The Yeoman Adventurer
of wine and a pipe of tobacco. I liked him so much that I was afraid to
tell him I had been fighting for the Stuarts, and was content to pass in
the role Mr. Faneuil had assigned to me of an ingenuous young English
gentleman who had come out to study colonial matters on the spot before
entering Parliament. Our talk over, I went on to Signor Zandra's and
worked at Italian for two hours. Most days I took him back to my lodging
for dinner and read and talked Italian with him for another hour or two.
The rest of the day I gave to reading, exercising, and, thanks to the good
merchant, to the best society in Boston.
Occasionally, when I knew for certain that no ship would clear for home
for two or three days, I made little shooting journeys inland, but in the
main this is how I spent my days, filling them with work and distraction
so as not to have idle hours for idler thinking. Spring passed, summer
came and went, and the leaves were turning from gold to brown when one
morning, as I was at breakfast, Mr. Faneuil's man came in with a letter.
It was from Master Freake, summoning me home as all was put right. It
contained a few lines from Margaret, written in Italian. A ship was
sailing for London that day, and I went on her.
* * * * *
Jonadab Kilroot had found his way across the Atlantic into Boston Harbour
much more easily than I was finding mine across London to Master Freake's
house in Queen Anne's Gate. It was after nine at night, at which late
hour, of course, I did not intend to arouse the inmates, but I meant to
find the place so that I could stand outside and imagine Margaret within,
perchance dreaming of me. At last I observed that men with torches were
clearly being used as guides through this black maze of streets, and I
stopped one such and offered him a guinea to do his office for me. He was
a lean, shabby, hungry-looking man, who might be forty by the look of him.
He stared vacantly at me for a few seconds, and then hurriedly led the
way, holding his link high over his head.
This trouble over, another began, which put me in a towering rage. A
gaudy young gentleman bumped into me and, though it was clearly his fault,
I apologized and passed on, leaving him hopping about on one foot and
nursing the other, which I had trodden on. He swore at me worse than a
boatswain at a lubber, and but for the exquisite pain I had caused him I
should have gone into the matter with him. I found my linkman leaning
against a post and laughing heartily.
"Never you mind, sir. He'll not take the wall of you again in a hurry."
"Take the wall?" I said.
"Done on purpose, sir, to pick a quarrel with you. The young sparks do it
for a game."
Not much farther on, we met a sedan, with an elegant young lady in it,
and an elegant gentleman walking along by her close up to the chains, she
being in the roadway. There was ample room for me to pass between him and
the wall, which was also the courteous thing to do; but as soon as my
linkman had passed him, he shot clean in my way. I gave him all the wall
he wanted and more, bumping his head against it till he apologized humbly
through his rattling teeth. The lady shrieked viciously at me, and one of
her chairmen, my back being turned, pulled out his pole and came to attack
me. My man, however, very dexterously pushed the link in his face as he
was straddling over the chains, and he dropped the pole and spat and
spluttered tremendously. I stepped across to the lady and apologized for
detaining her, and then my man and I went on, easy victors.
Arrived at Queen Anne's Gate, another surprise awaited me. Master
Freake's windows were ablaze with light, and the door was being held open
by a man in handsome livery to admit an exquisite gentleman and a more
exquisite lady who had just arrived there in chairs. I gave my man his
guinea, and after dousing his link in a great iron extinguisher at the
side of the door, he sped happily away. After watching the arrival of
three or four more chairs and one carriage, I summoned up all my
resolution and gave a feeble rat-tat with the massive iron lion's-head
which served as knocker.
The man in livery opened to me, and I was inside before he could observe
that I was an intruder. True, I was in my best clothes--my Sunday clothes,
as I should have called them at home--and they were none so bad; but they
had been made in Boston, where fashions ranged on the sober side. Here I
looked like a sparrow in a flight of bull-finches.
"Can I see Master Freake?" said I.
"No," said he, with uncompromising promptness.
"Is he at home?"
"No," he retorted.
"This is his house, I think?"
"It is," he assented.
"Then I suppose all these people are coming to see you--and cook," said I
gravely.
The sarcasm might have got through his thick skin perhaps but for the
intervention of another liveried gentleman, who briefly asserted that I
was "off my head," and proposed a muster of forces to throw me out. My own
feeling distinctly was that I was on my head, not off it; but his
suggestion interested me, as I do not take readily to being thrown out of
anything or anywhere. Luckily, a fresh arrival took their attention off me
for a minute or two, and while I was standing aside to admire the lady,
who should come statelily down the grand staircase into the hall but Dot
Gibson. He too was in livery, but of a grave, genteel sort.
"Hello, Dot," said I, accosting him quietly.
It bounced all the gravity out of him. He shook my outstretched hand
vigorously, and then apologized for doing so, saying he was so glad to see
me. "Jorkins, you great ass," cried he to the first servant, "what do you
mean by keeping his honour waiting?"
Jorkins looked apprehensively at Dot and the suggester of violence looked
apprehensively at Jorkins; but Dot was too full to bother with them, and
went on: "Mr. Freake will be delighted, sir, and so will Miss Waynflete.
They're always talking of you. Come along, sir! Allow me to precede you."
He took me upstairs into the library, and left me there alone. In a few
seconds Master Freake burst in on me.
"My dear lad," he cried, wringing my hand heartily, "welcome--a thousand
times welcome!"
"Thank you, sir. I'm glad to be back," was all I could say.
He put a hand on each shoulder and stood at arm's length to examine me.
"And we're glad to have you back, looking as fit and brown as a bronze
gladiator. Come along to your room! It's been ready for you this three
months, for that silly Margaret set to work on it the very day we sent off
your letter."
"How is Mistress Waynflete, sir?"
"You'll see in five minutes if you'll only bestir yourself. The wits say
that there's no need for George to furnish the town with a new queen as I
have provided it with an empress."
He hurried me off to my room, as he called it, and it was so grand that I
crept about it on tiptoe for fear of damaging something. There was
everything a young man could want except clothes, and Master Freake
laughingly assured me that they (meaning Margaret and himself) had puzzled
for hours to see if they could manage them, but had given it up in despair.
"I declared you'd pine and get thin," he said, "and she vowed you'd get
lazy and fat."
I felt very doltish and unready as I followed him to the drawing-room. It
was very clear to me that no meeting on level terms was in front of me,
and when I got into a large, brilliant room where some dozen splendid
ladies and as many elegant, easy-mannered gentlemen were assembled, I felt
inclined to turn tail.
"Empress." It was the exact word. Master Freake put his arm in mine and
led me towards her. She was sitting throned in one corner of a roomy,
cushioned sofa, with half a dozen young men--the least of them an earl, I
thought bitterly--bending round her as the brethren's sheaves bent round
Joseph's. And, as if she were not overpowering enough of herself,
everything that consummate skill and the nicest artistry could do to
enhance her beauty had been done. Juno banqueting with the gods had not
looked more superb. "On level terms," I whispered to myself mockingly, as
Master Freake led me on, for one of the circling sheaves, with whom she
was exchanging easy, lightsome banter, was my finely chiselled
acquaintance, the Marquess of Tiverton.
Except that she cut a quip in two when she saw who it was that Master
Freake was bringing, Margaret gave no sign of surprise. She neither paled
nor reddened, nor gushed nor faltered. Empress-like she simply added me to
her train.
"I bring you an old friend, Margaret," said Master Freake, for whom, as I
saw, the worshippers round the idol made way respectfully.
"And my old friend is very welcome, sir," she answered, holding out her
hand. I bowed over it and kissed it. I thought that it trembled a little
as it lay in mine, but it is at least probable that I was the source of
what fluttering there was.
"I trust you have had a good voyage, Mr. Wheatman?" she questioned easily.
"Excellent, madam," I replied, with imitative lightness of tone. "It was
like rowing on a river."
For a moment her eyes steadied and darkened, then she said with a smile,
"That being so, even I, who am no sailor, should have enjoyed it along
with you."
This was how we met. Whether on level terms or not, who shall decide?
"I say, Mr. Wheatman," broke in the pleasant voice of the Marquess, "you
don't happen to have any venison-pasty on you, I suppose? I've got some
rattling good snuff, and I'll give you a pinch for a plateful, as I did up
in Staffordshire. I vow, Miss Waynflete, it makes me hungry to see him."
This speech caused much laughter, and Margaret said it was fortunate
supper was ready. She then introduced me to the company around, and when
this was done, Master Freake fetched me to renew the acquaintance of Sir
James Blount and his lady, so that I was soon full of talk and merriment.
Supper and talk, wine and talk, basset and talk--so the time went by till
long after midnight. Then one by one the guests dropped off. The Marquess
lingered longest, and on going, pledged me to call on him next morning.
"At last," said Margaret. "Beauty sleep is out of the question to-night,
Oliver, so tell us everything about everything. It's glorious to have you
back."
It is not my purpose to dwell on my life in London. After a few days it
became one long agony because of, but not by means of, Margaret. She did
her best for me, and was all patience, kindness, and graciousness, and was
plainly bent on living on level terms with me according to her promise and
prophecy. It only required a day or two to show me that she had many a man
of rank and wealth in thrall. As wealth went then, the Marquess of
Tiverton was, by his own fault and foolishness, a poorish man, but he was
lost in love of her, and he was only one of the many exquisites who were
for ever in and out of Master Freake's fine mansion. It did not become a
Wheatman of the Hanyards to cringe or be abashed in any company, and with
the best of them I kept on terms of ease and intimacy. I dressed as well,
and perchance looked as well, as they did, and if my accomplishments
differed from theirs they differed for the better in Margaret's eyes,
which were the only eyes that mattered.
Brief as I intend to be, I must set down a few jottings on things that
belong to the texture of my story. To begin with, the Colonel, though
pardoned, was still in France, looking after his affairs there, for before
starting to join the Prince he had wisely shifted all his fortune over to
Paris.
Davie Ogilvie had got clear away after Culloden, and his sweet Ishbel,
though taken after the battle, had been permitted to join him there. It
was a great comfort to know they were safe, for there were sad relics of