Last Pages. Oscar Mandel

the motherly housekeeper came up from the kitchen.

      “Jenny, when the post boy comes by, tell him I have a letter for him,” said Weamish.

      “I will, Mr. Weamish. And I thought you’d like to know, sir, that I saw Josh Mamack dragging down the street.”

      “It’s about time! Catch him and send him up at once.”

      When she was gone, Weamish rose from his chair, letter in hand, and took it to an unbroken window for a better light. He was rather proud of his epistolary skills and unwilling to fold and seal the letter without re-reading it. This he did, half aloud, with subdued but eloquent gestures.

      “Dearest mamma,” said the letter; “God grant that this missive find you in the full enjoyment of your customary health and cheerful spirits. Need I tell you how sorely you are missed by all your friends in town? To fly to an ailing sister, a despondent and helpless brother-in-law, in the midst of an embattled Boston, within hearing of cannon fire, insulted daily by a rabble of treacherous and unprincipled villains, who, like froward children, dare to question the mild authority of a monarch beloved of all his rational subjects; to rush, I say, to a sister and brother cruelly expelled from their ancestral home at Cambridge; to nurse them in their affliction; to comfort them for the loss of property, familiar grounds and acquaintances; all this proves you a Saltonstall, the proud daughter of a governor, and sister-in-law to a royal Councillor of Massachusetts. But let me descend from these heights and commend myself to Dr. Brattle and to your dear sister, my aunt. Pray tell them they acted wisely in taking shelter at Boston under the victorious wings of his Excellency our governor and general, who, if reports tell true, hath recently beaten the impudent rebels out of Charlestown, and will now drum them handily out of the entire province. Alas, how I wish that I myself could wield a sword in these stirring times, rise to defend my king, and scourge the contumacious mob! But the robe enjoins its own duties, the law hath its own heroes. My sphere, at the moment, is our dear county of Nantucket, and here I mean to sustain his Majesty’s mild rule and enforce his just decrees. What if you and I, my dear mamma, permit ourselves, in the intimacy of our household, to nurse the virtuous hope that Governor Gage will see fit presently to call me to his side, perhaps into his Council, to serve my king in a wider and nobler field of activity? I make no secret of my feelings. I do not care if a hint should come to the governor’s ear that Thomas Weamish, who suffered for his king in the time of the Stamp Act, and who now once again beholds his windows shattered as the reward of his loyalty, that this same Thomas Weamish burns with a noble ambition to sacrifice his repose on the altar of our cherished colony. But you, my dear mamma, will know better than anyone how to convey these not unworthy sentiments to General Gage. Speak to him apart at the next assembly, when music hath made him cheerful. For is it fitting that a son of yours should pine away in a rude colonial outpost, among uncouth whalemen and Quakers, distant from elegant society—”

      But the door opened again at that moment and Jenny entered, followed by Joshua Mamack, carrying tools and a sack. “Here’s Josh, Mr. Weamish.”

      The Indian took off his cap with a respectfully cheerful “Good day to you, sir.”

      Weamish gave the man in return a sarcastic “Well well, Mr. Mamack; very good of you I’m sure to call on us at last.”

      The Indian looked dumb and scratched his head. “Never mind,” said the Judge; “I’ll attend to you in a moment.”

      He sat down to fold and seal his letter, which he handed to Jenny. After she had left, he turned to the Indian and pointed tragically at the broken window-pane, the sharp edges of which remained as if to bear witness. “Here, Mr. Mamack, here.”

      “Yah. I seen it,” said the Indian. “Near same one they break nine years ago. Mamack good memory. I seen it from the street days ago and I brung the replacement. Here.”

      Mamack produced the bright new pane from his sack. The Judge examined it.

      “Very well, Mr. Mamack, but why has it taken you four days to find your way here?”

      Mamack had learned long ago that this looking dumb of his was the canniest way to cope with the white world. “Find my way?” he asked.

      “To answer my summons, Mamack,” Weamish shouted. “Am I to sit in this room for an entire week while the wind whistles through a broken window?”

      “I mean to come right away quickly, Judge—”

      “But?”

      “Well—”

      “Well well well! Well what?”

      “Well—I got five kids to feed, I got a position in the community—”

      The Judge’s cheeks puffed and went from his customary rosy to red.

      “A position in the—! A carpenter—a glazer—a jack Indian with a position in the community! So this is the new spirit blowing over the land! And what has your precious position in the community to do with my broken window, Mr. Mamack?”

      “Yah, I was only talking, Judge. I fix that window fast.”

      “I insist that you tell me!”

      “Well—”

      “Well?”

      Up to this moment, Mamack had been looking down and sideways as though interested in the Judge’s carpet, but now he gazed slyly into the Judge’s face: “Well, the folks around here see you comfy cozy with Sergeant Cuff and Mr. Applegate—”

      “Aha!”

      Just then, in the distance, came the sound of a fife and drum. It had become a familiar one to the Sherburne folk from the time when, months ago, thirty Redcoats, commanded by Sergeant Alexander Cuff (detached from the nth Regiment of Foot) had landed on the island to keep the peace. Mamack became a little bolder.

      “There’s a heap of bad feeling on the island, Judge,” he said, “like a wind, speak East, speak West, a cold wicked wind. But I don’t meddle none in white man’s business. I don’t sit down into no committees.”

      “Committees, eh? I assure you I know all about their rebel committees.”

      “They know all about you that you know all about them,” replied Mamack with a grin. “They say you and Mr. Applegate hush hush at night, in the dark, only one candle, you write names with ink in a book.”

      “Rubbish!”

      “But maybe they write names too, eh?”

      “Let them!” The military note was coming closer. “We have ways,” he added, “of slapping their writing hands. As for you—”

      “I better fix that window. Big storm step out of sky any day.”

      “Not yet! Tell me, have these patriotic gentlemen tried to keep you from mending it?”

      “They call a small meeting about it, sir.”

      “A meeting! A meeting about my window!”

      “Small meeting, Judge. A bowl of cider and a pipe in Swain’s tap room. I said to them, I said, ‘Gentlemen, who am I? Josh Mamack, Pokanoket tribe, honest worker, no rum hardly ever, I must mend the Judge’s window, not decent to keep the Judge in draft.’ And they said, ‘Go, friend, go in peace.’”

      “So now it’s the rebel committee that runs Nantucket! The magistrates and the selectmen no longer count. Tell me, Mr. Mamack, while you gentlemen were guzzling cider and puffing on your pipes, was not the vandal’s name mentioned by chance?”

      “Who?”

      “The window breaker’s name!”

      “The window breaker? O Lord—I don’t know—”

      Weamish, who had been standing, now sat down behind the desk and spoke with the voice of a judge addressing a sheep-stealer. “Mr. Mamack,” he said, “I am the chief magistrate of this county.”

      “I know, sir.