THE FUGITIVE AND HIS CHILD.
"Adieu! adieu! My native shore
Fades o'er the waters blue.
The night winds sigh, the breakers roar,
And shrieks the wild sea-mew."
At the close of a July day in the year of the restoration, a man,
travelling on foot and leading a little girl six years of age, entered
the town of Boston. The few inhabitants on the streets and at their
doors and windows regarded the travellers with amazement and even
suspicion, for both were strangers in this part of the world. It would
be difficult to meet wayfarers of more wretched appearance. He was tall,
muscular and robust, and in the full vigor of life. His age might be
anywhere from thirty-five to forty-five, for while his eye possessed the
fire of youth, there were streaks of gray in his long hair and beard.
His ruffled shirt of well-worn linen was met at the neck by a modest
ruff faded and torn like the shirt, and both sadly in need of washing.
On his head he wore a round black cap which, if it ever had a peak, had
lost it. The trousers of dark stuff came just below the knee, Puritan
fashion, and were met by coarse gray stockings. The feet were encased in
coarse shoes with steel buckles, and a sable blouse well worn was held
close to the body by a belt. His only visible weapon was a knotted
stick. Perspiration, heat, exhaustion from travelling on foot, with
dust, added something sordid to his general wretched appearance.
No less interesting than the man was the child he led at his side. Her
great, dark brown eyes and golden hair were indications of beauty,
despite the careworn look and dust-covered features. She wore a hood and
frock, stockings and thick English shoes of the period. Like the man,
the child had a haggard look, and her clothing was faded and worn. There
were leaves and dust in that golden hair, as if her pillow had been the
earth, and her beautiful brown eyes had a terrified look, as if some
dread possessed her mind.
The appearance of these two travel-stained strangers occasioned much
comment in Boston. No one knew them. Where did they come from? The
south, perhaps the seaboard, for they made their entrance from the
Plymouth and Rhode Island roads. But why had they come by land when
travel by water was so much easier? They must have been walking all
day, for the child seemed very tired. Some women, who had seen them
enter the old suburb at the lower part of the town, asserted that the
stranger was carrying the child in his arms when he came to the town.
They saw him halt under some trees by the big spring and both man and
child drink of the pure sweet waters. On reaching the corner of what is
now Washington Street he paused a moment and glanced toward the house of
the governor as if he would go there; but, after a few whispered words
with the child, he shook his head and turned his attention toward the
principal inn of the town.
The child evidently caused this change in his mind, for Mrs. Alice
Stevens, who from her window was watching the pair with no little
interest, thought the little girl looked hungry and tired. She was on
the point of going out to offer her some refreshments and ask the
wanderers to come in and rest, when they went on. The travellers must
have been very thirsty, for the children who followed them saw them
pause at the town-pump and drink again.
There was at this time in Boston a very respectable inn, at which
Bradford the governor of New Plymouth had been entertained by the elder
governor Winthrop. The man and child proceeded to this inn, the best in
the town, and entered the broad piazza which was on a level with the
street. All the ovens were heated, and the host, who was also chief
cook, was preparing supper. The savory smell of cooked meats and
vegetables filled the air with an odor which seemed to increase the
child's hunger. The man and child without a word sank down upon the
wooden benches and listened to the conversation of some men who were
drinking in the tap-room. The peals of laughter and loud talk certainly
were very unlike the staid Puritans of New England. Anon, one of them
struck up a cavalier song very popular among that sect at the period,
and ended with:
"God save the King!"
No war-horse ever heard the blast of a trumpet with more fire in his
soul than did the stranger sitting on the porch holding his child by one
hand, and his knotted stick in the other, hear that cry. His hand
involuntarily clutched the stick as if it were a sword, and his breath
came hard and quick, as if he were eager to rush into battle. The child
seemed instinctively to catch the idea of her father and clutched his
arm with both her hands, while her soft brown eyes were fixed on his in
mute appeal, and he sat enduring the insult without a murmur.
The kitchen was not so far away but that the partridges, grouse and
trout on spits and in the oven gave forth their fumes as they browned
to tempting perfection. The little girl had not yet spoken since they
had entered the town; but now she fixed her eyes on her parent and
whispered:
"I am very hungry."
He turned his great brown eyes on her tenderly, and made no answer. At
this moment a tow-headed son of the host espied the strangers on the
porch and went to his father to report. The landlord, with flushed face
and greasy apron, appeared on the porch and asked:
"What do you want?"
"Supper and bed," was the answer, and the little girl raised her eyes to
the host, giving him a tired hungry stare.
The proprietor of the inn looked at them suspiciously for a moment, and
then, as if doubting their ability to remunerate him for his
accommodations, asked:
"Have you money to pay for that which you ask?"
"I have," and the mysterious stranger drew from an inside pocket of his
blouse a heavy leathern purse. Unfastening its strings he emptied its
contents, golden guineas, into his own hands, as if to prove that he had
the wherewithal to pay for himself and child. The sight of so much gold
caused the landlord's eyes to sparkle with delight, and he said:
"You can have what you ask!"
The stranger returned his money to his purse and put it in the pocket of
his blouse. There was an air of mystery about the stranger which puzzled
the landlord, and he stood gazing at him, his brow gathered into a knot
of wrinkles as if trying to solve some intricate problem. The man was
sparing of his words; but when he did speak there was something terrible
in his voice; it was deep and heavy like the roar of a cannon. While the
landlord was gazing at him, lost in a sort of revery, he was suddenly
startled by the awful voice asking:
"Will supper be ready soon?"
"Directly."
The host, being thus recalled to his duty, wheeled about to return to
the kitchen. On his way he was met by his wife, whose face was the very
picture of terror and superstitious dread.
"Have nought to do with them! Have nought to do with them!"
"Wherefore, good wife, do you say as much?"
She whispered a few words in his ears which made him turn pale, and with
eyes starting from their sockets, he asked:
"How know you this?"
"Mrs. Johnson hath told me."
The whole demeanor of the landlord underwent an immediate change, his
eyes no longer sparkled with delight at thought of the golden guineas,
and he would sooner have handled a red-hot toasting-fork than have
touched one of them. For a moment he stood hesitating and actually
quaking, and then he appealed to his wife with:
"What must be done?"
"Be done with them at once. Marry! send them hence without delay."
The good dame ruled the household, and he hastily returned to the porch
where the stranger and his child were sitting, and said:
"I cannot make room for you!"
Half starting from his seat, the traveller fixed his terrible eyes on
the host and asked:
"What mean you? Be you afraid of your payment? Verily, I will give you
the money before I eat your bread," and once more he put his hand into
the pocket of the blouse to pull forth the purse; but the landlord
raised his own hand and, with a restraining gesture and averted his
head, as if he dreaded a sight of the other's gold, answered:
"Nay, it is not that."
"Pray, what is it?"
"I doubt not that you have the money."
"Then why refuse me what I ask?"
"I have no spare beds. When I said you could remain, I knew not that all
my rooms were taken."
The child raised her beautiful but dirt-stained face to the host in
mute appeal, while her father quietly continued:
"Put us in the stables; we are used to it."
"I cannot."
"Pray why not? Surely the enemies of the son of God would not refuse him
that."
The host started at the awful reply, which to him was sacrilege, and
answered in a faltering voice:
"The horses take up all the room."
The stranger seemed not entirely put out by the persistent refusal of
the landlord and said:
"We will find some corner in which to lie after supper."
"I will give you no supper."
This declaration, made in a firm tone, brought the mysterious traveller
to his feet.
"Can you, a Christian, speak thus?" he cried. "We are dying of hunger. I
have been on my legs since sunrise, and have walked ten leagues to-day,
for most part carrying my child on my back. I have the money, I am
hungry, and I will have food."
"I have none for you," said the landlord.
"What are you cooking in your kitchen, the savory odors of which are
maddening to a hungry man?"
"It is all ordered."
"By whom?"
"Merchants and travellers from Plymouth and New Amsterdam."
"You can surely spare a crust for my child, she is starving."
The stern landlord hesitated, when a loud authoritative "Ahem!" from his
invisible wife strengthened him, and he said:
"I have not a morsel to spare."
"I am at an inn. I am hungry, I have money, and I shall remain,"
answered the stranger, sitting by the side of the little girl, who
nervously clutched his arm. The landlord seemed quite put out, if not a
little awed by the determined manner of the stranger, and turning about
re-entered the house, where he held a whispered consultation with some
one. Terror overcame the hunger of the tired child, and, clinging to her
father, she whispered:
"Let us go from this house. I am not hungry now, let us go to some other
place where we will not be injured."
He laid his hard, rough hand assuringly on the shoulder of the
frightened child and sought to soothe her fears. At this moment the
landlord, who had had his courage renewed by his wife, came quite up to
the stranger and, in a voice that was terribly in earnest, said:
"I know more of you by far than you realize. I am usually polite to
everybody, so pray be off."
For a single instant a flash blazed from the eyes of the stranger, then
his face grew deathly white, and he rose, taking the hand of his child
in his own and went off. They walked along the streets at hap-hazard,
keeping close to the houses like a sad and humiliated pair. His tired
child was at his side, uncomplaining, though scarcely able to drag one
weary little foot after the other. They did not look back once. Had they
done so they would have seen that the landlord stood with all his guests
and the passers-by, talking eagerly and pointing to them. Judging from
the looks of suspicion and terror, they might have guessed that ere long
their arrival would be the event of the whole town. They saw nothing of
this, for people who are oppressed do not look back, they know too well
that evil destiny is following them.
Though sad and humiliated, the man was proud, and had the consciousness
of right on his side. Only for his child, he might have defied the
landlord and all the people, but the dread of leaving her alone and
uncared for almost made a coward of a lion. They walked on for a long
time, turning down streets new and strange to them, and in their sorrow
forgetting their fatigue. The sun had set and darkness was falling over
the landscape, when the father, roused once more to a sense of duty for
his child, began to look around for some sort of shelter. The best inn
was closed against them, so he sought a very humble ale-house, a
wretched den which he would have shuddered to have his child enter under
other circumstances. The candles had been lighted and the travellers
paused for a moment to look through the windows. Even that miserable
place had something cheerful and inviting about it. Some cavaliers who
had come from England since the restoration were drinking beer, while
over the fire in the broad chimney bubbled a caldron hanging from an
iron hook. The traveller went to the front entrance and timidly raised
the latch and entered the room, bringing his child after him.
"Who is there?" the landlord asked.
"A traveller and his child who want supper and bed."
"Very good. They are to be had here."
A long wooden bench was in the room, and the traveller sat down on it
and stretched out his tired feet, swollen with fatigue. The child fell
into the seat at his side and, laying her soft curly head on his lap,
despite the fact she had travelled all day without food, fell asleep. As
the stranger sat there in the gloom of twilight, for no candle had been
brought into the room, all that could be distinguished of his face was
his prominent nose, and firm mouth covered with beard. It was a firm,
energetic and sad profile. The face was strangely composed, for it began
by being proud and ended with humility, it commenced in stern austerity
and ended in kindness. One moment the eyes beneath the shaggy eyebrows
gleamed with fires of hate, next they were softened in love as the
glance fell on the sleeping, supperless child. The hand was hardened by
grasping the sword-hilt, and the heart, which had so often defied the
bullets of the enemy, was humble and child-like in the presence of the
little girl.
The landlord was about to prepare supper for the hungry wanderers, when
a man suddenly entered by the kitchen door, quite out of breath with
running. His eyes were opened wide with terror, and he was trembling
from head to foot. He proceeded to whisper some words in the ears of the
landlord, which caused him to start and quake with dread.
"What would I better do?" asked the landlord in amazement.
"Drive them hence. No good ever comes to one harboring such."
This being made the plain Christian duty of the landlord, he was not
slow to act. He went into the adjoining room, walked up almost to the
stranger, holding his sleeping child on his knee, and said:
"You must be off."
At first the eyes glared at the host fiercely, then became more gentle,
as he remarked:
"You know me?"
"Yes."
"We were turned away from the other inn."
"So you will be from this."
"Where would you have us go?"
"Anywhere so you leave my house."
The stranger had made no effort as yet to rise, and the child who sat at
his side with her head on his knee still slept. Someone brought in a
lighted wax taper, and the strange man, gazing on the face of the
sleeping child, asked:
"Can she remain? See, she has had no food all day and has journeyed, oh,
so far! Won't you let her remain?"
"No, I will have none of you with me."
"But she hath done no wrong," persisted the father.
The stubborn landlord shook his head and answered:
"It brings ill luck to one having such about. You must away and take her
with you."
The large, sad-eyed man bent over the sleeping child and whispered:
"Ester!"
She awoke in a moment and cast a bewildered glance about the room, as a
child will on being suddenly aroused.
"We must go," the father said, sadly.
She made no complaint, but, rising, with a feminine instinct common even
in a girl of her tender years, adjusted her ruffled hood and dress.
They went out into the night, for the sun had long since set, and the
far-off stars one by one opened their little eyes, until the heavens
were glittering with diamonds. They entered a small street in which
there were numerous gardens, some being merely enclosures with stone
fences. Among these gardens and fences he saw a house the window of
which was illuminated, and he looked through the open casement as he had
done at the inn. It was a cozy, whitewashed room, with a bed, a rude
cradle, a few chairs and an old-fashioned matchlock hanging on a rack
made of deer's antlers on the wall. A plain table was laid for supper in
the middle of the room, a wax taper burned on the mantel lighting up the
interior of the Puritan's home. A man forty years of age sat at the
table with a baby on his knee. Two children, one four and the other two
years old, sat at his side, while the mother was placing supper on the
table. What a tempting sight for a hungry man! Could one conceive a
more happy family picture? The travellers looked on, and the father was
almost maddened when he glanced at his own child.
"Papa, I am so hungry and so tired," she whispered. "Won't you ask them
if we can stay here?"
Fugitives from the law must have a care where they go, and to whom they
appeal, yet Ester's father was growing more desperate every moment. He
went boldly to the door and gave a timid rap with his knuckle. That hand
once bold enough to strike a king from his throne was weak and trembling
on this night. At sound of the knock, the husband and father seemed to
have suddenly changed. The lion may sport and play with his whelps in
his lair, but when the intruder enters his domestic abode, all is
changed. He rose, took up the light and went to the door. He was a tall
man and, judging from his charcoal-begrimed features, a blacksmith, and
he wore a large leathern apron which came quite to his shoulder. As he
threw back his head the shirt-front opened, displaying his bare neck and
hairy chest. His face was sullen, with a bull-dog expression on it.
Without a moment's hesitation, the stranger began:
"I am weary, and my child hath had no food to-day. Would you, for money,
give us a morsel to eat and a blanket and corner in which to sleep?"
"Who are you?" asked the smith.
"We came from New Plymouth, and have walked all day. I will pay you well
for what you give us."
The blacksmith loved money; but those were troublesome times, and people
had to be careful whom they admitted into their houses. The king had
been restored and was pursuing his enemies with a vengeance, and to
harbor a _regicide_ might mean death on the scaffold. The smith thought
of all this, and asked:
"Why do you not go to one of the inns?"
"There is no room there."
"Nonsense! that is impossible. Have you been to Robinson's?"
"I have been to all."
"Well?"
The traveller continued with some hesitation, "I do not know why; but
they all refuse to take us in."
The man knew there was something wrong with the travellers, and turning
about, he held a whispered consultation with his wife. She was heard to
say in a faint whisper: "It is the same, a man with a child." Then the
smith turned on the stranger, and said:
"Be off."
The proud eye of a daring trooper in despair is the saddest sight one
ever gazed upon. Such was the look of the humiliated man, as, with his
starving child, he turned from the last door. At times the spirit of
revenge rose in his breast, and he was inclined to turn on the men who
refused his child food, drink and shelter, and with his stout knotted
stick beat out their brains; but, on second thought, he restrained
himself and said:
"No--no; I will not make an outlaw of myself. I am not a robber."
He who had been the commander of thousands, the king of the
battle-field, at whose name princes grew pale and thrones tottered, was
now a wanderer from house to house, rejected at every door.
"I am so hungry," murmured Ester. "If I had but a morsel of food, I
could sleep under a tree."
He heard the plaintive appeal, and it wrung his fatherly heart. Through
his teeth he hissed:
"If I am made a savage let all the world beware."
They were climbing a hill to enter another part of the town, when they
came upon a kind old Puritan woman, who paused to gaze in compassion on
the wayfarers. If others kept off from them as though they were
creatures to contaminate by a touch, she seemed to entertain no such
fears. Coming quite close, she said:
"Prythee, friend, why do you not get this child to bed?"
"I would, good woman, had I a bed for her; but, alas, all doors are shut
against us."
"Surely not all!"
"I have tried the inns and the home of the smith; but they seem to fear
us, as if we were polution."
"Have you called at that house?" she asked, pointing to a steep-roofed
building, the top of which was just visible over the hill in the light
of the rising moon.
"No, who lives there?"
"Mathew Stevens, a very good old man."
"Has he a heart? Is he brave?"
"He has a heart tender enough, and he is brave enough to shelter the
oppressed, in spite of other people's opinions."
The woman went her way, and the traveller and his weary child went
slowly over the hill to the house. It seemed a great distance. Many a
time after that Ester traversed the distance alone and thought it short;
but on that night rods were lengthened out into miles. As they were
passing the window, Ester saw a man about the age of her father reading
a Bible. He sat at a table on which burned a taper, and his wife and
children were gathered about listening. Surely a man who would read the
Bible would not refuse them food and shelter. She staggered up to the
door by her father's side, in a dazed, half-conscious manner, and was
cognizant of his knocking, and the door being opened. Their story was
told briefly, and then warm arms encircled the little fugitive, a
colored slave prepared a supper, and Ester was awakened to eat it, after
which she sank into slumber on her father's breast.