The Yeoman Adventurer
except my lord Brocton who wrote it, and I who read it."
"Thank God!" ejaculated the rascal old earl fervently.
"Egad," thought I to myself. "It's the Ridgeley estates no less."
"We will call it, for the purposes of our discussion," said Master Freake
soothingly, "a letter about certain lands."
"Yes! Yes! Certainly! A letter about lands! So it was!" cried the Earl
eagerly, and Brocton began to look less like a coward on the scaffold.
"Would you prefer any other designation or description, my lords?"
inquired Master Freake.
"I'm quite satisfied, my good Master Freake," babbled the Earl.
"What lands?" I burst out, unable to hold in my curiosity any longer.
"The lands known as the Upper Hanyards in the county of Staffordshire,"
replied Master Freake.
"Well I'm ----," cried I, in amazement, but pulling up in time, and
Margaret's blue eyes were as wide open as mine.
"You are, Master Oliver Wheatman," said Master Freake, "the future,
rightful owner of the ancient estate of your family in all its former
amplitude; and all arrearages of rents and incomings as from the
thirteenth of April, one thousand seven hundred and thirty-two, with
compound interest at the rate of ten per cent per annum, together with a
compensation for disturbance and vexation caused to you and yours,
provisionally fixed in the sum of two thousand pounds. The Earl of
Ridgeley, smitten to the heart by the remembrance of his roguery and
knavery, has agreed to make this full restitution. Am I right, my lord?"
"Absolutely, Master Freake, if you please," whined the rascal old earl.
"My God, I'm a ruined man!"
"Well, my lord," said Master Freake, "if you lose your lands and moneys,
and I will not bate an acre or a guinea of the full tale, you and your son
will at least retain what, as I see, you both value more highly. The
restitution is to be made by you to me personally, so that we can avoid
quibbles about Oliver's legal position, he being a rebel confessed, and
the day after he is inlawed I will in my turn convey the property in both
kinds to him. When the restitution has been fully and legally made,
without speck or flaw in title, and passed as such by my lawyers, the
letter will be returned to you sealed as now, and of course I shall be
rigidly silent on the matter. Your lordships," he ended coldly, "may start
for London at once to see to the matter."
The old earl started for the door eagerly, calling down on his son dire
and foul curses. Brocton looked poisonously at me before following, and I
knew I had not done with him yet.
"I've got you your lands, Oliver, but there has been no time to get you
pardoned. The King was at Windsor; every moment was precious; and there
was no use, in the temper of the town, in dealing with underlings. It will
not do to run any risk of your being retaken, for Cumberland loves
blood-letting, and is no friend of mine. We shall take you to a little
fishing village on the Solway and get you a cast over to Dublin, whither
my good ship, 'Merchant of London,' Jonadab Kilroot, Master, outward bound
for the Americas, will pick you up. When we all meet again in London, in a
few months, you will be pardoned. Margaret and I must now follow her
father. The Stuart cause is smashed to pieces."
* * * * *
Late that night I stood with Margaret on the end of a jetty in a little
fishing village on the Cumberland coast. Master Freake was giving final
instructions to the owner of a herring-buss that was creaking noisily
against the side of the jetty under the swell of the tide. Dot was busily
handing to one of her crew of two certain packages for my use.
We stood together, and she had linked her arm in mine. We who had been so
close together for a month were now to have an ocean put between us. Not
that that mattered to me, already separated from her by something wider
than the Atlantic, a lonely unnamed grave away there in Staffordshire.
Suddenly she called to Dot, and he, as knowing just what she wanted,
brought her a box. She loosed her arm from mine and took it from him, and
when I would in turn have relieved her of it, she gently refused.
"Oliver," she said, in quiet, firm tones, "you met me when I was in grave
danger and immediately, like the gallant gentleman you are, left mother
and home to do me service."
"It was the privilege of my life, madam," I said earnestly.
"You have sweetened your service by so regarding it, giving greatly when
you gave. And, sir, that service put me in your debt. You see that?"
"It is like you to say so. What of it?"
"The time came when you were in danger, and I, in my turn, left my father
and rode hard to save you. I am not boasting, you understand, sir. I am
merely stating a fact. I rendered service for service, like for like, did
I not, sir?"
"You did, madam, and did it splendidly," said I.
"Then, sir, when we meet again," she said, and she was now speaking very
clearly and sweetly, looking me full in the eyes, potent in all her beauty
and queenliness, "when we meet again, we meet on level terms."
"Are you ready, lad?" called Master Freake.
"Coming, sir!" I cried, almost glad at heart of the escape.
"One moment, Oliver!" said Margaret. "So anxious to be rid of me? Nay, I
jest of course! I've a little present for you here, Oliver. It will, I
hope, make you think of me at times."
"It will not," I replied, smiling. "It will make me think oftener of you,
that's all."
She handed me the box, and we walked up to the boat.
The half-moon was bright in an unclouded sky, and it showed me tears on
Margaret's cheeks, as I bent to clasp and kiss her hand. Then I said
good-bye to Master Freake and Dot, and was helped into the boat.
So we parted, and I set my face toward the New World. For ten weary
months there is nothing to be said that belongs of right and necessity to
my story.
Except this: The first thing I did when I was alone in my cabin on the
good ship, the "Merchant of London," was to open Margaret's box. It
contained a full supply of books wherefrom to learn "the only language one
can love in," and on the fly-leaf of a sumptuous "Dante" she had written,
"From Margaret to Oliver."
CHAPTER XXV
I SETTLE MY ACCOUNT WITH MY LORD BROCTON
Of how I fared the seas with Jonadab Kilroot, master of the stolid
barque, "Merchant of London," I say nothing, or as good as nothing. Master
Kilroot was a noisy, bulky man, with a whiff of the tar-barrel ever about
him and a heart as stout as a ship's biscuit. He feared God always, and
drubbed his men whenever it was necessary; in his estimation the office of
sea-captain was the most important under heaven, and Master John Freake
the greatest man on earth.
The ship remained at anchor in Dublin harbour while tailors and tradesmen
of all sorts fitted me out, for Master Freake had given me guineas enough
for a horse-load. I did very well, for Dublin is a vice-regal city, with a
Parliament of its own and reasonable society, so that the modes and
fashions are not more than a year or so behind London, which did not
matter to a man going to the Americas.
From Dublin I wrote home. I had laid one strict injunction on Margaret.
She was not to go to the Hanyards, or write there, or allow anyone else to
do either. I would not suffer her to know, or to run any chance of
knowing, about Jack. She was greatly troubled over the matter, but I was
so decided that she consented to my demand. It cost me a world of pains to
write. I wrote, rewrote, and tore up scores of letters. Finally I merely
sent them word that I was going to America to wait till the trouble was
blown over, and that I should be with them again as soon as possible. I
gave them no address. It was cowardly, but I could not bring myself to it.
The nightmare that haunted me was my going home, home to our Kate, the
sweetest sister man ever had, with her young heart wrapped for ever in
widow's weeds. I used to dream that I rode up to the yard-gate on Sultan,
and every time, in my dream, the Hanyards looked so desolate and
woebegone, as if the very barns and byres were mourning for the dear dead
lad who had played amongst them, that I pulled Sultan round and spurred
him away till he flew like the wind, and I woke up in a cold sweat.
On a Wednesday morning in the middle of February the "Merchant of London"
swung into Boston Harbour on a full tide and was moored fast by the Long
Wharf. Master Kilroot hurried me ashore to the house of the great Boston
merchant, Mr. Peter Faneuil, to whom I carried a letter from Master
Freake. It was enough. My friend's protecting arm reached across the
Atlantic, and if it were part of my plan to tell at length of my doings in
the New World, I should have much to say about this worthy merchant of
Boston. He was earnest and assiduous in his kindness, and so far as my
exile was pleasant he made it so.
Mr. Faneuil was urgent that I should take up my abode with him, but this
I gratefully declined, and he thereon recommended me to lodge with the
widow of a ship-captain who had been drowned in his service. So I took
lodging with her at her house in Brattles Street, and she made me very
comfortable. She had a daughter, a pretty frolic lass of nine, who
promoted me uncle the first day, and one negro slave, who was the autocrat
of the establishment till my coming put his nose out of joint, as we say
in Staffordshire.
Master Kilroot unshipped most of his inward cargo and sailed away for
Carolina and Virginia to get rice and tobacco. Then he would come back
here to make up his return cargo with dried fish, to be exchanged at
Lisbon for wine for England. This was his ordinary round of trade, and a
very profitable traffic it was.
When he had left, I settled down to make my exile profitable. By a great
slice of luck there was at this time in Boston an Italian, one Signor
Zandra, who gave lessons in his native tongue openly and in the art of
dancing secretly. The wealth of the town was growing apace; there was a
leisured class, and, speaking generally, the Bostonians were alert of mind
and desirous of knowledge above any other set of men I have ever lived
among. In the near-by town of Cambridge there was a vigorous little
university with more than a hundred students. Moreover, there was a rising
political spirit which gave me a keen interest in the men who breathed the
quick vital air of this vigorous new England. In many respects I found
myself back in the times of Smite-and-spare-not Wheatman, captain of horse
in the army of the Lord-General. The genuine, if somewhat narrow, piety of
the Bostoneers reminded me of him, and still more their healthy critical
attitude towards rulers in general and kings in particular. They had the
old Puritan stuff in them too, for some eight months before they had
captured Louisberg from the French, a famous military exploit which the
great Lord-General would have gloried in.
My days were all twins to each other. Every morning, after breakfast, I
went abroad and always the same way: past the quaint Town House, down King
Street, and so on to the Long Wharf to see if a ship had come in from
England, and to ask the captain thereof if he had brought a letter for one
Oliver Wheatman at Mr. Peter Faneuil's. I got no letter and no news. Then,
always a little sad in heart, I strolled back, and looked in at Wilkins'
book-shop, where some of the town notables were always to be found, and
where, one May morning, as I was higgling over the purchase of a fine
Virgil, I made the acquaintance of a remarkable young gentleman, Mr. Sam
Adams, a genius by birth, a maltster by trade, and a politician by choice.
We would discuss books together in Master Wilkins', or slip out to a
retired inn called "The Two Palaverers" and discuss politics over a glass