CHAPTER VIII.
PAYING THE FIDDLER.
ASSUME a cheerfulness, if you have it not, and it may presently grow upon you. This happened to Adam, so that when he left Captain Phipps, to return to the tavern for his breakfast and to seek out the beef-eaters, his mood was almost volatile again. There is much virtue in having something other than one’s troubles to think upon. The sunken treasure afforded Adam a topic.
He made his way to his apartments in the Crow and Arrow by the stairs at the rear. He found the rooms empty. Beef-eaters, bag and baggage were gone. Even the violin-case was not to be found.
Somewhat surprised that his faithful followers would so desert him, or at least move the family habitation without consulting their comrade, and on notice so brief, Rust knocked on Wainsworth’s door, to ask him if he had seen anything of the worthy Pike and Halberd. But Wainsworth too was out.
Upon proceeding post haste down to the tap-room, Adam broke in upon a scene of armistice, after a first shock of war. Standing at bay, with drawn swords, the shabby chattels of the trio in a corner behind them, were the beef-eaters, confronting and defying the landlord and several valiant citizens, in the midst of whom was the small individual who had so much desired to fight, on the previous evening, and who was now haranguing the opposing forces volubly.
“Here comes the master-vagabond now!” he cried, the moment Adam appeared in the room. “Now, sirs, for your proof that you are not a pack of wandering beggars and braggarts!”
“At last!” cried Halberd and Pike, together, coming quickly forward to grasp their comrade in arms by the hands.
“We have defended your good name and possessions!” said Pike.
“We have flung the lie into the teeth of these varlets!” added Halberd. “You have come in good time.”
“What’s the meaning of all this business?” demanded Adam, of the assembled company.
Every one started to talk or to shout at once. Adam heard such things as:
“They have called you and us a lot of penniless beggars and pirates!”
“What are you but a swaggering bully?”
“You are a fiddling limb of Satan!”
The landlord said, more moderately, “I did but desire to protect my house in its good repute.”
The fierce little white-eyed man waved both his fists.
“These dogs,” he snapped to Adam, “have boasted that you are loaded down with gold!”
“Yes, they mentioned gold,” said the landlord, tentatively.
“Gold?” said Adam. “Is it a crime to have no gold? How much gold would you see?” he pulled his two hands from his pockets and scattered heaps of yellow sovereigns on the table.
The beef-eaters nearly collapsed with amazement, at the sight of this wealth. The landlord fell to rubbing his hands with ecstasy.
“You unseemly traducers of fair gentlemen,” he said, with virtuous indignation, to the belligerents behind him, “how dare you come here to insult and to villify my guests?”
“He probably stole it,” cried the incorrigible little white-eyed terrier. “He has naught to do but to make God-fearing men——and his betters, at that—dance against their will in the public streets!”
“Ah,” said Adam, striding forward and purposely bending with great show of looking down to where the little man was standing, “so you have come to pay the fiddler for the sport which your friend enjoyed yesterday evening? How little he reckons my fiddling worth. This is so sad that nothing short of a breakfast can console me. Landlord——”
“Braggart! knave!” cried the little man, interrupting. “I offer to fight you again! You dare not fight!”
The smaller the dog the rarer the punishments and the larger the arrogance.
“Shatter my hilt!” said Adam, “you and another gnat would devour me whole.”
Without warning, and yet gently, Rust took him by the collar, twirled him about so that he could lay his other hand on the trousers of the midget, and hoisting him off his feet, though he kicked and made a disturbance with yelling and raving, carried him at once to the open window of the tavern and dropped him out, on the sidewalk beneath.
Three or four partisans, who had backed up little white-eyes and the landlord, now edged toward the door. Adam made one motion in their direction and they got out with becoming alacrity.
“Lock that door till we have had our breakfast,” Rust commanded.
The landlord had no more than complied, than the little rat, dropped from the window, came banging against the barrier on the outside, demanding admittance vociferously.
“Who is yon whiffet?” Adam asked.
“His name is Psalms Higgler,” laughed the landlord, with fine hypocrisy. “How bravely you served him, and rightly too.” He rubbed his hands gleefully.
“And his friend who sent him hither, he that danced so divertingly, what may be his name?”
“Isaiah Pinchbecker, you doubtless mean. And what will you have for breakfast, sire?”
“I will have you carry my bales of merchandise back to my apartments,” said Adam, who did not propose to move out of the house until he felt inclined, preferring to remain there and command respect for himself and the beef-eaters, even while he knew that the landlord had joined the miserable snappers at his heels. “And look to it you move smartly and return to order something to eat.”
The landlord, spurred by the sight of the gold, and eager to make all possible amends for the errors of judgment he had committed, staggered up the stairs, panting like a grampus.
Adam now turned to his comrades, who recited three times over the incidents of the morning, which consisted chiefly of the charges made by Psalms Higgler, evidently at the instigation of Pinchbecker—the nimble-footed—and which had so nearly culminated in their expulsion from the tavern.
Tempest in a teapot as it had been, the business was an indication of feelings which went as deep as politics, in which the whole colony had been simmering for years. Moreover, the incident was not yet concluded.
The same year which had witnessed King Philip’s war, at the close of which Adam had gone away, one of the greatest mischief-makers with whom the Colonists had ever been called upon to deal, Edward Randolph, had come to Boston with a design to despoil the colony of its charter. He had worked openly, in some directions, secretly in others. He had enlisted malcontents, dissenters-from-everything, hypocrites and men with private greeds, in his Tory following. Among these were Pinchbecker, his friend, the landlord of the Crow and Arrow, Psalms Higgler and many others of their ilk.
Now Pinchbecker came under the category of hypocrites. He assumed the Puritans’ manners, speech and customs, and did, in fact, despise some of the looser habits of the Royalists, though he was their willing tool, working for future favor and gain. He had therefore felt himself sorely aggrieved when compelled to his dance, in a public highway, and having first egged on his little terrier, Psalms, had then repaired to Edward Randolph, himself, for redress of his wrongs.
Randolph, thinking he smelt a bluff and ready Tory lot, in Adam, and his company, found occasion to visit the tavern without delay. He arrived while Rust and the beef-eaters were still at their breakfast. He entered the house at the rear and ordered a drink at the bar.
Motioning the landlord to silence, that worthy being much astonished to see him so early, Randolph presently turned about, as if he had not before observed the trio at table.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I drink ill when I drink alone; will you not permit me to order something in which you can join me?”
Adam looked up. “Thank you,” he said, “it is our misfortune to have ordered, just as you were coming in.”
“The misfortune is mine,” insisted Randolph. He drank alone.
Rust had taken in the visitor’s details at a glance. The man was of medium size and nervous temperament. He had a great brow, heavy with perceptive faculties, at the expense of those of reflection. His eyes were deep-set, round, intense and close together, the nose that divided them being as thin and curved as a beak. His lips were thin and tight-shutting. He looked like a human bird-of-prey.
“By your dress and manner you are recently from England,” said the man, sauntering leisurely toward Adam, when he had smacked his lips and set down his mug.
“By your courtesy,” said Adam, “you are a student, curious to know your fellow-beings.”
Randolph laughed. “Curious?” said he. “You do me wrong. I care neither who nor what a gentleman is, so long as he is witty and blest with humor. Your repute and the tale of your love for dancing have preceded you, sir. I confess I was tempted to come here and see you.”
“I beseech you for an opportunity to say that I was merely charitable,” said Rust. “I ordered the dance to amuse my beef-eaters. Perhaps you are a dancer yourself?”
Randolph bit his lip. He was not getting on to his liking. He smiled, however, and said:
“I have few graces, after I have mentioned a sense of admiration——”
“And blandishment,” put in Adam, who frankly disliked the man.
“Say appreciation, rather,” corrected Randolph. “I have had a hearty laugh over that dance. I wish I had been there to see it; such merriment is so rare in Massachusetts.”
“Nearly as rare as introductions between gentlemen,” Adam answered.
He tipped up his mug and drank the last of his brew carelessly. Randolph turned red with anger. His gray eyes looked like cold fire, yet he was still unwilling to accept defeat in his effort to find out the bent of Adam’s political views.
“We live in a time when the stoutest friends and companions in good causes might be lost to each other by formality,” he said, with a smile doing its best to bend his features. “I must beg your pardon, if I seem——”
He was interrupted by the entrance, at this moment, of William Phipps, who came in at the door which the landlord had quietly unbolted.
“What, Adam, not yet done with eating?” he called out, bluntly. “Come, come, I have been waiting this long time for you and your friends to have a look over the brig.”
“With you at once,” rejoined the rover.
He and the beef-eaters knocked over their heavy chairs and stools, as they arose from the table. Phipps looked at Randolph. The two men nodded, distantly and somewhat frowningly. Without so much as glancing at Randolph, Adam and his retinue walked to the door and so away, with the Captain.
Randolph needed no further intimation of Adam’s probable leanings, politically, than this obvious camaraderie with Phipps—who was a patriot as immovable and staunch as a rock fortress. He clenched his fists and ground his molars savagely.
“Curse the young fool!” he said. “I’ll make him wish for a civil tongue to be hung in his head!”