Book: Richard Carvel, Volume 8

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RICHARD CARVEL

By Winston Churchill


Volume 8.


L. Farewell to Gordon's
LI. How an Idle Prophecy came to pass
LII. How the Gardener's Son fought the Serapis
LIII. In which I make Some Discoveries
LIV. More Discoveries.
LV. The Love of a Maid for a Man
LVI. How Good came out of Evil
LVII. I come to my Own again



CHAPTER L

FAREWELL TO GORDON'S

I cannot bear to recall my misery of mind after Mr. Swain's death.
One hope had lightened all the years of my servitude. For, when I
examined my soul, I knew that it was for Dorothy I had laboured. And
every letter that came from Comyn telling me she was still free gave me
new heart for my work. By some mystic communion--I know not what--I felt
that she loved me yet, and despite distance and degree. I would wake of
a morning with the knowledge of it, and be silent for half the day with
some particle of a dream in my head, lingering like the burden of a song
with its train of memories.

So, in the days that followed, I scarce knew myself. For a while
(I shame to write it) I avoided that sweet woman who had made my comfort
her care, whose father had taken me when I was homeless. The good in me
cried out, but the flesh rebelled.

Poor Patty! Her grief for her father was pathetic to see. Weeks passed
in which she scarcely spoke a word. And I remember her as she sat in
church Sundays, the whiteness of her face enhanced by the crape she wore,
and a piteous appeal in her gray eyes. My own agony was nigh beyond
endurance, my will swinging like a pendulum from right to wrong, and back
again. Argue as I might that I had made the barrister no promise,
conscience allowed no difference. I was in despair at the trick fate
had played me; at the decree that of all women I must love her whose
sphere was now so far removed from mine. For Patty had character and
beauty, and every gift which goes to make man's happiness and to kindle
his affections.

Her sorrow left her more womanly than ever. And after the first sharp
sting of it was deadened, I noticed a marked reserve in her intercourse
with me. I knew then that she must have strong suspicions of her
father's request. Speak I could not soon after the sad event, but I
strove hard that she should see no change in my conduct.

Before Christmas we went to the Eastern Shore. In Annapolis fife and
drum had taken the place of fiddle and clarion; militia companies were
drilling in the empty streets; despatches were arriving daily from the
North; and grave gentlemen were hurrying to meetings. But if the war was
to come, I must settle what was to be done at Gordon's Pride with all
possible speed. It was only a few days after our going there, that I
rode into Oxford with a black cockade in my hat Patty had made me, and
the army sword Captain Jack had given Captain Daniel at my side. For I
had been elected a lieutenant in the Oxford company, of which Percy
Singleton was captain.

So passed that winter, the darkest of my life. One soft spring day, when
the birds were twittering amid new-born leaves, and the hyacinths and
tulips in Patty's garden were coming to their glory, Master Tom rode
leisurely down the drive at Gordon's Pride. That was a Saturday, the
29th of April, 1775. The news which had flown southward, night and day
alike, was in no hurry to run off his tongue; he had been lolling on the
porch for half an hour before he told us of the bloodshed between the
minute-men of Massachusetts and the British regulars, of the rout of
Percy's panting redcoats from Concord to Boston. Tom added, with the
brutal nonchalance which characterized his dealings with his mother and
sister, that he was on his way to Philadelphia to join a company.

The poor invalid was carried up the stairs in a faint by Banks and
Romney. Patty, with pale face and lips compressed, ran to fetch the
hartshorn. But Master Tom remained undisturbed.

"I suppose you are going, Richard," he remarked affably. For he treated
me with more consideration than his family. "We shall ride together,"
said he.

"We ride different ways, and to different destinations," I replied dryly.
"I go to serve my country, and you to fight against it."

"I think the King is right," he answered sullenly.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," I remarked, and rose. "Then you have studied
the question since last I saw you."

"No, by G-d!" he cried, "and I never will. I do not want to know your
d--d principles--or grievances, or whatever they are. We were living an
easy life, in the plenty of money, and nothing to complain of. You take
it all away, with your cursed cant--"

I left him railing and swearing. And that was the last I saw of Tom
Swain. When I returned from a final survey of the plantation; and a talk
with Percy Singleton, he had ridden North again.

I found Patty alone in the parlour. Her work (one of my own stockings
she was darning) lay idle in her lap, and in her eyes were the unshed
tears which are the greatest suffering of women. I sat down beside her
and called her name. She did not seem to hear me.

"Patty!"

She started. And my courage ebbed.

"Are you going to the war--to leave us, Richard?" she faltered.

"I fear there is no choice, Patty," I answered, striving hard to keep my
own voice steady. "But you will be well looked after. Ivie Rawlinson
is to be trusted, and Mr. Bordley has promised to keep an eye upon you."

She took up the darning mechanically.

"I shall not speak a word to keep you, Richard. He would have wished
it," she said softly. "And every strong arm in the colonies will be
needed. We shall think of you, and pray for you daily."

I cast about for a cheerful reply.

"I think when they discover how determined we are, they will revoke their
measures in a hurry. Before you know it, Patty, I shall be back again
making the rounds in my broad rim, and reading to you out of Captain
Cook."

It was a pitiful attempt. She shook her head sadly. The tears were come
now, and she was smiling through them. The sorrow of that smile!

"I have something to say to you before I go, Patty," I said. The words
stuck. I knew that there must be no pretence in that speech. It must be
true as my life after, the consequence of it. "I have something to ask
you, and I do not speak without your father's consent. Patty, if I
return, will you be my wife?"

The stocking slipped unheeded to the floor. For a moment she sat
transfixed, save for the tumultuous swelling of her breast. Then she
turned and gazed earnestly into my face, and the honesty of her eyes
smote me. For the first time I could not meet them honestly with my own.

"Richard, do you love me?" she asked.

I bowed my head. I could not answer that. And for a while there was no
sound save that of the singing of the frogs in the distant marsh.

Presently I knew that she was standing at my side. I felt her hand laid
upon my shoulder.

"Is--is it Dorothy?" she said gently.

Still I could not answer. Truly, the bitterness of life, as the joy of
it, is distilled in strong drops.

"I knew," she continued, "I have known ever since that autumn morning
when I went to you as you saddled--when I dreaded that you would leave
us. Father asked you to marry me, the day you took Mr. Stewart from the
mob. How could you so have misunderstood me, Richard?"

I looked up in wonder. The sweet cadence in her tone sprang from a
purity not of this earth. They alone who have consecrated their days to
others may utter it. And the light upon her face was of the same source.
It was no will of mine brought me to my feet. But I was not worthy to
touch her.

"I shall make another prayer, beside that for your safety, Richard," she
said.

In the morning she waved me a brave farewell from the block where she had
stood so often as I rode afield, when the dawn was in the sky. The
invalid mother sat in her chair within the door; the servants were
gathered on the lawn, and Ivie Rawlinson and Banks lingered where they
had held my stirrup. That picture is washed with my own tears.

The earth was praising God that Sunday as I rode to Mr. Bordley's. And
as it is sorrow which lifts us nearest to heaven, I felt as if I were in
church.

I arrived at Wye Island in season to dine with the good judge and his
family, and there I made over to his charge the property of Patty and her
mother. The afternoon we spent in sober talk, Mr. Bordley giving me much
sound advice, and writing me several letters of recommendation to
gentlemen in Congress. His conduct was distinguished by even more of
kindness and consideration than he had been wont to show me.

In the evening I walked out alone, skirting the acres of Carvel Hall,
each familiar landmark touching the quick of some memory of other days.
Childhood habit drew me into the path to Wilmot House. I came upon it
just as the sunlight was stretching level across the Chesapeake, and
burning its windows molten red. I had been sitting long on the stone
steps, when the gaunt figure of McAndrews strode toward me out of the
dusk.

"God be gude to us, it is Mr. Richard!" he cried. "I hae na seen ye're
bonny face these muckle years, sir, sync ye cam' back frae ae sight o'
the young mistress." (I had met him in Annapolis then.) "An' will ye be
aff to the wars?"

I told him yes. That I had come for a last look at the old place before
I left.

He sighed. "Ye're vera welcome, sir." Then he added: "Mr. Bordley's
gi'en me a fair notion o' yere management at Gordon's. The judge is
thinking there'll be nane ither lad t' hand a candle to ye."

"And what news do you hear from London?" I asked, cutting him short.

"Ill uncos, sir," he answered, shaking his head with violence. He had
indeed but a sorry tale for my ear, and one to make my heart heavier than
it was. McAndrews opened his mind to me, and seemed the better for it.
How Mr. Marmaduke was living with the establishment they wrote of was
more than the honest Scotchman could imagine. There was a country place
in Sussex now, said he, that was the latest. And drafts were coming in
before the wheat was in the ear; and the plantations of tobacco on the
Western Shore had been idle since the non-exportation, and were mortgaged
to their limit to Mr. Willard. Money was even loaned on the Wilmot House
estate. McAndrews had a shrewd suspicion that neither Mrs. Manners nor
Miss Dorothy knew aught of this state of affairs.

"Mr. Richard," he said earnestly, as he bade me good-by, "I kennt Mr.
Manners's mind when he lea'd here. There was a laird in't, sir, an' a
fortune. An' unless these come soon, I'm thinking I can spae th' en'."

In truth, a much greater fool than McAndrews might have predicted that
end.

On Monday Judge Bordley accompanied me as far as Dingley's tavern, and
showed much emotion at parting.

"You need have no fears for your friends at Gordon's Pride, Richard,"
said he. "And when the General comes back, I shall try to give him a
good account of my stewardship."

The General! That title brought old Stanwix's cobwebbed prophecy into my
head again. Here, surely, was the war which he had foretold, and I ready
to embark in it.

Why not the sea, indeed?



CHAPTER LI

HOW AN IDLE PROPHECY CAME TO PASS

Captain Clapsaddle not being at his lodgings, I rode on to the Coffee
House to put up my horse. I was stopped by Mr. Claude.

"Why, Mr. Carvel," says he, "I thought you on the Eastern Shore. There
is a gentleman within will be mightily tickled to see you, or else his
protestations are lies, which they may very well be. His name? Now,
'Pon my faith, it was Jones--no more."

This thing of being called for at the Coffee House stirred up unpleasant
associations.

"What appearance does the man make?" I demanded.

"Merciful gad!" mine host exclaimed; "once seen, never forgotten, and
once heard, never forgotten. He quotes me Thomson, and he tells me of
his estate in Virginia."

The answer was not of a sort to allay my suspicions.

"Then he appears to be a landowner?" said I.

"'Ods! Blest if I know what he is," says Mr. Claude. "He may be
anything, an impostor or a high-mightiness. But he's something to strike
the eye and hold it, for all his Quaker clothes. He is swarth and
thickset, and some five feet eight inches--full six inches under your
own height. And he comes asking for you as if you owned the town between
you. 'Send a fellow to Marlboro' Street for Mr. Richard Carvel, my good
host!' says he, with a snap of his fingers. And when I tell him the news
of you, he is prodigiously affected, and cries--but here's my gentleman
now!"

I jerked my head around. Coming down the steps I beheld my old friend
and benefactor, Captain John Paul!

"Ahoy, ahoy!" cries he. "Now Heaven be praised, I have found you at
last."

Out of the saddle I leaped, and straight into his arms.

"Hold, hold, Richard!" he gasped. "My ribs, man! Leave me some breath
that I may tell you how glad I am to see you."

"Mr. Jones!" I said, holding him out, "now where the devil got you
that?"

"Why, I am become a gentleman since I saw you," he answered, smiling.
"My poor brother left me his estate in Virginia. And a gentleman must
have three names at the least."

I dropped his shoulders and shook with laughter.

"But Jones!" I cried. "'Ad's heart! could you go no higher? Has your
imagination left you, captain?"

"Republican simplicity, sir," says he, looking a trifle hurt. But I
laughed the more.

"Well, you have contrived to mix oil and vinegar," said I. "A landed
gentleman and republican simplicity. I'll warrant you wear silk-knit
under that gray homespun, and have a cameo in your pocket."

He shook his head, looking up at me with affection.

"You might have guessed better," he answered. "All of quality I have
about me are an enamelled repeater and a gold brooch."

This made me suddenly grave, for McAndrews's words had been ringing in my
ears ever since he had spoken them. I hitched my arm into the captain's
and pulled him toward the Coffee House door.

"Come," I said, "you have not dined, and neither have I. We shall be
merry to-day, and you shall have some of the best Madeira in the
colonies." I commanded a room, that we might have privacy. As he took
his seat opposite me I marked that he had grown heavier and more browned.
But his eye had the same unfathomable mystery in it as of yore. And
first I upbraided him for not having writ me.

"I took you for one who glories in correspondence, captain," said I; "and
I did not think you could be so unfaithful. I directed twice to you in
Mr. Orchardson's care."

"Orchardson died before I had made one voyage," he replied, "and the
Betsy changed owners. But I did not forget you, Richard, and was
resolved but now not to leave Maryland until I had seen you. But I burn
to hear of you," he added. "I have had an inkling of your story from the
landlord. So your grandfather is dead, and that blastie, your uncle, of
whom you told me on the John, is in possession."

He listened to my narrative keenly, but with many interruptions. And
when I was done, he sighed.

"You are always finding friends, Richard," said he; "no matter what your
misfortunes, they are ever double discounted. As for me; I am like
Fulmer in Mr. Cumberland's 'West Indian': 'I have beat through every
quarter of the compass; I have bellowed for freedom; I have offered to
serve my country; I have'--I am engaging to betray it. No, Scotland is
no longer my country, and so I cannot betray her. It is she who has
betrayed me."

He fell into a short mood of dejection. And, indeed, I could not but
reflect that much of the character fitted him like a jacket. Not the
betrayal of his country. He never did that, no matter how roundly they
accused him of it afterward.

To lift him, I cried:

"You were one of my first friends, Captain Paul" (I could not stomach the
Jones); "but for you I should now be a West Indian, and a miserable one,
the slave of some unmerciful hidalgo. Here's that I may live to repay
you!"

"And while we are upon toasts," says he, bracing immediately, "I give you
the immortal Miss Manners! Her beauty has dwelt unfaded in my memory
since I last beheld her, aboard the Betsy." Remarking the pain in my
face, he added, with a concern which may have been comical: "And she is
not married?"

"Unless she is lately gone to Gretna, she is not," I replied, trying to
speak lightly.

"Alack! I knew it," he exclaimed. "And if there's any prophecy in my
bones, she'll be Mrs. Carvel one of these days."

"Well captain," I said abruptly, "the wheel has gone around since I saw
you. Now it is you who are the gentleman, while I am a factor. Is it
the bliss you pictured?"

I suspected that his acres were not as broad, nor his produce as salable,
as those of Mount Vernon.

"To speak truth, I am heartily tired of that life," said he. "There is
little glory in raising nicotia, and sipping bumbo, and cursing negroes.
Ho for the sea!" he cried. "The salt sea, and the British prizes. Give
me a tight frigate that leaves a singing wake. Mark me, Richard," he
said, a restless gleam coning into his dark eyes, "stirring times are
here, and a chance for all of us to make a name." For so it seemed ever
to be with him.

"They are black times, I fear," I answered.

"Black!" he said. "No, glorious is your word. And we are to have an
upheaval to throw many of us to the top."

"I would rather the quarrel were peacefully settled," said I, gravely.
"For my part, I want no distinction that is to come out of strife and
misery."

He regarded me quizzically.

"You are grown an hundred years old since I pulled you out of the sea,"
says he. "But we shall have to fight for our liberties. Here is a glass
to the prospect!"

"And so you are now an American?" I said curiously.

"Ay, strake and keelson,--as good a one as though I had got my sap in the
Maine forests. A plague of monarchs, say I. They are a blotch upon
modern civilization. And I have here," he continued, tapping his pocket,
"some letters writ to the Virginia printers, signed Demosthenes, which
Mr. Randolph and Mr. Henry have commended. To speak truth, Richard, I am
off to Congress with a portmanteau full of recommendations. And I was
resolved to stop here even till I secured your company. We shall sweep
the seas together, and so let George beware!"

I smiled. But my blood ran faster at the thought of sailing under such a
captain. However, I made the remark that Congress had as yet no army,
let alone a navy.

"And think you that gentlemen of such spirit and resources will lack
either for long?" he demanded, his eye flashing.

"Then I know nothing of a ship save the little I learned on the John," I
said.

"You were born for the sea, Richard," he exclaimed, raising his glass
high. "And I would rather have one of your brains and strength and
handiness than any merchant's mate I ever sailed with. The more
gentlemen get commissions, the better will be our new service."

At that instant came a knock at the door, and one of the inn negroes
to say that Captain Clapsaddle was below, and desired to see me.
I persuaded John Paul to descend with me. We found Captain Daniel seated
with Mr. Carroll, the barrister, and Mr. Chase.

"Captain," I said to my old friend, "I have a rare joy this day in making
known to you Mr. John Paul Jones, of whom I have spoken to you a score of
times. He it is whose bravery sank the Black Moll, whose charity took me
to London, and who got no other reward for his faith than three weeks in
a debtors' prison. For his honour, as I have told you, would allow him
to accept none, nor his principles to take the commission in the Royal
Navy which Mr. Fox offered him."

Captain Daniel rose, his honest face flushing with pleasure. "Faith, Mr.
Jones," he cried, when John Paul had finished one of his elaborate bows,
"this is well met, indeed. I have been longing these many years for a
chance to press your hand, and in the names of those who are dead and
gone to express my gratitude."

"I have my reward now, captain," replied John Paul; "a sight of you
is to have Richard's whole life revealed. And what says Mr. Congreve?

"'For blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds,
And tho' a late, a sure reward succeeds.'

"Tho' I would not have you believe that my deed was virtuous. And you,
who know Richard, may form some notion of the pleasure I had out of his
companionship."

I hastened to present my friend to the other gentlemen, who welcomed him
with warmth, though they could not keep their amusement wholly out of
their faces.

"Mr. Jones is now the possessor of an estate in Virginia, sirs," I
explained.

"And do you find it more to your taste than seafaring, Mr. Jones?"
inquired Mr. Chase.

This brought forth a most vehement protest, and another quotation.

"Why, sir," he cried, "to be

'Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot,
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot,'

is an animal's existence. I have thrown it over, sir, with a right good
will, and am now on my way to Philadelphia to obtain a commission in the
navy soon to be born."

Mr. Chase smiled. John Paul little suspected that he was a member of the
Congress.

"This is news indeed, Mr. Jones," he said. "I have yet to hear of the
birth of this infant navy, for which we have not yet begun to make
swaddling clothes."

"We are not yet an infant state, sir," Mr. Carroll put in, with a shade
of rebuke. For Maryland was well content with the government she had
enjoyed, and her best patriots long after shunned the length of
secession. "I believe and pray that the King will come to his senses.
And as for the navy, it is folly. How can we hope to compete with
England on the sea?"

"All great things must have a beginning sir," replied John Paul,
launching forth at once, nothing daunted by such cold conservatism.
"What Israelite brickmaker of Pharaoh's dreamed of Solomon's temple?
Nay, Moses himself had no conception of it. And God will send us our
pillars of cloud and of fire. We must be reconciled to our great
destiny, Mr. Carroll. No fight ever was won by man or nation content
with half a victory. We have forests to build an hundred armadas, and I
will command a fleet and it is given me."

The gentlemen listened in astonishment.

"I' faith, I believe you, sir," cried Captain Daniel, with admiration.

The others, too, were somehow fallen under the spell of this remarkable
individuality. "What plan would you pursue, sir?" asked Mr. Chase,
betraying more interest than he cared to show.

"What plan, sir!" said Captain John Paul, those wonderful eyes of his
alight. "In the first place, we Americans build the fastest ships in the
world,--yours of the Chesapeake are as fleet as any. Here, if I am not
mistaken, one hundred and eighty-two were built in the year '71. They
are idle now. To them I would issue letters of marque, to harry
England's trade. From Carolina to Maine we have the wood and iron to
build cruisers, in harbours that may not easily be got at. And skilled
masters and seamen to elude the enemy."

"But a navy must be organized, sir. It must be an unit," objected Mr.
Carroll. "And you would not for many years have force enough, or
discipline enough, to meet England's navy."

"I would never meet it, sir," he replied instantly. "That would be the
height of folly. I would divide our forces into small, swift-sailing
squadrons, of strength sufficient to repel his cruisers. And I would
carry the war straight into his unprotected ports of trade. I can name
a score of such defenceless places, and I know every shoal of their
harbours. For example, Whitehaven might be entered. That is a town of
fifty thousand inhabitants. The fleet of merchantmen might with the
greatest ease be destroyed, a contribution levied, and Ireland's coal cut
off for a winter. The whole of the shipping might be swept out of the
Clyde. Newcastle is another likely place, and in almost any of the Irish
ports valuable vessels may be found. The Baltic and West Indian fleets
are to be intercepted. I have reflected upon these matters for years,
gentlemen. They are perfectly feasible. And I'll warrant you cannot
conceive the havoc and consternation their fulfilment would spread in
England."

If the divine power of genius ever made itself felt, 'twas on that May
evening, at candle-light, in the Annapolis Coffee House. With my own
eyes I witnessed two able and cautious statesmen of a cautious province
thrilled to the pitch of enthusiasm by this strange young man of eight
and twenty. As for good Captain Daniel, enthusiasm is but a poor word to
express his feelings. A map was sent for and spread out upon the table.
And it was a late hour when Mr. Chase and Mr. Carroll went home,
profoundly impressed. Mr. Chase charged John Paul look him up in
Congress.

The next morning I bade Captain Daniel a solemn good-by, and rode away
with John Paul to Baltimore. Thence we took stage to New Castle on the
Delaware, and were eventually landed by Mr. Tatlow's stage-boat at
Crooked Billet wharf, Philadelphia.

A BRIEF SUMMARY, WHICH BRINGS THIS BIOGRAPHY TO THE FAMOUS
FIGHT OF THE BON HOMME RICHARD AND THE SERAPIS

BY DANIEL CLAPSADDLE CARVEL

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