Johnny Tremain (8 page)

The dark boy put the question to him he had not been able to ask himself.

'Or what?'

Johnny lifted his thin, fair face. His lips parted before he spoke.

'I just don't know. I can't think.'

Apparently the printer's boy did not know either. All he said was, 'More cheese?'

Then Johnny began to talk. He told all about the Laphams and how he somehow couldn't seem even to thank Cilla for the food she usually got to him. How cross and irritable he had become. How rude to people who told him they were sorry for him. And he admitted he had used no sense in looking for a new job. He told about the burn, but with none of the belligerent arrogance with which he had been answering the questions kind people had put to him. As he talked to Rab (for the boy had told him this was his name), for the first time since the accident he felt able to stand aside from his problems—see himself.

Mr. Lorne, Rab's uncle by marriage, came back. He was a scholarly young man with a face as sharp and bright as a fox's. Rab did not immediately spring into action to make a good show of his industry before his master. He had none of the usual 'yes, sir,' 'no, sir,' 'please, sir.' He went on calmly eating bread and cheese.

On Mr. Lorne's heels came two little boys in big aprons—the Webb twins. Seemingly they went back to their master's house across Salt Lane for dinner, while the nephew ate out of a basket and minded the shop.

The Webbs were set to work. Mr. Lorne began to ink a pad. Johnny felt he must go. Rab walked with him to the door. He was still eating bread and cheese.

'I don't know how you'll make out,' said Rab. 'Of course you can get work—if you'll take it.'

'I know ... unskilled work.'

'Yes, work you don't want.'

'But'—the dinner had raised Johnny's hopes—' I feel sure I'll get something.'

Overhead the little man with the spyglass and the red breeches was swinging in the wind—observing Boston from a variety of angles.

Rab said: 'There is some work here you could do. Not the sort that teaches a boy a skilled trade. Just riding for us—delivering papers all over Boston and around. Nothing you'd want. But if you can't find anything else, you come back.'

'I'll come back all right—but not until I can tell you what a good job I've found myself.'

'You haven't any folks?'

'None at all.'

'I've got lots of relatives,' said Rab, 'but my parents are dead.'

'Oh.'

'Come again.'

'I'll come.'

It wasn't the food alone that so raised Johnny's hopes. It was Rab himself; an ease and confidence flowed out and supported those around him. The marketwoman had felt better about losing her Myra after she had talked with Rab. He was the first person to whom Johnny Tremain had confided his own story.

The coming of Mr. Percival Tweedie, journeyman silversmith of Baltimore, cast a longer and longer shadow over the Lapham household and conversation. While the terms of partnership were being drawn up, he stayed at a cheap lodging house on Fish Street. Johnny left right after breakfast and often did not return until dark. He did not meet Mr. Tweedie for a long time and he got tired of hearing about him. Mr. Tweedie was ready to sign the contract of partnership Mrs. Lapham had had drawn up—and Mr. Tweedie would not sign. When Mr. Tweedie came to the shop it was Dorcas he seemed to fancy—no, it was Madge. Although almost forty, he was still a bachelor—Mrs. Lapham had asked him about that.

Johnny already hated the very sound of his name, and then one morning, before breakfast, he met him. Mr. Tweedie was diffidently standing about in the shop, hoping Mrs. Lapham would ask him to breakfast. He was fingering a pocketbook sent in for a new clasp, and his stomach was rolling from hunger.

'Heh!' said Johnny rudely. The timid creature jumped like a shot rabbit and dropped the pocketbook.

'What are you doing here?' the boy demanded, pretending he had caught a thief.

Mr. Tweedie swallowed twice, his Adam's apple rising and falling with emotion, but said nothing.

'Are you a thief or are you that Tweedie man I've heard tell of?'

'I'm Tweedie.'

'I'm Johnny Tremain.'

'You don't say.'

'I'll tell Mrs. Lapham you're here—for breakfast.'

'I just happened by—just thought I'd come in.' He had a queer, squeaky voice. Johnny disliked him even more than he had expected. Such impotence, such timidity in a grown man irritated the boy.

'Oh, come out with it flat,' he said. 'You've been getting your dinners here free for two weeks and now you're feeling out for breakfast. I don't care, not me. But I'll warn the women to put on an extra plate.'

The man said nothing, but he looked at Johnny and the look of bleak hatred amazed the boy. He had not guessed Mr. Tweedie had that much gumption in him.

Mrs. Lapham came thumping down the stairs. It was her second trip to the foot of the attic ladder and she still wasn't sure Dove and Dusty were out of bed. Everything had gone wrong. Breakfast was late. Madge had a felon on her finger and wasn't good for anything and Dorcas was complaining because there was no butter for breakfast. She had slapped Dorcas, who had gone out back to cry. How easily, smoothly everything had gone in the old days before Johnny got hurt! Then the household went like clockwork and the shop had earned money for butter and butcher's meat once or twice a week. The sight of Johnny Tremain standing there in the lower hall doing nothing, good for nothing, irritated her.

'Hurry,' she snorted and waddled into the kitchen, Johnny on her heels. The fire was smoking and she knelt down to mend it. Johnny might have done that while she was upstairs.

Although Johnny was now looked upon as something of a black sheep and Mrs. Lapham was no longer telling him he would end up picking rags, but on the gallows, he thought it behooved him to tell her just what he thought of Mr. Tweedie.

'I can see why that Tweedie has never been a master smith. He hasn't the force of character. As a man he's no good—if he is a man, which I doubt. I think he is somebody's spinster aunt dressed up in men's clothes.'

Mrs. Lapham heaved herself to her knees and brushed back her streaming hair with a red forearm.

'You don't say!' Her voice showed her exasperation. She had found Mr. Tweedie herself. She was trying to nurse him along, to get the wary creature to sign her contract and marry one of her girls.

'Yep, I do say,' said Johnny. 'I've just been talking with him. He's no good and—'

'He's here now?'

'Yep. In the shop. That squeak-pig is trying to horn in on breakfast.'

The doors were all open. Anyone in the shop could have heard Johnny's insults.

Slowly, like a great sow pulling out of a wallow, Mrs. Lapham got to her feet, glaring down at Johnny, her enormous bosom heaving.

'And I'm going to tell you what I think of that squeak-pig.' Without a word and before he could finish his remarks or dodge, Mrs. Lapham gave him a resounding cuff on the ear.

'Sometimes actions do speak louder than words,' she said, 'and this is one of them times. You get right out of here, Johnny Tremain. That tongue of yours isn't going to do any more damage in
my
house.'

Johnny grabbed his jacket (Cilla had not yet put food in it), pulled his tattered hat over his eyes, and stalked out.

Since his accident he had unconsciously taken to wearing his hat at a rakish angle. This, and the way he always kept his right hand thrust into his breeches pocket, gave him a slightly arrogant air. The arrogance had always been there, but formerly it had come out in pride in his work—not in the way he wore his hat and walked. He told no one what he did all day and Mrs. Lapham was convinced that he had taken to, or was about to take to, 'evil ways.' He did look, at times, both shabby and desperate; in other words, a potential criminal. Sometimes he looked so proud and fine people thought he must be a great gentleman's son in misfortune. One thing he did not look like any more was a smart, industrious Boston apprentice.

He walked down Fish Street to Ann, crossed Dock Square with Faneuil Hall on his left. It was market day. He picked his way about the farm carts, the piles of whitish green cabbages, baskets of yellow corn, rows of plump, pale, plucked turkeys, orange pumpkins, country cheeses—big as a baby's head. Some of the market folk, men and women, children and black slaves, called to him, seeing in the shabby, proud boy a possible rich customer, but others counted the pats of butter on their tables after he had passed by.

Without heeding anyone, he crossed Dock Square and in a moment's time stood beside the brick Town House at the head of King Street. The lower floor of the Town House was an open promenade and here every day the merchants gathered 'on 'change.' Not a merchant in sight. They did not rise as early as market folk. Suddenly Johnny had an idea. Although seemingly he had tried every shop in Boston in search of a new master, he had not tried the merchants. From where he sat on the steps of the Town House, he could look the brief length of King Street which quickly and imperceptibly turned into Long Wharf, running for half a mile into the sea. It was the only wharf in Boston larger than Hancock's. There was not another wharf in all America so large, so famous, so rich.

As at his own wharf, one side was built up solidly with counting houses, warehouses, sail lofts, stores. The other side was left open for the ships. Already sailors, porters, riggers, and such were at work. He waited—it seemed to him for a long time—and then the clerks began to arrive, counting-house doors were unlocked, warehouses were unchained.

At last the merchants came, some striding down King Street, rosy-faced, double-chinned, known and greeted by everyone, apparently knowing and greeting everyone in return. Some came in chaises, gigs. Some had sour, gimlet-eyed faces; some had not yet lost the rolling gait of sea captains. Johnny saw the same gray horse and gig, with the arms upon the door, that had carried John Hancock to the Laphams' last July, trot quickly down King Street onto Long Wharf. Although Mr. Hancock had recently bought Hancock's Wharf, his principal place of business was on Long.

Mr. Hancock has on a cherry-red coat, Johnny thought. He drives the horse himself, but now he is getting out, telling that dressed-up doll of a black boy to put his horse up for him. Johnny decided he would start at the top of the merchants and work down, only, of course, skipping Merchant Lyte. He'd go first to John Hancock.

From where he sat he could see that a great ship was slowly warping in—no coaster this, no mere sugar boat from the Sugar Isles. A number of fashionably dressed young men, as well as the usual dockhands and porters, were crowding about to welcome her.

There was the heavy clatter of a great coach almost beside him and a coachman was bawling to lesser folk, 'Make way, make way.' Black horses in glittering, silver-mounted harnesses, the rumble and rattle of a ruby coach on cobbles, and on the door panel the familiar crest—a rising eye. Half-seen inside, Merchant Jonathan Lyte. Evidently he had just heard his ship was in and had come down from his mansion on Beacon Hill in a hurry. He was still struggling with the lace about his throat.

Johnny left his seat and strolled down the wharf to watch. No one had ever told him not to watch the Lytes, but he always felt guilty when he did. From afar he knew them all. He knew, for instance, that Mr. Lyte had a broken front tooth. He knew Mrs. Lyte was dead and two sons had been drowned as boys, and girls had died in infancy—this he could read upon the slate gravestones of Copp's Hill. He knew that besides the town house on Beacon Hill there was a country seat at Milton. And he knew that Lavinia Lyte had spent the last summer in London. Now she was back in Boston once more.

She was very tall for a woman, slender and graceful, and moved slowly down the gangplank with the stately self-consciousness which happened to be the fashionable gait for a lady at the moment. A hundred times before, Johnny had stopped on the streets of Boston, or before her house, to watch her: he but one more gaping face in a crowd, she the accepted reigning belle. He admired her odd, strong beauty which, unlike her regal gait, was not of the fashionable type. To begin with, she was too tall, and golden curls, pink-and-white skin were the mode. She was a black-haired woman, and only for balls and such was she powdered and curled. In contrast, her skin was dead white. Her features were clear-cut enough to justify the poems written to her in London and even here in Boston, comparing her to a classic goddess.

There was only one flaw to her marble beauty. Between the low-sweeping black brows was a tiny perpendicular line. Once, and once only, the master hand that carved her face had let the chisel slip. This blemish was odd enough for a young lady still in her twenties. It boded no good for the peace of mind of those about her—nor for her own. Now she was all glitter and smiles, greeting the young gentlemen who had come to meet her. Johnny did not notice what she wore, but the mantua-makers, dressmakers, milliners, glovers, and jewelers all knew that whatever Lavinia Lyte brought back from London would set Boston styles for the winter.

'Oh, Papa! Papa!' she suddenly exclaimed. There was an urgency in her voice, a soft flash in her eyes none of the young men's faces had called forth. Like any country girl, merely glad to be home again, she flung herself into her father's arms.

Spiritually Johnny shrugged, determined to be neither over-impressed nor envious. That overdressed moppet. That lean beanpole—for Miss Lavinia was lean in comparison to Madge and Dorcas, who had always been held up to Johnny as the end-all of feminine beauty. Bad-tempered, too. I hope she kills herself overeating cakes and plum pudding, turkeys with stuffing and gravy, hot white rolls. His stomach was gnawing at him. He forgot Lavinia Lyte as he thought of the wonderful things it was her privilege to overeat if she wished.

Surely by now enough time had passed since John Hancock's arrival at his counting house so that he would be ready to talk to a likely boy looking for work. His hand might be good enough for a cabin boy.