’TWIXT CUP AND LIP.
WITH appetites still further whetted by their various diversions, the
comrades were hardly made happier when Adam found that once more the
many years’ growth of Boston town confused him. It was something of a
walk to the Phipps’ domicile from the Crow and Arrow the best one could
do. With devious windings added, it became the next thing to provoking.
“Aha, at last I know where we are,” said Adam, finally. “These streets
are as bad as London’s. But ten minutes more and we shall be at the
board.”
“If this is not so,” said Halberd, gravely, with a memory of seeing Adam
part with the last money which they possessed, “it would be a kindness
to let us lie down and perish here.”
“This is a most unlikely-looking street,” added Pike, dolefully.
“What do you know of Boston streets?” inquired Adam, who had a doubt or
two of the place himself. “Good beef-eaters, if you weary, wait here for
a moment, till I can run a little along this road, to see where it
leads. If it is right I will presently whistle; if wrong I can the
sooner return.”
The beef-eaters with one accord sat down upon a block of stone, while
their leader strode hastily up a passage which was in reality an alley,
at the rear of a number of residences. With a hope that he would soon
emerge into a street which he thought should be in the neighborhood,
Adam almost ran. Thus he disappeared about a turn of the lane.
He had gone less than twenty rods when he found himself approaching a
small assemblage of boys, who were yelling, in suppressed voices, and
gathering stones which they were throwing with wild aim into a corner,
where the coming darkness had already formed a center of shadows. Rust
was well among these young scamps before they were aware of his
presence. One urchin had by this secured a long stick with which he
advanced, the others making room to let him through, to poke and jab at
something which the lads had evidently driven to bay where it could not
escape. Yet so afraid did the young rogues appear to be that this
something would yet fly upon them and do them great harm, that Adam
walked at once among them, touching one upon the shoulder.
“The witch!” screamed this lad, as if the devil himself had clutched
him. With yells of terror all the boys scudded swiftly away, for a
matter of twenty feet, and then turned about to look at Rust. Seeing a
man merely, they were reassured. It is a singular and doubtless a
fortunate matter that there was never such a thing conceived as a male
witch.
“What have you here?” said Adam, pleasantly.
“A witch’s cat!” cried one of the boldest youths, re-approaching. “We
drove it in the corner to stone it to death!”
Now Adam had a lingering fondness for cats, from a time not many years
past.
“A witch’s cat?” he repeated. “What nonsense! What harm can a poor cat
do to big healthy boys like you? There are no witches, you young
varlets.” He went into the corner and peered about eagerly, to find the
dumb victim of the mad superstition then subtly growing in that
Massachusetts colony.
“There was a witch and she ran away, screaming!” scolded back the bold
spokesman of the group of boys, now gaining courage to edge nearer. “She
ran away through this garden!” He pointed to a rear yard, leading off
the alley to a house not far distant.
“She made me cough up pins and needles,” asserted another young liar,
glibly. “And a monster black monkey with cock’s feet followed her when
she ran.”
“He’s a prince of the powers of air himself,” whispered another lad, in
awe-stricken tones.
Adam had found the cat, a middle-aged animal, frightened, hurt, soiled,
but intelligent, since it knew it was being protected at last. He lifted
it forth from its small retreat, finding it to be a heavy,
black-and-white specimen, too inoffensive to scratch and claw, even in
its terror.
“You young——” he started to say.
“Here she comes! Here she comes!” yelled one of the lads, interrupting.
“Two of them! Run for your lives!”
The self-scared young cowards, screaming like so many demons, darted
down the alley as fast as their legs would let them go. Adam looked
where one had pointed and beheld, indeed, two female figures coming on a
distracted run through the near-by yard, toward him as he was standing
with the cat in his arms.
Although the first veil of darkness was already drawn through the air,
Rust could see that they were two young women who were coming. The one
who led, he then noted, was a plain, but a sweet, wholesome-looking
girl, who was evidently much excited. He stepped forward toward her,
with the cat, divining it was the animal she had come for, and so for
the moment he neglected to glance at the second young woman.
When he did look at her she was not far and he caught his breath
quickly. “Shatter my hilt!” was the thought that leaped into his brain,
“they do have young witches here after all!”
Advancing to the middle of the alley he made a profound bow, as the
foremost girl came pantingly from the garden gate. The girl, seeing him
now for the first time, halted abruptly.
“Good evening,” said Adam, “may I have the honor of restoring your pet?
He is excellently well behaved and, I trust, not seriously hurt.”
The girl walked timidly toward him. Her face flushed rosy red with
pleasure and confusion. Her companion, having been caught on a rosebush,
in the garden, was delayed and was stooping to disentangle her skirt
from the thorns.
“Oh, sir, you are very kind,” stammered the girl confronting Adam. “I
thought they would kill him. He isn’t mine, but I also hold him——”
The second young lady now came hastily out at the gate. Adam had been
too polite to look past number one, in search for the one he thought so
witching, but now his heart bounded to see her coming. She ran
precipitately at him, breaking in upon her companion’s speech.
“Oh, Standing-Panther,” she cried, impetuously, “my own dear, darling
love, why did you ever come out to such a place?”
She plucked her pet from Adam’s arm in one swoop. Rust, at the old name,
which he had buried with memories that sorely harrowed his soul, dropped
his hat, which he had doffed, and raising his hand to his cheek in
wonder, stared at the girl before him with widened eyes.
“At—at your service, Miss—Mistress Gar—Mistress Merrill,” he stuttered.
Garde, a vision of beauty distraught, suddenly looked up in his face.
Frank amazement was depicted in her glorious eyes.
“I beg—your pardon,” stammered Adam, “I see you were speaking to your
cat, and not to me.”
“You!—Adam!—Mr.—Mr. Rust!” she exclaimed. A red-hot blush surged upward,
flooding her face, her neck and even her delicate ears. “Not
Little-Standing—Oh dear me! Why, Prudence, what did I say? It—it isn’t
really——” she stopped in confusion.
“Adam Rust, Kneeling Panther at your service,” supplied the rover. He
made a bow that was truly splendid, with a long sweep of his hat and a
touch of his knee on the pavement, that for sheer grace could not have
been equaled in Boston. “Miss—Mistress Merrill, you have not quite
forgotten that you commissioned me to bring you something from
Hispaniola?” he added.
“But you—but you have grown so,” said Garde, still as red as a rose.
“And to meet like this—that was such a long time ago. I—I thank you for
saving my cat. I—we—Prudence, you must thank Mr. Rust.”
Prudence, on whom Adam had scarcely looked, since seeing Garde, had been
standing there looking at Rust with a sudden-born love in her eyes that
was almost adoration. She had developed, out of the Puritanical spirit
of the times, a control of her various emotions that Garde would never
possess. Therefore she had herself in hand at a second’s notice.
“I have thanked Mr. Rust,” she answered, quietly.
Garde was stealing a look at Adam the second he turned in politeness to
Prudence.
“This was no service at all,” he said. “Pray expend no further words
upon it.”
“Oh, Adam, I am so glad——” burst from Garde’s lips impetuously, but she
checked her utterance the instant his glance came flashing back to hers,
and added. “I mean, Mr. Rust, I am so glad the cat wasn’t hurt, and,
Prudence, we must surely return to the house at once.”
This was not at all what Garde had started to say, nor what she wanted
to say; but though it was the same Adam, quite to her heart’s
satisfaction, yet he was now a man, and a maidenly diffidence shamed her
riotous gladness, and—Prudence was present.
“But,” said Adam, fumbling in a pocket over the region of his heart,
“the trinket I brought you from Hispaniola?”
“Oh, marry, it has kept so well all these years,” said Garde roguishly,
“surely it must still keep till—surely anyway till daylight. Really,
sir, we must thank you again and return before it is actually dark.” She
gave him one look which, had he been a woman, he would readily have
interpreted, but being a man, somewhat of its significance was lost upon
him.
“But now I know I have kept it too long already,” he insisted, still
tugging at the stubborn pocket. “Surely——”
“It will be the riper for keeping a little longer,” said Garde, almost
impatient with him for not seeing that she wanted to receive it only
when they two were alone together. “We thank you once more, for saving
Little-Standing-Panther, and so—good night,”
“But when—what day?—to-morrow?” cried the eager rover. “When may I give
it?”
“Oh stupid!” said Garde to herself, almost vexed at his lack of
understanding and tact. Aloud she called back, “Did you say good night?
Prudence, say good night again to Mr. Rust.”
Prudence called good night once more, this making her third time, and
Adam was left there in the alley alone. He went to the gate and, leaning
over it, clutched two of its pickets in his hands, as once before he had
done to another gate, and stood there gazing ardently into the gathering
darkness.
At length, with a heavy sigh, of joy and impatience blended, he strode a
little down the lane. Then he strode back. So, up and down he paraded,
for fifteen minutes. At the end of this time he suddenly bethought him
of the beef-eaters and the dinner at William Phipp’s. He then hastened,
tardily enough, back the way he had originally come.
Eager to find his companions, yet completely scatterbrained by the
meeting with Garde, the sight of her radiant beauty, and the chaos of
plans for seeing her again at daylight, which were teeming in his head,
he fairly fell over the outstretched feet of his faithful followers
before he saw them.
They were still sitting upon the block of stone. They had interlocked
their arms, for mutual support, and then had fallen fast asleep, worn
out with the long day and made weak by a longer fast.
“Good old beef-eaters,” said Adam, affectionately, and gently shaking
them by the shoulders, he aroused them, got them on their feet and
guided them out of the alley. By great good fortune, he came to a
land-mark he remembered from his short sojourn in Boston, years before.
With this as a bearing, he made good time to the Captain’s house. They
met William Phipps at the gate, going forth to hunt them up.
“We have sauntered along,” said Adam, carelessly, “for such air as this
is a tonic to the appetite.”
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