The long winter night was unrelieved by any hint of dawn when Justin
scrambled through a hurriedly-opened window, dropped to the gently
slanting roof of a one-storey shed attached to the Wilkins house and
slid safely into a deep pile of snow.
Working his way clear to the rutted icy alley that passed for a street,
Justin's chief impression was not wonder at the miracle that had
actually transported him backward through time into the Old Boston of
his dreams. It was a combination of uncertainty, befuddlement and
utter physical discomfort.
In the first place the cast-off clothing of her father that Deborah had
managed to procure for him from an upstairs hall closet was extremely
uncomfortable. Made of coarse homespun it felt like steel wool against
his skin. There was no underwear to ease the contact, nor had Deborah
thought of any.
* * * * *
A chill east wind from the Bay knifed up the alley and chilled
the marrow in his bones. Bitterly he recalled that the climate of
north-eastern America had been growing steadily warmer for more than a
century in his own time. He had returned to the very depths of the cold
era.
Nor was he used to strange and narrow streets, slippery with ice,
littered with refuse and utterly without lights. Holding with one hand
to the cocked hat Deborah had loaned him, he groped his way with the
other stretched out before him.
From the Wilkins house he was to proceed east on Mills Street, past
Arch Street, until he came to Long Lane. There he was to turn right
until he reached, on the corner to his left, a house, a full storey
higher than the structures around it. He was to rap the knocker until a
Mrs. Cooper answered and tell her that Sam Wilkins had sent him.
The small "hoard" Deborah had given him clinked in the cloth pouch
she had tied round his waist. In spite of his discomfort he felt
his thoughts soften at her generosity, as well as at its pitiful
smallness. She was, in truth, a lovely thing to happen to any man.
He found the house and banged the heavy brass doorknocker with
congealing fingers. After awhile a faint light glimmered through the
fan-glass above the door, to be followed by the metallic sounds of a
bolt being thrust back. The door opened a crotch and, above a wavering
candle, a long-chinned toothless crone peered out at him and said,
"What devil's business brings _ye_ to my door at this heathen hour?"
"Mrs. Cooper?" Justin asked, his teeth chattering.
"Aye, that I be," was the wary reply. "And who might _ye_ be?"
"The name is Justin," he replied. "Sam Wilkins sent me here in the hope
of obtaining lodging for the night."
"Hmmp--there's little enough left of it," came the sharp reply. "Ye
needn't think 'twill gain thee a short fee. That'll be a shilling and
tuppence extra for rousing me at such an hour."
Justin willingly disgorged the required sum with rapidly numbing
fingers and was led by the grumbling old crone to a small but
unexpectedly clean second-floor chamber overlooking the street. With
its white-washed walls, small mullioned window, wood fireplace, bureau,
bed, table and chair--all these of hard dark maple--and knitted
sampler on the wall, it might have been any of thousands of "Colonial"
restorations in suburban homes of his own epoch.
Since there was no wood in the fireplace, Justin undressed quickly,
glad to be out of his raspy clothing, and crawled naked between sheets
almost as rough. But fatigue quickly overcame him and he fell into a
dreamless sleep of sheer exhaustion.
He was awakened by a pock-marked mulatto girl who was apparently in
the process of changing his chamberpot. She informed him as he rubbed
sleepy eyes, "Ye slept through breakfast, Master. Mistress Cooper ast
me to tell ye there's a young leddy downstairs to see ye."
Justin got out of bed in a hurry as soon as the slave had left. He let
out a gasp as his bare feet struck the icy floorboards, crawled hastily
into his ill-fitting clothing. He had to break ice in the basin.
Deborah was awaiting him downstairs in the parlor. Wearing a
full-skirted tight-bodiced gown of light blue wool that matched her
eyes, with blue-and-white bonnet, she looked to Justin delightfully
quaint and breathtakingly lovely. She rose from the settee on which she
had been waiting and came eagerly to him.
But when, after a warm kiss of greeting, he sought to embrace her
further she danced away, laughing and saying, "Not now, Charles. Ye'll
have Mistress Cooper saying dreadful things about me. 'Tis a fine
winter's morning outdoors. I came to show ye the sights."
He went upstairs for his own borrowed cloak and by the time he got down
she had already donned hers, a warm-looking grey wool wrap with grey
woolen mittens to match. Outside the sun was bright and the night chill
was off the air. Deborah said, watching her own breath congeal and
mingle with his, "I had to come and see that ye made Mistress Cooper's
safely. I lay abed and fretted for ye all night long."
"You don't look it," he told her.
Then he looked at the snow-covered city about him. There it stood, the
Boston of his studies, of his dreams, the quaint old shops and houses
and taverns, many with overhanging eaves and gables, the ancient signs,
some fresh, some weathered, the innumerable and oddly-designed weather
vanes and chimney pots.
Yet his next impression was one of dinginess. The snow, piled high on
either side of the street, looked almost as dirty as snow that had lain
for awhile in the side-streets of his own Boston. A narrow passageway
had been dug out and even as he and Deborah watched a horse-drawn cart,
laden with night-soil, and an ox-cart, evidently proceeding north to
market, stood motionless, facing one another, while their drivers
indulged in the mutual invective city and countrymen have invoked in
like dilemmas since the invention of the wheel.
"What horrid words!" said Deborah, feigning shock. Justin took her arm
and they edged past the incipient combatants, about whom a crowd of
rough-looking customers was beginning to collect.
A gust of wind caused Deborah's cloak to billow about her and she
tugged him away to the half-shelter of the rope-walk, where despite
the weather a few hardy souls were engaged in splicing and reeving and
other intricate arts of rigging and sailmaking.