THE ENEMY IN POWER.
ADAM found his faithful beef-eaters on the verge of the grave. The
miserable old rogues had no better sense than to be pining to death like
two masterless dogs. They had been ill enough, in all conscience, and
even somewhat mentally disordered, but there had been no sufficient
grounds for the pair to believe themselves abandoned by their “Sachem,”
and there had been absolutely no excuse for them to refuse to eat.
However, the rascals nearly “wagged” themselves to pieces when Rust was
finally beside them, and the way they laughed was most suggestively like
the glad whimpering of two dumbly loving animals expressing their joy.
Adam would have scolded the two for having brought themselves to such a
condition of weakness and bones, only that he had not the heart to do
this justice to the case.
There was, however, no such thing as getting the old fellows back on
their pins in a week, nor yet in two, nor three. They even hesitated,
after he had come, between running backward toward their long sleep and
coming along with him to vales of renewed health. They were like
affectionate creatures divided between two masters. The grim visitor had
come so near to winning them both, with his beckoning, that they
appeared to think it their duty to die.
Adam, however, was a persuasive force. He had won them away from
themselves before; he won them again on this occasion. Captain Kidd, a
braw Scotsman, who ordinarily dropped his native dialect, having little
affection for his country, his father having suffered tortures for
becoming a non-conformist clergyman, felt he must needs relapse into
something barbaric to express himself on the beef-eaters.
“Of all the twas that ere twad,” said he, “you’re muckle the strangest
twa.”
By this he meant to convey that of all the couples that ever mated, the
two old rascals were the oddest pair.
The convalescence being a slow affair, Adam was obliged to give up all
thought of returning immediately to Boston. Yet so hopeful was he that
every day would perform some miracle of restoring the strength to the
muscles and the meat to the bones of his retinue, that it was not until
he had been away from Garde for more than three weeks that he finally
wrote to tell her of why he had failed to return. But the letter, for
some unknown reason, was never delivered.
At length, however, what with the fulness of summer come upon them and
the hope which Adam had inspired in their breasts, the beef-eaters
became padded out to the fulness of their old-time grandeur, and once
more swaggered about and bragged of their prowess.
Adam’s money had, by this time, dwindled down to a sum which was not at
all difficult to transport from place to place, nor even from pocket to
pocket. Having no heart to put the retinue on shipboard, to convey them
to Massachusetts, he sacrificed nearly his last bit of coin to secure
them passage, by coach and wagon, from Manhattan to Boston. This left
him either one of two expedients for himself. He could walk, or he could
make shift to secure a passage by vessel, giving work as payment for the
favor. He argued that once in Boston he would accept the position
offered by Goodwife Phipps at the ship-yard, and hither also would he
take his followers, so that by honest toil they might all be happy and
continue their time-sealed companionship, and desert the rolling-stone
business as an occupation.
It was not without misgivings that the beef-eaters accepted this
arrangement. But being obedient things that would willingly have gone
into fire, or the sea itself, at Adam’s command or wish, they meekly
bade him a temporary adieu and saw him depart before them, a ship being
several days ahead of the coach in point of time for departing.
In the meantime, history had been making fast in Boston. The crafty
Randolph, whose coup had long been prepared, had returned from New
Amsterdam, bearing a commission from the King of England declaring the
charter null and void and delegating upon him power to form a new
provisional government for the colony of Massachusetts. Great tracts of
territory, comprising New Hampshire, Maine and other areas, were lopped
off from the province at one fell blow. Randolph created Joseph Dudley
provisional governor, Dudley having long been seeking his favor, against
this final moment of changes. The courts fell into the hands of the
newly-elected power. The soldiers, constabulary, everything assumed an
ultra-English tone and arrogance. The people clenched their fists and
wrought their passions up to a point where rebellions are lighted in a
night.
Yet Boston was a loyal town, obedient to its liege lord and nearly as
eager to serve him and to do him homage as it was to preserve its
liberties and the independence, which gradual development had created
and long usage had confirmed as inalienable, in the belief of all the
patriotic citizens. Stoughton and Bradstreet, beholding the
revolutionary tendency, which would have plunged the colony most
unwisely into a sea of trouble, submitted to the new order of things,
which for long they had seen coming, inevitably, out of the malignant
spirit in which the Stuart dynasty had always desired to govern these
non-conformist hard-heads.
There were many creatures in Boston swift to join the Tory party, under
Randolph, for the plums of official recognition. Thus this party rapidly
assumed considerable dimensions, and therefore power, to add to that of
which the King himself was the fountain-head.
Boston at that time was a prosperous town of something more than six
thousand souls. It was substantially built, if crookedly, for the most
part of wood. Yet there was a fair sprinkling of brick houses along its
cow-path streets, and a few were of stone, which, in several instances,
had been brought to this undeveloped land from England. The town was
distinctly English, both as to customs and thoughts, but the seeds which
hardihood had sown, were to grow the pillars of Americanism—synonymous
with a spirit of Democracy sufficient to inspire the world!
Naturally Isaiah Pinchbecker became a master-jackal under the new
régime. Psalms Higgler, the lesser light of lick-spittling, became, by
the same token, a lesser carnivora, but no less hungry to be feeding on
the foe-masters of the recent past. And Pinchbecker, having found Adam
in the town, was alert to find him again.
Yet not even Pinchbecker, with his knife-edge mind, devoted to evolving
schemes of vengeance, could have comprehended the tigerish joy with
which Randolph remembered Adam Rust, from that morning in the Crow and
Arrow, and with which he now put two and two together, to arrive at
Adam’s relationship with Garde Merrill.
Randolph was a subtle schemer, never fathomed by the Puritans, against
whom he displayed such an implacable hatred. He was far too wise ever to
appear as the point, when a thrust of revenge was to be delivered. He
never for a moment relaxed his obsequious demeanor, nor his air of
injured guiltlessness. Like all men of power, he had much material,
self-offered, from which to choose his henchmen. He had chosen
Pinchbecker wisely, for a hypocrite, a fawner, and an arrant knave who
could work endless harm, in an underhanded fashion. But for his more
aggressive employment he attached to his service a great, burly brute,
with a face like a mastiff’s, an intelligence like a sloth’s, and a
courage like that of a badger. This masterpiece of human animalism
responded to the name of “Gallows,” for once a man had been hanged on
his back, as in early English-Irish usage, and of this he was
matchlessly proud.
Adam arrived in the midst of that first elation of Randolph and his
following, the like of which is frequently the cause of reaction so
violent as to quite reverse the fates themselves. But although the
Puritans hated Dudley, almost more than Randolph, for traitorously
joining the party of destruction, their growlings checked nothing of the
all-importance which the creatures in power felt and made their
fellow-beings feel. A spirit of sullen brooding settled on the people.
Unaware that Rust had been away from Boston, since he had seen him that
day in Donner’s garden with Mistress Merrill, Pinchbecker had been
seeking for him diligently, ever since Randolph’s return. But believing
that his quarry would be found eventually in the vicinity of the Crow
and Arrow, his field of investigations was narrow.
It had naturally happened, however, that Adam had quite forgotten to
tell the beef-eaters of his change of abode in Boston. They would
therefore proceed to the old tavern immediately upon their arrival. He
thought of this before he landed. Having come ashore at twilight, he
made it his duty to stroll to the Crow and Arrow, for the purpose of
leaving a message for Pike and Halberd, when at last they should come to
the town.
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