The Gentle Rebel (11 page)

“Why, yes, he is,” Revere said. He smiled and put his hand out. “We’re just finished, but won’t you come in?”

“I have no business here—and neither does my brother.” Nathan’s voice was cold, and he ignored the hand, pushing past Revere to come and stand before the two boys. “Let’s go, Caleb.”

There was a sudden stillness in the place, an ominous and uncomfortable silence, and everyone looked right at Caleb.

He felt the pressure of their eyes, and though most of them were strangers to him, he felt Moses lean slightly against him, and it was enough to make him say, “I’ll take care of myself, Nathan!”

“You’re not taking care of yourself like this!”

“You have objections to our study group, Mr. Winslow?” Sam Adams did not move, but his deep-set eyes suddenly burned with the anger that always lurked just beneath the surface.

“Study group, you call it?” Nathan scoffed. “I think we all know exactly what it is you
study!
How to overthrow the King’s true government!”

Revere said quietly, “I don’t think Gilbert Winslow would have looked at it like that, my boy. He left England to make a world where men could be free. And I suspect your father feels that way, as well.”

Nathan said angrily, “I will not argue politics with you, sir! Caleb, come with me!”

“No, I won’t do it, Nathan.”

Nathan stood there towering over the sturdy form of his brother, and he forced himself to say quietly, “Father said for me to take care of you, Caleb. I can’t let you stay here with these men. You could end up in jail—or worse!”

“In that your brother may be accurate, young man.” Dr. Warren suddenly moved out of the cluster in the rear and came to stand close to the brothers. He was a tall man with a fair complexion and a kind expression in his dark eyes. “It would not be fair to let you stay without knowing this well. All of us in this room are in danger—and it will probably get worse.”

Nathan was taken off guard by the tall man’s honesty. “Why, that’s decent of you, sir.”

The doctor glanced at Adams, and seemed to find what he sought. “Caleb, I suggest you go with your brother. Your father seems to have put you in his charge. Think about this, talk to your parents. Then make your decision.”

Adams nodded. “Good idea, my boy. You do it.”

“All right—but I know I’ll be back.”

Revere stepped back, but said to Nathan, “Give my regards to your parents for me, Mr. Winslow. I’ve often thought of them.”

“I’ll do that,” Nathan said, then walked out of the room followed by Caleb, who was close to tears and bit his lips to hide it.

“Those lads are in for trouble,” Dr. Warren murmured.

“That they are—and the tall one is in for the most grief,” Adams nodded. “Well, there’ll be many a family like that before this thing is over—split right down the middle.”

“I wonder what Gilbert Winslow would have said about this?” Revere mused. Then he gave a rueful laugh. “He’d probably have whipped out a foil and run King George through! He was a real fighter, that one.”

Adams looked toward the door, nodded slowly, then said, “We could do with some hot blood like that in this place. But it seems more likely that the real Winslow blood’s in the young fellow—my hope’s in him—not the older one.”

“Maybe.” Revere was rubbing his chin thoughtfully, but then he shook his head. “I remember that Gilbert Winslow, according to his book, got off the track himself when he was about this boy’s age—but when he finally got his head pointed in the right direction, why, sir, he just about got the job done!—and this tall one has the same look about him!”

Nathan said nothing all the way back to the house, knowing that there was an iron stubbornness running through his brother. He had seen it many times as they had grown up together, and the one thing that he could not do with Caleb was force him to do something. When they were children, he had always been able to dominate Caleb physically, but no matter how much he was hurt, the boy
never gave up.
Knowing this, he determined to say nothing of the business. But Caleb felt differently.

As soon as they were in their room, he said, “Nathan, don’t you ever do that again—not ever!”

Nathan made no attempt to avoid the charge, for his anger had gone, and it was replaced by a fear of what might happen. He shook his head sadly, then said, “Caleb, you don’t know what you’re getting into.”

“I think I do!”

“I know you think so, but will you let me tell you how it looks to me?”

The request caught Caleb off guard. He’d expected hard talk, and now there was a plea on his brother’s face that he’d rarely seen. “Well, I’ll listen, Nathan.”

“All right, here it is. You are forgetting one thing, and that is that we are
Englishmen.
Oh, I know King George is an idiot, probably insane! And I know that he’s surrounded himself by men who are
not
fools, but are greedy and unscrupulous. And it doesn’t take a smart man to see that we’ve been treated unfairly.”

“Why, if you see that, Nathan,” Caleb said in surprise, “why can’t you see that we have to stand against them?”

“Say that we do,” Nathan said slowly and with great intensity. “Say that we even do what Adams and Revere say we can do—defeat the Crown and set up our own government—which is impossible, but say that a revolution worked, where would we be then?”

“Why, we’d be free!”

“Not for long, Caleb. Have your forgotten Spain? She’s already got a foothold in Florida and Louisiana. We’d be a little group of states with nothing in common—no army, no law, nothing to fight with. And if not Spain, it’d be one of the strong European nations like Prussia who’d get us.”

“But we could be strong, Nathan, in time—”

“That’s just it, Caleb,” Nathan interrupted; “wouldn’t
have
time! We’d be little and weak, and one of the wolves would pick us off sure as the world. Can’t you see that?”

Caleb’s face settled into the stubborn lines that Nathan had learned to dread, so he broke off at once. “Well, I’m sorry if I shamed you, Caleb, coming for you, but I—” The words stopped, and silently the tall young man who spoke so well on some things had no way to say what he felt. He wanted to say,
I came because I love you and you’re my only brother and I don’t want you to be hurt.
But his emotions
were too subdued for that, so he merely put his hand on Caleb’s shoulder and said, “I just want what’s good for you, Caleb, that’s all.”

Caleb tried for a smile that didn’t quite work. He said only, “I wish we thought the same about this thing, Nathan. I—I don’t want to be against you.” Then he whirled to hide his confusion and began to prepare for bed.

Nathan’s heart was full, but there was no more to be said. He sat down at the desk and said, “I’ve got to write Father and Mother about this, Caleb. You know that?”

“Yes. You go ahead.”

By the light of a candle, Nathan began to write. The scratch of his turkey-quill pen echoed in the quietness of the room. He could hear Caleb’s steady breathing, but knew that he was not asleep. For over an hour he wrote, first about unimportant things, but finally he had to come to what he hated to put on paper:

CHAPTER SEVEN

A NEW CLERK

When Laddie opened the door of his room to admit Nathan the next morning, the youth saw at once the marks of sleeplessness on his face. But Winslow smiled, saying, “Well, you look pretty good this morning.”

“I’m fine. Mrs. Nelson fed me so much chicken soup, I’m about to sprout pinfeathers!”

“You feel like moving around a bit?” The boy nodded, plucked his ragged jacket from a wooden peg, and followed Winslow down the narrow stairs. “You had breakfast yet?”

“Oh, yes, I’m fine.”

“Well, we’ll go find you something to wear, then come back for a bite later.”

Laddie felt very uncomfortable walking with Nathan down the street. Winslow was wearing buff trousers, a crisp white shirt with ruffles, a dark blue waistcoat and a wool cloak of a lighter hue. His auburn hair escaped here and there from beneath the blue and white tri-cornered hat, and he wore highly polished black boots to the knees.
I look like a beggar he’s picked up from the gutter,
the lad thought, and when he led the boy into a shop filled with good clothing, it was worse.

“Yes, sir, may I be of help?” A short fussy-looking man with a prim moustache and a pair of silver-rimmed eyeglasses came up at once. He gave Nathan’s figure an approving glance, but seemed not to notice Laddie at all.

“Yes, I want this young fellow suited out,” Nathan said. He must have seen the supercilious look the clerk gave the
ragged figure beside him, for he spoke with an edge to his voice. “I doubt you’ve got anything good enough to suit, but you can try.”

That challenge seemed to change the man, for he straightened himself to his full five feet five and said indignantly, “You are mistaken, sir, grossly mistaken! We have just what the young gentleman needs!”

“We’ll see. Now from the skin out, mind you—breeches, shirts, stockings, waistcoat, overcoat, a good hat, underclothes—anything else that’s needed.”

The light of pure greed brightened the clerk’s narrowly spaced eyes, and he nodded so rapidly that his glasses almost fell off. “To be sure! Clothes make the man! And we’ll have a new man here in no time, won’t we, young fellow?”

A flash of humor appeared in the youth’s dark eyes, but Laddie only nodded briefly, then turned to Nathan. “I can’t let you spend all this on me, Mr. Winslow.”

“You can pay it back out of your earnings,” he shrugged. “You’ll have to pass muster for my uncle—and his wife, which will be more difficult. I’ll leave you here for an hour, all right?”

He gave an encouraging smile; then as he left the shop, the clerk at once began laying out the articles he had mentioned. It was a trying hour for Laddie, for men’s clothing was something she knew little about. But she went at it carefully, choosing items that would be less revealing of the figure underneath. Some of the choices surprised the clerk, and he showed grave displeasure, but when Nathan returned at the appointed time, all the items were in a large bag ready to go.

“Get everything?” he asked, then at the lad’s nod, asked the price and paid it without comment. “Let’s go back to the Nelsons’ place. I could use a bite now.”

As they walked along the street, Nathan said, “We’ll have to go out to my uncle’s house, Laddie. I talked to Strake—he’s the general manager—and he says he can use a clerk; you’ll have to satisfy him before we get my uncle’s approval.”

They turned into The Blue Boar, and went upstairs, but
Nathan called out as they went through the bar, “Nelson, let’s have some battered eggs and some fresh fruit if you’ve got any—for the two of us.”

When they were inside the door, Laddie opened the bag and began laying the items on the bed, saying, “Let me show you what I bought, Mr. Winslow—such nice things!”

He glanced down at the clothing, grinned and said, “Well, I don’t want to see how they look with the
bed
wearing them, Laddie! Go on and put them on.”

Laddie stared at him, and a red flush began creeping up the slender throat. Nathan looked at the boy in surprise and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“N-nothing—but would you—would you mind waiting outside until I—get dressed?”

“Outside?” He could not have been more surprised if Laddie had asked him to jump out the window. Then he suddenly laughed and said, “Why, Laddie, I think you’re ashamed because you’re so skinny! Well, that’s no matter to me—but I’ll go on down and hurry Mrs. Nelson up with the breakfast. Quickly now, will you?”

He slammed the door as he left, thinking with a wry smile,
Pretty modest for a beggar!
But he was hungry and sat down, listening to Nelson tell one of his tall tales about how he’d saved his ship in the Indian Sea once.

Finally the breakfast was brought out by Mrs. Nelson, and he looked up at that same instant to see Laddie come down the stairs. He was so surprised at the change in the boy’s appearance that for a moment he could only stare.

Nelson, however, was more vocal. He looked up from the mug of ale that he was sipping, and his eyes widened as he said, “Well, now! Lookee wot we got ’ere! A real gentleman is wot we got!”

Laddie crossed to the table, with no little grain of fear that they might see through the disguise. An examination of their faces drew a sigh of relief, however, for there was no indication of that.