Johnny Tremain (11 page)

Rab showed no surprise either over his return or the strange story that he proceeded to pour out. It was nightfall and, as Johnny hoped, Uncle Lorne and the little Webbs were gone. Rab was waiting for the ink to dry on the
Observer
so he could fold it. He sat with his long legs stretched before him, his hands clasped behind his neck.

'Lyte's crooked, you know,' he said at last.

'I've heard that before.'

'He's sly. When the merchants agreed not to import any English goods until the Stamp Act was repealed, he was one of the first to sign—then imported secretly. Sold through another name. Made more money. Sam Adams spoke to him privately—scared him. He says he won't do that again. He's trying to ride two horses—Whig and Tory.'

Johnny's life with the Laphams had been so limited he knew little of the political strife which was turning Boston into two armed camps. The Whigs declaring that taxation without representation is tyranny. The Tories believing all differences could be settled with time, patience, and respect for government.

Rab obviously was a Whig. 'I can stomach some of the Tories,' he went on, 'men like Governor Hutchinson. They honestly think we're better off to take anything from the British Parliament—let them break us down, stamp in our faces, take all we've got by taxes, and never protest. They say we American colonies are too weak to get on without England's help and guidance. But Governor Hutchinson's a good man. Of course we'll destroy him. We've marked him down. Sam Adams is already greasing the ways under him. But I can't stand men like Lyte, who care nothing for anything except themselves and their own fortune. Playing both ends against the middle.'

'I'd never have picked him for a relative. But beggars can't be choosers—and happens I'm a beggar. It's on to time to get ready to go to him.'

Understanding Johnny's unspoken desire not to appear too meanly before the great gentleman, Rab went to the attic above the shop where he slept and came down with a clean shirt of finest white linen and a fawn-colored corduroy jacket with silver buttons.

'It's too small for me. Ought to about fit you.'

It did.

Almost miraculously—for Johnny had not seen where it came from—bread and cheese were on the counter. It was his first food since yesterday's gorging.

With the straight, fair hair well brushed and tied behind with taffeta, the handsome jacket, the frilled, immaculate shirt, Johnny did cut a very presentable figure.

By the printing-shop clock the sun had been set for almost an hour. Rab was folding newspapers.

'You can sleep here,' he said, 'if they don't offer you anything. But ... good luck, bold fellow.'

Standing on Beacon Hill, so far removed from the hurly-burly of the wharves, shops, markets of town, Johnny hesitated. Should he, as a poor out-of-work apprentice, go around back, or should he, as a long-lost something-or-other, raise that gleaming brass knocker on the paneled front door? The silver buttons and Rab's 'bold fellow' heartened him. The knocker fell, and instantly a maid was bidding him enter, curtsying, asking his name.

'I'm Jonathan Lyte Tremain.'

The front hall was very large. From it rose a flight of stairs, taking their time in their rising, taking all the space they needed. Along the walls were portraits: Merchant Lyte in his handsome, healthy youth; Lavinia, painted long before in London, as regal a child as now she was a young woman. Time blackened old things, already a hundred years old. Was it their long dried blood which now ran red and living in Johnny's veins?

To the left was the drawing room. The tinkle of a spinet, low voices, laughter. Could it be they were laughing because the maid was announcing him? He wished he had called himself merely Johnny Tremain.

'Ah-ha-ha.' That was Merchant Lyte. 'Fetch him in, Jenny. Just a little family party. All want to see him, eh?'

Johnny's first impression was of dozens of wax candles lighting the long, dove-colored and lavender-and-yellow room. They were reflected in mirrors, silver, gleaming floors and mahogany. A dozen people were gathered together in the far end of the room.

Johnny stood a moment, anxious to do nothing wrong, conscious that the new shoes he had been so proud of did not much resemble the little black buckled pumps on the gentlemen.

'Well,' said Mr. Lyte, rising, but not approaching him. 'So ... here we are?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Lavinia, Cousin Talbot, Aunt Best, how do you like his looks?'

Aunt Best, a horrifyingly ugly, cross old woman with two goldheaded canes, vowed through her whiskers and toothless gums that he looked just as bad as she had expected.

Lavinia turned from the spinet. She had on a stiff, turquoise-blue dress that suited her marvelously. She looked at the boy with her head tipped sidewise as Johnny had seen other ladies look at silver teapots before they bought.

'At least, Papa, he's a deal handsomer than most of my relatives. Isn't he, Cousin Sewall?' It was the rosy clerk, lovelorn Sewall, who was turning her music for her.

'Yes, daughter.' Mr. Lyte's eyes flickered over Johnny. 'Quite the little gentleman—from the waist up. Silver buttons, eh? Ruffled shirt?'

His eyes slid over his 'little family party.' He addressed them in so low a voice he seemed to ignore Johnny standing at the far upper end of the long room.

He had been expecting some such apparition from the past ever since last August. In spite of family efforts to keep certain things dark, he had reason to believe certain things were well known, even among the—ah—lower classes. Then he called to Johnny.

'Now, boy, you brought your cup?'

'It is here—in this bag.'

'Very good. Will you—and all of you—please to step into the dining room?' This took some time, for Aunt Best had to be pulled in front and pushed from behind before she was balanced on her two gold-headed canes. She scolded, muttered, and shook her whiskers at everyone, including her famous nephew.

Only Lavinia, still at the spinet, and Cousin Sewall bending over her, did not go into the dining room.

There on the sideboard were three standing cups. They were identical to Johnny's. Silently he took his from its bag, set it with the other three, then stood back to look at the silken, bejeweled, perfumed folk crowding about him.

Mr. Lyte took up the cup, studied it, compared it with one of his own. Silently he handed it to a plainly dressed, thick-set gentleman who thus far had said nothing.

'I think,' said Mr. Lyte quietly, 'all of you ladies and gentlemen will agree that this cup our—ah, cousin, is it?—has brought back tonight is one of this set?'

There was a murmur of assent. Johnny could hear the tiny tinkle, seemingly far away, of Miss Lavinia's spinet.

'It is perfectly obvious that this cup now stands where it belongs. The question is how was it ever separated from its fellows?'

Johnny felt that everyone there except himself knew the answer to this question.

'In fact,' the merchant's voice was smooth as oil, 'I declare this to be the very cup which was stolen from me by thieves. They broke through yonder window on the twenty-third of last August. Sheriff, I order you to arrest this boy for burglary.'

The thick-set plain man whom Johnny had already noticed, put a heavy hand on his shoulder. His formal words flowed over him.

'Johnny Tremain, alias Jonathan Lyte Tremain ... apprentice to Ephraim Lapham ... name of King and Bay Colony ... standing cup ... taken away the twenty-third day ... month ... year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-three.'

'This is not true,' Johnny said.

'You can explain to the Judge.'

'Very well, I can and will.' The full horror of the accusation (for a boy might be hanged for stealing a silver cup) froze him into seeming nonchalance. This coolness made a bad impression. Aunt Best was poking at him with one of her canes. She hoped she'd live long enough to see him hanged. He was a perfect little viper—and he looked it. A florid woman was flapping a pink feather fan. She thought he had one of those falsely innocent little faces that are such an aid to evil boys.

'No,' someone else was saying, 'he has a shifty eye.'

Aunt Best croaked, 'Look at those silver buttons on his coat. I'm sure he stole them.'

Mr. Lyte said, 'Boy, where did you get that coat?'

'It was lent me.'

'Lent you? By whom, pray?'

'A printer's boy. I don't know his last name. Down at the
Observer
office ... He's called Rab.'

'That coat is worth money. Do you think someone whose last name you admit you don't know would
lend
you a coat?'

'It doesn't sound likely—but happens it's true.'

'Sheriff, look into this.'

'I certainly will, Mr. Lyte.'

'I sent Sewall over to the Laphams—a very respectable, humble, pious, poor sort of folk. Mrs. Lapham swore this boy never owned a thing but the clothes he stood in. As for his name, she showed Sewall the papers of his indenture, signed by his dead mother. She put him down as Johnny Tremain, no Jonathan Lyte about it. And Mrs. Lapham believed that lately he had taken to evil ways—stealing shoes and little things. She swore he never owned a cup. And Mr. Tweedie, a partner of Mr. Lapham, said the boy was a notorious liar, and of most evil report.'

The sheriff was taking out handcuffs, snapping them on Johnny's wrist and his own.

"Soon's I get this scamp locked up, I'll be back for that bowl of punch you promised, Mr. Lyte,' he called cheerfully as he left. The last sound Johnny heard was the fairy tinkle of the spinet.

The chain clanked. The sheriff said nothing until they had reached the stone jail in Prison Lane. Then, as the jailer was writing down Johnny's name in his book, the sheriff said kindly:

'Now, boy, you've got some rights. Who do you want notified? Got any kin except the Lytes, eh? How about old Mr. Lapham?'

'He's my master no more. He dismissed me months ago.'

'Relatives? Parents?'

'I've nothing. But will you please tell that boy down at the
Observer?
He's a tall boy, and dark—all I know is that his name is Rab.'

'The one you stole the coat off, hey? I was going to look him up tonight.'

Oddly enough, Johnny slept well on his straw pallet in the jail. The night before, lying and weeping among the graves of Copp's Hill, he had reached bottom. He could not go lower than that. No matter what happened, he could not help but now go up. He knew Isannah's childish squeals were nothing compared to the serious charge Mr. Lyte had brought against him, but the squeals had just about broken his heart. The accusation of burglary he could take. He felt tough enough and hard enough to take anything. But he could not help but think of the gallows, just beyond the town gates, how they had loomed up at him through the dark of the night like a warning.

Before he had finished his breakfast of corn gruel, Rab arrived. Johnny had known he would come. He brought blankets, books, food. Seemingly by the nonchalance of his manner, nothing was more usual than to find one's friends in jail. About his muscular, brown throat Johnny could see a medal hung upon a string. On it was engraved a Tree of Liberty. So Rab was one of the semi-secret famous Sons of Liberty, those carefully organized 'mobs' who often took justice into their own hands. They frightened royal officers out of Boston, stopped British admirals from impressing Yankee seamen, as they were impressed in England. They could at will paralyze trade, courts, government. Many a night Johnny had heard their whistles, conch shells, and cries of 'town-born, turn out,' the running of their feet. And next day had seen the effigies they had hung, the Tory fences they had torn down or windows broken, and heard that Royal Commissioner So-and-So had been frightened out of Boston. Or such-and-such a merchant had wept when haled before the Liberty Tree and sworn never to do trade with England until all grievances had been righted. The Laphams had hated such lawless seizure of government by the Sons of Liberty. Johnny had not thought much about it. Seeing the medal at Rab's throat made him think it might be fun to be out with them.

The medal did its work, for both the turnkey and the jailer were also 'Sons.' Johnny was given a neat, private room on the ground floor. Such rooms were usually reserved for gentlemen jailed for debt.

Here he told Rab his entire story. Rab had already found out that the case would come up on the following Tuesday, before Mr. Justice Dana. If Mr. Justice thought there was not sufficient evidence to hold him for a higher court and a jury trial, he would immediately release him. Then he asked ifJohnny had shown his cup to any living soul sometime before August twenty-third. Such a witness would prove that Johnny had owned a cup, before Mr. Lyte's had been stolen.

'Why, of course—Cilla Lapham. That was July. Come to think, it was the very day Mr. Hancock ordered his sugar basin. It was the second day ofJuly—that was a Tuesday.'

'That's all you'll need. Mr. Lyte was a fool to bring so flimsy a charge against you.'

'What do you suppose he meant when he said he had expected something like me turning up as soon as that cup was stolen?'

'I don't know what goes on in that clever, bad head, but perhaps he thinks you are an impostor and stole the cup first to back up some claim of kinship. Of course Cilla will come to court for you?'

'She will. If her mother will let her.'

'Would Mrs. Lapham give you a good character?'

'No. She thinks these days I'm bad enough to steal a wig off a parson's head.'

Next day Rab was back at the same time. He was a little perturbed. Mr. Lyte himself had been to the Laphams (in the ruby coach) and ordered a dozen silver spoons, a tea caddy, and,
if all went well,
would order a silver tankard a foot high.

'A bribe?'

'Cilla says he paid in advance. Then it was Mrs. Lapham said she would not have her girl mixed up in such a disgraceful case. She promised Cilla would spend next Tuesday under lock and key.'

'I could hang first?'

'And she is determined to please that Mr. Tweedie too. If he won't sign that contract and get right to work, she can't get Mr. Lyte's silver made. Poor old Mr. Lapham won't do anything but read his Bible. Says he hasn't long to prepare to meet his Maker. By the way, Mr. Tweedie just about hates you. Says you called him a squeak-pig. He didn't like it.'