Books: Janice Meredith

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"You do not like-- Why do you call Lord Clowes
scoundrel?" asked Janice.

Mobray shrugged his shoulders as he made answer: "On
enough grounds and to boot. But 't is sufficient that he gave
his parole to the rebels, and then broke it by escaping to our
lines. He is a living daily disgrace to the uniform we all
wear, and yet his influence is so powerful with Sir William
that we can do nothing against him. Pray Heaven that some
day he'll not be able to keep in the rear, and that the rebels
recapture and give him the rope he merits."

In contrast to the past, the next few days were very happy
ones to Janice. Her mother mended steadily, and was soon
able to come to meals and to stay downstairs. The servants
relieved the girl of all the household drudgery, and spared
her from all dwelling on her empty purse. As for the young
officers, they could not do enough to entertain her, and, it is
to be suspected, themselves. Piquet was quite abandoned,
and in place of it nothing would do Andre but he must teach
Janice to paint. Not to be thrown in the background,
Mobray produced his flute, and, thanks to a fine harpsichord
Franklin had imported for his daughter, was able to have
numberless duets with the maiden. Then they took short
rides to the south of the city, where the Delaware and Schuylkill
safeguarded a restricted territory from rebel intrusion, and
daily walks along the river-front or in the State House
Gardens, where one of the bands of a few regiments garrisoning
the city played every afternoon for the amusement of the
officers and townspeople, and where Janice was made acquainted
with many a young macaroni officer or feminine
toast. Save for the high price of provisions, and the constant
war talk, Philadelphia bore little semblance to being in a state
of semi-siege, and the prize which two armies were striving to
hold or win, not by actual conflict, but by a strategy which
aimed to keep closed or to open sources of supplies.

Late in October Howe's army fell back from Germantown
and took position just outside the city, where it was set to
work throwing up lines of fortifications. And a startling
rumour which seemed to come from nowhere, but which, in
spite of denials from headquarters, spread like wildfire, supplied
a reason for both the retrograde movement and the
construction of blockhouses and redoubts.

"The rebels have the effrontery to give it out that they
have captured General Burgoyne's whole force," sneeringly
announced Mobray, as he returned from guard mount.
"There seems no limit to the size of their lies."

"La! Sir Frederick," exclaimed Janice, "'t is just what
Colonel--what somebody predicted. He said that if General
Washington could but keep Sir William busy until it would
be too late for him to go General Burgoyne's aid, all would be
well at the end of the campaign."

"And having conceived the hope, they seek to bolster their
cause by spreading the tale abroad," scoffed the baronet.

"'Facile est inventis addere,'" laughed Andre. "They are
merely settling the moot point as to who is the father of
invention."

"What rebel was it bubbled the conceit to you, Miss Meredith?"
inquired Mobray.

"'T was Colonel Brereton," replied the girl, with a faint
hesitation. Then she added, as if a new idea occurred to
her, "So you see the American is not the father of invention,
Colonel Brereton being an Englishman." Though spoken as
an assertion, the statement had a definite question in it.

"Who is this fellow, who, like Charles Lee, fights against
his own country?" asked Andre.

"No one you ever knew, John," replied Mobray; "but I,
who do, have it not in my heart to blame him."

"Wilt not tell us his history?" begged Janice, eagerly.
"Once he said his great-grandfather was King of England,
and since then I've so longed to know it!"

"'T is truth he spoke, poor fellow, but he was an old-time
friend of mine, which would be enough to seal my lips respecting
his sorry tale, since he wishes oblivion for it. But I am
his debtor as well, for he it was who helped me to a prompt
exchange when I was taken prisoner last spring."

"Of course I would not have thee tell me anything that is
secret," remarked Janice. Then, after a moment, she went
on, "There is, however, something of which you may be able
to inform me?"

"But name your desire."

"I must get it," announced the girl, and she left the room
and went upstairs. But once in the upper hallway, she did
not go to her room, merely pausing long enough to take the
miniature from its abiding spot, and then returned. "Wilt
tell me if the diamonds are false?" she requested, placing the
ornament in Andre's hand.

"No, for a certainty," replied the captain.

"Then is it not worth five pounds?" exclaimed Janice.

"Five pounds," laughed Andre, derisively. "'T is easily
worth five hundred!"

"Oh, never!" cried the girl.

"Ay. Am I not right, Mobray?"

"Beyond question. And then 't is not worth the portrait it
encircles," asserted Mobray, gallantly.

"And yet I could not get one pound for it," marvelled
Janice, and told the two officers how she had sought to
barter it.

"'T is evident you asked too little, Miss Meredith," surmised
Andre, "and so made him suspect your title."

"Would that you might offer it to me at a hundred times
five pounds!" bemoaned the baronet. "To think of such a
pearl being cast before such swine

"Who painted it, Miss Meredith?" asked Andre.

"'T was Colonel Brereton."

Mobray looked up quickly at her, then once more at the
miniature. He turned it over, and as the initials on the back
caught his eye, he frowned, but more with intentness than
anger. For a moment he held it, then handed it to Janice
with the remark, "Know you the frame's history?"

"Only that it once held another portrait, and that of a
most beautiful girl."

"Whom he forgot, it appears, once you were seen, for
which small blame to him, Miss Meredith," replied Mobray,
as he rose and left the room, his face set sternly, as if he were
fighting some emotion.

For two days the young officers continued to get infinite
amusement out of the rebel news, but on the third their gibes
and flouts ceased, and a sudden gravity ensued, the cause of
which was explained to the women that evening when the
time had come for "good-night."

"Ladies," said Andre, "the route is ordered before daybreak
to-morrow, so we must say a farewell to you now, and
leave you for a time to the sole charge of Mrs. O'Flaherty.
She has orders from us, and from her putative spouse, to take
the greatest care of you both, and we have endeavoured to
arrange that you shall want for nothing during what we fervently
hope will be but a brief absence."

"For what are you leaving us?" asked Mrs. Meredith.

"In truth, 't is a sorry business," growled Mobray. "Confirmation
came last night of Burgoyne's capitulation, and this
means that General Gates's army will at once effect a juncture
with Washington's, and the combined force will give us more
than we bargained to fight. Burgoyne's fiasco makes it all
the more necessary that we hold Philadelphia, and so, as our
one chance, we must, ere the union is effected, capture the
forts on the Delaware, that our warships and supplies may
come to us, lest, when the moment arrives for our desperate
struggle, we be handicapped by short commons and no line
of retreat."

"Wilt pray for our success, Miss Meredith?"

"Ay," urged the baronet, "for whatever your sympathies,
remember that we fight this time to reunite you with your
father."

And that night Janice made her first plea in behalf of the
British arms.

The absence of Mobray and Andre brought the commissary
once again to the fore. Previous to their departure he had
dropped in upon the Merediths, only to receive a cool greeting
from Janice, and such cold ones from the two captains as
discouraged repetition. Now, relieved of their supercilious
taunts and affronts, the baron became a daily visitor. He
always brought gifts of delicacies, paid open court to Mrs.
Meredith, and never once recurred to the words he had wrung
from Janice, for the time making himself both useful and entertaining.
From his calls the ladies learned the course of the
war and of what the distant cannonading meant: of the bloody
repulse of Donop's Hessians at Red Bank, of the burning of
the Augusta 64, of the bombardment of the forts on Mud
Island, and of the other desperate fighting by which the British
struggled to free their jugular vein, the river, from the
clutch of Washington's forces.

It was Clowes who brought them the best proof of the final
triumph of the royal army, for one November morning he
broke in upon their breakfast, unannounced, and with him
came Mr. Meredith.

Had the squire ever doubted the affection of his wife and
daughter, the next few minutes of inarticulate but ecstatic delight
would have convinced him once for all. Mrs. Meredith,
who, since her fever, had been unwontedly gentle and affectionate,
welcomed him as he had not been greeted in years;
and Janice, shifting from tears to laughter and back again,
wellnigh choked him in her delight. Breakfast was forgotten,
while the exile was made to tell all his adventures, and of how
finally he had escaped from the ship on which perforce he
had been for three months.

"'T was desperate fighting on both sides, but we were too
many for them, and the river is free at last. The transport
'Surrey' was third to come up to the city, and the moment I
was ashore I sought out Lord Clowes, hoping to get word of
ye, and was not disappointed. Pox me! but I'd begun to
think that never again should I see ye!"

There was so much to tell and to listen to in the next few
days that the reunited family gave little heed to public events,
though warm salutations and thanks were lavished on Mobray
and Andre upon the return of the regiments which had operated
against the forts.

An enforced change speedily brought them back to the
present. The mustering of all the royal army, now swelled by
reinforcements of three thousand troops hurriedly summoned
from New York, compelled a rebilleting of the troops, and nine
more officers were assigned by the quartermaster-general to
the Franklin house, overcrowding it to such an extent as to
end the possibility that it should longer shelter the Merediths.
The squire went to Sir William Erskine, only to be told that as
he was a civilian, the Quartermaster's Department could, or
at least would, do nothing for him. An appeal to Clowes resulted
better, for that officer offered to share his own lodgings
with his friends,--a generosity which delighted Mr. Meredith,
but which put an anxious look on his daughter's face and a
scowl on that of Mobray.

"I make no doubt 't was a well-hatched scheme from the
start," he asserted. "Lord Clowes and Erskine are but Tom
Tickle and Tom Scratch."

With the same thought in her own mind, Janice took the
first opportunity to beg her father to seek further rather than
accept the commissary's hospitality.

"Nay, lass," replied Mr. Meredith. "Beggars cannot be
choosers, and that is what we are. Remember that I am
without money, and have been so ever since those rascals
hounded me from home. Had not Lord Clowes generously
stepped forward as he has, we should be put to it to get
through the winter without being frozen or starved. And
your mother's health is not such as could stand either, that
ye know."

"You are quite right, dadda," assented the girl, as she
stooped and kissed him. "I--I had a reason--which now
I will not trouble you with--and selfishly forgot both mommy
and our poverty." Then flinging her arms about his neck, she
hid her head against his shoulder and said: "I am promised
--you have given Philemon your word, and you'll not go
back on it, will you, dadda?" almost as if she were making a
prayer.

"Odds my life! what scatter-brains women are born with!"
marvelled Mr. Meredith. "No wonder the adage runs that
'a woman's mind and a winter's wind oft change'! In the
name of evil, Jan, what started ye off on that tangent?"

"You will keep faith with him, dadda?" pleaded the daughter.

"Of course I will," affirmed the squire. "And glad I am,
lass, to find that ye've come to see that I knew not merely
what was best for ye, but what would make ye happiest. If the
poor lad is ever exchanged, 't will be glad news for him."

The removal to the commissary's quarters might have
been for a time postponed, for barely had the new arrangement
been achieved when another manoeuvre wellnigh
emptied the city of the British troops. Massing fourteen
thousand soldiers, Howe sallied forth to attack the Continental
army in its camp at Whitemarsh.

"We have word," Lord Clowes explained, "that Gates is
playing his own game, and, instead of bringing his army to
Mr. Washington's aid, he keeps tight hold of it, and has, after
needless delay, sent him but a bare four thousand men. So,
in place of waiting for an attack, Sir William intends to drive
the rebels back into the hills, that we may obtain fresh provisions
and forage as we need them."

The movement proved but a march up a hill to march
down again, and four days later saw the British troops back in
Philadelphia with only a little skirmishing and some badly
frosted toes and ears to show for the sally, the young officers
tingling and raging with shame at not having been allowed to
fight the inferior Continental army.

The commissary, however, took it philosophically. "Their
position was too strong, and they shoot too straight," he told
his guests. "It will all turn for the best, since no army can
keep the field in such weather, and Washington will be forced
to go into winter quarters. He must then fall back on Lancaster
and Reading, out of striking distance, leaving us free to
forage on the country at will."

Once again his prediction was wrong. "That marplot of a
rebel general has schemed a new method of troubling us," he
grumbled angrily a week later. "Instead of wintering his
troops in a town, as any other commander would, our spies
bring us word that he has marched them to a strong position
on Valley Creek, a bare twenty miles from here, and has them
all as busy as beavers throwing up earthworks and building
huts. If God does n't kindly freeze the devil's brood, they'll
tie us into our lines just as they did last winter, and give us an
ounce of lead for every pound of forage we seek. No sooner
do we beat them, and take possession of a town, than they
close in and put us in a state of siege, just as if they were the
superior force. Small wonder that Sir William has written the
Ministry that America can't be conquered, and asking his
Majesty's permission to resign. A curse on the man who
conceived such a mode of warfare!"

XLI
WINTER QUARTERS

No sooner had the British returned from their brief
sally than they settled into winter quarters, and
gave themselves up to such amusements as the
city afforded or they could create.

The commissary had taken good heed to have one of the
finest of the deserted Whig houses in the city assigned to him,
and whatever it had once lacked had been supplied. A
coach, a chair, and four saddle-horses were at his beck and
call; a dozen servants, some military and some slave, performed
the household and stable work; a larder and a cellar,
filled to repletion, satisfied every creature need, and their
contents were served on plate and china of the richest.

"I' faith," explained the officer, when Mr. Meredith commented
on the completeness and elegance of the establishment,
"'t is something to be commissary-general in these times; and
since the houses about Germantown were to be destroyed, 't was
contrary to nature not to take from them what would serve to
make me comfortable. Their owners, be they friends or foes,
are none the poorer, for they think it all perished in the flames,
as it would have done but for my forethought."

However lavish the hospitality of Lord Clowes could be
under these circumstances, it was not popular with the army,
and such officers as came to eat and drink at his table were
more remarkable for their gastronomic abilities than for their
wits and manners. In his civilian guests the quality was
better, the man being so powerful through his office that the
best of the townsfolk only too gladly gathered about his table
when they were bidden,--an eagerness at which the commissary
jeered even while he invited them.

"They are all to be bought," he sneered. "There is Tom
Willing, who made the most part of his money importing
Guinea niggers, and now is in a mortal funk lest some of it,
like them, shall run away. Two years ago he was a member
of the rebel Congress and a partner of that desperate speculator
Morris, with a hand thrust deep in the Continental
treasury rag-bag. Now he has trimmed ship better than any
of his slavers ever did, gone about on the opposite tack, and
is so loyal to British rule that his greatest ambition is to get
his other hand in some government contracts. He and his
pretty wife will dine here every time they are asked, and so
will all the rest, ye'll see."

During the first days in their new domiciliary, Janice
showed the utmost nervousness, seldom leaving her mother's
or father's side, and never venturing into the hallways without
a previous peep to see that they were empty. As the
weeks wore on without any attempt on the commissary's part
to surprise her into a tete-a-tete, to recur to the words he had
forced her to utter, or to be anything but a polite, entertaining,
and thoughtful host, the girl gained courage, and little
by little took life more equably. She would have been been
less easy, though better able to understand his conduct, had
she overheard or had repeated to her a conversation between
Lord Clowes and her father on the day that they first took up
their new abode.

"A beggar's thanks are lean ones, Clowes," the squire had
said, over the wine; "but if ever the dice cease from throwing
me blanks, ye shall find that Lambert Meredith has not
forgot your loans of home and money."

"Talk not to me in such strain, Meredith," replied the
host, with the frank, hearty manner he could so well command.
"I ask no better payment than your company, but
't is in your power to shift the debt onto my shoulders at any
time, and by a single word at that."

"How so?"

"It has scarce slipped thy memory that in a moment's
mistrust of thee--which I now concede was both unfriendly
and unjustifiable--I sought to run off with thy beautiful maid.
She was ready to marry me out of hand; but give thy consent
as well, and I shall be thy debtor for life."

"Ye know--" began Mr. Meredith.

[Illustration: "Who are you?"]

"And what is more," went on the suitor, "though 't is not
for me to make boast, I can assure ye that Lord Clowes is no
bad match. In the last two years I've salted down nigh sixty
thousand pounds in the funds and bank stock."

"Adzooks!" aspirated the squire. "How did ye that?"

"Hah, hah!" laughed the commissary, triumphantly.
"That is what it is to play the cards aright. 'T was all from
being carried on that cursed silly voyage to the Madeiras
which at that moment I deemed the work of the Evil One
himself. I could get but a passage to Halifax, and by luck I
arrived there just as Sir William put in with the fleet from
Boston. We had done a stroke or two of business in former
times, and so I was able to gain his ear, and unfold a big
scheme to him."

"And what was that?"

"Hah! a great scheme," reiterated Clowes, smacking his
lips, after a long swallow of spirits. "Says I, make me commissary-general,
and I'll make our fortunes. We'll impress
food and forage, and the government shall pay us for every
pound of--"

"'T was madness," broke in Mr. Meredith. "Dost not
know that nothing has so stirred the people as the taking
their crops without payment?"

"Like as not," assented the commissary; "but 't is also the
way to subdue them. They began a war, and they must pay
the usual penalty until they are sickened of it. And since the
seizures were to be made, 't was too good a chance not to turn
an honest penny. Pray Heaven they don't lay down their
arms too soon, for I ambition to be wealthier still. Canst
hope better for your daughter than that she be made Lady
Clowes, and rich to boot?"

"She's promised--" began the squire, but once again
the suitor cut him off.

"She herself told me she is pledged to no one but me."

"Nay, I've passed my word to Leftenant Hennion."

"Chut! A subaltern who'll bless his stars if he ever is
allowed to starve on a captain's pay. Thou canst not really
mean to do thy daughter such an injury?"

My word is passed; and Lambert Meredith breaks not
that. The lad 's a good boy, too, who'll make her a good
husband, with a fine estate, if peace ever comes again in the
land."

The officer thrummed a moment on the table. "Then 't is
only thy word to this fellow, and no want of friendliness that
leads thee to give me nay?" he asked.

"Of that ye may be sure," assented Mr. Meredith, eagerly
availing himself of the easy escape from the quandary that his
host made for him.

"And but for the promise ye'd give her to me?"

The father hesitated and swallowed before he made reply,
and when the words came, it was with an observable reluctance
that he said: "Ye should know that."

"That is all I ask," cried the commissary. "I knew ye
were not the man to eat another's bread and not do what ye
could for him. We'll not hope for harm to the lad, but if
the camp fever or small-pox or aught else should come to him,
I'll remind ye of the promise ye've just spoken, sure that the
man who won't break his word to one won't to t' other."

"That ye may tie to," acceded Mr. Meredith, though with
a dubious manner, as if something perplexed him. And in
his own room that evening he paused for a moment after
removing his wig and remarked to himself: "Promise I suppose
I did, though I ne'er intended it. Well, let 's hope that
Phil gets her; and if some miscarriage prevents, 't is something
that she should be made great and rich, though I wish
the money had come in some more honest way to a more
honest man."

As for the commissary, once retired to his own room, he
wrote a letter which he superscribed "To David Sproat, Deputy
Commissary of Prisoners at New York." But this done, he
tore it up, and tossed the fragments into the fire, with the
remark: "Why should I put my name to it, when Loring or
Cunningham can give the order just as well? I'll see one or
t' other to-morrow, and so prevent all chance of its being
traced to me." Then he sat looking for a time at the embers
reflectively. "'T is folly to want her," he said finally, as he
rose and began the removal of his coat, "now that ye need
not her money; but she's enough to tempt any man with
blood in his veins, and I can afford the whim. Keep that
blood in check, however, till ye have her fast; and do not
frighten her as ye have done. To think of Lord Clowes,
cool enough to match any man, losing his head over a whiffling
bit of woman-flesh! What devil's baits they are!"

Put at ease by the commissary's conduct toward her, Janice
entered eagerly into the gaiety with which the army beguiled
the tedium of winter quarters. Dislike of Clowes precluded
Andre and Mobray from coming to the house, but they saw
much of the maiden elsewhere. She and Peggy Chew had
been made known to each other by Andre early in the
British occupation, and they promptly established the warm
friendship that girls of their age so easily form, and spent
many hours together. The two captains were quick to discover
that the Chew house was a pleasant one, and became
almost as constant visitors there as Janice herself. At Andre's
suggestion the painting lessons were resumed, with Miss Chew
as an additional pupil, and he undertook to teach them French
as well; the music, too, was revived for Mobray's benefit,
though now more often as a trio or quartette; and many other
pleasures were shared in common. Both young officers were
deeply concerned in the series of plays for which the theatre
was being made ready; and the girls not merely heard them
rehearse their respective parts, but with scissors and needles
helped to make costumes for the amateur actors.

"Oh!" sighed Janice one day, after hearing Mobray
through his lines in "The Deuce is in Him," "I'd give a
finger but to see it played."

"See it!" exclaimed the baronet. "Of course you'll
see it."

"They say there 's a great demand for places," demurred
Peggy.

"Have no fear as to that," said Andre. "Do you think
I've risked my neck painting the curtain and scenery, and
worked myself thin over it generally, not to get what I deserve
in return. My name was next down after Sir William's for a
box, and in it such beauty shall be exhibited that 't is likely
we poor Thespians will get not so much as a look from the
exquisites of the pit."

"Lack-a-day!" grieved Janice, "mommy will never hear of
my going to see a play. I've not so much as dared to tell
her that I'm helping you."

"Devil seize me, but you shall attend, if it takes a provost
guard to do it," predicted Mobray.