the common enemy; that by these acts they placed themselves outside of the laws of the commonwealth, their property became forfeited, and was ordered sold for the benefit of the State; that the property of one Lambert Meredith, who had been attainted, both by proclamation and by trial, of high treason, was therefore within the act; and, finally, that there would be sold to the highest bidder, at the court-house of the town of Brunswick, on the sixteenth day of August next ensuing, the said property of the said Lambert Meredith; namely, "Two likely negro women, who can cook and spin," and thirty thousand acres of choice arable farm and wood lands under cultivation lease, with one house, one stable, and corn-cribs and other outbuildings thereto appertaining.