The Hidden Children | Page 4

landlord gazed back at him with his faded, lack-lustre eyes-- eyes that
we both understood, alas-- eyes made dull with years of fear, made old
and hopeless with unshed tears, stupid from sleepless nights, haunted
with memories of all they had looked upon since His Excellency
marched out of the city to the south of us, where the red rag now

fluttered on fort and shipping from King's Bridge to the Hook.
Nothing more was said. Our landlord went away very quietly. An
hostler, presently appearing from somewhere, passed the broken
windows, and we saw our rifleman go away with him, leading the three
tired horses. We were still yawning and drowsing, stretched out in our
hickory chairs, and only kept awake by the flies, when our landlord
returned and set before us what food he had. The fare was scanty
enough, but we ate hungrily, and drank deeply of the fresh small beer
which he fetched in a Liverpool jug.
When we two were alone again, Boyd whispered:
"As well let them think we're here with no other object than recruiting.
And so we are, after a fashion; but neither this state nor Pennsylvania is
like to fill its quota here. Where is your map, once more?"
I drew the coiled linen roll from the breast of my rifle shirt and spread
it out. We studied it, heads together.
"Here lies Poundridge," nodded Boyd, placing his finger on the spot so
marked. "Roads a-plenty, too. Well, it's odd, Loskiel, but in this cursed,
debatable land I feel more ill at ease than I have ever felt in the Iroquois
country."
"You are still thinking of our landlord's deathly face," I said. "Lord!
What a very shadow of true manhood crawls about this house!"
"Aye-- and I am mindful of every other face and countenance I have so
far seen in this strange, debatable land. All have in them something of
the same expression. And therein lies the horror of it all, Mr. Loskiel
God knows we expect to see deathly faces in the North, where little
children lie scalped in the ashes of our frontier-- where they even scalp
the family hound that guards the cradle. But here in this sleepy, open
countryside, with its gentle hills and fertile valleys, broad fields and
neat stone walls, its winding roads and orchards, and every pretty
farmhouse standing as though no war were in the land, all seems so
peaceful, so secure, that the faces of the people sicken me. And ever I

am asking myself, where lies this other hell on earth, which only faces
such as these could have looked upon?"
"It is sad," I said, under my breath. "Even when a lass smiles on us it
seems to start the tears in my throat."
"Sad! Yes, sir, it is. I supposed we had seen sufficient of human
degradation in the North not to come here to find the same cringing
expression stamped on every countenance. I'm sick of it, I tell you.
Why, the British are doing worse than merely filling their prisons with
us and scalping us with their savages! They are slowly but surely
marking our people, body and face and mind, with the cursed imprint
of slavery. They're stamping a nation's very features with the hopeless
lineaments of serfdom. It is the ineradicable scars of former slavery that
make the New Englander whine through his nose. We of the fighting
line bear no such marks, but the peaceful people are beginning to-- they
who can do nothing except endure and suffer."
"It is not so everywhere," I said, "not yet, anyway."
"It is so in the North. And we have found it so since we entered the
'Neutral Ground.' Like our own people on the frontier, these
Westchester folk fear everybody. You yourself know how we have
found them. To every question they try to give an answer that may
please; or if they despair of pleasing they answer cautiously, in order
not to anger. The only sentiment left alive in them seems to be fear; all
else of human passion appears to be dead. Why, Loskiel, the very
power of will has deserted them; they are not civil to us, but obsequious;
not obliging but subservient. They yield with apathy and very quietly
what you ask, and what they apparently suppose is impossible for them
to retain. If you treat them kindly they receive it coldly, not gratefully,
but as though you were compensating them for evil done them by you.
Their countenances and motions have lost every trace of animation. It
is not serenity but apathy; every emotion, feeling, thought, passion,
which is not merely instinctive has fled their minds forever. And this is
the greatest crime that Britain has wrought upon us." He struck