Books: Janice Meredith

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"Now, my good fellow," asked the merchant, "to what kind
of work have ye been bred?"

The steady gray eyes were turned deliberately from the captain
until the questioner was within their vision. Then, after a
moment's scrutiny of his face, they were slowly dropped so as
to take in the merchant from head to foot. Finally they came
back to the face again, and once more studied it with intentness,
though apparently without the slightest interest.

"Come," said the merchant a little heatedly, and flushing at
the man's coolness. "Answer me. Are ye used to horses and
gardening?"

As if he had not heard the question, the man turned, and
resumed his staring at the water.

"None of your damned impertinence!" roared the captain,
catching up the free part of a halyard coiled on the deck, "or
I'll give you a taste of the rope's end."

The young fellow faced about in sudden passion, which
strangely altered him. "Strike me at your peril!" he challenged,
his arm drawn back, and fist clinched for a blow.

"None but a jail-bird would be so afraid of telling about
himself," cried the captain, though ceasing to threaten. "The
best thing you can do will be to turn the cursed son of a sea
cook over to the authorities, Mr. Cauldwell."

"Look ye, my man," warned the merchant, "ye only bring
suspicion on yourself by such conduct, and ye know best how
far ye want to have your past searched into--"

The man interrupted the merchant.

"Ar bain't much usen to gardening, but ar knows--" he
hesitated for a moment and then went on, "but ar bai willin'
to work."

"Ay," bawled the captain. "Fear of the courts has made
him find his tongue."

"Well," remarked the merchant, "'t is not for my interest
to look too closely at a man I have for sale." Then, as he
walked away with the captain, he continued: "Many a convict
or fugitive has come to the straightabout out here, but hang me
if I like his looks or his manner. However, Mr. Meredith
knows the pot-luck of redemptioners as well as I, and he can
say nay if he chooses." He stopped and eyed the group of
emigrants sourly, saying, "I'll let Gorman hear what I think
of his shipment. He knows I don't want mere bog cattle."

"'T is a poor consignment that can't be bettered in the advertisement,"
comforted the captain, and apparently he spoke
truly, for in the "Pennsylvania Gazette" of September 7th appeared
the following:--

"Just arrived on board the brig 'Boscawen,' Alexander
Caine, Master from Ireland, a number of likely, healthy, men
and women Servants; among whom are Taylors, Barbers,
Foiners, Weavers, Shoemakers, Sewers, Labourers, etc., etc.,
whose indentures are to be disposed of by Cauldwell & Wilson,
or the master on board the Vessel off Market Street Wharff--
Said Cauldwall & Wilson will give the highest prices for good
Pot-Ashes and Bees-Wax."

III
MISS MEREDITH DISCOVERS A VILLAIN

Breakfast at Greenwood was a pleasant meal at a
pleasant hour. For some time previous to it, the family
were up and doing, Mr. Meredith riding over his farm
directing his labourers, Mrs. Meredith giving a like
supervision to her housekeeping, and Janice, attired in a wash
dress well covered by a vast apron, with the aid of her guest,
making the beds, tidying the parlour, and not unlikely mixing
cake or some dessert in the kitchen. Before the meal, Mr. Meredith
replaced his rough riding coat by one of broadcloth, with
lace ruffles, while the working gowns of the ladies were discarded
for others of silk, made, in the parlance of the time, "sack
fashion, or without waist, and termed "an elegant negligee,"--
this word being applied to any frock without lacing strings.

Thus clothed, they gathered at seven o'clock in the pleasant,
low-ceiled dining-room whose French windows, facing westward,
gave glimpses of the Raritan, over fields of stubble and corn-stacks,
broken by patches of timber and orchard. On the
table stood a tea service of silver, slender in outline, and curiously
light in weight, though generous in capacity. Otherwise,
a silver tankard for beer, standing at Mr. Meredith's place
beside a stone jug filled with home brew, balanced by another
jug filled with buttermilk, was all that tended to decoration, the
knives and forks being of steel, and the china simplicity itself.
For the edibles, a couple of smoked herring, a comb of honey,
and a bunch of water-cress, re-enforced after the family had
taken their seals by a form of smoking cornbread, was the
simple fare set forth. But the early rising, and two hours of
work, brought hunger to the table which required nothing more
elaborate as a fillip to tempt the appetite.

While the family still lingered over the meal one warm
September morning, as if loth to make further exertion in the
growing heat, the Sound of a knocker was heard, and a moment
later the coloured maid returned and announced:--

"Marse Hennion want see Marse Meredith."

"Bring him in here, Peg," said Mr. Meredith. "Like as not
the lad 's not breakfasted."

Janice hunched her shoulders and remarked, "Never fear
that Master Hennion is not hungry. He is like the roaring
lion, who 'walketh about seeking whom he may devour.'"

"Black shame on thee, Janice Meredith, for applying the
Holy Word to carnal things," cried her mother.

"Then let me read novels," muttered Miss Meredith, but so
indistinctly as not to be understood.

"Be still, child!" commanded her mother.

"And listen to Philemon glub-glub-bing over his victuals?"

"Philemon is no pig," declared Mrs. Meredith.

"No," assented Janice. "He 's too old for that,"--a remark
which set Mr. Meredith off into an uproarious haw-haw.

"Lambert," protested his wife, "I lose patience with thee
for encouraging this stiff-necked and wayward girl, when she
should be thankful that Providence has made one man who
wants so saucy a Miss Prat-a-pace for a wife."

Miss Meredith, evidently encouraged by her father's humour,
made a mouth, and droned in a sing-song voice: "'What doth
every sin deserve? Every sin deserveth God's wrath and
curse, both in this life and that which is to come.'" Such a
desecration of the Westminster Assembly of Divines' "Shorter
Catechism" would doubtless have produced further and severer
reproof from Mrs. Meredith, but the censure was prevented by
the clump of heavy boots, followed by the entrance of an over-tall,
loosely-built fellow of about eighteen years, whose clothes
rather hung about than fitted him.

"Your servant, marms," was his greeting, as he struggled to
make a bow. "Your servant, squire. Mr. Hitchins, down ter
Trenton, where I went yestere'en with a bale of shearings, asked
me ter come araound your way with a letter an' a bond-servant
that come ter him on a hay-sloop from Philadelphia. So--"

"Having nothing better to do, you came?" interrupted
Janice, with a gravely courteous manner.

"That 's it, Miss Janice; I'm obleeged ter you for sayin' it
better nor I could," said the young fellow, gratefully, while
manifestly straining to get a letter from his pocket.

"Hast breakfasted, Phil?" asked the squire.

Producing the letter with terrible effort, and handing it to
Mr. Meredith, Hennion began, "As for that--"

Here Janice interrupted by saying, "You breakfasted in
Trenton--what a pity!"

"Janice!" snapped her mother, warningly. "Cease thy
clack and set a chair for Philemon this instant."

That individual tried to help the girl, but he was not quick
enough, except to get awkwardly in the way, and bring his
shins in sharp contact with the edge of the chair. Uttering an
exclamation of pain, he dropped his hat,--a proceeding which
set the two girls off into ill-suppressed giggles. But finally,
relieved of his tormenting head-gear, he was safely seated, and
Janice set the dishes in front of him, from all of which he
helped himself liberally. Meanwhile, the squire broke the
seal of the letter and began to read it.

"Wilt have tea or home brew?" asked Mrs. Meredith.

"Beer for me, marm, thank you. An' I think it only kindly
ter say I've hearn talk concernin' your tea drinkin'."

"Let 'em talk," muttered the squire, angrily, looking up
from the letter. "'T is nothing to me."

"But Joe Bagby says there 's a scheme ter git the committee
of Brunswick township ter take it up."

"Not they," fumed Mr. Meredith. "'T is one thing to write
anonymous letters, but quite another matter to stand up and be
counted. As for that scamp Joe--"

"Anonymous letters?" questioned Philemon.

"Ay," sputtered the squire, taking from his pocket a paper
which he at once crushed into a ball, and then as promptly
smoothed out again as a preliminary to handing it to the youth.
With difficulty, for the writing was bad, and the paper old and
dirty, Philemon read out the following:--

Mister Muridith,--
Noing that agenst the centyments of younited Amurika you
still kontiyou to youse tea, thairfor, this is to worn you that
we konsider you as an enemy of our kuntry, and if the same
praktises are kontinyoud, you will shortly receeve a visit from
the kommitty of Tar And Fethers,
Brunswick Township.

"The villains!" cried Janice, flushing. "Who can have
dared to send it?"

"One of my tenants, like as not," snapped the squire.

"They 'd never dare," asserted Janice.

"Dare!" cried the squire. "What daring does it take to
write unsigned threats and nail 'em at night on a door? They
get more lawless every day, with their committees and town
meetings and mobs. 'T is next to impossible to make 'em pay
their rents now, and to hear 'em talk ye'd conclude that they
owned their farms and could not be turned off. A pretty state
of things when a man with twenty thousand acres under leaseholds
has to beg for his rentals, and then does n't get 'em."

"You 'd find it easier ter git your rents, squire, if you only
sided more with folks, an' wa'n't so stiff," suggested the youth.
"A little yieldin' now an' then--"

"Never!" roared Mr. Meredith. "I'll have no Committee
of Correspondence, nor Sons of Liberty, nor Town Meeting
telling me what I may do or not do at Greenwood, any more
than I let the ragtag and bobtail tell me what I was to buy in
'69. Till I say nay, tea is drunk at Greenwood," and the
squire's fist came down on the table with a bang.

"Folks say that Congress will shut up the ports," said the
young man.

"Ay. And British frigates will open 'em. The people are
mad, sir, Bedlam mad, with the idea of liberty, as they call it.
Liberty, indeed! when they try to say what a man shall do in
his own house; what he shall eat; what he shall wear. And
this Congress! We, A and B, elect C to say what the rest of
the alphabet shall do, under penalty of tar and feathers, burned
ricks, or--don't talk to me, sir, of a Congress. 'T is but an
attempt of the mobility to override the nobility of this land, sir.
Once again the plates rattled on the table from the squire's fist,
and it became evident that if Miss Meredith had a temper it
came by inheritance.

"Now, Lambert," interposed his wife, "stop banging the
table and getting hot about nothing. Remember how thee hadst
the colonies ruined in Stamp Act times, and again during the
Association, and it all went over, just as this will. Pour thy
father another tankard of small beer, Janice."

Clearly, what the Committee of Correspondence, and even
the approaching Congress could not do, Mrs. Meredith could,
for the squire settled back quietly into his chair, took a long
swallow of beer, and resumed his letter.

"What does Mr. Cauldwell say, dadda?" inquired the
daughter.

"Hmm," said Mr. Meredith. "That he sends me the likeliest
one from his last shipment. What sort of fellow is he,
Phil?"

Hennion paused to swallow an over-large mouthful, which
almost produced a choking fit, before he could reply. "He
han't a civil word about him, squire--a regular sullen dog."

"Cauldwell writes guardedly, saying it was the best he could
do. Where d' ye leave him, lad?"

"Outside, in my waggon."

"Peg, bid him to come in. We'll have a look at--" Mr.
Meredith consulted the covenant enclosed and read, "Charles
Fownes heigh?"

A moment later, preceded by the maid, Fownes entered.
He took a quick, almost furtive, survey of the room, then
glanced in succession at each of those seated about the table,
till his eyes rested on Janice. There they fixed themselves in
a bold, unconcealed scrutiny, to the no small embarrassment of
the maiden, though the man himself stood in an easy, unconstrained
attitude, quite unheeding the five pairs of eyes staring
at him, or, if conscious, entirely unembarrassed by them.

"Well, Charles, Mr. Cauldwell writes me that ye don't know
much about horses or gardening, but he thinks ye have parts
and can pick it up quickly."

Still keeping his eyes on Miss Meredith, Fownes nodded his
head, with a short, quick jerk, far from respectful.

"But he also says ye are a surly, hot-tempered fellow, who
may need a touch of a whip now and again."

Without turning his head, a second time the man gave a jerk
of it, conveying an idea of assent, but it was the assent of contempt
far more than of accord.

"Come, come," ordered the squire, testily. "Let 's have a
sound of your tongue. Is Mr. Cauldwell right?"

Still looking at Miss Meredith, the man shrugged his shoulders,
and replied, "Bain't vor the bikes of ar to zay Mister
Cauldwell bai a liar." Yet the voice and manner left little doubt
in the hearers as to the speaker's private opinion, and Janice
laughed, partly at the implication, but more in nervousness.

"What kind of work are ye used to?" asked Mr. Meredith.

The man hesitated for a moment and then muttered crossly,
"Ar indentured vor to work, not to bai questioned."

"Then work ye shall have," cried the squire, hotly. "Peg,
show him the stable, and tell Tom--"

"One moment, Lambert," interjected his wife, and then she
asked, "Hast thou had breakfast, Charles?"

Fownes shook his head sullenly.

"Take him to the kitchen and give him some at once, Peg,"
ordered Mrs. Meredith.

For the first time the fellow looked away from Janice, fixing
his eyes on Mrs. Meredith. Then he bowed easily and gracefully,
saying, "Thank you." Apparently unconscious that for
a moment he had left the Somerset burr off his tongue and
the rustic pretence from his manner, he followed Peg to the
kitchen.

If he were unconscious of the slip, it was more than were his
auditors, and for a moment they all exchanged glances in silent
bewilderment.

"Humph!" finally growled the squire. "I like the look of
him still less."

"He holds himself like a gentleman," asserted Tabitha.

"This fellow will need close watching," predicted Mr. Meredith.
"He 's no yokel. He moves like a gentleman or a
house-servant. Yet he had to make his mark on the covenant."

"I think, dadda," said Miss Meredith, in her most calmly
judicial manner, "that the new man is a born villain, and has
committed some terrible crime. He has a horrid, wicked
face, and he stares just as--as--so that one wants to
shiver."

Mrs. Meredith rose. "Janice," she chided, "thou 't too
young to make thy opinions of the slightest value. Go to thy
spinet, child, and don't let me hear any more such foolish
babble. Charles has a good face, and will make a good
servant."

"I don't care what mommy thinks," Miss Meredith confided
to Tabitha in the parlour, as the one took her seat at an embroidery
frame and the other at the spinet. "I know he's a
bad man, and will end by killing one of us and stealing the
silver and a horse, just as Mr. Vreeland's bond-servant did. He
makes me think of the villain in 'The Tragic History of Sir
Watkins Stokes and Lady Betty Artless.'"

IV
AN APPLE OF DISCORD

In the week following his advent the new servant was the
cause of considerable discussion, and, regrettably, of not
a little controversy, among the members of the household
of Greenwood. The squire maintained that "the fellow is
a bad-tempered, lazy, deceitful rogue, in need of much watching."
Mrs. Meredith, on the contrary, invariably praised the
man, and promptly suppressed her husband whenever he began
to rail against him. To Janice, with the violent prejudices of
youth still unmodified by experience and reason, Charles was almost
a special deputy of the individual she heard so unmercifully
thrashed to tatters each Sunday by the Rev. Mr. McClave.
And again, to the contrary, Tabitha insisted with growing fervour
that the servant was a gentleman, possessed of all the
qualities that word implied, plus the most desirable attribute of
all others to eighteenth-century maidens, a romantic possibility.

As a matter of fact, these diverse and contradictory views
had a crossing-point, and accepting this as their mean, Charles
proved himself to be a knowing man with horses, an entirely
ignorant and by no means eager labourer in the little farm work
there was to do, a silent though easily angered being with every
one save Mrs. Meredith, and so clearly above his station that
he was viewed with disfavour, tinctured by not a little fear, by
house-servants, by field hands, and even by Mr. Meredith's
overseer.

[Illustration: "Nay, give me the churn."]

For the most part, Fownes spoke in the West of England
dialect; but whenever he became interested, this instantly slipped
from him, as did his still more ineffective attempt to move and
act the rustic. Indeed, the ease of his movements and the
straightness of his carriage, with a certain indefinable precision
of manner, led to a common agreement among his fellow-labourers
that he had earlier in life accepted the king's shilling.
Granting him to be but one and twenty years of age, as his
covenant stated, and as in fact he looked, his service must have
been shorter than the act of Parliament allowed, and this seeming
bar to their hypothesis caused many winks and shrugs over
the tankards of ale consumed of an evening at the King George
tavern in the village of Brunswick. Furthermore, for some
months the deserter columns of such stray numbers of the
"London Gazette" as occasionally drifted to the ordinary were
eagerly scanned by the loungers, on the possibility that they
might contain some advertisement of a fellow standing five feet
ten, with broad shoulders, light brown hair, straight nose, and
gray eyes, whose whereabout was of interest to His Majesty's
War Office, Whitehall. Neither from this source, however,
nor from any other, did they gain the slightest clue to the
past history of the bond-servant, spy upon the fellow who
would.

Nor was talk of the man limited to farm hands and tavern
idlers, for dearth of new topics in the little community made
him a subject of converse to the two girls during the hours of
spinet practice, embroidery, and sewing, which were their daily
occupations between breakfast and dinner, and, even extended
into the afternoon, if the stint was not completed. Yet all
their discussion brought them no nearer to agreement, Janice
maintaining that Fownes was a villain in posse, if not in esse,
while Tabitha contended that Charles had been disappointed
in a love which he still, none the less, cherished, and which to
her mind accounted in every particular for his conduct. As
such a theory allowed considerable scope to the imagination,
she promptly created several romances about him, in all of
which he was of noble birth, with such other desirable factors
as made him a true hero; and having thus endowed him with
a halo of romance, she could not find words strong enough to
express her thorough-going contempt for the woman whose
disregard and cruelty had driven him across the seas.

"Thee knows, Janice," she argued, when the latter expressed
scepticism, "that the Earl of Anglesey was kidnapped, and
sold in Maryland, so it 's perfectly possible for a nobleman to
be a bond-servant."

"That 's the one case," answered Janice, sagely.

"But things like it are very common in novels," insisted
Tabitha. "And what is more likely for a man disappointed in
love than, in desperation, to indenture himself?"

"I can easily credit a female of taste--yes, any female--
refusing the ill-mannered, bold-staring rogue," said Janice, giving
the coarse osnaburg shirt she was working upon a fretted jerk;
"but to suppose him to be capable of a grand, devoted passion
is as bad as expecting--expecting faithfulness in a dog like
Clarion."

"Clarion?" questioned Tabitha.

"Yes. Have n't you seen how--how--that he--the man,
has taken possession of him? Thomas says the two sneak off
together every chance they get, and sometimes are n't back
till eleven or twelve. I wish dadda would put a stop to it.
Like as not, 't is for pilfering they are bound." Miss Meredith
began anew on the buttonhole, and had she been thrusting
her needle into either man or dog, she could not have sewed
with a more vicious vigour.

"That must be the way he got those rabbits for thy mother."

"I should know he had been a poacher," asserted Janice,
as she contemptuously held up and surveyed at arms-length
the completed shirt. Then she laid it aside with another, and
sighed a weary, "Heigh-ho, those are done. Here I have to
work my fingers to the bone making shirts for him, just because
mommy says he has n't enough clothes,"--a sentence which
perhaps partly accounted for the maiden's somewhat jaundiced
view of Charles.

"Are those for him?" cried Tabitha. "Why didst thou
not tell me? I would have helped thee with them."

"You 'd have been welcome to the whole job. As it is, I've
done them so carelessly that I know mommy will scold me.
But I wasn't going to work myself to death for him!"

"I should have loved--I like shirt-making," fibbed Tabitha.

"And I hate it! Forty-two have I made this year, and
mommy has six more cut out."

There was a moment's silence, and then Tabitha said, "Janice."
For some reason the name seemed to embarrass her, for the
moment it was spoken she coloured.

"What?"

"Dost thee not think--perhaps--if we steal out and take
the shirts to the stable, thy mother will never--?"

"Tibbie Drinker! Go out of the house in a sack? I'd as
soon go out in my night-rail."

"Thee breakfasts in a negligee, even when Philemon is here,"
retorted Miss Drinker. "Wouldst as lief breakfast in thy
shift?"

"No," said Miss Janice, with a wicked sparkle in her eyes,
"because if I did Philemon would come oftener than ever."

"Fie upon thee, Janice Meredith!" cried her friend, "for a
froward, indelicate female."

"And why more indelicate than the men who'd come?"
demanded Janice.

"'Immodest words admit of no defence,
For want of modesty is want of sense,'"

quoted Miss Drinker.

"Rubbish!" scoffed Janice, but whether she was referring
to the stanza of the reigning poet of the eighteenth century, or
simply to Miss Tabitha's application of it, cannot be definitely
known. "You know as well as I, Tibbie, that I'd rather have
Philemon, or any other man, see me in my shroud than in my
rail. Come, we'll change our frocks and take a walk."

A half hour later, newly clothed in light dimity gowns, cut
short for walking, and which, in combination with slippers, then
the invariable footgear of ladies of quality, served to display the
"neatly turned ankles" that the beaux of the period so greatly
admired, the girls sallied forth. First a visit was paid to the
stable, to smuggle the shirts from the criticism of Mrs. Meredith,
as well as to entice Clarion's companionship for the walk.
But Thomas, with a grumble, told them that Fownes had stolen
away from the job that had been set for him after dinner, and
that the hound had gone with him.

Their rambling walk brought the girls presently to the river,
but just as they were about to force their way through the fringe
of willows and underbrush which hid the water from view, a
sudden loud splashing, telling of some one in swimming,
gave them pause. Yelps of excitement from Clarion a moment
later served to tell the two who it probably was, and the probability
was instantly confirmed by the voice of Charles, saying:

"'T is sport, old man, is 't not? To get the dirt and transpiration
off one! 'S death! What a climate! 'Twixt the
sun and osnaburg and fustian my skin feels as if I'd been triced
up and had a round hundred."

Exchanging glances, the girls stole softly away from the bank,
neither venturing to speak till out of hearing. As they retired
they came upon a heap of coarse garments, and Tabitha, catching
the arm of her friend, exclaimed:--

"Oh, Jan, look!"

What had caught her eye was the end of a light gold chain
that appeared among the clothes, and both girls halted and
gazed at it as if it possessed some quality of fascination. Then
Tabitha tip-toed forward, with but too obvious a purpose.

"Tibbie!" rebuked Janice, "you shouldn't!"

"Oh, but Jan!" protested Eve, junior. "'T is such a
chance!"

"Not for me," asserted Miss Meredith, proudly virtuous, as
she walked on.

If Miss Drinker had searched for a twelve-month she could
scarce have found a more provoking remark than her spontaneous
exclamation, "Oh! how beautiful she is!"

Janice halted, though she had the moral stamina not to
turn.