The Lively Lady

by Kenneth Lewis Roberts

  Reviewers raved about the original

  1931 edition of THE LIVELY LADY

  "It drives full-sailed and rail under, logging a yarn

  of the War of 1812 and the privateers that

  were America's chief substitute for a navy. . .

  It hurries you along through frothing sea and

  pungent powder smoke and the grim

  ordeal of Dartmoor Prison ....

  —NEW YORK EVENING POST

  "The Lively Lady is a record of stirring and

  gallant adventure—one which will be

  long read and remembered."

  —NEW YORK TIMES

  "The Lively Lady has everything that a good

  historical novel must have, brilliantly assembled

  in a manner certain to send racing the blood of

  every man and woman whose circulation has

  become sluggish because of the poor

  diet offered by so many of today's writers."

  —PORTLAND EXPRESS

  "There is a thread of a love story, much humor,

  a lively set of characters, a quick beginning,

  and a well sustained flood of action."

  —FORUM AND CENTURY

  THE LIVELY LADY

  “It is a maxim, founded on the universal

  experience of mankind, that no nation is to be

  trusted further than it is bound by its interest;

  and no prudent statesman or politician will

  venture to depart from it.”

  —George Washington

  THE LIVELY LADY

  Kenneth Roberts

  DOWN EAST BOOKS

  Camden, Maine

  COPYRIGHT 1931 BY KENNETH ROBERTS

  REPRINTED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH DOUBLEDAY, A DIVISION OF

  BANTAM DOUBLEDAY DELL PUBLISHING GROUP, INC.

  PERMISSION FOR USE OF THE N. C. WYETH COVER PAINTING

  GRANTED BY THE OWNER, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  2 4 5 3 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Roberts, Kenneth Lewis, 1885-1957.

  The lively lady / by Kenneth Roberts.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-89272-425-0 (paperback)

  1. United States—History—War of 1812—Fiction.

  2. Maine—History—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3535.0176L58 1997

  813’.52—dc21

  97-24404

  CIP

  THE LIVELY LADY

  “The Lively Lady is the best historical novel we have read in years. After considering soberly the works of William Stearns Davis and S. Weir Mitchell and Rafael Sabatini and the earlier Robert W. Chambers, we’ll go even further. We have read no better book of its type than The Lively Lady, anywhere, any time. It drives, full-sailed and rail under, logging a yam of the War of 1812 and the privateers that were America’s chief substitute for a navy. There is a mighty gusto in the book, controlled and disciplined by writing of high merit. It hurries you along through frothing sea and pungent powder smoke and the grim ordeal of Dartmoor Prison with no respite in its traction. Its people are real, its situations plausible, its style a delight. To this reviewer The Lively Lady stands quite as high in the aristocracy of historical romance as Hugh Wynne, and it is quite possible that the patina of years will make it seem even finer.”

  —FREDERIC V. VAN DE WATER, New York Evening Post

  PRINTINGS

  TO

  A. M. R.

  I

  OUR town of Arundel, at the mouth of the Arundel River in the Province of Maine, halfway between Portsmouth and Portland, is a small place; and those who live there think that nothing happens in it, ever. It is to escape from that dullness, no doubt, that so many of my townsmen have taken to the sea, knowing it and using it as landsmen know and use their front yards and back yards and farms and warehouses and highways.

  Yet there is more curiosity among Arundel folk concerning the small things of life than concerning events commonly called great and romantic; and they are less interested in knowing how wars are won than in hearing how soup is cooked by the French and the English with whom Jeddy Tucker and I had so many dealings, some of them savory and some not so savory.

  Therefore I shall put into this tale the small things that happened to me on the high seas and in various ports of this and other countries, and within the cruel bell-topped walls of Dartmoor Prison during our struggle with England’s ships in the War of Impressments.

  Jeddy Tucker, who was a school teacher and a scholar before he became a mariner, has said often that if he had the time, he could write more entertainingly than I of our adventures, putting in flowery language and noteworthy deeds and making a history out of it, whereas I can set down nothing but the simple truth and our own unimportant endeavors—though God knows they seemed important to us.

  Yet, since he never had the time, being busy with conversation concerning his experiments with gambling games and the drinking of liquor, or concerning his uncle John Burbank, who was master at arms on the Bonhomme Richard under John Paul Jones, there was no way of getting it done unless I did it myself.

  It seems strange that John Burbank, uncle to Jeddy Tucker, should have had an influence on me, considering that he died in 1793, which was three years after my birth. But it was because of him that Jeddy and I set out from Portland on a warm March day in 1812 and took the road down Bramhall’s hill toward Arundel, and that journey profoundly affected my life.

  This walk is a pleasant one under ordinary circumstances, what with the White Hills lying off to the northward, the vast flocks of ducks in the marshes near Dunstan’s, and the sweet smells of young grass, moist earth and pine forests that blend with the fresh perfume of the sea between Biddeford and Arundel. Yet it is no walk for a man just ashore from a long cruise, lacking the feel of the land in his feet and legs; and if I had done as I wished I would have ridden home in state in a cushioned coach, for we were newly returned in our brig Neutrality from Cadiz in Spain and had not yet adjusted our clumsy sea legs to the hellish ruts and mire holes that are left in all our roads when the frost goes out of them in the spring.

  But I couldn’t ride; for when I went ashore from the Neutrality and turned into Fore Street with my small white dog, the one my father brought me from England when he last sailed there with my mother, I saw Jeddy waiting near the door of the Weather Rail Tavern. He came to me immediately with a serious expression on his face, which was small and innocent-looking, a little like a child’s, but impudent.

  I knew from the way he frowned and covered his lips with his hand that he had been splicing the main brace; for although this attitude gave him an air of thoughtfulness, it was only adopted to divert the smell of liquor from my nose. I wouldn’t like to say Jeddy never spoke of his uncle John Burbank except when drunk; but it seemed to be a fact that whenever he devoted himself seriously to drinking, his uncle automatically entered the conversation—as a result of which there was immediate and overwhelming trouble. It seems that when his uncle was master at arms on the Bonhomme Richard, she had fought a desperate engagement with the Serapis and the Countess of Scarborough; and when the Bonhomme Richard was sinking, Jeddy’s uncle had loosed the prisoners to let them escape with their lives. For doing it he was censured by John Paul Jones, who was a great captain, but hard. It was over this that the fighting began; for Jeddy, having stated his case, would at once offer to remove the hide from any man who would not admit that Paul Jones was a flint-hearted Scotch snake. Always, it seemed to me, there was someone to defend Paul Jones, which obliged Jeddy to fly at him without further formalities.

  “Captain,” Jeddy said, behind the shelter of his hand, “I’d think it a great favor if you’d take my bag to
Arundel with you, seeing as how I might be delayed.”

  “Why might you?” I asked, mindful of his feelings. Men can do as they like for all of me, and I won’t ask why they do it; but with Jeddy it was different. I didn’t wish to lose sight of him, because he was quick to see the meaning in printed words and figures, which is a great help on shipboard to a new-made captain, young and forgetful of the many wordy problems in Bowditch’s Navigator. Also, being skilled at card games, he was a pleasant companion on long voyages.

  “Well, Captain,” said Jeddy, moving quickly on his feet to keep from settling back on his heels, “it so happened I met two men, mariners from Halifax, looking for loads of potatoes for the British armies. They play piquet.”

  “So,” I said, “you met two herring chokers, did you? Ten to one they’re Scotch and hard losers.”

  “I’ll make it as easy for ’em as I can,” he said, drawing a deep breath and blowing it from the side of his mouth.

  I saw there was nothing for it but to walk him to Arundel; for if I left him with two Scotchmen, and he inflamed them by winning their money, they would fall on him together when he maligned Paul Jones, which was inevitable.

  That was how we came to be plodding along the road together, with my small white dog Pinky running ahead of us, sniffling into every stone wall and ditch and old stump, and covering twenty miles for each one of ours. He was a good dog, this Pinky, called by that name because he was small and short, rising to a point at bow and stem, like the vessel known to us as a pink, a craft able to wriggle in and out of anything. When he came suddenly into a field he would behave like a pink in a choppy sea, leaping smoothly up and down, and seeing everything around him with a minimum of fuss and wild antics. He had small, high ears and black eyes, and important bristly white whiskers like those of Mr. Cutts the shipowner in Saco. He swaggered and rolled in his gait, his short tail bent upward, taut and jaunty; and he was high-and-mighty with other dogs, walking on his toes in their vicinity and seeming to fling oaths at them.

  We traveled light, for I had given our dunnage, all but my mother’s shawl, to Tommy Bickford, our cabin boy, the son of the Thomas Bickford who saved my father’s life at the battle of Valcour Island; and Tommy, though only fourteen years old, would carry it safely to Arundel by coach, so that we needed to give it no further thought. The shawl, a white silk one embroidered with blue and pink flowers and bright green leaves, very rich and Spanish, was from Cadiz; and I had wrapped it around my waist under my jacket so I could give it to my mother on entering the house.

  Between Dunstan’s and Saco there is a dip in the road, with a meandering brook running through the meadow at the bottom. On the slopes are groves of birches, wild cherries and hawthorns, among which stand pines and tall elms. Even a man with half an eye would recognize it as the best of cover for partridges or woodcock.

  When we came up from this dip we found a light coach standing by the side of the road, the driver asleep in the sun, and the body of the coach filled with expensive dunnage: hat boxes and coach robes and cloaks and small trunks, and atop the pile a man’s beaver hat and an empty gun case.

  While we stood looking at it, wondering whether to wake the driver, we heard a faint scream from a field nearby; then a ripple of laughter, soft and exciting laughter, unlike the sort I was accustomed to hear along the waterfronts of Havana and Lisbon. Close on the laughter came the sharp bark Pinky makes when waiting permission to accept food.

  I left Jeddy, pushed through the shrubbery into the field and at once came on two women. They were on rising ground, a heavy stand of pines at their backs and the warm noonday sun shining down on them. One was an oldish woman, pleasant enough looking, but with an air of grayness about her, as if she had worn nothing but gray all her life and busied herself in colorless pursuits. The other was young and the opposite of her companion in appearance, for she had the look of never having worn gray and of never having done anything that didn’t give her pleasure. She was kneeling on a robe, offering food to Pinky, who was sitting straight on his stub of a tail, as I had taught him when he was small; and her cloak, which had been placed around her shoulders, had fallen a little away, so I could see her dress was green, with ruffles on it, and her pretty arms bare below the elbow.

  When Pinky looked around at me and barked, impatient to be allowed to accept the proffered food, the younger woman looked up. Her hair was the color of a copper rivet worn by rubbing, and her eyes seemed to mirror the greenness of her bonnet, though I could not make sure without staring overlong.

  “Oh, la!” she said, prim and disdainful, “such a stubborn little wretch I never saw, never! Such a darling! Is he yours?” She turned from me at once, but I knew she had missed nothing of my clay-covered shoes, and the tie I had loosened at my throat, and the thickness at my waist where my mother’s shawl was hid.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, wishing I had worn my varnished boots and my new baggy pantaloons and my blue silk shirt from Cadiz. “Take, Pinky.” With that Pinky leaped up and took the food from the lady’s fingers. She screamed again, a faint, affected scream, and sank back on her robe, drawing her cloak around her. Pinky moved a little, so to be immediately before her, and, after glancing at me apologetically, threw himself upright once more; nor could I blame him, for if he was as empty as I he could have eaten a whole ox tongue and then looked around for something filling.

  “You should feed your dog, sir!” she said to me severely.

  It was then that Jeddy came up beside me and stood staring at the green-clad lady. When she held out more food to Pinky, Jeddy stepped forward and took it from her fingers.

  “Is it fitten and proper for him to have such food as this?” he asked doubtfully. He held it out to me inquiringly; then popped it into his own mouth. He rolled his eyes upward, seemingly in contemplation. “You better taste it,” he told me. “It might be bad for little dogs.”

  He burst into a rapid series of laughs, elevating his pale eyebrows until they almost vanished beneath his cap; and with that the lady in green, who had put on a dubious and distant look, glanced up at us and laughed herself. Her eyes, I then saw, were not green at all, but a sort of smoke color.

  “La!” she said, rising to her knees to slice delicately at sausages and cheese that she took from a basket, “how thoughtless I am! I had it in mind you were on your way to your dinner, but perhaps you don’t live hereabouts at all.”

  “No, ma’am,” I said. “We live in Arundel, fifteen miles from here.

  ” She looked at me blankly. “In a Rundle?” she asked, saying the name of our town as I had said it. “You live in a Rundle?” Then understanding seemed to come to her. “Lud!” she cried, “what a way to pronounce it! You should know it’s Arun Del. We have an Arun Del in England, on the Arun River. You mustn’t call it as you do, ‘a Rundle’!”

  “Well,” I said, “there’s no Arun River in Maine, and goodness knows what port you’ll make if you go around asking for Arun Del.”

  She laughed lightly. “Small loss if we miss it! I remember the place too well!” She turned to her companion, the gray woman. “It was a Rundle where we stopped last night,” she said, with an air of having suffered martyrdom. Then she turned back to me. “The food swam in grease, and we dared not rest in our beds. A terrible place! How do you stay there all winter without dying?”

  “You’d say no such thing if you stopped with us!” I protested. “None of our food swims in grease! My aunt Cynthy’s the best cook in the world, and I’d rather have our food than anything you can find in any country! Where do you five, ma’am?”

  “I?” she asked, looking at me haughtily. “I live in London and at Ransome Hall, near Exeter and Plymouth in England.”

  “Those are terrible places,” I told her. “London’s a rabbit warren of filthy houses filled with drabs and slatterns and paupers, and Plymouth has fishwives and boozing kens enough to supply all America, I do believe.”

  “Ooh!” she said, tossing her head. “There wa
s never such an untruth! Plymouth has the greenest hills and the fairest houses of all Devon; and there’s no city anywhere with such fashionable people and lovely shops and entrancing routs as London!”

  “Well, ma’am,” I said, “I’ve been in London and Plymouth, and seen the things I tell you of.”

  “I don’t care!” she cried, seizing Pinky in her arms and kissing the top of his head. “It isn’t true! I’ve never seen such things in my life, and I’ve spent all of it in London or near Exeter.”

  “We’ve spent a good part of our fives in Arundel,” Jeddy said, “and we don’t recognize your description of the place.”

  The lady in green looked closely into Pinky’s glazed eyes and ruffled his bristly whiskers with a small white hand, at which he sighed, throwing himself back voluptuously in her lap and raising his chin in the hope of having it scratched.

  “Where is it you live in Arun Del?” she asked.

  “I live in the garrison house at the mouth of the river. It was an inn when I left, and for all I know it’s an inn still. If you’ll come there, my aunt Cynthy’ll bake beans for you such as you’ll get nowhere in England.”

  “Why did you leave it if you’re so fond of it?”

  “Because it’s my trade to follow the sea.”

  “Oh, la!” she cried. “To follow the sea! What an expression! To follow the sea! Where do you follow it to?”

  “Why, to Spain,” I told her, “or Portugal or Havana, or wherever there’s cargoes to be carried.”

  She rubbed Pinky’s head idly. “Do sailors have sweethearts in every port?” She glanced at me from the comers of her eyes.

  “As many as they want,” I said, “and a nuisance it is, too, carrying presents from each port to the next port for the sweethearts. Here’s what I mean.” I unbuttoned my jacket and unrolled my mother’s Spanish shawl from around my waist, spreading it out in the bright March sunshine so that its pinks and greens and blues flashed wonderfully brilliant by contrast with the dead grasses and somber pines.