Philip Winwood. Robert Neilson Stephens

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ too much of the company of other boys, but with certain mental and bodily advantages of which too much of that company would have deprived him—who was taken into the house of the Faringfields in the Summer of 1763.

      The footing on which he should remain there was settled the very morning after his arrival. Mr. Faringfield, a rigid and prudent man, but never a stingy one, made employment for him as a kind of messenger or under clerk in his warehouse. The boy fell gratefully into the new life, passing his days in and about the little counting-room that looked out on Mr. Faringfield's wharf on the East River. He found it dull work, the copying of invoices, the writing of letters to merchants in other parts of the world, the counting of articles of cargo, and often the bearing a hand in loading or unloading some schooner or dray; but as beggars should not be choosers, so beneficiaries should not be complainers, and Philip kept his feelings to himself.

      Mr. Faringfield was an exacting master, whose rule was that his men should never be idle, even at times when there seemed nothing to do. If no task was at hand, they should seek one; and if none could be found, he was like to manufacture one. Thus was Phil denied the pleasure of brightening or diversifying his day with reading, for which he could have found time enough. He tried to be interested in his work, and he in part succeeded, somewhat by good-fellowship with the jesting, singing, swearing wharfmen and sailors, somewhat by dwelling often on the thought that he was filling his small place in a great commerce which touched so distant shores, and so many countries, of the world. He used to watch the vessels sail, on the few and far-between days when there were departures, and wish, with inward sighs, that he might sail with them. A longing to see the great world, the Europe of history, the Britain of his ancestors, had been implanted in him by his reading, before he had come to New York, and the desire was but intensified by his daily contact with the one end of a trade whose other end lay beyond the ocean.

      Outside of the hours of business, Philip's place was that of a member of the Faringfield household, where, save in the one respect that after his first night it was indeed the garret room that fell to him, he was on terms of equality with the children. Ned alone, of them all, affected toward him the manner of a superior to a dependent. Whatever were Philip's feelings regarding this attitude of the elder son, he kept them locked within, and had no more to say to Master Ned than absolute civility required. With the two girls and little Tom, and with me, he was, evenings and Sundays, the pleasantest playfellow in the world.

      Ungrudgingly he gave up to us, once we had made the overtures, the time he would perhaps rather have spent over his books; for he had brought a few of these from Philadelphia, a fact which accounted for the exceeding heaviness of his travelling bag, and he had access, of course, to those on Mr. Faringfield's shelves. His compliance with our demands was the more kind, as I afterward began to see, for that his day's work often left him quite tired out. Of this we never thought; we were full of the spirits pent up all day at school, Madge and Fanny being then learners at the feet of a Boston maiden lady in our street, while I yawned and idled my hours away on the hard benches of a Dutch schoolmaster near the Broadway, under whom Ned Faringfield also was a student. But fresh as we were, and tired as Philip was, he was always ready for a romp in our back yard, or a game of hide-and-seek in the Faringfields' gardens, or a chase all the way over to the Bowling Green, or all the way up to the Common where the town ended and the Bowery lane began.

      But it soon came out that Phil's books were not neglected, either. The speed with which his candles burnt down, and required renewal, told of nocturnal studies in his garret. As these did not perceptibly interfere with his activity the next day, they were viewed by Mr. Faringfield rather with commendation than otherwise, and so were allowed to continue. My mother thought it a sin that no one interfered to prevent the boy's injuring his health; but when she said this to Phil himself, he only smiled and answered that if his reading did cost him anything of health, 'twas only fair a man should pay something for his pleasures.

      My mother's interest in the matter arose from a real liking. She saw much of Philip, for he and the three younger Faringfields were as often about our house as about their own. Ours was not nearly as fine; 'twas a white-painted wooden house, like those in New England, but roomy enough for its three only occupants, my mother and me and the maid. We were not rich, but neither were we of the poorest. My father, the predecessor of Mr. Aitken in the customs office, had left sufficient money in the English funds at his death, to keep us in the decent circumstances we enjoyed, and there was yet a special fund reserved for my education. So we could be neighbourly with the Faringfields, and were so; and so all of us children, including Philip, were as much at home in the one house as in the other.

      One day, in the Fall of that year of Philip's arrival, we young ones were playing puss-in-a-corner in the large garden—half orchard, half vegetable plantation—that formed the rear of the Faringfields' grounds. It was after Phil's working hours, and a pleasant, cool, windy evening. The maple leaves were yellowing, the oak leaves turning red. I remember how the wind moved the apple-tree boughs, and the yellow corn-stalks waiting to be cut and stacked as fodder. (When I speak of corn, I do not use the word in the English sense, of grain in general, but in the American sense, meaning maize, of which there are two kinds, the sweet kind being most delicious to eat, as either kind is a beautiful sight when standing in the field, the tall stalks waving their many arms in the breeze.) We were all laughing, and running from tree to tree, when in from the front garden came Ned, his face wearing its familiar cruel, bullying, spoil-sport smile.

      The wind blowing out Madge's brown hair as she ran, I suppose put him in mind of what to do. For all at once, clapping his hand to his mouth, and imitating the bellowing war-whoop of an Indian, he rushed upon us in that character, caught hold of Madge's hair, and made off as if to drag her away by it. She, screaming, tried to resist, but of course could not get into an attitude for doing so while he pulled her so fast. The end of it was, that she lost her balance and fell, thus tearing her hair from his grasp.

      I, being some distance away, picked up an apple and flung it at the persecutor's head, which I missed by half an inch. Before I could follow the apple, Philip had taken the work out of my hands.

      "You are a savage," said Phil, in a low voice, but with a fiery eye, confronting Ned at close quarters.

      "And what are you?" replied young Faringfield promptly. "You're a beggar, that's what you are! A beggar that my father took in."

      For a moment or two Phil regarded his insulter in amazed silence; then answered:

      "If only you weren't her brother!"

      Here Madge spoke up, from the ground on which she sat:

      "Oh, don't let that stop you, Phil!"

      "I sha'n't," said Phil, with sudden decision, and the next instant the astounded Ned was recoiling from a solid blow between the eyes.

      Of course he immediately returned the compliment in kind, and as Ned was a strong fellow, Phil had all he could do to hold his own in the ensuing scuffle. How long this might have lasted, I don't know, had not Fanny run between, with complete disregard of her own safety, calling out:

      "Oh, Phil, you mustn't hurt Ned!"

      Her interposition being aided on the other side by little Tom, who seized Ned's coat-tails and strove to pull him away from injuring Philip, the two combatants, their boyish belligerence perhaps having had enough for the time, separated, both panting.

      "I'll have it out with you yet!" said Master Ned, short-windedly, adjusting his coat, and glaring savagely.

      "All right!" said Phil, equally out of breath. Ned then left the field, with a look of contempt for the company.

      After that, things went on in the old pleasant manner, except that Ned, without any overt act to precipitate a fight, habitually treated Phil with a most СКАЧАТЬ