Johnny Tremain (14 page)

The idea that Goblin was more scared than he gave him great confidence and so did Rab's belief in him and his powers to learn. He had always been quick on his feet, rhythmic and easy in his motions. He had no idea that learning to ride by himself, with a notoriously bad horse for one instructor and a boy who never left his printing press for the other, he was doing an almost impossible thing. But one day he overheard Uncle Lorne say to Rab, 'I don't see how Johnny has done it, but he is riding real good now.'

'He's doing all right.'

'Not scared a bit of Goblin. God knows
I
am.'

'Johnny Tremain is a bold fellow. I knew he could learn—if he didn't get killed first. It was sink or swim for him—and happens he's swimming.'

This praise went to Johnny's head, but patterning his manners on Rab's he tried not to show it.

For the first week Uncle Lorne did hire the landlady's gentle nag for Johnny. Even with the lists and maps Rab made for him, those three days of delivering papers, first through Boston, then circling out through the surrounding towns and returning Saturday night by ferry from Charlestown were confusing enough.

Soon, however, these three days of riding became a delight to him. He was a town boy, knowing little of country ways. The ships in the harbor he knew. The wharves and the world of shops and trade. Now he reveled in broad harvest fields, orange pumpkins, shocked corn, frost-touched grapes. And the towns clustering around Boston interested him.

He liked to make a handsome entrance. Even if he and Goblin had dawdled a bit on country roads, they both liked arriving at the inns at a gallop. Then Johnny would bustle in with his newspapers and often find the subscribers already sitting about the taproom waiting for him. Because he came from Boston and rode for the
Observer,
he was often questioned about the political thinking at the capital. By reading the papers, talking to Rab and Uncle Lorne, listening to the leaders of opposition about Boston, he quickly became well informed. In only a few weeks he changed from knowing little enough about the political excitement, and caring less, to being an ardent Whig.

He also enjoyed the showy, queer beauty of his horse. When people on the streets or at the taverns complimented him on his mount, there would come the same fatuous expression on his face he had often ridiculed on Cilla's when people stopped her and said how angelic Isannah was, but he did not know it.

At first he fell off fairly often and it would take him half an hour to catch the wary animal, but once a farmer's wife gave him his hat full of bad apples and he lured Goblin easily. After that he always stuffed his pockets with windfalls. If Goblin would approach something he feared, Johnny rewarded him with a specked apple, but when he did fall off, he would come home smelling like a cider press.

The boys shared the loft above the printing shop. It was reached only by a ladder, but was large, comfortable, and had a big fireplace. There was one odd thing about this attic and that was the number of chairs stored there. He started to ask Rab why this was, but thought better of it, and at last Rab told him.

It was here in the attic, ever and anon, 'The Boston Observers' met. It was a secret club, as powerful as any in Boston, and here in the last few years had been hatched much 'treason,' as the Tories called it. Rab did not even tell Johnny to keep his mouth shut. He knew he would.

Breakfast they made for themselves. Dinner was sent over by Mrs. Lorne. Supper they either got for themselves or ate at Aunt and Uncle's. Rab's aunt was a plump, red-headed, white-skinned woman. She must have been a variation of a well-known family pattern, for Johnny often heard people say, as they looked at Rab, 'That boy is a regular Silsbee from Lexington.' If he was, then she was not. But her eight-months-old son was. He was the longest baby Johnny had ever seen, had the straightest black hair, cried the least and ate the fastest. Never fussed, and watched the world through enigmatic, questioning, dark eyes. Even Uncle Lorne, who might have preferred that his only child should have repeated the fox-like, scholarly brightness of his own face, admitted, as he looked thoughtfully at his baby, 'That child of yours, Jenifer, is a regular Silsbee of Lexington.'

Johnny became absorbed in Goblin. He was afraid the stable boys at the Afric Queen struck at him, bullied him because he was timid, so he took upon himself the feeding and care of the animal. This saved Mr. Lorne a few pennies a week on the board bill, and he generously gave the money to Johnny. The landlord at the Queen liked the boy. When guests wished a letter delivered faster than the dawdling post riders, he would recommend Johnny. So once that fall he rode as far as Worcester, and again to Plymouth. This money was divided between the owner of the horse and the rider, and Johnny bought himself spurs, boots, and a fur-lined surtout, all second hand.

Although Johnny held the reins in his left hand, as Rab had taught him, many times as the horse was off on a wild tear and he was struggling to get him once more under control, he was forced to use his crippled hand. He could not keep it proudly in his pocket while careening about on a horse like Goblin. Although too badly injured ever to be skillful again, it was no longer in danger of atrophying—as it had been in Johnny's pocket. As a silversmith he had already learned to use his left hand a certain amount. Rab never said to him, 'Now, Johnny, you've got to learn to write with your left hand,' but he would give him things to copy, take it for granted that he could—and he did.

For the first four days of every week Johnny was his own master. He spent his time exercising his horse, unless he got an order to ride express for the Afric Queen, in learning to write with his left hand, and an orgy of reading. Mr. Lorne had a fine library. It was as if Johnny had been starved before and never known it. He read anything—everything. Bound back copies of the
Observer, Paradise Lost, Robinson Crusoe
—once more, for that was one of the books Rab had brought him to read in jail—
Tom Jones
and Locke's
Essays on Human Understanding,
Hutchinson's
History of Massachusetts Bay, Chemical Essays, Spectator Papers,
books on midwifery, and manners for young ladies, Pope's
Iliad.
It was a world of which he never had guessed while living with the Laphams, and now he remembered with gratitude how his mother had struggled to teach him so that this world might not be forever closed to him. How she had made him read to her, when he would rather have been playing. Poor woman! Her books had been few and mostly dull.

So he sat for hours in the Lornes' sunny parlor, the books about him stretching to the ceiling. Mrs. Lorne never called to him to help her in the kitchen. She, Uncle Lorne, and Rab all took it for granted that Johnny ought to read. Mrs. Lapham could not have borne the sight of so 'idle' a boy. But Aunt Lorne never interrupted him except to come in now and then with a plate of hot ginger-bread or seed cakes, and once in a long time ask him if he would mind baby as she went out marketing or visiting.

'I'll just put baby in his cradle here, and if he doesn't go right to sleep you rock him a little with your foot.' The first time he read
Tom Jones,
he got so excited he absent-mindedly rocked baby for half an hour, but even this did not upset that regular Silsbee of Lexington. The baby gulped a little, but took it philosophically—just like Rab. Secretly, and only when alone, Johnny began calling him 'Rabbit.' It was easy for him to love, and he loved the baby. He would have died before he would have let anyone guess he was so simple, but Aunt Lorne knew. Sometimes she would come into the kitchen quietly and hear Johnny holding long, one-sided conversations with Rabbit. When she came into the room where he was with the child, he would merely say scornfully, 'Aunt Lorne, I think it is wet,' and pretend to be lost in his book.

Then she would feel so fond of the lonely boy, who never knew he was lonely, and so amused at his pretense of scorn for something he in his heart loved, she could not help but kiss him. She always kissed him where his hair began to grow in the middle of his forehead. He had never known until she told him that he had a widow's peak, which she assured him was a great mark of beauty. 'Why, I'd give anything for a widow's peak,' she would say, 'I'd give a plate of cookies,' and off she would waddle—for she was tiny-footed and too plump—and come back with the cookies.

Johnny thought Rab was lucky to have an aunt like that.

This was Johnny's new life. He liked it, but was at first a little homesick for the Laphams. He had never been so glad in his life as that Thursday, a few weeks after he had begun delivering newspapers, when he saw Cilla and Isannah standing by the town pump in North Square. He had left his last paper for the day with Paul Revere and was starting back to put up his horse at the Afric Queen. He had felt he could never again go to the Laphams'. Mrs. Lapham and her Mr. Tweedie had been too ready to let him hang. He'd just about kill Dove if ever he met him.

'Cilla!' he cried. She looked at him and her eyes shone.

Goblin stretched his muzzle toward the empty drinking trough.

'I'll pump him fresh water.' Cilla pumped and the horse drank gratefully.

'Cilla, do you come over often to fetch water?' It hurt him that the heavy yoke and the two buckets which he had worn so often, to his humiliation, had somehow descended upon her thin shoulders.

'Mr. Tweedie won't have it that Dove and Dusty stop their work. Before breakfast they are supposed to bring in all we need for the day. When we run short, he says we girls are to go. He's upset everything, Johnny.'

'I didn't know he had that much gumption.'

'Ma abets him. And Ma says it's not suitable for grown women like Madge and Dorcas to be carrying buckets through the streets. So I'm the one.'

'If you'll lead my horse,' said Johnny, 'I'll carry the water as far as Fish Street. I'm not going into that house for a long time yet—but I'll go pretty near. Close enough to spit at them all.'

'Still mad?'

'Sure. Of course I am. Why not?'

Isannah had wandered off because a passing clergyman had seen the sunlight on her hair and was asking her to say the shorter catechism as proof that she was as pious as she was beautiful. And he was giving her a poke of sweetmeats he had bought for his wife.

'Look you, Cil,' said Johnny. 'Every Thursday, see? I'll leave Mr. Revere's paper and I'll be here to help you, just about the same time as today.'

'I can carry the water myself,' said Cilla stiffly.

'No, it's not just that, but ... I've been wanting to see you. And Isannah too. I didn't know how to manage.'

They were stopping on Fish Street. It was not close enough for Johnny to spit at his old residence, but as close as he cared to go.

'Don't you go promising, Johnny,' she said. She was stroking Goblin's face. 'I think your horse is the most beautiful horse I ever saw. I think he likes me already.'

'Yes, I know. But I'm going to be here every Thursday. And Sunday afternoon, too. If there's water to carry, I'll carry it, but it's more important that we talk. Couldn't you sneak off and meet me up by the pump?'

'Yes, I could.'

'Well,
will
you?' She was a 'sot' and stubborn girl.

'I don't know—but if you want me and Isannah very much, I can say ... maybe...'

Isannah flew up to join them. She had just eaten every one of her sweetmeats and was now exclaiming over the beauty of the paper poke, suggesting, at least, that that was all the kind clergyman had given her—an empty paper poke—but Johnny could smell chocolate and peppermint on her. Cilla shouldn't let her get away with such selfishness and gluttony.

Although 'maybe' was all Cilla promised, Johnny promised much more.

'Every Thursday and every Sunday afternoon.' Those were his last words and he thought he meant them. He thought six months, a year, six years from now, the girls would be as dear to him as they were at that moment.

Back once more in Goblin's saddle, he turned to watch them, Cilla bent under the heavy load, Isannah skipping about and for no particular reason chanting the shorter catechism once more. But maybe she had reason—maybe another clergyman was in the offing.

There was a lump in Johnny's throat.

So far in his new life there had been one, and only one, slight disappointment. Rab was so self-contained. It was as if nothing could come in from the outside to upset him. He owned himself. By temperament Johnny was expansive, easily influenced. Although Rab would have been exactly the same if he had been the son of the wealthiest merchant or the poorest tinker in Boston, Johnny would not. When he had been the prize apprentice of Hancock's Wharf, the envy of all the other masters, the principal bread-winner of the Laphams (and he knew it), he had been quite a different boy from the arrogant, shabby young tramp of late summer and early fall. Those marketwomen who had counted their pats of butter after he brushed past their stands, Mrs. Lapham with her prophecies that he would end on the gallows, had not been so far wrong. For a little while it had been touch-and-go with him. If pushed a little farther, he might have taken to crime—because that was what was expected of him. But no matter what happened to Rab, good or bad fortune, good or bad reputation, he would never change. Johnny felt he knew him but little more than at their first meeting, but he admired him more and more all the time. Rab did not criticize him, but he had a way of asking him why he did certain things which had a great influence upon Johnny.

Once, as they sat in the attic toasting cheese and muffins by their hearth, the older boy asked why he went about calling people 'squeak-pigs' and things like that. Johnny was always ready to do his share, or more than his share, in fanning up friendship—or enmity. Sometimes it seemed to Rab he did not much care which.

'Why do you go out of your way to make bad feeling?'

Johnny hung his head. He could not think why.

'And take Merchant Lyte. Everybody along Long Wharf knows you called him a gallows bird. He's not used to it.' Was it fun, he wondered—going about letting everybody who got in your way have it?