"Why yes, mother, here comes Stephen and Stiles Hotchkiss up the road.
My! how tired and hot the boys and the horses do look!" exclaimed
Polly.
Stephen waited for no reprimand. He forestalled it by saying: "Captain
Hotchkiss let Stiles and me go far enough to _see_ the British
troops--way off, ever so far--but we saw 'em, we did, didn't we,
Stiles?"
"Come! come!" said Mr. Porter, while the lad's mother stood with her
hand on his head. "Stephen, tell us all about it!"
"Captain Hotchkiss said he was a boy once, and if we'd promise him to
go home the minute he told us to, he'd take us along. Well! we kept
meeting folks running away from New Haven, with everything on 'em but
their heads. One woman was lugging a lot of salt pork, 'because she
couldn't bear to have the Britishers eat it all up;' and another woman
was carrying away a lot of candles hanging by a string, and the sun
had melted the last drop of tallow, leaving the wicks dangling against
the tallow on her dress, but she didn't know it; and mother, would
you believe it--Mr. Timothy Atwater told Captain Hotchkiss that he
met a woman whom he knew hurrying out of town with a cat in her arms.
When he asked her where her children were, she said, 'Why, at home I
suppose.' 'Well,' said Mr. Atwater, 'hadn't you better leave the cat
and go back and get them?' And she said, 'Perhaps she had,' and went
back for 'em."
"What became of the cat?" asked Mrs. Melicent Porter.
"Why, Aunt Melicent, how nice!" cried Stephen, running back to the
porch and returning with a cat in his arms.
"I've fetched her to you. I _knew_ you loved cats so! Here she is,
black as ink, and she stuck to the saddle every step of the way like a
true soldier's cat. I was afraid she'd run away when I took her off
the saddle, and I hid her. You know mother don't like cats around
under her feet."
In a minute pussy was on the floor, and the last drop of milk in the
house was set before her by little Polly Lewis. Little Melicent
cooed softly to her, while Stephen and Stiles went on with their
story,--from which it was learned that the boys had gone within a
mile of Hotchkisstown (now Westville), where, from a height, they
had a view of the British troops. The lads were filled with
admiration of the marching, "as though it was all one motion," of
the "mingling colors of the uniforms worn, as the bright red of the
English Foot Guards blended with the graver hues of the dress worn
by the German mercenaries," and of "the waving line of glittering
bayonets."
"We didn't see," said Stephen, "but just one flash of musketry,
because Stiles's father said we must start that instant for home, and
he told Stiles to stay here until morning, and we haven't had a
mouthful to eat since breakfast, and its been the hottest day that
ever was, and I'm tired to death."
"And the cows are on the hill and nobody here to fetch them down,"
sighed Mr. Porter.
"Such a lot of captains waiting to see you, father!" announced Polly.
"There's Captain Woodruff and Captain Castle and Captain Richards and
a Fenn captain and a Garnsey captain. I forget the rest." The captains
invaded the kitchen itself, declaring that it being Monday in the
week, every householder had been short of provisions for the
emergency--that every inn on the way and many a private house had been
unable to provide enough for so many men, and what could they have at
the Porter Inn?
Polly disappeared. Before her father had considered the matter she
had, assisted by her Aunt Melicent and Polly Lewis, seized from the
pantry shelves all that they could carry, and going by a rear way, had
hidden on the garret stairs a big roast of veal, one of lamb, and
enough bread and pies for family requirements, and still the pantry
shelves seemed amply filled. "I'm not going to have Ethel come home in
the night and find nothing left for him I know, and the hungry boys
fast asleep and tired out on the kitchen settle will come to life
ravenous. Wonder if I hadn't better be missing just now and go fetch
the cows down. Father would have asthma all night if he tried it,"
said Polly to her aunt; and up the hill Polly went accompanied by
little Polly--while Mrs. Porter stood by and saw the fruits of her
hard day's work vanish out of sight.
"Pray leave something for your own household," she ventured to
intercede at last. "Don't forget that we have four guests of our own
for the night;" but Mr. Porter, rather proud to show that, however
remiss others had been, the Porter Inn was prepared for emergencies,
had already bidden Nancy and Phyllis fetch forth the last loaf.
"Like one for supper," ventured Nancy, as her master carefully
examined the empty larder, hoping to find something more. As the last
captain from Northbury started on the night journey for New Haven, Mr.
Porter faced his wife. "Now Thomas Porter," she said, "you can go
hungry to bed, but what can I do for my guests and the children and
the rest of the household?"
Mr. Porter scratched his head--a habit when profoundly in doubt--and
said: "I must fetch the cows! It's most dark now," and set forth, to
find that Polly had them all safely in the cattle yard.
"I suppose, father," said Polly, "that we've got to live on milk
to-night. I thought so when I heard you parleying with the captains.
So I thought I'd get the cows down." As Polly entered the house, she
saw a lady and two girls of about her own age, to whom her mother was
saying: "We will give you shelter, gladly, but my husband has just let
the militia you met just below have the last morsel of cooked food in
our house, and we've nothing left for ourselves but milk for supper."
"Mother," said Polly, stepping to the front; "we have plenty! I looked
out for you before father got to the pantry. I made journeys to the
garret stairs, several of them, and Aunt Melicent and Polly Lewis
helped me. It is all right for the lady to stay."
The lady in question was Mrs. Thankful Punderson and her twin
daughters, girls of twelve years, who had escaped from New Haven just
as the British troops reached Broadway, and the riot and plunder and
killing began. "I hoped," she said, "to reach the house of my
husband's sister, Mrs. Zachariah Thompson, in Westbury, but Anna and
Thankful are too tired to walk further to-night, and the horse can
carry but two. It is getting late, and I am so thankful to stay."
As Mr. Porter stood on the porch looking down the road for the next
arrival, hoping to learn some later news and perhaps to hear Ethel's
cheery call in the distance, Polly said: "Father, will you let me be
innkeeper to-night?"
"Gladly, Polly, with nothing to keep and not a room to spare," was his
reply.
"Then I'll invite you to supper, and mind, if the ministers themselves
come, they can't have a bite to-night, for I'm the keeper."
"I suppose you've made us some hasty pudding while the milking was
going on," he said, as Polly, preceding her father for once, went
before, and opened the door upon a table abundantly supplied, and laid
for twelve.
At the table Mr. Porter told, for the benefit of Mrs. Melicent Porter
and Mrs. Punderson, some of the events, both pathetic and tragic,
that had occurred in the old house during his boyhood and youth, and
Mrs. Melicent Porter told again the events of the day in June--only
a year before--wherein the battle of Monmouth had been fought near
her New Jersey home, and she had spent the day in doing what she
could to relieve the sufferings of men so spent with battle and heat
and wounds that they panted to her door with tongues hanging from
their mouths; also of her perilous journey from New Jersey to
Connecticut on horseback, accompanied by Lieutenant-Colonel
Baldwin, her father--during which journey it was, that she had
thrown her daughter Melicent in safety from her horse to the bank
of the river they were fording, while the animal, having lost its
footing, was going down the current.
While these things had been in the telling, Polly had slipped from the
table unnoticed, and had lighted every lamp that could brighten the
house front and serve to guide to its porch. The last lamp was just
alight when Polly's guests began to arrive. She half expected
soldiers, and refugees came. It seemed to her that every family in New
Haven must be related to every family in Waterbury--so many women and
children came in to rest themselves before continuing the journey and
"to wait until the moon should rise," for the evening was very dark,
and oh! the stories that each fresh arrival brought! They filled the
group that came in to listen with fear and agony. New Haven was very
near to Waterbury in that day. The inhabitants there were closely
connected with the inhabitants here, and their peril and distress was
a common woe. Little Stiles Hotchkiss cried himself to sleep that
night, fearing that one of the three Hotchkisses, reported killed,
might be his father.
Polly acted well her part. To the children she gave fresh milk; to
their elders she explained that the militia had taken their supplies,
while she made place to receive two or three invalids who could go no
further, by giving up her own room.
"You'll let me lie on the floor in your room, Aunt Melicent, I know,"
she said, "for the poor lady is so old and so feeble; I'm most sure
she is a hundred. She came in a chaise and wanted to get up to Parson
Leavenworth's, but she just can't. She can't hold up her head."
It was near midnight when the refugees set forth for the Center, Mr.
Porter himself acting as guide. After that time, the sleepy boys and
the entire household having taken themselves to bed, the old house was
left to the night, with its silence and its chill dampness that always
comes up from the river, that goes on "singing to us the same bonny
nonsense," despite our cheer or our sorrow. Again, and yet again
through the night, doors opened and two mothers stepped out in the
moonlight to listen, hoping--hoping to hear sound of the coming of the
boys, but only the lone cry of the whippoorwill was borne on the air.
"'Pears like," said Phyllis to Mrs. Porter in the morning, "the
whippoorwills had lots to say last night; talked all night so's you
couldn't hear nothing 'tall."
"Phyllis," said Mrs. Porter, "there was nothing else to hear, but we
shall know soon."
Polly came down, bringing her checked linen apron full of eggs for
breakfast. "I thought, mother," she said, "that you'd leave yourself
without an egg yesterday, so I looked out. Isn't it handy to have them
in the house? Haven't heard a single cackle this morning yet, but
yesterday was a remarkable day everyway. I believe the hens knew the
British were coming. Did you ever see such eggs? Wonder if my old lady
is awake yet! Guess I'll carry up some hot water for her and find
out."
Polly poured the water deftly from the big iron tea-kettle hanging
from the crane and hurried away with it, only to return with such
haste that she tripped on the threshold, broke the pitcher and sent
the water over everything it could reach. "Mother," she said,
recovering herself, "Parson Leavenworth will be here to breakfast.
He's coming down the road with father. My old lady will feel honored,
won't she? I know he's come for her. Phyllis, any more hot water to
spare? It's so good to take out wrinkles; she'll miss it, I know."
The sun had not climbed over Great Hill when breakfast was over, and
the last guest of the night had gone. Mrs. Punderson's daughter Anna
rode behind the Rev. Mark Leavenworth on his horse, Thankful with Mrs.
Punderson, the old lady in the chaise, and even Stiles had galloped
away toward the east, and yet not a traveler on the road had brought
tidings from New Haven. The group on the porch watching the departure
had not dispersed when Polly's ears caught a strain floating up the
river valley. She listened. She ran. She clasped her mother in her
arms. She kissed her. She whispered in her ear, "I hear him! He's
coming! Ethel is; and Cato is with him!" she cried out, embracing
Phyllis in her joy. The two mothers--the one white, the other black;
the one free, the other in bonds--went to listen. They stood side by
side on the porch; tears fell from their eyes, tears that through all
the years science has failed to distinguish, the one from the other.
Ethel's cheery call rang clear and clearer. Cato's wild cadence grew
near and nearer, but when the boys rode up beside the porch, Mrs.
Porter was on her knees in the little bed-room off the parlor, and
Phyllis was in the kitchen. New England mothers, both of them! Their
sorrows they could bear; their joys they hid from sight.
WATERBURY, CONN., September, 1898.
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