Part 11

"Such a lot of captains waiting to see you, father!" announced Polly. "There's Captain Woodruff and Captain Castle and Captain Richards and a Fenn captain and a Garnsey captain. I forget the rest." The captains invaded the kitchen itself, declaring that it being Monday in the week, every householder had been short of provisions for the emergency--that every inn on the way and many a private house had been unable to provide enough for so many men, and what could they have at the Porter Inn?

Polly disappeared. Before her father had considered the matter she had, assisted by her Aunt Melicent and Polly Lewis, seized from the pantry shelves all that they could carry, and going by a rear way, had hidden on the garret stairs a big roast of veal, one of lamb, and enough bread and pies for family requirements, and still the pantry shelves seemed amply filled. "I'm not going to have Ethel come home in the night and find nothing left for him I know, and the hungry boys fast asleep and tired out on the kitchen settle will come to life ravenous. Wonder if I hadn't better be missing just now and go fetch the cows down. Father would have asthma all night if he tried it," said Polly to her aunt; and up the hill Polly went accompanied by little Polly--while Mrs. Porter stood by and saw the fruits of her hard day's work vanish out of sight.

"Pray leave something for your own household," she ventured to intercede at last. "Don't forget that we have four guests of our own for the night;" but Mr. Porter, rather proud to show that, however remiss others had been, the Porter Inn was prepared for emergencies, had already bidden Nancy and Phyllis fetch forth the last loaf.

"Like one for supper," ventured Nancy, as her master carefully examined the empty larder, hoping to find something more. As the last captain from Northbury started on the night journey for New Haven, Mr. Porter faced his wife. "Now Thomas Porter," she said, "you can go hungry to bed, but what can I do for my guests and the children and the rest of the household?"

Mr. Porter scratched his head--a habit when profoundly in doubt--and said: "I must fetch the cows! It's most dark now," and set forth, to find that Polly had them all safely in the cattle yard.

"I suppose, father," said Polly, "that we've got to live on milk to-night. I thought so when I heard you parleying with the captains. So I thought I'd get the cows down." As Polly entered the house, she saw a lady and two girls of about her own age, to whom her mother was saying: "We will give you shelter, gladly, but my husband has just let the militia you met just below have the last morsel of cooked food in our house, and we've nothing left for ourselves but milk for supper."

"Mother," said Polly, stepping to the front; "we have plenty! I looked out for you before father got to the pantry. I made journeys to the garret stairs, several of them, and Aunt Melicent and Polly Lewis helped me. It is all right for the lady to stay."

The lady in question was Mrs. Thankful Punderson and her twin daughters, girls of twelve years, who had escaped from New Haven just as the British troops reached Broadway, and the riot and plunder and killing began. "I hoped," she said, "to reach the house of my husband's sister, Mrs. Zachariah Thompson, in Westbury, but Anna and Thankful are too tired to walk further to-night, and the horse can carry but two. It is getting late, and I am so thankful to stay."

As Mr. Porter stood on the porch looking down the road for the next arrival, hoping to learn some later news and perhaps to hear Ethel's cheery call in the distance, Polly said: "Father, will you let me be innkeeper to-night?"

"Gladly, Polly, with nothing to keep and not a room to spare," was his reply.

"Then I'll invite you to supper, and mind, if the ministers themselves come, they can't have a bite to-night, for I'm the keeper."

"I suppose you've made us some hasty pudding while the milking was going on," he said, as Polly, preceding her father for once, went before, and opened the door upon a table abundantly supplied, and laid for twelve.

At the table Mr. Porter told, for the benefit of Mrs. Melicent Porter and Mrs. Punderson, some of the events, both pathetic and tragic, that had occurred in the old house during his boyhood and youth, and Mrs. Melicent Porter told again the events of the day in June--only a year before--wherein the battle of Monmouth had been fought near her New Jersey home, and she had spent the day in doing what she could to relieve the sufferings of men so spent with battle and heat and wounds that they panted to her door with tongues hanging from their mouths; also of her perilous journey from New Jersey to Connecticut on horseback, accompanied by Lieutenant-Colonel Baldwin, her father--during which journey it was, that she had thrown her daughter Melicent in safety from her horse to the bank of the river they were fording, while the animal, having lost its footing, was going down the current.

While these things had been in the telling, Polly had slipped from the table unnoticed, and had lighted every lamp that could brighten the house front and serve to guide to its porch. The last lamp was just alight when Polly's guests began to arrive. She half expected soldiers, and refugees came. It seemed to her that every family in New Haven must be related to every family in Waterbury--so many women and children came in to rest themselves before continuing the journey and "to wait until the moon should rise," for the evening was very dark, and oh! the stories that each fresh arrival brought! They filled the group that came in to listen with fear and agony. New Haven was very near to Waterbury in that day. The inhabitants there were closely connected with the inhabitants here, and their peril and distress was a common woe. Little Stiles Hotchkiss cried himself to sleep that night, fearing that one of the three Hotchkisses, reported killed, might be his father.

Polly acted well her part. To the children she gave fresh milk; to their elders she explained that the militia had taken their supplies, while she made place to receive two or three invalids who could go no further, by giving up her own room.

"You'll let me lie on the floor in your room, Aunt Melicent, I know," she said, "for the poor lady is so old and so feeble; I'm most sure she is a hundred. She came in a chaise and wanted to get up to Parson Leavenworth's, but she just can't. She can't hold up her head."

It was near midnight when the refugees set forth for the Center, Mr. Porter himself acting as guide. After that time, the sleepy boys and the entire household having taken themselves to bed, the old house was left to the night, with its silence and its chill dampness that always comes up from the river, that goes on "singing to us the same bonny nonsense," despite our cheer or our sorrow. Again, and yet again through the night, doors opened and two mothers stepped out in the moonlight to listen, hoping--hoping to hear sound of the coming of the boys, but only the lone cry of the whippoorwill was borne on the air.

"'Pears like," said Phyllis to Mrs. Porter in the morning, "the whippoorwills had lots to say last night; talked all night so's you couldn't hear nothing 'tall."

"Phyllis," said Mrs. Porter, "there was nothing else to hear, but we shall know soon."

Polly came down, bringing her checked linen apron full of eggs for breakfast. "I thought, mother," she said, "that you'd leave yourself without an egg yesterday, so I looked out. Isn't it handy to have them in the house? Haven't heard a single cackle this morning yet, but yesterday was a remarkable day everyway. I believe the hens knew the British were coming. Did you ever see such eggs? Wonder if my old lady is awake yet! Guess I'll carry up some hot water for her and find out."

Polly poured the water deftly from the big iron tea-kettle hanging from the crane and hurried away with it, only to return with such haste that she tripped on the threshold, broke the pitcher and sent the water over everything it could reach. "Mother," she said, recovering herself, "Parson Leavenworth will be here to breakfast. He's coming down the road with father. My old lady will feel honored, won't she? I know he's come for her. Phyllis, any more hot water to spare? It's so good to take out wrinkles; she'll miss it, I know."

The sun had not climbed over Great Hill when breakfast was over, and the last guest of the night had gone. Mrs. Punderson's daughter Anna rode behind the Rev. Mark Leavenworth on his horse, Thankful with Mrs. Punderson, the old lady in the chaise, and even Stiles had galloped away toward the east, and yet not a traveler on the road had brought tidings from New Haven. The group on the porch watching the departure had not dispersed when Polly's ears caught a strain floating up the river valley. She listened. She ran. She clasped her mother in her arms. She kissed her. She whispered in her ear, "I hear him! He's coming! Ethel is; and Cato is with him!" she cried out, embracing Phyllis in her joy. The two mothers--the one white, the other black; the one free, the other in bonds--went to listen. They stood side by side on the porch; tears fell from their eyes, tears that through all the years science has failed to distinguish, the one from the other. Ethel's cheery call rang clear and clearer. Cato's wild cadence grew near and nearer, but when the boys rode up beside the porch, Mrs. Porter was on her knees in the little bed-room off the parlor, and Phyllis was in the kitchen. New England mothers, both of them! Their sorrows they could bear; their joys they hid from sight.

WATERBURY, CONN., September, 1898.

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Transcriber's Notes

Incorrect quotes and a few obvious typos (hugh/huge, fireams/firearms, and ziz/zig) have been fixed.

Otherwise, the author's original spelling has been preserved; e.g. Yankeys, afright and affright, and the incorrect usage of 'its'.

Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Only Woman in the Town, by Sarah J. Prichard