Philip Winwood Part 4

"Why, it looks as if--you were going away somewhere."

Phil made a brief answer; and then there was a long talk, all the while he continued to pack his goods, in his perturbation stowing things together in strange juxtaposition. The end of it was that Madge, after vowing that if he went she would never speak to him again, and would hate him for ever, indignantly left him to himself.

Phil went on packing, in all the outward calmness he could muster, though I'll wager with a very pouting and dismal countenance. At last, his possessions being bestowed, and the bag fastened with much physical exertion, he left it on the bed, and slipped down-stairs to find his one remaining piece of property. Philip's cat had waxed plump in the Faringfield household, Master Ned always deterred from harming it by the knowledge that if aught ill befell it, the finger of accusation would point instantly and surely at him.

Phil was returning up the stairs, his pet under his arm, when Mistress Madge reappeared before him, with magic unexpectedness, from a doorway opening on a landing. As she stood in his way there, he stopped, and the two faced each other.

"Well," said she, with sarcastic bitterness, "I suppose you've decided where you're going to."

"Not yet," he replied. He had thought vaguely of Philadelphia or Boston, either of which he now had means of reaching, having saved most of his small salary at the warehouse, for he was not a bound apprentice.

"I make no doubt," she went on, "'twill be the farthest place you can find."

Phil gave her a reproachful look, and asked where her mother and the children were, that he might bid them good-bye. He wondered, indeed, that Madge had not told her mother of his resolve, for, from that lady's not seeking him at once, he knew that she was still unaware of it. He little guessed that 'twas the girl's own power over him she wished to test, and that she would not enlist her mother's persuasions but as a last resource.

"I don't know," she replied carelessly.

"I shall look for them," said Philip, and turned to go down-stairs again.

But (though how could a boy imagine it?) Miss Faringfield would not have it that his yielding should be due to her mother, if it could be achieved as a victory for herself. So she stopped him with a sudden tremulous "Oh, Phil!" and, raising her forearm to the door-post, hid her face against it, and wept as if her heart would break.

Philip had never before known her to shed a tear, and this new spectacle, in a second's time, took all the firmness out of him.

"Why, Madge, I didn't know--don't cry, Madgie--"

She turned swiftly, without looking up, and her face, still in a shower of tears, found hiding no longer against the door-post, but against Phil's breast.

"Don't cry, Madgie dear,--I sha'n't go!"

She raised her wet face, joy sparkling where the lines had not yet lost the shape of grief; and Phil never thought to ask himself how much of her pleasure was for his not going, and how much for the evidence given of her feminine power. He had presently another thing to consider, a not very palatable dose to swallow--the returning to the warehouse and telling Mr. Faringfield of his change of mind. He did this awkwardly enough, no doubt, but manfully enough, I'll take my oath, though he always said he felt never so tamed and small and ludicrous in his life, before or after.

And that scene upon the landing is the last picture, but one, I have to present of childhood days, ere I hasten, over the period that brought us all into our twenties and to strange, eventful times. The one remaining sketch is of an unkempt, bedraggled figure that I saw at the back hall door of the Faringfields one snowy night a week later, when, for some reason or other, I was out late in our back garden.

This person, instead of knocking at the door, very cautiously tried it to see if it would open, and, finding it locked, stood timidly back and gazed at it in a quandary. Suspecting mischief, I went to the paling fence that separated our ground from the Faringfields', and called out, "Who's that?"

"Hallo, Bert!" came in a very conciliating tone, low-spoken; and then, as with a sudden thought, "Come over here, will you?"

I crossed the fence, and was in a moment at the side of Master Ned, who looked exceedingly the worse for wear, in face, figure, and clothes.

"Look here," said he, speaking rapidly, so as to prevent my touching the subject of his return, "I want to sneak in, and up-stairs to bed, without the old man seeing me. I don't just like to meet him till to-morrow. But I can't sneak in, for the door's locked, and Noah would be sure to tell dad. You knock, and when they let you in, pretend you came to play with the kids; and whisper f.a.n.n.y to slip out and open the door for me."

I entered readily into the strategy, as a boy will, glad of Ned's return for the sake of Phil, who I knew was ill at ease for Ned's absence being in some sense due to himself.

Old Noah admitted me at my knock, locked the door after me, and sent me into the smaller parlour, where the whole family happened to be.

When I whispered my message to f.a.n.n.y, she turned so many colours, and made so precipitately for the entrance hall, that her father was put on the alert. He followed her quietly out, just in time to see a very s.h.i.+vering, humble, shamefaced youth step in from the snowy outer night. The sight of his father turned Ned cold and stiff upon the threshold; but all the father did was to put on a grim look of contempt, and say:

"Well, sir, I suppose you've changed your tune."

"Yes, sir," said the penitent, meekly, and there being now no reason for secrecy he shambled after his father into the parlour. There, after his mother's embrace, he grinned sheepishly upon us all. f.a.n.n.y was quite rejoiced, and so was little Tom till the novelty wore off; while Madge greeted the prodigal good-humouredly enough, and one could read Phil's relief and forgiveness on his smiling face. Master Ned, grateful for an easier ordeal than he had feared, made no exception against Phil in the somewhat sickly amiability he had for all, and we thought that here were reconciliation and the a.s.surance of future peace.

Ned's home-coming brought trouble in its train, as indeed did his every reappearance afterward. It came out that he and another boy--the one in whose house he had found refuge on the night of his running away--had started off for the North to lead the lives of hunters and trappers, a career so inviting that they could not wait to provide a sufficient equipment. They travelled afoot by the Albany post-road, soliciting food at farmhouses, pa.s.sing their nights in barns; and got as far as Tarrytown, ere either one in his pride would admit to the other, through chattering teeth, that he had had his fill of snow and hunger and the raw winds of the Hudson River. So footsore, leg-weary, empty, and frozen were they on their way back, that they helped themselves to one of Jacob Post's horses, near the Philipse manor-house; and not daring to ride into town on this beast, thoughtlessly turned it loose in the Bowery lane, never thinking how certainly it and they could be traced--for they had been noticed at Van Cortlandt's, again at Kingsbridge, and again at the Blue Bell tavern. After receiving its liberty, the horse had been seen once, galloping toward Turtle Bay, and never again.

So, a few days after Ned's reentrance into the bosom of his family, there came to the house a constable, of our own town, with a deputy sent by the sheriff of Westchester County, wanting Master Edward Faringfield.

Frightened and disgraced, his mother sent for her husband; and for the sake of the family name, Mr. Faringfield adjusted matters by the payment of twice or thrice what the horse was worth. Thus the would-be hunter and trapper escaped the discomfort and shame of jail; though by his father's sentence he underwent a fortnight's detention on bread and water in his bedroom.

That was the first fright and humiliation that Master Ned brought on his people; and he brought so many of these in after years, that the time came when his parents, and all, were rather glad than sorry each time he packed off again, and shuddered rather than rejoiced when, after an absence, he turned up safe and healthy as ever, with his old hangdog smile beneath which lurked a look half-defiant, half-injured.

As he grew older, and the boy in him made room for the man, there was less of the smile, less injury, more defiance.

I do not remember how many years it was after Philip's coming to New York, that our Dutch schoolmaster went the way of all flesh, and there came in his place, to conduct a school for boys only and in more advanced studies, a pedagogue from Philadelphia, named Cornelius. He was of American birth, but of European parentage, whether German or Dutch I never knew. Certainly he had learning, and much more than was due alone to his having gone through the college at Princeton in New Jersey. He was in the early twenties, tall and robust, with a large round face, and with these peculiarities: that his hair, eyebrows, and lashes were perfectly white, his eyes of a singularly mild blue, his skin of a pinkish tint; that he was given to blus.h.i.+ng whenever he met women or strangers, and that he spoke with pedantic preciseness, in a wondrously low voice. But despite his bashfulness, there was a great deal in the man, and when an emergency rose he never lacked resource.

He it was to whom my education, and Ned Faringfield's, was entrusted, while the girls and little Tom still strove with the rudiments in the dame-school. He it was that carried us to the portals of college; and I carried Philip Winwood thither with me, by studying my lessons with him in the evenings. In many things he was far beyond Mr. Cornelius's highest teaching; but there had been lapses in his information, and these he filled up, and regulated his knowledge as well, through accompanying me in my progress. And he continued so to accompany me, making better use of my books than ever I made, as I went through the King's College; and that is the way in which Phil Winwood got his stock of learning eked out, and put in due shape and order.

It happened that Philip's taste fastened upon one subject of which there was scarce anything to be learned by keeping pace with my studies, but upon which much was to be had from books in the college library, of which I obtained the use for him. It was a strange subject for a youth to take up at that time, or any time since, and in that colonial country--architecture. Yet 'twas just like Phil Winwood to be interested in something that all around him neglected or knew nothing about. What hope an American could have in the pursuit of an art, for which the very rare demands in his country were supplied from Europe, and which indeed languished the world over, I could not see.

"Very well, then," said Phil, "'twill be worth while trying to waken this sleeping art, and to find a place for it in this out-of-the-way country. I wouldn't presume to attempt new forms, to be sure; but one might revive some old ones, and maybe try new arrangements of them."

"Then you think you'll really be an architect?" I asked.

"Why, if it's possible. 'Faith, I'm not so young any more that I still want to be a soldier, or a sailor either. One thing, 'twill take years of study; I'll have to go to Europe for that."

"To England?"

"First of all."

"What will Mr. Faringfield say to that?"

"He will not mind it so much in my case. I'm not of the Faringfield blood."

"Egad," said I, "there's some of the Faringfield blood hankers for a sight of London."

"Whose? Ned's?"

"No. Margaret's."

We were young men now, and she would not let us call her Madge any more. What I had said was true. She had not grown up without hearing and reading much of the great world beyond the sea, and wis.h.i.+ng she might have her taste of its pleasures. She first showed a sense of her deprivation--for it was a deprivation for a rich man's daughter--when she finished at the dame-school and we boys entered college. Then she hinted, very cautiously, that her and f.a.n.n.y's education was being neglected, and mentioned certain other New York gentlemen's daughters, who had been sent to England to boarding-schools.

Delicately as she did this, the thought that his favourite child could harbour a wish that involved going to England, was a blow to Mr.

Faringfield. He hastened to remove all cause of complaint on the score of defective education. He arranged that the music teacher, who gave the girls their lessons in singing and in playing upon the harpsichord and guitar, should teach them four days a week instead of two. He engaged Mr. Cornelius to become an inmate of his house and to give them tuition out of his regular school hours. He paid a French widow to instruct them in their p.r.o.nunciation, their book-French and grammar being acquired under Mr. Cornelius's teaching. And so, poor girls, they got only additional work for Margaret's pains. But both of them were docile, f.a.n.n.y because it was her nature to be so, Margaret because she had taken it into her head to become an accomplished lady.

We never guessed her dreams and ambitions in those years, and to this day I often wonder at what hour in her girlhood the set design took possession of her, that design which dominated all her actions when we so little guessed its existence. Besides these three instructors, the girls had their dancing-master, an Englishman who pretended to impart not only the best-approved steps of a London a.s.sembly-room, but its manners and graces as well.

So much for the education of the girls, Philip, and myself. Ned Faringfield's was interrupted by his expulsion from King's for gross misconduct; and was terminated by his disgrace at Yale College (whither his father had sent him in vain hope that he might behave better away from home and more self-dependent) for beating a smaller student whom he had cheated at a clandestine game of cards. His home-coming on this occasion was followed by his being packed off to Virginia to play at superintending his father's tobacco plantations.

Neglecting this business to go shooting on the frontier, he got a Scotch Presbyterian mountaineer's daughter into trouble; and when he turned up again at the door in Queen Street, he was still shaky with recollections of the mob of riflemen that had chased him out of Virginia. That piece of sport cost his father a pretty penny, and resulted in a place being got for Ned with a merchant who was Mr.

Faringfield's correspondent in the Barbadoes. So to the tropics the young gentleman was s.h.i.+pped, with sighs of relief at his embarkation, and--I have no doubt--with unuttered prayers that he might not show his face in Queen Street for a long time to come. Already he had got the name, in the family, of "the bad s.h.i.+lling," for his always coming back unlooked for.

How different was his younger brother!--no longer "little Tom" (though of but middle height and slim build), but always gay-hearted, affectionate, innocent, and a gentleman. He was a handsome lad, without and within--yes, "lad" I must call him, for, though he came to manly years, he always seemed a boy to me. He followed in our steps, in his time, through Mr. Cornelius's school, and into King's College, too, but the coming of the war cut short his studies there.

It must have been in the year 1772--I remember Margaret spoke of her being seventeen years old, in which case I was nineteen--when I got (and speedily forgot) my first glimpse of Margaret's inmost mind. We were at the play--for New York had had a playhouse ever since Mr.

Hallam had brought thither his company, with whom the great Garrick had first appeared in London. I cannot recall what the piece was that night; but I know it must have been a decent one, or Margaret would not have been allowed to see it; and that it purported to set forth true scenes of fas.h.i.+onable life in London. At one side of Margaret her mother sat, at the other was myself, and I think I was that time their only escort.

"What a fright!" said Margaret in my ear, as one of the actresses came upon the stage with an affected gait, and a look of thinking herself mighty fine and irresistible. "'Tis a slander, this."