University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.

King Henry IV.

The sun was just stirring the heavy bank of
fog, which had rested on the waters during the
night, as Lionel toiled his way up the side of
Beacon-Hill, anxious to catch a glimpse of his
native scenery while it was yet glowing with the
first touch of day. The islands raised their green
heads above the mist, and the wide amphitheatre
of hills that encircled the bay was still visible,
though the vapour was creeping in places along
the vallies—now concealing the entrance to
some beautiful glen, and now wreathing itself fantastically
around a tall spire that told the site of a
suburban village. Though the people of the town
were awake and up, yet the sacred character of
the day, and the state of the times, contributed to
suppress those sounds which usually distinguish
populous places. The cool nights and warm
days of April, had generated a fog more than
usually dense, which was deserting its watery
bed, and stealing insidiously along the land,
to unite with the vapours of the rivers and
brooks, spreading a wider curtain before the
placid view. As Lionel stood on the brow of the
platform that crowned the eminence, the glimpses

of houses and hills, of towers and ships, of places
known and places forgotten, passed before his
vision, through the openings in the mist, like phantoms
of the imagination. The whole scene,
animated and in motion as it seemed by its
changes, appeared to his excited feelings like
a fanciful panorama, exhibited for his eye alone,
when his enjoyment was interrupted by a voice
apparently at no great distance. It was a man
singing to a common English air, fragments of
some ballad, with a peculiarly vile nasal cadency.
Through the frequent pauses, he was enabled to
comprehend a few words, which, by their recurrence,
were evidently intended for a chorus to
the rest of the production. The reader will understand
the character of the whole from these
lines, which ran as follows:

Lionel, after listening to this expressive ditty for
a moment, followed the direction of the sounds
until he encountered Job Pray, who was seated on
one of the flights of steps which aided the ascent
to the platform, cracking a few walnuts on the
boards, while he employed those intervals, when his
mouth could find no better employment, in uttering
the above-mentioned strains.

“How now, master Pray, do you come here to
sing your orisons to the goddess of liberty, on a
Sunday morning,” cried Lionel; “or are you the
town lark, and for want of wings take to this
height to obtain an altitude for your melody?”

“There's no harm in singing psalm tunes or
continental songs, any day in the week,” said the
lad, without raising his eyes from his occupation:

“Job don't know what a lark is, but if it belongs
to the town, the soldiers are so thick, they can't
keep it on the common.”

“And what objection can you have to the soldiers
possessing a corner of your common.”

“They starve the cows, and then they wont
give milk; grass is sweet to beasts in the spring
of the year.”

“But my life for it, the soldiers don't eat the
grass; your brindles and your blacks, your reds
and your whites, may have the first offering of the
spring, as usual.”

“But Boston cows don't love grass that British
soldiers have trampled on,” said the sullen lad.

“This is, indeed, carrying notions of liberty to
refinement!” exclaimed Lionel, laughing.

Job shook his head, threateningly, as he looked
up and said, “Don't you let Ralph hear you say
any thing ag'in liberty!”

“Ralph! who is he, lad? your genius! where
do you keep the invisible, that there is danger of
his overhearing what I say?”

“He's up there in the fog,” said Job, pointing
significantly toward the foot of the Beacon, which
a dense volume of vapor was enwrapping, probably
attracted up the tall post that supported the grate.

Lionel gazed at the smoky column for a moment,
when the mists began to dissolve, and, amid
their evolutions, he beheld the dim figure of his
aged fellow passenger. The old man was still clad
in his simple, tarnished vestments of gray, which
harmonized so singularly with the mists as to impart
a look almost ethereal to his wasted form. As
the medium through which he was seen became
less cloudy, his features grew visible, and Lionel
could distinguish the uneasy, rapid glances of his
eyes, which seemed to roam over the distant objects
with an earnestness that appeared to mock the

misty veil that was floating before so much of
the view. While Lionel stood fixed to the spot,
gazing at this irregular being with that secret
awe which the other had succeeded in inspiring,
the old man waved his hand impatiently, as if he
would cast aside his shroud. At that instant a
bright sun-beam darted into the vapour, illuminating
his person, and melting the mist into thin air.
The anxious, haggard, and severe expression of his
countenance changed at the touch of the ray, and
he smiled with a softness and attraction that thrilled
the nerves of the other, as he called aloud to
the sensitive young soldier—

“Come hither, Lionel Lincoln, to the foot of
this beacon, where you may gather warnings,
which, if properly heeded, will guide you through
many and great dangers, unharmed.”

“I am glad you have spoken,” said Lionel,
advancing to his side; “you appeared like a
being of another world, wrapped in that mantle
of fog, and I felt tempted to kneel, and ask a
benediction.”

“And am I not a being of another world!
most of my interests are already in the grave,
and I tarry here only for a space, because there
is a great work to be done, which cannot be performed
without me. My view of the world of
spirits, young man, is much clearer and more
distinct than yours of this variable scene at your
feet. There is no mist to obstruct the eye, nor
any doubts as to the colours it presents.”

“You are happy, sir, in the extremity of your
age to be so assured. But I fear your sudden determination
last night subjected you to inconvenience
in the tenement of this changeling.”

“The boy is a good boy,” said the old man,
stroking the head of the natural complacently;
“we understand each other, major Lincoln, and

that shortens introductions, and renders communion
easy.”

“That you feel alike on one subject, I have
already discovered; but there I should think the
resemblance and the intelligence must end.”

“The propensities of the mind in its infancy and
in its maturity are but a span apart,” said the stranger;
“the amount of human knowledge is but to
know how much we are under the dominion of
our passions; and he who has learned by experience
how to smother the volcano, and he who
never felt its fires, are surely fit associates.”

Lionel bowed in silence to an opinion so humbling
to the other, and after a pause of a moment,
adverted to their situation.

“The sun begins to make himself felt, and
when he has driven away these ragged remnants
of the fog, we shall see those places each of us have
frequented, in his day.”

“Shall we find them as we left them, think
you? or will you see the stranger in possession of
the haunts of your infancy?”

“Not the stranger, certainly, for we are the subjects
of one king; children who own a common
parent.”

“I will not reply that he has proved himself an
unnatural father,” said the old man, calmly; “the
gentleman who now fills the British throne is
less to be censured than his advisers, for the oppression
of his reign.”—

“Sir,” interrupted Lionel, “if such allusions
are made to the person of my sovereign, we must
separate; for it ill becomes a British officer to hear
his master mentioned with levity.”

“Levity!” repeated the other, slowly. “It is
a fault indeed to accompany gray locks and wasted
limbs! but your jealous watchfulness betrays
you into error. I have breathed in the atmosphere

of kings, young man, and know how to
separate the individual and his purpose, from the
policy of his government. 'Tis the latter that
will sever this great empire, and deprive the
third George of what has so often and so well
been termed `the brightest jewel in his crown'.”

“I must leave you, sir,” said Lionel; “the
opinions you so freely expressed during our passage,
were on principles which I can hardly call
opposed to our own constitution, and might be
heard, not only without offence, but frequently
with admiration; but this language approaches
to treason!”

“Go then,” returned the unmoved stranger,
“descend to you degraded common, and bid
your mercenaries seize me—'twill be only the
blood of an old man, but 'twill help to fatten
the land; or send your merciless grenadiers to
torment their victim before the axe shall do its
work; a man who has lived so long, can surely
spare a little of his time to the tormentors!”

“I could have thought, sir, that you might spare
such a reproach to me,” said Lionel.

“I do spare it, and I do more; I forget my
years, and solicit forgiveness. But had you known
slavery, as I have done, in it's worst of forms, you
would know how to prize the inestimable blessing
of freedom.”

“Have you ever known slavery, in your travels,
more closely than in what you deem the violations
of principle?”

“Have I not!” said the stranger, smiling bitterly;
“I have known it as man should never
know it; in act and will. I have lived days,
months, and even years, to hear others coldly
declare my wants; to see others dole out their
meager pittances to my necessities, and to hear

others assume the right, to express the sufferings,
and to control the enjoyments of sensibilities that
God had given to me only!”

“To endure such thraldom, you must have fallen
into the power of the infidel barbarians!”

“Ay! boy, I thank you for the words; they
were indeed most worthy of the epithets! infidels
that denied the precepts of our blessed Redeemer;
and barbarians that treated one having a soul, and
possessing reason like themselves, as a beast of
the field.”

“Why didn't you come to Boston, Ralph, and
tell that to the people in Funnel-Hall?” exclaimed
Job; “ther'd ha' been a stir about it!”

“Child, I did come to Boston, again and again,
in thought; and the appeals that I made to my
townsmen would have moved the very roof of
old Fanueil, could they have been uttered within
her walls. But 'twas in vain! they had the power,
and like demons—or rather like miserable men,
they abused it.”

Lionel, sensibly touched, was about to reply in
a suitable manner, when he heard a voice calling
his own name aloud, as if the speaker were ascending
the opposite acclivity of the hill. The
instant the sounds reached his ears, the old man
rose from his seat, on the foundation of the beacon,
and gliding over the brow of the platform,
followed by Job, they descended into a volume
of mist that was still clinging to the side of the
hill, with amazing swiftness.

“Why, Leo! thou lion in name, and deer in
activity!” exclaimed the intruder, as he surmounted
the steep ascent, “what can have brought you
up into the clouds so early! whew—a man needs a
New-Market training to scale such a precipice.
But, Leo, my dear fellow, I rejoice to see you—
we knew you were expected in the first ship, and

as I was coming from morning parade, I met a
couple of grooms in the `Lincoln green,' you
know, leading each a blooded charger—faith,
one of them would have been quite convenient to
climb this accursed hill on—whew and whew-w,
again—well, I knew the liveries at a glance; as
to the horses, I hope to be better acquainted with
them hereafter. Pray, sir, said I, to one of the
liveried scoundrels, whom do you serve?” “Major
Lincoln, of Ravenscliffe, sir,” said he, with a
look as impudent as if he could have said, like
you and I, his sacred majesty the king. That's
the answer of the servants of your ten-thousand
a year men! Now, if my fool had been asked
such a question, his answer would have been,
eraven dog as he is, captain Polwarth, of the 47th;
leaving the inquirer, though it should even be some
curious maiden who had taken a fancy to the tout
ensemble of my outline, in utter ignorance that
there is such a place in the world as Polwarth-Hall!”

During this voluble speech, which was interrupted
by sundry efforts to regain the breath lost
in the ascent, Lionel shook his friend cordially by
the hand, and attempted to express his own pleasure
at the meeting. The failure of wind, however,
which was a sort of besetting sin with captain
Polwarth, had now compelled him to pause,
and gave time to Lionel for a reply.

“This hill is the last place where I should have
expected to meet you,” he said. “I took it for
granted you would not be stirring until nine or
ten at least, when it was my intention to inquire
you out, and to give you a call before I paid my
respects to the commander-in-chief.”

“Ah! you may thank his excellency, the `Hon.
Thomas Gage, governor and commander-in-chief,
in and over the Province of Massachusetts-Bay,
and vice-admiral of the same,' as he styles himself

in his proclamations, for this especial favour;
though, between ourselves, Leo, he is about as
much governor over the Province, as he is owner
of those hunters you have just landed.”

“But why am I to thank him for this interview?”

“Why! look about you, and tell me what you
behold—nothing but fog—nay, I see there is a
steeple, and yonder is the smoking sea, and here
are the chimneys of Hancock's house beneath us,
smoking too, as if their rebellious master were at
home, and preparing his feed! but every thing in
sight is essentially smoky, and there is a natural
aversion, in us epicures, to smoke. Nature dictates
that a man who has as much to do in a day, in
carrying himself about, as your humble servant,
should not cut his rest too abruptly in the morning.
But the honourable Thomas, governor, and vice-admiral,
&c. has ordered us under arms with the
sun; officers, as well as men!”

“Surely that is no great hardship to a soldier,”
returned Lionel; “and moreover, it seems to
agree with you marvellously! Now I look again,
Polwarth, I am amazed! Surely you are not in a
light-infantry jacket!”

“Certes—what is there in that so wonderful,”
returned the other, with great gravity; “don't I
become the dress? or is it the dress which does not
adorn me, that you look ready to die with mirth?
Laugh it out Leo. I am used to it these three
days—but what is there, after all, so remarkable
in Peter Polwarth's commanding a company of
light infantry. Am I not just five feet, six and
one eighth of an inch—the precise height!”

“You appear to have been so accurate in your
longitudinal admeasurement, that you must carry
one of Harrison's time-pieces in your pocket; did
it ever suggest itself to you to use the quadrant
also?”

“For my latitude! I understand you, Leo;
because I am shaped a little like mother earth,
does it argue that I cannot command a light-infantry
company?”

“Ay, even as Joshua commanded the sun.
But the stopping of the planet itself, is not a
greater miracle in my eyes, than to see you in
that attire.”

“Well, then, the mystery shall be explained;
but first let us be seated on this beacon,” said captain
Polwarth, establishing himself with great
method in the place so lately occupied by the
attenuated form of the stranger; “a true soldier
husbands his resources for a time of need; that
word, husbands, brings me at once to the point—
I am in love.”

“That is surprising!”

“But what is much more so, I would fain be
married.”

It must be a woman of no mean endowments
that could excite such desires in captain Polwarth,
of the 47th, and of Polwarth-Hall!”

“She is a woman of great qualifications, major
Lincoln,” said the lover, with a sudden gravity
that indicated his gaiety of manner was not
entirely natural. “In figure she may be said to
be done to a turn. When she is grave, she
walks with the stateliness of a show beef; when
she runs, 'tis with the activity of a turkey; and
when at rest, I can only compare her to a dish
of venison, savory, delicate, and what one can
never get enough of.”

“You have, to adopt your own metaphors, given
such a `rare' sketch of her person, I am, `burning'
to hear something of her mental qualifications.”

“My metaphors are not poetical, perhaps, but
they are the first that offer themselves to my mind,
and they are natural. Her accomplishments exceed

her native gifts greatly. In the first place she
is witty; in the second, she is as impertinent as the
devil; and in the third, as inveterate a little traitor
to king George as there is in all Boston.”

“These are strange recommendations to your
favour!”

“The most infallible of all recommendations.
They are piquant, like savoury sauces, which excite
the appetite, and season the dish. Now her
treason (for it amounts to that in fact) is like
olives, and gives a gusto to the generous port of
my loyalty. Her impertinence is oil to the cold
sallad of my modesty, and her acid wit mingles
with the sweetness of my temperament, in that sort
of pleasant combination with which sweet and
sour blend in sherbet.”

“It would be idle for me to gainsay the charms
of such a woman,” returned Lionel, a good deal
amused with the droll mixture of seriousness and
humour in the other's manner; “now for her
connexion with the light-infantry—she is not of
the light corps of her own sex, Polwarth?”

Pardon me, major Lincoln, I cannot joke on
this subject. Miss Danforth is of one of the best
families in Boston.”

“Danforth! not Agnes, surely!”

“The very same!” exclaimed Polwarth, in surprise;
“what do you know of her?”

“Only that she is a sort of cousin of my own,
and that we are inmates of the same house. We
bear equal affinity to Mrs. Lechmere, and the
good lady has insisted that I shall make my home
in Tremont-street.”

“I rejoice to hear it! At all events, our intimacy
may now be improved to some better purpose
than eating and drinking. But to the point—there
were certain damnable innuendoes getting into
circulation, concerning my proportions, which I
considered it prudent to look down at once.”

“In order to do which, you had only to look
thinner.”

“And do I not, in this appropriate dress?
To be perfectly serious with you, Leo, for to
you I can freely unburthen myself, you know what
a set we are in the 47th—let them once fasten an
opprobrious term, or a nick name on you, and you
take it to the grave, be it ever so burthensome.”

“There is a way, certainly, to check ungentleman-like
liberties,” said Lionel, gravely.

“Poh! poh! a man wouldn't wish to fight
about a pound more or a pound less of fat! still
the name is a great deal, and first impressions are
every thing. Now, whoever thinks of Grand
Cairo as a village; of the Grand-Turk and Great
Mogul, as little boys; or, who would believe, by
hearsay, that captain Polwarth, of the light infantry,
could weigh one hundred and eighty!”

“Add twenty to it.”

“Not a pound more, as I am a sinner. I was
weighed in the presence of the whole mess no
later than last week, since when I have rather lost
than gained an ounce, for this early rising is no
friend to a thriving condition. 'Twas in my nightgown,
you'll remember, Leo, for we, who tally so
often, can't afford to throw in boots, and buckles,
and all those sorts of things, like your feather-weights.”

“But I marvel how Nesbit was induced to
consent to the appointment,” said Lionel; “he
loves a little display.”—

“I am your man for that,” interrupted the captain;
“we are embodied you know, and I make
more display, if that be what you require, than
any captain in the corps. But I will whisper a
secret in your ear. There has been a nasty business
here lately, in which the 47th has gained
no new laurels—a matter of tarring and feathering,
about an old rusty musket.”

“I have heard something of the affair already,”
returned Lionel, “and was grieved to find
the men justifying some of their own brutal conduct
last night, by the example of their commander.”

“Mum—'tis a delicate matter—well, that tar
has brought the Colonel into particularly bad
odour in Boston, especially among the women,
in whose good graces we are all of us lower than
I have ever known scarlet coats to stand before.
Why, Leo, the Mohairs are altogether the better
men, here! But there is not an officer in the whole
army who has made more friends in the place
than your humble servant. I have availed myself
of my popularity, which just now is no trifling
thing, and partly by promises, and partly by secret
interest, I have the company; to which you know
my rank in the regiment gives me an undoubted
title.”

“A perfectly satisfactory explanation; a most
commendable ambition on your part, and a certain
symptom that the peace is not to be disturbed;
for Gage would never permit such an arrangement,
had he any active operations in his eye.”

“Why, there I think you are more than half
right; these yankees have been talking, and resolving,
and approbating their resolves, as they
call it, these ten years past, and what does it all
amount to? To be sure, things grow worse and
worse every day—but Jonathan is an enigma to
me. Now you know when we were in the cavalry
together—God forgive me the suicide I committed
in exchanging into the foot, which I never
should have done, could I have found in all England
such a thing as an easy goer, or a safe leaper—but
then, if the commons took offence at a
new tax, or a stagnation in business, why they got
together in mobs, and burnt a house or two, frightened

a magistrate, and perhaps hustled a constable;
then in we came at a hand gallop, you know,
flourished our swords, and scattered the ragged
devils to the four winds; when the courts did the
rest, leaving us a cheap victory at the expense of
a little wind, which was amply compensated by
an increased appetite for dinner. But here it is
altogether a different sort of thing.”

“And what are the most alarming symptoms,
just now, in the colonies?” asked major Lincoln,
with a sensible interest in the subject.

“They refuse their natural aliment to uphold
what they call their principles; the women abjure
tea, and the men abandon their fisheries!
There has been hardly such a thing as even a wild-duck
brought into the market this spring, in consequence
of the Port-Bill, and yet they grow
more stubborn every day. If it should come to
blows, however, thank God we are strong enough
to open a passage for ourselves to any part of the
continent where provisions may be plentier; and
I hear more troops are already on the way.”

“If it should come to blows, which heaven forbid,”
said major Lincoln, “we shall be besieged
where we now are.”

“Besieged!” exclaimed Polwarth, in evident
alarm; “if I thought there was the least prospect
of such a calamity I would sell out to-morrow.
It is bad enough now; our mess-table
is never decently covered, but if there should
come a siege 'twould be absolute starvation.—No,
no, Leo, their minute men, and their long-tailed
rabble, would hardly think of besieging four thousand
British soldiers with a fleet to back them.
Four thousand! If the regiments I hear named
are actually on the way, there will be eight thousand
of us—as good men as ever wore—”

“Light-infantry jackets,” interrupted Lionel.
“But the regiments are certainly coming; Clinton,
Burgoyne, and Howe, had an audience to take
leave, on the same day with myself. The service
is exceedingly popular with the king, and our reception,
of course, was most gracious; though I
thought the eye of royalty looked on me as if it
remembered one or two of my juvenile votes in
the house, on the subject of these unhappy dissensions.”

“You voted against the Port-Bill,” said Polwarth,
“out of regard to me?”

“No, there I joined the ministry. The conduct
of the people of Boston had provoked the
measure, and there were hardly two minds in parliament
on that question.”

“Ah! major Lincoln, you are a happy man,”
said the captain; “a seat in Parliament at five-and-twenty!
I must think that I should prefer just
such an occupation to all others—the very name is
taking; a seat! you have two members for your
borough: who fills the second now?

“Say nothing on that subject, I entreat you,”
whispered Lionel, pressing the arm of the other,
as he rose; “'tis not filled by him who should
occupy it, as you know—shall we descend to the
common? there are many friends that I could
wish to see before the bell calls us to church.”

“Yes, this is a church-going, or rather meeting-going
place; for most of the good people forswear
the use of the word church as we abjure the supremacy
of the Pope,” returned Polwarth, following
in his companion's foot-steps; “I never think of attending
any of their schism-shops, for I would any
day rather stand sentinel over a baggage-wagon,
than stand up to hear one of their prayers. I can
do very well at the king's chapel, as they call it; for
when I am once comfortably fixed on my knees,

I make out as well as my lord archbishop of Canterbury;
though it has always been matter of surprise
to me, how any man can find breath to go
through their work of a morning.”

They descended the hill, as Lionel replied,
and their forms were soon blended with those of
twenty others who wore scarlet coats, on the
common.