自由战士 英文原著｜第1章B

He decided to do nothing that would lay him open to such criticism for at least a morning, but he couldn’t help it. First, if he had not jumped on Dusty, the furnace would have gone out. Then he had to explain to his master how badly Dove had done the spoon. Although he tried to sound humble, he was soon behaving perfectly naturally, standing over Mr. Lapham with his notebook in his hand, reading off exactly how those spoons had been ordered.

Mr. Lapham was a fine craftsman. His weakness was that he never wrote down what was ordered or even listened very carefully. If a patron ordered a sauceboat, he would get a fine one—perhaps a month after it had been promised. Sometimes it weighed a little more, sometimes a little less, than it was supposed to. Sometimes it had splayed feet when a gadroon edge had been asked for. Mrs. Lapham herself had told Johnny he must always be on hand and write down exactly what the order was. This was necessary, but it did seem cheeky to see the fourteen-year-old boy standing there, telling his master what he was supposed to do.

Johnny, having started everybody off on his work (even Mr. Lapham), decided to go to the coal house and see if he should order more charcoal. It was such things Mr. Lapham never thought about until too late.

There were two basketfuls of charcoal and at least half another scattered over the floor. That was the other boys’ fault. Johnny himself was too valuable to carry charcoal. He started to yell for Dusty, thought better of it, and went to work arranging the dirty stuff himself.

When he was a master craftsman, he wasn’t going to buy charcoal by the basket. He was going to own his own willows—say, out in Milton. That would save—say, twopence a basket. In a year—he began to figure. And he wouldn’t take just any boy whose father or mother wanted him to be a silversmith. He’d pick and choose. He saw himself sitting at his bench, his shop crowded with boys with mothers, boys with fathers, all begging to be allowed to work for him. He’d not talk to the parents—only to the boys. What church did they go to? King’s Chapel? All right. Describe to me at least one piece of silver you see used every Lord’s Supper. If they could not answer that, he’d know they hadn’t got silver in their blood. But how could he find which boys had nice hands . . . ?

‘Johnny!’ It was Madge’s voice that pulled him out of his reverie.

He wiped his black hands on his leather breeches and stepped out into the sunlight of the tiny back yard.

‘What is it, my girl?’ He often thus arrogantly addressed his master’s granddaughters—really his own mistresses.

‘Ma sent me. Johnny, it’s Mr. Hancock himself. He’s in the shop ordering something. Stand by and listen or Grandpa will get it wrong.’

Dorcas next flung herself upon him, too excited to be elegant.

‘Johnny, hurry, hurry! It’s Mr. Hancock. He’s ordering a sugar basin. Can’t you go faster? Shake a leg.’

Isannah was jumping about him like a wild thing.

‘Help, help!’ she shrieked.

But it was Cilla who thought to offer him her clean apron for a towel as he washed off the charcoal at the yard pump.

Oh, but he must hurry! And there was Mrs. Lapham tapping at him from the kitchen window. Slowly he approached the house, the girls chattering about him.

Close to the shop door was a tiny African holding a slender gray horse by the bridle. Johnny noted the Hancock arms on the door of the gig. He felt so good he could not help saying to the black child, ‘Mind that horse doesn’t trample our flowers.’

There were no flowers in the Laphams’ yard.

‘Oh, no, sir,’ said little Jehu, rolling his eyes. He thought, from the attention this boy was receiving from his escorting ladies, he must be a boy of consequence.

Johnny slipped into the shop so quietly that Mr. Hancock did not even look up. It was he who owned this great wharf, the warehouses, many of the fine ships tied up along it. He owned sail lofts and shops, and also dwelling houses standing at the head of the wharf. He owned the Lapham house. He was the richest man in New England. Such a wealthy patron might lift the Laphams from poverty to affluence.

Mr. Hancock was comfortably seated in the one armchair which was kept in the shop for patrons. (When I’m master, thought Johnny, there are going to be two armchairs—and I’ll sit in one.)

Unobtrusively Johnny got his notebook and pencil. Dove and Dusty were paralyzed into complete inaction. ‘Do something,’ Johnny muttered to them, determined his master’s shop should look busy. Dusty could not take his eyes off the green velvet coat, sprigged white waistcoat, silver buttons and buckles on the great man, but he picked up a soldering iron and nervously dropped it.

‘. . . and to be done next Monday—a week from today,’ Mr. Hancock was saying. ‘I want it as a birthday present to my venerable Aunt Lydia Hancock. This is the creamer of the set. Only this morning a clumsy maid melted the sugar basin. I want you to make me a new one. I want it about so high . . . so broad . . .’ Johnny glanced at the delicate, lace-ruffled, gesturing hands, guessed the inches, and wrote it down.

Mr. Lapham was looking down at his own gnarled fingers. He nodded and said nothing. He did not even glance at the cream pitcher as Mr. Hancock set it down on a workbench. Johnny’s hard, delicate hands, so curiously strong and mature for his age, reached quickly to touch the beautiful thing. It was almost as much by touch as by sight he judged fine silver. It was indeed old-fashioned, more elaborate than the present mode. The garlands on it were rounded out in repoussé work. Mr. Lapham would have to do the repousséing. Johnny hadn’t been taught that. He looked at the handle. A sugar basin would have to have two such handles and they would be larger than the one on the creamer. He’d shape it in wax, make a mold. He had cast hundreds of small things since he had gone to work for Mr. Lapham, but nothing so intricate and beautiful as the woman with folded wings whose body formed the handle. He thought he had never seen anything quite so enchanting as this pitcher. It must have been the work of one of the great smiths of forty or fifty years ago. Although he had not intended to address Mr. Hancock, he had said, before he thought, ‘John Coney, sir?’

Mr. Hancock turned to him. He had a handsome face, a little worn, as though either his health was bad or he did not sleep well.

‘Look at the mark, boy.’

Johnny turned it over, expecting to see the familiar rabbit of the great Mr. Coney. Instead, there was a pellet, and ‘L,’ and a pellet.

‘Your master made that creamer—forty years ago. He made the entire set.’

‘You made it!’ He had never guessed there had been a time when Mr. Lapham could do such beautiful work.

At last Mr. Lapham raised his protuberant eyes. ‘I remember when your uncle, Mr. Thomas Hancock, sir, ordered that set. “Make it big, and make it handsome,” he said, “bigger and handsomer than anything in Boston. As big and handsome as my lady is. Make it as rich as I am.”’

John Hancock laughed. ‘That is just the way my uncle used to talk.’ He was so sure of his own good breeding, he could laugh affectionately at the rich-quick vulgarities of the uncle who had adopted him and from whom he had inherited his fortune.

He stood up—a tall, slender man, who stooped as he stood and walked. The fine clothes seemed a little pathetic. He had a soft voice, and low.

‘But you have not as yet said whether or not you can make my sugar basin for me—and have it done by Monday next? Of course I thought first of you—because you made the original. But there are other silversmiths. Perhaps you would rather not undertake . . .’

Mr. Lapham was in a study. ‘I’ve got the time, the materials, and the boys to help. I can get right at it. But honestly, sir . . . I don’t know. Perhaps I haven’t got the skill any more. I’ve not done anything so fine for thirty years. I’m not what I used to be, and . . .’

Although neither of the two men could see the door leading from the hall into the shop, Johnny could. There was Mrs. Lapham in her morning apron, her face purple with excitement, and all four girls crowded about her listening, gesturing at Johnny. ‘Say yes,’ all five faces (big and little) mouthed at him. ‘Yes . . . yes . . . yes.’

So they had forgotten morning prayers, had they? Wanted him to take charge.

‘We can do it, Mr. Hancock.’

‘Bless me,’ exclaimed the gentleman, not accustomed to apprentices who settled matters while their masters pondered.

‘Yes, sir. And you shall have it delivered at your own house a week from today, seven o’clock Monday morning. And it’s going to be just exactly right.’

Mr. Lapham looked at Johnny gratefully. ‘Certainly, sir. I’m humbly grateful for your august patronage.’ He was not a proud man. He was relieved that Johnny had stepped in and settled matters.

Mr. Hancock bowed and turned to go, but none of the boys thought to run ahead and open the door for him, so Mrs. Lapham, apron and all, barged in, her red arms bare to the elbow, her felt slippers flapping at her bare heels, and did (or overdid) the courtesies for them all.

Hardly was the door closed than there was a rap on it. Little Jehu came mincing in, a glitter of bright colors. He solemnly laid three pieces of silver on the nearest bench and recited his piece.

‘My master, Mr. John Hancock, Esquire, bids me leave these coins—one for each of the poor work-boys—hoping they will drink his health and be diligent at their benches.’ Then he was gone.

‘Hoping they will vote for him—when they are grown up and have enough property.’

‘Don’t you ever vote for Mr. Hancock, sir?’ asked Johnny.

‘I never do. I don’t hold much with these fellows that are always trying to stir up trouble between us and England. Maybe English rule ain’t always perfect, but it’s good enough for me. Fellows like Mr. Hancock and Sam Adams, calling themselves patriots and talking too much. Not reading God’s Word—like their parents did—which tells us to be humble. But he’s my landlord and I don’t say much.’

Johnny was not listening. He sat with the pitcher in his hand. To think the poor, humble old fellow once had been able to make things like that! Well, he was going to turn the trick again before he died—even if Johnny had to stand over him and make him.

–4–

The sun stood directly overhead, pressing its heat down upon the town as though it held an enormous brass basin. There was not wind enough to take a catboat from Hancock’s Wharf to Noddle Island.

In the Lapham shop windows and doors were left open to catch what breeze might come up the wharf, but there wasn’t any breeze.

Old Mr. Lapham had worked well in the morning. He said if Johnny could do the handles, he himself could get the basin done in time, but after dinner he had gone down to the old willow behind the coal house, put a basket over his head, and gone to sleep. Dove and Dusty had, therefore, left to go swimming. Johnny was making out of wax an exact replica of the pitcher handle, only enlarging it. He tried again and again, never quite satisfied with his work, but confident that he could do it.

It was long past dinner hour when he crossed the entry into the kitchen. The fire was out. The table cleared except for his place. Cilla had evidently been left to wait on him whenever he felt like eating. The success of Mr. Hancock’s order was so dependent upon him, no one would scold him today because he chose to be an hour late. Johnny took his seat and Cilla put down the slate she had been drawing on. She gave him a piece of cold meat pie, a flat loaf of rye bread, dried apples, and ran down cellar to fetch him a flagon of cold ale. He drank the ale, and then more leisurely began on the pie.

With hardly a word Cilla went back to the settle where Isannah was sprawled and picked up her slate. She drew very well. It would be just about nothing, Johnny thought, to teach that girl to write.

‘She’s doing it for you, Johnny,’ Isannah said at last.

‘What are you doing for me, Cil?’

‘She’s designing you a beautiful mark so when you are man-grown and master smith you can stamp your silver with it.’

‘I’ve five more years to go. No matter how good my work may be, I have to mark it with your grandpa’s old pellets and “L’s.”’

‘Johnny’s forgotten morning prayers and all those wonderful humble people,’ said Cilla. ‘Look, I’ve got your “J” and “T” sort of entwined.’

‘Too hard to read. Then, too’ (he could not imagine why he came out with this secret), ‘when I’m master smith I’m going to use all three of my initials.’

‘All three?’

‘J. L. T.’

Neither of the girls had ever heard of a poor working boy with three names. ‘You’re not making up?’ Cilla asked, almost respectfully. ‘I’ve heard tell of folk with three names, but I never saw one before.’

‘Look at me, my girl.’ He got up to go back to the shop.

‘Wait, Johnny. What is that middle name? It begins with “L.”’

‘As far as you are concerned, it ends with “L” too.’

‘I’ll bet it’s something so awful you are ashamed of it, like “Ladybug” or “Leapfrog.” I’ll bet it’s “Lamentable.”’

Johnny grinned, untempted by her insults.

In the shop it was so hot he could not handle the wax. The solitude in which he worked depressed him a little. For the first time he was afraid he could not get the handles right. All the shops had stopped work because of the heat. He could hear the other boys running and splashing, diving off the wharf into the cold water. He locked the shop. Now even Mr. Lapham would have to ask him if he wanted to get in, and he ran off to swim. Later, after sunset, he could get on with the model, even if he had to work by lamplight.

–5–

When at last he blew out his lamp, Johnny had made an exact replica of the winged woman, only larger. He looked at it and knew that it was not, for some reason, quite right. Instead of going up to the attic to sleep, he crossed into the kitchen and got an old mattress. The clock struck midnight and he was asleep.

He woke and it was still dark night. Someone was in the room with him and he thought of thieves.

‘Who’s there!’ he yelled roughly.

‘It’s me. Johnny, I wasn’t going to wake you up, if you were already asleep, but . . .’

‘What’s wrong, Cilla?’

‘Johnny . . . it’s Isannah. She’s sick again.’

‘What does her mother say?’

Cilla began to cry. ‘I don’t want to tell her. She’d just say p-p-p-oor Ba-a-Baby wasn’t worth raising.’

Johnny was tired. At the moment he had a sneaking sympathy with Mrs. Lapham’s point of view.

‘What seems to be wrong?’

‘She’s so hot. She says if she can’t get a breath of air, she’ll throw up.’ This was a very old, but dire threat.

‘There might be a little down at the end of the wharf. Fetch her down.’

Seemed it was always like this. Whenever things went wrong and he was tired, Cilla was after him to help her nurse Isannah. Nevertheless he carried her in his thin, strong arms. She was a tiny child for eight. The white-gold hair that he secretly admired so much got into his mouth and he wished she was bald. Isannah giggled. On one side of the deserted wharf were warehouses, on the other were ships. Not a person was abroad except themselves. The child grew heavier and heavier.

‘Want to walk now, Isannah? You’d be cooler walking.’

‘I like to ride.’

‘Well—just so you are satisfied.’

‘Johnny,’ said Cilla crossly, ‘are you being sarcastic to baby?’

‘Yes.’

‘How do you feel, dear?’

‘I feel like I’m going to throw up.’

‘Oh, you get down, then,’ said Johnny. ‘That settles it.’ But he carried her to the very end of the wharf.

Suddenly he felt cool fingers of air lifting the wet, fair hair on his forehead. The perspiration under his arms, dripping down his chest, evaporated and the prickly sensation was delightful.

Isannah cried, ‘The wind, the wind! Blow, wind, blow!’

It did not blow, but flowed over them and cooled them. The three sat in a row, their feet dangling over the water below. They sat well apart at first, with arms outstretched, soaking themselves in the freshness of the sea air.

For a long time they sat and said nothing, then Isannah put her head in Cilla’s lap. Cilla leaned against Johnny. The two girls were almost asleep. Johnny was wide awake.

‘Johnny,’ murmured Isannah, ‘tell us a story?’

‘I don’t know any.’

‘Johnny,’ said Cilla, ‘tell us the story of your middle name?’

‘It isn’t a story; it’s just a fact.’

‘What is it?’

Although by daytime and if Cilla had teased him, he never would have told, the darkness of the night, the remoteness of the place where they sat, an affection he felt for the girls and they for him, made everything seem different.

After a long pause he said, ‘It is Lyte.’

‘So you are really John Lyte Tremain?’

‘No. My baptized Bible name is Jonathan. I’ve always been called Johnny. That’s the way my papers were made out to your grandpa. I am Jonathan Lyte Tremain.’

‘Why, that’s just like Merchant Lyte?’

‘Just like.’

‘You don’t suppose you are related?’

‘I do suppose. But I don’t know. Lyte’s not a common name. And we are both Jonathan. Of course I’ve thought about it . . . some—When I see him rolling around in his coach, strutting about with his laces and gold-headed canes. But I don’t aim ever to think too much about it.’

Isannah was almost asleep. ‘Tell more, Johnny,’ she murmured.

‘Merchant Lyte is so very rich . . .’

‘How rich? Like Mr. Hancock?’

‘Not quite. Almost. He’s so rich gold and silver are like dust to him.’

‘You mean at Lyte Mansion Mrs. Lyte sweeps up gold and silver in a dustpan?’

‘Mrs. Lyte doesn’t sweep, you silly, not with her own fair hands. For one thing, she’s dead, and for another, if she weren’t she’d just snap her fingers and maids would come running—in frilly starched caps. They’d curtsy and squeak, “Yes, ma’am,” “No, ma’am,” and “If it please you, ma’am.” Then Mrs. Lyte would say, “You dirty sluts, look at that gold dust under the bed! I could write my name in the silver dust on the mirror over that mantel. Fetch your mops and rags, you bow-legged, cross-eyed, chattering monkeys.”’

‘Diamonds, too?’

‘To clean up diamonds they need brooms.’

‘Oh, Johnny! Tell more.’

‘Once the rubies spilled and the cook (a monstrous fine woman—I’ve seen her) thought they were currants. She put them in a fruit cake, and Merchant Lyte broke a front tooth on one.’

‘A fact, Johnny?’

‘Well, it’s a fact that Merchant Lyte’s got a broken front tooth. I saw it as I stood watching him.’

Cilla said, ‘You watch him much?’