James Fenimore Cooper's Five Novels

by James Fenimore Cooper

  “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.”

  “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 on 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. 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 young soldier.

  “Come hither, Lionel Lincoln, to the foot of this beacon,” he said, “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 lad.”

  “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 has 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, perhaps, 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; 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 treason!”

  “Go then,” returned the unmoved stranger, “descend to yon 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, that you might spare me such a reproach.”

  “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 its 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 barbarians!”

  “Ay! boy, I thank you for the word; they were indeed most worthy of the epithet! infidels that denied the precepts of our blessed Redeemer; 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 Faneuil, 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 ascendin
g the opposite declivity 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, 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, craven 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 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 for you, 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, 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, an oblate spheroid, 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 which time I have rather lost than gained an ounce, for this early rising is no friend to a thriving condition. ’Twas in my night-gown, 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 Nesbitt 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.”