The Hidden Children. Chambers Robert William
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 the table lightly with doubled fist, "Mr. Loskiel," he said, "I ask you—can we find recruits for our regiment in such a place as this? Damme, sir, but I think the entire land has lost its manhood."
We sat staring out into the sunshine through a bullet-shattered window.
"And all this country here seems so fair and peaceful," he murmured half to himself, "so sweet and still and kindly to me after the twilight of endless forests where men are done to death in the dusk. But hell in broad sunshine is the more horrible."
"Look closer at this country," I said. "The highways are deserted and silent, the very wagon ruts overgrown with grass. Not a scythe has swung in those hay fields; the gardens that lie in the sun are but tangles of weeds; no sheep stir on the hills, no cattle stand in these deep meadows, no wagons pass, no wayfarers. It may be that the wild birds are moulting, but save at dawn and for a few moments at sundown they seem deathly silent to me."
He had relapsed again into his moody, brooding attitude, elbows on the table, his handsome head supported by both hands. And it was not like him to be downcast. After a while he smiled.
"Egad," he said, "it is too melancholy for me here in the open; and I begin to long for the dusk of trees and for the honest scalp yell to cheer me up. One knows what to expect in county Tryon—but not here, Loskiel—not here."
"Our business here is like to be ended tomorrow," I remarked.
"Thank God for that," he said heartily, rising and buckling on his war belt. He added: "As for any recruits we have been ordered to pick up en passant, I see small chance of that accomplishment hereabout. Will you summon the landlord, Mr. Loskiel?"
I discovered the man standing at the open door, his warn hands clasped behind him, and staring stupidly at the cloudless sky. He followed me back to the taproom, and we reckoned with him. Somehow, I thought he had not expected to be paid a penny—yet he did not thank us.
"Are you not Benjamin Hays?" inquired Boyd, carelessly retying his purse.
The fellow seemed startled to hear his own name pronounced so loudly, but answered very quietly that he was.
"This house belongs to a great villain, one James Holmes, does it not?" demanded Boyd.
"Yes, sir," he whispered.
"How do you come to keep an ordinary here?"
"The town authorities required an ordinary. I took it in charge, as they desired."
"Oh! Where is this rascal, Holmes?"
"Gone below, sir, some time since."
"I have heard so. Was he not formerly Colonel of the 4th regiment?"
"Yes, sir."
"And deserted his men, eh? And they made him Lieutenant-Colonel below, did they not?"
"Yes, sir."
"Colonel—of what?" snarled Boyd in disgust.
"Of the Westchester Refugee Irregulars."
"Oh! Well, look out for him and his refugees. He'll be back here one of these days, I'm thinking."
"He has been back."
"What did he do?"
The man said listlessly: "It was like other visits. They robbed, tortured, and killed. Some they burnt with hot ashes, some they hung, cut down, and hung again when they revived. Most of the sheep, cattle, and horses were driven off. Last year thousands of bushels of fruit decayed in the orchards; the ripened grain lay rotting where wind and rain had laid it; no hay was cut, no grain milled."
"Was this done by the banditti from the lower party?"
"Yes, sir; and by the leather-caps, too. The leather-caps stood guard while the Tories plundered and killed. It is usually that way, sir. And our own renegades are as bad. We in Westchester have to entertain them all."
"But they burn no houses?"
"Not yet, sir. They have promised to do so next time."
"Are there no troops here?"
"Yes, sir."
"What troops?"
"Colonel Thomas's Regiment and Sheldon's Horse and the Minute Men."
"Well, what the devil are they about to permit this banditti to terrify and ravage a peaceful land?" demanded Boyd.
"The country is of great extent," said the man mildly. "It would require many troops to cover it. And His Excellency has very, very few."
"Yes," said Boyd, "that is true. We know how it is in the North—with hundreds of miles to guard and but a handful of men. And it must be that way." He made no effort to throw off his seriousness and nodded toward me with a forced smile. "I am twenty-two years of age," he said, "and Mr. Loskiel here is no older, and we fully expect that when we both are past forty we will still be fighting in this same old war. Meanwhile," he added laughing, "every patriot should find some lass to wed and breed the soldiers we shall require some sixteen years hence."
The man's smile was painful; he smiled because he thought we expected it; and I turned away disheartened, ashamed, burning with a fierce resentment against the fate that in three years had turned us into what we were—we Americans who had never known the lash—we who had never learned to fear a master.
Boyd said: "There is a gentleman, one Major Ebenezer Lockwood, hereabouts. Do you know him?"
"No, sir."
"What? Why, that seems strange!"
The man's face paled, and he remained silent for a few moments. Then, furtively, his eyes began for the hundredth time to note the details of our forest dress, stealing stealthily from the fringe on legging and hunting shirt to the Indian beadwork on moccasin and baldrick, devouring every detail as though to convince himself. I think our pewter buttons did it for him.
Boyd said gravely: "You seem to doubt us, Mr. Hays," and read in the man's unsteady eyes distrust of everything on earth—and little faith in God.
"I do not blame you," said I gently. "Three years of