Atlantic Monthly by - (a court of thorns and roses ebook free .TXT) 📕

“No! goin’ to Lexington, after corn. Can I do anything for you?”

“Well, no, I ‘xpect not. When be you a-comin’ back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, go long! good-luck to ye; keep to wind’ard o’ squalls, George.”

Long nodded, and George drove on. That day the whole village of Westbury was in an uproar. News had come from Boston that the British were about to send out forces to possess themselves of all the military stores in the country, and forestall rebellion by rendering it helpless. From every corner of every farm and village, young men and old mustered; from every barn, horses of all sizes and descriptions were driven out and saddled; rusty muskets, balls of all shapes and of any available metal that would melt and run, disabled broadswords, horse-pistols, blunderbusses, whatever wore any resemblance to a weapon, or could be rendered serviceable to that end,—all were hunted out, cleaned, mended, and laid ready;—an array that might have made a properly drilled and equipped army smile in contempt, but whose deficiencies were more than supplied by iron sinews, true blood, resolve and desperate courage.

Sally and Aunt Poll partook the gale of patriotism. They scoured the “ole queen’s arm” to brilliancy; they ran bullets by the hour; baked bread and brewed Spring beer, with no more definite purpose than a general conviction that men must and would eat, as the men of their house certainly did, in the intervals of repairing harness, filling powder-horns and shot-belts, trotting over to the tavern after news, and coming back to retail it, till Aunt Poll began to imagine she heard the distant strokes of a battering-ram, and rushing out in terror to assure herself, discovered it to be only Sam Pequot, an old Indian, who, with the apathy of his race, was threshing in the barn.

Aunt Poll took down Josephus to refresh her memory, and actually drew a laugh from Sally’s grave lips by confiding to her this extreme horror of the case; a laugh she forgave, since Sally reassured her by recommending to her notice the fact that Jerusalem had stone walls that were more difficult to climb than stone fences. As for Sally, she thought of George, all day of George, all night; and while the next day deepened toward noon, was still thinking of him, when in rushed Long Snapps, tarpaulin in hand, full of news and horror.

“I swan! we’ve got it now!” said he. “Them darned Britishers sot out fur Concord last night, to board our decks an’ plunder the magazine; the boys heerd on’t, and they was ready over to Lexin’ton, waitin’ round the meetin’us; they stood to’t, an’ that old powder monkey Pitcairn sung out to throw down their arms, darned rebels; an’ cause they didn’t muster to his whistle, he let fly at ‘em like split; an’ there’s some killed an’ more wounded; pretty much all on ‘em our folks, though they did giv the reg’lars one round o’ ball afore they run.”

“Hooray!” shouted Zekle; “that’s the talk; guess they’ll sing smaller next time!”

“They’ll do more’n that, Zekle,” responded Long; “this a’n’t but the beginnin’ o’ sorrers, as Parson Marsh sez, sez he; there’ll be a hull gulf stream o’ blood, afore them darned reg’lars knows the color on’t well enough to lay their course.”

Sally glided past Long, and plucked him by the sleeve, unseen by the rest. He followed her into the shed. She was ghastly pale. “Long,” said she, hurriedly, “did you hear who? was anybody shot?”

“Bless ye, gal! a hull school on ‘em was shot; there wasn’t many went to the bottom, though; han’t heerd no names.”

“But George?” gasped Sally; “he went to Lexington yesterday.”

“Well, I am took aback!” growled Long. “I swear I never thought on’t. I’ll go see.”

“Come back and tell me?” whispered Sally.

“Lord-a-massy, yes, child! jest as soon’s I know myself trewly! but I shan’t know nothin’ more till sundown, I expect. Desire Trowbridge is a-ridin’ post; he’ll come through ‘bout that time with news.”

Long did not come back for several hours, some time after sundown, when he found Sally in the shed, waiting for him. She saw the news in his face. “Dead?” said she, clutching at the old sailor’s hand.

“No! no! he a’n’t slipt his moorins’ yet, but he is badly stove about the figger-head; he’s got a ball through his head somewhere, an’ another in his leg; and he a’n’t within hail; don’t hear no speakin’-trumpets; fact is, Sally, he’s in for the dockyard a good spell, ef he a’n’t broke up hull and all.”

“Who shot him?” whispered Sally.

“That’s the best on’t, gal; he’s took an’ tacked beautiful; he went into port at Lexin’ton yesterday, and heerin’ there all sides o’ the story, an’ how them critters sot up for to thieve away our stores, he got kinder riled at the hull crew, like a common-sense feller, an’ when Pitcairn come along, George finally struck his colors, run up a new un to the mast-head, borrered a musket, an’ jined the milishy, an’ got shot by them cussed reg’lars fur his pains; an ef he doos die, I’ll hev a figger cut on a stun myself, to tell folks he was a rebel and an honest man arter all.”

“Where is he?” asked Sally in another whisper.

“He’s to the tavern there in Lexin’ton. There a’n’t nobody along with him, cause his father’s gone to Bostin to see ‘bout not gettin’ scomfishkated, or arter a protection, or sumthin.”

“And his mother is dead,” said Sally, slowly. “Long! I must go to Lexington to-night, on the pillion, and you must go with me. Father’s got too much rheumatiz to ask it of him.”

“Well!” said Long, after a protracted stare at Sally,—“wimmin is the oddest craft that ever sailed. I swan, when I sight ‘em I don’t know a main-top-sail from a flyin’ jib! Goin’ to take care o’ George, be ye?”

“Yes,” said Sally, meekly.

Long rolled the inseparable quid in his cheek, and slyly drawled out, “W-ell, if ye must, ye must! I a’n’t a-goin’ ter stand in the way of yer dooty!”

Sally was too far away to hear, or she might have smiled.

Uncle Zeke and Aunt Poll were to be told and coaxed into assent;—no very hard task; for George Tucker was a favorite of ‘Zekiel’s, and now he had turned rebel, the only grudge he had ever owed him was removed; he was only too glad to help him in any way. Aunt Poll’s sole trouble was lest Sally should take cold. The proprieties, those gods of modern social worship, as well as their progenitors, the improprieties, were unknown to these simple souls; they did things because they were right and wrong. They were not nice according to Swift’s definition, nor proper in the mode of the best society, but they were good and pure; are the disciples and lecturers of the ‘proper’ equally so?

Sally’s simple preparations were quickly made. By nine o’clock she was safe on the pillion behind Long Snapps, folded in Aunt Poll’s red joseph, and provided with saddle-bags full of comforts and necessaries. The night was dark, but Sally did not feel any fear; not Tam O’Shanter’s experience could have shaken the honest little creature’s courage, when George filled the perspective before her. The way was lonely; the hard road echoed under the old cart-horse’s hoofs; many a black and desolate tract of forest lay across their twenty miles’ ride; more than once the tremulous shriek of a screech-owl smote ominously on Sally’s wakeful sense, and quavered away like a dying groan; more than once a mournful whippoorwill cried out in pain and expostulation, and in the young leaves a shivering wind foreboded evil;—but they rode on. Presently Sally’s drooping head rose erect; she listened; she laid her hand on the bridle. “Stop, Long!” said she. “I hear horses’ feet, and shouts.”

“Look here!” said Long, after a moment’s listening, “there’s breakers ahead, Sally; let’s heave to in these ‘ere piny bushes side o’ the track; it’s pitch dark, mebbe they’ll go by.”

He reined the horse from the road, and forced him into a group of young hemlocks, which hid them entirely from passers by. Just as he was well ensconced, a company of British cavalry rode up, broken and disorderly enough, cursing and swearing at the Yankees, and telling to unseen ears a bloody story of Concord and its men. Sally trembled, but it was with indignation, not fear, and as soon as the last hoof-beat died away, she urged Long forward; they regained the road, and made their way at once to George in Lexington.

Is it well to paint, even in failing words, such emotions as Sally fought with and conquered in that hour? Whoever has stood by the bed of a speechless, hopeless, unconscious human being, in whom their own soul lived and suffered, will know these pangs without my interpretation. Whoever knows them not need not so anticipate. If Sally had been less a woman, I might have had more to say; but she was only a woman, and loved George, so she went on in undisturbed self-control, and untiring exertion, to nurse him.

The doctor said he could not live; Long said he was booked for Davy Jones; the minister prayed for “our dying brother”;—but Sally said he should live, and he did. After weeks of patient care he knew her; after more weeks he spoke,—words few, but precious; and when accumulating months brought to the battlefields of America redder stains than even patriotic blood had splashed upon their leaves,—when one nation began to hope, and another to fear, both hope and fear had shaken hands with Sally and said good-bye. She was married to George Tucker, and, with the prospect of a crippled husband for life, was perfectly happy; too happy not to laugh, when, the day after their wedding, sitting on the door-sill of the old Westbury homestead, with George and Long Snapps, George said, “Would you ever have come to take care of me, Sally, if I’d ‘a’ been shot on the side of the reg’lars?”

Sally looked at him, and then looked away.

“I ‘xpect she’d ‘a’ done her dooty,” said Long Snapps dryly; and Sally laughed.

THE MANCHESTER EXHIBITION.

In a number of the “Illustrated News,” not long since, there was what professed to be a view of Manchester. It represented a thousand tall factory-chimneys rising out of a gray mist, and surmounted by a heavy, drifting cloud of smoke. And in truth a view not very different from this was presented to any one who, standing at the entrance of the Palace of the Exhibition of Art Treasures, turned and looked back before going within. Two miles off lies the body of the great workshop-city, already stretching its begrimed arms in the direction of the Exhibition. The vast flat expanse of brick walls, diversified by countless chimney and occasional steeples, now and then interrupted by the insertion of a low shed or an enormous warehouse, offers no single object upon which the eye or the imagination can rest with pleasure. Such a view was never to be seen in the world before this century; a city built merely by trade, built for the home of labor, of machines, and of engines, and for the dwelling-place (one cannot call it the home) of crowds of human beings, whose value is, for the most part, estimated according to the development of their machine-like qualities. Beauty is not consulted here. In those places in or near the city, where Nature, reluctant to be driven utterly away, still tries to keep a foothold, she is parched and scorched by the feverish breath of forges and furnaces. Standing here, one may see the cloud of smoke, which waves in the wind like a pall over the city, slowly moving and