Books: Janice Meredith

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Her second application drew forth an even sterner rebuff,
for the housewife, before Janice had said half of her speech,
cried, "Be off with you, you Tory! think you I would give
help to such nasty dogs?"

The third attempt was equally futile, for she was told:
"Not for a thousand dollars would I give you anything, and if
you would all die of hunger, 't would be so much the better."

The maiden was long since too accustomed to this treatment
to let it discourage her, and in her fourth essay she was more
fortunate. While the woman was refusing, the farmer himself
appeared upon the scene, and moved by pity, or perhaps by the
youth and beauty of the petitioner, vetoed his wife's decision,
and not merely filled her pail with milk, but added a small
basket of eggs and apples, declining to accept the one hundred
dollars in Continental bills she tendered.

Her quest had taken Janice nearly two miles away from her
quarters, and in returning with this wealth she was compelled
to pass the length of the encampment. This brought her
presently to a large tent, from which issued the sobs of a child,
intermixed with complaints in French of cold and hunger, with
all of which a woman's voice was blended, seeking to comfort
the weeper.

On impulse, the girl turned aside and looked through the
half-closed flap. Within she saw a woman of something over
thirty years of age, with a decidedly charming face, sitting on a
camp-stool with a child of about three years old in her arms
and two slightly older children at her feet, from one of whom
came the wails.

"We do not know each other, Madame de Riedesel," Janice
apologised in the best French she could frame, "but Captain
Geismar and others have told me so much about you that I--
I--" There Janice came to a halt, and then in English,
colouring as she spoke, she went on, "'T is mortifying, but
though I thought I had become quite a rattler in French, the
moment I need it, I lose courage."

"Ach!" cried Madame de Riedesel. "Nevair think. I
speak ze Anglais parfaitement. Continuez."

"I was passing," explained Janice, mightily relieved, "and
hearing what your little girl was saying, I made bold to intrude,
in the hope that you will let me share my milk and eggs
with the children." As she spoke, Janice held out to each of
the three a rosy-cheeked apple, and the sobs had ended ere
her explanation had.

"Ah!" cried the woman, "zees must be ze Mees Meredeez
whom zay told me was weez ze waggons in ze rear, and who,
zay assure me, was a saint. Zat must you be, to offer your
leettle store to divide with me. Too well haf I learned how
difficile it ees to get anyzing from zeese barbarians."

"They are hard, madame," explained Janice, "because
they deem us foes."

"But women cannot be zare enemies, and yet ze women ze
worst are. Ma foi! Weez ze army I kept through ze wilderness,
ze bois, from Canada, and not one unkind or insult did
I receef, till I came to where zere were zose of my own sex.
Would you beleef it, in Boston ze femme zay even spat at me
when I passed zem on ze street. And since from Cambridge
we started, when I haf wished for anyzing, my one prayer zat
it shall be a man and not a woman I must ask it has been.
Ze women, I say it weez shame, are ze brutes, and ze men, zay
seek to be gentle, mais, helas! zay are born of ze women!

Janice, pouring half her milk into an empty bowl that was
on the table, and dividing her eggs, smiled archly as she said,
"I fear, then, that my call is not a welcome one, since, helas!
I am a woman."

The baroness spilled the little girl from lap to floor as she
sprang to her feet and clasped the caller in her arms. "You
are une ange," she cried," and I geef you my lofe, not for now,
but for ze all time for efer."

The acquaintance thus begun ripened rapidly. In her
gratitude for the kindness, Madame de Riedesel, who had a
roomy calash and a light baggage waggon, insisted that Janice
and Mrs. Meredith should quit the springless army van in the
rear and travel henceforth with the advance in one or the
other of her vehicles, giving them far greater ease and comfort.
Sometimes the children were sent with the baggage, and the
three ladies used the calash, but more often Janice and
Madame de Riedesel rode in it, with a child on each lap,
and one sandwiched in between them, and the squire took
the empty seat beside Mrs. Meredith in the waggon.

A second generosity of the new friend was her quickly offering
to share with them the large officer's marquee that her
husband's rank had secured for her, with the comfortable beds
that formed a part of her camp equipment; and as they had
hitherto been cramped into a small field tent, with only
blankets and dead leaves laid on the frozen ground to sleep
upon, the invitation was a still greater boon. Close packing
it was, but the weather was now so cold that what was lost in
space was made up for in warmth.

It was early in January that they finally reached their destination,
--an improvised village of log huts, some two miles
from Charlottesville, named Saratoga, from the capitulation
that had served to bring it into being; but so far as the
Merediths were concerned, it meant a change rather than a
lessening of the privation. The cabin to which they were
assigned consisted of one windowless room, and was without
a chimney. They were necessarily without furniture, their
sole stock beyond their own clothing being a few blankets and
cooking utensils, which they had brought with them. Nor
were they able to purchase much that they needed at the
neighbouring town, for their cash had been seriously depleted
by what they had bought in Trenton, and by the expenses of
the march, while what was left had shrunk in value in the two
months' march from fifty dollars to seventy-five dollars, paper,
for one in gold.

Seeking to make the best of it, the three set to work diligently.
From a neighbouring mill slabs were procured, which,
being cut the right length and laid on logs, were made to do
for beds, and others served to make an equally rough table.
Sections of logs were utilised for chairs, and the squire built
a crude fireplace a few feet from the doorway. At best, however,
the discomfort was really very great. Even with the
door closed, the cabin was cold almost beyond the point of
endurance, and if it was not left open, the only light that came
to them was through the chinks of the logs. Yet their suffering
was far less than that of the troops, for many of the huts were
unfinished when they arrived, and with three feet of snow on
the ground, most of them were compelled to roof their own
quarters and even in some cases entirely build them, as a first
step to protection.

General de Riedesel, who had gone before his wife with the
first detachment, that he might arrange a home in advance,
had rented "Colle," the large house of Philip Mazzei, close to
the log barracks. Madame de Riedesel was therefore at once
in possession of comfortable quarters, and upon hearing from
Janice how they were living, she offered her a home with them.

"Come to us, liebling," she begged. "Ze children zay
lofe you so zat almost jealous I am; alreaty my goot husband
he says ze Mees Meredeez ees charmant, and I--ah, I neet
not tell it, for it tells itself."

"If it were right I would, Frederica, and I cannot thank
you enough for wanting me; but ever since mommy had the
fever she has not been really strong, and both she and dadda
need me. Perhaps though, if you and the children--whom
I dearly love--truly like me, you will help me in another
way?"

"And how?"

"I heard you complaining to Baron de Riedesel yesterday
of not being able to get a nurse. Will you not give me the
place, and let my pay be for us all to live in your garret?
We will make as little trouble--"

"Ach! Why deet I not it think before?" cried the baroness,
boxing her own ear. "Cochon! Brute! You come,
ma pauvre! Mais not as bonne, non, non."

"Indeed, Frederica, 't is the only way that we can. We
could not live upon you without in some way making a return,
and the paper money with which we furnished ourselves has
gone on falling till now 't is worth but a threepence in the
pound, so that we could not hope to pay for--"

"Bah! Who asks? You come as our guests; when you
had ze plenty of milk and eggs you shared it weez us, and so
now we share our plenty weez you. You, a proud girl, to be
a nurse, indeet!"

"'T is that pride which asks it, my dear. Ah, if you only
would let me! Mommy suffers so with the cold, and has
such a frightful cough, that every day I fear to see it become
a pneumonia, and--"

"Stop! I was ze wrong. Come as you please, a l'instant.
Ah, ze leettle ones, zay will go craze for joy; ze baron he will
geef no more eyes to ze wife who is losing her shape, and all
ze officairs, zay will say, 'Gott! How I lofe children!'
Mais, I will not angree be, but kiss you so, and so, and so.
And to all will I say, 'Voila, deet efer woman haf such a
frent for herself and such a second mutter for her children?'"

LVI
A LIFE OF CAPTIVITY

The removal to Colle was made the same day, and
Janice assumed her new charge. It was, as it
proved, not a very onerous one, for the children
were well mannered for their years, and, young as
they were, in the German method they were kept pretty
steadily at tasks, while an old servant of the general, a German
Yager, was only too delighted at any time to assume care of
them. Janice herself slept in the nursery, and at first Mr. and
Mrs. Meredith were given, as suggested, accommodation in the
garret. But the baron, not content with the space at his command,
as soon as the weather permitted, had built a large
dining-room and salon, separate from the house, and this
supplied so much more space that the parents were given a
good room on a lower floor.

The new arrangement not merely brought them comfort,
but also pleasure. Mr. and Mrs. Meredith were treated as
guests; and Madame de Riedesel made Janice quite as much
her own companion as an attendant on the children. With
her, once her nervousness was conquered, Janice talked
French entirely; and more for amusement than for improvement,
she began the study of German, with her friend as
instructor; and, having as well the aid of every Brunswick
officer, who only too gladly frequented the house, she was
soon able to both read and speak it, to the delight of the
baron, who preferred his native tongue; though his wife, German-born
as she was, could not understand how any one who
could talk French would for a moment willingly use any other
tongue. Furthermore, they taught each other the various
stitches in embroidery and crocheting each knew; and the
German, who was an excellent housewife, not merely made
Janice her assistant in the household cares, but, after expressing
horror that the girl knew nothing of accounts, spent many
hours inducting her into the mysteries by which she knew to
a farthing how her money was expended.

Although these were all pastimes rather than labours to
Janice, there were lighter hours in which she made a fourth
at whist, learned chess from the general, and played on the
harpsichord or sang to him. Once a week there was a
musicale, at which all who could play on any instrument contributed
a share, and dances and dinners were frequently
given by the Riedesels and by General Phillips, the major-general
in command of the British part of the Convention
prisoners. Horses in plenty were in the stable, and the two
ladies, well escorted by officers, took almost daily rides, the
baroness making herself a figure of remark to the natives by
riding astride her horse in a short skirt and long boots.

With the advent of summer, their pleasures became more
pastoral. So soon as the weather permitted, the gentry of
the neighbourhood came to call upon their foes, and this led
to much dining about. Then, too, there were out-of-door
fetes and picnics, oftentimes at long distances from the cantonment;
so that ere many weeks the Riedesels and the
Merediths had come to know both the people and the region
intimately.

A sudden end came to these amusements by an untoward
event. Janice and General de Riedesel had made the flower-garden
at Colle their particular charge, working there, despite
the heat, for hours each day, till early in August, when one
day the baron was found lying in a pathway unconscious, his
face blue, his hands white, and his eyes staring. He was
hurriedly carried into the house, and when the army surgeon
arrived, it was found to be a case of sunstroke. Though he
was bled copiously, the sufferer improved but slowly, and before
he was convalescent developed the "river" or "breakbone
fever." Finally he was ordered over the mountains to the
Warm Springs, to see whether their waters might not benefit
him; and, leaving Mr. and Mrs. Meredith in charge, the
baroness and Janice went with him, half as companions and
half as nurses.

Upon their arrival there, they found the Springs so crowded
that all the log cabins, which, by custom, fell to the first comers,
were already occupied. Declining an offer from one of these
to share lodgings, they set to work in a proper spot to make
themselves comfortable; for, having foreseen this very possibility,
they had come amply supplied with tents. Before they
had well begun on their encampment, two negroes in white
and red livery appeared, and the spokesman, executing a bow
that would have done honour to a lord chamberlain, handed
Madame de Riedesel a letter which read as follows:--

"Mrs. Washington preasent's her most respectful complements
to the Barones de Reedaysell, and her sattisfacshon at being informed
of her arival at the Springs. She beggs that if the
barers of this can be of aney a sistance to the Barones in setling,
that she will yuse them as long as they may be of sarvis to
her.

"Mrs. Washington likewise bespeeks the honer of the Baroneses
party to dinner today and beggs that if it will be aney conveenence
to her, that she will sup as well."

Both offers Madame de Riedesel was only too glad to accept;
and at the dinner hour, guided by the darkies, they made
their way to Lady Washington's lodgings, to find a plump,
smiling, little lady, who received them with much dignity,
properly qualified with affability. The meal was spread
underneath the trees, and they were quickly seated about
the table and chatting genially over it.

Once the newness was taken off the acquaintance, the
baroness made an appeal to the hostess for a favour. "Ah,
Laty Washington," she begged, "ze surgeons, zay declare my
goot husband he cannot recovair ze fevair in ze so hot climate,
and zat ze one goot for him will be zat he to New York restores
himself. I haf written ze prediction to Sir Henry Clinton,
applicating zat he secure ze exchange of ze baron immediatement,
mais, will you not also write to ze General Washington
and ask him, also, zees zing to accomplish?"

"I would in a moment, gladly, baroness," replied Mrs.
Washington, "but I assure you that the general would highly
disapprove of my interfering in a public matter. Do not
hesitate, however, to write yourself, for I can assure you he
will do everything in his power to spare you anxiety or
discomfort."

"Zen you zink he will my prayer grant?"

"I am sure he will, if it is possible, for, aside from his generous
treatment of every one, let me whisper to you that 't is
not a quality in his composition to say 'No' to a pretty
woman."

"Oh, no, Frederika," broke in Janice; "you need not
have the slightest fear of his Excellency. He is everything
that is kind and great and generous!"

"What!" exclaimed Mrs. Washington. "You know the
general, then?"

"Oh, yes," cried Janice, rapturously; "and if you but knew,
Lady Washington, how we stand indebted to him at this very
moment!"

The hostess smiled in response to the girl's enthusiasm.
"'T is certain he refused you nothing, Miss Meredith," she
said.

"Indeed, but he did," answered Janice, merrily. "Wouldst
believe it, Lady Washington, though perhaps 't is monstrous
bold of me to tell it, 't is he that has had to keep me at a
distance, for I have courted him most outrageously!"

"'T is fortunate," replied the matron, "that he is a loyal
husband, and that I am not a jealous wife, for 't is a way all
women have with him. What think you a Virginian female,
who happened to be passing through camp, had the forwardness
to say to me but t' other day? 'When General Washington,'
she writ, 'throws off the hero and takes up the chatty,
agreeable companion, he can be downright impudent sometimes,
Martha,--such impudence as you and I, and every
woman, always like.'"

"Ah," asserted Madame de Riedesel, "ze goot men, zay
all lofe us dearly. Eh, Janice?"

"What!" demanded the hostess. "Is your name Janice?
Surely this is not my nice boy Jack's Miss Meredith?"

The girl reddened and then paled. "I beg, Lady Washington--"
she began; but the baroness, who had noted her
change of colour, cut her off.

"You haf a lofer," she cried, "and nevair one word to me
told? Ach, ingrate! And your lofe I zought it was mine.

"Miss Meredith is very different, then, from a certain gentleman,"
remarked Mrs. Washington, laughingly. "I first
gained his confidence when he lay wounded at headquarters
winter before last; but once his secret was unbosomed, I could
not so much as stop to ask how he did but he must begin and
talk of nothing but her till he became so excited and feverish
that I had to check or leave him for his own good."

"Indeed, Lady Washington," protested the girl, her lip
trembling in her endeavour to keep back the tears, "once
Colonel Brereton may have thought he cared for me, but, I
assure you, 't was but a half-hearted regard, which long since
died."

"'T is thy cruelty killed it, then," asserted Mrs. Washington,
"for, unless my eyes and ears deceived me, never was there
more eager lover than--"

"'T is not so; on the contrary, he won my heart and then
broke it with his cruelty," denied the girl, the tears coming in
spite of herself. "I pray you forgive my silly tears, and do
not speak more of this matter," she ended.

"I cannot believe it of him," responded Lady Washington.
"But 't was far from my thought to distress you, and it shall
never be spoke of more."

The subject was instantly dropped; and though Janice saw
much of Lady Washington during their three weeks' stay at
the Springs, and a mutual liking sprang up between the two,
never again was it broached save at the moment that they
set out on their return to Colic, when her new friend, along
with her farewell kiss, said, "I, too, shall soon leave the Springs,
my dear, and journey ere long to join the general at headquarters
for the winter. Have you any message for him?"

"Indeed, but I have," eagerly cried Janice. "Wilt take
him my deepest thanks?"

"And no more?"

"If your ladyship were willing," said Janice, archly, "I
would ask you to take him my love and a kiss."

"He shall have them, though I doubt not he would prefer
such gifts without a proxy," promised Mrs. Washington, smiling.
Then she whispered, "And can I not carry the same to
some one else?"

"Never!" replied the girl, grave on the instant. "Once I
cared for him, but such feeling as I had has long since died,
and nothing can ever restore it."

Keenly desirous as the Merediths were for the well-being
of the Riedesels, it was impossible for them not to feel a pang
of regret when, one morning, the baroness broke the news to
them that Washington had yielded to her prayer, that her
husband and General Phillips had at last been exchanged, and
that they were to set out within the week for New York. Yet,
even in the departure, their benefactors continued their kindness;
for, having rented Colle for two years, they placed
the house at their disposal for the balance of the lease; and
when, after tearful good-byes had been made and they were
well started on their northern journey, Janice went to her
room, she found a purse containing twenty guineas in gold as
a parting gift from the general, a breastpin of price from the
baroness, and a ring from Gustava, with a note attached to it
in the English print which Janice had taught her, declaring her
undying affection and her intention to ask God to change her
to a boy that when she grew up she might return and wed her.

The months that drifted by after this departure were lean
ones of incident. Succeeding as they did to the ample garden,
poultry, pigs, and two cows which the baron had donated to
them, they were quite at ease as to food. The junior officers
who still remained in charge of the troops saw to it that they
did not want for military servants, thus relieving them of all
severe labour; and while they deeply felt the loss of the
Riedesels, there was no lack of company.

The void the departure of the baroness and children made
in Janice's life was partly filled by an acquaintance already
made which now grew into a friendship. Soon after their settlement
at Colle, Mrs. Jefferson, wife of the Governor, who lived
but a few miles away at Monticello, had come to call on them,
a visit which she was unable to repeat, owing to her breaking
health, but this very invalidism, as it turned, tended to foster
the intimacy. Her husband being compelled by public events
to be at the capital, she was much alone, and often sent over
an invitation to Janice to come and spend a few days with
her. As a liking for the girl ripened, it induced an attempt
to serve them.

"I have spoke to Thomas of your hard lot," she told Janice,
"and repeated to him enough of the tale you told me to
convince him that your father was not the active Tory he is
reputed to be, and have at last persuaded him to write to
Governor Livingston bespeaking a permission for you to return
to your own home, if your father will but give his parole to
take no part in public affairs."

"Oh, Mrs. Jefferson, how can we ever thank you?"

"I do not deserve it, believe me, Janice, for I long postponed
what I knew I ought to do, through regret at the
thought of losing your visits."

"That but deepens our thanks. If you--"

"I'll not listen to them now," replied the friend, "for who
can say that they will come to aught? 'T will be time enough
when it has really accomplished something."

Distant as they were from the active operations of the war,
the inmates of Colle were kept pretty well informed of its
progress, for it was a constant theme of conversation, and the
movements were closely followed on the military maps of the
officers who frequented the house. From them Janice heard
how Clinton, despairing of conquering the Northern colonies
by force of arms, had resorted to bribery, but only to win the
services of an officer he did not wish, and not the desired post
of West Point; and with tears in her eyes she listened to the
news that Andre, setting ambition above honour, had paid for
the lapse with his life. Then, as the tide of war shifted, it
was explained to her why the British general, keeping tight
hold on New York as a base for operations, transferred a material
part of his forces to the South, where, in succession, he
captured Savannah and Charleston, and almost without resistance
overran the States of Georgia and the two Carolinas.

"You see, Miss Meredith," she was told, "the yeomanry of
the Northern States are so well armed that we have found it
impossible to hold the country against their militia; but in
the Southern States, aside from the difference between the
energetic Northerners and the more indolent Sonthrons, the
long distances between the plantations, and the fact that the
gentry don't dare to trust their slaves with weapons, make
them practically defenceless. The plan now seems to be,
therefore, to wear the Northern colonies out by our fleet and
by occasional descents upon the towns of the coast, while we
meantime conquer the Southern States. Had it been adopted
from the first, the strength would have been sapped out of
the rebellion and it would have been ended two years ago;
but the new strategy cannot fail, even at this late date, to
bring them to their knees in time."

An evidence of the truth of this surmise, and an abrupt ending
to the peaceful life at Saratoga, came to the little settlement
in the first week of the year 1781, when a post rider
spurred into Charlottesville with a despatch to the County
Lieutenant of Albemarle announcing that a British fleet had
entered the Capes of the Chesapeake and seized the town of
Portsmouth, and summoning the militia to embody, for Virginia
was threatened with the fate which had already befallen
her sister States to the southward.

LVII
A PAPER MONEY AND MILITIA WAR

The alarm of the British invasion was sufficient to
throw the whole of Virginia into a panic, but especially
the neighbourhood about Charlottesville, for
it was inferred that one purpose of their coming
was to attempt to liberate the Convention prisoners. The cantonment,
therefore, was hastily broken up, and all the troops
were marched over the mountains to Winchester, or northward
into Pennsylvania, scarcely time for them to pack their few
possessions being accorded to them. From this deportation
the Merediths were excepted, for as political prisoners, no
mention of them was made in the orders issued by Washington
and the Virginia Council; and so Colonel Bland left them unmolested,
the sole residents of the once overcrowded village
of huts. The removal of the prisoners proved a needless precaution,
for, after remaining but a few days, the British fleet
retired, having effected little save to frighten badly the people,
but the apprehension subsided as quickly as it had come.