Heralds of Empire | Page 3

face silently permitted me to salute four limp fingers. His eyes swept me with chill disapproval. My hat clapped on a deal faster than it had come off, for you must know we unhatted in those days with a grand, slow bow.
"Thy Aunt Ruth," says Tibbie, nudging me; for had I stood from that day to this, I was bound that cold man should speak first.
To my aunt the beaver came off in its grandest flourish. The pressure of a dutiful kiss touched my forehead, and I minded the passion kisses of a dead mother.
Those errant curls blew out in the wind.
"Ramsay Stanhope," begins my uncle sourly, "what do you with uncropped hair and the foolish trappings of vanity?"
As I live, those were the first words he uttered to me.
"I perceive silken garters," says he, clearing his throat and lowering his glance down my person. "Many a good man hath exchanged silk for hemp, my fine gentleman!"
"An the hemp hold like silk, 'twere a fair exchange, sir," I returned; though I knew very well he referred to those men who had died for the cause.
"Ramsay," says he, pointing one lank fore-finger at me, "Ramsay, draw your neck out of that collar; for the vanities of the wicked are a yoke leading captive the foolish!"
Now, my collar was point-de-vice of prime quality over black velvet. My uncle's welcome was more than a vain lad could stomach; and what youth of his first teens hath not a vanity hidden about him somewhere?
"Thou shalt not put the horse and the ass under the same yoke, sir," said I, drawing myself up far as ever high heels would lift.
He looked dazed for a minute. Then he told me that he spake concerning my spiritual blindness, his compassions being moved to show me the error of my way.
At that, old nurse must needs take fire.
"Lord save a lad from the likes o' sich compassions! Sure, sir, an the good Lord makes pretty hair grow, 'twere casting pearls before swine to shave his head like a cannon-ball"--this with a look at my uncle's crown--"or to dress a proper little gentleman like a ragged flibbergibbet."
"Tibbie, hold your tongue!" I order.
"Silence were fitter for fools and children," says Eli Kirke loftily.
There comes a time when every life must choose whether to laugh or weep over trivial pains, and when a cut may be broken on the foil of that glancing mirth which the good Creator gave mankind to keep our race from going mad. It came to me on the night of my arrival on the wharves of Boston Town.
We lumbered up through the straggling village in one of those clumsy coaches that had late become the terror of foot-passengers in London crowds. My aunt pointed with a pride that was colonial to the fine light which the towns-people had erected on Beacon Hill; and told me pretty legends of Rattlesnake Hill that fired the desire to explore those inland dangers. I noticed that the rubble-faced houses showed lanterns in iron clamps above most of the doorways. My kinsman's house stood on the verge of the wilds-rough stone below, timbered plaster above, with a circle of bay windows midway, like an umbrella. High windows were safer in case of attack from savages, Aunt Ruth explained; and I mentally set to scaling rope ladders in and out of those windows.
We drew up before the front garden and entered by a turnstile with flying arms. Many a ride have little Rebecca Stocking, of the court-house, and Ben Gillam, the captain's son, and Jack Battle, the sailor lad, had, perched on that turnstile, while I ran pushing and jumping on, as the arms flew creaking round.
The home-coming was not auspicious. Yet I thought no resentment against my uncle. I realized too well how the bloody revenge of the royalists was turning the hearts of England to stone. One morning I recall, when my poor father lay a-bed of the gout and there came a roar through London streets as of a burst ocean dike. Before Tibbie could say no, I had snatched up a cap and was off.
God spare me another such sight! In all my wild wanderings have I never seen savages do worse.
Through the streets of London before the shoutings of a rabble rout was whipped an old, white-haired man. In front of him rumbled a cart; in the cart, the axeman, laving wet hands; at the axeman's feet, the head of a regicide--all to intimidate that old, white-haired man, fearlessly erect, singing a psalm. When they reached the shambles, know you what they did? Go read the old court records and learn what that sentence meant when a man's body was cast into fire before his living eyes! All the while, watching from a window were the princes